Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

ABCs streaming service today launched the second season of the Diarra Kilpatrick-created short-form digital comedy seriesAmerican Koko,in honor of Juneteenth.June 19, known as Juneteenth, commemoratesthe abolition of slavery in Texas (June 19, 1865) and producers Viola Davis and her husband Julius Tennon, felt it was an appropriate date on which to premiere Season 2 of the racially-themed series.

American Koko stars Kilpatrick as Akosua Millard, code-named Koko, an investigator who solves sticky racial situations in a post-racial America as a member of the satirical E.A.R. Agency (Everybodys A little bit Racist). As she and her team of specialists tackle cases, she herself is trying to reconcile the trauma of her past that has led to outbursts of her Angry Black Woman syndrome. It gets in the way of her work and, more importantly, her dating life as her latest boyfriend may be the downfall to her and the agency!

Tennon spoke to Deadline on the significance of the premiere date.

Race has always been a issue in our country. Now, in our current political climate, a show like American Koko, which is about helping people navigate sticky racial situation, creates a conversation around race in an insight, funny, and interesting way. The conservation around race should be as open as they can be. It can create some situations for solutions on how people view race. Its going to be a show that addresses a lot of things people dont talk about, so theyll learn something.

Originally produced independently on Kilpatricks YouTube channel, the series caught the eye of Davis and Tennon, who then signed on to produce via their JuVee Productions, along with National Picture Show, a second season and a re-shoot of the first.

On whats in store for season two, Tennon said, [the characters] lay it on top of what they did this first season and have added more cases to what they had gotten into with the first six [episodes]. Its a continuation of the narratives about race but a little bit more filled out.

American Koko can be streamed on abc.com and the ABC app.

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'American Koko': Viola Davis-Produced Digital Series Launches Season 2 In Honor Of Juneteenth - Deadline

A coalition of black community groups chose "June-teenth" or "freedom day" for the ceremonial groundbreaking of a new affordable housing real estate project in Seattle's Central District.

June 19 is the day in 1865 when the abolition of slavery was announced in Texas.

The project has been dubbed The Liberty Bank Building" to honor Seattle's former African-American bank that once occupied a much smaller structure right where the new development will be built, on the corner of 24th Avenue and East Union Street. Liberty Bank folded in 1988.

Andrea Caupain, the CEO of Centerstone, one of the groups behind the project, said they want to encourage African Americans and others who've been priced out of the Central District to move back to the area, while still adhering to the city's first-come, first-serve rental rules.

"It's not going to be a situation where were only going to market to the African American community, or we will turn someone away who is not African American, Caupain said. But really how do we dive deeper and go specific and target the African American community, people who we know want to come back to the CD?"

Caupain said that means marketing their message into black community spaces that affordable housing information often doesn't reach. She said they're also in talks with local longtime black businesses about moving into Liberty's retail space.

We're looking at black businesses that have been in the Central area for a long time, that have a strong desire to stay in the community. We're also looking at black businesses that maybe were here before and had a desire to continue their business, but for various different reasons including affordability could not continue, she said.

Caupain said the work has been challenging, but the building represents a development model of inclusive efforts, with strong ties to Seattle's black community.

As one example, the building will house installations from nine different artists from the Central Area.

Centerstone has been working with Africatown, The Black Community Impact Alliance and Capitol Hill Housing on the Project. Caupain said they expect to start construction later this summer.

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Development project aims to bring displaced African Americans back to Central District - KUOW News and Information

This essay is based upon the One People Oration I delivered at Westminster Abbey in October 2014. I have made hundreds of speeches in the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for 25 years, but this was the only one I had given in Westminster Abbey. In its early days, in the early1300s, Parliament actually sat there, in the Chapter House and then in the Refectory of the Abbey. So as an MP I felt very at home, but there were important differences.

The Commons is a scene of noisy disagreement, while in the Abbey we were surrounded by a thousand years of reflection and calm. In the Commons I would be cut off mid-flow if I went a minute over my allotted time, but in the Abbey I spoke for as long as I needed to and had some hope the audience might actually have been listening. When I spoke in the House of Commons I was just yards from where my hero William Pitt the Younger (Hague 2005) debated with Fox and Burke and Sheridan, but he was actually buried in the Abbey, with his father, in what I believe is the only grave in our country to contain two prime ministers.

People often comment that politicians are becoming younger, but Pitt was prime minister at the age of 24. There has never been a younger occupant of Number 10 before or since, and I doubt there will ever be one again or one as peculiarly gifted as a parliamentary orator. Pitt was prime minister for 18 years and 11 months, and for half that time Britain was at war with France and frequently at risk of invasion.

Another hero of mine, WilliamWilberforce(Hague 2008), is also buried in the Abbey, thanks to his family and friends countermanding his wish to be buried elsewhere. His house, Number 4 Palace Yard, stood just over the wall and was by every account a veritable pandemonium of books, pets, visitors and hapless servants he never had the heart to let go. From amid that ferment of ideas and activity he spent 20 years converting the people and entire political establishment of Britain to the cause of abolition. Year after year he moved motions in the House of Commons that were defeated. But in 1807, two decades after he began, he finally succeeded in turning our country from a slave-trading nation into one that bullied, harassed and bribed other countries into giving up their own detestable traffic in humans. And he did this without ever holding any office in any government.

Although I am not an intensely religious person, in writing my book onWilberforceI came to admire the unquenchable determination to succeed in a cause that religion in his case evangelical Christianity inspired in him. Because he believed he was accounting to God for how he spent his time, he actually recorded what he did with it. His papers include tables detailing each quarter hour of the day. One typical entry describes seven and a half hours of Commons business, eight and a quarter hours in bed, five and a half hours of requisite company &c visits &c, threequarters of an hour of serious reading and meditation, 15 minutes unaccounted for or dressing and one hour described as squandered.

While few in his age had his gift with words and his obsessive drive,Wilberforcewas not alone in being inspired by his faith. He was part of theClaphamsect, a small group of politicians, lawyers, merchants, churchmen and bankers based aroundClaphamCommon, who were responsible for one of the greatest varieties and volumes of charitable activity ever launched by any group of people in any age.

Their primary goal was the abolition of the slave trade and the founding of Sierra Leone, but on top of this they set up a staggering array of charitable causes: the London Missionary Society; the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor; the Church Missionary Society; the Religious Tract Society; the Society for Promoting the Religious Instruction of Youth; the Society for the Relief of the Industrious Poor; the British National Endeavour for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors; the Institution for the Protection of Young Girls; the Society for the Suppression of Vice; the Sunday School Union; the Society forSupercedingthe Necessity for Climbing Boys in Cleansing Chimneys; the British and Foreign Bible Society; and two with particularly wonderful names: The Asylum House of Refuge for the Reception of Orphaned Girls the Settlements of whose Parents Cannot be Found and, finally, the Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women of Good Character, Who Have Seen Better Days. And we thinkwelive in an age of activism.

***

I know that for many people today religious faith of all kinds remains a great inspiration and channel for charity and altruism. And whatever faith or creed we live by, inherent in our democracy is the idea that our freedoms and rights are universal. Oppression or conflict or poverty or injustice anywhere in the world has stirred our consciences, as individuals and collectively, throughout our history. I want to argue that maintaining and building on that national tradition is absolutely vital in the twenty-first century, both as a moral obligation and in order to prevent wars at a time of growing international instability.

The year 2014, when I delivered my lecture in Westminster Abbey, saw us marking 100 years since the First World War, in which so many of our countrymen perished because conflict was not averted. Remembering that dreadful conflict should inspire us to maintain our restless conscience as a nation and be determined to do whatever we can to improve the condition of humanity. We should have faith in the broadest sense in our ideas and our ideals as a country, and in our ability to have a positive impact on the development of other nations and the future of our world.

One of the most moving sights I have seen in some time was the sea of poppies encircling the Tower of London, commemorating each and every British and Commonwealth military fatality in the First World War. It was a silent exhortation to remember, to be grateful for what we have and to learn the lessons of those times when peace had to be restored at so great a price to humanity. So too is the revered Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, buried among Kings, as his gravestone says, as one of the many who gave the most that man can give, life itself, for God, for King and Country, for Loved Ones and Empire, for the Sacred Cause of Justice and the Freedom of the World. The remains of 15 British soldiers from the War were reburied in Belgium in October 2014, 100 years after they were killed in battle, reminding us that we are still counting the cost of that terrible conflagration.

As Foreign Secretary, for four years I occupied the office used by Sir Edward Grey, with its windows overlookingHorseguardsand St Jamess Park. Standing at those windows, as he contemplated the catastrophe about to engulf the world, he famously said, the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. The failure of diplomacy on the eve of the War ushered in greater suffering than Grey and his contemporaries could ever have imagined: war on an industrial scale, the butchery of the unknown by the unseen, in the words of one war correspondent, in which 10 million soldiers died on all sides, 20 million were severely wounded and eight million were permanently disabled; in which appalling massacres, rapes and other atrocities were committed against thousands of civilians and millions of refugees were created; and which was all to be followed by the Second World War, the massacres in Poland, the gas chambers and extermination camps of the Holocaust, pogroms in the Soviet Union and the slaughter of war and revolution in China.

It is tempting to look back on the horrors and evils of the past and to think that these things could not happen again. It would be comforting to imagine that we have reached such a level of education and enlightenment that ideologies like Nazism, Fascism and Communism that led to mass slaughter, and the nationalism that leads states to attack theirneighboursor groups within states to massacre their fellow citizens, have all seen an end. Sadly, I believe this is an illusion.

There is an additional illusion that sometimes takes hold, as it did before the First World War, that a permanent peace has arrived. Then, Europe had enjoyed 99 years without widespread war. The Great Powers had found a way back from the brink of conflict several times, and Grey and his colleagues can be forgiven for thinking that crises would always be resolved by diplomacy, when in fact they were on the edge of the two greatest cataclysms in history.

History shows that while circumstances change, human nature is immutable. However educated, advanced or technologically skilled we become, we are still highly prone to errors ofjudgement, to greed and thus to conflict. There is no irreversible progress towards democracy, human rights and greater freedoms just as there is unlikely to be any such thing as a state of permanent peace. Unless each generation acts to preserve the gains it inherits and to build upon them for the future, then peace, democracy and freedom can easily be eroded, and conflict can readily break out.

***

It is true that there is more education, welfare, charitableendeavourand kindness in our world than ever before, that we have reached extraordinary diplomatic milestones like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that we have a United Nations (UN) system carrying out responsibilities from peacekeeping to the protection of our environment. We should never lose faith in the positive side of human nature and always retain our optimism and belief in our ability to shape our destiny. But my argument is that it is also true that the capacity of human beings to inflict unspeakable violence upon others, of ideologies that are pure evil to rise up or for states that are badly led to wade into new forms of conflict are all as present as ever.

We often read about massacres as if such barbaric things are only to be found in the pages of history. But the short span of our own lifetimes tells a different story, from Europe to the Middle East, to Africa and Asia. Only in 1995, in Europe, 8000 men and boys were massacred inSrebrenicain a single week. Over five million people have been killed in the Congo in the two decades up to 2014.

