Breaking news from LinkedIn:

Congratulations, Jamie!

(Apologies to Charlie and Campbell.)

Partly pre-empting my next post – which is going to start with a bit of post-dormancy navel-gazing about what I’ve been doing while I haven’t been blogging – here’s a Web site I’ve just set up:

It’s for my book More work! Less pay!, which is out very shortly. It’s coming out in a prohibitively expensive academic hardback edition, unfortunately. Hopefully, if it gets a bit of buzz behind it, the university libraries of the world will get through that edition and I’ll be able to push for a paperback.

The Web site includes links to the publisher and to Amazon, a link to Henry’s review on Crooked Timber, an excerpt from the Preface and the book’s table of contents; taken together, they should tell you all you need to know about what the book’s about.

Or almost all. There’s also a ‘Q&A’ link, which currently goes nowhere much. Qs which I’m intending to A on the site include

What’s with the title?
and
What’s with the cover?
and possibly
What’s this got to do with the Decent Left and the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme?

All other suggestions are welcome.

Also welcome is publicity from any bloggers reading this who have bigger audiences than mine (which probably means all of you). If you’re interested, the front cover can be seen in greater detail here.

Update

30th November

It’s out! It’s actually, physically available! I’ve held it in my hands (just now, in fact) and can confirm that it’s a lovely piece of work; I haven’t spotted any errors yet, and the cover design works really well. Coming soon, I hope, to a library or a conference or a book reviews section – and possibly even a bookshop – near you.

June? June?

Oh well – I’m back, probably.

What’s been happening? Looking back at the last two posts, both those papers got rejected; in one case it was more of a “revise and resubmit”, so I’m not particularly distressed. The other was more of a “hit the back wall without bouncing” rejection, which did stop me in my tracks for a bit – but I’ll get a resubmission out of it. And my book is almost out, and almost has its own Web page (a holding page as I write this, but I’m going to fix that RSN).

I was going to kick this blog back into life with a few thoughts on blogging, or a political meme that drifted past in the summer, or some thoughts on the mainstreaming of Fascism, or possibly even my long-planned post on the ethics of armed struggle. (Armed struggle: I’m agin it.) Instead of which, I’m going down that time-honoured route to a blog post, the comment that got too long for the comment box. Sparked off by something on Daniel’s site, which has an odd sort of big-fleas-little-fleas appropriateness about it.

First off, how about a bit of Tronti? (Borrowed from my book, which is out soon.)

Capitalist society has its laws of development: they have been formulated by economists, applied by governments and endured by the workers. But who will discover the laws of development of the working class? … We ourselves have put capitalist development first, workers’ struggles second. This is wrong. We need to reverse the problem, change its sign, begin from first principles: and the first principle is the struggle of the working class. Where capital is developed on the social scale, capitalist development is subordinate to workers’ struggles: it follows on from them and has to shape the political mechanisms of its own production accordingly.
Mario Tronti (1964), “Lenin in England”

More generally – Tronti and the workerists argued – capitalist development is parasitic on workers’ intelligence and creativity, which they use in the refusal of work. You get the job done with half an hour to spare and sneak off for a fag; your employer cuts your working day by half an hour and cuts your pay accordingly. Result: profit. You do eight hours’ work in six hours; your employer increases your workload by 33%. Result: profit.

And so to Thomas Friedman.

we need to understand that it is not only our financial system that needs a reboot and an upgrade, but also our public [i.e. state] school system. Otherwise, the jobless recovery won’t be just a passing phase, but our future.
…
[the] problem will be reversed only when the decline in worker competitiveness reverses — when we create enough new jobs and educated workers that are worth, say, $40-an-hour compared with the global alternatives. If we don’t, there’s no telling how “jobless” this recovery will be.
…
Those who are waiting for this recession to end so someone can again hand them work could have a long wait. Those with the imagination to make themselves untouchables — to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to attract old customers or new ways to combine existing technologies — will thrive. Therefore, we not only need a higher percentage of our kids graduating from high school and college — more education — but we need more of them with the right education.

For a start, the “untouchable” theme is a striking example of Friedman’s legendary tin ear. To use “untouchable”, as a noun, to refer to people at the top of the heap – people who will thrive while the rest of us struggle – is bizarrely insensitive. To do so when what we’re struggling against is competition from low-wage countries, like, say, India – ugh. Brane hertz.

The “work-smarter-not-harder” stuff in the last paragraph quoted above is pretty insulting, too – at least, it is for those of us who have been hearing it from management gurus, year in and year out, ever since the last recession. The sermon changes from year to year – sometimes there’s just no money around; sometimes there’s lots of money but lots of people competing for it; sometimes it’s neither of the above but the world is changing! – but the message is always the same. There’s always some compelling reason why we’ve got to invent smarter ways to do old jobs, energy-saving ways to provide new services, new ways to achieve this and save money on that. We can’t just get on with our jobs – that would be wrong. (More to the point, it would mean we didn’t generate more profit than we did last year. See Tronti.)

But Friedman has something more specific to say here. Something that goes roughly like this:

“Only a minority of American workers are doing well out of globalisation – everyone else is getting shafted! As nobody could possibly have predicted (except for everybody but me)! So we need to move all American workers into that minority! And the key to that is education, government-provided education in particular! And what we need to do to government-provided education is, oh, damn, time’s up.”

I was particularly struck by the line about the $40-an-hour jobs. He’s literally proposing to fix the problem at the margin – by moving everyone who’s being affected by global competition into the margin of jobs so skill-intensive, and skills so specialised, that they can’t be done for less than $40/hour. Because if they could be done cheaper they would be, and if they’re done cheaper on the other side of the world, hey, them’s the breaks.

In The age of insecurity, Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson liken globalisation to a strong wind – a conventional enough image these days. They then say that the anti-protectionist orthodoxy is a bit like saying we should deal with this strong wind by opening all our doors and knocking down walls where possible. (That wind is out there whether we like it or not! It’s a fact of life! It’s the way the world is!) Friedman has been urging on a process which other people said should be resisted or slowed down, because it would lead to disruption and immiseration on a large scale. He’s now claiming that it has led to large-scale disruption and immiseration – and his only solution is for the 80% to clamber on board the 20%’s lifeboat. And if that doesn’t work, well, it’s probably the fault of the government.

I’ve written another paper (hence the no blogging). No prizes for guessing which area this one’s in.

