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The end of the Iraq war: the myths and the reality

Professor Richard Lance Keeble, Acting Head of the Lincoln School of Journalism, looks behind the headlines surrounding the US withdrawal from Iraq and finds the all-too-predictable lies and myths

In her seminal text, Media and the Politics of Failure (Palgrave Macmillan 2006), Laura Roselle analyses the American withdrawal fromVietnam and the Soviet retreat fromAfghanistan. And she concludes that, despite the significant differences in political and media systems, there were remarkable similarities in the way in which the politicians and their compliant media on both sides emphasised success and ‘honour’. After all, great imperial powers can never admit to failing.

Over recent days, history has been repeating. For as US troops have hastily withdrawn from Iraq, the dominant media in this country have given prominence to exactly the same kinds of myths and lies. It has been, we are told, a ‘retreat with honour’. According to President Obama, speaking at Fort Bragg: ‘Everything that American troops have done in Iraq– all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the battling and the training and the partnering – all of this has led to this moment of success.’

A similar audacious comment came from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta when he told US troops: ‘You will leave with great pride, lasting pride, secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to cast tyranny aside and to offer hope for prosperity and peace to this country’s future generations.’

The media’s sourcing conventions mean that they habitually attach ‘credibility’ to the voices of authority (whether they be nonsense, lies, misinformation or the ‘truth’) – and thus, inevitably, such views dominated coverage. As so we entered once again the bizarre world of Orwellian ‘doublethink’ when disgrace became honour – and abject failure success.

For the US record in Iraq must rank as one of the most appalling disasters in history. How many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died since the illegal invasion of 2003 (based on all those lies surrounding Weapons of Mass Destruction) we will never know. In July 2006, the authoritative medical journal, Lancet, estimated that more than 600,000 Iraqis had been killed since 2003. In January 2008, the polling organisation Opinion Research Business calculated the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 at 1,033, 000. The report was almost totally ignored by Fleet Street. This week justforeignpolicy.org said that 1,455, 590 Iraqis had been killed.

On top of that, official records indicate that 4,500USsoldiers have been killed and 30,000 seriously injured. The conflict has left 1.3 million people internally displaced and 1.6 million have been forced to flee the country. There are 4.5 million orphans inIraq. A whole generation is growing up whose parent have been killed or disappeared. According to UN statistics, 50 per cent of Iraqis today live in slums (compared to 17 per cent in 2000) while 7 million out of a population of 30 million live below the poverty line. Unemployment is more than 50 percent.

In terms of resources the figures are staggering: together the conflicts inIraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are estimated to have cost some $4 trillion, including direct expenses and the long-term impact on health and economic growth. Hundreds of billions have been siphoned off to defence contractors and profiteers, and at least $16 billion is estimated to have been simply lost or stolen. The military/industrial complex has been kept happy – but at what terrible cost to human life and dignity?

As Joseph Kishore comments (see wsws.org): ‘All the atrocities for which the Iraq War will be remembered flowed from its imperialist character: the mass imprisonment and torture of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib and other prisons; the levelling of Fallujah; the massacre of 24 civilians at Haditha; the rape and murder of a 14-year old girl and massacre of her family in Mahmudiyah; the routine killings at checkpoints, during night-time raids, and by bombs and missiles from jets and helicopter gunships.’

The US embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, still houses 15,000 people. Heavily fortified, it was still the site of a bomb attack earlier this month on the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. CIA officials and mercenaries will remain while the Observer reported last Sunday that 3,000 US ‘military trainers’ will also stay on in Iraq. Thousands of troops are stationed in surrounding countries ready to intervene. And so, while the media celebrate the end of the war – is it really over?

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By Thirzah Wildman – December 22, 2011

Rape, rhetoric – and reality

Professor Richard Lance Keeble, Acting Head of the Lincoln School of Journalism, examines the media representation of rapes in the US and UK armies – and, behind the rhetoric, discovers some troubling facts:

In the US, three men and 25 women have issued a lawsuit blaming former defence secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates for permitting a culture of punishment against women and men who report sex crimes. Indeed, as the Guardian reported on 10 December, rape within the US military is now so widespread that it is estimated that a female soldier on duty is more likely to be attacked by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy action.

Last year, 3,158 sexual crimes were reported in the US military but, as the Guardian, stressed, these figures are only a fraction of the reality.

