Cultural Olympiad

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but there are things going on this summer other than sport. Now I know some of you are really caught up in a bunch of guys kicking around an inflated pig’s bladder in Eastern Europe, and I know that the Olympic archery and pentathlon finals are all marked on our calendars. I mean if you base your opinion on the media coverage we are all going nuts for the Olympics. But in truth some of us aren’t.

Disappointingly, while the BBC has been covering every painstaking mile of the Olympic Torch Relay – which isn’t actually a relay as there are multiple torches and not just one – it hasn’t made a big thing out of the London 2012 Festival. The Festival is the culmination of the Cultural Olympiad which (running since 2008) has been attempting to inspire creativity especially in young people.

The festival is made up of over 12,000 events revolving around art, dance, theatre, food and every other form of creative endeavour you can imagine. These events are scattered around the country and quite a lot of them are free. You’d think a bigger thing would be being made of this, but no.

Now I know that hosting the Olympics is a big thing. We’ve been working on it for seven years, spent a lot of money on it and we want it to go well. And of course I understand that it’s something to be proud of. The last time the Olympics were held in London was in 1948 and I know that I will probably never see it here again in my life time. It is impressive. But it doesn’t change the fact that I just don’t care about sport.

What I do care about is cultural stuff. I love museums and castles and visiting an art gallery is for me a nice way to spend an afternoon. In the UK we are lucky enough to have a lot of cultural things to visit and nice things to look at. It’s why you can’t walk across Parliament Square without getting caught in a throng of tourists, and why getting a seat on the underground is nigh on impossible. People want to come and see buildings that are older than the whole of the United States. They want to pay to see them.

The government must realise this. They must realise that it would be a perfect way to get back some of the money – which we don’t have – which we have spent to build the Olympic Stadium. There will be plenty of time in between the various sporting events in which visitors to the UK can potter off to Windsor or Stratford-Upon-Avon or some other cultural centre . And with the summer kicking in, so can lots of native British people as well, if the government and or the media actually start suggesting that it might be a good idea.

Granted that would cut into amount of time where we can be informed that the Olympic Torch is now somewhere between Leeds and Sheffield. But I really don’t think many people would actually mind that.

It appears to be the 1980's again.

We haven’t all gone back in time to the 1980s again have we? I mean there hasn’t been a time storm of some sort has there? I ask this because on top of the financial crisis, royal weddings and an (unpopular) Conservative government, we’re yet again getting into an argument with Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

This time however the fight is not going to be a physical one. This may have something to do with the fact that as things stand now the Argentinean army could apparently just about hold off Paraguay for just over a day. At which point it would be invaded, by Paraguay. So this time the Argentinean President Cristina Kirchner is attempting to wrest control of the Falklands via stealth and politics. She has ordered a blockade of all ships flying a British flag and has made speeches in front of the UN, presumably hoping that sooner or later we’ll just get fed up and cede control of the Falklands to Argentina in the hope that they will then stop going on about the issue. .

But here is the major sticking point. Argentina keeps talking about how they are keen to “negotiate” an agreement with the British government. However the two governments have a different understanding of the purpose of such negotiation. For the Argentineans the issue is how Argentinean sovereignty over the islands can be achieved. As they see it, the islands are part of their continental shelf and were stolen from them by the British in 1834. For the British the issue is how an agreement about the future of the islands can be achieved that respects the fact that the inhabitants of the Falkland Islands, many of whose families have lived on the islands for six or seven generations, wish to remain subjects of the British crown rather than be ruled by Argentina.

The Argentineans, it seems, don’t care about the people who actually live on the Falklands. In a guest column written for the I on Thursday the Argentinean Ambassador to the UK, said that the UK could not “shield behind the so-called self-determination of the islanders when no such [UN] resolution has recognised such a right.”  The crux of her argument is that as the Falkland Islanders are not the original inhabitants of the islands, but rather the remnants of a colonial take over, they do not have the right to say who they wish to be governed by. Well we would ask the original inhabitants. But they’ve been dead for several hundred years. Of course, Argentina is not exactly the country to make noises about colonial hangovers seeing as their whole nation is a hangover from the Spanish governance of South America.