In April 2014, when I attended the20thanniversary of the Rwandan massacres, I and the other international representatives were standing where nearly a third of a million people are buried in a single grave, a third of the million women, men and children slain in cold blood within 100 days. Also in 2014, two of Pol Pots henchmen, part of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed more than a million people, were convicted and given life sentences. In Iraq and Syria, in a perversion of religion,ISIL(Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is currently terrorizing communities with beheadings and crucifixions. And think of the barrel bombs that have rained down on schools in Syria from theAssadregime and the pitiless desperation to hold on to power needed to produce such utter inhumanity.

Aggressive ideology, despotism and fanaticism live on, despite all our other advances and achievements. This is the human condition. Our optimism and faith in human nature will always have to contend with this harsh truth, at the same time as being essential to overcoming such evils. That is why it is so important for us to have a strong sense of history so that we never lose sight of how fragile peace and security can be. And so we understand that diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts is not an abstract concept but our greatest responsibility.

In our information-rich, media-saturated world, history can be caricatured as a luxury, not least for those who have their hands full running the country. But I could not imagine having been Foreign Secretary without drawing on the advice of the Foreign Office historians, who were able to offer historical precedents for every conceivable revolution, insurgency, treaty or crisis, and who produced maps and papers that shed light on the most intractable of modern problems. It is as important to consult the lessons of history in foreign policy as it is to seek the advice of our embassies, our intelligence agencies, our military and our allies. History is not set in stone and is open to endless reinterpretation. But the habit of deep and searching thought rooted in history must be cultivated: not toparalyseus or make us excessively pessimistic, but to help us make sound decisions and guide our actions.

It remains as true today as it was when Edmund Burke first expressed it that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. We cannot in our generation coast along or think it is not our responsibility or that it is too difficult to tackle conflict and injustice that bring misery to millions. However pressing the crises of the day, we have to address the fundamental conditions that lead to armed conflict and reduce the human suffering it causes. This means not only maintaining Britains global role living up to our responsibilities, protecting our interests internationally and being able to project military power where necessary but also consciously encouraging and developing the ideas, concepts and strategies needed to address poverty, conflict and injustice.

All our advances start with an idea. Powerful ideas can then become unstoppable movements as indeed the abolition of the slave trade did in the eighteenth century. For that to happen governments have to adopt the best of these ideas, and leaders have to be prepared to be open and radical.

***

The title of my essay is taken from a remark by Admiral John Fisher, First Sea Lord in the early nineteenth century and commander of the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War. In 1899, he was sent as Britains representative to the first Hague Peace Conference, called by Russia, to discuss the growing arms race and place curbs on the use of certain weapons in war. As these proposals were discussed at the negotiating table, he is said to have remarked with some passion that one could sooner talk of humanising hell than of humanising war. While he was, of course, right about the hell of war, in actual fact the traumatic experience of conflict and great idealism have often gone together. It has frequently been the very experience of war that has spurred mankinds greatest advances in international relations, based on ideas that were radical when first presented.

When HenryDunantobserved the agonizing deaths of thousands of injured men at the battle ofSolferinoin 1859, his outrage and activism led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the founding text of contemporary international humanitarian law, which laid the foundation for the treatment of prisoners in war. After the First World War, there was a vast and intensive period of institution building, leading to the League of Nations, InternationalLabourOrganization, the prohibition on use of chemical weapons and the creation of the High Commissioner for Refugees to find a way of returning millions of European refugees to their homes, which supports over 50 million refugees and displaced people worldwide today.

While the Second World War was raging, Roosevelt and Churchill spent hours discussing the creation of a new international body to prevent conflict in the future, which led to the United Nations itself, the Security Council and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recently, in our lifetime, the outrage at atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia led to the creation of the International Criminal Court and the concept of the Responsibility to Protect. Since 1990 our country has played a leading role in securing international bans on the use of cluster munitions andlandmines, and I was proud to sign on Britains behalf the ratification of the International Arms Trade Treaty, the culmination of ten years of advocacy begun here in Britain.

The humanising of the hell of war is a continual process. While our goal must always be to avert conflict in the first place, except as a last resort as provided in the UN charter, it is also essential to establish norms ofbehaviourabout what is unacceptable even in times of war. This is vital so that if conflict breaks out despite our best efforts, governments feel restrained by the threat of accountability for any crimes that are committed, we have mechanisms to protect civilians and peace agreements take account of the need for reconciliation and the punishment of crimes against humanity. The crucial point is that while the international bodies we have are the result of diplomacy, they do not simply arise on their own. They are the product of ideas generated by individuals, groups or governments refusing to accept thestatus quo, such that then, with enough momentum, public support and political commitment became reality.

I think of this restless conscience, as I call it, as an enduring and admirable British characteristic. Our nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), lawyers, academics and Crown servants have had an extraordinary impact internationally. In my time in the Foreign Office I found our diplomats a powerful part of this tradition, from their work on the abolition of the death penalty, to improving the lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities worldwide, to helping negotiations as far away as the nowsuccessful Mindanao Peace Process in the Philippines. This is part of our countrys distinctive contribution to the world, and it involves the power of our ideas as much as the skill of our diplomats. We must always cherish and encourage that flow of ideas and idealism and those rivers of soft power and influence that form such a large part of our role in the world.

It is also true that diplomatic negotiations for peace do not simply arise automatically. They require extraordinary effort by individuals. US former Secretary of State, John Kerry, for example, deserves praise for his tireless work on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. He chose to devote weeks on end trying to restart and conclude those negotiations, rather than taking the easy route of not attempting such a difficult task. Individuals and the choices they make have an immense impact. Sometimes the individual is someone in high office, like William Pitt, who did his utmost in the early1790sto avoid war with France and whose State Paper of 1805 was the basis for European peace for most of the nineteenth century. Or it is someone likeWilberforce, who was never a government minister, but whose ideas and energy brought relief, an end of suffering and ultimately freedom for millions of people.

Choices are motivated differently. The coalition to end the British slave trade was driven not just by moral considerations, but also by political and economic factors. Adam Smith argued against slavery because he saw it as an inefficient allocation of resources. British naval supremacy in the world meant that in simple political terms, abolition was possible because we had the diplomatic and military muscle to enforce it. AndWilberforcewas outraged that slaves had no opportunity to embrace Christianity, so their souls were being lost. So his key argument against the trade was neither economic nor political, it was religious. It is inevitable that in this way governments, like individuals, are motivated by a number of different factors. But we must pursue the issues today that bring together the moral interest and the national interest, using the combination of powerful ideas, our strong institutions and our global role.

***

We should be proud that, so far, our country has kept its promise to spend 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on international development, not just because it is morally right, but also because it is profoundly in our national interest to help other nations lift their citizens out of poverty. We have to continue to lead global efforts to stop the illegal wildlife trade, which destroys the natural heritage of African nations, undermines economic development and creates instability. It is vital that we promote a rules-based international system, because it nourishes the commerce, trade and stability that are the lifeblood of our own economy as well as strengthening human rights internationally. And it is essential that we support political reform, civil society, womens rights and economic progress in the Middle East, because it is vital to our long-term security that that region becomes more free, more stable and more prosperous.

The pursuit of policies that bring stability in the world, and the moral authority for them, are inseparable. Any idea that we should retrench, withdraw or turn away from these issues is misguided and wrong for two reasons. First, the world is becoming systemically less stable. This is due to many different factors: the dispersal of power amongst a wider group of nations, many of whom do not fully share our values and our objectives in foreign policy; the diffusion of power away from governments, accelerated by technology; the globalization of ideas and ability of people to organize themselves into leaderless movements and spread ideas around the world within minutes; our interconnectedness, a boon for development but also a major vulnerability to threats, from terrorism and cyber crime to the spread of diseases like Ebola; the growing global middle class, which is driving demand for greater accountability and more freedom within states designed to suppress such instincts; and the rise of religious intolerance in the Middle East.

Global institutions are struggling to deal with these trends. It is not enough to ensure there is no conflict on our own continent, although sadly the crisis in Ukraine has shown, once again, that even Europe is not immune. Conflict anywhere in the world affects us through refugee flows, the crimes and terrorism that conflict fuels and the billions of pounds needed in humanitarian assistance, so we have to address these issues.

Second, the pursuit of sound development, inclusive politics and the rule of law are essential to our moral standing in the world, which is in turn an important factor in our international influence. As I pointed out in 2006, the US and UK suffered a loss of moral authority as a result of aspects of the War on Terror, which affected the standing of our foreign policy and the willingness of other countries to work with us, and which both President Obamas administration and our own government worked hard to address. We are strongest when we act with moral authority, and that means being the strongest champions of our values.

Thus, neither as a matter of wise policy nor as a matter of conscience can Britain ever afford to turn aside from a global role. We have to continue to be restless advocates for improving the condition of humanity. This means continuing to forge new alliances, reforming the UN and other global institutions and enforcing the rules that govern international relations. But that will never be enough by itself, so we also have to retain the ambition to influence not just the resolutions that are passed and the treaties that are signed up to, but also the beliefs in the world about what is acceptable and what is not.

A powerful example of an issue on which we need to apply such leadership is the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war. I have been surprised by how deeply engrained and passive attitudes to this subject often are. Because history is full of accounts of the mass abuse of women and captives, and because there is so much domestic violence in all societies, it is a widely held view that violence against women and girls is inevitable in peacetime and in conflict.

But when we seeISILforeign fighters in Iraq and Syria selling women as slaves and glorifying rape and sexual slavery; when we hear of refugees, who have already lost everything, being raped in camps for want of basic protections; when we see leaders exhorting their fighters to go out and rape their opponents, specifically to inflict terror, to make women pregnant, to force people to flee their homes and to destroy their families and communities; or peace agreements giving amnesty to men who have ordered and carried out rape or deliberately turned a blind eye to it; or soldiers and even peacekeepers committing rape due to lack of discipline, proper training, no accountability and a culture that treats women as the spoils of war, a commodity to be exploited with impunity, then we are clearly dealing with injustice on a scale that is simply intolerable, as well as damaging to the stability of those countries and the peace of the wider world.

It is often said to me that without war there would be nowarzonerape, as if that is the only way to address the problem. While of course our goal is always to prevent conflict, we cannot simply consign millions of women, men, girls and boys to the suffering of rape while we seek a way to put an end to all conflict, since, as I have argued, this goal is one we should always strive for but may often not attain.

***

We have shown that we can put restraints on the way war is conducted. We have put beyond the pale the use of poison gas or torture and devised the Arms Trade Treaty for the trade in illegal weapons. It is time to address this aspect of conflict and to treat sexual violence as an issue of global peace and security. The biggest obstacle we face in this campaign is the idea you cannot do anything about it that you cannot humanise hell, that there is nothing we can do to endwarzonerape. But there is hope, and we must dispel this pessimism. Over the last two years, working with NGOs, the UN and faith groups, we have brought the weight and influence of Britain to bear globally as no country ever has done before on this subject.

Over 150 countries have joined our campaign and endorsed a global declaration of commitment to end sexual violence in conflict. We brought together over 120 governments and thousands of people at a Global Summit in London in June 2014, the first of its kind. And in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Colombia we are seeing signs of governments being prepared to address this issue by passing laws and reforming their militaries.