Paradoxically, allegations of rape by the enemy have regularly featured in the war propaganda of Western leaders. For instance, before the 1991 Iraq conflict, President Bush constantly represented ‘innocent’ Kuwait as having been ‘raped by Saddam’. All Iraqi men were also often represented as being potential rapists.

When US Army special Melissa Rathbun- Nealy was captured by the Iraqis during Operation Desert Storm in February 1991, the Sun, under the headline ‘At the mercy of the beast’ reported: ‘A US girl marine was at the mercy of brutish Iraqi troops last night after being captured in the Battle of Khafji.’ And it continued: ‘Allied military chiefs think the Iraqis, who treat their own women appallingly, might abuse or even rape their captive.’

Ms Rathbun-Nealy was, in fact, released unharmed after the end of the conflict. The Iraqis, she said, had done everything to make her imprisonment comfortable. She was told by her captors that she was a hero, as brave as Sylvester Stallone and as beautiful as Brooke Shields. She said her greatest fear was not of Iraqi rapists but, ironically, of US bombers hitting the place where she was being held.

Even in 1991, rape in the US army was running at epidemic levels. A Senate committee report at the time estimated that 60,000 women had been sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the US military. The US navy secretary was also forced to resign in 1992 over reports of sexual harassment of women in the navy.

Rape by UK soldiers remains more of a mystery. An investigation by Channel 4 News last year found that between 2007 and 2009 76 allegations of rape had been investigated by the armed forces. But Channel 4 reported that ‘reporters had tried repeatedly to elicit from the Ministry of Defence basic but critical information about its track record on investigating rape. The answers we eventually received raise serious questions about the military’s ability to effectively deal with allegations of rape.’

More recently, during the Nato assault on Libya, allegations of rape against Col. Gadaffi’s troops were promoted prominently by Western politicians and reproduced uncritically throughout the mainstream media. But the human rights organisation Amnesty International reported that they could find no evidence to support these claims. All too predictable.

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By Ian Richards – December 15, 2011

Orwell, Astor – and me

Professor Richard Lance Keeble, Acting Head of the Lincoln School of Journalism, recalls his interview with David Astor, the legendary editor of The Observer, about George Orwell’s war reporting – and possible links with intelligence:

I was always determined to interview David Astor, the legendary editor (from 1948-1975) of The Observer which is just celebrating its 220th anniversary. George Orwell, having struck up a remarkable friendship with Astor (whose father owned the newspaper), had travelled to the continent in 1945 to report on the final days of the Second World War for The Observer – and I wanted to chat to Astor about that.

It was the year 2000, I was enjoying a full year’s sabbatical from teaching at City University, London, and so had time to pursue my obsession. Securing the interview proved remarkably simple. Here was millionaire Astor, one of wealthiest men in the country, amongst the 3,000-odd Great and Good who essentially run the country – and yet the address and telephone number of his swish London pad was there for all to see in Who’s Who. I rang the number, Astor picked up the phone and when I indicated that I wanted a brief interview with him about George Orwell he said: “Fine, come round to my house. We’ll have a chat.”

So in Astor’s magnificent, tall house round the back of Lord’s Cricket Ground in St John’s Wood, London, I chatted to him for two hours about Orwell. It was one of his last interviews before he died in December 2001.

Astor’s biographer Richard Cockett  records that Astor had wanted to meet Orwell after reading his Lion and the Unicorn (1941) and finally secured an introduction to him through Cyril Connolly, an old Etonian friend of Orwell, then editing the influential literary journal Horizon and filling in for The Observer’s literary editor. They met in a café near the BBC off Portland Place where Orwell was working on broadcasts to India. Cockett comments: “They quickly became friends, recognising each other’s directness and simplicity and David seeing him as an intellectual guide and companion.”

After leaving the BBC in November 1943 Orwell became literary editor of the leftist journal Tribune until February 1945 when he resigned to take on the war reporting assignment. Astor told me that Orwell strongly desired to travel to the Continent before the end of the war to see at first hand a totalitarian state. But he said Orwell was working under a serious misapprehension. “He wanted to pick up the atmosphere of a dictatorship. But by the time he arrived in Germany it had blown away. He was looking for something that wasn’t there.”

