Sweden: A Home For All Peoples - Or The People's Home?

Premature Celebrations: Swedish Democrats Party members cheer the news that its anti-immigration policies have elevated it to third-largest-party status. Three months after the SDPs election success, however, the centre-left and centre-right parties have come together in defence of Sweden's multicultural dream - thereby excluding the SDP from the mainstream of Swedish political life.

MOST NEW ZEALANDERS are immensely proud of their country’s anti-nuclear policy. So many, in fact, that the National Party, which originally opposed the policy, was eventually required to say “me too”. Indeed, since the late-1980s, such a strong bi-partisan consensus has grown up around New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy that, today, no sensible politician would seriously contemplate knocking it down.

 

Viewed in this light, the ban on both nuclear-powered and armed warships and on nuclear power generation stands as one of the signal achievements of “progressive” New Zealand. Along with votes for women, industrial arbitration and the welfare state, this country’s anti-nuclear stance is held up as proof of New Zealanders’ political enlightenment. It represents the last unequivocal contribution to our reputation as the “social laboratory of the world”.

 

What the anti-nuclear policy is to progressive New Zealanders, Sweden’s incredibly generous immigration laws are to progressive Swedes. Conceived and born in the late-1960s, the hey-day of Swedish social-democracy, Sweden’s commitment to the world’s refugees re-iterated the (long since discarded) promise carved into the base of America’s Statue of Liberty:

 

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me …

 

As with our own anti-nuclear policy, there was an “anti-imperialist” (i.e. anti-American) element to Sweden’s immigration policy. While the rest of the West were creating refugees, Sweden, that beacon of freedom, equality and solidarity in a darkening world, was lifting her lamp “above the golden door”.

 

Sweden’s welcome to “the wretched refuse” of the world’s conflict zones was a source of pride to her progressive citizens. It reinforced everything they believed was special about their country and its internationally acclaimed progressive movement, led by the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SSDP) which had been in office for the best part of forty years.

 

Not surprisingly, the demands of effective political competition led the SSDP’s centre-right rivals to embrace its commitment to the world’s refugees. Like New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy, Sweden’s bi-partisan commitment to progressive immigration and refugee resettlement programmes became politically unassailable.

 

Until recently.

 

As anyone reading Henning Mankell’s Inspector Wallander novels soon discovers, the SSDP’s progressive ideals have never been universally accepted by Swedes. Prior to World War II the country boasted a vigorous and vociferous national-socialist movement, and even the SSDP, in the 1930s and 40s, pursued eugenic policies barely distinguishable from those of Hitler’s Nazis’.

 

Indeed, some have argued that the SSDP’s extraordinary electoral success was based not upon socialist internationalism but upon the party’s key concept of the Folkhem (literally, “People’s Home”). Swedish generosity was for the Swedes and only the Swedes. Socialist “charity” began, and ended, where it belonged – at home.

 

Thus it was that as progressive Sweden opened its golden door to the homeless and the tempest-tossed, that other Sweden, the one that saw itself as a single, albeit vast, extended family, recoiled in dismay, and then in anger, at the sudden (and in many locations overwhelming) influx of foreigners.

 

Far from the metropolitan haunts of progressive Sweden, sprawling, prefabricated refugee camps proliferated. Once naturalised, the inhabitants of these camps moved into the packed social-housing estates of Sweden’s provincial cities. So ethnically and religiously undifferentiated were these immigrant communities that they became effectively self-governing. There are places in Swedish cities where the Police and other emergency services hesitate to intervene. Very unofficially, the Swedes call them “No-Go Zones”.

 

The inevitable electoral response came in the form of the Swedish Democrat Party (SDP). In the recent Swedish General Elections it captured 13 percent of the vote – and the balance of power.

 

The SDP promised to co-operate with the minority SSDP-Green government – but only on condition that Sweden’s immigration and refugee resettlement regime be radically overhauled. The SSDP and their Green allies refused, prompting the SDP to, as promised, reject the new government’s budget. Swedes were poised for their first snap-election since 1958 when the centre-right opposition Alliance Party closed ranks with the centre-left parties to freeze out the anti-immigration movement until at least 2022.

 

This is a dangerous experiment, undertaken by the Swedish political class in defence of the increasingly contested humanitarian ideals of the 1960s. The SDP, now casting itself as the last, defiant, defender of the Folkhem, are rubbing their hands in glee.

 

Political nostalgia cuts both ways.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 2 January 2015.

