BLOGS REVISITED

I am going to revisit two of my blogs of this week to make some additional comments.

To start let me restate my position on the right to demonstrate. In a democracy I believe we have the basic right to peacefully express our views by marching or holding protests.

Furthermore I believe it is one of the tasks of the British police force to ensure we are able to practice that right without hindrance.

I do not believe that being in a democracy gives us the right to riot, cause damage or abuse the police verbally or physically. I do believe the police have the right to protect themselves, property and members of the public.

During the G20 protests in London there were thousands of police on duty. The vast majority performed their tasks within the law and in a praiseworthy manner. Sadly there are those who did not and we are now seeing the fall-out from those tragedies.

If there are officers who were guilty of assault, if there are officers who have a culture of violence, if there are sections of the force that are trained and instructed to act inappropriately, and there are senior officers who attempted to cover us such acts – then they must be rooted out and dealt with.

However the events surrounding the G20 in London and just days later the violence that erupted in Strasbourg at the NATO Summit are starkly different. In France for example, they have a trained riot police, whose methods would simply not be accepted in Britain but whose actions were applauded by their political masters in that country.

It is right that in Britain we demand the highest standards of our police. It is right also that when a section of the force or individual officers break the law they were set up to defend – they should be punished, and heavily. However let us be careful not to blacken the name of an entire police force and that of thousands of good officers – because that would not be democratic either.

I close with Gibraltar and its off-shore status. On the day I wrote my blog on the OECD Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, sent a missive to the UK’s tax havens including Gibraltar informing them that they had to meet international transparency standards by signing 12 bilateral tax agreement by November or face sanctions.

The facts are these: Gibraltar signed an accord to meet the OECD’s standards in 2002 then sat on its hands for seven years and did nothing. Ahead of the G20 meeting it hurriedly signed a tax agreement with the USA but has seen itself demoted down the OECD’s list of “Good Guys”. Under the threat of sanctions the British Government has now given the Rock till November to get its house in order.

Gibraltar’s Chief Minister, Peter Caruana, says he is confident that they would meet that timetable. A miracle – 13 agreements in seven months after seven years of doing nothing.

So it still begs the questions why did Gibraltar sign the agreement in 2002 then do nothing when it could have acted and been the pace-setter amongst off-shore tax havens?

Why has it given the strong critics of tax havens a sitting target – because even if it now complies it will be the threat of sanctions that is held up as the reason – when it could have been the model off-shore centre all others were made to follow?

WAS THE CÁDIZ CARNAVAL GAGGED?

“Increíble pero cierto. Los carnavales de Cádiz, en otros tiempos cuna de la libre creatividad crítica y de la indomable rebeldía popular ante el poder establecido, no han producido ni una sola letra crítica en su versión de 2009. En la España actual, con 4 millones de parados y con una clase política que escandaliza a la ciudadanía a diario con sus despilfarros, abusos, corrupciones y desatinos, hay materia y razones más que suficientes para que la crítica carnavalesca, en una tierra antes libre, como Cádiz, hubiera sido feroz, pero los carnavales gaditanos han sido castrados por el eficaz y omnipresente poder político andaluz.”

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am an avid follower of the ‘Voto en Blanco’ website of respected journalist Francisco Rubiales. As you will see above this week he questioned whether the performers at the Cádiz Carnaval had been gagged.

Well there is no British comparison for the Spanish form of Carnaval of which the Cádiz Carnaval is unique. We do have a reputation for irreverent satire often aimed at our political masters. The carnaval acts I have seen over the years have been risqué, political, barbed and hilarious, often tilting at the windmills of every day life.

I must admit I haven’t seen any of this years acts but Francisco quite rightly reckons that with four million jobless, corruption rife plus numerous fiascos in public life then the ‘comprasas’ and ‘chirigotas’ who perform on stage at Cádiz’s Falla theatre had a rich vein of material to draw on.

He believes they dodged the challenge. Why he asks – was it because it was transmitted by Canal Sur, which is controlled by the PSOE run Andalucía government or because those who hand out the grants have their own agenda?

I don’t know! Yet what is certain is that in a free society, be it in Spain or Britain, we need to defend our right to speak out and ridicule our masters when they deserve it – and nobody can deny that right now they do truly deserve it.

In 2012 Cádiz celebrates the 200 th anniversary of ‘La Pepa’, the constitution that is considered in the Spanish speaking world as the ‘Magna Carta’ of nations. ‘La Pepa’ was drawn up and signed by the Cortes Parliament that was then sitting in the city of Cádiz before being suppressed by Napoleon. It would be cruelly ironic if in the year of its commemoration by leaders of Hispano-American nations that the Cádiz Carnaval was by then so neutered that it had become a meaningless parody of itself.

Behind ‘La Pepa’ was the cry of freedom and the regeneration of democracy. Both freedom and democracy are now under threat and we rely on such celebrations as the Cádiz Carnaval to remind ourselves and the wider world we are both free and democratic!

COULD THERE BE ANOTHER 23F?

Yesterday, February 23, is engraved for ever in the Spanish mind as 23F. It is the name given to the failed coup d’état that started on 23 February 1981 and ended the next day on 24 February 1981.

It is also known as El Tejerazo from the name of its most visible figure, Guardia Civil Antonio Tejero, who conducted the most notable event of the coup by storming into the Congress of Deputies with a group of 200 of his fellow armed officers during the election of Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo as the new Prime Minister.

It was also the time when Spain’s King, Juan Carlos I, cemented his place in the nation’s hearts by giving a nationally televised address denouncing the coup and urging the upholding of the law and the democratically elected government.

As a result of the monarch’s decisive intervention against the uprising the coup soon collapsed. After holding the Parliament and cabinet hostage for 18 hours the hostage-takers surrendered the next morning and nobody had been harmed physically at least.

This year is the 28 th anniversary of the coup attempt. A number of television channels have chosen this anniversary to broadcast dramatisations of the events of 23F.

A sobering fact is that today as in 1981 Spain is in a state of crisis. Then there was 20 per cent unemployment plus 16 per cent inflation. It is a sign of Spain’s democratic maturity that those problems are now tackled by its politicians at home and in international forums rather than through the waving of guns.

But, yes there’s always one of my buts, what if the people of Spain finally become fed up with their corrupt politicians? What if they despair of being shunted from one corrupt administration to the next at national, regional and local level? What if the politicians do not clean up their mutual act? Then the successors of Tejero may again take up arms. Then Juan Carlos or a future King Felipe might not have the will or the ability to talk down a coup. Then the democracy, which so many Spaniards fought so hard to win, might be smashed by another Tejero – the tile maker. What then?