The way of Model United Nations

We were coming towards the end of a very long debate. We had been arguing, compromising, bullying and pleading for the previous day and the start of this morning. Finally it seemed as though we were actually getting a resolution passed. Tired smiles started to appear on the faces of delegates. Then there was stunned silence followed by a mixture of panic and anger, absolute bedlam. For this was the Model United Nations Security Council. Russia had just decided to move their status from being a sponsor of the resolution to being a signatory. Since sponsors cannot veto the resolution and signatories who have the power can at will, the drama in the room went up several notches. Private messages flowed to Russia, "why are you doing this?" "What does Russia want?" When the delegate saw the last one a small smile appeared across their face. I was the Russian delegate.

This is the weird and wonderful world of Model United Nations, a simulation of the real UN. Sometimes they are small events at the local club where the number of participants can vary between 5-15. The debates around issues are numerous and various including but not exclusively; Climate Change, drugs, HIV/AIDS, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, North Korea's nuclear programme, terrorism, China's sea territorial claims, trade barriers and social care among others.

Each session of MUN is different whether you are at a regular local club night or at an international conference. The issues change, therefore the Nation States central to the debates change. When you have your country the first thing you need to know is that you are there to speak your country's position on a given issue, not your own. This can be especially challenging when you are given a country that you are not very familiar with, and even more so if you have to represent a country whose position you find distasteful. However there is much fun to be had with the latter. There are the jokers in the pack, the Axis of Evil countries; Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Iran. With these countries you can pretty much get away with saying anything random and crazy, interspersed with rants against America or the Jews or both (depending on the country). But others are less outwardly unsavoury but still don’t see eye to eye with the Western countries; Russia and China. China especially tends to play its cards close to its chest.

While my game plan for a given debate often depends on the issue we are addressing, it also depends on which country I am and which others are present. Who are my friends? Who are my enemies? Who are the neutral ones who can be persuaded? Who are the ones who might try to annoyingly outfox you with a critique of one of your speeches, leaving you to resort to cutting them down to size until they submit? Forceful positions on certain issues often require a forceful approach in order to match your country's stance. Often you find yourself having to articulate points of view that you disagree with or find downright offensive.

You learn a lot about human psychology at MUN. If you are at a local group you can learn the different debating methods that various people bring to the table and how to manoeuvre around them. On the international debate the very confident (and arrogant) people stick out. These are the resolution writers and those that seem to be everywhere at once during the informal sessions. They are often the showmen who are expert at appearing reasonable when really they would shiv you in the spinal column if it was in their national interest. Things get very competitive very quickly. Too often the people who spend most of their times behind the laptops writing resolutions get awards, mercifully a trend that seems to be abating.

At the international conferences the size and power of the country's you represent generally increases with the number of conferences you get under your belt. I worked up from Togo, to Egypt, to Russia (Security Council) to Saudi Arabia (Environment Programme). The last two countries left we with that dilemma I mentioned before, representing a country whose position is very far from your own. So I pondered over the dilemma and came to the conclusion that the only way to represent them effectively, would be to do so with enthusiasm and a fair share of aggression. Take no prisoners, trample your enemies, pillage and burn down their villages and dance and urinate on their funeral pyres. And in the breaks of the debate get to know your opponents as yourself, just so they know you don’t live your life as some kind of Genghis Khan-like jerk (or just a straight jerk). You have to let people know it isn’t personal and you have to believe it too.

But then comes the central contradiction, if you are getting all heated up arguing a point then successes and failures feel more personal. As Russia on the Security Council I ended up in shouting matches with Morocco and Australia, leading to France and the US virtually dragging me outside to cool me down and have me state my terms for getting us out of the deadlock. Just the other day I tried to use my powers of persuasion to get poor countries to vote through an amendment which would compensate Saudi Arabia financially for cutting it's oil production. I was asking countries like Tuvalu, an island nation with a 3 story building as its highest building and a 15 member parliament, to get the international community to give money to my super rich kingdom ruled by a super rich royal family. But alas my powers of oratory were not enough and my amendment was voted down. I was furious! I smacked my pen on desk so hard it broke. It was then that I decided to have my revenge. I and my oil producing allies (most of them) helped me vote down every single amendment and the resolution itself. Nothing was passed to tackle the problem of rising sea levels. The debate closed. I was happy as Saudi Arabia, personally I felt very dirty.

