Monthly Archives: May 2015

Arts, Books

Book Review: Abattoir Blues by Peter Robinson

ABATTOIR BLUES

Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this. Robinson writes an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this. Robinson writes an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

THE STORY BEGINS with DCI Banks going straight to his office from the airport on his return from holiday. This isn’t because of his ubiquitous work ethic as a dedicated senior police officer, avid and hardworking as he is, but more to do with that he can’t resist the ‘lure of a bloody crime scene’, as well as being happy to escape his messy private life.

Since his marital breakdown to Sharon, Banks has had a few other partners in his life, including the Italian woman whose parents he has just travelled abroad to meet. But while she seems noncommittal, he needn’t worry. Another interesting prospect will soon come his way.

Back at work, DCI Banks quickly reaffirms his effectiveness as leader of the homicide and major crimes team in West Yorkshire. Abbattoir Blues is another example of Peter Robinson who proves his outstanding expertise as a crime writer as he cleverly takes the reader through the intricacies of a complex plot.

Two young men are reported missing, and after some painstaking police work prove that the youths are linked in a major homicide crime. Bloodstains are found in a disused airfield hangar by Peaches the dog as she runs away from her master, Terry Gilchrist, who has a slight disability from an injury sustained in the Iraq war whilst serving as a soldier in the army. A caravan belonging to one of the youths is also burned to the ground. Things quickly become much more sinister.

Then a retired and successful fund manager finds that his £100,000 tractor has been stolen. There is the suspicion that he might be pursuing an insurance payment, or that the wayward son of the nearby farmer looking after the property in his absence might have been involved.

This case is being supervised by the permanently grumpy DI Annie Cabbot, whose ill humour and staid approach stems from the serious injury following a shooting she sustained in a previous case.

The author creates a storyline where Banks is in the habit of reviewing cases with his team. This is a very effective device for keeping the reader abreast of the story, and keeps the reader guessing as to what might happen next: ‘We’ve got a stolen tractor, two young men we’d like to find and talk to and the makings of a suspicious death at an abandoned airfield.’ The idiosyncrasies of the story are by no means obvious that these events are linked to a single major crime.

Robinson deserves huge credit for his meticulous approach and how a police operation of this nature might unfold. Sometimes the difference between fiction and reality is paper-thin. Peter Robinson’s Abattoir Blues is a clear example of this.

That summary holds good until the various themes are brought together by a fatal accident on a country road. The van involved was collecting animal parts from farms to take them to an abattoir when it skewered out of control and careered over the edge of a cliff-face. Following a search by police, the van also contains human remains. The various incidents hitherto are now linked and forged into a single case.

Unfortunately, though, the task of touring the many abattoirs to find the source of the remains goes to the team’s vegetarian, who finds it demanding and difficult to deal with. Others in the team have issues too. The hapless DC Dougal Wilson is the spitting image of Harry Potter and always becoming the butt of the joke, both with fellow officers and members of the public.

Gradually, a list of suspects emerges. One of them is Malcolm Hackett who has changed his name to Montague Havers, to become less ‘comprehensive school’ and ‘more Eton’. His links to the financial world and to the former trader turned farmer who had his tractor stolen helps to unravel a case that has many twist and turns before it is finally solved. Deceit and deception, unabridged differences in the background of the story’s main character, and the subtle nature by which Robinson writes all add to an excellent novel you’ll want to read in as few sittings as possible.

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Britain, European Court, Government, History, Human Rights, Politics, Society, United Nations

Celebrating 800 years of the Magna Carta: why would Britain contemplate leaving the ECHR?

MAGNA CARTA & ECHR

The 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta will be celebrated in Britain this year. This was the treaty signed between King John and a group of rebellious barons in 1215 that guaranteed British citizens a range of freedoms and civil rights. One of the 25 guarantors of the Magna Carta was the Earl of Winchester, Saer de Quincy, whose ancestors were from France. De Quincy fought King John when he failed to respect the Magna Carta and it all contained, and asked the French prince Louis to lay claim to the English throne. Whilst on a crusade, and far away from home, De Quincy died in 1219.

As a crusader today, De Quincy would probably have been labelled a foreign fighter by the intelligence services and would never have made it to the Kingdom of Jerusalem, having been stopped by border control as he attempted to leave the UK. His attempts to have King John of Runnymede replaced by a French king would have landed him in jail under anti-terrorism laws. And no doubt GCHQ, the intelligence services listening outpost in Cheltenham, would have kept him and his fellow barons under 24/7 surveillance as a threat to national security.

Today Magna Carta (and the accompanying legal presumption of habeas corpus) is celebrated as one of the most important documents in the history of civil rights. It is widely seen and accepted as being the precursor to later conventions that protect human rights and the rule of law, including the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and, more recently, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Magna Carta, though, was never meant to protect all the people, whereas the UN and European documents gives equal protection to all citizens, regardless of their status in society.

Today, too, we don’t need charters to protect Barons against the abuse of power by Kings. But we do need laws that protect citizens against abuse of power by governments, and we need not only national laws, but European and international ones.

