Unusa Karimu’s people, the Mbororo, are a marginalised semi-nomadic community of cattle herders in Cameroon. The daily persecution and exploitation they face at the hands of government and wealthy elites inspired Mr Karimu to become a lawyer so he could defend their human rights in court. Karimu talks to Salman Shaheen about his struggle against economic hardship to become the Mbororo’s first and only barrister and the far more difficult struggle to win equality for his people.

Cramped and overheated as it is, Karimu’s London hotel room is a world away from his sweltering, mosquito-infested little place in war-ravaged Sierra Leone where he studied to become a lawyer. He’s in the UK to hone his skills with Derbyshire-based charity Village Aid so he can return to Cameroon to bolster the Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association (MBOSCUDA), an organisation chaired by him which is dedicated to defending the rights of his people.

When MBOSCUDA was first established, its members were threatened with death and falsely imprisoned, languishing in jails without any charges ever being brought against them in court. But, with Karimu as the Mbororo’s first lawyer, things are beginning to change.

Karimu was born in 1980 in the village of Mentang in the Boyo district of the North West region of Cameroon. His mother died when he was three years old and his absentee father squandered much of the family’s cattle wealth. He had just enough left to fund his way through school.

“I did quite well at school, I cannot remember failing any exams,” says Karimu, who used the last of the cattle to go to university, where he graduated in law.

Witnessing the “day to day abuses” of his people, intimidated by rich landowners and corrupt government officials making a fast buck confiscating Mbororo cattle and exhorting bribes, Karimu set out to become a lawyer to use the law of the land to protect them. Despite the rarity of his academic success among a people whose literacy rate remains as low as 5%, however, Karimu had no money to go to law school.

His career, and his ambition to use his legal expertise to empower the Mbororo, might have reached a dead end there had it not been for Village Aid, a small UK charity concerned by the silent suffering of his people, which entered into a partnership with MBOSCUDA and managed to secure funding from Comic Relief to train him to become a lawyer.

“I was trained as a paralegal, providing legal services based in the community,” says Karimu. “I could advise and say where there had been violations of human rights. But we could not intervene directly and had to take the cases to a barrister.”

Karimu quickly realised, however, that for the Mbororo people to truly realise their rights enshrined, but not actualised, in law, they had to have their own barristers capable of representing them in court.

“I could not address the day to day abuses of my people unless I became a practising lawyer,” says Karimu. “So I took up the task and I went to Freetown. If you see my room where I was living, you can’t believe it. I resigned from my job, I left my house and my family and I went down to Freetown, the capital of a country that had undergone 10 years civil war. But now I have qualified and am in Cameroon, I can talk like a barrister on their behalf.”

Representing the plight of his people before Cameroon’s courts, the greatest problem for Karimu and for the Mbororo people is the billionaire cattle rancher and business magnate, Baba Amadou Danpullo. Darling of the national press, bane of the Mbororo, Danpullo has used his position on the central committee of Cameroon’s ruling party and his ownership of the Danpullo Broadcasting System (DBS) television station to make life for Karimu’s people a living hell.

“He is the main perpetrator of abuses on the Mbororo people,” says Karimu. “Because he needs a lot of land for ranching and his tea plantations he has made many evictions without any due compensation. He has imprisoned a lot of my people. Recently he made a ban on the sale of horses, which are the livelihood of the Mbororo.”

Why is Danpullo on a seemingly personal campaign of hatred against the Mbororo? Perhaps it is nothing more complex than blind prejudice. Perhaps it is because he is a powerful man afraid of groups like MBOSCUDA organising against him. Certainly he has done his best to see their members thrown in jail, while using the courts to block cases against his interests.

“DBS was saying very nasty things about the Mbororo and MBOSCUDA,” says Karimu. “We instigated a defamation action against DBS. We reported it to the state prosecutor and a summons was issued for accused persons to give their statements. As I’m speaking to you, I’ve got information from Cameroon that suggests the case will not go anywhere.”

Where Danpullo has used his considerable government influence to block cases, Karimu has used international partners and social networks to raise awareness about the issues. It’s an uphill struggle for the hitherto voiceless Mbororo, but Karimu’s work has begun to make a difference.