Orwell’s biographer W. J. West explains Orwell’s decision to report for Astor in a rather different way: he simply wanted to earn a “large lump sum” to help pay for his family’s move to the remote Scottish island of Jura (to a farmhouse actually owned by Astor).

One of the most intriguing aspects of Astor’s career, usually ignored, is that he served with the covert military intelligence force, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), during the war and thereafter maintained close links with British intelligence. Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that in 1944 Astor was transferred to a unit liaising between the SOE and the resistance in France, helping the French underground in London spread the word to groups throughout Europe.

I was obviously keen to ask Astor about Orwell’s possible links with intelligence. Perhaps not surprisingly he adamantly denied them. But Dorril does record that Orwell attended the first conference in Paris of the Committee for European Federation, bringing together resistance groups from around Europe, probably on behalf of Astor. Significantly, most of the men Orwell met in Paris (Malcolm Muggeridge, the philosopher A. J Ayer, Ernest Hemingway, and Harold Acton) had links to intelligence.

I later asked Peter Davison, editor of the 20-volume collected works of Orwell, for his view and he commented: “I do doubt if Orwell would be involved with intelligence – but that by no means says he wasn’t.”

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By Ian Richards – December 8, 2011

The most interesting Republican candidate – mostly missing from the media

Richard Lance Keeble, Acting Head of the Lincoln School of Journalism, spotlights maverick Republican contender Ron Paul – and wonders why he’s been ignored by the mainstream media.

Is it not intriguing that the most interesting candidate for the leadership of the Republican Party in the United States, Ron Paul, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media in both the US and UK?

According to the latest Bloomberg News poll, Paul is level with Herman Cain, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich as the top choices for Iowans likely to attend the 3 January Republican presidential caucuses. Another Bloomberg News poll in New Hampshire places Paul second to Mitt Romney with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich way behind.

Yet a Lexis Library search into the US coverage over the previous three months in the Guardian, Independent and Daily Telegraph shows only 23 articles featuring Paul (and then only very briefly) compared to 145 featuring Rick Perry, 122 Mitt Romney and 97 Herman Cain.

A report in the Guardian, of 18 November, focusing on the spouses of the main Republican contenders (using an unnecessary militarist metaphor in its headline: “GOP candidate spouses – secret weapons or dangerous millstones?”) was typical. Gloria Cain, Anita Perry, Michelle Bachman, Gingrich and Rick Santorum (trailing hopelessly in all the polls) were all mentioned: Paul, on the other hand, was totally ignored. The Independent, on 23 November, provided a video of the national security debate amongst the contenders: all were mentioned except Paul. Similarly, The Sunday Times report of 27 November 2011 on the contest (titled “Robot Mitt in frantic bid for a little sparkle”) missed out any mention of Paul.

How can we explain this? Well, Paul is a fascinating Republican maverick. His views on many issues are conventionally libertarian: for instance, he opposes all proposals for new taxes, backs increased border security and opposes welfare for illegal immigrants. But on many issues his libertarian instincts lead him to adopt many stances which clearly appall the Establishment. But, as the US slips into another deep recession, his radical views (particularly on foreign policy issues) are gaining increasing support.

For instance, he has consistently opposed America military adventures. Inspired by the writings of Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand, he argued that the financial crises of the 1970s were largely caused by excessive government spending on the Vietnam War. According to Paul, US interference and aggression in the Muslim world has fuelled anti-American sentiment and was thus part of the motivation for the 9/11 attack.

In 2001, he was one of only six Republicans to oppose the Iraq War resolution. And “extraordinary rendition” (that Orwellian doublethink euphemism for kidnap and torture), he says, is nothing less than “another stain on the morality clarity of the US”. More recently he spoke out strongly against Nato’s intervention in Libya. On Iran, he argues that US aggression (in the form of sanctions and covert attacks) are more likely to exacerbate problems and lead to war. Instead, he calls for dialogue with the Iranians.

He has also been constant in his criticisms of the Federal Reserve, blaming it for inflation, and of the bankers for their mismanagement – which has led to the current global economic crisis. In the recent CNN debate, he denounced President Bush’s Patriot Act, which clamped down on civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11, as “unpatriotic”.

