Author Archives: B Merritt

Let’s join the fashion club; or how ‘Rihanna’s horror show’ may represent retail avant-garde

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This post was contributed by Dr Wendy Hein, a lecturer in the Department of Management.

We are still recovering from the glitz and glamour of London Fashion Week (LFW). Arguably, fashion is becoming the ‘big consumer sport of today’ – a participatory sport allowing us to virtually and materially reinvent ourselves. However, it is still an elite space – only those in the front row or the red carpet can legitimately claim their rightful place. There are a select few who seem to be in ‘the know’, while others are desperately trying to join this ‘club’.

New technologies ‘democratising’ fashion

The importance of fashion enthusiasts has not gone unnoticed in the haute couture circuit, and its doors are ajar to participation from outsiders. We could view this as a ‘democratising’ trend. Thanks to new technologies, we can now experience live shows streamed over the internet; we can select our favourite pieces and create an expressive collage of our ideal ‘me’ on Pinterest/Instagram/Tumblr, and can share it with others on Facebook, Twitter, and the many forms of digital exchange. Understanding the importance of these experiences and the size of the growing fashion industry helps us understand its gravity in today’s society. The good news may be that the trickle down from runway to reality is faster. Yet, the divide between the real insiders and outsiders persists. The magic of the front row may not be the same if it wasn’t for its exclusivity. On the other hand, ‘insiders’ would never be recognised for their competence and taste if it was not for fashion’s many fans.

Fashion collaborations

All of this takes place at a time when retail is struggling. With youth unemployment continuing to hit record figures in the UK, the list of retail closures appealing to youth markets is extensive.  High street fashion has, however, recognised the desire for design from the ‘common crowd’ and numerous collaborations have paved the way towards letting some of this fame and fortune rub off:  Karl Lagerfeld, Stella McCartney, Lanvin, Versace or Marni for H&M; Valentino or Pierre Hardy for GAP; or Mary Katrantzou for Topshop.  The power of celebrity and popular culture has equally been tried and tested by retailers; think Topshop and Kate Moss, New Look and Kelly Brook, or H&M and David Beckham. Rather than a claim to design, these celebrities use their star power to lure customers into the shops.  While some retailers have made inroads to high fashion through collaborations, others have gained their own legitimate place in fashion show lineups. TheUS retailer JCrew has earned its place as a stable contributor toNew York fashion week, and the Olsen twins, as well as our very own Victoria Beckham in theUK have claimed their places amongst the fashion glitterati.

Rihanna and River Island

At London Fashion Week AW2013 we see similar scenarios and even a new mix of the above tried and tested formulae. One of the big surprises came with Rihanna presenting her new designs in collaboration with the UK retailer River Island. Her show certainly received marked attention, but not always positive. Of course, this may have been due to the ‘brand’ that Rihanna seeks to represent – rebellious, untamed and youthful (on a good day) –but may have also been linked to reactions of the high fashion club. The Daily Beast labelled it a ‘horror show’ and a ‘tiresome, underwhelming and uninspired marketing exercise’.  We may go along with the mantra that even bad press is good press, but despite these controversies, the deliberate nature of connecting Rihanna’s developing brand and River Island with the runway certainly found its critics. Serious fashion enthusiasts were quick to comment that this show was, once again, not part of the official LFW lineup. I was fortunate to be asked about my views in an interview prior to the show  and I clearly saw a potential mismatch between high fashion,RiverIsland and Rihanna. The homogeneity of audiences and their expectations may not have worked to their advantage. While there may certainly be promise in connecting the high street with haute couture, and pop star kudos with clothes, bringing all three together without extensive previous record may or may not have paid off. Rihanna and Versace – yes; Rihanna andRiverIsland – yes; but could there be a missing link between Rihanna,RiverIsland and LFW?

Marketing milestone or misplaced experiment?

Whether this experiment goes down as the new ‘retail avant-garde’ that will be adapted by others (possibly more experienced), or whether it will be remembered as a marketing experiment, is questionable. What is clear is that fashion continues to seek its share of the desire and exclusivity produced by art & design, but success may increasingly depend on how this is managed. Whether it was achieved in this instance is now up to consumers to decide.RiverIslandlargely depend on the technologies that have facilitated ‘fashion as a new consumer sport’, and the success of its campaign could highlight to what extent these are embraced by the broader (youth) public. It may also be interesting to observe the potential strategies of the fashion elite in creating a division between insiders and outsiders. As argued above, without this distinction, the exclusivity that outsiders crave may not exist.

Lastly, success may also depend on the price of this exclusivity. Rihanna’s line will hit the shops today (5 March 2013) but as I write this piece, prices are rumoured, but not confirmed byRiverIsland. With a youth struggling to find work, yet a retailer looking for fame in high fashion, I for one can’t wait to find out how this pans out.

Would you camp outsideRiverIsland’s store to get your share of Rihanna’s River Island designs?