What would it say about our commitment to human rights in our own society if we knew about such abuses but did nothing about them? And how could we be at the forefront of preventing conflict in the world if we did not act to prevent something that causes conflict in the future? Sexual violence is often designed to make peace impossible to achieve and create the bitterness and incentive for future conflict. Dealing with it is not a luxury to be added on, it is an integral part of conflict prevention, a crucial part of breaking a cycle of war. And it has to go hand in hand with seeking the full political, social and economic empowerment of women everywhere, the greatest strategic prize of all for our century.

In 2014 we commemorated those who died in the First World War and their suffering. There is no more fitting thing we can do for the sake of that memory than to face up to the hell of conflict in our lifetimes. We have never had to mobilize our population to fight in the way their generation did, and so we have been spared their painful burdens. But how much more incumbent does that make it on all of us to fight with the peaceful tools at our disposal on behalf of those who are denied, through no fault of their own, the security we consider our birthright.

Just as inWilberforces day, it will always be necessary for Britain to be at the forefront of efforts to improve the condition of humanity. The search for peace and an end to conflict requires powerful ideas and the relentlessdefenceof our values, as much it does negotiations and summits between nations. We could be heading for such turbulent times that it will be easy for some people to say we should not bother with development or tackling sexual violence in conflict or other such issues. There will always be the pressing crisis of the day that risks drowning out such longterm causes. But, in fact, addressing these issues is crucial to overcoming crises now and in the future and it will be an increasingly important part of our moral authority and standing in the world that we are seen to do this.

Just because there are economic crises and major social changes does not mean we or our partners can squander any day or any year in producing the ideas as well as the laws that prevent conflict and deal with some of the greatest scourges of the twenty-first century, and we must do so with confidence: for it remains the case that free and democratic societies are the only places where the ideas and the moral force we need can be found. Our times call for a renewal of that effort for just and equitable solutions to conflict, the driving down of global inequalities and the confronting of injustices.

Every day we have to start again: there is not going to be a day in our lifetimes when we can wake up and say this work is complete. We have to overcome the sense of helplessness that says that vast problems cannot be tackled. We have to awaken the conscience of nations and stir the actions of governments. In an age of mass communication this is a task for every one of us. Whether we are in government, are diplomats, journalists, members of the armed forces, members of the public, students, faith groups or civil servants, every one of us is part of that effort.

In Britain, our restless conscience should never allow us to withdraw behind our fortifications and turn away from the world but should always inspire us to strive for peace and security, to maintain our responsibilities, seek new ways of addressing the worst aspects of humanbehaviourand live up to our greatest traditions.

This essay is taken from The Moral Heart of Public Service, edited by Claire Foster-Gilbert and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, priced 15.99, on 21 June 2017.

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Labour's populism for the middle classes - New Statesman

STARKS There was a moment in August 1994 when Don Christen realized his idea for a big outdoor party to celebrate marijuana was really catching on.

I woke up on Saturday and the field was just covered with blankets and tents from people who slept there overnight, said Christen, 64, recalling that years Hempstock festival in Starks. We recorded 12,500 people through our gates. The issue back then was so important to people that they just had to be there.

By drawing crowds of 10,000 or more pot smokers and activists, Hempstock helped this rural town of 640 people become known as an epicenter of marijuana advocacy in Maine. Though the names have changed and crowds have grown smaller over the years, cannabis-friendly festivals have been held on Harry Browns 70-acre farm every year since the first Hempstock in 1991. The next one, Harrys Hoe Down, takes place Friday through June 25.

So it may seem ironic that, with marijuana now legal in Maine, Starks voters approved an ordinance in March making their town one of only a handful of marijuana-dry towns in the state, banning any marijuana-related retail business by a vote of 61-39. A majority of Starks voters also opposed the new state law allowing marijuana use, when it was on the ballot in November, 185-167.

But people in Starks say the twist is not so surprising. Residents have long been split over the festivals, which are held on private land and have become tightly regulated by the town. Some residents support the festivals cause and say the area, where making a living isnt easy, has a history of people putting food on the table by growing and selling cannabis. But many didnt like the traffic jams, the noise and the headlines about drug arrests in their town. Many in Starks, founded in 1795, have come to resent the towns reputation as a pot haven.

From my perspective the festivals have had an overall negative impact on the town, and I think a lot of people in town feel that way. Thats why they voted the way they did when they got the chance to weigh in, said Paul Frederic, 74, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, whose family goes back more than 200 years in Starks. I know some people in town support (the festivals) but so many find it an irritant, to have this reputation, to have our town known as a hotbed of marijuana.

Hempstock security personnel read through a search warrant served by Maine State Police before a brief search of the festival site in Starks in this 2002 file photograph. Staff photo

SOMETIMES PERFECT IS THE ENEMY OF GOOD

Christen and Brown, the two Starks residents most responsible for Hempstocks reputation and the towns notoriety, no longer work together. With Christen as the main organizer and Brown as the landowner and host, the two collaborated on festivals that were essentially rallies for marijuana-related causes for about 17 years. They parted ways in 2008 over money and the direction of the festival.

Both men have been jailed over the years for marijuana-related charges, and both say they are still committed to the cause of educating the public on cannabis products and broadening existing laws. But neither supported the successful campaign to legalize marijuana in Maine last fall. They both feel the state law doesnt go far enough and that personal possession should not be limited to 2 ounces.

It seems ironic to me that this was a bill to legalize marijuana, with some regulation, and that these guys couldnt support it. Sometimes perfect is the enemy of good, and from an activist standpoint this was a good initiative, said David Boyer, Maine political director of the Marijuana Policy Project, who managed the pro-legalization campaign. But I certainly respect what these guys have done over the years and the groundwork they laid. They helped change attitudes.

So the festivals in Starks, begun when marijuana was not legal in Maine, will continue even with the new law in effect. Harrys Hoe Down will be the first of three scheduled for this season in Starks. Browns farm also will host Green Love Renaissance Aug. 18-20 and Harvest Ball Oct. 6-9. Each festival includes a mix of bands, people speaking about marijuana laws and ongoing efforts to broaden them, as well as nonprofits giving out information on medical marijuana and cannabis-related businesses. Bands scheduled to perform this year include Max Creek, Bellas Bartok, Wobblesauce and Roots of Creation. No alcohol is sold.

Selling marijuana anywhere in Maine is not yet legal, as state lawmakers work to set up a regulatory system to oversee the industry.

Brown and other organizers say the Starks festivals are about peaceful social change of all kinds.

The reasons for celebrating our freedoms are more now, not less, said Brown, 68, standing on the porch of his small home. The law needs to be broader; there is still too much ignorance of the herb.

The Starks prohibition on marijuana sales, which both Christen and Brown opposed, was approved by town voters March 10. It bans retail marijuana establishments, which include stores, testing facilities, manufacturing facilities, social clubs and commercial growing operations.

The town ordinance did not address personal use of marijuana, though the state law allows people to grow six plants for that purpose. Since the state law went into effect in January, many towns have considered temporary moratoriums.

But only a handful, including Oakland, Skowehgan, Norway, York and Lebanon, have bans similar to the one in Starks, said Ted Kelleher, an attorney with Drummond Woodsum in Portland whose practice focuses on regulated substance issues. Others are considering bans and moratoriums. Kelleher said some town officials have considered bans because their voters strongly rejected the state legalization.

The ban on marijuana businesses was proposed by the town planning board. Board chairman Kerry Hebert declined to comment for this story. In a message to residents on the town website, board members said the ban was proposed partly because town voters rejected the state marijuana law and partly because voters at the 2016 town meeting had voted for a 180-day moratorium on marijuana businesses.

Shane Sours, 42, whose family once ran the only store in town, opposed the ban.

Were already known for marijuana, so what would it hurt if we had a dispensary or a business selling it? he said. It might bring jobs. I think the people who voted for (the ban) want to change this towns image.

Not everyone saw the vote as a referendum on the towns reputation. Ernest Hilton, a 66-year-old lawyer and member of the Board of Selectmen, said he voted for the ban because he could not see very much positive about allowing marijuana businesses in town. But he said he could have accepted a rejection of the ban as well.

It could have gone either way for me, Hilton said. It was not an issue that raised a huge emotional response with everyone.

The history of marijuana festivals in town wasnt a factor for him, he said: Those festivals will continue whether this ban was voted on or not, so to me theyre not related.

FROM ONE HEMPSTOCK COME MANY

Starks is about 20 miles east of Farmington, in rolling hills near the western mountains. It was named for Revolutionary War hero Gen. John Stark of New Hampshire and has a history of attracting independent-minded people.

Brown grew up in Connecticut and moved to Starks in the late 1970s for a freer lifestyle, closer to nature. He sells his artwork at a store in Farmington, H. Brown Fine Art, and has been involved in protests against war, nuclear power and Wall Street. As a user of marijuana, he has long found it a lot of nonsense that the federal government can classify it as a dangerous drug and incarcerate its citizens because of it.

Christen grew up in the nearby paper mill town of Madison and has been advocating for the abolition of legal restrictions on marijuana most of his adult life. His father was a health inspector and town official in Madison and Anson, and Christen has worked various skilled labor jobs, including in paper mills. He says he grew up with friends and neighbors who grew marijuana to make ends meet, to cobble together a living along with whatever else they could manage.

The reason I started doing this is because Ive never felt like I was a criminal for smoking pot and growing pot. There are so many people around here who have grown it for years, to put food on the table, said Christen. One day when I was young, I was sitting around with some friends at the kitchen table, complaining (about marijuana being illegal), my father said, Why dont you do something about it instead of just bitchin about it?

Christen started Maine Vocals, a group working to promote the legalization of marijuana and was looking for like-minded people to help when he met Brown. So when Christen wanted to start a festival to push his cause, he asked Brown for use of his 70-acre farm.

Out-of-work carpenters in the area helped quickly build a stage for the first festival, in 1991, Brown remembers. About 400 to 500 people showed up that year, and throughout the 1990s the festival grew markedly. Starks residents themselves helped promote the towns reputation as a center of cannabis advocacy in 1992 when they approved a resolution asking the state to legalize the growing of marijuana and possession of small amounts. The vote was 45-42, but the gesture, at a time when police helicopters were buzzing central Maine fields looking for marijuana farms, got national attention.

Harry Brown, whose 70-acre farm in Starks was the longtime site of the annual Hempstock, has parted ways with festival organizer Don Christen. But Brown still hosts music festivals that are about peaceful social change of all kinds. Staff photo by Ben McCanna

PARTNERSHIP ENDED IN 2008

There were sometimes arrests during festivals, including for people selling marijuana or paraphernalia. In June 2016, a New Hampshire man was arrested after leaving an event at Harry Browns Farm and charged with possession of hashish, a marijuana derivative, and refusing to submit to arrest. Police said they stopped him after he was seen speeding on Starks Road.

The partnership between Christen and Brown ended about 2008, around differences over the direction of the festival and financial matters. Christen says Brown and his family wanted more money than what he was willing to pay to rent the land. Brown said he didnt get paid for some years of the festival, that very little money was used to maintain the festival site, and that the crowds were getting edgier and drunker and more intoxicated as years went by. He says that in the years Christen organized Hempstock, letting the music get too loud upset townspeople.