Significantly, a report by Brad Knickerbocker in the Christian Science Monitor, of 20 November, acknowledged that Paul had become the candidate to watch: “As other candidates – Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain – dash forward hare-like only to stumble or be run over by the next new thing, Paul is the perpetual tortoise in the race, mild-mannered, confident and unwavering in his positions (no flip-flopper he), advancing steadily toward the first real test in the Iowa caucuses.”

So as Paul’s campaign gathers pace and becomes impossible for the mainstream media to ignore, the attacks on him by that same media may well increase. Let’s watch closely.

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By Thirzah Wildman – November 29, 2011

Looking Back on a Week and a Year

Dr David Gray, Senior Lecturer in Lincoln Business School, considers how the economic problems now facing Italy echo events from a year ago:

Politics in Greece and Italy are subject to the general malaise found in much of the troubled world. With wafer thin majorities and facing intransigent, vested interests, Papandreou and Berlusconi seem unable or unwilling to make sufficient progress on the reforms agenda. Papandreou’s referendum offer on the €130bn second bailout that was withdrawn in quick time may have forced an issue in Greece: the opposition was compelled to support him. However, the Eurozone reaction was to use the occasion to withhold a €8bn tranche and to make the question explicitly about single currency membership. Papandreou survived a confidence vote but not the weekend’s negotiation. Under the yoke of a debt repayment of €1.7bn due in December, plus the inability to fund more immediate pensioner and civil servant payments, Greece was pushed into forming an emergency national government. When California ran out of money, it printed its own IOUs, resulting in a dual currency system. If this emerges in the short term, it could become the vehicle for a cessation of single currency membership. 

The wisdom emerging is that a 10-year bond yield of over 7% is beyond a sustainable level and that a bail-out would be requested within days. Before the ECB began its debt purchasing in early August 2011, Spain and Italy saw their bonds float around 6-6.5%. Following the recent G20 Summit, Italy is there again. There is an echo of events a year ago that one should heed. LCH.Clearnet, a clearing house for bonds, has played a key role in pushing countries towards bail-out. On 10th November 2010, LCH increased its charges from 15% to 30% above normal requirements for using Irish sovereign debt as collateral. The Irish government were then boxed into a bail-out, requested within days.

By Friday, offered on the condition of intrusive monitoring of the progress of promised reforms, the Italian Prime Minister declined a €50bn IMF loan. As he refused, a marker was passed. Italian 10 year bonds were over 450 basis points above Bunds. This is important, partly as a measure of the disjuncture within the Eurozone, but also significant as it might provoke LCH to recast Italian debt as more risky in the same manner as it treated Irish debt a year ago. Today, the debt yield is 6.66%, within days of the recasting, Italy will need support, provoking far greater intrusion than Berlusconi currently seeks to avoid. Without the funds, as in Greece, an Italian public sector without funds will lead to unrest and the PM will lose his job.

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By Ian Richards – November 7, 2011

Will the real spooks mourn the end of Spooks?

Dr Andrew Defty, Senior Lecturer in Politics in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lincoln, asks whether the real MI5 will miss its fictional counterpart now the BBC drama Spooks has come to an end:

As the BBC drama Spooks drew to a close last night one might be left wondering whether the real intelligence and security agencies will miss the programme. Throughout their history the intelligence agencies have adopted a rather ambivalent attitude towards their fictional counterparts.

To some extent the British Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) owe their very existence to spy fiction. At the beginning of the twentieth century the novelist William Le Queux’s account of a fictional German invasion helped to create a climate of opinion in which intelligence services were viewed as a necessity and prompted the government to establish the modern agencies in 1909.

Britain’s most famous fictional spy James Bond has been variously feted and disowned by the real version of his employers, MI6. Whilst intelligence professionals have at times been keen to distance themselves from the gung ho and morally ambiguous secret agent, the image of a dynamic service with global reach has also been embraced by the service. One former Chief of MI6 Sir Colin McColl spoke publicly about the positive impact of Bond on the brand image of MI6, creating the impression of an ‘all-knowing and all-powerful organisation’ which made intelligence officers feel good about themselves and helped in the recruitment of agents. Judi Dench who played ‘C’ in recent Bond movies was invited to lunch with her real-life counterpart, and the World Is Not Enough was given  a special premiere for staff inside MI6 headquarters.