Defining Dirty Politics

Permanent Interests: If the "Intelligence Community" ever came to the conclusion that an actual, or potential, prime minister is implementing, or, intends to implement, policies inimical to the general and permanent interests of the Crown, then their reaction might very well be to designate the Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition a “threat to national security” and act accordingly.

 

LOOKING BACK over the most tumultuous election year in our recent history, one phrase in particular stands out: “dirty politics”. Yes, it was the name of another of Nicky Hager’s journalistic interventions, but it quickly became something more than that. For close to half the voting public, “dirty politics” became shorthand for everything that’s gone wrong with New Zealand’s political life.

 

But what actually constitutes “dirty politics”? Are we talking about the normal cut-and-thrust of political existence? The wrong-footing of opponents? The strategic shifts of internal support that mark the rise and fall of party leaders? The calculated exploitation of one’s opponents’ personal weaknesses to demonstrate their unfitness to hold political office? The private, off-the-record and entirely unattributable briefings of journalists to effect any or all of the above? Or, are we talking about something else? And, if so – what?

 

I believe that Nicky Hager’s book, Dirty Politics, was written to highlight something more than the normal cut-and-thrust of political life. In my view, Mr Hager’s intention was to draw the public’s attention to the deliberate use by an incumbent Government of its institutional and bureaucratic power to thwart, mislead and, if necessary, disrupt and discredit its political opponents.

 

The politicisation of our supposedly neutral civil service would be a grave development under any circumstances, but the gravity of such behaviour would increase exponentially should the institutions so politicised turn out to be the armed forces, the security services and/or the police.

 

It is especially important that those state institutions whose fundamental remit is the maintenance and protection of “national security” remain utterly aloof from party politics. Precisely because such institutions have privileged access to extremely sensitive and confidential information, any pursuit of their own or somebody else’s private political agenda could easily result in constitutional catastrophe. Those targeted for destruction would be most unlikely to see it coming and, after the event, would have next to no chance of discovering (let alone proving) from whence it came.

 

The constitutional dangers notwithstanding, there is considerable historical evidence that the national security apparatus of the State is particularly prone to developing and following its own political agenda. In the United Kingdom and its former “Dominions” (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) this propensity to politicisation may be traced back to the relationship of the “Crown” to the elected government of the day. The interests of the latter are particular and transitory, while those of the Crown are general and permanent.

 

What’s more, because the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are “realms”, ruled (at least nominally) by the same royal family, the relationship between those pledged to maintain and protect the general and permanent interests of the Crown isn’t simply constitutional – it’s personal. Governors-general, military commanders, directors of intelligence agencies and commissioners of police all swear to “bear true allegiance”  not to the Prime Minister of the day, his or her government, or even to the people of New Zealand – but “to Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors”.

 

That may appear to be a purely formal constitutional distinction, but should the protectors of national security come to the conclusion that an actual, or potential, prime minister is implementing, or, intends to implement, policies inimical to the general and permanent interests of the Crown, then their reaction might very well be to designate the Prime Minister/Leader of the Opposition a “threat to national security” and act accordingly.

 

“Dirty politics”, in the form of a series of “dirty tricks” conceived and carried out by the security services and/or their agents and “assets” would be the result.

 

In practical terms, this “top-down” variety of dirty politics would entail the security services feeding their own highly disruptive and reputationally destructive material into the normal processes of party-political competition. “Politics-as-usual” is, of course, the perfect cover for such extraordinary interventions. Those who object are easily dismissed as naïve, or even hypocritical. “All politics is dirty politics”, becomes the stock reply: “Everybody’s at it.”

 

Ideologically speaking, such top-down interventions are, almost without exception, the work of the Right, and their principal target is almost always the Left, or those disposed to offer the Left meaningful support. These latter targets may include trade unions; a minor political party willing to enter into a coalition with the dominant left-wing party; a newspaper or broadcasting network commissioning investigative journalism to the Left’s advantage; as well, of course, as the unionists, journalists and/or whistleblowers causing all the trouble.

 

From the Zinoviev Letter to Watergate; from Norman Kirk’s “sinister scheme” to the former SIS Director, Warren Tucker’s, 2011 lapse of judgement; dirty tricks have a way of influencing political outcomes.

 

Dirty politics is more than “politics as usual”. Its true purpose is to make sure that ordinary politics is never seriously threatened by the success of extraordinary politics – or politicians.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 December 2014.

Special Effects: A Christmas Satire

Star Quality: "Seriously, Nuriel, that was a really clever special effect. The mortals will still be talking about your 'Star' two thousand years from now."

