What influence does Britain have?

Dean Acheson once described Britain as a country which [Speech at West Point (5 December 1962)] "has lost an Empire" but which "has not yet found a role". During the 1960s and 1970s it sought to find a role within Europe. The story of that search is well described in "Britain and European Unity".



(my apologies if you can't see the link to Amazon & John Young's book - I've had some problems getting it to display - but it is there!)

The course he led while I was studying for my MA at Leicester University (1995-7), allowed me to look at the background to Britain's applications to join what is now the EU. British politicians had been very dismissive of European efforts to rebuild the continent together after the Second World War. We didn't think it would last - we thought that we could continue to dominate the world stage alone. By 1962 many at the height of government had concluded that we needed to adapt - and Acheson's comments just rubbed in the fact of our loss of influence. So Britain sought to regain influence and economic power through close cooperation in Europe.

It didn't do too badly. Instead of falling behind and losing markets as we had in the 1950s and 1960s - Britain began to trade more with Europe. We did what we were best at - and Britain made a comeback (Ireland also profited from her membership). Local government in Britain, working with funding from Europe, saw cities rebuilt. (I remember Birmingham in the late 1960s - it was a decaying mess. I particularly remember the gloomy, run down area by the canal basins - which were spectacularly transformed with European funding). My MA dissertation looked at Labour MPs who backed the "No" campaign in 1975 - to find out whether & why their views had changed by the mid 1990s. Interestingly, those who recovered their political careers after losing in 1979 & returning to local government, had been impressed by how productive working with "Brussels" was, compared to working with Whitehall. European work was transforming & building for the future. Communities had better access to decision makers in Brussels than in London.

The growth of the Eurosceptics (or more accurately "Europhobes") has been the big political story of the past quarter century. Aided by a mainly anti-EU press, ordinary British people have gained the impression that Britain loses through its membership of the EU.

The pro-European "British Influence" has researched & produced a report on British Influence in Europe today. It is worth reading, and I hope it will inform the debate about our future.

It is available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/Britishinfluence/British_Influence_Scorecard.pdf

A Bill of Rights for Britain

For as long as I can remember exams for both UK Constitutional Law & British Politics have often included questions inviting the student to discuss the merits and disadvantages of establishing a Bill of Rights specifically for the UK system. It's a super exam question - because it enables the student to demonstrate their understanding of "rights"; to discuss how far a piece of paper can actually protect them; the relationships between elected legislatures and governments and the Judiciary; and the problems caused for such a Bill due to the doctrine of Parliamentary Sovereignty.

The Political & Constitutional Reform Committee - one of the House of Common's Select Committee has been looking at the issue - and a debate has been held in Westminster Hall. It's worth having a look at the debate - It can be accessed directly here or the PDF of Hansard can be downloaded - You'll find the debate about a third of the way through, starting at Column 216 WH. That can be downloaded from here.

Defamation Act 2013

This post won't be of immediate interest to my new OU students - but former students (and other law students studying Tort) may find the House of Library paper on the Defamation Act 2013 of use.

The Act has been in effect since the beginning of 2014.

The report is available here.

Happy Birthday!

Birthday greetings go to Tom Downey, the youngest of the so-called "Watergate Babies" - the freshmen (and women) elected to Congress in the immediate aftermath of Watergate. He is Sixty Five today. He had only been eligible to be elected to the House for nine months when he won the seat for the second district of New York. (Just two years previously the long serving Republican, James Gover had won with 66% of the vote - and Nixon won 72% of the district's votes!).

The term "Watergate Babies" is certainly no longer appropriate now - and wasn't then. Many had previous elected experience - Downey himself had been a member of the Suffolk County, [New York] legislature since 1971. Joseph Fisher (VA10) was sixty, and almost a third had been born in the 1920s or before.

As previous posts have noted - this year is the 40th anniversary of the 1974 landslide election.

Downey was a law student when first elected. He served in Congress until 1993 (18 years - 9 Congresses). He then founded a lobbying group, the Downey-McGrath Group, of which he is Chairman.

Stop & Search

The House of Commons Library has produced (yet again! - and I have to say, they regularly produce reports of high quality which are VERY useful!) - a report on Stop & Search powers. It's a useful briefing paper for anyone interested in the topic - and relevant to Law Students (especially OU W201 & W200)

The full paper is available at http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn03878.pdf. The summary states:

The police have a range of powers to stop and search people. The most widely used of these is under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) which accounts for over one million stops and searches per year. This allows the police to stop people or vehicles in public places and search them for stolen goods and other articles. However, like most stop and search powers, this only applies where the constable has “reasonable suspicion” that these articles will be found.

There are two powers which do not require the police to have “reasonable suspicion” of the individual being stopped and searched:

 

• The police can authorise stops and searches under the Terrorism Act 2000. The rules governing these have recently been reformed following a judgement by the European Court of Human Rights that they violated article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to privacy).A separate Library Standard Note (SN/HA/6742) deals with Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (stop and search at airports etc)

 

• Under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, a senior officer can authorise such stops and searches in a particular area if he or she reasonably believes that serious violence may take place or that people are carrying offensive weapons. This provision has also recently been subject to a legal challenge.

 

Both these have proved particularly controversial, but stop and search powers generally have long been at the centre of tensions between Black people and the police. Overall, Black people are stopped and searched around seven times more than White people. In 2010 the Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report examining some of the explanations which have been given for this disproportionality. Stops and searches were cited in a number of reports on the August 2011 riots in England as being a cause of resentment.

 

A Metropolitan Police review has resulted in recent changes to policy in London, including a more intelligence-led and targeted approach. In July 2013, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced a public consultation into the use of stop and search powers. Responses are currently being analysed. There were media reports in January 2014 that the Prime Minister was blocking plans by the Home Secretary to restrict the use of stop and search.