Christen says he paid as much as $18,000 a year in rent for three festivals and that Brown wanted more. He called the festivals orderly, with less trouble than youd see in a bar in Waterville on a Friday night. Town officials did not agree, and shortly after the 1994 Hempstock they began crafting a 15-page mass gatherings ordinance that requires a public hearing to be held before each festival is approved, with very specific requirements about all facets of the festivals, from toilets and water supplies to the number of parking spaces and the location of all parking supervisors.

Over the years the crowds at Starks festivals have been much smaller, though Brown and the people who help him organize the festivals now say they dont keep an exact count.

Christen kept the Hempstock name and moved his festivals to a piece of land he owns in Harmony, another very rural town about 25 miles east. He holds about six a year, under various names, including Hempstock, Freedom Fest and Heads in Harmony. The three-day Freedom Fest was to be held this weekend and to wrap up Sunday. His next festival, Somerset County Jam Fest, is scheduled July 14-16. His festivals have bands, speakers and vendors, too, and attract a few hundred people, he said. No alcohol is sold.

Christen has been jailed in Maine three times, including stints in 2007 and 2008 that totaled about 10 months, after being charged with aggravated cultivating of marijuana.

Brown served more than four months in Maine jails after being arrested just a month after the first Hempstock and charged with drug trafficking. Police found 10 pounds of marijuana, which he says was not his, at his farm. Four other men were arrested as well, including two from Starks and one from Anson, one town over.

SOMETHING IN THE WATER?

The reasons Starks become known as a flash point in the fight to legalize marijuana go beyond Christen and Brown. The town, and the wider area of Somerset County near the western mountains, has long attracted back-to-the-landers and people seeking more personal freedom. The hardscrabble nature of getting by in such a rural area seems to make people a little more independent-minded, said Gerry Boyle, a former Maine newspaper reporter who based his 1997 novel Potshot loosely on Starks-area people and events.

When I was covering that area, it wasnt drug cartels up there. It was a lot of old bikers and old hippies and people growing marijuana on their farms, Boyle said. It was people who felt their rights were being trampled on.

Boyle covered marijuana-related issues in Maine in the 1980s and 1990s, around the time Hempstock started and police were targeting marijuana farming and retail operations in the area. He researched Potshot by talking to Brown and many others in the area. Those conversations inspired characters in the book, like a father who publicly stumps for marijuana so zealously that he embarrasses his children, Boyle said. But he says no one in the book is a real-life Starks resident.

He wanted to write the book because he was intrigued by the area, its people and their struggle as they saw it.

There is something otherworldly about their connection to the outside world, Boyle said. There are a lot of people who are tough, self-sufficient and want to be left alone.

Ray Routhier can be contacted at 210-1183 or at:

[emailprotected]

Twitter: RayRouthier

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In Starks, Maine's pot haven, passion doesn't burn evenly - Press Herald

The Municipal Network Against Illegitimate Debt and Fiscal Cuts is expanding to the level of the autonomous regions [the Spanish State consists of 12 autonomous communities, among which Andalusia, Catalonia, the Basque country, the Madrid community] stated Carmen Lizrraga, a Podemos member of the Parliament of Andalusia, at the opening press conference of the second meeting of the Network, which brought together in Cadiz, on 2, 3 and 4 June 2017, over 150 participants representing 77 municipalities from all over Spain. Members of the Parliaments of the autonomous Communities of Andalusia, Navarre, the Baleares, Estremadura and Galicia had a separate meeting that resulted in the decision to meet more frequently and in a more structured way after the summer recess.

Doing away with the illegitimate debt at the municipal, regional and national levels is part and parcel of the Network. The Oviedo Manifesto, which was signed by over one thousand elected representatives (among whom municipal councillors, MPs and MEPs, joined by social activists and international key figures) who committed to support the establishment of a Spanish association of municipalities, autonomous communities and nationalities that question illegitimate debt and work towards its abolition. The meeting in Cadiz was a step in that direction.

Thirteen municipalities and two autonomous parliaments subscribe to motions demanding remunicipalization

Over the last weeks, 13 municipalities that are members of the Network (Gijn, Laviana, Torres de la Alameda, Morn de la Frontera, Getxo, Vilassar de Mar, Santa Coloma de Gramanet, Loeches, Valdemoro, Amurrio, Jerez, Petrer and Leioa) voted motions against the Additional Provisions in the General State Budgets as presented by Finance Minister, Cristbal Montoro that prevent remunicipalization of services. A motion voted by the Parliament of Navarre and a proposal by the Parliament of Aragan were added to the municipalities protests.

Eric Toussaint, spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts (CADTM), who took part in the meeting, said it was essential to now reach the level of involving autonomous Communities. If the network should stay at the municipal level without reaching out to the regions both in terms of political parties and of social movements, we would soon be in a dead-end. To achieve a solution we have to be able, and willing, to face up to the Central Government.

Similarly during the press conference Carlos Snchez Mato, in charge of economy and Finance for the city of Madrid, expressed the need to work together in a coordinated way otherwise there is no hope of winning.

Mato recalled the ground that had been covered between the Indignados movement in 2011 and the establishment of municipal governments aiming at change in about a hundred municipalities thanks to victories in the municipal elections in May 2015 and pointed out the difference between Cadiz run by Tefila Martnez (former PP mayoress) or by Kichi (the nickname given to the current Podemos party mayor - Por Cdiz S Se Puede), and indeed between Madrid run by Manuela Carmena (of the progressive coalition Ahora Madrid) or by Esperanza Aguirre (PP) the previous mayor. Wherever we are in positions of power we have to go beyond the legal framework. Madrid is fighting a hard battle against Montoro. We have to fight it and we shall win it. Because their unfair laws are ineffective to enforce their absurd measures.

Eric Toussaint underlined the significance of the Network, which is unprecedented whether in Spain or on the international scene. He added that the current challenge is to achieve the alchemy through which social movements and elected representatives join forces. Many of those representatives used to be active in the social movements. Another challenge he mentioned is for the front to tip the balance Balance End of year statement of a companys assets (what the company possesses) and liabilities (what it owes). In other words, the assets provide information about how the funds collected by the company have been used; and the liabilities, about the origins of those funds. of power with the government. It is one thing to be in the Madrid town hall confronting Montoro and another to be in one of the small municipalities under the threat of cuts such as in Puerto Real or Cadiz. Hence the need for a solidarity front.

In the opening session Ftima Pontones, in charge of the finance department for Puerto Real, a municipality currently caught in the vice of debt, exposed the perversion of a system that forbids direct employment but supports privatization of services. She called for disobedience on the part of citizens. She also criticized the ICO loans that turned a commercial debt into a financial debt and the obligation, through the modified article 135 of the Constitution to give payments to banks the first priority.

Maria Rozas, who is in charge of the Finance department for Santiago de Compostela, exposed the Montoro law as being more concerned with investors security than with the 26,000 people threatened by poverty in her city. She concluded on the necessity of standing up against the law and the investors.

Kichi launched a citizen audit of the debt in Cadiz

Other good news marked the beginning of this meeting in Cadiz, held in the wake of the meeting in Oviedo last November. The mayor of Cadiz, Jos Mara Gonzlez Kichi, announced that a citizen audit of the debt in Cadiz would start in September. One of its objectives is to show how public money is used. There is less waste when things are monitored he said. He was confident that collective learning is essential to avoid the mistakes of the past. Let us remember that in 2013, like many other municipalities, Cadiz contracted loans at 5.95% interest Interest An amount paid in remuneration of an investment or received by a lender. Interest is calculated on the amount of the capital invested or borrowed, the duration of the operation and the rate that has been set. rate while the banks granting those loans received the funds from the ECB ECB European Central Bank The European Central Bank is a European institution based in Frankfurt, founded in 1998, to which the countries of the Eurozone have transferred their monetary powers. Its official role is to ensure price stability by combating inflation within that Zone. Its three decision-making organs (the Executive Board, the Governing Council and the General Council) are composed of governors of the central banks of the member states and/or recognized specialists. According to its statutes, it is politically independent but it is directly influenced by the world of finance.

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/html/index.en.html at 0.25%.

The mayor of Cadiz gave another evidence of this commitment to citizen participation when he left the opening panel to join in a sit-in, in his childrens school, to defend public education. A clear wish to carry on this kind of networking resulted in the decision to hold a third meeting in Rivas Vaciamadrid, 15 kilometers from Madrid next November.

Translated by Mike Krolikowski and Christine Pagnoulle

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Spain: The Municipal Network against Illegitimate Debt held a second successful meeting in Cadiz - CADTM.org

This essay is based upon the One People Oration I delivered at Westminster Abbey in October 2014. I have made hundreds of speeches in the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for 25 years, but this was the only one I had given in Westminster Abbey. In its early days, in the early1300s, Parliament actually sat there, in the Chapter House and then in the Refectory of the Abbey. So as an MP I felt very at home, but there were important differences.

The Commons is a scene of noisy disagreement, while in the Abbey we were surrounded by a thousand years of reflection and calm. In the Commons I would be cut off mid-flow if I went a minute over my allotted time, but in the Abbey I spoke for as long as I needed to and had some hope the audience might actually have been listening. When I spoke in the House of Commons I was just yards from where my hero William Pitt the Younger (Hague 2005) debated with Fox and Burke and Sheridan, but he was actually buried in the Abbey, with his father, in what I believe is the only grave in our country to contain two prime ministers.

People often comment that politicians are becoming younger, but Pitt was prime minister at the age of 24. There has never been a younger occupant of Number 10 before or since, and I doubt there will ever be one again or one as peculiarly gifted as a parliamentary orator. Pitt was prime minister for 18 years and 11 months, and for half that time Britain was at war with France and frequently at risk of invasion.

Another hero of mine, WilliamWilberforce(Hague 2008), is also buried in the Abbey, thanks to his family and friends countermanding his wish to be buried elsewhere. His house, Number 4 Palace Yard, stood just over the wall and was by every account a veritable pandemonium of books, pets, visitors and hapless servants he never had the heart to let go. From amid that ferment of ideas and activity he spent 20 years converting the people and entire political establishment of Britain to the cause of abolition. Year after year he moved motions in the House of Commons that were defeated. But in 1807, two decades after he began, he finally succeeded in turning our country from a slave-trading nation into one that bullied, harassed and bribed other countries into giving up their own detestable traffic in humans. And he did this without ever holding any office in any government.

Although I am not an intensely religious person, in writing my book onWilberforceI came to admire the unquenchable determination to succeed in a cause that religion in his case evangelical Christianity inspired in him. Because he believed he was accounting to God for how he spent his time, he actually recorded what he did with it. His papers include tables detailing each quarter hour of the day. One typical entry describes seven and a half hours of Commons business, eight and a quarter hours in bed, five and a half hours of requisite company &c visits &c, threequarters of an hour of serious reading and meditation, 15 minutes unaccounted for or dressing and one hour described as squandered.

While few in his age had his gift with words and his obsessive drive,Wilberforcewas not alone in being inspired by his faith. He was part of theClaphamsect, a small group of politicians, lawyers, merchants, churchmen and bankers based aroundClaphamCommon, who were responsible for one of the greatest varieties and volumes of charitable activity ever launched by any group of people in any age.

