Thursday 12 February 2015

Blue Labour, Indeed

Rather than Pink Labour, that is.

With yet more bother around the frankly bizarre Sexual Offences Act 2003, and especially around the Harman's Law at the heart of it, see if you can remember what else the Government was up to, with full "Opposition" collusion, in and around 2003.

The law now begins from the premise that all heterosexual intercourse is rape, and it then seeks devices for convicting as many perpetrators as possible, mostly by making acquittal effectively impossible.

To be fair, it was written by women who genuinely could not comprehend consenting to sex with a man, as most men cannot comprehend consenting to being buggered, or as most people cannot comprehend consenting to the "BDSM" that seems to have entered mainstream culture while no one was paying attention.

Making "all men are rapists" the law of the land, and indeed having Harriet Harman and her associates anywhere near the business of government at all, was an integral and important part of the transformation of Labour into an anti-worker and pro-war party, and thus an integral and important part of that project's continuity with Thatcherism.

Of course, then, there was no suggestion that the stockades of male employment would be restored, or the trade unions re-empowered, or municipal institutions treated with anything other than scorn and derision.

And of course, then, there was no suggestion that the lives of mostly younger and, above all, mostly male Armed Forces personnel were worth protecting from pointless wars built on entirely false prospectuses, of an explicitly feminist kind in the case of Afghanistan. Hell, they were not even issued with the proper kit with which to fight those wars.

Serious erosion of the presumption of innocence was and is entirely of a piece with the New Labour assault on civil liberties on specious grounds of national security.

Harman managed to play the Electoral College well enough to pip Jon Cruddas at the post, more is the pity. But Ed Miliband managed to play the Electoral College well enough to pip the other one, so Labour's is now a far less anti-worker and pro-war position than it might have been, or than it used to be.

Therefore, it stands a good chance of winning an overall majority, and Miliband is practically certain to become Prime Minister.

As part of that process of return both to its right mind and to its rightful place, Labour ought to propose the replacement of the offences of rape, serious sexual assault, and sexual assault, with aggravating circumstances to the general categories of offences against the person, enabling the sentences to be doubled. The sex of either party would be immaterial.

There must be no anonymity either for adult accusers or for adult complainants. Either we have an open system of justice, or we do not. There must be no suggestion, in this or in any other area, of any reversal of the burden of proof.

American-style legislation for internally administered "balance of probabilities" or "preponderance of evidence" tests to sexual assault allegations at universities or elsewhere must be banned by Statute. It is incompatible with the Rule of Law to punish someone for a criminal offence of which he has not been convicted.

As for teaching things in schools, how is that curriculum time currently being filled? Apply the Eton Test. Would this be taught in a school that assumed its pupils to be future Prime Ministers or Nobel Laureates? If not, then instead fill the hours with something that is. Teach Latin. Someone will.

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