Albertazzi, D. and McDonnell, D. (2009), “The parties of the centre right: many oppositions, one leader”, in Newell (2009a)
Allum, F. and Allum, P. (2008), “Revisiting Naples: clientelism and organized crime”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies,13(3)
Bardi, L. (2007), “Electoral change and its impact on the party system in Italy”, West European Politics 30(4)
Berselli, E. (2008a), “Quando la politica diventa un format”, la Repubblica 18 September
Berselli, E. (2008b), “L’antagonismo ex parlamentare”, la Repubblica 15 April
Bertinotti, F. (2008), “15 tesi per la sinistra”, Liberazione 13 November
Bordandini, P., Di Virgilio, A. and Raniolo, F. (2008), “The birth of a party: The case of the Italian Partito Democratico”, South European Society and Politics 13(3)
Briquet, J.-L. (2007), Mafia, justice et politique en Italie: L’affaire Andreotti dans la crise de la Republique (1992-2004), Paris: Karthala
Bull, M. and Newell, J. (2009), “Still the anomalous democracy? Politics and institutions in Italy”, Government and Opposition 44(1)
Buzzanca, S. (2008), “Sinistra Arcobaleno, un voto su due al Pd”, la Repubblica 17 April
Campus, D. (2009), “Campaign issues and themes”, in Newell (2009a)
Capano, G. and Giuliani, M. (2003), “The Italian parliament: In search of a new role?”, Journal of Legislative Studies 9(2)
Capoccia, G. (2002), “Anti-system parties: a conceptual reassessment”, Journal of Theoretical Politics 14(1)
Carbone, M. and Newell, J. (2008), “Towards the end of a long transition? Bipolarity and instability in Italy’s changing political system”, Politics 28(3)
Chiaramonte, A. (2009), “Italian voters: Berlusconi’s victory and the ‘new’ party system”, in Newell (2009a)
Corriere della Sera (2008), “Berlusconi: Veltroni nei fatti e’ inesistente”, 17 September
Corriere della Sera (2009), “Parisi: via chi ci ha condotti nel pantano”, 21 February
Croci, O. (2001), “Language and politics in Italy: from Moro to Berlusconi”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 6 (3)
de Marchis (2008), “Anche il modello Roma ha ceduto e al loft parte la resa dei conti”, la Repubblica 29 April
della Porta, D. and Vannucci, A. (2007), “Corruption and anti-corruption: The political defeat of ‘Clean Hands’ in Italy”, West European Politics 30(4)
Donovan, M. (2009), “The processes of alliance formation”, in Newell (2009a)
Edwards, P. (2005), “The Berlusconi anomaly: Populism and patrimony in Italy’s long transition”, South European Society and Politics10(2)
Edwards, P. (2008), review of Briquet, Mafia, justice et politique en Italie, Modern Italy 13(3)
Edwards, P. (2009), ‘More work! Less pay!’ Rebellion and repression in Italy, 1972‑77, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Fabbrini, S. (2006), “The Italian case of a transition within democracy”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 8(2)
Fusani, C. (2008a), “Rifondazione non trova l’accordo; Drammatica conta per la segreteria”, la Repubblica 26 July
Fusani, C. (2008b), “Ferrero nuovo segretario di Rc; Vendola sconfitto: ‘No scissione’”, la Repubblica 27 July
Giannini, M. (2008), “Dal Pd opposizione senza sconti: non daremo tregua a Berlusconi”, la Repubblica 18 April
Gilbert, M. (1998), “In search of normality: The political strategy of Massimo D’Alema”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 3(3)
Ginsborg, P. (1990), A history of contemporary Italy: Society and politics 1943-1988, London: Penguin
Ginsborg, P. (2001), Italy and its discontents: Family, civil society, state 1980-2001, London: Penguin
Kimber, R. (2009), Political science resources
la Repubblica(2006a), “Elezioni, Berlusconi non molla: ‘Non li faremo governare’”, 21 April
la Repubblica (2006b), Speciale elezioni 2006
la Repubblica (2008a), Speciale elezioni 2008
la Repubblica (2008b), “Veltroni: ‘Il dialogo si chiude; Berlusconi ha strappato la tela’”, 17 June
la Repubblica (2008c), “Berlusconi: ‘Pm sovversivi’; E attacca Veltroni: E’ un fallito’”, 20 June
la Repubblica (2009a), Speciale elezioni 2009
la Repubblica (2009b), “Prc e Sl fuori anche dall’Europarlamento; Mpa bene in Sicilia, ma e’ lontano il 4%”, 8 June
Maltese (2008), “Il morso del Caimano”, la Repubblica 21 June
Newell, J. (2006), “Characterising the Italian parliament: Legislative change in longitudinal perspective”, Journal of Legislative Studies 12(3)
Newell, J. (ed.) (2009a), The Italian general election of 2008, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Newell, J. (2009b), “Introduction: a guide to the election and ‘instructions for use’”, in Newell (2009a)
Newell, J. (2009c), “The man who never was? The Italian transition and 2008 election”, paper presented at PSA annual conference, April
Pacini, M. (2009), “Public funding of political parties in Italy”, Modern Italy 14(2)
Paolucci, C. (2006), “The nature of Forza Italia and the Italian transition”, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 8(2)
Paolucci, C. and Newell, J. (2008), “The Prodi government of 2006 and 2007: A retrospective look”, Modern Italy,13(3)
Pasquino, G. (2004) “The restructuring of the Italian party system”, paper presented at PSA Annual Conference, April
Pasquino, G. (2009), “The Democratic Party and the restructuring of the Italian party system”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14(1)
Pridham, G. (1990), “Political actors, linkages and interactions: Democratic consolidation in Southern Europe”, West European Politics13(4)
Russo, F. and Verzichelli, L. (2009), “A different legislature? The parliamentary scene following the 2008 elections”, in Newell (2009a)
Serracchiani, D. (2009), intervention at national meeting of Partito Democratico groups, 21 March
Shore, C. (1990), Italian Communism: the escape from Leninism, London: Pluto
Sinistra Critica (2008), “Sinistra Critica vince la scommessa. Ora ricostruiamo dall’opposizione sociale“, 15 April
Tarchi, M. (2003), “The political culture of the Alleanza Nazionale: an analysis of the party’s programmatic documents (1995-2002)”, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 8(2)
Veltroni, W. (2007), “Un’Italia unita, moderna e giusta”, speech to Partito Democratico, 26 June
Vendola, N. (2008), “Noi predichiamo il cambiamento ma il cambiamento non ci riconosce”, Liberazione 16 November
Vendola, N. (2009), “Un cantiere aperto“, 8 June

It’s a ‘transition’ thing; I’m defending the idea of an ‘Italian transition’, despite the fact that the transition’s been going on for 17 years now and shows no sign of ending. That, and saying what I think of Walter Veltroni (although you do have to be fairly diplomatic in academic papers).