I go to MUN conferences for the social and the debating element. Every conference I have been to I have felt more welcome there than many other clubs I went to during my time at UWE. But sadly it will all come to an end at some point. I still go now because I only live a short walk away from the university and my friends in the committee still welcome me along. But sooner or later I will leave the weird and wonderful city of Bristol and it's MUN club. It is a shame since I have improved immeasurably in my performance at MUN debates. My speaking has improved thanks to practice at MUN and the practice I get from the Public Speaking Society I still attend. At the end of international conferences it is a tradition that you pass your country's placard around for people to sign and put comments on. I was especially touched with the comments I received at the last conference. It seemed many of my fellow delegates were impressed with my performance, one of them even saying that they thought I should be the next Prime Minister! The latter was quite a compliment even though pretty much anyone I could hit a rock with could do a better job than the incumbent. I was pleased that my colleagues thought so highly of me, but to be honest I was disappointed that after all that I walked away empty handed awards wise. I say this knowing that some chairs at that debate may be reading this. I am not expecting them to pull an award out of their backside and it isn’t personal, but I reserve my right to say when I think they are wrong.  Now I have done so I can let the matter rest.  If you get to know me personally you will find that I am principally outspoken when I see something I believe to be unjust.

But either way my past experience has left me hungry for the next MUN adventure.  I shall not be denied a second time.  So watch out BATHMUN 2014, the Bristol barbarians are coming!

The State of the Union Part II: Political

In many ways my worldview is very similar to where it was in 2012. According to politicalcompass.org.uk I am a centre-left libertarian, almost smack on the dot of Mahatma Ghandi. I broadly agree with that assessment, although I am by my own admission not a pacifist. I believe violence is sometimes necessary to ensure one's self defence against bully's and as a last resort earn one's freedom. So my Mahatma Ghandi's stick would be either a sharp pointy or a Bo stick like Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

I am pretty certain now that I am not a Liberal Democrat any more. My membership has expired and I have no plans to renew it. In many ways I have cause to feel sad about this. I enjoyed the weird and wonderful world of Lib Dem Party Conferences: the free goodies, free food, free booze, interesting stalls, wonderful people etc. But when it came down to it I didn’t feel right staying in a party just for the goodies. I don’t entirely subscribe to this Coalition "Stab in the back" myth. I understand that compromises have to be made. Granted, much of the Lib Dem co-operation with the cuts has happened with far too little protest from my old party. But by myself I have drifted away from the Lib Dems. My ideas about democratic reform have become more radical in particular. And generally I think the party is in danger of losing it's innovative and radical spark. That being said I am still strangely defensive of my party. I tire of this "they are all the same" faff because it is simply not true. I know many Lib Dems MPs and councillors who are very hard working and I wish them well.

At the moment I am fairly pessimistic about our country's short term political prospects. The initiative is with the hard right (not to be confused with the Far Right) and their standard-bearer United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). In times when the right are in power logic would dictate that support should flock mostly to the left as a protest vote. This however has not happened, which tells me that something is very wrong. The left should be getting a windfall but are losing out. This should ring alarm bells on the left side of the fence and encourage some soul searching.

I don’t have all the answers for why UKIP is getting the windfall. For the most part I can see five core causes: 1. Public opinion turning to support welfare cuts. 2. Media helpfulness towards UKIP. 3. UKIP profiting from public anger towards politicians and life in contemporary Britain. 4. Non-UKIP politicians mishandling the UKIP challenge. 5. The left failing to articulate an alternative vision loudly and convincingly enough.

The cuts to the welfare budget originally and rightfully earned the Coalition Government the British public's scorn. After banging on about so called 'scroungers', albeit in more diplomatic language, to the British public the government eventually managed to make public opinion turn. After looking at a few opinion polls on balance it seems a slim majority of the British public see the welfare cuts as necessary. This is news to the ears of the UKIP leadership who want the government to cut deeper into the welfare budget, using similar language about the issue as the Conservatives.

There is not a day that goes by that you don’t hear any news about UKIP, no matter how tenuous. It has almost become ridiculous how fixated the media are on the party, especially it's leader Nigel Farage. Some of this has been intentional, while other stories appear to have been accidental ones such as embarrassing remarks from UKIP councillors. But even the latter stories seem to work in UKIP's favour. As they say, it is better to be talked about than not talked about. I suspect that some of them, although perhaps not all are intentional leaks to keep the party in the mainstream dialogue. Godfrey Bloom, for all his vile opinions has not said anything that I have not heard on local newspaper Opinion pages, a sad sign of the times.

Then there is the British public's continuing resentment with the state of politics. I am guilty of more than a little cynicism about this trend. I know people personally from country's that are Communist, ruled by cliques who put on charades of democracy and those in almost total anarchy (Somalia). These cases seem to put our problems in perspective. To be sure I am not completely satisfied with all of our politician’s conduct (elected or unelected).  What concerns me however is this is unconstructive anger.  Anger seems to be directed towards more apathy or voting for UKIP.  Let the system burn or vote for a party with reheated Conservative policy leftovers.  This is where the left should be capitalising. 