The tricky task of achieving life/work balance

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On Monday 25 February Birkbeck held an Athena SWAN mentoring event, primarily aimed at women working in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Professor Annette Karmiloff-Smith, Professorial Research Fellow in the Department of Psychological Sciences, shares her advice, gained over her 36-year career as an academic in Switzerland, Holland and the UK .

 

My experience with mentoring young scientists has been that most females focus on how to balance career with having children, and less often on how to advance their careers, yet of course they should do both. By contrast, males tend to focus mainly on career advancement, rarely raising the problem of balance with family life, yet they too should do both.

The two-body problem

Academics often have academic partners, although the problems are just as difficult when one partner’s career is outside academia.  One lesson I have learnt is that one must discuss everything beforehand.  Don’t wait until the problems arise and resentment creeps in.  Be objective, realising in advance that one of you may get a superb offer in a place where the other cannot find something suitable.  What will happen if that arises?  Whose career will have precedence (certainly not automatically the man’s!)?  How will you find compromises that meet both your needs to some extent, even if not to perfection?  Whose career is more transportable?  All these issues must be faced in advance, without which debates end up in resentment for one party and guilt for the other…. often resulting in a doomed relationship.  You have to ask yourself, which is more important: career or relationship, even if both are important.  The solution isn’t to pretend the issue won’t arise!

Integrating family and career

Many young academics desire a child.  It is often assumed that a busy career means a single child.  In a newspaper article many years ago, Katherine Whitehorn raised the question “one child or many?” and concluded that, if you are a busy professional, it may be better – albeit counterintuitive – to have several children!  She reasoned that a singleton waits desperately for mum (or dad) to come home, whereas several children just muck in together and barely notice their parent is away.  What about maternity leave?  Fortunately, since I was a mother, maternity (and paternity) leave has vastly improved, so you could devote yourself entirely to the new arrival. This is clearly your right, but is it such a good idea?  My advice is that, if you intend to pursue your career, then don’t cut off completely during the maternity leave.  Save a special time each day to check email, read the latest article, jot down notes for your next article or research project.  You are going to have to juggle both once you return to work, so start practising gently now.  Remember that the smaller the baby the more s/he sleeps, so take your baby to special lectures or a conference.  Feed the baby just before it starts and hopefully s/he’ll sleep right through.  Do sit on an aisle seat, though, in case s/he starts screaming!!   And, once you’re back fulltime at work, agree with your partner in advance on how you will both decide who will come home anytime the baby is sick – not automatically the mother!

Focus your research

When you had no home responsibilities, it may have been fine to dabble in numerous research projects, but once there are family responsibilities, it is essential to focus your research. Try to arrange to teach on courses that are related to your research so that your reading serves both.

Avoiding guilt

Remind yourself frequently that you cannot be superwoman!  Keep an eye on your health and remember that sleep isn’t only a time of rest, but that parts of the brain are more active during sleep than wakefulness and that sleep is critical for the consolidation of memory.  Avoid guilt, and learn to say “No” to requests to take on extra tasks.  Protect yourself at this time of your career; you can be an avid volunteer in the future.  Tell yourself that it’s OK to use day-care and, when you drop off your child, leave with a confident stride.  Babies pick up on their parents’ doubts.  Do ask for help when you need it.  You don’t have to prove you can do it all alone.

You never stop being a mum…

A personal ending:  I thought that when my daughters left the nest, had their own careers and families, I could simply get on with my career without a second thought… Alas no!  Now the potential guilt raises its head again:  how do I juggle expected grandmother duties (I have seven) with the pressures of my academic career?  Rest assured, I have no regrets… having children, grandchildren and a busy career have fulfilled my life.

Britain in the EU

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This blog post was written by Dr Dionyssis G. Dimitrakopoulos, Senior Lecturer in Politics and Director of the MSc programme in European Politics and Policy. It summarises parts of the lecture he gave to British diplomats at the Foreign Office on 18 February 2013.

Britain has been described as an ‘awkward partner’ (George, 1994) within the EU but the chequered history of her membership is even more complex. Although it is true that until 1997 there were only two major episodes of positive engagement (the establishment of the single European market in the second half of the 1980s and John Major’s short-lived attempt, upon his arrival at 10 Downing Street, to place the UK ‘at the heart of Europe’) a more thorough understanding of Britain’s 40-year history as a member of the EC/EU ought to be couched not only in contemporary debates on the future of European integration but also Britain’s own past, present and future.

For a start, Britain’s accession to the then European Communities was a sign of an undeclared defeat. As Hugo Young appositely notes,

‘For the makers of the original “Europe”, beginning to fulfil Victor Hugo’s dream, their creation was a triumph.  Out of defeat they produced a new kind of victory.  For Britain, by contrast, the entry into Europe was a kind of defeat: a fate she had resisted, a necessity reluctantly accepted, the last resort of a once great power, never for one moment a climactic or triumphant engagement with the construction of Europe’ (Young, 1998, 2).