I guess I’m hoping that someone somewhere will look at the sheer range covered by these two papers & think “wow!”. Although I concede it’s more likely that they’d think “why?” (Because I was asked, would be the flip answer – but I jumped at the chance, both times. Why? Well, because the area I’m interested in lies… somewhere in between. What can I say, it’s a big area.)

Overreaching can be a problem. John Otway thought he was going to amaze the world when he followed Really Free with Geneva, a heartfelt orchestral ballad – his first song was awkward, energetic and hilarious, and now this! is there nothing he can’t do? Instead of which the reaction was …and now this! what’s he think he’s doing? Mind you, it didn’t help matters that Otway can’t, when you get right down to it, actually sing, as such – no handicap if you’re working in the awkward-energetic-hilarious area but a bit of a problem on the heartfelt-ballad front.

Glad I’ve got it done, anyway. Have I just done an Otway? It’s a worry. (Mind you, he seems to do all right.)

Last night I dreamed an angel kissed me, Solpadeine…

I’ve just finished a paper. I never have much trouble writing, once I get going; my problem is always that I try to get the kitchen sink in, while also being vaguely provocative and gnomic in the manner of Debord or Garfinkel or Nils Christie. So I spend far too long reading all round the subject, then wear myself out trying to fit it all together, then produce something everyone thinks is a bit off to one side of what they were expecting.

Anyway, here’s the bibliography, which I compiled over a happy (if dull) couple of hours this afternoon, listening to Robyn Hitchcock’s album Luxor (and especially its mysteriously euphoric last track, “Solpadeine”). Question for anyone who recognises more than a couple of those names: what discipline am I in? (It’s not a guessing game, I’m genuinely curious.)

Ashworth, A. (2000), “Is the criminal law a lost cause?”, Law Quarterly Review 116
Ashworth, A. (2006), “Four threats to the presumption of innocence”, International Journal of Evidence & Proof 10(4)
Ashworth, A. and Zedner, L. (2008), “Defending the criminal law: Reflections on the changing character of crime, procedure, and sanctions”, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2(1)
Ayres, I. and Braithwaite, J. (1992), Responsive regulation: transcending the deregulation debate, Oxford: OUP
Babcock, B. (1982), “Fair play: Evidence favorable to an accused and effective assistance of counsel”, Stanford Law Review 34(6)
Baldwin, R. (2004), “The new punitive regulation”, Modern Law Review 67(3)
Bates, E. (2009), “Anti-terrorism control orders: Liberty and security still in the balance”, Legal Studies 29(1)
Benjamin, W. (tr. Edmund Jephcott) (1986 (1921)), “Critique of violence”, in Benjamin, W., Reflections, New York: Schocken
Black, J. (2002), “Critical reflections on regulation”, Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 27(1)
Black, J. (2004), “Law and regulation: The case of finance”, in Parker, Scott, Lacey and Braithwaite 2004
Blake, M. and Ashworth, A. (1996), “The presumption of innocence in English criminal law”, Criminal Law Review
Bottoms, A. (2003), “Some sociological reflections on restorative justice”, in von Hirsch, A., Roberts, J., Bottoms, A., Roach, K. and Schiff, M. (eds.), Restorative justice and criminal justice: Competing or reconcilable paradigms?, Oxford: Hart
Braithwaite, J. (1982), “Challenging just deserts: Punishing white-collar criminals”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73(2)
Braithwaite, J. (1989), Crime, shame and reintegration, Cambridge: CUP
Braithwaite, J. (1997), “On speaking softly and carrying big sticks: Neglected dimensions of a republican separation of powers”, University of Toronto Law Journal, 47(3)
Braithwaite, J. (2002), Restorative justice and responsive regulation, Oxford: OUP
Braithwaite, J. (2005), “Pre-empting terrorism”, Current issues in criminal justice 17(1)
Cane, P. (2002), “Tort law as regulation”, Common Law World Review 31(4)
Carson, W. (1970), “White-collar crime and the enforcement of factory legislation”, British Journal of Criminology 10(4)
Christie, N. (1977), “Conflicts as property”, British Journal of Criminology 17(1)
Coffee, J. (1991), “Does ‘unlawful’ mean ‘criminal’?: Reflections on the disappearing tort/crime distinction in American law”, Boston University Law Review 71(2)
Cooter, R. (1984), “Prices and Sanctions”, Columbia Law Review 84(6)
Crawford, A. and Newburn, T. (2002), “Recent developments in restorative justice for young people in England and Wales: Community participation and representation”, British Journal of Criminology 42(3)
Cruft, R. (2008), “Liberalism and the changing character of the criminal law: Response to Ashworth and Zedner”, Criminal Law and Philosophy 2(1)
Flint, J. and Nixon, J. (2006), “Governing neighbours: Anti-social behaviour orders and new forms of regulating conduct in the UK”, Urban Studies 43(5-6)
Garfinkel, H. (1956), “Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies”, American Journal of Sociology 61(5)
Hood, C., Rothstein, H., and Baldwin, R. (2001), The government of risk, Oxford: OUP
Hoyle, C., Young, R. and Hill, R. (2002), Proceed with caution: An evaluation of the Thames Valley Police initiative in restorative cautioning, York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Kamenka, E. and Tay, A. (1975), “Beyond bourgeois individualism: The contemporary crisis in law and legal ideology”, in Kamenka, E. and Neale, R. (eds.),  Feudalism, capitalism and beyond, London: Edward Arnold
Kamenka, E. and Tay, A. (1986), “The traditions of justice”, Law and philosophy 5(3)
Lacey, N. (2004), “Criminalization as regulation: The role of criminal law”, in Parker, Scott, Lacey and Braithwaite 2004
Loader, I. (2006), “Policing, recognition, and belonging”, ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 605(1)
Parker, C., Scott, C., Lacey, N. and Braithwaite, J. (eds.) (2004), Regulating Law, Oxford: OUP
Pashukanis, E. (1924), “The general theory of law and Marxism”, in Beirne, P. and Sharlet, R. (eds.) (1980), Pashukanis: Selected writings on Marxism and law, London: Academic Press
Paulus, I. (1977), “Strict liability: Its place in public welfare offences”, Criminal Law Quarterly 20(4)
Pavlich, G. (1996), “The power of community mediation: Government and formation of self‑identity”, Law and Society Review 30(4)
Pavlich, G. (2005), Governing paradoxes of restorative justice, London: GlassHouse
Shapland, J., Atkinson, A., Atkinson, H., Colledge, E., Dignan, J., Howes, M., Johnstone, J., Robinson, G. and Sorsby, A. (2006), “Situating restorative justice within criminal justice”, Theoretical Criminology 10(4)
Sherman, L. (1990), “Police crackdowns: Initial and residual deterrence”, Crime and Justice 12(2)
Simmonds, N. (2005), “Jurisprudence as a moral and historical inquiry”, Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence 18(2)
Simmonds, N. (2007), Law as a moral idea, Oxford: OUP
Stapleton, J. (2004), “Regulating torts”, in Parker, Scott, Lacey and Braithwaite 2004
Van den Haag, E. (1982), “The criminal law as a threat system”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 73(2)
Von Hirsch, A. (1990), “Proportionality in the philosophy of punishment: From ‘why punish?’ to ‘how much?’”, Criminal Law Forum 1(2)
Von Hirsch, A. and Ashworth, A. (1992), “Not not just deserts: A response to Braithwaite and Pettit”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 12(1)
Waldron, J. (2008), “The concept and the rule of law”, Georgia Law Review 43(1)
Young, R. (2000), “Just cops doing ‘shameful’ business?: Police-led restorative justice and the lessons of research”, in Morris, A. and Maxwell, G. (eds.) Restorative justice for juveniles: Conferencing, mediation and circles, Oxford: Hart
Young, R. (2001), “Integrating a multi-victim perspective into criminal justice through restorative justice conferences”, in Crawford, A. and Goodey, J., Integrating a Victim Perspective within Criminal Justice, Dartmouth: Ashgate