Their primary goal was the abolition of the slave trade and the founding of Sierra Leone, but on top of this they set up a staggering array of charitable causes: the London Missionary Society; the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor; the Church Missionary Society; the Religious Tract Society; the Society for Promoting the Religious Instruction of Youth; the Society for the Relief of the Industrious Poor; the British National Endeavour for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors; the Institution for the Protection of Young Girls; the Society for the Suppression of Vice; the Sunday School Union; the Society forSupercedingthe Necessity for Climbing Boys in Cleansing Chimneys; the British and Foreign Bible Society; and two with particularly wonderful names: The Asylum House of Refuge for the Reception of Orphaned Girls the Settlements of whose Parents Cannot be Found and, finally, the Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women of Good Character, Who Have Seen Better Days. And we thinkwelive in an age of activism.

***

I know that for many people today religious faith of all kinds remains a great inspiration and channel for charity and altruism. And whatever faith or creed we live by, inherent in our democracy is the idea that our freedoms and rights are universal. Oppression or conflict or poverty or injustice anywhere in the world has stirred our consciences, as individuals and collectively, throughout our history. I want to argue that maintaining and building on that national tradition is absolutely vital in the twenty-first century, both as a moral obligation and in order to prevent wars at a time of growing international instability.

The year 2014, when I delivered my lecture in Westminster Abbey, saw us marking 100 years since the First World War, in which so many of our countrymen perished because conflict was not averted. Remembering that dreadful conflict should inspire us to maintain our restless conscience as a nation and be determined to do whatever we can to improve the condition of humanity. We should have faith in the broadest sense in our ideas and our ideals as a country, and in our ability to have a positive impact on the development of other nations and the future of our world.

One of the most moving sights I have seen in some time was the sea of poppies encircling the Tower of London, commemorating each and every British and Commonwealth military fatality in the First World War. It was a silent exhortation to remember, to be grateful for what we have and to learn the lessons of those times when peace had to be restored at so great a price to humanity. So too is the revered Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, buried among Kings, as his gravestone says, as one of the many who gave the most that man can give, life itself, for God, for King and Country, for Loved Ones and Empire, for the Sacred Cause of Justice and the Freedom of the World. The remains of 15 British soldiers from the War were reburied in Belgium in October 2014, 100 years after they were killed in battle, reminding us that we are still counting the cost of that terrible conflagration.

As Foreign Secretary, for four years I occupied the office used by Sir Edward Grey, with its windows overlookingHorseguardsand St Jamess Park. Standing at those windows, as he contemplated the catastrophe about to engulf the world, he famously said, the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. The failure of diplomacy on the eve of the War ushered in greater suffering than Grey and his contemporaries could ever have imagined: war on an industrial scale, the butchery of the unknown by the unseen, in the words of one war correspondent, in which 10 million soldiers died on all sides, 20 million were severely wounded and eight million were permanently disabled; in which appalling massacres, rapes and other atrocities were committed against thousands of civilians and millions of refugees were created; and which was all to be followed by the Second World War, the massacres in Poland, the gas chambers and extermination camps of the Holocaust, pogroms in the Soviet Union and the slaughter of war and revolution in China.

It is tempting to look back on the horrors and evils of the past and to think that these things could not happen again. It would be comforting to imagine that we have reached such a level of education and enlightenment that ideologies like Nazism, Fascism and Communism that led to mass slaughter, and the nationalism that leads states to attack theirneighboursor groups within states to massacre their fellow citizens, have all seen an end. Sadly, I believe this is an illusion.

There is an additional illusion that sometimes takes hold, as it did before the First World War, that a permanent peace has arrived. Then, Europe had enjoyed 99 years without widespread war. The Great Powers had found a way back from the brink of conflict several times, and Grey and his colleagues can be forgiven for thinking that crises would always be resolved by diplomacy, when in fact they were on the edge of the two greatest cataclysms in history.

History shows that while circumstances change, human nature is immutable. However educated, advanced or technologically skilled we become, we are still highly prone to errors ofjudgement, to greed and thus to conflict. There is no irreversible progress towards democracy, human rights and greater freedoms just as there is unlikely to be any such thing as a state of permanent peace. Unless each generation acts to preserve the gains it inherits and to build upon them for the future, then peace, democracy and freedom can easily be eroded, and conflict can readily break out.

***

It is true that there is more education, welfare, charitableendeavourand kindness in our world than ever before, that we have reached extraordinary diplomatic milestones like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that we have a United Nations (UN) system carrying out responsibilities from peacekeeping to the protection of our environment. We should never lose faith in the positive side of human nature and always retain our optimism and belief in our ability to shape our destiny. But my argument is that it is also true that the capacity of human beings to inflict unspeakable violence upon others, of ideologies that are pure evil to rise up or for states that are badly led to wade into new forms of conflict are all as present as ever.

We often read about massacres as if such barbaric things are only to be found in the pages of history. But the short span of our own lifetimes tells a different story, from Europe to the Middle East, to Africa and Asia. Only in 1995, in Europe, 8000 men and boys were massacred inSrebrenicain a single week. Over five million people have been killed in the Congo in the two decades up to 2014.

In April 2014, when I attended the20thanniversary of the Rwandan massacres, I and the other international representatives were standing where nearly a third of a million people are buried in a single grave, a third of the million women, men and children slain in cold blood within 100 days. Also in 2014, two of Pol Pots henchmen, part of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed more than a million people, were convicted and given life sentences. In Iraq and Syria, in a perversion of religion,ISIL(Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is currently terrorizing communities with beheadings and crucifixions. And think of the barrel bombs that have rained down on schools in Syria from theAssadregime and the pitiless desperation to hold on to power needed to produce such utter inhumanity.

Aggressive ideology, despotism and fanaticism live on, despite all our other advances and achievements. This is the human condition. Our optimism and faith in human nature will always have to contend with this harsh truth, at the same time as being essential to overcoming such evils. That is why it is so important for us to have a strong sense of history so that we never lose sight of how fragile peace and security can be. And so we understand that diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts is not an abstract concept but our greatest responsibility.

In our information-rich, media-saturated world, history can be caricatured as a luxury, not least for those who have their hands full running the country. But I could not imagine having been Foreign Secretary without drawing on the advice of the Foreign Office historians, who were able to offer historical precedents for every conceivable revolution, insurgency, treaty or crisis, and who produced maps and papers that shed light on the most intractable of modern problems. It is as important to consult the lessons of history in foreign policy as it is to seek the advice of our embassies, our intelligence agencies, our military and our allies. History is not set in stone and is open to endless reinterpretation. But the habit of deep and searching thought rooted in history must be cultivated: not toparalyseus or make us excessively pessimistic, but to help us make sound decisions and guide our actions.

It remains as true today as it was when Edmund Burke first expressed it that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. We cannot in our generation coast along or think it is not our responsibility or that it is too difficult to tackle conflict and injustice that bring misery to millions. However pressing the crises of the day, we have to address the fundamental conditions that lead to armed conflict and reduce the human suffering it causes. This means not only maintaining Britains global role living up to our responsibilities, protecting our interests internationally and being able to project military power where necessary but also consciously encouraging and developing the ideas, concepts and strategies needed to address poverty, conflict and injustice.

All our advances start with an idea. Powerful ideas can then become unstoppable movements as indeed the abolition of the slave trade did in the eighteenth century. For that to happen governments have to adopt the best of these ideas, and leaders have to be prepared to be open and radical.

***

The title of my essay is taken from a remark by Admiral John Fisher, First Sea Lord in the early nineteenth century and commander of the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War. In 1899, he was sent as Britains representative to the first Hague Peace Conference, called by Russia, to discuss the growing arms race and place curbs on the use of certain weapons in war. As these proposals were discussed at the negotiating table, he is said to have remarked with some passion that one could sooner talk of humanising hell than of humanising war. While he was, of course, right about the hell of war, in actual fact the traumatic experience of conflict and great idealism have often gone together. It has frequently been the very experience of war that has spurred mankinds greatest advances in international relations, based on ideas that were radical when first presented.

When HenryDunantobserved the agonizing deaths of thousands of injured men at the battle ofSolferinoin 1859, his outrage and activism led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the founding text of contemporary international humanitarian law, which laid the foundation for the treatment of prisoners in war. After the First World War, there was a vast and intensive period of institution building, leading to the League of Nations, InternationalLabourOrganization, the prohibition on use of chemical weapons and the creation of the High Commissioner for Refugees to find a way of returning millions of European refugees to their homes, which supports over 50 million refugees and displaced people worldwide today.

While the Second World War was raging, Roosevelt and Churchill spent hours discussing the creation of a new international body to prevent conflict in the future, which led to the United Nations itself, the Security Council and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recently, in our lifetime, the outrage at atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia led to the creation of the International Criminal Court and the concept of the Responsibility to Protect. Since 1990 our country has played a leading role in securing international bans on the use of cluster munitions andlandmines, and I was proud to sign on Britains behalf the ratification of the International Arms Trade Treaty, the culmination of ten years of advocacy begun here in Britain.

The humanising of the hell of war is a continual process. While our goal must always be to avert conflict in the first place, except as a last resort as provided in the UN charter, it is also essential to establish norms ofbehaviourabout what is unacceptable even in times of war. This is vital so that if conflict breaks out despite our best efforts, governments feel restrained by the threat of accountability for any crimes that are committed, we have mechanisms to protect civilians and peace agreements take account of the need for reconciliation and the punishment of crimes against humanity. The crucial point is that while the international bodies we have are the result of diplomacy, they do not simply arise on their own. They are the product of ideas generated by individuals, groups or governments refusing to accept thestatus quo, such that then, with enough momentum, public support and political commitment became reality.

I think of this restless conscience, as I call it, as an enduring and admirable British characteristic. Our nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), lawyers, academics and Crown servants have had an extraordinary impact internationally. In my time in the Foreign Office I found our diplomats a powerful part of this tradition, from their work on the abolition of the death penalty, to improving the lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities worldwide, to helping negotiations as far away as the nowsuccessful Mindanao Peace Process in the Philippines. This is part of our countrys distinctive contribution to the world, and it involves the power of our ideas as much as the skill of our diplomats. We must always cherish and encourage that flow of ideas and idealism and those rivers of soft power and influence that form such a large part of our role in the world.

It is also true that diplomatic negotiations for peace do not simply arise automatically. They require extraordinary effort by individuals. US former Secretary of State, John Kerry, for example, deserves praise for his tireless work on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. He chose to devote weeks on end trying to restart and conclude those negotiations, rather than taking the easy route of not attempting such a difficult task. Individuals and the choices they make have an immense impact. Sometimes the individual is someone in high office, like William Pitt, who did his utmost in the early1790sto avoid war with France and whose State Paper of 1805 was the basis for European peace for most of the nineteenth century. Or it is someone likeWilberforce, who was never a government minister, but whose ideas and energy brought relief, an end of suffering and ultimately freedom for millions of people.