Indeed, not only did Britain’s governments shun the opportunity to participate in this process from the beginning – in the 1950s – but their pronouncements were matched by further concrete action: Britain played a major role in the establishment of the European Free Trade Association which was meant to be a counter-weight to the emerging European Communities, and was devoid of a common external tariff and a common trade negotiator vis-à-vis third countries, i.e. two ‘state-building’ features of the EEC. Britain was initially joined by Austria, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, Norway and Switzerland, nearly all of which [i] subsequently became full members of the EC/EU (as did Finland that became a full member of EFTA in 1986 but joined the EU only nine years later).  In addition, far from its usual position as a leading decision shaper in international affairs, Britain has had to apply three times in order to join the European Communities.

Since then, by and large Britain’s membership has been marked by a number of paradoxes or even contradictions: a sceptical member state but also one whose basic preferences are often (though not always) congruent with key developments in the process of integration as indicated by the single market project, successive enlargements, market-based approaches to a series of policy issues, including employment.

More recently, the terms of the domestic debate on Britain’s membership have not only returned to the themes of the late 1980s and early 1990s but can be seen as evidence of the British political elite beginning to catch up with the continental European debate on the future and the finalité politique of European integration – a debate essentially launched by Joschka Fischer’s famous speech at Humboldt University in May 2000. This involves a struggle between the supporters and opponents of essentially two quite different options for the future of Europe, namely neoliberalism and regulated capitalism. Indeed, on the one hand, David Cameron’s recent speech at Bloomberg and other pronouncements made by senior Tories place them firmly on the side of those who support unfettered markets, a neoliberal Europe – that is arguably the essence of contemporary Tory Euroscepticism for they see the EU as an actual or even just potential source of intervention in the economy. As the emerging debate on the UK’s membership of the EU is bound to reveal, when Mr Cameron refers to ‘flexibility’ he actually has in mind what many on the Continent as well as the UK call ‘social dumping’. In that sense, the recent developments in the debate in the UK mark a return to the early 1990s, when the late John Smith, then Labour leader, was castigating the Major-led government for trying to turn the UK into the sweatshop of Europe, trying to compete with Taiwan on low wages, rather than with Germany on skills, as he put in a speech in the House of Commons. The fact that Mr Cameron has singled out the EU’s Working Time Directive makes him particularly vulnerable to that line of attack because that directive (like others in the socio-economic and environmental domains) actually allows individual member states to pursue higher standards. So, if Mr Cameron wants flexibility, this is bound to mean the dilution of standards, not their improvement.

The Labour Party’s response was largely couched in Ed Miliband and his team’s preference for ‘responsible capitalism’ which has a clear social democratic ‘flavour’. This is good news for those who want to have real choices not only in national electoral contests but also the forthcoming European elections for, ultimately, the kind of Europe that we want is inextricably linked to the kind of Britain we want.

References cited

George, S. (1994) An Awkward Partner.  Britain in the European Community. 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Young, H. (1998) This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair. London: Macmillan.

[i] Norway and Switzerland are the two exceptions.

Australia is playing a dangerous game with Sri Lanka

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This post was written by Dr Stewart Motha, a Reader in the School of Law. It originally appeared on the Guardian’s Comment is Free on 21 February 2013.

It’s election year in Australia, and that means open season on boat migrants. Last year, 17,000 people arrived by boat, with a massive surge of 6,500 from Sri Lanka. These numbers have an alarming impact on Australia’s human rights record as the government puts in place draconian domestic measures to deal with the increase, and plays a foolhardy game of building military and security links with Sri Lanka to stem the flow.

Harsh measures for dealing with people arriving by boat are nothing new in Australia. The Howard government set the tone in 2001 by mobilising special forces to seize the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa after it rescued more than 400 refugees from a sinking vessel and brought them into Australian waters. The “Pacific solution” was then introduced, whereby outer islands were excised from the Australian territory for the purpose of migration and judicial review. Refugee claimants arriving by boat at excised territories were mandatorily detained and transported to harsh offshore camps administered by Australia in countries such as Nauru – a practice stopped in 2008, but reactivated last August.

The Australian government is now constructing permanent facilities in Nauru to detain boat migrants, and also runs a detention camp in Manus Island, Papua New Guinea. The PNG opposition were in court last week, challenging the legality of the Manus Island detention centre.

The migration amendment (unauthorised maritime arrivals) bill 2012 now seeks to implement the Pacific solution throughout Australia. What was an exception is to become the norm. A new category of “unauthorised maritime arrivals” will discriminate against people on the basis of the mode of their journey to Australia. If you arrive by boat, you face mandatory detention in a harsh and remote place. Travel by plane and you will be able to apply for a protection visa on arrival. Given most maritime arrivals are from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka, the legal regime effectively implements a de facto form of apartheid based on country of origin (and here, let us note that article 3 of the 1951 refugee convention obliges Australia to fulfil its protection obligations without discriminating on the basis of “race, religion, or country of origin”). As such, the migration amendment bill seeks to implement a staggering legal artifice for a nation that claims to walk tall among the civilised.