 

The self professed main standard-bearer of the left, the Labour Party has been lacklustre in hitting back at the Coalition or UKIP lately. This due to the party giving into the same old cheap tactic of Opposition politics, saying everything the government is doing wrong without presenting any alternative ideas.  The Labour Party should ridiculing Prime Minister David Cameron as a weak leader for implementing policies against migrants, not coming up with their own variety.  The problem is no political party is daring to question the myths that UKIP is propagating against immigration.  No one has the guts to say that the last wave of Eastern Europe immigration gave us more public money than it took away, confounding the scare stories.  Simply put this has happened before.  The Labour Party adds fuel to the immigration fire by talking about immigrants depressing wages, yet they don’t talk about the problem of migrant qualifications being incompatible with jobs over here.  It is all show, no policy.

 

Policy rooted in evidence is what needed.  The British public are irritable and angry, they are susceptible to listening to scapegoats more than they are to being told they are wrong or have been misled.  But those are the facts on the ground.  UKIP are generating easy answers.  A bit of careful planning, some moral courage, good research and new innovative ideas are the answer to lancing the UKIP boil.

 

Some of my leftist friends have whispered in my ear about UKIP potentially splitting the rightist vote to our advantage.  While I see where they are coming from I think waiting on this could have some negative consequences.  A Tory/UKIP electoral pact for instance would be for the left a disaster.  Also it will distract us from the real problem which is making the left more palatable to the electorate.

 

Those on the left need to do many things.  We need to start talking about policy a little more than talking about principles, the latter of which the left are susceptible to rambling on about.  We need to prove through evidence why certain rightist policies are not working.  We need to start making ideas and weave them into a vision of Britain, to sink Cameron’s and to prove that UKIP has none (or none desirable).  I am working on some ideas myself, but I don’t have all the answers (sorry to disappoint).

The State of the Union I: Personal

From a personal perspective 2013 for me was year of achievement. At the start of the year I was enjoying my second term of my Masters course in International Development and Security at the University of Bristol. Bolstered by my unexpectedly very good essay results from the previous term I began this one with my head held high. My initial optimism was slightly dented at the start with a quick switch of modules. Long story short I didn’t think I could maintain my uni work/paid work balance with this module. It was a hard decision to make, especially since vocationally it may have opened up more pathways to me in the future. As a kind of karmic retribution for this quick change, I ended up with a fellow comrade having to cobble together a presentation about the foreign policy of Small Nation-States in a week. We pulled it off with lots of work mixed with charm and confidence. I initially felt bad since I seemed to be bossing him around to get the presentation together. But he gave me a bottle of wine for myself and my fiancée to say thanks for my work, so I guess I didn’t wear him down too much. I wish him well wherever he is now.

My favourite module was by far the Politics of Latin America. I won’t name my tutor since I don’t want to embarrass them. But take it from me, their charisma, their personality and their passion for the subject matter made the module hugely enjoyable. I always looked forward to the seminar on a friday morning. I find the region a fascinating one and would very much like to visit it again once my financial position improves. I have visited Cuba with my Mum and sister and would love to go back. If only to do Havana again, half of which I was prevented from seeing due to being stricken with food poisoning. Learning Spanish is on my to do list. Lord knows when I will actually have a chance to follow up on that.

The decision to change my module seems to have set a trend in myself making sudden decisions that have paid off. My decision to go on my Masters course in 2012 was much like that. The message was clear to me then, "something has to change", I thought. And so it has. In a delightful twist continuation of this trend, myself and my fiancée decided to become engaged last January. It was an unconventional proposal to say the least, suitable for a very unconventional couple such as us. We were watching the Buffy The Vampire Slayer episode about the Incan mummy who comes alive and disguises herself as a foreign exchange student, surviving by sucking the life out of school boys who fancy her. "Do you want to get married?" She asked me. "Are you serious?" I asked, thinking I completely misheard her. She repeated the question. "Yes. Yes I do". And that was that. No ring, no going down on one knee. In truth I was pondering when the best time for a proposal would be, and how I was going to do it. In those few seconds all of those worries disappeared. All that was left was us smiling, looking forward to a similarly unconventional but very fun wedding day and future together. We decided that was how it should be and we went with it. Caution was cast aside and yet again it paid off.

The exit from student life and re-entry to working life was rough thanks to a sluggish jobs market in Bristol, interesting since our Chancellor is full of boasting about our apparently "strong" recovery. Yet again I was tagged and sent in to the crawlingly inefficient, severely demoralising and insane Jobseekers Allowance system. I could write a book (a large angry one to be delivered to IDS via brick through his window) about what is wrong with the system according to my personal experience, suffice it to say that the system is worse under the Coalition in my experience. Despite a few false starts I eventually ended up getting some Data Entry work for EE via an agency. The contract is ongoing. So now I am in the more beneficial position where I can claw my way out of debt to my relatives and look for a job related to my degree. A good position of advantage.

Acutely aware that I am not yet working in the field I want to be in I have occupied myself with various distractions. I have left uni, but very kindly I was welcomed back into the two uni clubs that I have spent most time in and got the most out of during my Masters; Public Speaking Society and Model United Nations Society (MUN). I particularly had fun with the latter this year. Long story short but basically the more international conference's you go to, the more powerful countries you can be in the future. I had been patient. At the first conference I was the not so mighty Togo. At the Bath conference of 2012 I was Egypt. Both debates involved P5 stitch ups. And so it was at Reading's 2013 conference I came in as the delegate for Russia on the Security Council, P fived and ready to go with my Russian flag button on my chest. The first topic was going to be Syria, when I heard this I knew it was going to be a lot of fun.