“The work I’m doing has made things better,” says Karimu. “I can write to the state authorities and explain things to them. They can arrest all of the Mbororo people, but they cannot stop me. So at least there is someone out there who can do something.”

One success story Karimu is particularly proud of is his intervention in a case of cattle theft falsely brought against two Mbororo men by a powerful woman.

“I represented them in court and they were acquitted based on the evidence,” says Karimu.

He believes that it was entirely a case of prejudice and if he had not been there to argue the facts, the accused would have gone to prison for at least three years each.

“Sometimes the judges are not bad, but if you are not well represented, other lawyers will make the opposition case look genuine,” Karimu explains. “We need lawyers who know the facts about their case. I was against the most senior barrister in the jurisdiction. A lawyer is always as good as his case.”

Karimu has close to 60 cases on his hands at the moment. With so many daily injustices perpetrated against his people, generating new cases all the time, it’s a big challenge being the only Mbororo lawyer. North West Cameroon has seven districts with high courts. When two of these districts have a case on the same day, even a man as passionate and dedicated as Karimu cannot be in two places at once.

“I can’t deal with all these cases alone,” he says. “We need more Mbororo lawyers. It’s not like we don’t have other law graduates who can do it. The programme is so expensive, they can’t afford to go to the law school.”

Karimu hopes his example will inspire others and attract funding for Village Aid and MBOSCUDA to send more of his people to law school.

Many challenges lie ahead. Human rights defenders in the Mbororo community continue to receive death threats, while a lot of the cases Karimu would like to take up go unreported because the abuses happen in remote areas. The problem is not Cameroon’s laws. On paper, the country’s legal framework guarantees the rights of all its citizens, including its Mbororo minority. However, as is so often the case, theory falls flat in the face of corrupt practice, poor implementation and a lack of legal understanding among the victimised. With Karimu leading the fight in the courtrooms and in the communities, there is hope for the Mbororo. If that hope is to be realised, Cameroon needs more people like him.

Abu Qatada is a nasty piece of work. Probably. From yesterday evening’s coverage of his release, it’s actually surprisingly difficult to find any specifics as to what it is he’s actually supposed to have done – according to the Guardian “judges accept [he] remains a threat to national security”, and the Daily Mail quotes someone who tells us he has “a litany of terror connections” but both are notably light on specifics. The BBC does have more details, but there seems to be a rather touching faith across much of the mainstream media that if the government wants to lock someone up without charge (especially, it seems, if that someone is brown and beardy), then we can take it as read that they must have done something, so we don’t need to be bothered with the actual details of what that is. Still, it seems unlikely that a man who’s given a sermon condoning suicide bombings and who was once found to be in possession of an envelope full of cash marked ‘For the mujahideen in Chechnya’ is completely free of links with Islamist terrorism, so let’s accept that he probably at least had such links in the past.

The fact remains, though, that he’s never been found guilty – or even put on trial – for any crime in this country. Committing terrorism is a crime. Conspiracy to commit terrorism is a crime. Inciting terrorism is a crime. “Having links to terrorism” isn’t. He has been found guilty in his absence of conspiracy to commit terrorist acts in Jordan – and the British government wants to deport him there – but they’ve been blocked from doing so for the very good reason that the evidence for his conviction was obtained by torture, which as you can imagine is generally held to throw the certitude of any testimony obtained by such into doubt. And since torture and unfair trials seem to be endemic in the Jordanian justice system, I’m also inclined to be cynical about any assurances Jordan’s government gives ours about how if we do deport him we can count on them not to mistreat him.

Of course, the inevitable response to this from many will be incomprehension that we should care at all how he’s treated. There’s hysterical tabloid outrage (such as in the Daily Mail link above) about how much it’s costing the British taxpayer to have him kept under house arrest for 22 hours per day, but no outrage whatsoever at the fact that he’s been detained – for literally years – and then placed under house arrest despite never having been convicted in a fair trial of any crime. But that’s how human rights work – they apply to everyone, even nasty terrorist sympathisers. Restricting someone’s freedom without a fair trial or deporting them to a country where they’ll be tortured isn’t OK, no matter how much we might – justifiably – wish they weren’t in the UK. And no, asking “but what about the human rights of the victims of terrorism?” as Tory MP Robert Halfon did on The World at One yesterday isn’t a sensible response. “Terrorists do it, so we should too” is about the most disastrously misguided principle to apply to criminal justice that I can think of.