The Australian government has also introduced the dangerous practice of forced repatriations of people it claims are not refugees (last September, Human Rights Watch documented the torture of Tamil men and women repatriated to Sri Lanka by the UK Border Agency). These people are returned within 72 hours of arrival, and with “screening” taking place offshore, this happens without any provision of legal assistance for the returnees, or transparency in relation to the work of immigration officials. The risk of refoulement – the return of refugees with a right to protection to their persecutors – is increased, thus flouting the fundamental obligation under the refugee convention.

Australia’s extreme measures have been prompted by a curious surge in the number of people arriving by boat from Sri Lanka. In 2012 around 6,500 people made this arduous journey. In the previous year the number of Sri Lankan arrivals was a mere 211. Department of Immigration statistics indicate that 5,215 of the 2012 arrivals were Tamil, and 1,027 Sinhalese. In the last month, the number arriving has dramatically reduced to a trickle. What explains these fluctuations, and what is to be made of the Australian reaction to it?

Earlier this month, the Australian reported that Australia’s intelligence agencies suspected an official with a high profile close to President Mahinda Rajapaksa was “responsible for authorising numerous boats in the past 10 months, fuelling the surge of asylum seekers from Sri Lanka”. The Sri Lankan government has denied the allegations. The suggestion is that Sri Lanka can “turn on the tap” and “unleash untold asylum boats”. Australia has chosen an unreliable security and surveillance partner.

The politics of people smuggling is hardly ever only about the people being trafficked and those exploiting their desperation. Because of its hysterical attitude to those seeking asylum, Australia has potentially walked into the trap of being held hostage by any authoritarian regime that colludes in people smuggling. The currency they will demand is a blind-eye to human rights violations, favourable diplomatic attention and security partnerships.

The Australian minister for foreign affairs, Bob Carr, visited Sri Lanka in December and announced training for Sri Lankan naval officers on surveillance and intelligence gathering. The shadow minister for foreign affairs, Julie Bishop, visited Sri Lanka last month and praised its postwar reconciliation and reconstruction efforts. It’s one thing for Australia to throw the refugee convention out the window, and another to weigh in on issues such as reconciliation and militarisation in another country. If they want to do the former they should do it honestly; the latter is gratuitous, unnecessary and harmful.

As Australians look ahead to the renewal they deserve in an election year, is it not time to imagine a different, better Australia? Let’s not add another episode of “unutterable shame” to Australia’s archive of atrocity. Instead, let Australia summon up the sentiments of Henry Lawson’s iconic 1891 poem, Freedom on the Wallaby, for today it is not the rebel’s blood but a callous disregard for the vulnerable that “stains the wattle”.

Does the jury system work?

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This piece was contributed by Dr Adam Gearey, a Reader in the School of Law.

Does the discharge of the jury in the Pryce trial suggest that this most ancient of common law institutions has come to the end of the road? The trial judge, Mr Justice Sweeney, was certainly scathing about the failure of the members of the jury to understand basic points of evidence and their role in the trial. It also seems the press are ready to stick the boot in; fulminating against overpaid lawyers who defend the jury trial as a way of justifying fat fees. The point is that we have to take a sober look at these issues, and not listen to the rantings of the gutter press.

The real difficulty is finding an objective way of thinking about the good and bad features of the jury. One way of doing this is by looking at the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (ECtHR). Using Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the court has been busy developing principles that define a fair trial. Given that these are international human rights standards they offer sound principles for thinking about and assessing the work of the jury.

From the perspective of fair trial rights, the jury is – at first regard- deeply problematic. It is a fundamental principle of a fair trial that a decision maker gives reasons for his/her decision. It should then be clear how the law and facts have been interpreted. If the decision maker is wrong, then there may be grounds for an appeal. The jury does not give reasons for its decision.

Does this mean that the jury is fundamentally flawed? This conclusion would be a mistake. A fair trial involves checks and balances. What the Pryce trial shows is that the trial judge himself was able to give jurors directions and guidance- and- when it became clear that the jury was unable to reach a sensible decision, was able to bring the trial to an end.

“Ah”- say the journalists of the gutter press- “the Pryce trial shows that courts are costly and inefficient”; a line of reasoning that always leads to the same kind of conclusion: human rights keep criminals out of prison; stop ‘us’ deporting immigrants etc etc etc.

Step back and think this through.