 

THE SPECIAL EFFECTS DIRECTORATE of Paradise was located several blocks from the actual Throne of God. Its angelic executives did not enjoy the status of the Heavenly City’s heavy-hitters, Gabriel and Michael, but their spectacular contributions to his Mysterious Way had earned them plenty of commendations from the Boss. Why only this morning the Directorate had received an effusive memo from the Throne praising their dazzling contributions to the night before.

 

Uriel, the Directorate’s CEO, handed the memo to his Creative Director, Nuriel, with one of his famous smiles.

 

“Another job well done, brother. The Boss is over the moon!”

 

Nuriel scanned the memo’s contents and chuckled.

 

“I knew the Choir Effect would do the trick. Always a massive logistical effort, but nothing beats the Heavenly Host singing ‘Hallelujah!’”

 

“So true, Nuriel, so true. Those poor shepherds couldn’t believe their eyes!”

 

“The sudden intrusion of celestial power into the corporeal world will do that”, Uriel laughed. “My personal favourite, however, was the Star. That was a masterstroke. Do you remember how stumped we were when we first got this brief? How in Heaven were we supposed to persuade three Parthian wizards to travel all the way from Saba to Bethlehem without a direct summons?’ It’s a very long way to come without one of Gabriel’s special ‘invitations’.”

 

“True enough, but then we realised that those inveterate star-gazers would not be able to resist the lure of a new light in the sky. Once spotted it was only a matter of time before they unearthed all those “ancient” prophecies we’d taken care to deposit in the Saba library. The moment they realised that the Star portended the birth of their long-awaited ‘Messenger’, they couldn’t saddle-up the camels fast enough.”

 

“Yes, but it was the way you made it travel ahead of them that really brought everything together. Solved the problem of how to ensure that everyone got to the same place at the same time. Seriously, Nuriel, that was a really clever special effect. The mortals will still be talking about your “Star” two thousand years from now.”

 

“Not quite as clever as the Boss’s baby though – eh Uriel?”

 

“Shhhh, Nuriel! You know that matter’s strictly classified. Gabriel will have our wings if we start asking the wrong sort of questions about the new-born ‘Son of God’. Our brief was to handle the special effects aspects of his birth. The Hows and the Whys are well-above our pay grade!”

 

“Sure, sure, Uriel – don’t worry. It’s just that I’m puzzled as to why the Boss would want to manifest himself in something as fragile as a mortal human-being? I mean they’re nowhere near as spectacular as a Burning Bush, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, or a Pillar of Fire in the desert. No mortal could mistake the Boss’s messages when embedded in effects like that.”

 

“Not to mention the Parting of the Red Sea! Now that’s what I call a special effect!”

 

Nuriel smiled proudly at the memory.

 

“The thing is, Nuriel, the Boss is entering a new phase in his relationship with these strange creations of his. The last time we talked, He warned me that the day would come when the Special Effects Directorate would no longer be needed. That we’d be reassigned to new and altogether more complex duties.”

 

Nuriel frowned. “When is the Boss planning to do this?”

 

“Oh, don’t worry, brother, we still have plenty of work ahead of us. I tell you, when this baby grows up the Directorate will have its hands full, special effects wise. Indeed, the Boss is expecting our very best work. Water into Wine, Walking on Water, Loaves and Fishes: there’s plenty yet for us to do!”

 

“Sounds like fun.”

 

“Yes, but as the centuries pass the Boss will call upon our services less and less. That’s this little fellow’s job, apparently. To demonstrate a way to access the Divine without the need for heavenly hosts, travelling stars, or miracles of any kind.”

 

“Really? How does this ‘Jesus’ plan to do that?”

 

“I’m sorry, Nuriel, but that’s classified too. All I know is that his death is destined to be as mysterious as his birth. I pressed the Boss for an answer, but all he said was that it is going to require one last, very special, effect of his own.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 December 2014.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

 



Wishing all the readers of Bowalley Road a joyous Christmas Day and a happy and prosperous New Year.



Videos courtesy of You Tube.

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

A Song For Christmas Eve

 

Over By Christmas: This sequence from Oh, What A Lovely War re-enacts the informal Christmas truce of 1914. The generals had said that the conflict that became the First World War would be over by Christmas - and if it had been left to the ordinary men in the trenches, it would have been.