It’s at this point that a rightwing troll (if we had any left here at TTE) would probably interject something like “so you’d rather have suspected terrorists roaming free in the streets would you?” The simple answer is yes, I would. That doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, but if we’re supporting the principle of universal human rights, we shouldn’t have to pretend that the people who need theirs upholding are nice people. Abu Qatada might well be a fundamentalist preacher of hate. But if we accept that it’s OK to lock him up then you’re tacitly accepting that we live in a society where you can be indefinitely deprived of your liberty without anyone needing to prove that you’ve done anything wrong. And it’ll take a hell of a lot of would-be terrorists to be walking the streets before I accept that.

I’m sure your thoughts are with Japan. If not, read now. The death count is unbearable, the initial Hollywood-style video footage has become merely a prelude to the suffering which is happening in its wake.

Reactor explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi plant

In Haiti last year, the earthquake brought with it artificial disasters: US imperialism. the squabbling cash divisions of NGOs, everything except real Haitian government. Now in Japan the natural, unchangeable series of events have been worsened by the Nuclear material artificially created and left in its path. The exploding reactors are not merely a part of the natural disaster, they are an avoidable exacerbation of suffering.

A friend of mine said to me earlier today “It’s times like this that I wish I hadn’t studied physics at University.” Most of us don’t understand what the effects to a nuclear disaster in Japan would be, but many who do are saying that this is worse than the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.

Nuclear power and weapons have not gone away, we have merely taken them out of public thought. And the horrors of nuclear material remain. This is the kind of disaster which has made so many of us oppose nuclear power even in the face of climate change, even in the face of those citing the clean, safe, responsible nature of modern nuclear technology. It’s only purpose is to secure short term profit, never mind the human cost it has levied for decades in Japan, Russia and beyond. It isn’t clean, and it isn’t safe.

If any good can come out of this disaster, maybe it is that we can finally end the absurd calls for increased nuclear power, and turn our backs on its foul technology, and overturn a politics which puts short-term profit over life itself.

Cameron said: “I simply don’t understand how you can’t understand how democracies have a right to defend themselves. I would have thought this argument is particularly powerful right here in Kuwait which, 20 years ago, was invaded by a thuggish bullying neighbour who disrespected your sovereignty, invaded your country and destroyed parts of your capital city.

He added: “Are we honestly saying that for all time, forever and a day, that countries like Kuwait have to manufacture and maintain every single part of their own defences? I think very few people considering that argument for any time would give it any consideration at all.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake. No one – no one – who’s criticising Cameron for taking a trip to the Middle East to talk up democracy in between visiting arms fairs is saying democracies shouldn’t be allowed to buy weapons to defend themselves. That would be stupid. The idea that nice cuddly democratic governments might still need to buy weapons from time to time is entirely reasonable. But as an adequate response to the criticism at hand Cameron’s statement falls short so badly it’s hard to know where to even begin.

First, isn’t it a teensy bit of a stretch to imply – as Cameron seems to – that Saddam Hussein still constitutes a threat to Kuwait’s sovereignty? I don’t think even Genghis Khan managed to conquer anywhere from beyond the grave.

Second, Kuwait’s a democracy now? Oh dear. The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s only ranked it 114^th out of 162 countries for political freedoms, and classified it as an authoritarian regime. Boy, are they going to feel stupid when they learn that all that ‘research’ and ‘studying’ they did was a waste of time. A country where peaceful political meetings are violently broken up by riot police is clearly exactly the kind of place we want to be selling riot shields to.

This is what democracy looks like. Apparently. Image - TTC Press Images/flickr

Third – and this is so obvious it really shouldn’t need pointing out – it might have escaped Cameron’s notice, but Kuwait’s not the only sodding country in the Middle East. We’ve sold tear gas to Gaddafi’s Libya, Land Rovers and Armoured Personnel Carriers to Saudi Arabia, combat helicopters to Algeria…the list goes on. At this point I almost feel it’s insulting all of our intelligence to point out that none of these regimes are in the least bit democratic, but Cameron seems not to be aware of it, so it seems worth spelling out.