Choices are motivated differently. The coalition to end the British slave trade was driven not just by moral considerations, but also by political and economic factors. Adam Smith argued against slavery because he saw it as an inefficient allocation of resources. British naval supremacy in the world meant that in simple political terms, abolition was possible because we had the diplomatic and military muscle to enforce it. AndWilberforcewas outraged that slaves had no opportunity to embrace Christianity, so their souls were being lost. So his key argument against the trade was neither economic nor political, it was religious. It is inevitable that in this way governments, like individuals, are motivated by a number of different factors. But we must pursue the issues today that bring together the moral interest and the national interest, using the combination of powerful ideas, our strong institutions and our global role.

***

We should be proud that, so far, our country has kept its promise to spend 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on international development, not just because it is morally right, but also because it is profoundly in our national interest to help other nations lift their citizens out of poverty. We have to continue to lead global efforts to stop the illegal wildlife trade, which destroys the natural heritage of African nations, undermines economic development and creates instability. It is vital that we promote a rules-based international system, because it nourishes the commerce, trade and stability that are the lifeblood of our own economy as well as strengthening human rights internationally. And it is essential that we support political reform, civil society, womens rights and economic progress in the Middle East, because it is vital to our long-term security that that region becomes more free, more stable and more prosperous.

The pursuit of policies that bring stability in the world, and the moral authority for them, are inseparable. Any idea that we should retrench, withdraw or turn away from these issues is misguided and wrong for two reasons. First, the world is becoming systemically less stable. This is due to many different factors: the dispersal of power amongst a wider group of nations, many of whom do not fully share our values and our objectives in foreign policy; the diffusion of power away from governments, accelerated by technology; the globalization of ideas and ability of people to organize themselves into leaderless movements and spread ideas around the world within minutes; our interconnectedness, a boon for development but also a major vulnerability to threats, from terrorism and cyber crime to the spread of diseases like Ebola; the growing global middle class, which is driving demand for greater accountability and more freedom within states designed to suppress such instincts; and the rise of religious intolerance in the Middle East.

Global institutions are struggling to deal with these trends. It is not enough to ensure there is no conflict on our own continent, although sadly the crisis in Ukraine has shown, once again, that even Europe is not immune. Conflict anywhere in the world affects us through refugee flows, the crimes and terrorism that conflict fuels and the billions of pounds needed in humanitarian assistance, so we have to address these issues.

Second, the pursuit of sound development, inclusive politics and the rule of law are essential to our moral standing in the world, which is in turn an important factor in our international influence. As I pointed out in 2006, the US and UK suffered a loss of moral authority as a result of aspects of the War on Terror, which affected the standing of our foreign policy and the willingness of other countries to work with us, and which both President Obamas administration and our own government worked hard to address. We are strongest when we act with moral authority, and that means being the strongest champions of our values.

Thus, neither as a matter of wise policy nor as a matter of conscience can Britain ever afford to turn aside from a global role. We have to continue to be restless advocates for improving the condition of humanity. This means continuing to forge new alliances, reforming the UN and other global institutions and enforcing the rules that govern international relations. But that will never be enough by itself, so we also have to retain the ambition to influence not just the resolutions that are passed and the treaties that are signed up to, but also the beliefs in the world about what is acceptable and what is not.

A powerful example of an issue on which we need to apply such leadership is the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war. I have been surprised by how deeply engrained and passive attitudes to this subject often are. Because history is full of accounts of the mass abuse of women and captives, and because there is so much domestic violence in all societies, it is a widely held view that violence against women and girls is inevitable in peacetime and in conflict.

But when we seeISILforeign fighters in Iraq and Syria selling women as slaves and glorifying rape and sexual slavery; when we hear of refugees, who have already lost everything, being raped in camps for want of basic protections; when we see leaders exhorting their fighters to go out and rape their opponents, specifically to inflict terror, to make women pregnant, to force people to flee their homes and to destroy their families and communities; or peace agreements giving amnesty to men who have ordered and carried out rape or deliberately turned a blind eye to it; or soldiers and even peacekeepers committing rape due to lack of discipline, proper training, no accountability and a culture that treats women as the spoils of war, a commodity to be exploited with impunity, then we are clearly dealing with injustice on a scale that is simply intolerable, as well as damaging to the stability of those countries and the peace of the wider world.

It is often said to me that without war there would be nowarzonerape, as if that is the only way to address the problem. While of course our goal is always to prevent conflict, we cannot simply consign millions of women, men, girls and boys to the suffering of rape while we seek a way to put an end to all conflict, since, as I have argued, this goal is one we should always strive for but may often not attain.

***

We have shown that we can put restraints on the way war is conducted. We have put beyond the pale the use of poison gas or torture and devised the Arms Trade Treaty for the trade in illegal weapons. It is time to address this aspect of conflict and to treat sexual violence as an issue of global peace and security. The biggest obstacle we face in this campaign is the idea you cannot do anything about it that you cannot humanise hell, that there is nothing we can do to endwarzonerape. But there is hope, and we must dispel this pessimism. Over the last two years, working with NGOs, the UN and faith groups, we have brought the weight and influence of Britain to bear globally as no country ever has done before on this subject.

Over 150 countries have joined our campaign and endorsed a global declaration of commitment to end sexual violence in conflict. We brought together over 120 governments and thousands of people at a Global Summit in London in June 2014, the first of its kind. And in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Colombia we are seeing signs of governments being prepared to address this issue by passing laws and reforming their militaries.

What would it say about our commitment to human rights in our own society if we knew about such abuses but did nothing about them? And how could we be at the forefront of preventing conflict in the world if we did not act to prevent something that causes conflict in the future? Sexual violence is often designed to make peace impossible to achieve and create the bitterness and incentive for future conflict. Dealing with it is not a luxury to be added on, it is an integral part of conflict prevention, a crucial part of breaking a cycle of war. And it has to go hand in hand with seeking the full political, social and economic empowerment of women everywhere, the greatest strategic prize of all for our century.

In 2014 we commemorated those who died in the First World War and their suffering. There is no more fitting thing we can do for the sake of that memory than to face up to the hell of conflict in our lifetimes. We have never had to mobilize our population to fight in the way their generation did, and so we have been spared their painful burdens. But how much more incumbent does that make it on all of us to fight with the peaceful tools at our disposal on behalf of those who are denied, through no fault of their own, the security we consider our birthright.

Just as inWilberforces day, it will always be necessary for Britain to be at the forefront of efforts to improve the condition of humanity. The search for peace and an end to conflict requires powerful ideas and the relentlessdefenceof our values, as much it does negotiations and summits between nations. We could be heading for such turbulent times that it will be easy for some people to say we should not bother with development or tackling sexual violence in conflict or other such issues. There will always be the pressing crisis of the day that risks drowning out such longterm causes. But, in fact, addressing these issues is crucial to overcoming crises now and in the future and it will be an increasingly important part of our moral authority and standing in the world that we are seen to do this.

Just because there are economic crises and major social changes does not mean we or our partners can squander any day or any year in producing the ideas as well as the laws that prevent conflict and deal with some of the greatest scourges of the twenty-first century, and we must do so with confidence: for it remains the case that free and democratic societies are the only places where the ideas and the moral force we need can be found. Our times call for a renewal of that effort for just and equitable solutions to conflict, the driving down of global inequalities and the confronting of injustices.

Every day we have to start again: there is not going to be a day in our lifetimes when we can wake up and say this work is complete. We have to overcome the sense of helplessness that says that vast problems cannot be tackled. We have to awaken the conscience of nations and stir the actions of governments. In an age of mass communication this is a task for every one of us. Whether we are in government, are diplomats, journalists, members of the armed forces, members of the public, students, faith groups or civil servants, every one of us is part of that effort.

In Britain, our restless conscience should never allow us to withdraw behind our fortifications and turn away from the world but should always inspire us to strive for peace and security, to maintain our responsibilities, seek new ways of addressing the worst aspects of humanbehaviourand live up to our greatest traditions.

This essay is taken from The Moral Heart of Public Service, edited by Claire Foster-Gilbert and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, priced 15.99, on 21 June 2017.

Continued here:

Humanising hell - New Statesman

This essay is based upon the One People Oration I delivered at Westminster Abbey in October 2014. I have made hundreds of speeches in the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament for 25 years, but this was the only one I had given in Westminster Abbey. In its early days, in the early1300s, Parliament actually sat there, in the Chapter House and then in the Refectory of the Abbey. So as an MP I felt very at home, but there were important differences.

The Commons is a scene of noisy disagreement, while in the Abbey we were surrounded by a thousand years of reflection and calm. In the Commons I would be cut off mid-flow if I went a minute over my allotted time, but in the Abbey I spoke for as long as I needed to and had some hope the audience might actually have been listening. When I spoke in the House of Commons I was just yards from where my hero William Pitt the Younger (Hague 2005) debated with Fox and Burke and Sheridan, but he was actually buried in the Abbey, with his father, in what I believe is the only grave in our country to contain two prime ministers.

People often comment that politicians are becoming younger, but Pitt was prime minister at the age of 24. There has never been a younger occupant of Number 10 before or since, and I doubt there will ever be one again or one as peculiarly gifted as a parliamentary orator. Pitt was prime minister for 18 years and 11 months, and for half that time Britain was at war with France and frequently at risk of invasion.

Another hero of mine, WilliamWilberforce(Hague 2008), is also buried in the Abbey, thanks to his family and friends countermanding his wish to be buried elsewhere. His house, Number 4 Palace Yard, stood just over the wall and was by every account a veritable pandemonium of books, pets, visitors and hapless servants he never had the heart to let go. From amid that ferment of ideas and activity he spent 20 years converting the people and entire political establishment of Britain to the cause of abolition. Year after year he moved motions in the House of Commons that were defeated. But in 1807, two decades after he began, he finally succeeded in turning our country from a slave-trading nation into one that bullied, harassed and bribed other countries into giving up their own detestable traffic in humans. And he did this without ever holding any office in any government.

Although I am not an intensely religious person, in writing my book onWilberforceI came to admire the unquenchable determination to succeed in a cause that religion in his case evangelical Christianity inspired in him. Because he believed he was accounting to God for how he spent his time, he actually recorded what he did with it. His papers include tables detailing each quarter hour of the day. One typical entry describes seven and a half hours of Commons business, eight and a quarter hours in bed, five and a half hours of requisite company &c visits &c, threequarters of an hour of serious reading and meditation, 15 minutes unaccounted for or dressing and one hour described as squandered.

While few in his age had his gift with words and his obsessive drive,Wilberforcewas not alone in being inspired by his faith. He was part of theClaphamsect, a small group of politicians, lawyers, merchants, churchmen and bankers based aroundClaphamCommon, who were responsible for one of the greatest varieties and volumes of charitable activity ever launched by any group of people in any age.