I am by my own admission socially awkward, making meeting new people sometimes haphazard with regards to first impressions. But as soon as I started talking to people at the conference, some of whom kindly approached me after recognising me from the last few conferences I felt like I belonged there. In the past I had joined groups where initially I met many people who would become friends for life (one of whom introduced me to my fiancée), but then stayed well past the time it became enjoyable, becoming the butt of jokes to certain shallow and vain people. I knew instantly this was a break with that unhappy past, not a return to it. I am very grateful to those who people who made me feel welcome, you know who you are. I hope to see you all again some time soon.

Anyway, enough of the self deprecating nonsense. The next day it was time for action! I listened to angry music as I walked to the campus, I couldn’t let my personal fondness for the delegates I had met before the night before get in the way of my country's hard line. The MUN Security Council convened. Straight away countries willing to join in my appetite for obstruction helped me as Russia vote down pretty much anything the opposition wanted to discuss, there was no real point in it, other than to make a statement and show that we weren’t going to make the day easy for them. My method was simple, demand something, get it, then ask for something else and threaten to Veto if I didn’t get what I wanted. For the most part it was an effective strategy for getting what I wanted. Not the easiest strategy for making friends though. But mercifully my colleagues away from the negotiating table did not take my antics personally.

Towards the end of the Reading MUN council things got a bit heated. The reasons were both personal and political. I knew that ambitious people wanted to get prizes at the end of the conference, and I knew that those who inevitably (and unfairly in my opinion) be those who wrote the resolution. I sensed that some slimy trickery was going on with the resolution, so I thundered to them at the session the next day that I sensed a "plot". It got pretty heated at one point. Voices were raised and I walked out with the P5 to cool off and lay out my terms. It turned out in the end that I was right to be suspicious. 3 traps were hidden in the resolution. I found 2 of them. Arguably what I voted through could conceivably have authorised force against my ally Bashar Al Assad. I congratulated the delegate who thought of that bit of trickery. After having said that, how many countries have completely ignored inconvenient parts of UN resolutions? Bloody lots is the answer, I am sure Russia would not behave any differently. I didn’t get any awards but two Russian's at the conference were so impressed by my performance that they asked to have their picture taken with me. I obliged my fans. The whole experience was exciting and confidence boosting. I knew I had people's attention when I sent ripples of panic through the Council, changing my status to the resolution from sponsor to signatory. After that many delegates eyed my like some sort of Darth Vader-like figure.

My political activities have also acted as a confidence to booster to me in what has turned out to be an eventful year. More of that will be addressed in my next post, Part II of my fairly pretentiously titled State of the Union. If there is an overall moral I have learnt for 2013 it is to be confident and seize opportunities. They are everywhere if you look for them. One of my near future opportunities to seize is to do a PHD. I am greatly looking forward to 2014. After years of settling for what I can make do with as oppose to what I want I know I am closer to getting the latter. Half the fun is the journey, not the destination itself.

The Wat Tyler Letters Part I

18^th December 2013

Julian Brown, if you ever come to a pub in Bristol your money will be no good, for I will be the one buying you drinks.  Your letter last week giving UKIP a well deserved bashing made my week.  The likes of UKIP strut these Opinion pages like they are political messiahs.  There is nothing messianic about building up on old hatreds and prejudices.  People need the welfare state more than ever yet UKIP chide the government to hack away at it, instead of presenting ideas for making it more efficient for those who rely on it. 

     UKIP talk about opening up more Grammar Schools, ignoring the fact that many other countries vast perform us with schools with integrated classes.  UKIP promote the increased spending on defence with little vision about what to do with this new power, or how we can even afford it.

     UKIP have very few new ideas.  They are all reheated leftovers from the putrid carcass of conservative ideology.  Stuart Eels can save his snarling.  How can UKIP not be called a negative party when it is promoting hatred against the needy, the foreign and the foreign poor?

      As for Nigel Farage he is much like a creepy uncle at a wedding after party.  I don’t want politicians to assure me how like them they are by boasting how much they drink in their lunch breaks.  Integrity and policy is what I am looking for.  So far UKIP have delivered neither.

Wat Tyler

Bishopston, Bristol

 

23^rd December 2013

I am sick and tired of all of this misdirected outrage over the recent conviction of the Royal Marine who murdered an insurgent under his charge in Afghanistan.  Being at war is not a mitigating circumstance for his behaviour.  His colleagues seem to be able to do their job and behave themselves, so what excuse does he have?  Just because the Taliban fight without rules does not mean we should follow suit.  There has to be rules within war, and we are all the more morally superior for fighting under them, and long may we do so.

