Blair hails new era on law and order

[Briar]

(Hope this isn't a dupe. Bliar, desperate to distract people from the chaos that is Iraq, has now completed his transformation into Thatcher and his betrayal of the socially liberal consensus. Next he'll be campaigning to bring back capital punishment.)


Blair hails new era on law and order


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3905547.stm


Prime Minister Tony Blair has said it is time to mark the end of the "1960s liberal consensus" on law and order.


...the prime minister set the scene for the five-year plans by warning that 1960s liberalism had gone too far.

....


Mr Blair said the 1960s saw great breakthroughs on individual rights, women's rights and rejection of discrimination, deference and rigid class divisions.

But....

[schultzee]

1. Joining the new Nazi movement, Mr. Blair?

[cprise]

2. This is the guy that Ruport Murdoch & Co. backed

...in the last election.

Tres creepy.

[AP]

7. What's your evidence for that?

[cprise]

10. It is common knowledge

...that News Corp. outlets have openly backed New Labour and specifically Tony Blair in recent elections. There is concern he may lose that support though.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3272023.stm

Blair is Murdoch's man.

[AP]

13. They needed Blair to build up some wealth in society to give Tories

something to steal. Just like in the US with Clinton.

[cprise]

15. Clintonites are good at this

The divide between rich and poor in the US had already reached 1920s proportions under Clinton. At that point, the rich have almost unlimited power to corrupt (the courts, elections, you name it) especially when so much regulation has been scrapped.

Give private corps. complete control over the media, and watch them create phony scandals and then steal an election.

[BlueEyedSon]

3. Scum sucking POS

[JohnyCanuck]

4. Blair figures Allawi has the right idea. n/t

[AP]

5. I encourage people to read the speech.

Tories use crime the way Bush uses to terrorism in order to scare people into voting for fascists. Blair is trying to reduce crime in order to limit its effectiveness as a wedge issue and as a tool the Tories can use to win elections. And I think if you read this speech, it's not exactly the Big Brother manifesto that the knee-jerkers here think it is.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3907651.stm



Today's strategy is the culmination of a journey of change both for progressive politics and for the country.

It marks the end of the 1960s liberal, social consensus on law and order.

The 1960s saw a huge breakthrough in terms of freedom of expression, of lifestyle, of the individual's right to live their own personal life in the way they choose.

It was the beginning of a consensus against discrimination, in favour of women's equality, and the end of any sense of respectability in racism or homophobia.

Not that discrimination didn't any longer exist - or doesn't now - but the gradual acceptance that it was contrary to the spirit of a new time.

Deference, too, was on the way out and rightly.

It spoke to an increasing rejection of rigid class divisions.

All of this has survived and strengthened in today's generation.

But with this change in the 1960s came something else, not necessarily because of it but alongside it.

It was John Stuart Mill who articulated the modern concept that with freedom comes responsibility.

But in the 1960's revolution, that didn't always happen.

Law and order policy still focussed on the offender's rights, protecting the innocent, understanding the social causes of their criminality.

All through the 1970s and 1980s, under Labour and Conservative Governments, a key theme of legislation was around the prevention of miscarriages of justice.

Meanwhile some took the freedom without the responsibility.

The worst criminals became better organised and more violent.

The petty criminals were no longer the bungling but wrong-headed villains of old; but drug pushers and drug-abusers, desperate and without any residual moral sense.

And a society of different lifestyles spawned a group of young people who were brought up without parental discipline, without proper role models and without any sense of responsibility to or for others.

All of this was then multiplied in effect, by the economic and social changes that altered the established pattern of community life in cities, towns and villages throughout Britain and throughout the developed world.

Here, now, today, people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus.

People do not want a return to old prejudices and ugly discrimination.

But they do want rules, order and proper behaviour.

They know there is such a thing as society.

They want a society of respect.

They want a society of responsibility.

They want a community where the decent law-abiding majority are in charge; where those that play by the rules do well; and those that don't, get punished.

For me this has always been something of a personal crusade.

I got used to the society of fear in the 1980s canvassing on the Holly Street estate in Hackney (now thankfully greatly improved); when people were too scared to open the door and the letterboxes had burn marks round them where lighted rags had been shoved through them.

[Cocoa]

8. co-opting their rhetoric, at least

an ok strategy, but I doubt how much substance there is. Running against the 60's, in 2004, makes me think he's full of air.

[AP]

9. I'm not sure if he's running against the '60s. Read the speech.

He's identifying social trends. IIRC, he explicitly states that the positive trends are not necessarily linked to the negative ones. It's just a history lesson, and he's embracing the great things about the 60s.

In fact, he probably included the extensive discussion about the positive developments during the 60s to make a point that he's NOT running against the 60s. He's just criticizing Labour's approach to crime in the 60s (which was a miserable failure and cost them a second term more than once, IIRC).

If anyone wants to know the important part crime has played in British politics, read Blumenthal's discussion of Tony Blair in The Clinton Wars, and also think about how the Tories were able to exploit the problems in NI in order to make people feel unsafe.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. He is obviously running against the 60s

There was no need to bring them up. He could have, for instance, talked about the 90s - more recent, and thus with more of an effect on today's situation. He could have talked about the 80s, and the huge encouragement of selfishness by Thatcher (the nearest he got to criticising this was "they know there is such a thing as society"). But instead he decided to slag off "a society of different lifestyles".

The frightening thing is not just that Michael Howard could have made this speech; so could Thatcher. Or Enoch Powell. Or George Bush. Or Joe McCarthy. I'll stop there with the comparisons - I could go further back in time.

[AP]

17. He has to address it. That's when the Tories started killing Labour on the

issue of crime. Until Tony Blair turned labour into the "tough on crime, tougher on the causes of crime" party beginning in the mid-'80s, the tories had no problem limiting the ellectability of the labour party.

[cprise]

11. Tony Blair now wants an American-style race war at home

I don't know if he's watched Bowling For Columbine or really paid attention to crime statistics, but the societies with the lowest crime rates are those that educate and rehabilitate.

Tony Blair and his ilk (Thatcherites) think that the U.S. ought to be emulated in every way. The UK has a problem on its hands and it is runaway Yankephilia.

[Moderator]

18. AP

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.

DU Moderator

[AP]

19. The speech itself is crown copyright -- you can reproduce it freely.

It's not BBC copyright.

[MisterP]

6. out-Thatcher Thatcher! that's the new Labor way!

and Thatcher looks like Leader from the Hulk...
(read Greg Palast! it's good for ya!)

[DeepModem Mom]

12. What Blair is REALLY trying to do is change the subject from Iraq...

in exactly the same way Rove creates diversions here. Last week was a bad one for Tony.

[Bridget Burke]

14. I've always had a problem with "Law & Order"

We know what Law is. Laws are passed by the Legislative branch & carried out by the Executive branch. The Judicial branch deals with any questions. Tere may be unjust laws & they may be carried out in an unfair way (!) but officially, it's Our government. We do have soem feedback on the Law thing.

But what's this "and Order"? "Order" beyond any Law? That's always been a bit scary.