Criminology or legal theory, Rob suggests in comments. Yes, but that’s exactly the problem – which is it to be? I’m addressing regulation (hence all the Braithwaite) from a standpoint within criminology, but making a case which leans rather hard on legal theorists (Ashworth, Simmonds) & work close to them (von Hirsch), while remaining ultimately within the phenomenological tradition in sociology (Garfinkel). (Sounds good – but what does it actually sound like?) I’m in danger of falling between every stool there is. I’m sure there’s a journal somewhere which will lap this kind of thing up, but I haven’t identified it yet.

And then today I woke beside you, Solpadeine…

Last night I didn’t dream an angel kissed me. I did, however, dream that I was walking round Manchester with Barack Obama. I wasn’t exactly showing him around – he knew exactly where he was going and frequently pointed things out to me, generally things like used needles and people begging. He was a nice bloke. We parted at the bottom of the High Street, with me heading to the bus station and him to his hotel; he invited me to go for dinner, but I said I ought to get back.

“Whether the subject sinks into madness, practises theory or participates in an uprising … the two poles of daily life – contact with a narrow and separate reality on one hand and spectacular contact with the totality on the other – are simultaneously abolished” (Voyer) Presumably life, music and dreams will all seem that much duller now that I’ve finished with the practice of theory. Note to self: write more papers.

I was waiting for the Soft Boys, Solpadeine
I was waiting for the Soft Boys, Solpadeine
And I saw them coming across the dying grass
That long hot summer
When you were born
Solpadeine

Following another thread in another place, here are a couple of reviews of books about Silvio Berlusconi, currently Prime Minister of Italy for the third time. As you can see, these reviews predate the 2006 elections, won by a united Left under Prodi (perhaps not quite the gran tessitore Aldo Moro was, but certainly a tessitore to be reckoned with). Consequently they also predate the 2008 elections, lost by a divided Left under Veltroni (who was either stupid enough to believe his own publicity or naive enough to believe that Berlusconi would reward him for his moderation after the inevitable defeat).

If my book (see next post down) has any relevance to contemporary Italy, it’s that all this could have been avoided if the Communist Party hadn’t got stuck in a groove of principled centre-right ‘moderation’ – of defining themselves as The Left That Wants To Be Loved By The Right. Veltroni’s act of electoral suicide suggests that they still haven’t learnt the lesson of the 1970s.

Paul Ginsborg, Silvio Berlusconi: Television, power and patrimony

Printed in Red Pepper, February 2005

In March 2001, a 128-page book was mailed to millions of Italian households. Titled Una storia italiana (“An Italian Story”), the book told the story of Silvio Berlusconi: a man from a poor background who had grown rich through hard work and loyalty to his friends, and who now wanted to serve his country. In May 2001, Cinderella went to the ball: Berlusconi became Prime Minister for the second time, leading a coalition which received nearly 50% of the vote. Berlusconi’s own party took nearly 30% – almost twice the vote of its nearest rival, the post-Communist Left Democrats.

Berlusconi faced several charges of corruption and fraud arising from his business career. His government acted promptly, passing laws which annulled some of Berlusconi’s court cases and obstructed others. Berlusconi still faces one charge of bribing a judge, but the court is likely to run out of time under the statute of limitation. Meanwhile, 90% of the television watched in Italy is broadcast either on the state RAI network – subject to heavy government pressure – or on Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels. In 1994 Italy’s supreme court ruled that Berlusconi’s share of terrestrial broadcasting was excessive and ordered one of his channels to transfer to satellite. In 2003, as the final deadline loomed, a decree overriding the ruling was signed by the Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi.

Berlusconi’s attitude to the Italian legal system is not so much cavalier as openly hostile. In the early 1990s Italy’s post-war ruling class disappeared under an avalanche of corruption trials. For Berlusconi, this judicial onslaught has a simple explanation: it was a Communist plot. Communists are behind his own trials; they have also occupied positions of power in RAI, the education system and the culture industry, from which they must now be extirpated. Some intellectuals now argue that the ‘First Republic’ of 1948-92 was characterised by a ‘cultural hegemony of the left’; more bluntly, Berlusconi proposes to rescue Italy from ‘fifty years of Communism’.

As well as being a leading writer of contemporary Italian history, Paul Ginsborg is active in the opposition to Berlusconi; he has criticised the ‘self referential’ politics of the Left Democrats, urging a new relationship with the forces of radical and ethical protest. This brief but valuable book shows a deep understanding of the Berlusconi phenomenon, pinpointing both his populism and his patrimonialism – an oddly feudal belief in loyalty, largesse and reciprocal favours, given greater scope by access to the assets of the Italian state. Ginsborg’s partisanship is unmistakable but does not cloud his judgment; if anything it has a positive effect, bringing the gravity of his charges against Berlusconi into sharp focus.

