I dedicate this campaign to my son Tom, who was killed in Iraq four days short of his 21st birthday. He was sent to war under very controversial circumstances.

If this war was justified then I would not be here today. If the war had been just I would have been grieving and not campaigning. If weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, then I would not have come to Sedgefield, to the Prime Minister’s stronghold, to challenge him on its legality.

I don’t pretend to be a politician, and it has not been easy for me, but it has been a very rewarding campaign, and I think it is remarkable that an amateur like me has come from a standing start in one of the most traditional and safe Labour seats of all to achieve a share of the vote which is not so far short of that of an established political party.

For this I thank the team which built spontaneously around me, my wife Sally and my other son Richard who have stood behind me, and above all I thank the voters of Sedgefield who put their trust in me.

I hope in my heart that one day the Prime Minister will be able to say sorry to the families bereaved by this war, and that one day he will find himself able to visit in hospital the soldiers who have been wounded by it.

So, as well as to Tom, I would like to dedicate my campaign to all the British servicemen - and I am aware that some people do not know how many it is who have been killed - to all 88 British servicemen who have been killed and given their young lives in this conflict.

And especially to those Royal Military Policemen who have become known as The Six, who were abandoned and slaughtered in a filthy police station in Al Majar Al-Kabir.

—-

Posted today at http://www.keysforsedgefield.org.uk/

97 votes and 3 recounts but Bill Rammell made it back to the Commons in what must surely now be Britain’s most marginal marginal - unless anyone knows better.

Labour majority now 67 but will drop to 66 next month when South Staffs return Patrick Cormack as I can’t see him being shifted off a 7,000+ majority by Labour or the Lib Dem’s pulling up from 17,000+ behind at the last election.

Of course it could be 68 and not 66 if Tony can be big enough to offer Peter Law the Labour Whip and welcome him back to the party with an apology for interfering in Blaenau Gwent.

Blair’s response to the election results and the drop in Labour’s majority to a mere 66 or so has been as predictable and as anodyne as I expected.

I’ve listened and I’ve learned, says Blair, before appearing to suggest, wrongly, that he think Iraq was the major issue that cost him and the Labour Party dearly on Thursday. Well, Iraq did hurt us and did cost us some seats but there’s more too it than that and it would be the most grievous error on the part of the PM and his inner circle to get the idea into their heads that we lost close to 50 seats on a protest vote.

As a party member I need something more substantial than a few carefully chosen words to convince me that Tony has listened and more importantly that he’s going to go right on listening and learning for as long as he remains the Prime Minister. I would like to see a concrete demonstration from the PM which shows that he is prepared to rethink his position and really listen, especially to the rank and file of the party.

I’ve got a couple of things in mind, simple things really, which could easily serve as just such a demonstration and as a bit of test, if you like, of whether Tony really can step back from his previously overt and authoritarian style of leadership to become more inclusive of the differing strands of thought within the party.

The first, and by far the simplest to do, is to start a dialogue with Peter Law and the dissident membership of Blaenau Gwent CLP with the aim of bringing their new MP back where he belongs, into the Labour Party and under the Labour Whip.

Now I’m sure to irritate some in the party by proposing that, Gareth Davies wont agree with me for certain, nor will Jo Salmon neither of whom seem to appreciate fully that the real issue at stake in Blaenau Gwent was the democratic right of the local CLP and local people to have a candidate, and ultimately an MP, of its own choosing and not one foisted on it by Party headquarters.

To be fair, Jo at least has an arguable point in so far as we should be looking to build up representation by women in Parliament; the principle is correct its only the chosen method, the crude tokenism of all women short lists is a fault. That’s a debate for another occasion but it does show that one lesson we must learn from Blaenau Gwent is that we need to find a much better, a more open and democratic method of achieving fair representation, one which not only ensure we get more women MP’s but that those MP’s carry the proper democratic mandate of their local CLP by having won the nomination fair and square on the basis of having been simply the best candidate. Even had Peter Law not stood, Maggie Jones would have entered Parliament without anything like the full support of her local party and spent the next four years or so looking over her shoulder waiting for move to deselect here which would inevitably have come before the next election - that’s just not a tenable platform for someone who is supposed to represent the community which elected them to parliament.

