Social Justice - a new authoritarianism

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I got to thinking about social justice. Partly this was because I'm doing a debate on Wednesday with someone who comes billed as a 'Social Justice Campaigner' and partly because it's a term I see used again and again but which seems to avoid clarity or definition. On the one hand we can point to a right wing version as typified by the Centre for Social Justice:

By combining hands-on experience, public involvement, academic rigour and effective political engagement, the CSJ has been able to work from a foundation that has sparked radical public policy change. Since 2004 we have set out over 800 ideas – published across more than 20 research themes – that would make a transformative difference in people’s lives. Many of these recommendations have influenced the political process significantly, revolutionising a tired debate about poverty and social justice. These include: radical welfare reform through Universal Credit; early years intervention programmes; political commitments to prevent family breakdown; pioneering education reforms; efforts to improve the rehabilitation of offenders and drug addicts; action on street gangs; and support for people with unmanageable debts.

I see this as having the same relationship to Conservatism as Methodism appears to have to English protestantism - at least in so far as I understand these things. Indeed, the CSJ does come across as drawing on a Christian conservative tradition that might be associated with 19th century 'muscular Christians', with G K Chesterton or, more recently, with Pope John Paul II. I'm being careful here because the mixing of religion and politics is always tricky. What is clear from the CSJ position on social justice is that it is about poverty and exclusion rather than inequality per se.

The other hand contains the left wing world of our social justice campaigner - the one I'm seeing on Wednesday is from this organisation:

JUST is a groundbreaking initiative set up by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust in 2003 to promote racial justice in West Yorkshire. Since its establishment JUST has become a leading voice in the North promoting racial justice, civil liberties and human rights. The fall-out from the 2001 Northern Uprisings and the introduction of draconian legislation following the 7/7 London bombings has resulted in civil liberties and human rights increasingly becoming an integral part of our work in the region.

In an era where the Community Cohesion and Prevent agendas have become the key paradigms of government policy and the Race and Institutional Racism agendas have been rolled back by the State, the adverse impact on Black and minority ethnic people has been unprecedented.

BME people continue to be over-represented in poverty, discrimination, NEETS, criminal justice, stop and search, education, poor health and other poor quality of life outcomes. Instead of investment in resources and funding to address the generational and historic systemic and structural discrimination that BME people experience, the government’s ‘war on terror’ has ‘criminalised’ BME and particularly Muslim people and its community cohesion policy has put the burden of good race relation on visible minorities.

We're in a very different place here from the CSJ. Instead of the focus on poverty we have an emphasis on inequality - the view that government and other institutions are contributors to the lack of justice faced, in this case, by BME communities. And we can encounter the same language from others advocating for LGBT, for women's rights and even for religious minorities (this is hinted at with JUST West Yorkshire saying "...particularly Muslim people....").

The question here is whether we have two entirely different definitions of social justice or whether there is a common theme between the anti-poverty positioning of the CSJ and the minority rights approach of JUST West Yorkshire. I did trawl through the philosophical underpinnings of the idea - from John Rawls backwards (always best to work backwards with philosophy) to Locke and Hobbes via Rousseau. As usual with philosophy it's about a penetrable as six-inch thick steel plate but the themes of poverty and equality (or equity) were common as was this idea of a 'social contract'. Indeed this latter concept seems to me quite the central consideration.

The problem is that this social contract is every bit as nebulous as the idea of social justice. Not only is the contract not written down but there seems to be some confusion as to whether it applies to all of humanity or merely to parts of humanity. Is the social contract something sitting at the level of the neighbourhood (say Cullingworth), region or nation? And is the General Will that Rousseau talks about essentially a vocalisation of that social contract? Finally, who interprets or enforces the social contract and how do we know that reflects the General Will?

I'm saying all this, not because I want to answer all those questions (I'm not sure we can), but rather because we need to understand that, if social justice is the enforcement of Rousseau's social contract, it can only be done through authoritarian means and through the preference for communal rights over individual rights. To do this someone - or some organisation - has to become the arbiter of what is or isn't a breach of that social contract or, in other words, is contrary to social justice.

Sometimes all this is pretty straightforward because there is no conflict between individual and communal rights - for example in arguing that it's wrong to exclude someone from employment on the basis of skin colour, gender or sexual preference. But where personal views (and our right to express them) are concerned we can only enforce social justice by denying individual rights. Thus the 'social justice right' may wish to prevent (or actively discourage) 'non-traditional' family arrangements and the 'social justice left' may want to stop the expression of support for such a traditionalist position. Both positions deny people a right - either to live in a non-traditional family or to express opposition to that idea.

The problem is that both sides invoke (at least implicitly) the idea of the social contract in defence of their position. Yet the positions are - for essentially the same reason on each side - mutually exclusive. The left says excluding the non-traditional is unfair or unequal while the right says that the non-traditional arrangements promote poverty and therefore inequality. Social justice cannot be delivered unless one or other position is rejected.