Whilst the jury is not perfect it is central to the integrity of the criminal trial. Faith in the jury is faith in our fellow citizens to argue about matters and come to a reasonable conclusion. That the jury is also consistent with European human rights law and measures up to an international benchmark is also worth stressing. Jury deliberations may be hidden from scrutiny – a safeguard necessary to allow full and frank discussion of the issues the trial raises- but we should not allow the Pryce trail knock our belief that the jury is central to the criminal trial.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, the Pryce trial shows that the safeguards do work; and that, to the chagrin of the journalists, lawyers are doing their jobs and that – despite some problems – the jury is an integral part of the criminal trial.

Valentine’s Day

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This post was contributed by Professor Lynne Segal, Anniversary Professor of Psychology & Gender Studies in the Department of Psychosocial Studies.

Not again? Are you home alone on Valentine’s day, feeling yourself like a miserable old ghost, excluded from the feast of love? If so, you could join up with the ‘one-billion-rising’, the global feminist campaign which, in the footsteps of Eve Ensler seventeen years ago, turned Valentine’s Day into V-Day. Women and men everywhere are being urged to take a stand against violence against women, so often perpetrated through sexual assault. Here the V stands for Victory over men’s Violence against Women. It is a victory that is to be achieved through, among other things, everybody learning to love, instead of hating and abusing, the Vagina. It’s a crucial movement, with rape culture still endemic around the world.

But let me return to my opening question, the thought of being home alone on Valentine’s Day. Are we unlovable if tonight we find ourselves undatable, living alone, outside any couple? Of course not! We all know that there are so many different kinds of love, some might even reflect, like Jeanette Winterson this time last year, that all our relationships are based on love of different kinds: ‘If we could try to experience love as a quality – like compassion or courage – and focus less on love as an event, something that happens, then love would belong to us, rather than being dependent on us belonging to someone’.

In his conversation, In Praise of Love, the philosopher Alain Badiou echoes some of Winterson’s thoughts, though reinstating the couple as the site of ‘love’. Disdaining what he sees, rather oddly, as the ‘risk-free’ commercialization of love in internet dating, Badiou affirms the truth of ‘love’ in the movement from the chance encounter to the challenging commitment of an enduring recognition and acceptance of ‘difference’ between two people, as each negotiates a shared encounter with the world, no longer ‘from the perspective of the One, but from the perspective of the Two’.

Love may indeed be best seen as a quality of commitment, acceptance and enduring negotiation. However there is surely a little more to add when Winterson or Badiou object, as many do, to the commodification of the trade in ‘love’ nowadays, exemplified by those roses and chocolates on Valentine’s Day. This is because, even when free from the taint of commercialism, love is always shadowed by various forms of envy, dread of abandonment, and more, on the one hand; constraint and fears of suffocation, on the other.

This underbelly of love persists, whether we see ‘love’ as a type of event (the expression of desire, the occurrence of sexual activity, the declaration of strong affection); or alternatively, as a quality of lasting attachment and care (trying to be always dependable, supportive, comforting, responsive, in sharing one’s life with another). In a brief meditation on the risks of love the philosopher Judith Butler agrees, when she writes, ‘love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.’ The archetypal bond of love, that of a child for its mother, conveys it all; soon enough the child will be caught between need and flight, even as the mother was perhaps once caught between fear and flight at the initial total dependence of the infant on her ceaseless ministrations.

We could all love each other more, even that passing stranger, and the world be a better, indeed unrecognizable, place. But who dares ask for love without fear of rejection? It is the horror of the pitying smugness of the securely (or insecurely) coupled that single people experience, especially on Valentine’s Day. Now where exactly can I find those billion people rising, tonight?

Listen to a podcast from the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosopy’s lecture series ‘The Importance of Being Human’ (2011). Professor Lynne Segal and Professor Stephen Frosh discuss : Is love possible?

Reflections On Gay Marriage

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This post was contributed by Daniel Monk, Reader in Law, in Birkbeck’s School of Law.

When the result of the House of Commons vote on gay marriage was announced I was surprised not so much by the result – 400 in favour/175 against – but by how moved I was by it.

Full Equality?

If enacted, gay marriage will not add any rights or benefits to those already provided for by the Civil Partnership Act 2004. The marriage rules relating to adultery and consummation (which never applied to civil partnerships) will still not apply to same sex marriage. And Christian gays and lesbians will be prevented from being married by the established Church of England (even if their local clergy wants to). So, while close, it is not full legal equality. And add to this the fact that Prime Minister David Cameron’s support of gay marriage has been seen by many political commentators as an attempt to prove himself to be a moderniser in the run up to the 2015 General Election, a more cautious reaction to the vote might have been in order.