Whether Spooks had a similar impact on MI5 is open to debate. The show’s by-line, ‘MI5 not 9 to 5’ was described by one MI5 Director-General as an accurate reflection of life inside the agency and could have been written by recruitment consultants working for the agency which now advertises openly for recruits. There have also been claims that hits on the recruitment page of the MI5 website spike after each episode. The programme’s depiction of a young diverse staff with a good gender and ethnic mix is probably also welcomed within the agency, and the programme’s depiction of hi-tech surveillance equipment to some extent reflects the all-knowing agency of Bond. However, some would question whether Spooks was likely to encourage the right kind of recruits and the agency has sought to distance itself from the programme. In a speech in 2006 the then Director-General of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, criticised the programme for its simplistic presentation of intelligence operations ‘where everything is (a) knowable, and (b) soluble by six people’. She has also objected to the programme’s suggestion that agents have an ‘utter disregard for the law.’

At a time when the real intelligence and security agencies are subject to an ongoing inquiry into their involvement in the torture of terrorist suspects it may well be that they are only too pleased that Spooks will no longer be on our screens.

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By Ian Richards – October 24, 2011

Where’s Data when you need him?

Oliver Letwin’s faux pas over dumped personal information in a park bin got the Lincoln School of Journalism’s Barnie Choudhury thinking…why on earth didn’t he just use a shredder?

Data Protection. Just roll your tongue slowly around what must arguably be the five most un-sexiest syllables in the English language. And I should know. I’ve spent more than a hundred hours over the summer getting to grips with a law which ranks alongside “Elf & Safety”, in derision. If truth be told, before my enforced research, the only data I was interested in was the robotic character from Star Trek. Now, though, I have a grudging admiration for the Data Protection Act 1998 [DPA]. It, the Information Commissioner’s Office [ICO] and I have become firm friends. While colleagues may think this an odd choice for buddies, I’ll remind them that Oliver Letwin’s  mishap has propelled this oft-maligned topic into media-sex-on-legs.

In my best Victor Meldrew voice: “I don’t believe it!” Of course I care if the information were classified – the former Met Assistant Commissioner, Bob Quick , resigned after photographs showed his injudicious actions. But, if all this were true about the Minister’s actions, I’m probably more concerned that Mr Letwin would treat his constituents so shabbily. Without wishing to anger Hubris, I do feel he has only himself to blame. The MP’s advisers and civil servants would have warned him about the need to guard against the loss of anything personal. Why on earth didn’t Mr Letwin just use a shredder?

So why all this fuss, to paraphrase Zac Goldsmith’s tweet ? Well, the point is that this law is there to protect all of us. How would you like to have your identity stolen because someone stupidly left all your details on a hard-drive he or she’s thrown away? Or maybe you didn’t want your Tory boss to know that you’re a card-carrying member of the Socialist Party. And isn’t that embarrassing illness you’re being treated for really no-one else’s business but your own?

Almost everything can be personal information and certain things are classed as “sensitive data”. When considering what personal information is, the tests for me are:

Can you indentify the living person?

and

Has anything you’re storing likely to embarrass, harm or cause irreparable damage to someone if that information falls into the wrong hands?

When it comes to identifying a person from data, the Information Commissioner is unequivocal: “When considering identifiability it should be assumed that you are not looking just at the means reasonably likely to be used by the ordinary man in the street, but also the means that are likely to be used by a determined person with a particular reason to want to identify individuals. Examples would include investigative journalists, estranged partners, stalkers, or industrial spies.”

Well, that puts me in the category of the deranged stalker. Jokes aside, what if one of our students were escaping an abusive guardian and didn’t want to be found? Suppose we talked to that guardian without getting the permission of the adult learner? Across the land universities are wrestling with Data Protection. We’re asking questions which, taken out of context, look as if we’ve lost our marbles.

Can we take assignments home with us to mark…are we allowed to forward e-mails inside a department…will I fall foul of the DPA if I use a memory stick? And the one which has challenged the minds of many a journalism academic: if a student were to be sent to court on an assignment in a theory class, could she or he then use the information in a newspaper article?

After consulting the ICO, colleagues and I decided that, as long as we took adequate precautions: we could mark assignments at home; it was alright to forward e-mails internally in a secure system; and as long as we use encrypted memory sticks, then we were unlikely to fall foul of the DPA. Now, when it comes to students sent on a theory assignment we’ve come up with, what we hope is, an ingenious plan. These are no longer theory assignments. Students should be told that it is our intention to publish the information they get from court. That way we can legitimately use one of the exemptions to the DPA. 