At the thirtieth anniversary of the end of the Falklands conflict, the Prime Minister promised that the UK would stand by the Falklands what ever happened. I don’t think anything will happen. However at the same time, I don’t believe the Argentinean Government is going to back down any time soon as the current situation is a political gold mine for them. Continuous rhetoric about “reclaiming Argentinean territory” earns President Kirchner a lot of support from the electorate, while she knows that she will never actually have to do anything except keep talking about it. A win-win situation for any politician.

York Against Hate

Universities are places of learning where people go to be educated, learn more about things that interest them and develop a better understanding of other people’s views and opinions. This may have been the motivation behind the University of York’s Islamic Society inviting one Yusuf Chambers to speak to one of their meetings this past evening.

However University is also supposed to be a place where one can grow, learn more about yourself and above all else, be yourself and feel free. That is why members of the University’s Jewish, and LGBT communities were outraged at the decision to invite the man known to many as Brother Yusuf. For you see Mr Chambers and the organisation he helped found the Islamic Education and Research Academy, has both spoken out against Jews, and condemned homosexuality, calling for homosexuals to be executed in order to keep society “pure.” He has also stated that adulterers should be flogged. These punishments are most often used against women, an opinion that enraged many female students.    

The IERA, a dawah organisation which seeks to educate people about Islam and its beliefs, also has a rather sketchy past. It has been the subject of numerous protests and was asked to leave a hotel in Toronto following an outcry over their anti-Semitic and anti-homosexual beliefs, a fact that the Islamic Society executive would have been able to discover with a simple five minute internet search.

 In a statement released by the University Student’s Union, it was claimed that it shouldn’t “be the Union’s responsibility to ‘vet’ who students can and cannot hear speak on an arbitrary basis,” though they admitted that they had to balance this with their responsibility to ensure that hate speech should not occur on campus.

At the same time the LGBT society issued a statement saying that the LGBT community must “tread carefully so as not to restrict anyone’s right to seeing a speaker that they wish to see.” However it was also stated that this was not so much an issue of free speech as safety and decency. The statement urged the LGBT students on campus not to picket the event, but rather to attend with “a hostile question in mind and to pounce at him intellectually and not practically.”

Regardless a picket – organised collaboratively by female, Jewish and LGBT students on campus – did take place under the title of York Against Hate. According to one source, there were ten to fifteen students there are various times, some with placards and some who went in to the talk to challenge Mr Chambers.

The University and the Union – who it seems, did not follow proper procedure with regards to announcing upcoming events – chose to hide behind the 1986 Education Act which requires the university to encourage divergent views and debate. The exact wording is thus, that universities, polytechnics and colleges shall,

·         “Take such steps as are reasonable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers.

And that

·         “The use of any premises of the establishment is not denied to any individual or body of persons on any ground connected with

A: The beliefs or views of that individual or of any member of that body; or

B: The policies or objectives of that body.

While it would be possible to argue a violation of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act of 2008 with regards to the hate speech amendment, this isn’t really a question of free speech. It also doesn’t matter a jot that the university made it clear that they needed to be careful “the views ascribed to speakers are genuinely theirs, rather than “guilt by association” and that these views are pertinent to the context.” What matters is that the University of York allowed a speaker to be invited who openly believes that a portion of the university’s student body don’t deserve the same rights as others and that they are in fact a second class of citizen.

Universities are supposed to be a place where a person can feel safe to be themselves. A transitional period between childhood and adulthood, between home and independence where students are free to explore, learn and grow, where they are free to be whoever they want to be without fear of reprisal or bullying, while knowing that the University – and the Student Union – will have their back if they are made to feel that they cannot be themselves or they are in some way wrong or abnormal. The University of York and the YUSU has failed in this regard. It has let down its student body.

The process of publicising upcoming events at the University of York clearly needs to be looked into as they obviously did not work on this occasion. I would also hazard that an investigation into the Islamic Society Executive and their vetting of speakers needs to take place as this is the second time that the society has invited extremist speakers to address them.