Past injustices

But the reason why it moved me and many other gays and lesbians attests both to the symbolic significance of marriage and to law’s function, too often unacknowledged, as a vehicle for the expression of emotions. Oscar Wilde on being released from Reading Gaol in 1897 is recorded as saying, “Yes, we will win in the end; but the road will be long and red with monstrous martyrdoms”. The overwhelming support for gay marriage by the House of Commons is moving then, not primarily because of what it enables in the future, but because of the perspective it provides for viewing and remembering that long road. For many gay men alive now sex between men was illegal for a major part of their lives and lowering the age of consent to 16 (making it equal for gays and straights) was only achieved in 2000. As an undergraduate student in the 1980s not only was it potentially criminal for me to have any male partners but in family law I read about contemporary cases where lesbians were losing custody of their children simply on the basis of their sexuality. And at the same time the notorious Section 28 in 1986 outlawed the ‘promotion of homosexuality’. In this context the vote for gay marriage, in a bitter sweet way, is experienced as a form of reconciliatory justice, an implicit political acknowledgment and apology for the violence of the law in the past.

Why Marriage?

That marriage has been the vehicle for expressing a commitment to respecting gays and lesbians is not surprising. For those who see analogies between gay rights and the US Black Civil Rights movement, the right to marry (as opposed to entering a civil partnership) is comparable to the right to travel on non-segregated buses. Equal but different simply isn’t good enough. But marriage is a complex institution and its ‘true’ function has always been contested. Gay marriage is only one site of contemporary conflict. Other current debates concern the status of pre-nuptial agreements, the legal distinction between ‘forced’ and ‘arranged’ marriages, and extension of marriage-like rights to cohabitants (conjugal, coupled or otherwise). This broader context opens up the debate to principles other than formal legal equality and reveals alternatives to simply voting for or against gay marriage.

Alternatives

One alternative, which is adopted in many continental countries, is that ‘marriage’ is left totally to the authority of religious bodies and all legal consequences are removed from it, while at the same time opening up civil partnerships to both heterosexuals and non-conjugal relations. One benefit of this is that the rules relating to adultery and non-consummation would not apply to anyone, again a reform adopted in other jurisdictions. Of course this route would require the disestablishment of the Church of England and the separation of Church and State. (Section 3 of the gay marriage Bill refers to the Submission of the Clergy Act 1533; in family law the battle between Church and State goes back a long way!)

A second even bolder alternative would be to leave marriage to religious bodies and to simply dispense with the legal regulation of conjugal couple relationships altogether. This approach asks us to question not ‘why should gays be excluded from marriage’ but ‘why does the State regulate relationships’? This focus requires us to engage seriously with David Cameron’s claim that he supports gay marriage, ‘not despite being a Conservative but because I’m a Conservative’.

These are important questions for the future. But in looking back to the past and fittingly as Birkbeck for the time marks LGBT History Month, gay marriage is unquestionably cause for celebration.

Defence policy for an independent Scotland

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This post was contributed by Ron Smith, Professor of Applied Economics in the Department of Economic, Mathematics and Statistics.

Scottish independence is a low probability event, but low probability events like the break-up of the Soviet Union or of Czechoslovakia do happen, so it is sensible to do some contingency planning. The Scottish Affairs Committee of the House of Commons has been examining the defence policy for an independent Scotland as part of its enquiry into The Referendum on Separation for Scotland. Together with Professor Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute I gave evidence to the Committee on January 23.

The Scottish National Party, SNP, has suggested a defence budget for an independent Scotland of around £2.5 billion with armed forces of 15,000 personnel. A comparison with other small countries with populations of around 5m, like Ireland, Norway, Denmark or New Zealand suggests that these are reasonable numbers for steady state spending and armed forces. However, the transition to steady state is likely to be difficult.

The sort of equipment that Scotland might inherit from the UK is unlikely to be appropriate for an independent Scotland. The obvious example is the Trident nuclear deterrent, which is located in Scotland on the Clyde, on which the Scottish Affairs Committee has already reported.

Scotland is likely to follow those other small countries which inherited nuclear weapons on separation. Belarus, Ukraine & Kazakhstan all denuclearised, and that is SNP policy.  They had aid under the US Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program to help them repatriate the weapons to Russia. How one would repatriate Scottish nuclear weapons would be a central issue.

A major problem in the transition is that the military or defence civil servants that Scotland inherits from the UK are likely to have UK preconceptions and a mindset that is inappropriate for a small country like Scotland. They would face the same problems that somebody leaving a large company for a small firm faces. Some of the suggestions that have been made for a possible Scottish force structure reflect that mindset.

Because of the SNP’s commitment to the traditional Scottish regiments, their proposed structure is rather infantry heavy, whereas it is likely that naval and air assets for protection of fisheries and oil fields will be more useful. However the ships and aircraft they might inherit from the UK are not likely to be suitable, so they would need to buy new equipment appropriate for a small country.  Heavy investments in infrastructure may also be needed to provide for command and control, training and intelligence.

My suggestion would be that an independent Scotland should follow the example of the appointment of a Canadian as Bank of England Governor and hire a foreigner. Scotland should bring in a defence planner from somewhere like Ireland, Denmark or New Zealand, who understands how to run the defence of a small country.

The scientific legacy of the Apollo Moon landings and the case for a return to the Moon

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Fig. 1. One of the last two men on the Moon: Harrison Schmitt stands next to a large boulder at the Apollo 17 landing site in December 1972. (NASA).