For the right this means championing stable communities, families (in the old-fashioned sense of the word) and often the fear of god. Hard work, community involvement and self-sacrifice in the interest of future generations are held as essential virtues - the social contract is an unwritten commitment to the whole community and that community is local, limited and seeks to be resilient. Social justice is served where everyone is part of secure, supportive and strong communities.

The problem is that this leads to social stasis, to paternalism and to the exclusion of people who reject (or have a different idea of) the essential community virtues. Plus, of course, someone has to define and enforce those virtues, to be the authority.

In the case of the left social justice is served by rejecting homogeneity, placing equality as the primary virtue and ensuring that no actions or speech undermines this primacy. The result is - or aims to be - a homogeneity between communities rather than within communities. Anything that questions the primacy of equality as the social contract's purpose cannot be permitted. Moreover the meaning of equality becomes fluid - it is determined by authority rather than by the reality of access to opportunity. As a result individual rights become secondary as communal rights come to dominate society. It is acceptable to 'no platform' a speaker if it is feared their words might contest the enforcement of the social contract - in ensuring social justice.

I had thought to draw the philosophical line forward down a different route to Giovanni Gentile's transition from Actualism to Fascism where the question of who interprets the General Will was answered though the idea of 'the leader'. The problem, however, is that this takes us - implicit authoritarianism aside - away from the modern position where leadership is more complex. Rather than a single identified leader, we have a sort of groupthink - a hive mind perhaps - that provides the basis on which the General Will is decided and the social contract upheld. Because this collective has market power, authorities bow to the pressure it asserts and exclude those who fail to conform with the perceived General Will.

In the end social justice is really something desired and doesn't need to be defined. The politician who proclaims he is fighting for social justice secures approval by seeming to support some sort of community betterment. The reality is that, whether from right or left, social justice is illiberal and excluding - either by enforcing an intra-communal conformity (the right) or by insisting on an inter-communal conformity (the left). The biggest loss here is, for me, individuality and the accompanying rights to speak, act and live freely.

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General Specific - thoughts on Islam and society

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"O mankind! We created you from a male and a female and made you into nations and tribes that you may know and honor each other (not that you should despise one another). Indeed the most honorable of you in the sight of God is the most righteous." Koran Chapter 49, Verse 13

Yesterday evening’s therapeutic visit to the Club finished with an enjoyable interaction – OK, dear reader, spat – with the neighbour. About Muslims. Or more importantly about General Specific.

The contention is clear – because it says somewhere in the Koran that non-Muslims have to be killed, therefore all people laying claim to being a Muslim subscribe to this and are a threat to our peace and democracy. Now, for the purpose of what follows, I am taking the existence of the offending chapter as a given. In truth I don’t know whether or not such a passage exists, what its context might be and how those who concern themselves with such matters interpret the chapter’s meaning.

My problem with all this is pretty simple. And to illustrate this I will make use of a book I have read – the Bible. Now you all know that the bible says that adulterers should be stoned to death:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. (Deut 22: 23-24)

Now, I’m pretty sure that if I bob along to talk to Cullingworth’s vicar (I think we have one now they’ve rebuild the new vicarage on the site of the nice one they knocked down), he will not be saying that your typical Cullingworth adulteress should by lined up in the Rec and bricked to death. While there may be subscribers to the Old Testament view – perhaps in the wackier outposts of American fundamentalism or in one of the nuttier African churches – I can say with some confidence that almost all Christians reject the requirements of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, at least in respect of stoning.

It’s all right, I’m ahead of you! The Koran also prescribes lapidation as the punishment for adultery and, as we know, in some Muslim countries such punishment is used – most notably and recently in Iran. So perhaps I was wrong in last night’s debate? Perhaps all Muslims do subscribe to the absolute, inviolable truth of every word within the Koran? I do not know but I am sure that those arguing that specific examples – a stoning case, a bearded mullah calling for jihad in a grainy video or a leaflet handed out by over-enthusiastic students – indicate a general position are no better informed.

It may be the case that all ‘proper’ Muslims subscribe to this view. But that makes it tricky for the many Muslims who find the prescription of stoning and the calls for endless, eternal, violent jihad something less than appealing. I do not believe that the good men and women I encounter – some devout Muslims, others Muslim by culture and tradition if rather lax in their practice – are engaged in some lurid conspiracy to destroy freedom and democracy. And I am encouraged by some Muslim writers:

Moderate Muslims aspire for a society – a city of virtue -- that will treat all people with dignity and respect. There will be no room for political or normative intimidation. Individuals will aspire to live an ethical life because they recognize its desirability. Communities will compete in doing good and politics will seek to encourage good and forbid evil. They believe that the internalization of the message of Islam can bring about the social transformation necessary for the establishment of the virtuous city. The only arena in which Moderate Muslims permit excess is in idealism.

