Jenni Russell: We are giving the authorities an open invitation to abuse their power
I fear that many of us are failing to see the danger we are now in, precisely because we have grown up in a largely benign state. We still trust in the good sense and reasonableness of its agents, and the rest of officialdom. We don’t understand that that has been sustained only by the existence of our legal rights, and by a respect for our freedom of action. We don’t see the lesson of every society: that if you do not place constraints on official power, its instinct is to grow. Our tolerant world is disappearing, and it is only when many more of us start running up against that reality that we will realise what we have lost.
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Posted on February 25th, 2006 at 11:11 am
| See also • Respect the *snip* • Daniel Davies: The lessons learned • A unified theory of respect |
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As Joni Mitchell said:
“Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Wasn’t this because she had an argument with airport staff over the absence of trolleys? A pretty small peg on whch to hang a very large case. Not that the case itself was invalid, but the particular piece just invited parody.
Yeah, white, middle class women, eh? They should just take their intimidation and shut the fuck up.
Don’t be silly, other-Justin. The whole point is that she writes a whole column of which it can be fairly said that
1. the events in it would not remotely constitute a news story.
2. rather worse things happen in British airports every day (and do not constitute news stories).
Therefore the problem with the story is that it looks like somebody who is, indeed, confortable and middle-class, having an argument with the airport staff which leads to the police being called and then reacting as if this constituted a police state. That, unfortunately, is what it looks like.
It’s a very shallow foundation on which to erect a very sizeable edifice. Had I been editor of the relevant section of the Guardian I hope I’d have spiked the piece.
Put it this way, perhaps. I’m flying to Zaragoza on Thursday and on the following Wednesday I fly back to Stansted. Let us suppose that on one of these days I have a customer service incident (not at all unlikely, since Ryanair are involved - my girlfriend was three hours late taking off on their flight yesterday, entirely due to their errors). Let us suppose that at some point during this incident I raise my voice, or the staff take offence, and as a result they maybe overreact and call the cops. However, no arrest ensues and in fact the police are quite sympathetic.
If, later, I call a national newspaper and ask them to cover the story, what will they say? They will say “what story?”. If I then say, “it goes to prove how officialdom in this country has become intolerable”, how loud do you think they’ll laugh?
So what’s different for Jenni Russell? Is it really so unlikely that all that’s happened is that somebody comfortable has had an uncomfortable incident, that she’s completely unused to this sort of thing and that as a result she goes completely overboard about it?
Nothing happened here. When I read the story it was like Basil Fawlty looking for the chicken in the trifle at the end of Gourmet Night. Or in the yoghurt, perhaps. Where is it?
Fair enough. I saw it as yet another example of the creeping authoritarianism that, unless I’m very much mistaken, we’re all going to be at the sharp end of very soon. It’s an attitude (and seemingly a policy) that allowed to lazy and feckless airport staff to intimidate a woman.
I saw that as wrong and worthy of report - after all, we won’t all be issued with orange jumpsuits when the wheels really start to turn. It’ll be a million small (and not so small) inconveniences at the hands of bastards enjoying their authority and our impotence.
You saw it worthy of sneering.
Mine is the politics of a broad coalition of left, right, centre, man, woman, black, white, and across the classes to fight this kind of crap before it truly takes hold (if it hasn’t already).
Yours sounds like typical left-wing splitterism. If only she’d been a black asylum seeker.
Sorry, where on earth do you get “left-wing splitterism2 from? Do explain that one because I see not a word I’ve written to justify it.
What I am actually, and I think obviously, trying to do is to read the article critically. I am trying to ask two particular questions:
1. Does it sustain the case it tries to make?
2. What questions would a neutral observer ask of the story?
In the first instance, plainly it does not. The police being called to attend a customer service incident is not what you would like: it is not, however, something that “reveals our intimidating relationship with the modern state”. The state itself, after all, did not do anything other than attend an incident when called. If Ms Russell has a quarrel, it is with BAA and British Airways, not the state.
In the second instance, what will the neutral observer ask? They will ask, “was Ms Russell’s behaviour such as to merit a hostile reaction from the staff?”. We do not know. We have not heard their point of view. A journalist, presented with the story, would ask that question. So should you.
If you do not, then there is no point in having a go and me, and inventing opinions I do not hold and have not expressed, because I demonstrate an absolute minimum of intellecutal rigour in reading the story. I think we live in a more illiberal society than we did and that some of the things Ms Russell decribes elsewhere in the story are evidence of that. I don’t, however, consider her experience to be anything to do with it: even on her own terms. And I think I am entitled to say so, without having mud thrown at me for it.
Fine. You carry on picking over the minor details. The rest of us are probably a little more concerned about the broader picture that “white, middle class woman reported to the the police for complaining” represents.
Do as you will, but having attributed various opinions to me it would be admirable if you either backed up your claims or withdrew them. I’ve had “left-wing splinterism”, for instance, without a word of explanation. Either back it up or withdraw it, please.
Note incidentally that the only references to race in this entire debate have been yours, and yet you have attributed them to me. Three or four times, now.
I’m not sure I like that at all. It’s all a litle too smeary for my taste.
If you were offended then I apologise and withdraw the remarks.
To be honest I wondered why you bothered to make the comment. You seem to have ignored the major and central thrust of the article and instead emphasised the mnor anecdote.
You also did this on the post about the robbery, ignoring the point of the (albeit frivolous) post - bank heists and American cop shows - and gave an utterly peripheral qualitative judgement about the journalist I quoted. And who gives a toss about Marina Hyde’s taste in man and who the hell is Barney Ronay? What did they have to do with what I wrote about?
If I may interrupt your fine argument for a moment, Peter Hitchens programme on Channel 4 last night gave much corroborative evidence of the growth of this very issue.
The chilling effect on public freedoms by the officious and authoritarian interpretation of countless petty laws that ultimately do nothing to deter crime but much to deter democracy.
A bit ridiculous to see Hitchens of all people getting all purple-faced about authoritarianism, given that he’s a big fan of the death penalty. If you’re prepared to give the State the right to kill you, you might want to consider not lecturing other people about their lesser illiberalism.
And I wonder if he was on his high horse about CCTV back when the Tories kickstarted its wholesale adoption by local authorities back in the early 90s, or whether back then he’d have just been grousing about all the unwashed civil libertarians who were opposing it?
Yes, I’d agree with you, although I find the idiocies of the two Hitchen difficult to tell apart, so am never sure which one said what.
However, Orwell once said something along the lines of “the truth is still the truth, even when it’s written in the Daily Telegraph”.
And the programme did hit several spots about the petty investigation of legitimate activities that is becoming an regular undercurrent resulting from this Govt’s policies.
Agreed: petty and fascistic. And nice to see that Hitchler’s finally come round to admitting he’s been wrong about the kind of anti-authority viewpoints that just a little while ago he’d have been dismissing as the ravings of infantile leftists.
Although (and keeping in line with the theme of the spat above between our host and the Other Justin), was it me or did he not mention at all any of the egregious injustices meted out to people of black, Asian and Arab descent over the past five years? I didn’t see the first bit of the prog tho’.
No, he didn’t mention such injustices. But I actually feel that wasn’t the point he was trying to make.
He was saying, even As Jenni Russel did in her article, that such interference is now so pervasive that even the white middle classes are finding themselves on the receiving end. Yes, it does imply a smug superiority that, like in all cases, we only get notice when it’s us that are affected, but this is the majority population that is now being declared an “enemy of the state”