     The Marine deserves to be named because he is a murderer, pure and simple.  If you kill someone who is unarmed and has surrendered, you are a murderer.  If you do it while you are in a uniform you are a disgrace to that uniform and by extension the country you represent. There have already been too many crimes throughout history carried out by those wearing uniforms.  As for his family the shame he brings on them is unfair and I hope the British public will treat them fairly.  His reputation he has already sacrificed.  So I say good riddance to him.

 

Regards

 

Wat Tyler

Bishopston, Bristol

Left Wing vs. Right Wing in 2015: Prepare to be Underwhelmed

This time of year tends to make me quite nostalgic. It is nearing the end of party conference season. Just a few years ago I would be getting stuck in to the Liberal Democrat Conference. Aside from the motion debates, that can get a bit sterile, the fringe events offer an interesting distraction. Charities, business groups and political organisations host the fringe groups. In the evening you may be lucky enough to have food there. The Nuclear Industries Association's event last time I went had vats of fish and chips and a plentiful supply of wine, all inclusive with conference fees. Then there was Glee, the strange old liberal sing-along. I don’t remember a huge amount of Glee, a part from having an altercation with a very rude official with the Radical newspaper at the bar. Such are the hazards and opportunities at the conference. The last one I went to was in Liverpool in 2011 a great city to have a conference in. I met up with nearly everyone I campaigned alongside in 2010 including the candidate I still believe should have got in, despite my political differences between then and now.

This time around money, or more accurately a lack of which, and political uncertainties have lead me to sit Lib Dem Conferences out including this one. So now I am reduced to observer status at least for the time being. But on the whole the news coverage of all of the party conferences has given me an interesting vantage point from which to view the different courses of the UK's main political parties leading up to 2015. The Lib Dem conference wasn't particularly revealing. Although I notice that Nick Clegg is starting to sound a lot less apologetic and a lot more defiant. A part of me thinks 'good for him'. But then another part of me does wonder how in touch he is with the rest of his party and I am not talking about the MPs. I am talking about the rank and file members which not long ago included myself. Being a Lib Dem is constantly accused of as being synonymous with treachery or basically being a 'Yellow Tory'. Surely a bit of reassurance is due from the leader? More than the Letter from the Leader emails I still receive and line my Trash Inbox with. Some of the motions gone through in this conference tells me that the fight has gone out of us. Take our motion on our Trident nuclear missiles for example. We have decided we don’t want a like-for-like replacement of Trident, but we do want a nuclear missile launching system of some description, just cheaper. We missed an opportunity to have a serious debate about whether this country needs nuclear weapons in the first place. I am conscious that this is a debate that our Conservative partners are determined not to have, which makes me suspect that we have selfish motives for not advancing such a controversial position. But putting forward controversial and interesting debates is what attracted me to our party in the first place. If this is gone I am not sure what else there is for me.

The Labour and Tory Conferences have been the real eye openers this time around. Mostly because the former has actually decided to grace the British public with the presence of some of their policies. The tone of these policies look decidedly left-leaning, socialist even by the look of the price freezing idea for energy bills. Labour have now openly declared a return to socialism of some kind, likely trying to become a magnet for leftist discontent with the Coalition, of which there is much. More controversially their proposals included one for the government to essentially seize unused land from any owners, to free it up for housing development. To back up their left hook the Labour Conference also made mention of taxing bankers’ bonuses to pay for certain reforms.

The Tory's on the other hand are advocating a distinctly free market orientated pitch for Britain with American sound-bites. "Land of Opportunity" was mentioned more than once by David Cameron. Essentially the Tory line is that state activism has its limits and ultimately only jobs produced by a vibrant economy will be beneficial to the country. This rhetoric pretty closely follows the Tory line of individualism, the conservative creed of self help. Taking advantage of public support for welfare cuts more of these were announced by George Osbourne to big applause by the party rank and file. Notably less applause came from Ian Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State who will have to actually implement the cuts within his own department.

Now lets get one thing straight, I have no intention of voting for either Labour of the Tories. I dislike them both in equal measure, so I make the following judgement from an equal footing of loathing. Both parties are propagating false visions while promising false dawns and are presenting a false picture of Britain and its' citizens.

Labour has breezily brought in a price freeze, neatly avoiding any inconvenient questions about what consequences these could have for the energy companies. The concern of the energy companies in Labour-speak is the less of their concerns than the people of Britain, which is all very well and good until you look at the detail. This freeze will likely effect smaller and often more ethical energy companies negatively, perhaps to the point of closing some of them down. The monstrosities of the energy market like Npower will power on while the Ecotricity's of this world will struggle to survive, thus killing what small private investment there is in renewable energy. Price controls of any kind always come with side effects, hence why I avoid state-planned economics. The Tory's are right in that there are limits in what the state can do, and controlling the economy successfully is one thing it has failed to do in the past.

