Fairly predictable reactions all round to the suggestion emerging from Lord Goldsmith’s Citizenship review that school pupils take an oath of allegiance to Queen & Country. By happy coincidence Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone writes in today’s LA Times about the California loyalty oath, which all state, city, county, public school, community college and public university employees are required to sign:
“A mathematics teacher named Marianne Kearney-Brown, who is a Quaker and a pacifist, declined to sign the oath because she felt that it might later be construed as committing her to take up arms to defend the nation, which would violate her religious beliefs. The state finessed the situation by agreeing that the oath would not be interpreted in that manner.”Stone goes on to trash the whole idea of loyalty oaths and ground them in the McCarthy era paranoia of 1950’s America. In his view loyalty oaths reverse the essential relationship between the citizen and the state since citizens of a self-governing society must be free to think and talk openly and criticise the government of the day. They are designed, according to Stone:
“not to protect the nation against real subversion but to frighten, intimidate and punish individual citizens for exercising their constitutional right to question and criticize the government.”While remaining ever vigilant against the petty partisan comments found on other blogs I can’t help but remark that their appeal to New Labour is suddenly very clear….
5 Comments:
Well, let's not engage in cheap shots, be more explicit. Just exactly what is it the government has done to make you frightened, intimidated and punished as an individual citizen over the last decade, Liam?
I mean, I feel they've engaged in a lot of waffly crap to try to keep swindon man and woman from voting tory... (including the oath nonsense) but frightened? Intimidated? Punished?
Do you really think citizens of the US are shaking in their boots? This is really one of the most ridiculous pieces of nonsense I've seen for a long time, and is comparable to all that stupid BNP 'moon landings were a fake' stuff.
Please explain in something deeper than Daily Mail-speak
I'm a white and probably middle-class Scotsman Bob so any government efforts to frighten or intimidate citizens aren't likely to centre on me.
Were I a young muslim male, perhaps of Pakistani origin I'd probably have several examples to lay before you, likely to include dawn raids, arrests and detention without subsequent charge.
Heck, if I was a young Brazilian male I might not be in a position to have made this post in the first place...
I think you see where I'm going Bob - if you read Stone's full piece it puts my point in better context.
Of course I'm not suggesting this is 1984 with some sort of totalitarian regime - I'm just pointing out in the current climate and given community relations over the last 5 years or so New Labour would do well to apply a little more finesse to their policy making than this sort of crude gesture politics. For the reasons cited above some people in our community would have good cause to be just so alarmed about 'oaths of allegiance'....
Cas, this British rubbish is to stop people noticing Labour have quadrupled immigration ,foisted Multiculturalism on us , reduced the English to an ethnicity in their own coutry and given away the powers of Parliament directly undermining the UK. Even more importantly they rule England on the basis of a bizarre half way house devolution in which Nationalism is appeased by double votes only in Labour areas yielding them 69 seats which they absurdly employ on English legislation. Then it is to divert anti Scottish feeling caused Brown’s obvious contempt for parts of England
In Scotland you get better health care no tuition fees and the difference is noticeable that Berwick Upon Tweed is desperate to be Scottish. No Administration has ever harmed the UK as much as this one. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with patriotism but this false meretricious flag waving is exactly what the famous "Refuge of the scoundrel " was aimed at.
I have no objection to mono culture up to a point but I do object to the cheap fatuous prostitution of important and historic symbols the immediate needs of the Labour Party .One of these is stop the haemorrhaging of votes from the betrayed working classes used by their “Progressive” paternal careerist scum bag manipulators as so much fodder to be simply bought with other people’s money.
You detect a malign Soviet style wiff of stale grey cultural authoritarianism. What you miss is that the point of those ‘heroic tractor make’r lies was always to disguise that queues for food and growing failure of the regime . The truth is the reverse of the state`s handout and this subversion of government to attack the way we think with or money is a truly calamitous development .
Bob Piper is a member of the international union of class warriors and does not care if we use the flag to wipe our pissy fingers . Naturally to him this sort of cultural attack in unintelligible and its affront unnoticed .
Personally I would prefer it if newmania avoided pissing on his fingers in the first place. It is something we teach even the youngest male children in this part of the world, but I suppose as a southern softie they don't teach good manners, etiquette and cleanliness... any more than they do good grammar and spelling.
However... he is almost right. If there was an international union of class warriors, my subscription would be fully paid up.
Having done some work with young Muslims recently, my sense was that the groups I met (from London and Birmingham) felt they were British, and seemed happy with that.
Perhaps understandably they had a complex view of the police - wanting to see more evidence of them in their communities, but also not wanting to feel as if that policing was focusing on potential terrorist plots.
The other thing I found hopeful and interesting was a strong desire to create opportunities for them to meet and be part of wider secular society.
I understand - and to an extent share - the cringe that the idea of citizenship ceremonies induces. But having been at civic ceremonies with new British citizens, where the people involved celebrated their where they came from as well as their Britishness, I think there not a terrible idea. And certainly aren't the beginning of the police state.
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