Now this writer may be a lone voice in the wilderness but what we read more accurately reflects what I see and hear from those Muslims I meet. Indeed that same writer has written this encouragement to progress:

In my opinion, Muslims can modernize without de-Islamising or de-traditionalising. India and Japan have shown that societies can modernize without losing their traditional cultures. Muslim societies today have to distinguish between Islam and culture, retain their Islamic essence and reform dysfunctional cultural habits that hinder development, progress, equality and prosperity.

Muqteder Khan is no more the voice of Islam than is Osama Bin-Laden but his writing demonstrates that there is a pluralism of thought within Islam. And that we cannot take a passage from the Koran and from that extrapolate that every Muslim subscribes to a literal interpretation of that passage – any more than we can for Christians or Jews.

When some young men – acting, as they thought, in the interests of Islam – crashed planes into the World Trade Centre, I was sat in a Bradford Council Executive meeting (in the days when we had an all-party executive) discussing the response to Bradford’s riots of 7th July 2001. The link between the two events – while only slight – was not lost on us. We were discussing how better to involve and integrate a large Muslim community while, through an act of terrorism in another country, some other Muslims set up a huge wall between good men like my neighbour and the City’s Muslim community.

However much I point to the good Muslims and argue that you cannot go from the specific to the general, my good neighbours will point to the twin towers, to the bombs of July 2007 and to the stories of stonings and such. And they will say: “explain that then?” And I will be at a loss for words unable to understand how a faith that speaks so clearly of justice and peace can, at the same time, contain some who promote such barbarism, injustice and violence?

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Forget the rhetoric - the fact's say we have a shattered society. Accept the truth and ask what we should do.

Julian Dobson looks at the manner in which the tragedy of Fiona Pilkington has been used by pundits and politicians to provide the basis of arguments in support of particular policies or positions. And Julian focuses on the ‘Broken Britain’ analysis that informs much of the current Conservative leadership’s thinking on social and welfare policies.

Julian Dobson’s analysis is right is one crucial respect – using the specific to make judgements about the general is a dangerous activity in any field and especially in the field of policy-making. Yet this is the default position for much research in social policy – show me an MA dissertation in sociology or social policy that has a quantitative basis and its a rare exception! But, grumbles about the basis for policy-making aside, Julian’s “it’s not broken” argument doesn’t bear much scrutiny – unless of course you take the narrow and rather partisan starting point of 1997.

It seems to me that Ian Duncan Smith’s argument doesn’t solely reflect the failings of the current labour Government but represents a far wider critique of the welfare state as it evolved from the early 1970s to the present day. And Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice makes a compelling case – even for those of us who worry about the muscular Christianity that underlies much of the motivation for those doing that research.

On crime, indictable offences known to the police have risen from around 20/1000 population in 1970 to almost 100/1000 population today. By anyone’s assessment that is a major shift – there is a great deal more crime today than when Julian and I were young! (It is interesting to note that over the same period that crime has increased five-fold the prison population has merely doubled). (source: Trends in UK Statistics since 1900, House of Commons Library)

In the case of male economic activity we see the same trend – roughly a fifth of the male working age population is not economically active today compared to only a tenth back in 1971. There is a great deal more unemployment – systemic, intergenerational worklessness – than there was when Julian and I were young.

I could go on I’m sure and show how levels of teenage pregnancy, single parenthood, divorce, abortion and substance abuse have risen considerably since the 1970s. What we should conclude is that that prescription of new Labour – the promise of New Deal, Sure Start and “Neighbourhood Renewal”- has not resolved the issue. Nor have ASBOs, curfew orders, CCTV cameras, DNA databases or the rest of the surveillance state.It may not be worse but for sure it isn’t better.

Last Friday an innocent, well-brought up young man was kicked nearly to death in a Northern town – it doesn’t matter where this happened but I ask just one question. Should we treat that incident as a single, isolated case? Should we deal with its tragic consequences as one event unconnected with other events on the same Friday elsewhere in England? Should we carry on suggesting that such a young man was just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Or should we conclude that – along with a legion of other assaults, insults, intimidation, bullying and dissolution – we really do have a broken society. And until we address the challenge this poses – to instill that sense of social responsibility, to remake good manners, to encourage self-discipline, to challenge bullying and exploitation – until we let the good values of the majority be enforced, we will continue to read of tragedies like Fiona Pilkington, of cruelties like the killing of Baby P and of the senseless injury to young men who committed the terrible crime of going out for a Friday night drink with their mates.

We can no longer afford to trim and parse, to excuse and explain the failings of our society – it really is a mess. It’s probably broken. And we certainly can’t afford to claim that there is no problem – or not the problem the statistics describe. We can’t go on as we are now with lives destroyed, families ruined and children abused – all because we can’t face up to the need for people to be responsible and our continuing failure to enforce such responsibility.