All in all, it’s hard to see how Cameron’s statement could have been less convincing. It’s as if someone had a go at him for running over a small child while five pints over the limit and he came out with a spiel about the vital role cars play in meeting our travel needs in modern society. I know politicians have a habit of being evasive when faced with awkward questions, but it’s kind of galling to see it done so brazenly.

I swore I’d never write about tax in my private life, but given tax avoidance kills 1,000 children in the developing world every day since these countries lose more through multinational corporations shifting taxable profits abroad than they receive in aid, I feel the need to post this very important press release I received from Christian Aid today.

Tuesday 8 February 2011

G20 MUST END TAX HAVEN SECRECY, CAMPAIGNERS TELL SARKOZY

French President Nicolas Sarkozy faces a global campaign demanding that the G20 commits to ending tax haven secrecy when it meets in Cannes, France later this year.

Organisations behind the campaign, which was launched at the World Social Forum in Dakar today, include Christian Aid, ActionAid, Tax Justice Network Africa and Inspiraction (Spain).

By visiting the websites of participating agencies, those wanting to add their voices will be able to email President Sarkozy, who is this year’s G20 host, as well as other G20  leaders, demanding that effective action to end tax haven secrecy is firmly on the G20 agenda.

‘We hope many thousands of campaigners will demand an end to the huge suffering which tax haven secrecy currently causes, especially in developing countries,’ said Dr David McNair, Senior Economic Justice Adviser at Christian Aid.

‘G20 countries between them have the power to force tax havens to stop keeping the secrets of people and companies who dodge tax, pay or receive bribes and launder money.’

Tax dodging by some unscrupulous companies operating internationally costs developing countries more than they receive in aid. Christian Aid estimates this to be around US$160bn each year – money which should be funding schools, hospitals and other vital public services.

Chris Jordan, Tax Justice Campaigner at ActionAid, said: ‘Removing the secrecy havens offer would make tax dodging dramatically more difficult and enable governments in poorer countries to determine just how much they are losing by way of tax revenues, and take the appropriate action.’

Visitors to www.endtaxhavensecrecy.org will be able to send the following message to Nicolas Sarkozy, David Cameron and Nick Clegg:

‘Please take effective action on tax haven secrecy at the G20 in November 2011.

‘Global tax losses amount to over a hundred billion dollars per year at a time when the global financial crisis has prompted severe cuts in states’ budgets around the world.

‘Developing countries lose more to tax dodging each year than they receive in aid.

‘The G20 nations must take action now to end this injustice by agreeing on measures to end tax haven secrecy.

‘I call upon you to show global leadership in 2011.’

The sleepy little market town of Beccles rarely makes it into the news. The most exciting thing to happen here since three turnips were stolen from the village fete in 1833 was the discovery last summer that carts move more efficiently with rotating circular devices attached to the undercarriage.

I spent 25 years of my life living on the outskirts of this rural backwater, safe in the knowledge that no matter how long I’m away, nothing ever changes. In February this year I swapped the quotidian quiet of Beccles for the bright lights of London. And what a difference a year seems to have made. Not only has the old pub I used to work at been bought up by Wetherspoons, but a man wanted dead by Sarah Palin is living just down the road.

Parking my car down an old stone track and turning the corner, I was surprised to see a dozen paparazzi camped outside Beccles police station waiting to get a shot of Julian Assange. Chatting to them, I learned that as part of his bail conditions while he is staying with Vaughan Smith at the rather plush Ellingham Hall, Assange must register at the local station every day between 2pm and 5pm.

The paps, sent from civilisation to stand on a frozen empty street in the dark of this provincial little settlement,  seemed rather confused by the whole experience. I suspect the locals, who it appears refer to Assange as “that Wikipedia bloke” have also been somewhat confused by the attention the world has been paying to Beccles. But it’ll pass.  Some travelling tinker will show them how to operate a lightbulb, the whole village will gather round jaws to the floor, and Assange will soon be forgotten.

As the Labour leadership contest enters its final leg, party members will be receiving their ballots in the post today. But while the national media is zooming in on a two-horse race between the two Milibands – one the candidate of continuity, the other of modest change – The Third Estate talks to Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, sofa star of This Week and the only contender for Brown’s vacant throne offering genuine left-wing reform.

“I am running for the leadership because I am the best candidate for the job,” Diane Abbott confidently declares. “The most immediate task is to rebuild and revitalise the party and no other candidate has my experience of the party.”