However I suspect that the second won’t happen, which leads into a final point, that I want you to think about. If a society had wished to invite a far right Christian speaker, such as a representative of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Koran burning Pastor Terry Jones, the University would not have upheld the invitation and it most certainly would not have received the backing of the Student Union. So why did the Islamic Society’s invitation received such full support?

I’ll leave you to think about that. Let’s just say that there are different degrees of “free speech.”

Rule Britannia

Last week saw the celebrations of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and among all the flag waving, fireworks and renditions of Land of Hope and Glory – kudos to the members of the Royal College of Music Chamber Choir who kept on singing despite being on top of a boat in the middle of a downpour during the river pageant – there was also a sudden upsurge in the number of republicans showing up in the media. That’s republicans with a little r by the way; people who wish to abolish the monarchy, not republicans with a big R. That’s the American political party.

In the name of accuracy I should probably point out that republicans have been around for a while. It’s just that the Jubilee – a celebration of everything that they can’t stand – gave them an excuse to make a fuss. Not that it did them much good. Apparently those who attempted to protest at the river pageant last Sunday were heckled by pro-monarchists and subjected to continuous renditions of God Save the Queen.

Republicans claim that the monarchy is an outdated and archaic institution, a relic of a more unequal time which has no place in modern society. They claim that the only way for a country to grow up and move forward is by having a democratically elected head of state. They argue that the monarchy is unequal and unrepresentative and they don’t understand why power (not that the royal family has that much power) should be concentrated in the hands of an unelected minority through an accident of birth. There are two major snags with their arguments.

1: More Democracy is better.

Republicans claim that having an unelected head of state no longer works in modern society. As they see it, in a time where everyone has a vote it is illegitimate to have authority because of the circumstances of your birth rather than because you have been elected and thus have a mandate from the people. These are interestingly the same arguments used by those seeking to reform the House of Lords. It is argued that more elections make for a better democracy.

The key problem with this argument is that the British public don’t like to vote as it is. A mere 30% of the electorate turned out for the recent local elections and it is only slightly better than that in general elections. There is a serious problem with voter apathy in this country that needs to be dealt with first. If people want this country to be more democratic than they need to find a way to get people involved with politics.

Simply having more elections will not solve this problem. All that will happen is the same small number of people will turn out and therefore the MPs, Senators (or whatever they end up being called) and the elected President, far from being representative of the nation as a whole, will face the same problem as our current politicians and end up representing a tiny minority. This leads nicely into my next point.

2: Equality and Representation

Another argument is that an elected President would allow for more equality and a wider representation of British society as anyone would have the opportunity to become head of state rather than this possibility being confined to the members of one family. However, is this really true?

If we take the US Presidents as an example, there is one thing you notice very quickly. They all tend to come from the upper classes. While it is true that Abraham Lincoln never went to college and Lyndon Johnson graduated from Texas State, the majority of Presidents have attended privileged Ivy League institutions such as Harvard and Yale. Whilst it is also true that Presidents Clinton and Obama did not have the best starts in life, they did drag themselves up and by the time they were elected to office, were at least a little bit removed from the lower classes of American Society.

It seems that apart from the constitutional requirements that a potential President has to fulfil – being over thirty five and a natural born American citizen - there are certain unofficial requirements relating to class, wealth and education that have to be fulfilled as well. If you come from a big political family such as the Kennedys or the Bushes you have an even bigger advantage. As much as it appears that anyone can become President, the fact remains that it is the preserve of a very small minority of the citizenry. It is unlikely you’ll see a President elected who graduated from Ohio State. In fact far from being more equal and representative, the American presidency is quite hypocritical, claiming to be something it obviously isn’t. Whatever sins the Royal Family have committed they have never claimed to be anything other than what they are. 

The same would be true here. The government and politics as a whole is already dominated by rich, white Oxbridge educated males. Why do we assume that having an elected head of state would suddenly mean that everyone would have a shot at the role? The same group of people who already control British politics would simply have a new role to fill.

The monarchy may not be perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got. It transcends every day party politics, acting – if I may borrow a line from the Spanish constitution – as the living embodiment of Great Britain. I believe that it would take a scandal of mammoth proportions before the British public would even consider getting rid of it. No matter what the republicans say.