It may seem as if we’ve gone over the top. But these are all legitimate concerns because get it wrong and the ICO can impose fines of up to a half million pounds . Oliver Letwin is now under investigation from the ICO. The Prime Minister’s already lost his Defence Secretary and if the press and media get into a feeding frenzy, they could claim another scalp. In all honesty, there is a part of me that does feel sorry for Mr Letwin. A little part of me thinks there but for the grace of God. Now where is that shredder?

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By Thirzah Wildman – October 17, 2011

Apple founder was genius to the core

Professor Nigel Allinson, Distinguished Professor of Image Engineering in the University of Lincoln’s School of Computer Science and inventor of the world’s largest micro-chip, comments on the death of Apple founder, Steve Jobs:

Steve was a visionary who from the earliest days in creating the Apple I computer saw the need to create products that were designed for people and not tech-savvy geeks.  

 He was single-minded and very difficult to work with – he did not suffer fools.  

 He had no time for asking customers what they wanted as he said: “They will always want something different by the time very have developed it.”  

 He created markets that could have existed before but did not.  

 Through wonderful design and ease of use, he made products that became icons.

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By Joni Appleton – October 6, 2011

Debating petitions – blog update

Catherine Bochel, Principal Lecturer in Policy Studies at the University of Lincoln, provides an update on her recent post about petitions:

The Backbench Business Committee has received support from backbench Members of Parliament to debate issues relating to the first two petitions to reach the 100,000 signature threshold. These relate to responses to the riots, including the issue of sanctions for those involved, and the disclosure of documents to the Hillsborough Independent Panel.  These are not debates on the specific topics of the e-petitions, but generally relate to them. In the case of the e-petition ‘convicted London rioters should lose all benefits’, the issue has been broadened out to cover a debate on responses to the riots which will include the issue of sanctions for those involved. This is provisionally scheduled to take place on October 13th in Westminster Hall. In the case of  the e-petition ‘Full disclosure and publication of all documents, discussions and reports relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster’, this will now be a debate on the disclosure of documents to the Hillsborough Independent Panel, and is provisionally scheduled for a House of Commons debate on October 17th. A further petition calling for ‘cheaper petrol and diesel’ has also reached the 100,000 signatures threshold and will now be passed to the Backbench Business Committee to see if it has any support from Members for a debate.

Interestingly, in the transcript of ‘Representations taken before the Backbench Business Committee Backbench debates 13 September 2011’ the Chair of the Committee talked about judging issues on merit rather than the number of people who have signed e-petitions, suggesting that if there is support for an e-petition by a Member then a debate could take place regardless of the number of signatures it garners.   At the same meeting a hybrid petition with more than 80,000 signatures on paper and 20,000 which had been collected electronically, although not on the government’s new e-petitions system, calling for a ‘referendum on whether we remain a member of the European Union’ had support from a range of Members who asked to be granted a one day debate. It would therefore appear that the Backbench Business Committee is flexible in its approach to petitions and to debates on them, and may be developing a rather different line to that originally set out in the Conservatives’ 2010 general election manifesto.

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By Ian Richards – October 5, 2011

Debating petitions

Catherine Bochel, Principal Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Lincoln, looks at whether the Coalition’s new e-petitions system really will offer a fresh means for people to influence government policy:

The new e-petitions system launched by the Coalition government in August 2011 has attracted a lot of attention. Sir George Young, Leader of the House of Commons, announced that any petition which secures more than 100,000 signatures will be eligible for a debate in Parliament. Petitions that meet this criterion will be passed to the Backbench Business Committee to decide whether they should be debated in the House of Commons.

At the time of writing the topics of the ten petitions with the most signatures  include petitions calling for convicted London rioters to lose all benefits; full disclosure of government documents relating to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster; cheaper petrol and diesel; making financial education a compulsory part of the school curriculum, public and private pension increases; a referendum to leave the EU; Formula One to be kept free to air in the UK; one petition to retain the ban on capital punishment and another to restore capital punishment. The number of signatures on these range from almost 250,000 to 21,000, with the first two meeting the 100,000 signatures threshold and therefore being eligible for a debate in Parliament.