IN THE FROSTY EVENING AIR of Northern France, on 24 December 1914, British troops, hunkered down in their trenches, heard their German enemies' voices raised in song. Peering across No Man's Land they saw lights twinkling from the branches of scores of Christmas trees raised high above the German parapets.

After several tentative approaches, soldiers from both sides met in the middle of No Man's Land where they exchanged cigarettes and shared a swig or two of liquor from proffered bottles.

For close to a week, an informal truce kept Death at bay along miles of the Western Front. "Hey Fritz!" cried the English Tommies, "Merry Christmas!" Out of the mist came the reply: "English soldier! English soldier! Happy Christmas!"

The song the men were singing on both sides of the line that special Christmas Eve was the hauntingly beautiful "Silent Night".

In the spirit of that miraculous moment, 100 years ago, may I wish all the readers of Bowalley Road a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Video courtesy of You Tube

This posting is exclusive to the Bowalley Road blogsite.

Name Recognition

Slave Driver! Sixty-five years ago the name Simon Legree was synonymous with a cruel and tyrannical individual. Harriet Beecher Stowe's slave driving villain was familiar to all who had read Uncle Tom's Cabin - or heard about him in church sermons or at the local union hall. Are we loosing purchase on a cultural repertoire familiar to our grandparents' generation but virtually unknown to their great grandchildren?

WHO IS SIMON LEGREE? Sixty-five years ago just about everybody had heard the name of Harriet Beecher-Stowe’s villainous slave-owner. Nearly a hundred years may have passed since the publication of her celebrated anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but people were still reading it.
 

To summon up the image of a tyrannical slave-driver one had only to invoke Simon Legree’s infamous name. Which is why the vast crowd rallying in support of locked-out Auckland carpenters in February 1949 was so quick to roar its approval when the trade union leader, Jock Barnes, thundered: “We will not bend the knee to the Auckland Employers’ Federation – these upstart Simon Legrees!”

Jock Barnes could have invoked the names of any number of historical and fictional characters in front of that working-class crowd and been entirely confident of their recognition. He could have quoted from Shakespeare or Dickens; made reference to Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte; and his audience would not have wondered who or what he was talking about.
 

Most of all, however, he could have quoted the Bible – the book everybody knew. Had he invoked the characters of Moses and Pharaoh, and called upon the Auckland employers to “Let my people go!”, his listeners would have responded every bit as lustily.
 

On Christmas Day, 1814, above the bright Bay of Island’s beach of Oihi, the Reverend Samuel Marsden conducted the first ever Christian service on New Zealand soil. More than any other import from the European-dominated world, Christianity has defined the cultural evolution of New Zealand society.
 

It was the Christian faith which ensured that Maori and Pakeha would, eventually, come to espouse a set of common moral purposes. Its complex web of insights and values was powerful enough to restrain both the colonisers and the colonised; tempering the inevitable conflicts associated with colonisation and speeding-up the processes of reconciliation afterwards. Indeed, in the Bible’s Book of Exodus Maori prophets found a source of both inspiration and hope that, ultimately, the Pakeha Pharaoh might also be prevailed upon to “Let my people go!”
 

Samuel Marsden was an Anglican missionary, and his Church of England was to play a decisive historical role in Christianity’s spread throughout the North Island. The gospel of peace did not, however, spread as rapidly as the military impact of the musket. Indeed throughout the 1820s and 30s the missionaries and the musket-bearers seemed to be involved in a grim competition to discover who could reap the larger harvest.
 

Historians put the toll of death and displacement arising out of the Musket Wars at between twenty and thirty thousand (out of a Maori population of, at most, 150,000). By the late 1830s, as more and more tribes acquired firearms, the slaughter was slowed by the emergence of a rough balance of terror. Equally important to the cessation of hostilities, however, was the power of the Christian message of love and forgiveness. Conversion lifted the traditional burden of utu (reciprocity and restitution) from Maori shoulders. Had the tribes not converted it is difficult to say when, or even if, the killing would have stopped.
 

The intimate historical relationship between Maori and the Anglican Church continues into the present day in the form of the Church’s unique constitution. Inspired by the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi, the Anglicans have accorded Maori a decisive role in the governance of their Church. Some, like Professor Whatarangi Winiata, have argued that the Church’s constitutional innovations should become the model for a reconstitution of the entire New Zealand State.
 

Were the whole of New Zealand as seized of Christian principles as the Anglican Church and all the other denominations, such a prospect would not sound so politically far-fetched. Since the 1970s, however, Christianity in New Zealand has been in steep decline – to the point where, in the last census, less than half the population was willing to identify as such.
 