As for Gareth, I think the word he’s reaching for in his piece without every quite getting to it is ‘parochialism’ - quite where all this ‘villagism’ business derives from is anyone’s guess - it’s certainly not a term to be found in any dictionary I have, including the Shorter OED and it carries no mention on Wikipedia either. Knowing, from his personal ‘bio’ that Gareth works in the Voluntary Sector, a field in which I have no small degree of experience, I would suggest that ‘villagism’ belongs to who class of terminology in wide-spread use in the sector which is best categorised under ‘patronising pseudo-intellectualism’ or ‘we’ve just made this word up so we sound clever”.

In any case, blind parochialism and lack of exterior vision are hardly charges one can level at a constituency party which, as Ebbw Vale, returned Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot to Parliament and Gareth’s touching little tale of Pontypool CLP’s decision to select “a maverick and interesting outsider with a genuine passion for parliamentary activism like Leo Abse” hardly squares with Bob Piper’s account of Maggie Jones as having “sat on the Labour Party NEC and pursued a New Labour agenda as opposed to UNISON policy” - what was that I quoted only yesterday day about the business of ‘thinking’ and ‘rearranging prejudices’.

If Blair is to reinvent himself as the ‘listening’ Prime Minister then he needs first to listen to the people of Blaenau Gwent and the members of the local CLP and bring Peter Law back into the party where he belongs.

The other demonstration of listening and learning that Blair could, and I believe firmly, make is of a more legislative nature.

Labour has plenty to do from Monday, not only to build a new agenda for the third term but also to look carefully over the supposedly ‘radical’ programme that Blair wanted to pursue but which now must surely be reconsidered and revised in light of Labour’s reduced majority.

For all his listened and learned rhetoric of yesterday - which still concluded with him talking about having a radical agenda, Tony must surely realise that significant parts of that agenda will now not fly, not with a majority of less than 70 to rely on in trying to push it forward.

The Beeb has helpfully taken a brief look at Tony’s ‘in tray’ and notes that on a number of contentious issues he may well not have sufficient support on his own benches to force through some of his more radical proposals.

ID cards will be one obvious flashpoint where, if Blair attempts to revive and force through the same bill that was scuppered through lack of time before the election on the same basis and with the same argument then it is likely, in fact almost certain, that he’ll lose. A key part of the problem with ID cards is the unseemly haste with which Blair and Blunkett sought to force through the legislation on the back of the bogeyman of international terrorism with having a proper, open and frank public debate in the issue - Blairite authoritarianism at its worst.

ID cards will, I believe, do nothing to combat terrorism whatsoever. They, and some of the spin-off’s that will come from them, could very effectively address a wide range of other issues, not least around identity-theft, electoral fraud and low-level financial crime. There is also, however, tremendous potential for the misuse of ID cards and the data and information that governmental and other agencies may obtain about ordinary citizens through the introduction of ID cards with all the attendant risks to our civil liberties and freedoms.

If Tony really is going to listen and learn then on ID cares - as just one example - he should pull back from reintroducing the present bill and open up the whole issue to a proper and inclusive public debate.

This is not the demonstration of the all-new listening and learning Tony Blair that I’m looking for, rather there is legislation that will and should be reintroduced but which requires, in my view, one significant amendment - an amendment which if Tony is really listening and learning, he will accept and make.

I’m talking here of the plans to create an offence of ‘incitement to religious hatred’.