Unfortunately, Ginsborg says little about the background to Berlusconi’s apparent paranoia. Italy’s stagnant and corrupt political class, whose heir Berlusconi is, was rooted in a diffuse culture of illegality; for many Italians under the First Republic, giving and receiving bribes was a way of life. Opposition to this situation came largely from the Left, which built a thriving and influential sub-culture out of its exclusion from political power; left-wing judges, in particular, were staunch defenders of the Italian Constitution and of ethics in public life. The two coalitions which faced off in 2001 were an imperfect but genuine reflection of two conflicting cultures; one of them has won its most decisive victory in over forty years, and now intends to make it permanent. The Italian Left urgently needs to combine unity with radicalism and a renewed commitment to ethical politics; it’s a challenging combination, but this is a challenging conjuncture. In the British press, Berlusconi is too often presented as comical, ludicrous or merely contemptible. Ginsborg gives him his due, taking the threat that he presents entirely seriously.

David Lane, Berlusconi’s Shadow: Crime, justice and the pursuit of power

Printed in the Independent, 14/9/2004

Italy’s vocation for political turmoil is matched by the sluggishness of its courts: cases continue for months or years; charges are annulled to cut the backlog; sentences only take effect after appeal, by which time the original charge may have expired under the statute of limitations.

Under another system, the Italian prime minister might now be a convicted criminal. Silvio Berlusconi has been found guilty of corruption and false accounting (verdicts reversed on appeal) and illegally financing Bettino Craxi’s Socialist Party (charge expired during appeal). A conviction for perjury was annulled. An associate was jailed for bribing a judge; another was convicted for extortion and faces charges of Mafia involvement.

For Berlusconi and his party, Forza Italia, this judicial onslaught is a Communist conspiracy to deprive the Italian people of their chosen leader. This allegation intimidates Berlusconi’s critics. Since Forza Italia and its allies came to power in May 2001, a more direct – and dangerous – approach has become available. A series of measures have been passed that hamper magistrates investigating false accounting, cases using Mafia informers, and those involving high-ranking politicians.

David Lane writes for The Economist, which Berlusconi sued for libel after it suggested he was unfit to lead Italy. Berlusconi’s Shadow is a withering indictment of crony capitalism, executive thuggery and government incompetence. For Lane, Berlusconi is a shrewd but amoral businessman who entered politics to safeguard his interests and is now out of his depth. This contrasts with the picture presented by writers such as Paul Ginsborg, for whom Berlusconi’s combination of anti-political populism and media power makes him a real threat to democracy.

The test will come in the 2006 elections. Italy’s governing coalition looks fragile; the ex-Fascists of Alleanza Nazionale are bizarrely emerging as standard-bearers of principled conservatism. But neither the strength of Forza Italia nor Berlusconi’s will to power should be underestimated. With the left in long-term disarray, and court cases still hanging over the prime minister, Italy faces several more years of political instability.

More news on my book. I handed over the corrected proofs this morning, together with an index. Compiling the index was easier than I’d thought it would be, but still not exactly fun; it was one of those tasks that leaves you looking round for the next chunk of mental hard labour for several days afterwards. My basic approach was to index every proper name I could see, plus a few key concepts. I then cut out most names with only one occurrence, although a few got left in for the benefit of anyone who picks up the book and starts by browsing the index (don’t tell me it’s just me).

It’s called ‘More work! Less pay!’ Rebellion and repression in Italy, 1972-7, and it’ll be published (initially in hardback) by Manchester University Press this autumn. And that index? Here’s a selection. (For each initial letter I’ve included the first entry and the one with the most references.)

They say you can tell a lot about a book from its index; certainly I’m pretty pleased with what this one seems to be saying. It’s not Pale Fire – no “Berlinguer, idiocy of; idleness of; taste of, in shoes” sub-entries – but I think it tells you pretty much what the book’s about. It’s about Togliatti, Feltrinelli, Lotta Continua and the Red Brigades, and everything that connects them. One connection in particular:

Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) passim
see also Austerity; Berlinguer, Enrico; Confederazione Generale Italiano del Lavoro; Historic Compromise; Lama, Luciano; Togliatti, Palmiro; l’Unità

There was a curious piece in the ‘Work’ section of Saturday’s Guardian (I only read it for the problem page). It was headed

10 things we’ve learned so far

We send our reporters around the UK to see what happens in a downturn

but on inspection there were only three things that they’d learnt from their roving reporters; the other seven were single-paragraph makeweights. The three big investigative findings were

1. We innovate more
Kate Burt meets the start-ups who won’t be put off by a credit crunch.

2. We’re willing to lower our sights
Lydia Stockdale and Huma Quereshi interview workers who swallowed their pride to do a job they previously thought beneath them.

and

3. We don’t like ‘foreigners’ taking ‘our’ jobs
Hsiao-Hung Pai visits migrant Italian workers living on a barge in Grimsby.

OK. Now, I’ll admit to having taken a fairly optimistic view of the Lindsey strike from day one. I’m in favour of people being able to travel to look for work, but I’m even more in favour of people not having to travel any further than they want to. I don’t see anything inherently problematic in a workforce in location X objecting to being replaced by a workforce which the employer has bussed in (or shipped in) for the purpose; I certainly don’t think any such protest is inherently racist or xenophobic, as Pai’s scare-quotes rather strongly suggest. (“We don’t like the boss taking the jobs we were doing off us” wouldn’t have quite the same ring to it.)

But it can’t be denied that the strike did acquire some definite nationalist overtones, thanks not least to some of its supporters on the mainstream Left. So it was heartening to see the demands which (thanks to Socialist Party members) the strike committee adopted – demands which rather pointedly don’t frame the strike in nationalist terms.

• No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
• All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement
• Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members
• Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers
• All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
• Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers – via interpreters – to give right of access to Trade Union advice – to promote active integrated Trade Union Members

There have been different views on what the strike achieved. The Socialist Party remained upbeat:

the original contractor, Shaw, had been told that they had lost part of the work to an Italian company, IREM, who would bring in their own workforce from Italy and elsewhere to do the job. As a result, Shaw had told the shop stewards on the site that some of their members would be made redundant from 17 February to make way for the Italian workers.