Drawing on her experience as a trade union official, a councillor, an MP, a member of the national executive and a veteran of many grassroots campaigns, Abbott believes she is better placed to engage with ordinary Labour party members than any of her rivals.

“I want to build on the best of the New Labour years, but I am the only candidate offering a fresh vision for the party,” Abbott says. It’s a vision that ranges from greater internal democracy to putting civil liberties back at the heart of its politics. At home, she wants to challenge, not just to the timing of government cuts but their scale, while abroad she wants to see new thinking about Britain’s place in the world by scrapping the Trident nuclear deterrent and withdrawing British troops from Afghanistan. Meanwhile, advocating bringing the railways back into public ownership, Abbott seeks to address one of the core failures of New Labour. “We need to admit that the market is not the answer for everything,” she says.

Labour’s defeat in May’s election has ushered in a new period of reflection for the party. But while most of her rivals are seeking to trim around the edges, pushing for centrist reform, Abbot is clear about her party’s mistakes and how they must be addressed.

“Ordinary people thought that New Labour was not on their side,” Abbot says. “Increasingly it seemed like an elitist project trapped in a Westminster bubble. New Labour became increasingly undemocratic. The Prime Minister was not listening to his cabinet and the Parliamentary leadership was not listening to its own members and supporters or the general public.”

Abbott argues that if ordinary party members had had a real say, Labour could have avoided some of its most damaging mistakes.

“Scrapping the 10p tax rate, the introduction of tuition fees, the failure to regulate the banks properly, the attempt to introduce 90 days detention without trial, locking up children in immigration detention centres, the failure to bring the railways back into public ownership, creeping privatisation in the NHS, and, above all, the Iraq War. These are all things that contributed to our defeat at the last election.”

It has been fifteen years since Clause IV was famously re-written and Labour became New Labour. But after thirteen years of New Labour government, on the day that Tony Blair’s memoir hits the shelves defending his decision on Iraq and urging Labour not to return to the left, what would Abbott say to disaffected left-wingers who have abandoned a party they feel abandoned them long ago?

“I cannot defend the many right-wing decisions that were taken over the past thirteen years and I never have,” Abbot says. “But I can offer an alternative. Under my leadership we will get back to the business of being the Labour party that delivers for the people of this country. Being in opposition gives us a chance to have a real look at the state of the party, and get back to the principles we were built on.”

While a spell in opposition may well be what the party needs to reflect on its many mistakes in government, the conclusions it draws will depend largely on who it selects as its next leader. Abbott’s candidacy, like those of Ed Balls and Andy Burnham, has been overshadowed somewhat by the Miliband brothers, and in particular the elder front-runner. But if David Miliband wins, will it prove the party has learnt nothing from the failings of New Labour?

“David Miliband is the New Labour continuity candidate, the heir to Blair,” Abbott says. “The majority of ordinary Labour party members were against many decisions of the New Labour project. However they see the desperate times we face under the coalition and some think that David Miliband is the quickest way out of it and back to power.”

Abbott believes voters will naturally return to Labour, but the sell will be a hard one. “My view is that the general public are not fools,” she says. “When the Lib-Cons have finished destroying our country we will certainly have voters that will naturally come back, but the rest will take convincing. There is nothing convincing about the same old, New Labour rhetoric, which offers no real alternative to the status quo.”

As a left-winger, and as the country’s first female black MP, Abbott neither sounds nor looks like the status quo of British politics. Her place on the ballot paper was far from secure, however, until fellow Socialist Campaign Group MP, John McDonnell, withdrew his leadership candidacy. By doing so, he said he hoped he could help ensure that a woman got onto the ballot paper of an otherwise testosterone dominated contest. But should politics be about gender, or race, or should it be about having the right ideas and the right policies?

“I am most grateful to John McDonnell, because his withdrawing did ensure that a woman made it on to the ballot,” Abbott says. “However he is a staunch socialist and would not have withdrawn for another principled progressive.”

Abbott agrees that politics is all about policies, but argues that in the 21st century, a winning progressive movement in any country has to reflect the views and concerns of women and minorities. “If we do not have a political leadership which looks like the community around us then it will lack the legitimacy we want to represent,” she says. “Politics should be about representing the needs of people and people come in many different forms. A lack of diversity and a lack of representation in any institution are instantly reflected in debate, policies and implementation.”