Today, 19 December 2012, marks exactly 40 years to the day since the last human beings to set foot on the Moon, Gene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt of Apollo 17 (Fig. 1), returned safely to Earth. In the three and a half years between Neil Armstrong’s ‘first small step’ in July 1969 and the departure of Cernan and Schmitt from the lunar surface in December 1972, a total of twelve astronauts explored the lunar surface in the immediate vicinity of six Apollo landing sites (Fig. 2).

Fig 2. The Apollo landing sites. Note their restriction to the central part of the nearside – there is a lot more of the Moon to explore! (Image: NASA).

In their cumulative 12.5 days on the lunar surface, the twelve Apollo moonwalkers traversed a total distance of 95.5 km from their landing sites (heavily weighted to the last three missions that were equipped with the Lunar Roving Vehicle (or ‘moon buggy’), collected 382 kg of rock and soil samples, drilled three geological sample cores to depths greater than 2 m, and deployed over 2100 kg of scientific equipment (Fig. 3). The results from all this activity continue to have a major scientific impact today.

 

Apollo science

Probably the greatest scientific legacy of Apollo has resulted from analysis of the 382 kg of rock and soil samples returned to Earth. One of the key results has been the calibration of the lunar cratering rate. Only by comparing the density of impact craters on surfaces whose ages have been obtained independently by laboratory analyses of returned samples is it possible to determine the rate at which meteorite impacts have created craters on a planetary surface. Analysis of the Apollo samples has enabled this to be done for the Moon, which remains the only planetary body for which such a data-set exists, and which is used, with various assumptions, to estimate the ages of cratered surfaces throughout the Solar System from Mercury to the moons of the outer planets.

Fig. 5. The current theory of the Moon’s formation from debris produced by a giant impact on the early Earth is largely based on the geochemical analysis of samples collected by the Apollo missions (image: Wikipedia Commons).

Another important result of Apollo sample analysis has been the evidence provided for the origin of the Moon. In particular, the discovery that lunar materials have compositions broadly similar to those of Earth’s mantle, but that the Moon is highly depleted in volatiles and has only a small iron core, led to the current view that the Moon formed from debris resulting from a giant impact of a Mars-sized planetesimal with the early Earth. It is very doubtful that we would have sufficient geochemical evidence usefully to constrain theories of lunar origins without the quantity and diversity of samples provided by Apollo.

Birkbeck’s involvement

The Apollo samples have of course also been central to our understanding of the Moon’s own geological history and evolution. While lunar geology may at first sight appear to be a relatively parochial area of planetary science, it is important to realise that the Moon’s surface and interior retain records of planetary processes which will have occurred in the early histories of all the terrestrial planets. In all these respects the Moon acts as a keystone for understanding the geological evolution of rocky planets, and is an area in which we at Birkbeck are actively engaged (Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. Fragments of Apollo 12 soil sample 12023 at the Lunar Sample Laboratory at the NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, being selected for a lunar volcanic diversity study by Birkbeck scientists in 2009. Inset (left to right): PhD student Joshua Snape (now a post-doc at the Open University), the author, and Dr Katherine Joy (now at the University of Manchester); since this photo was taken Birkbeck PhD student Louise Alexander has also joined the project (photo: I.A. Crawford).

Lunar geophysics

In addition to study of the Apollo samples, many other areas of scientific investigation were also performed by the Apollo missions, especially geophysical investigations of the Moon’s interior (Fig. 7). Key results included the discovery of natural moonquakes and using them to probe the structure of the crust and mantle, geophysical constraints on the existence and physical state of the lunar core, and measurements of the flow of heat from the Moon’s interior. Although these data are over thirty years old, advances in interpretation means that they continue to give new insights into the interior structure of the Moon. For example, only last year an apparently definitive seismic detection of the Moon’s core, and strong evidence that, like the Earth’s, it consists of solid inner and liquid outer layers, was made by a re-examination of Apollo seismic data.

Fig. 7. Apollo 14 seismometer deployed on the lunar surface; the silvery skirt provided thermal stability. These instruments, also deployed at the Apollo 12, 15 and 16 landing sites, constituted the Apollo passive seismic network which remained active until 1978 and yielded valuable data about the interior of the Moon (NASA).

Looking over the totality of the Apollo legacy, I think one could reasonably make the case that Apollo laid the foundations for modern planetary science, certainly as it relates to the origin and evolution of the terrestrial planets. Arguably, the calibration of the lunar cratering rate, and its subsequent extrapolation to estimating surface ages throughout the Solar System, could alone justify this assertion. If one also considers the improvements to our knowledge of lunar origins and evolution, and the records of solar wind, cosmic rays and meteoritic debris extracted from lunar soils, it is clear that our knowledge of the Solar System would be greatly impoverished had the Apollo missions not taken place.

Time to go back?