What was crucial in this was not the fact that they were Italian or Portuguese but that they would not be part of the National Agreement for the Engineering and Construction Industry (NAECI). Why? Because under the EU directives, backed up by the European Court of Human Rights, employing those workers under NAECI conditions would be seen as a “restraint on trade” and therefore against the freedom of movement of labour and capital enshrined in the EU capitalist club’s rules and regulations.
…
It was clear that the IREM workers were not in a union, Italian or otherwise. Italian union confederation CGIL leader Sabrina Petrucci was quoted in the Morning Star on 6 February saying that IREM is a notorious non-union firm.
…
In a major breakthrough, part of the deal allows for the shop stewards to check that the jobs filled by the Italian and Portuguese workers are on the same conditions as the local workers covered by the NAECI agreement. The Lindsey oil refinery is what is known as a ‘blue book’ site and all workers on it should be covered by the NAECI agreement. This means in practice that the union-organised workers will be working alongside the IREM-employed Italian workers and will be able to “audit” whether or not this is the case.

Unite’s statement is rather less gung-ho; but then, it wasn’t a union strike, and as such there must have been an element of relief when it was over. But even Derek Simpson stops short of trotting out the “British jobs for British workers” line again:

Unite joint general secretary, Derek Simpson said, “This is a good deal which establishes the principle of fair access for UK workers on British construction projects. We now expect other companies in the construction industry to level the playing field for UK workers. The workers involved in the unofficial strike can now get back to work.

“Lindsey is part of a much wider problem that will not go away just because the workers at Lindsey have voted to go back to work. There are still employers who are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on construction projects. No European worker should be barred from applying for a British job and absolutely no British worker should be barred from applying for a British job.”

Some on the left have pointed to what IREM told ACAS, suggesting that the strike was based on a misapprehension: supposedly IREM already were abiding by the provisions of the ‘blue book’ (even though they didn’t have to), and the only substantive difference in pay and conditions had to do with the timing of meal breaks. On the other hand, ACAS do concede that IREM couldn’t provide documentary evidence of what they were claiming; on those grounds alone, the role which the settlement grants to shop stewards is a step forward. I also think that, if it’s a choice between “hiring decisions made by corporate management” and “hiring decisions made by corporate management and local unionised workers”, anyone on the Left should prefer the latter in almost all circumstances.

In short, what the strike achieved was: to make the demands of local workers a factor in corporate decision-making; to ensure that all workers, whether locally-based or brought in temporarily, are employed on terms better than the minimum required by EU law; and to give the unions a role in policing this agreement. (The unions hadn’t done a lot to earn this – but then, the unions do tend to turn up in time to take the benefits of wildcat actions, even when they’ve been sitting on the sidelines all the way through. Oops, little bit of workerism, my name’s Toni Negri goodnight.) On a broader level, the strike also legitimised the idea of wildcat industrial action and demonstrated that anti-union legislation can be ignored if you’ve got the numbers. Basically, the job’s a good ‘un. But you wouldn’t know it from Hsiao-Hung Pai:

Francesco and Gianluca are two of the 100 Italians who arrived in late January on a four-month contract to work at the French oil giant, Total, at Lindsey oil refinery in Immingham. Francesco, in his late forties, has worked as a welder in Tunisia and Libya. Gianluca, in his thirties, has worked in Croatia and Germany. “This is my first time in the UK,” Francesco says, “and it is the first time in my 20 years of working abroad that I’ve experienced anti-foreign feelings.”

Their employment by Italian company Irem, for the building of a sulphurisation facility at Total, prompted a wave of nationwide wildcat strikes involving more than 6,000 workers on 20 construction sites – all angry that “foreign workers” are taking “British jobs”. The Unite union says the strikes are about challenging the Posted Workers Directive and ensuring service providers follow national agreements across the EU. And yet the unions have rallied behind the divisive slogan of “British jobs for British workers”, and alienated migrant workers in the process.

I think ‘divisive’ is a bit strong. ‘Potentially divisive’, fair enough, but it’s not an inherently divisive slogan: it’s perfectly possible to read that slogan as saying “people based here want to carry on working here (and we’re throwing Gordon Brown’s words back at him)”. Apart from anything else, I’m not aware of any evidence (and Pai doesn’t quote any) that migrant workers have been alienated; indeed, I know of some unionists who have gone to some lengths to try and stop this happening. More to the point, what’s with that ‘and yet’? There’s no dishonesty here, and not much in the way of contradiction. Yes, Unite – in the person of Mr Simpson – has ‘rallied behind’ that slogan, although (as we’ve seen) even he has backed away from it now. But the strike was about challenging the Posted Workers Directive; the worst you can charge Simpson with is inconsistency. Besides, Simpson and Unite weren’t even involved. The fact that the strike took place outside union structures, and that the strike committee itself disowned that slogan, would surely be worth mentioning in any reasonably complete account of the dispute.

Francesco says the real issue is about the system of subcontracting which isn’t specific to overseas firms and affects workers of all nationalities. “Irem pays differentiated wages to its workers,” he explains. “The hourly rate ranges from €14 [£12.50] in Bologna to €12 in the UK. Ten of us welders are on €12 per hour but the 80 labourers are on €7 per hour. And the new 100 British workers [starting work following an agreement with the unions] will be on the same rate.” Gianluca looks at my interpreter friend. “I remember migrants in Italy, like Bulgarian workers … They earn less than half our rate, for doing the same skilled jobs. I asked myself, the Bulgarians are also specialists like us, why are they only earning €5? All [posted] workers should be paid equally and have the same rights.”

Interesting information – although I don’t quite follow the bit about how a system in which The hourly rate ranges from €14 [£12.50] in Bologna to €12 in the UK isn’t specific to overseas firms. More to the point, the demand that all [posted] workers should be paid equally and have the same rights was exactly what the strike was about – and exactly what the victory of the strike achieved, albeit only in one location (so far – la lotta continua).

But instead of advocating equal conditions for all workers, British trade unions have bowed to nationalist pressure and fought for quotas for British workers. Picket line racist abuse was treated as acceptable. “I saw a Lindsey steward give out union jack flags to strikers here,” said local activist John Shemeld of the Staythorp power plant strike. “The leadership [of the strikes] is not racist, but they don’t challenge racism.”