But what is the purpose of this petitions system and what can anyone submitting a petition hope to achieve? According to the http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/ website, ‘e-petitions is an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK’. Whilst at one level this might be seen to be a positive step in facilitating wider engagement between government and citizens, in practice, it will be largely a mechanism to allow people to express their views with few people likely to see any direct action as a result of their petition.

At present petitions which reach the 100,000 signature threshold are eligible for debate.  These are passed to the Backbench Business Committee which will decide which petitions should be debated. However, the chair of the Committee, Labour MP Natascha Engel, has raised concerns about the lack of time allocated to the Committee for debates. Time for debates is limited to 35 days in each parliamentary session, and this has to take account of all the issues which MPs wish to discuss, not just those raised in petitions. The introduction of this online system, alongside the clear statement that it is an easy way to influence government policy, risks raising expectations which the government and Parliament may not be able to fulfil. If petitions reach the signatures threshold and then do not get debated this is likely to lead to frustration for members of the public.

There are further concerns about the numbers threshold. Whilst popular or well organised petitions on big or populist issues may have no difficulty reaching the 100,000 threshold others may struggle to get many signatures at all, but this does not necessarily mean that the issues raised are not important.  The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly both have petitions systems with very low numbers thresholds. In the case of the former, the signature of one person is enough, while in the National Assembly for Wales the minimum number of signatures required for an individual to submit a petition is ten. In both systems, providing petitions meet the admissibility criteria, each is discussed by a dedicated petitions committee on its merits, so that it is the quality of the petition that matters, as much as the number of signatures it attracts.  These systems also provide feedback on petitions, so each petitioner receives an ‘outcome’ of sorts.  Clearly given the volume of petitions, it would be difficult for the government’s new e-petitions system to respond to all petitions, but even the 10 Downing Street e-petitions system provided a response to petitions with 500 or more signatures. Currently it is not clear whether or not petitions that do not meet the signatures threshold will receive any response, but given that the majority of petitions are unlikely to be signed by at least 100,000 people, then these may be viewed as not worthy of consideration. This has the potential to leave large numbers of people feeling frustrated and possibly angry that their petition is deemed to be of no value and raises questions about the extent to which the system has been thought through in advance. Clearly e-petitions systems are popular because they are a quick and easy way for people to express their views. The Hansard Society has noted that petitions are one of the most common forms of participation (Hansard Society, 2010). But if few people receive a response, then they are not as the epetitions website suggests ‘an easy way for you to influence government policy in the UK’, but much more of a way to communicate views to government, with few people actually having any influence. Whilst a small minority of petitioners may get their petition debated, for the majority, nothing is likely to happen. The key issues here appear to be a lack of clarity around the actual purpose of the system, both for the government and for petitioners, and the failure to provide a mechanism for the consideration of petitions that do not reach the 100,000 threshold.  These are issues that the government needs to address if the system is to have credibility with the public.

There are other aspects which may also need to be considered in greater depth. Some petitions are likely to be highly visible and it may prove difficult for Parliament not to debate them and for the government to ignore them. Similarly the government do not appear to have thought through the use of the system by groups to get their issues on the agenda. The National Trust have announced that they will write to each of their 3.8m members encouraging them to sign an online petition against the government’s proposed planning reforms. Other organizations such as the RSPB, trade unions, etc. may similarly use the system to further their agendas. The use of petitions by the opposition is also a possibility, with, for example, Ed Miliband reported (The Guardian 31 August 2011) to be considering using the e-petitions system to force a Commons debate on police cuts.

In conclusion, the new e-petitions system is clearly meant to be a positive step in facilitating wider engagement with the public and reconnecting government and citizens, but whilst this may be a step in the right direction, it is questionable whether it will achieve this. For the government to suggest that the new system is an easy way to influence policy is misleading. While there is potential for a small number of petitions to have influence, for the majority it will largely provide a means to express their views to politicians, nothing will happen as a result of their petition, and they may not receive any feedback. The purpose of the system for petitioners and for government is unclear and this may hinder the ability of the system to meet the expectations of the people who use it. The system may also have the potential to cause embarrassment to government when petitions that run counter to their policies are debated in the House of Commons, although since any petitions have yet to be debated this at present remains an unknown. The new system may therefore best be seen as a starting block upon which to build, but there is scope for improvement, including perhaps, learning from the systems already operating in Scotland and Wales.

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By Ian Richards – September 21, 2011