However, it is also clear that Apollo did little more than scratch the surface, both literally and figuratively, of the lunar geological record. With only six landing sites, all at low latitudes on the nearside (Fig. 2), it is clear that much remains to be explored. Moreover, precisely because we have the Apollo legacy as a foundation on which to build, supplemented by recent orbital remote-sensing missions, it is now possible to formulate much more sophisticated lunar exploration strategies than was possible forty years ago. There are now key, specific, scientific questions which can only be addressed by once again returning to the lunar surface (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Artist’s concept of astronauts supervising a drill on the Moon. Returning humans to the lunar surface later in the 21st century would facilitate larger scale exploration activities than was possible with Apollo, and will further increase our knowledge of lunar and Solar System evolution (artwork: NASA).

Therefore, as we pass the 40th anniversary of the last human expedition to the Moon, there are good scientific reasons to start planning for a return. However, unlike the Cold War competition that drove Apollo, a human return to the Moon in the coming decades would ideally be part of a sustained, international, programme of Solar System exploration such as the emerging Global Exploration Strategy.

Ian Crawford is Professor of Planetary Science and Astrobiology in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London. His group is actively engaged in a number of areas of lunar science, and has recently been awarded a grant of £99,300 by STFC to study lunar meteorites found on Earth. This blog article is based on a popular article published in the December 2012 issue of the Royal Astronomical Society journal Astronomy and Geophysics, and a more technical review paper just published in Planetary and Space Science.

The Justice and Security Bill – a threat to open justice

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Professor Bill Bowring of Birkbeck Law School, who is also a practising human rights barrister, writes about the potential impact of the controversial Justice and Security Bill.

The Justice and Security Bill, presently going through Parliament, threatens to take Britain back to the 17th century, through the regular use of secret evidence. The Coalition Government intends to expand the use of secret evidence to ordinary civil proceedings. As Liberty has pointed out, enactment of the Bill would be an unprecedented encroachment on the rule of law, and the principles of open and fair trial.

This controversial Bill is a panic reaction to the Labour Government’s defeat in 2010 in the Binyam Mohammed case. Binyam Mohamed was arrested in Pakistan and subjected by the US authorities to ‘extraordinary rendition’. He claimed that a confession that he had been trained by Al-Quaeda had been obtained by torture. Charges against him were dropped, after the US District Court of Columbia vindicated his claim that UK authorities had been involved in and facilitated ill-treatment and torture to which he was subjected while under the control of US authorities. He was released and arrived in the UK on 23 February 2009.

When he claimed damages, the UK Government attempted to exclude the evidence that he had been tortured, despite the fact that this was public knowledge in the US as a result of the judgment. On 10 February 2010 the Court of Appeal dismissed the Labour Government’s appeal against a series of Divisional Court judgments ordering that the Government was not permitted to exclude the information obtained from US sources. Jonathan Sumption QC, who is now a Justice of the Supreme Court, told the Court of Appeal on behalf of the Government that the Divisional Court’s decision was “unnecessary and profoundly damaging to the interests of this country”, and indeed that part of the reasoning of the Divisional Court was “irresponsible”. In fact all the information was already in the public domain.

Binyam Mohamed has now been paid a very large sum in compensation.

The Justice and Security Bill was introduced into the House of Lords on 29 May 2012 by Lord Wallace of Tankerness QC, a Liberal Democrat peer and Advocate General for Scotland. The Bill proposes a new Ministerial power to instigate, by application to the Court, a Closed Material Procedure (CMP), in cases where the Minister considers that disclosure of certain material would be damaging to national security. Until now, CMP has only been available in a very small number of specialist proceedings, such as in relation to “Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures”, and Control Orders. CMP takes place entirely in private; only the judge, the Government’s lawyers and a Special Advocate appointed by the Government for the litigant. The litigant and their lawyers are excluded. Unlike normal legal representatives Special Advocates are unable to disclose material to their ‘client’.

On 21 November 2012 Louise Christian of leading civil liberties solicitors Christian Khan chaired a public meeting at Garden Court Chambers, sponsored by the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers (of which I am International Secretary) and CAMPACC – the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities. The meeting was addressed by the human rights QC Dinah Rose; Richard Norton-Taylor, journalist on defence and security on The Guardian; Clare Algar, Executive Director of Reprieve; and Saghir Hussain Director of CagePrisoners. The theme running through the meeting was that open justice is a central principle of British law, and the right to a fair trial is a centuries-old feature of the common law and is enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.

I agree with the practising lawyers organised in the Bar Council and the Law Society that secret trials and withholding evidence are the standard practices of repressive regimes. The Bill if enacted will erode core principles of justice. The UK’s international reputation for fair trials will be significantly damaged.

Professor Bowring and Birkbeck Law School work closely with solicitors like Christian Khan, and the barristers at Garden Court, for example in the Law School’s annual week-long event “Law on Trial”.