Now while I appreciate and applaud the concerns raised by Rowan Atkinson in relation to the risk that this new law could be misused to suppress legitimate criticism of religion and religious groups and denude our rights to free expression, I have to balance out those concerns against the simple fact that this bill would certainly prevent the likes of Nick Griffin and others on the far-right from skirting around existing laws on the incitement of racial hatred simply by inserting the word ‘Muslim’ into their foul speeches and diatribes where what they really mean and would like to say is ‘Paki’.

On the whole, as was the case with the introduction of the Obscene Publications Act in the late 1950’s and the subsequent ‘trial’ of DH Lawrence’s ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, I’m willing to trust that the British Legal System and the Judiciary will today, as then, apply common sense and sound judgement in distinguishing between legitimate free expression and blind, pig-ignorant hatred - they may not get it right every time but one the whole the courts have shown more than sufficient sound judgement in such cases to be trusted to deal fairly and reasonably with the outlawing of religious hatred - plus its also pretty much a sure thing that the vast majority of such cases to begin with and until enough judicial precedents have arisen to bed down the legislation and ensure that its used consistently and fairly, will arise either from the bile being spewed out against Islam by the far-right or from internecine rivalries within and between various groups of religious zealots.

As laws go, enacted properly and applied with common sense and justice uppermost in the mind of the courts, I can happily support it even as someone who believes passionately in free speech - I may offend some people, and probably have earlier in this piece and, sometimes I may be offended, myself, by certain things but in a free democratic society that its how is should be. However, threatening people, particularly with violence, or inciting people to make and even carry out such threats in unacceptable and as this law, for the most part, offer equal protection to all religions and beliefs - including, I would certainly argue, us atheists - then it seems fair and equitable as all good laws should be.

I say for the most part, however, because despite speculation to the contrary, late on in the debate the government chose not to do what many of us had expected and failed to include proposals to repeal the existing laws on blasphemy, which applied solely to the Church of England.

Now, as I noted here, Blair has had a bit of a track record of sneaking in concessions to Christian groups on equality legislation at the 11th hour and when its too late for a proper debate on the subject - something in which I certainly see signs both of Blair’s authoritarian tendencies and more than a touch of personal bias on the part of the blessed ‘Vicar of St Albion‘ intruding into public policy.

I will write up something of a more substantive argument for my position in dues course but my basic views on the current blasphemy law is that…

its outdated and irrelevant - only two successful cases brought in the last 100 years or so, one in 1922 and Mary Whitehouse’s private case in 1977 -

its discriminatory and unsustainable under the Human Rights Act and ECHR - specifically articles 9, 10 and 14 which you can look up here -

And the only people with a vested interest in keeping it are groups like MediaWatch and Christian Voice some of whom are every bit as fascist in their views as the BNP - there’s no difference in practice between despots and theocrats and we can do without either. Its doubtful that even the Church of England itself really cares about retaining the existing blasphemy laws, remember its not so very long ago that a previous Bishop of Durham was amongst the leading blasphemers in the UK for daring to question some of the received ‘truths’ of Christianity.

The law of blasphemy should go, in fact it has to go. It is unsustainable in a modern democracy. It is discriminatory and, I believe, the fact that the government chose to turn its back on the opportunity to repeal this law in putting a place a law on incitement which is far more measured and infinitely more equitable, owes more to the personal beliefs of Blair and some others in the government than to the needs of our modern society.

I believe we should go further than this and disestablish the Church of England outright as the best and only sure protection for religious freedom for all is a secular society with a strict separation between Church and State but for now, and as evidence that Blair really can listen and learn, I’ll happily settle for a demonstration that he can put aside his personal beliefs fro a moment and do the right thing for Britain as a whole by bring and end to the law of blasphemy.

If he does that, that maybe I’ll start to believe that he really is listening.

Last word…

I will put up my own detailed arguments on the law of blasphemy in a few days but in the mean time I’ll defer for the moment to Tony Benn and the arguments he put forward in support of an unsuccessful attempt to repeal this law via a private member’s bill in 1989 - as is ever the case, his views are cogent, forceful in their logic, and nigh on impossible to refute.