Their primary goal was the abolition of the slave trade and the founding of Sierra Leone, but on top of this they set up a staggering array of charitable causes: the London Missionary Society; the Society for Bettering the Condition and Increasing the Comforts of the Poor; the Church Missionary Society; the Religious Tract Society; the Society for Promoting the Religious Instruction of Youth; the Society for the Relief of the Industrious Poor; the British National Endeavour for the Orphans of Soldiers and Sailors; the Institution for the Protection of Young Girls; the Society for the Suppression of Vice; the Sunday School Union; the Society forSupercedingthe Necessity for Climbing Boys in Cleansing Chimneys; the British and Foreign Bible Society; and two with particularly wonderful names: The Asylum House of Refuge for the Reception of Orphaned Girls the Settlements of whose Parents Cannot be Found and, finally, the Friendly Female Society, for the Relief of Poor, Infirm, Aged Widows, and Single Women of Good Character, Who Have Seen Better Days. And we thinkwelive in an age of activism.

***

I know that for many people today religious faith of all kinds remains a great inspiration and channel for charity and altruism. And whatever faith or creed we live by, inherent in our democracy is the idea that our freedoms and rights are universal. Oppression or conflict or poverty or injustice anywhere in the world has stirred our consciences, as individuals and collectively, throughout our history. I want to argue that maintaining and building on that national tradition is absolutely vital in the twenty-first century, both as a moral obligation and in order to prevent wars at a time of growing international instability.

The year 2014, when I delivered my lecture in Westminster Abbey, saw us marking 100 years since the First World War, in which so many of our countrymen perished because conflict was not averted. Remembering that dreadful conflict should inspire us to maintain our restless conscience as a nation and be determined to do whatever we can to improve the condition of humanity. We should have faith in the broadest sense in our ideas and our ideals as a country, and in our ability to have a positive impact on the development of other nations and the future of our world.

One of the most moving sights I have seen in some time was the sea of poppies encircling the Tower of London, commemorating each and every British and Commonwealth military fatality in the First World War. It was a silent exhortation to remember, to be grateful for what we have and to learn the lessons of those times when peace had to be restored at so great a price to humanity. So too is the revered Grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, buried among Kings, as his gravestone says, as one of the many who gave the most that man can give, life itself, for God, for King and Country, for Loved Ones and Empire, for the Sacred Cause of Justice and the Freedom of the World. The remains of 15 British soldiers from the War were reburied in Belgium in October 2014, 100 years after they were killed in battle, reminding us that we are still counting the cost of that terrible conflagration.

As Foreign Secretary, for four years I occupied the office used by Sir Edward Grey, with its windows overlookingHorseguardsand St Jamess Park. Standing at those windows, as he contemplated the catastrophe about to engulf the world, he famously said, the lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime. The failure of diplomacy on the eve of the War ushered in greater suffering than Grey and his contemporaries could ever have imagined: war on an industrial scale, the butchery of the unknown by the unseen, in the words of one war correspondent, in which 10 million soldiers died on all sides, 20 million were severely wounded and eight million were permanently disabled; in which appalling massacres, rapes and other atrocities were committed against thousands of civilians and millions of refugees were created; and which was all to be followed by the Second World War, the massacres in Poland, the gas chambers and extermination camps of the Holocaust, pogroms in the Soviet Union and the slaughter of war and revolution in China.

It is tempting to look back on the horrors and evils of the past and to think that these things could not happen again. It would be comforting to imagine that we have reached such a level of education and enlightenment that ideologies like Nazism, Fascism and Communism that led to mass slaughter, and the nationalism that leads states to attack theirneighboursor groups within states to massacre their fellow citizens, have all seen an end. Sadly, I believe this is an illusion.

There is an additional illusion that sometimes takes hold, as it did before the First World War, that a permanent peace has arrived. Then, Europe had enjoyed 99 years without widespread war. The Great Powers had found a way back from the brink of conflict several times, and Grey and his colleagues can be forgiven for thinking that crises would always be resolved by diplomacy, when in fact they were on the edge of the two greatest cataclysms in history.

History shows that while circumstances change, human nature is immutable. However educated, advanced or technologically skilled we become, we are still highly prone to errors ofjudgement, to greed and thus to conflict. There is no irreversible progress towards democracy, human rights and greater freedoms just as there is unlikely to be any such thing as a state of permanent peace. Unless each generation acts to preserve the gains it inherits and to build upon them for the future, then peace, democracy and freedom can easily be eroded, and conflict can readily break out.

***

It is true that there is more education, welfare, charitableendeavourand kindness in our world than ever before, that we have reached extraordinary diplomatic milestones like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and that we have a United Nations (UN) system carrying out responsibilities from peacekeeping to the protection of our environment. We should never lose faith in the positive side of human nature and always retain our optimism and belief in our ability to shape our destiny. But my argument is that it is also true that the capacity of human beings to inflict unspeakable violence upon others, of ideologies that are pure evil to rise up or for states that are badly led to wade into new forms of conflict are all as present as ever.

We often read about massacres as if such barbaric things are only to be found in the pages of history. But the short span of our own lifetimes tells a different story, from Europe to the Middle East, to Africa and Asia. Only in 1995, in Europe, 8000 men and boys were massacred inSrebrenicain a single week. Over five million people have been killed in the Congo in the two decades up to 2014.

In April 2014, when I attended the20thanniversary of the Rwandan massacres, I and the other international representatives were standing where nearly a third of a million people are buried in a single grave, a third of the million women, men and children slain in cold blood within 100 days. Also in 2014, two of Pol Pots henchmen, part of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed more than a million people, were convicted and given life sentences. In Iraq and Syria, in a perversion of religion,ISIL(Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) is currently terrorizing communities with beheadings and crucifixions. And think of the barrel bombs that have rained down on schools in Syria from theAssadregime and the pitiless desperation to hold on to power needed to produce such utter inhumanity.

Aggressive ideology, despotism and fanaticism live on, despite all our other advances and achievements. This is the human condition. Our optimism and faith in human nature will always have to contend with this harsh truth, at the same time as being essential to overcoming such evils. That is why it is so important for us to have a strong sense of history so that we never lose sight of how fragile peace and security can be. And so we understand that diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of conflicts is not an abstract concept but our greatest responsibility.

In our information-rich, media-saturated world, history can be caricatured as a luxury, not least for those who have their hands full running the country. But I could not imagine having been Foreign Secretary without drawing on the advice of the Foreign Office historians, who were able to offer historical precedents for every conceivable revolution, insurgency, treaty or crisis, and who produced maps and papers that shed light on the most intractable of modern problems. It is as important to consult the lessons of history in foreign policy as it is to seek the advice of our embassies, our intelligence agencies, our military and our allies. History is not set in stone and is open to endless reinterpretation. But the habit of deep and searching thought rooted in history must be cultivated: not toparalyseus or make us excessively pessimistic, but to help us make sound decisions and guide our actions.

It remains as true today as it was when Edmund Burke first expressed it that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men and women to do nothing. We cannot in our generation coast along or think it is not our responsibility or that it is too difficult to tackle conflict and injustice that bring misery to millions. However pressing the crises of the day, we have to address the fundamental conditions that lead to armed conflict and reduce the human suffering it causes. This means not only maintaining Britains global role living up to our responsibilities, protecting our interests internationally and being able to project military power where necessary but also consciously encouraging and developing the ideas, concepts and strategies needed to address poverty, conflict and injustice.

All our advances start with an idea. Powerful ideas can then become unstoppable movements as indeed the abolition of the slave trade did in the eighteenth century. For that to happen governments have to adopt the best of these ideas, and leaders have to be prepared to be open and radical.

***

The title of my essay is taken from a remark by Admiral John Fisher, First Sea Lord in the early nineteenth century and commander of the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War. In 1899, he was sent as Britains representative to the first Hague Peace Conference, called by Russia, to discuss the growing arms race and place curbs on the use of certain weapons in war. As these proposals were discussed at the negotiating table, he is said to have remarked with some passion that one could sooner talk of humanising hell than of humanising war. While he was, of course, right about the hell of war, in actual fact the traumatic experience of conflict and great idealism have often gone together. It has frequently been the very experience of war that has spurred mankinds greatest advances in international relations, based on ideas that were radical when first presented.

When HenryDunantobserved the agonizing deaths of thousands of injured men at the battle ofSolferinoin 1859, his outrage and activism led to the 1864 Geneva Convention, the founding text of contemporary international humanitarian law, which laid the foundation for the treatment of prisoners in war. After the First World War, there was a vast and intensive period of institution building, leading to the League of Nations, InternationalLabourOrganization, the prohibition on use of chemical weapons and the creation of the High Commissioner for Refugees to find a way of returning millions of European refugees to their homes, which supports over 50 million refugees and displaced people worldwide today.

While the Second World War was raging, Roosevelt and Churchill spent hours discussing the creation of a new international body to prevent conflict in the future, which led to the United Nations itself, the Security Council and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. More recently, in our lifetime, the outrage at atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Liberia and Bosnia led to the creation of the International Criminal Court and the concept of the Responsibility to Protect. Since 1990 our country has played a leading role in securing international bans on the use of cluster munitions andlandmines, and I was proud to sign on Britains behalf the ratification of the International Arms Trade Treaty, the culmination of ten years of advocacy begun here in Britain.

The humanising of the hell of war is a continual process. While our goal must always be to avert conflict in the first place, except as a last resort as provided in the UN charter, it is also essential to establish norms ofbehaviourabout what is unacceptable even in times of war. This is vital so that if conflict breaks out despite our best efforts, governments feel restrained by the threat of accountability for any crimes that are committed, we have mechanisms to protect civilians and peace agreements take account of the need for reconciliation and the punishment of crimes against humanity. The crucial point is that while the international bodies we have are the result of diplomacy, they do not simply arise on their own. They are the product of ideas generated by individuals, groups or governments refusing to accept thestatus quo, such that then, with enough momentum, public support and political commitment became reality.

I think of this restless conscience, as I call it, as an enduring and admirable British characteristic. Our nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), lawyers, academics and Crown servants have had an extraordinary impact internationally. In my time in the Foreign Office I found our diplomats a powerful part of this tradition, from their work on the abolition of the death penalty, to improving the lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities worldwide, to helping negotiations as far away as the nowsuccessful Mindanao Peace Process in the Philippines. This is part of our countrys distinctive contribution to the world, and it involves the power of our ideas as much as the skill of our diplomats. We must always cherish and encourage that flow of ideas and idealism and those rivers of soft power and influence that form such a large part of our role in the world.

It is also true that diplomatic negotiations for peace do not simply arise automatically. They require extraordinary effort by individuals. US former Secretary of State, John Kerry, for example, deserves praise for his tireless work on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. He chose to devote weeks on end trying to restart and conclude those negotiations, rather than taking the easy route of not attempting such a difficult task. Individuals and the choices they make have an immense impact. Sometimes the individual is someone in high office, like William Pitt, who did his utmost in the early1790sto avoid war with France and whose State Paper of 1805 was the basis for European peace for most of the nineteenth century. Or it is someone likeWilberforce, who was never a government minister, but whose ideas and energy brought relief, an end of suffering and ultimately freedom for millions of people.

Choices are motivated differently. The coalition to end the British slave trade was driven not just by moral considerations, but also by political and economic factors. Adam Smith argued against slavery because he saw it as an inefficient allocation of resources. British naval supremacy in the world meant that in simple political terms, abolition was possible because we had the diplomatic and military muscle to enforce it. AndWilberforcewas outraged that slaves had no opportunity to embrace Christianity, so their souls were being lost. So his key argument against the trade was neither economic nor political, it was religious. It is inevitable that in this way governments, like individuals, are motivated by a number of different factors. But we must pursue the issues today that bring together the moral interest and the national interest, using the combination of powerful ideas, our strong institutions and our global role.