This is extraordinarily misleading. First, as noted above, the strike took place outside any union structures; in this instance ‘British trade unions’ haven’t ‘fought’ for anything. Second, the strike committee fought for “equal conditions for all workers” and a one-off quota (not “quotas”) for locally-based (not “British”) workers; the two aren’t contradictory. (I suspect that the enforcement of equal conditions will make shipped-in labour less attractive anyway, but even if this weren’t the case I would see the quota as making British and Italian workers more rather than less equal.) Third, Pai doesn’t tell us anything about this “picket-line racist abuse” (what, when, how much); or who it “was treated as acceptable” by; or, for that matter, what the connection was between this abuse (whatever it was), its toleration (whoever did tolerate it) and that “nationalist pressure” (whatever that means). There certainly was “nationalist pressure” on the picket line, in the sense that the BNP turned up; the BNP turned up and they were told to clear off. Again, you wouldn’t learn this from Pai. There’s a general, woozy slippage between ‘racism’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘willingness to adopt patriotic imagery’ here, exemplified by that closing line from “local activist John Shemeld”. Shemeld seems to read tolerance of racism into the sight of a steward handing out Union Jacks – not ideal, certainly, but it’s worth noting that shop stewards couldn’t hand out anything with a union logo on, given that it was a wildcat strike.

In short, I think Hsiao-Hung Pai’s either got a very superficial understanding of the dispute or been misinformed. It’s great that she managed to talk to the Italian workers, but it’s a shame she didn’t speak to any of the local activists who were actually involved in the strike; I’m sure they could have helped her come up with something better. (I wouldn’t mind so much, only the other two articles were bobbins – especially 2. We’re willing to lower our sights. Apparently packing stuff in a warehouse doesn’t pay as well as being an investment banker, but you don’t have to get up so early. Or it might have been the other way round. Being a part-time lecturer in 2009 doesn’t pay as well as editing a magazine in 1998, I can tell you that, and you still have to get up in the morning. I wouldn’t go back, though – apart from anything else, that magazine doesn’t come out any more. But I digress.)

My book: an announcement and a question.

I’m quite excited about my book. Or should I say, my book – for lo, that’s an actual link to a page where you can, apparently, pre-order it, with free UK delivery and everything. And here’s the publisher’s page about the book, and here’s what it says there:

‘More work! Less pay!’

Rebellion and repression in Italy, 1972–77
Phil Edwards

In the mid-1970s, a wave of contentious radicalism swept through Italy. Groups and movements such as ‘Proletarian youth’, ‘metropolitan Indians’ and ‘the area of Autonomy’ practised new forms of activism, confrontational and often violent. Creative and brutal, intransigent and playful, the movements flourished briefly before being suppressed through heavy policing and political exclusion.

This is the first full-length study in English of these movements. Building on Sidney Tarrow’s ‘cycle of contention’ model and drawing on a wide range of Italian materials, Phil Edwards tells the story of a unique and fascinating group of political movements, and of their disastrous engagement with the mainstream Left. As well as shedding light on a neglected period of twentieth century history, this book offers lessons for understanding today’s contentious movements (‘No Global’, ‘Black Bloc’) and today’s ‘armed struggle’ groups.

This book will be of great interest to scholars in the fields of Italian politics and society; the sociology of social movements; and terrorism and political violence.

Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Hot Autumn and after: a cycle of contention reconsidered
3. From Resistance to Historic Compromise: the politics of the PCI
4. From Feltrinelli to Moro: a second cycle of contention
5. ‘Repudiate all forms of intolerance’: how the movements were framed
6. A cycle and its aftermath
7. Do you remember revolution?
8. Social movements and cycles of contention: theoretical appendix

The book itself is currently sitting on the floor of our front room in the form of proofs (proofs! actual proofs of my book!) – proofs which I’m going to have to check before too long, to say nothing of producing an index.

Setting aside my new-authorial giddiness (which mostly evaporated when I started thinking about indexing anyway), I honestly think this is a book that’s well worth publishing. It is the first full-length study in English of the Italian movements of the 1970s – the great archipelago of Autonomia, the ‘proletarian youth’, the indiani metropolitani, the movimento del ‘77 and all – not to mention the vast and complex panorama of ‘armed struggle’ groups which flourished and declined alongside them. There’s some of this in Storming Heaven, Steve Wright’s excellent book on operaismo and Autonomia; there’s some about the movimento in one chapter of Robert Lumley’s States of Emergency; and there are a couple of very good books about the armed groups by David Moss and Donatella della Porta. But to get a proper overview of the scene, you’ve basically had to read Italian. Up to now!

All right, so it’s an academic specialism like any other, and I only think it’s fascinating and important because it’s my academic specialism – someone else could make an equally good case for a new atlas of French regional dialects or a groundbreaking study of variations in snail shell thickness. But I do think it’s fascinating and important – and since this is my blog, I’ll take the space to tell you why.

Italian politics often looks a bit weird, seen from the outside, and the mid- to late 1970s were a particularly weird period. It had two particularly striking features. Firstly, you had a political system that was becoming more and more ossified, heading for the final stasis of the ‘five party’ period (when every political party to the Left of the Fascists and to the Right of the Communists was locked into a permanent coalition around the ruling Christian Democrats). The Communists – who had been systematically excluded from power since 1948 – tried to challenge the Christian Democrats’ dominance of Italian politics, but they did so (this is the weird part) by asking to be allowed to share power; the word ‘begging’ also comes to mind. The Communists’ approach was politically abject; it was tactically inept (the Christian Democrats under Aldo Moro ran rings around them), and it was strategically disastrous (the party never recovered, and arguably still hasn’t). Whether ideologically or in terms of party self-interest, it made no sense at all. Why did they do it?

Well, you’ll have to read chapter 3, but a large part of what was going on had to do with the second oddity of the period. In the late 1960s there had been a huge amount of industrial militancy, beginning outside the unions and very largely escaping their control. The wave of activism culminated at the very end of the decade, with an official settlement agreed in December 1969; this got the workers most of what they’d wanted, while also giving the unions what they’d wanted by acknowledging their representative role in the workplace. So in 1970 everyone went back to work, to be greeted with a pay rise plus official union representation, and things went back to normal. What’s extraordinary is what happened next: over the next few years, things started kicking off again, in the name of direct action against inflation. Rent strikes, bus fare strikes, utility strikes, ‘proletarian shopping’ (à la Can’t pay? Won’t pay!)… it was all happening, facilitated in many cases by people who’d cut their teeth in the wildcat strikes of the 60s. It’s a period of extraordinarily active and widespread protest and agitation; it didn’t go anywhere near the official Left (represented by the poor old Communist Party); and, for the most part, it didn’t go near the workplace either.