And what of plans to seize so called idle lands for housing developments? The Daily Mail hailed this plan as Stalinist and in this one instance I am inclined to agree with this vile paper. Should the government just be able to order you to do something with your land? Surely we need some land idle for the sake of the environment. In general I agree with the 'my land, my rules' ethos, so long as you aren't building a private army or something else illegal. This is simply sidestepping the issue of the housing shortage and blaming the public for government inaction on this matter. I think a better plan would be to re-examine and simplify planning laws and give tax breaks to house building companies that renovate individual houses and neighbourhoods. I am not a fan of mass new building because I think this will only drive up prices further and imperil the environment.

When it comes to banker bonuses I really couldnt care less. I am not one of those people who discriminate people by profession, so I dont feel the need to single bankers out. We need bankers. Bankers provide credit to business which create jobs. And I am acutely aware that not all bankers are criminals or behave unethically. I dont see Labour advocating a tax on high paying Union jobs, many of which come for with a paid for house.

The Tories on the other hand are painting a very rosy picture of how things are now in contemporary Britain. The economy is apparently expanding, but there seems to be scant evidence of it in many places. Things are especially hard for many people my age. Unemployment for people in their 20s is disproportionately high. University fees has gone up meaning that in many British universities foreigners can often afford to go to university's more than the natives can. Colleges are either closing or having their facilities cut. Cameron's latest brainwave was to cut benefits for people below 25, imploring them to either 'work' or 'learn'.

This policy is disingenuous and completely separate from reality in contemporary Britain. How are young people supposed to work when there aren't enough jobs around? How are young people supposed to learn when the means of them doing so are being cut? And more importantly why are people under 25 less worthy to receive state help than their elders? I have been working consistently since I was 18 and my fiancé has since she was 16. If I had no support early on in my time in Bristol I have had to move back home where the job prospects would have been a lot less bright. But the language around this idea presumes that these under 25 year olds would not have their job prospects alter from such a move, and presuming that they actually have a parent's home to go to. But it is the sense of the lack of entitlement for the young an over-entitlement for the elder that I have a big problem with. The latter in many ways harbour responsibility for supporting policies that have put us in the dire straights we are in now. I don’t think either young people or old people should be put on the "scrapheap", a phrase persistently used by Grant Shapps on Question Time last Thursday. If there are cuts we should all feel the burden together.

I am inclined to agree that savings can be made with the welfare budget. But I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing that we spend more on welfare than defence. This division of priorities merely reflects reality on the ground. Strategically we have few immediate threats in the world, at least in terms of ones that can be countered by armies. Furthermore our country is recovering from a very large recession, which many people need a helping hand to recover from. Many savings from the welfare budget can be gained very quickly by simply bring the Department of Work and Pensions into the 21st century. For instance, illogically DWP takes peoples email addresses but still insists on sending communications by letter, which costs money and time. This is just the tip of the iceberg for a terribly inefficient department. More than once during my recent period of unemployment the advisors at the Jobcentre lost my notes. The government needs to make sure the DWP provides a public service for its users, as oppose to just providing cutting chum to an ignorant public.

This language has carefully avoided the issue of where welfare is being spent. Interestingly enough the main beneficiaries of the welfare budget are the elderly. Yet while this is the case old people are not being portrayed as scroungers while unemployed young people increasingly are. Why is this? Well I think a part of the answer is that elder voters tend to be more conservative leaning. More importantly elders increasingly vote more than young people. That is why when I do eventually run for Parliament I want to focus on making young people enthusiastic about politics again. Surely some of them if not many of them have cause to be angry. The worse thing they can do is to give in to apathy.

Furthermore the Conservatives new mortgage initiative, while it may prove handy for many Brits, ignores those of us who live in rented accommodation with less than consistent good service from our landlords. Conservatives have quietly left questions aside about how to address the unequal division of wealth. Economic growth means very little to people who will receive very little from it.

The Spirit of The International Brigades

During the usual melee of Facebook group debating, as it is politely called I was suddenly faced with an interesting question. This debate was concerning the question of whether the West should intervene in Syria. I stated my position that I was pro-intervention, and then proceeded to be faced by the usual herd of Facebook keyboard chimps, flinging their excrement at me and shrieking. I was scanning through it when one critic interrupted his monologue of character assassination against me to put an intriguing question to me; since I cared so much about the Syrian overthrowing Assad, would I be prepared to put my life on the line and go to Syria to fight with the rebels?

My first reaction was to scoff at the question and dismiss it as ridiculous. Me? Go over there and fight? Then I went through it with a logical and moral mind. I have stated I support intervention, so surely if I don’t volunteer to carry it out myself I am a hypocrite? Is it right for me to in reality support intervention, when what that means is essentially volunteering someone else, members of the UK's armed forces, who will end up taking a bullet for the cause I support? In a legal sense it does makes sense given the government-society set up, whereby I pay taxes to fund those forces. Furthermore those people who are in those forces have sworn an oath, by stupid arcane tradition to the Queen, but in actual fact to do whatever the elected government of the day tells them.