Now, it might be objected that although only 49 percent of New Zealanders currently identify themselves as Christians, a much larger percentage of the population continues to subscribe to Christian values. But, in the face of what might best be described as New Zealand’s “moral restructuring” can such an optimistic view be sustained?
 

Between 1984 and the present, the prevailing Neoliberal ideology has waged an unceasing war against the Christian values of compassion, forgiveness, solidarity and redistribution. The New Testament’s rejection of wealth and power sits very uneasily with a system whose values are best displayed in the moral squalor of “reality television”.
 

In 1949 New Zealanders could still be roused to moral indignation by a reference to Simon Legree. Their easy familiarity with their society’s religious and literary traditions made them powerfully responsive to moral appeals.
 

Is that still true in 2014?
 

Sixty-five years from now, how will Kiwis answer: “Who is Jesus Christ?”
 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 23 December 2014.

Walking With Each Other

Into The Arms Of  Safety: But what kind of safety? And what manner of arms? How shall this world be healed when the innocent run from the arms of one gunman
 into the arms of another? (AP Photo)

 

IT IS A PICTURE of grief and relief. The fleeing hostage’s pale hands clutch franticly at the arm of the man who is swinging her behind him. The inclination of her body and the agitation of her flailing tresses convey vividly the desperate momentum of her flight. Eyes squeezed shut against the horrors at her back; the first of many gut-wrenching sobs escaping from her mouth, the young woman collapses, weeping, into the arms of safety.

 

But what kind of safety? And what manner of arms? Because the hostage’s rescuer is barely recognisable as a human being. Like the distraught waitress from the besieged Lindt Chocolat Café, he, too, is clad in black. But there the similarities end. The entity into whose arms the fleeing hostage has fallen might best be described as a weaponised biped.

 

If the young woman is the symbol of unprotected vulnerability, her rescuer represents the exact opposite. Every inch of him bristles with armour, weaponry and communications gear. And when he lowers the visor of his helmet what little remains of this two-legged tank’s humanity disappears altogether behind tinted Perspex.

 

Is this what the State has become? A blank and pitiless cyborg bulked up with Kevlar, strapped tight with Velcro and armed to the teeth? Is this really what we, as citizens, have demanded from those set in authority over us? Presented with a threat like the armed hostage-taker, Haron Monis, would we be outraged if the State defended us with anything less?

 

But if these weaponised human beings are indeed our representatives, then shouldn’t we give some thought to how the rest of the world might interpret what they – and we – truly stand for?

 

When we allow our politicians to pass laws that tightly circumscribe the limits of dissent and restrict people’s right to cross borders to uphold what they believe to be freedom and justice (as thousands of men did in the late-1930s to defend the Spanish Republic against its fascist enemies) what kind of values are we proclaiming?

 

And when even more fearsome variants of the weaponised men we send into our streets are deployed abroad to unleash fire and death upon people who have never lifted a hand against them, what should we expect from their families, friends and co-religionists in return?

 

History suggests that human beings generally respond as they are responded to.

 

Monday, 15 December 2014 will long be remembered in Australia for the crimes of Haron Monis. But among Australia’s Muslim community it will be remembered for something else. Hashtag I’ll Ride With you.

 

The Twitter account arose from an incident on a train where a young Muslim woman was observed removing her head-scarf in fear of retaliation for what was unfolding in Martin Place. A non-Muslim Australian citizen, seeing this, followed the young woman and implored her to replace her headscarf. “Don’t worry”, she said, “I’ll walk with you.” This extraordinary display of human solidarity, relayed through social media, saw the creation of #Illridewithyou and very soon tens of thousands of Australians were offering to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their Muslim fellow citizens.

 

Which was the better emblem of Australia? The Kevlar-encased, heavily-armed policemen who thrust a terrified young waitress behind him to safety? Or, the citizen upon whose shoulder a young Muslim woman sobbed her gratitude? Which message offers the better hope of peace and goodwill? The Australian fighter-bombers unleashing fire and death upon the battered remains of Iraq and Syria? Or, #Illridewithyou?

 

In just six days’ time we celebrate the birth of a Middle-Eastern prophet who instructed his followers to do more than repay like with like.

 

On a hillside in Galilee, Jesus of Nazareth told them:

 

You have heard it said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles.

 

For how shall this world be healed when the innocent run from the arms of one gunman into the arms of another? If we would be truly safe, then we must all learn to say: “Don’t worry, I’ll walk with you.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and the Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 December 2014.