David Cameron symbolises Magna Carta as the ultimate expression and mantra of British values. While some Tories are now promulgating the argument that the UK should withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and return to those traditional values, against the backdrop of the Magna Carta anniversary celebrations their arguments are especially ironic. For example, they strongly accuse the ECHR of limiting the freedom of governments, but King John probably complained too about the Magna Carta unduly restricting his absolute freedom to rule as he wanted. But crucially those in power must be bound by law in order to protect citizens from arbitrary rule.

800 years on, the values and principles laid down in Magna Carta have been embraced by large parts of the world. They have become universal and their shared values are at the core of the European Union as a community of citizens. We should be glad that European courts in Luxembourg and Strasbourg protect us against governments exceeding and abusing their powers, undermining civil liberties and the rule of law.

Fundamental rights, the rule of law and democratic principles enshrined into nationhood are frequently violated in nearly all EU member states. In some cases, the violations are serious and systematic. The current Hungarian government is one of the most egregious offenders. In recent years, the media has been critically gagged, electoral law changed to secure an absolute majority for the governing party, political opponents weakened and the independence and impartiality of the judiciary undermined. But there are also many other examples across Europe: the ant-gay laws in Lithuania, the deportation of Roma people from France, the cruel and inhumane treatment of underage asylum seekers in the Netherlands, and the collective disregard shown for the law and civil liberties in many countries’ counter-terrorism policies.

If we become accepting of tolerating torture, secret prisons, rendition, abduction, and indefinite detention without fair trials and representation then we will lose our moral authority. Such blots tarnish Europe’s status as a shining beacon of freedom and human rights in the world. EU governments must be held accountable for such crimes, especially those that are committed in the name of defending democracy.

That is why we need legal instruments to uphold our common values, even if this means that sometimes national authorities are overruled. EU member states voluntarily signed up to these supranational laws and conventions for good reason, namely because it is the essence of democracy that those in power are bound by laws and that their powers are limited. Whilst that may sometimes be awkward, such checks and balances are the vital safeguards which protect us against abuse of power by the state.

As it happens, these principles are not politically left or right-wing, nor are they alien to modern British culture. Quite the opposite: safeguarding citizens’ rights and the rule of law have their roots firmly established in that ancient, famous document that will be celebrated this year. Magna Carta does not set Britain apart from the rest of Europe. It is the expression and very epitome of the common European values that we have all come to embrace.

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Foreign Affairs, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria gas attacks are continuing…

SYRIA & CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Intro: Despite Syria agreeing to dismantle its chemical weapons programme, Bashar Assad is using chlorine against his people

IN 2013 Washington went back on its pledge to strike at the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for having used sarin nerve gas against Syrians in Damascus that summer. Brokered by Russia, the Syrian regime agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Theoretically, the deal has been a success: to date, 98% of the country’s banned substances have been eliminated and destroyed, and Syria has joined the treaty against their use. Yet, as is his convoluted way, Assad still appears to be making a mockery of the agreement.

Since 2014 there have been increasingly frequently reports of chlorine gas attacks against towns and villages held by the rebels, most recently in three separate incidents on May 7th. Chlorine is not a banned substance since it has industrial and commercial uses, but it is strictly prohibited when used as a weapon. Inhalation causes a burning sensation, and fluid can accumulate in the lungs resulting in suffocation.

Then, on May 8th, reports surfaced from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPWC) that unexplained traces of sarin and VX nerve agent had been found at a research centre in Damascus. Suspicions that Syria had failed to declare all its facilities first arose in 2014 when the regime suddenly added four new sites to the list it handed over in 2013.

Few believe the regime’s claims that the rebels are responsible for the chemical attacks, including the one in the summer of 2013 that left hundreds dead. The physical evidence points the other way, too. Chlorine is usually delivered in barrel bombs dropped by helicopters, which only the regime possesses. All have been targeted at rebel-held areas. More recently, the attacks have been concentrated on Idleb, the north-western province where the regime is losing ground.

The international community is deeply troubled. Some members broke down at a recent UN Security Council session when they were shown graphic video images of the aftermath of one attack and heard testimony from doctors who were at the scene. On March 6th the Council passed a resolution expressing ‘extreme concern’ about the attacks and authorising the UN to use chapter VII (military action or sanctions to enforce its decisions) against anyone found responsible.

The UN is now setting up a commission to determine who is carrying out the attacks rather than just whether they actually happened, as has been the case in past investigations. The OPCW and Human Rights Watch are satisfied that chlorine was used in at least three of the several reported instances. Diplomats from America, Britain and France are convinced that the Syrian leader is still using chemicals as a weapon. Assad’s regime is the only government in the world to do so since 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq.

However, there is unlikely to be much more than public censure. It is probable that Russia would veto any chapter VII action, and the appetite by Western countries’ for ousting Assad has greatly diminished since the emergence of Islamic State.

Throughout this long and protracted civil war the regime has carefully calibrated its actions to deliberately avoid triggering western intervention – the sarin attack in 2013 is reckoned to have been far bigger than the regime planned, and only a handful of people have died in the recent chlorine attacks. Using an alternative to conventional weapons also suggests a calculated choreography. Bashar al-Assad is getting away with saying one thing whilst clearly doing another.

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