So yes the armed forces are there, paid for me the UK taxpayer and will jump when our elected government will tell them to. But that still doesn’t get me out of my moral conundrum completely does it? Would I be willing to fight and very possibly die in the fight against Bashar Al-Assad? I am then forced through the practicalities of my hypothetical freedom fighting adventure including; a lack of knowledge of the Arabic language, a woeful lack of money, a lack of knowledge about who to sign up with and my Mum and fiance having a joint heart attack. But at the end of it I am forced to admit that no, I am not willing to go out there and fight. And I am faced grim prospect that I may well be in some way a hypocrite. Not for the first time, and likely not for the last time.

I then started to ponder over the tradition of people volunteering to fight for a cause in a foreign land on their own initiative. During the Vietnam War some British former servicemen volunteered to join the fight on the US-backed South Vietnamese side against the Communist North Vietnamese. In the idealistic view of these volunteers this meant fighting for democracy against Communism. In reality the South was anything but democratic. The US gave medals to the volunteer servicemen who dedicated their lives to the cause.

Perhaps the most famous example of a mass volunteer soldier effort was the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War, which took place 1936 to 1939. The Spanish Civil War started when General Francisco Franco lead an army revolt against the government of the newly proclaimed Spanish Republic. Franco rallied rebels within the army along with various conservative and right wing factions, all of whom were angry at the reforms made by the republican government. These reforms included the abolition of the Spanish Monarchy and the separation of church and state. While Franco had the elite Spanish Army of Morocco to rely on, much of the main army, the fascist phalangists and various conservative factions to fight the nationalist cause the Republicans had to cobble together a resistance quickly. Through the Socialist, Communist and Anarchist parties and their channels in Spain volunteers from all over the world were called up to fight.

Many answered the call. Some were ex-servicemen. Some were ardently of a socialist, Communist or Anarchist disposition. Many were very prophetic in seeing the danger that Fascism posed to the world if it was left unchallenged. The Western Democracies chose to sit the war out. But in so doing they left a vacuum to be filled by dictators; Stalin on the Republican side, Hitler and Mussolini on the other. By one estimate 32,000-35,000 members of the International Brigade fought. In the end their struggle was in vain. Franco won. But in recognition of their sacrifice, this year surviving members of the International Brigade were given honourary Spanish passports by a Spanish government that is not yet a Republic.

For many reasons the prospect for a similar International Brigade looks pretty slim today. I have geared my academic brain to asking why this is. One of the reasons I can nail down is that the world's public is not only more experienced in the horrors of war, and know what it looks like thanks to the era of 24 hour news. Images of carnage from half a world away bombard us every day, giving us a million different reasons not to leave our comfortable lives. A second reason is the cynicism that now accompanies the idea of fighting for a political ideology. Political ideologies in a globalised world are in a constant state of flux. That which do exist today have changed massively since the era of the Spanish Civil War. Idealism for better or worse is dead or at least dying.

A third reason which would make anyone think twice about embarking on an International Brigade style mission is exemplified by the Iraq War. Put simply, many people are tired of wars seemingly for wars' sake and the rest simply do not care. The Iraq War in many ways is an example of when idealism (some would say arrogance) is put ahead of being practical. Everyone is suspicious of someone sounding like a missionary who wants to do their duty at the point of a bayonet, well they should be.

Having said that there is still much evil in the world. Corrupt and dictatorial regimes that deserve to be overthrown are all around such as Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe and North Korea, yet stand pretty much unchallenged. They stand unchallenged mostly due to the war weariness of Western Democracies and their refusal to challenge them. But I wonder, if an organisation similar in style to the International Brigades existed, couldn’t revolutions in any of these troubled spots be given a helping hand? However any such organisation would be faced with many practical problems. Who would finance the organisation? What would stop government's using such an organisation for its' own nefarious purposes? Who would the ground troops be? What would stop these soldiers causing atrocities? I do not have a full response to these queries, but I would say that the constitution for this organisation would have to be carefully formulated.

So the International Brigades are a part of history. But they exist in a type of cruel imitation today. I speak of Muslim extremist insurgencies all across the world, but most notably in Syria. In recent years, idealistic young Muslim men have left our shores to fight under the banner of groups such as the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra front. On one level I can admire their idealism and enthusiasm while I detest the ideology they hold. Holy War it seems is back in vogue. I wonder whether secularists such as myself will one day have to counter their idealism.

But I detest just as much the apathy and idealism gripping the British people. Not just as regards Syria but what happens across the rest of the world too. So what? There is suffering in this country right? I was asked this before by a colleague. He pointed out that there are kids in care in this country. I sat patiently and quietly and took this in. Then I pointed out that when it rains in Mumbai poor kids with no care homes to go to are often flushed down storm drains, where they drown. I then left him stunned and went about my day.