One policy that Abbott keenly supports is electoral reform which, more than any other, threatens to split the coalition government. A referendum on introducing the Alternative Vote (AV) system was, albeit rather too little rather too late, included in Labour’s manifesto and Abbott has pledged to back the key coalition proposal.

“It may not be the ultimate solution, but will certainly be fairer than the first past the post system we currently use,” she says. “It is more proportional, reduces the need for tactical voting and will help to reflect true public opinion of fascist parties. Groups like the BNP are very unlikely to get 2nd or even 3rd preferences.”

Like many of her fellow party members, however, she is somewhat less keen on the government’s decision to link the referendum on voting reform with boundary changes.

“I am appalled at the Lib-Cons attempts to use voting reform to bring about boundary changes,” Abbott says. “These are clearly designed to ensure that they maintain and gain more seats in further elections. Tainting the reforms with trying to maintain power is highly inappropriate and may mean that people will not vote for AV reform despite believing this is the best system. This in effect defeats the point of the entire reform.”

This last comment perhaps best reflects Abbott’s philosophy. A socialist, a democrat, a thorn in the side of the Blairite establishment, but Labour through and through.

“We have difficult times ahead,” Abbott says. “I love my party and believe that we will rise to this challenge. But to do this we need every disaffected activist in the Labour movement behind us. They are a group of people who understand solidarity and I am certain they see the importance of uniting against the Lib-Cons.”

The task ahead for Abbott, and for her party, will not be an easy one. In less than a month it will choose which direction it will take. And contrary to the retired rhetoric of the Mandelsons of this world, that choice is not between backwards and forwards, but between left and right. If, after thirteen years of Blair and Brown, after Iraq and Afghanistan, after the systematic rollback of civil liberties and human rights and the stark betrayal of its socialist roots for a market-orientated philosophy, Labour elects David Miliband, it will have learnt nothing from the failings of a leadership that sacrificed genuine progressive principles for power for power’s sake. If, on the other hand, it chooses Diane Abbott, reported to be the favoured candidate of Miliband’s Marxist mother, voters may once again find themselves faced with a genuine choice at the next election and the Labour Party may find itself saying out with the New and in with the old.

This week’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California is obviously welcome news. Amending California’s state constitution to state that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” is nakedly discriminatory and Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to strike it down should be applauded.

There is, though, something else that’s important to note about this case; it’s a clear example of a member of the judiciary overriding the democratically expressed will of the people. Proposition 8 was put to a referendum at the same time as the 2008 Presidential election, and 52% voted yes – a slim but clear majority. Judge Walker’s decision was unambiguously anti-democratic. Stopping same-sex couples from marrying is wrong for many reasons, but one area on which it certainly doesn’t impinge is democratic rights. And what this demonstrates, I suggest, is that the revolutionary left vision of a society run as democratically as possible might not be without serious drawbacks.

For a liberal, there are certain universal individual rights and liberties which merit legal protection regardless of what majority opinion might be. The right of two (or more, as I argue here) consenting adults to access all the legal benefits of marriage if they so choose is, in my opinion, worthy of this protection, so as a social (though definitely not an economic) liberal I’m entirely comfortable with Judge Walker’s decision. But for the revolutionary left, one of the many benefits which the overthrow of capitalism will bring is more democracy, and in particular more direct democracy, in as many areas of life as possible. Our present system of representative parliamentary democracy is argued to be little more than a sham; a tool to safeguard the interests of the rich and powerful – and the same (presumably) goes for undemocratic checks on legislative power like the judiciary. But given what’s happened with Prop 8, and with other cases where good reforms were passed in the teeth of popular opposition (Roy Jenkins’ abolition of capital punishment and his decriminalisation of abortion and male homosexual sex in the 1960s are often cited as examples), it seems hard to argue that public opinion always knows best.