***

We should be proud that, so far, our country has kept its promise to spend 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on international development, not just because it is morally right, but also because it is profoundly in our national interest to help other nations lift their citizens out of poverty. We have to continue to lead global efforts to stop the illegal wildlife trade, which destroys the natural heritage of African nations, undermines economic development and creates instability. It is vital that we promote a rules-based international system, because it nourishes the commerce, trade and stability that are the lifeblood of our own economy as well as strengthening human rights internationally. And it is essential that we support political reform, civil society, womens rights and economic progress in the Middle East, because it is vital to our long-term security that that region becomes more free, more stable and more prosperous.

The pursuit of policies that bring stability in the world, and the moral authority for them, are inseparable. Any idea that we should retrench, withdraw or turn away from these issues is misguided and wrong for two reasons. First, the world is becoming systemically less stable. This is due to many different factors: the dispersal of power amongst a wider group of nations, many of whom do not fully share our values and our objectives in foreign policy; the diffusion of power away from governments, accelerated by technology; the globalization of ideas and ability of people to organize themselves into leaderless movements and spread ideas around the world within minutes; our interconnectedness, a boon for development but also a major vulnerability to threats, from terrorism and cyber crime to the spread of diseases like Ebola; the growing global middle class, which is driving demand for greater accountability and more freedom within states designed to suppress such instincts; and the rise of religious intolerance in the Middle East.

Global institutions are struggling to deal with these trends. It is not enough to ensure there is no conflict on our own continent, although sadly the crisis in Ukraine has shown, once again, that even Europe is not immune. Conflict anywhere in the world affects us through refugee flows, the crimes and terrorism that conflict fuels and the billions of pounds needed in humanitarian assistance, so we have to address these issues.

Second, the pursuit of sound development, inclusive politics and the rule of law are essential to our moral standing in the world, which is in turn an important factor in our international influence. As I pointed out in 2006, the US and UK suffered a loss of moral authority as a result of aspects of the War on Terror, which affected the standing of our foreign policy and the willingness of other countries to work with us, and which both President Obamas administration and our own government worked hard to address. We are strongest when we act with moral authority, and that means being the strongest champions of our values.

Thus, neither as a matter of wise policy nor as a matter of conscience can Britain ever afford to turn aside from a global role. We have to continue to be restless advocates for improving the condition of humanity. This means continuing to forge new alliances, reforming the UN and other global institutions and enforcing the rules that govern international relations. But that will never be enough by itself, so we also have to retain the ambition to influence not just the resolutions that are passed and the treaties that are signed up to, but also the beliefs in the world about what is acceptable and what is not.

A powerful example of an issue on which we need to apply such leadership is the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war. I have been surprised by how deeply engrained and passive attitudes to this subject often are. Because history is full of accounts of the mass abuse of women and captives, and because there is so much domestic violence in all societies, it is a widely held view that violence against women and girls is inevitable in peacetime and in conflict.

But when we seeISILforeign fighters in Iraq and Syria selling women as slaves and glorifying rape and sexual slavery; when we hear of refugees, who have already lost everything, being raped in camps for want of basic protections; when we see leaders exhorting their fighters to go out and rape their opponents, specifically to inflict terror, to make women pregnant, to force people to flee their homes and to destroy their families and communities; or peace agreements giving amnesty to men who have ordered and carried out rape or deliberately turned a blind eye to it; or soldiers and even peacekeepers committing rape due to lack of discipline, proper training, no accountability and a culture that treats women as the spoils of war, a commodity to be exploited with impunity, then we are clearly dealing with injustice on a scale that is simply intolerable, as well as damaging to the stability of those countries and the peace of the wider world.

It is often said to me that without war there would be nowarzonerape, as if that is the only way to address the problem. While of course our goal is always to prevent conflict, we cannot simply consign millions of women, men, girls and boys to the suffering of rape while we seek a way to put an end to all conflict, since, as I have argued, this goal is one we should always strive for but may often not attain.

***

We have shown that we can put restraints on the way war is conducted. We have put beyond the pale the use of poison gas or torture and devised the Arms Trade Treaty for the trade in illegal weapons. It is time to address this aspect of conflict and to treat sexual violence as an issue of global peace and security. The biggest obstacle we face in this campaign is the idea you cannot do anything about it that you cannot humanise hell, that there is nothing we can do to endwarzonerape. But there is hope, and we must dispel this pessimism. Over the last two years, working with NGOs, the UN and faith groups, we have brought the weight and influence of Britain to bear globally as no country ever has done before on this subject.

Over 150 countries have joined our campaign and endorsed a global declaration of commitment to end sexual violence in conflict. We brought together over 120 governments and thousands of people at a Global Summit in London in June 2014, the first of its kind. And in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Colombia we are seeing signs of governments being prepared to address this issue by passing laws and reforming their militaries.

What would it say about our commitment to human rights in our own society if we knew about such abuses but did nothing about them? And how could we be at the forefront of preventing conflict in the world if we did not act to prevent something that causes conflict in the future? Sexual violence is often designed to make peace impossible to achieve and create the bitterness and incentive for future conflict. Dealing with it is not a luxury to be added on, it is an integral part of conflict prevention, a crucial part of breaking a cycle of war. And it has to go hand in hand with seeking the full political, social and economic empowerment of women everywhere, the greatest strategic prize of all for our century.

In 2014 we commemorated those who died in the First World War and their suffering. There is no more fitting thing we can do for the sake of that memory than to face up to the hell of conflict in our lifetimes. We have never had to mobilize our population to fight in the way their generation did, and so we have been spared their painful burdens. But how much more incumbent does that make it on all of us to fight with the peaceful tools at our disposal on behalf of those who are denied, through no fault of their own, the security we consider our birthright.

Just as inWilberforces day, it will always be necessary for Britain to be at the forefront of efforts to improve the condition of humanity. The search for peace and an end to conflict requires powerful ideas and the relentlessdefenceof our values, as much it does negotiations and summits between nations. We could be heading for such turbulent times that it will be easy for some people to say we should not bother with development or tackling sexual violence in conflict or other such issues. There will always be the pressing crisis of the day that risks drowning out such longterm causes. But, in fact, addressing these issues is crucial to overcoming crises now and in the future and it will be an increasingly important part of our moral authority and standing in the world that we are seen to do this.

Just because there are economic crises and major social changes does not mean we or our partners can squander any day or any year in producing the ideas as well as the laws that prevent conflict and deal with some of the greatest scourges of the twenty-first century, and we must do so with confidence: for it remains the case that free and democratic societies are the only places where the ideas and the moral force we need can be found. Our times call for a renewal of that effort for just and equitable solutions to conflict, the driving down of global inequalities and the confronting of injustices.

Every day we have to start again: there is not going to be a day in our lifetimes when we can wake up and say this work is complete. We have to overcome the sense of helplessness that says that vast problems cannot be tackled. We have to awaken the conscience of nations and stir the actions of governments. In an age of mass communication this is a task for every one of us. Whether we are in government, are diplomats, journalists, members of the armed forces, members of the public, students, faith groups or civil servants, every one of us is part of that effort.

In Britain, our restless conscience should never allow us to withdraw behind our fortifications and turn away from the world but should always inspire us to strive for peace and security, to maintain our responsibilities, seek new ways of addressing the worst aspects of humanbehaviourand live up to our greatest traditions.

This essay is taken from The Moral Heart of Public Service, edited by Claire Foster-Gilbert and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, priced 15.99, on 21 June 2017.

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From Beyonc to Little Mix (via Kendall Jenner): how protest went pop - New Statesman

No time to work The Hindu Nonetheless, the scepticism aroused by the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Amendment Act, 2016 over the government's commitment towards complete abolition of child labour will persist. The ILO treaties are about the minimum age at which a ... and more »

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Huge telephone bills ruining your holiday budget, an Internet connection not delivering on its promises: these experiences will be soon old memories.The EU has reached an agreement to abolish roaming charges across Europe from June 2017.

The announcement follows a statement from the European Council earlier this year in which it was indicated that the charges would remain in some form until 2018, but Wednesday's agreement brings that date forward by more than a year.

Welcoming the agreement, The EU Commission Vice-President for the Digital Single Market AndrusAnsip, said, "Europeans have been calling and waiting for the end of roaming charges as well as for net neutrality rules. They have been heard. We still have a lot of work ahead of us to create a Digital Single Market. Our plans to make it happen were fully endorsed by Heads of State and Government last week, and we should move faster than ever on this."

The EU Commissioner for the Digital Economy and Society, Gnther H.Oettinger, said: "I welcome today's crucial agreement to finally end roaming charges and establish pragmatic net neutrality rules throughout the EU. Both are essential for consumers and businesses in todays European digital economy and society. We will build on these important foundations in our forthcoming review of the EU's telecoms legislation."

The EU has worked steadily over the past number of years to tackle roaming charges on behalf of consumers.

Since the 2007 introduction of the Eurotariff, charges have been consistently reduced as caps were placed on the maximum permissible amount operators could impose on consumers. Themost recent reduction came into effect in July 2014.

These caps have seen fees for roaming drop by 80% since 2007, with data roaming charges in particular falling by up to 91%. For context, the data roaming market has grown by 630% in that time period.

As part of its Connected Continent drive, the EU is working to develop a telecoms single market.

Ending roaming charges has been a priority for some time, as it seeks to remove barriers to mobile phone use abroad. It is hoped that not only will this alleviate a burden on consumers, but also provide greater accessibility for businesses and start-ups to sell online to consumers travelling abroad.

The agreement will see roaming charges cease to exist in the EU from 15thJune 2017. In order to achieve this, a number of technical conditions must be fulfilled.

Most particularly, the institutions are seeking a thorough review of the wholesale roaming market so as to ensure that the abolition of roaming fees is sustainable throughout the Member States.

The agreement also proposes a fair use safeguard. This is with a view to preventing permanent roaming, i.e. situations where a consumer buys a SIM card in another Member State in order to avail of favourable domestic tariffs in their country of residence, or a consumer continuing to use a domestic subscription while based abroad.

Under the fair use safeguard, a usage limit will be put in place and once this is reached, operators may then charge a small basic fee. The Commission stressed that this fee will be much lower than current caps and will likely be further decreased over time.

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EU abolishes roaming charges across Europe - Myjoyonline.com

President Petro Poroshenko has instructed the Cabinet of Ministers to verify the efficiency of abolition of additional registration for the foreign drugs registered in the countries of the EU and G7.

This has been reported by the press service of the Head of State.

"I instruct the Government to thoroughly verify the efficiency of abolition of additional registration for the best foreign drugs and their prices," Petro Poroshenko said. He added that the government officials must explain the difference in prices in case there is one.

The Head of State noted that the medical system requires urgent reform. However, several important steps in this issue have already been made: registration of drugs registered in the EU and G7 countries has been abolished. "This is a resolute step to overcome corruption and bureaucracy," the President emphasized.

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Poroshenko instructs Cabinet to verify work of simplified registration of medicines - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news