Syria: Watching it Burn

Suddenly Syria is back on the agenda. This issue has been meandering in and out of the main public discourse for as long as the conflict has been going on, pushed out by various issues deemed more important to Britons. An Olympics there, deteriorating economy there a Royal baby who you would have to live on the moon to avoid news of. Things started out in the now familiar Arab Spring context. The people protested against their government and demanded more of a say in how their country is run. In response the government shot at them, over and over again. Soon the inevitable happened; the people shot back. What started as a few simmering skirmishes turned into a civil war, then slowly and surely morphed into a glimpse of a regional one. But as bad as it got it wasn't quite bad enough to discuss anything other than sending over non-lethal aid. It was certainly not bad enough in the opinion of the politicians and the people who voted them in this country and much of the West. In the wake of a shaky Eurozone and austerity measures, this additional problem came at a time decidedly inconvenient for us. It is undoubtedly immeasurably more inconvenient for the Syrian people themselves.

 

So the brain trust of our political masters had a plan. Granted it seemed hardly justifiable to act now, it simply wasn't horrible enough as defined by their humble assessments. But if Assad or the rebels used chemical weapons a "red line" would be crossed, all bets would be off and the West would race in and settle accounts. It seemed no one believed that this line would come, then it did. And the US in particular as demonstrated for Obama opted for more caution instead of more action. If chemical weapons were used, verification would have to be carried out it was reasoned. Even when verification from the UK, France and Israel among other came Obama urged caution, the US intelligence juggernaut had still not delivered its verdict. Just to make sure the world was listening the culprits pulled the same trick again almost as if to make sure we were looking. Now it is no longer in debate that chemical weapons have been used. Certainty has been restored, and the inconvenient fact that over 700,000 lives have been snuffed out with good old fashioned firearms and bombs has been put aside as a minor annoyance.

 

So the arm chair politicians and strategists, admittedly a vice I am not completely innocent of, are out in force. What is to be done? How? Who's army? The latter question is the most permanent. Conservatives and UKIP supporters in particular are out for blood thanks to the UK defence cuts making a mockery of our previous imperial power status. We are not powerless, but our power is waning. But in this we are not alone. Europe with the exception of Germany is in economic recovery mode and suffering under similar austerity measures. So no one nation is really in a position to solve this problem alone. This has to be a coalition effort. France seems keen to get involved. The US seems less so but has begun to position itself on the warpath.

 

We the UK seem as little more than an assertive and at times a little bit of a morally self righteous little country at times like this. But we are far from powerless and we still have a powerful voice. I am divided for practical reasons about what a military intervention might achieve. My pessimism is mostly down to my belief that an earlier intervention may have supported a more cohesive and less extreme rebel force. Now extremists are growing among the rebels. But for principle and long term stability's sake, I am pretty certain that President Assad has to go. But in order to bring this about there is one angle we have avoided for reasons of political expediency, leaning on Russia.

 

Assad's Syria has long been a client state of Russia. Even now despite sanctions and international condemnation Russia backs Assad, only slightly wavering at the chemical weapons. You need only look at the tone which Russia addresses the West with to know that the Putin clique does not respect us. An infamous feature of the Syrian debacle has been their Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov wagging his finger at us, urging us to stay out while Assad 'resolves' the problem. Despite the fact that such resolving seems to require an extreme amount of bloodshed. And yet what is the UK's response to Russia? There were pictures taken and handshakes given in front of No 10. Putin is feted like a statesman while he acts in the manner as anything but one. Meanwhile a Russian ship carrying arms to Syria is stuck in Scottish waters in insurance grounds, hardly a bold blow struck for freedom.

 

Germany is one of the only larger nations that have taken a harder line against Russia. Germany under Chancellor Angela Merkel has openly criticised Putin, cancelled state visits between Russia and Germany and has encouraged the growth of Russian human rights activist groups in Russia. I firmly believe that it is in the UK's interests to encourage Germany to come out of its World War Two shadow. The decline of European hard power thanks to defence cuts means a more assertive Germany has a place in the world. I hope one day Germany will be as keen to commit to interventions such as Syria as much as France is.

But today is Friday 29th August 2013, the day after the House of Commons vote on Syria. The government has been defeated, meaning that the UK will militarily at least sit this one out. Many people are happy about this, including many friends of mine. For myself I could not be more disappointed. As far as I am concerned Labour has done the "right thing" to exorcise the demons left from the Iraq debacle more than anything. Ed Miliband is now spoken of very disingenuously as a statesman. And now the UK will sit by and do nothing, while the unlikely alliance of France and the US may take the lead instead.

 

My anti-war friends tell me that this is good news. We aren't going to kill anyone. No imperialist solutions etc. Despite what I believe, for better or worse they have their way now. Maybe future events will prove that this fight will resolve itself before too much more suffering befalls the Syrian people. However I would like my friends to consider this; if you were the Syrian rebels, after your victory over Assad, would you come to the UK's aid if they were in need?