So you had political stasis, a supine official Left and some fairly wild scenes in the streets, in the campuses and on the estates. And then you had the interaction between the movements and the Communist Party, which is the analytical heart of my book. Following news stories in the Communist Party’s paper l’Unità over a period of five years, I analyse the party’s dominant ‘framings’ of the movements – how the party leadership saw them, and how it wanted party members to see them. Hostility to the movements is not surprising – these were, after all, potential political rivals. What is surprising, and marks a sharp departure from the Party’s approach to the activism of the late 60s, is the hostility expressed towards the movements’ members, their demands and their culture. Instead of offering to take the movements under its wing, the Party essentially dismissed them in their entirety, after labelling them as breeding-grounds for nihilist hooligans and fascist provocateurs. This ’scorched-earth’ policy made life extremely difficult for the movements, deprived of any kind of sponsor from within the political mainstream; from this point of view it could be said to have been a success. However, it also led inexorably to the Communist Party denying itself a major potential source of new members and new ideas, and alienating much of its existing support. And they never did get to share power with the Christian Democrats.

It’s a fascinating and in many ways a tragic period. More to the point, the scale and diffusion of activism makes it a very unusual period in European history. To think of another like it I think you’d need to go back to May ‘68, if not to Barcelona ‘36 – and both of those have had plenty written about them, even in English. Yes, Steve Wright’s book is good – and the chapter in Robert Lumley’s book – but I really think this is the first book in English to do the period justice. I don’t expect you’ll buy it, though, unless you’ve got an institutional budget. Here’s the problem: the initial edition is hardback only. The planned cover price is £60, or approximately 30p per page. There’s a possibility of a paperback edition, which I might be able to recommend people to buy with a straight face; there’s a possibility, if the hardback edition sells. It’s an edition of 400.

All giddiness spent, I know the topic of the radical left in Italy in the 1970s isn’t that fascinating to that many people; I know the book’s never going to sell a million. I think it’s got a definite readership, though, not all of whom frequent university libraries. With a fair wind I think it could sell a few thousand – if it was affordable.

So here’s the question, aimed particularly at anyone who’s been in a similar position or knows people who have (hi Daniel!): how can I sell (say) 300 academic hardbacks, knowing that they’re realistically only going to be bought by libraries and eccentric millionaires? Advertising? Journal papers (Phil Edwards is the author of…)? Word of mouth at conferences? Emails to everyone I’ve ever met who might be interested (Forgive the impersonal approach, NO STOP PLEASE DON’T DELETE THaaah, too late)? Blog posts like this one?

Any suggestions will be gratefully received. (And I really don’t expect you to buy the book yourself. Unless you’re a librarian and/or an eccentric millionaire, of course, in which case feel free.)

Nick Cohen in Standpoint (via):

a significant part of British Islam has been caught up in a theocratic version of the faith that is anti-feminist, anti-homosexual, anti-democratic and has difficulties with Jews, to put the case for the prosecution mildly. Needless to add, the first and foremost victims of the lure of conspiracy theory and the dismissal of Enlightenment values are British Muslims seeking assimilation and a better life, particularly Muslim women.

It’s the word ’significant’ that leaps out at me – that, and Cohen’s evident enthusiasm to extend the War on Terror into a full-blown Kulturkampf. I think what’s wrong with Cohen’s writing here is a question of perspective, or more specifically of scale. You’ve got 1.6 million British Muslims, as of 2001. Then you’ve got the fraction who take their faith seriously & probably have a fairly socially conservative starting-point with regard to politics (call it fraction A). We don’t really know what this fraction is, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s biggish (60%? 70%?) – certainly bigger than the corresponding fraction of Catholics, let alone Anglicans. Then there’s fraction B, the fraction of the A group who sign up for the full anti-semitic theocratic blah; it’s pretty clear that fraction B is tiny, probably below 1% (i.e. a few thousand people). Finally, you’ve got fraction C, the proportion of the B group who are actually prepared to blow people up or help other people to do so – almost certainly 10% or less, i.e. a few hundred people, and most of them almost certainly known to Special Branch.

I think we can and should be fairly relaxed about fraction A; we should argue with the blighters when they come out with stuff that needs arguing with, but we shouldn’t be afraid to stand with them when they’re raising just demands. (Same as any other group, really.) Fraction B is not a good thing, and if it grows to the point of getting on the mainstream political agenda then it will need to be exposed and challenged. But it hasn’t reached that level yet, and I see no sign that it’s anywhere near doing so. (Nigel Farage gets on Question Time, for goodness’ sake. Compare and contrast.) The real counter-terrorist action, it seems to me, is or should be around fraction C. Let’s say there are 5,000 believers in armed jihad out there – 500 serious would-be jihadis and 4,500 armchair jihadis, who buy the whole caliphate programme but whose own political activism doesn’t go beyond watching the Martyrdom Channel. What’s more important – eroding the 5,000 or altering the balance of the 500/4,500 split? In terms of actually stopping people getting killed, the answer seems pretty obvious to me.

Nick Cohen and his co-thinkers, such as the Policy Exchange crowd, focus on fraction B rather than fraction A. In itself this is fair enough – I think it’s mistaken, but it’s a mistake a reasonable person can make. What isn’t so understandable is the urgency – and frequency – with which they raise the alarm against this tiny, insignificant group of people, despite the lack of evidence that they’re any sort of threat. “A small minority of British Muslims believe in the Caliphate” is on a par with “A small minority of British Conservatives would bring back the birch tomorrow” or “A small minority of British Greens believe in Social Credit”. It’s an advance warning of possible weird nastiness just over the horizon; it’s scary, but it’s not that scary.

What explains the tone of these articles, I think, is an additional and unacknowledged slippage, from fraction B back out to fraction A. What’s really worrying Cohen, in other words, isn’t the lure of conspiracy theory and the dismissal of Enlightenment values so much as the lure of Islam (in any form) and the dismissal of secularism. (What are these Enlightenment values, anyway? Nobody ever seems to specify which values they’re referring to. Somebody should make a list). Hence this sense of a rising tide of theocratic bigotry, and of the need for a proper battle of values to combat it. This seems alarmingly wrongheaded. Let’s say that there’s a correlation between religious devotion and socially conservative views (which isn’t always the case) – then what? A British Muslim who advocates banning homosexuality needs to be dealt with in exactly the same way as a British Catholic who advocates banning abortion – by arguing with their ideas. (Their ideas are rooted in their identities – but then, so are mine and yours.) And hence, too, that odd reference to British Muslims seeking assimilation and a better life, as if stepping out of the dark ages must mean abandoning your faith – or, at least, holding it lightly, in a proper spirit of worldly Anglican irony. Here, in fact, Cohen is a hop and a skip from forgetting about all the fractions and identifying the problem as Muslims tout court. Have a care, Nick – that way madness lies.