I’m aware, of course, that the revolutionary left’s advocacy of more democracy doesn’t entail believing that democratic decisions are always right. A Marxist, might, for example, argue that people can act or vote in ways antithetical to their own interests or those of their class because the true nature of economic relations under capitalism is obscured, which leads to false consciousness, and that in a communist society this wouldn’t happen. But with social issues like tolerance towards sexual minorities it seems a little hard to argue that capitalism must necessarily foment bigotry, not least because it’s hard to see precisely how stirring up homophobia or racism benefits the ruling class in and of itself. Apart from anything else, one of the major arguments used by opponents of Prop 8 was that legalising same-sex marriages would bring money into California’s economy (see this video from 2:03 onwards, for example) – something you’d think the bourgeoisie would generally be in favour of. So, assuming we’re agreed that equal rights for sexual minorities are worth safeguarding regardless of what majority opinion might be on the matter, and assuming that homophobic attitudes can’t just be put down to the distorting effects of capitalism, it seems hard to escape the conclusion that those pesky liberal checks and balances on democracy are pretty important.

I’m aware that there’s a real danger that what I’m arguing here could come off as elitist. Maybe it is. But I’d rather live in an elitist liberal society where unpopular but harmless minorities are undemocratically protected from the tyranny of the majority than in a totally democratic commune with no safeguards against bigotry. Maybe that’s a false dichotomy, but like any other decision-making process, democracy is and will always be fallible. I’m aware that my knowledge of revolutionary socialist and anarchist theory is severely limited, and anyone who can explain why I’m wrong about this is more than welcome to do so. But unless and until that happens I’ll remain firmly of the belief that more democracy isn’t always something to be welcomed.

Today seemes to be a bit of a Theresa May special on The Third Estate. But not all of it’s negative. Who’d have thought the Conservatives – the party which brought us Michael Howard and the Criminal Justice Act – could actually be better than Labour on civil liberties? Well, looking back at the last decade, probably pretty much everyone.

In signalling the end of ASBOs today, the Home Secretary has taken an important step in rolling back one of the most significant injustices of New Labour’s systematic assault on civil liberties.

A few years ago, I made the somewhat embarrassing decision to go on the Weakest Link. During the audition process, I met two men. One was a policeman. The other was a father whose son had been arrested by that policeman for starting a fight in a pub. Fair enough, you might say, and you’d be right. Criminally dangerous behaviour needs to be punished. But what was interesting about their story is that following his arrest, the son was served with an ASBO barring him from entering pubs. A few weeks later, he was caught having a quiet drink in a pub and given three month jail sentence.

The kid wasn’t jailed for starting a fight. He was jailed for walking into a pub. A completely legal activity. In essence, his ASBO made a crime of something that was not a criminal act. And with the power to turn almost anything into a crime, ASBOs are an incredibly dangerous tool. Climate campaigners, as we’ve seen, have already suffered at the hands of this repressive instrument.

The end of ASBOs is something to be celebrated. Now the Tories must do what New Labour utterly failed to do. Balance fighting crime with fighting the causes of crime. With cuts set to devastate the poorest communities in Britain, this may be a very difficult task.

So it’s now official –  Binyam Mohamed was tortured while he was detained by the US, and MI5 knew this, but lied about it. Needless to say, this is pretty serious, so who should we be getting pissed off at first? The US, for doing the torturing? MI5, for lying? The House of Commons’ Intelligence and Security Committee, for totally failing to notice or do anything about said collusion in torture? No, no and no again. According to ‘independent intelligence consultant’ Crispin Black, the real villains of the piece are Lords Neuberger, Judge and May, the judges who found that MI5 had ‘a dubious record relating to actual involvement, and frankness about any such involvement, with the mistreatment of Mr Mohamed when he was held at the behest of US officials.’ Their judgment is ‘over the top’, and ‘judicial bullying’, apparently.

Why Mr. Black thinks the judges’ opinion is wrong is something he doesn’t deign to share with us, of course. He suggests – perhaps quite plausibly – that MI5 probably wouldn’t have acted as they did without the knowledge of the Government, (and his criticism of the judges for overlooking this may well have some validity), but on what planet does that imply that MI5 are innocent of what the judges are claiming? Unless I’ve misunderstood, and it’s just that in his view colluding in and lying about the torture of only one person is enough to deserve the damning criticism of ‘a dubious record’? And in any case, since when is a judge making a judgment (which is kind of their job after all) an example of bullying?

I genuinely can’t understand this reaction. MI5 might not be the only guilty party in all this (in fact, since it was the Americans who tortured Mohamed, they most definitely aren’t), but deserving of sympathy? Really? I think not.