FGM has been illegal for thirty years and no prosecutions

Actually, that is not quite correct. There was one prosecution of a case that was clearly not going to result in a conviction since the doctor in question was not exactly accused of female genital mutilation. We hear a great deal about various new initiatives in healthcare, in education, whatnot but what we do not hear about is people who carry out this ghastly torture of children being taken to court, tried and sentenced.

From the BBC news item I find out that we have a Minister for Safeguarding, Vulnerability and Countering Extremism and her name is Sarah Newton. Ms Newton, Minister for all the above said rather pompously:

This government is clear that FGM is a barbaric form of abuse that has absolutely no place whatsoever in a Britain that works for everyone, and the criminals who perpetrate it should be brought to justice.

That's why we are taking world-leading action to tackle FGM by strengthening the law to improve protection for those at risk and remove barriers to prosecution.

World leading action? What kind of world leading action? Ms Newton, Minister for all of the above was responding to a Report issued by the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee that castigated the judicial system for not prosecuting successfully a single case in the UK. Not a single one. How is that world leading action?

I cannot quote all the Conclusions and Recommendations of the Report on p. 22 do I suggest readers of this blog turn to it (so to speak) themselves. They are hard hitting, I am glad to say. Here is the BBC's summary:

The committee said the poor record on prosecutions and convictions would "deter those brave enough to come forward" to report FGM and "result in the preventable mutilation of thousands of girls".

The scale of the problem remains unknown because of a lack of reliable data, but the government estimates 170,000 women and girls in the UK have undergone the procedure.

The first ever recorded figures for FGM, reported in July, showed that between April 2015 and March 2016 there were 5,702 new cases in England.

Most of the women and girls were born in Africa and underwent the procedure there, but at least 18 were subjected to FGM in the UK.

Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland have not collected any figures on FGM.

Will anything come of this Report beyond more initiatives and more discussions? Oh yes, and yet more strengthening of the law, which was strengthened two years ago? Rather despairingly, I do not hold my breath.

"The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep"

This is the title of David Satter's most recent book, a translation of the Russian saying: Меньше знаешь, крепче спишь. Some might argue that this is a saying that sums up a good deal of Russian history and, alas, the Russian people's attitude. The book is about the transition from the Yeltsin era to the Putin one and deals, particularly, with the infamous apartment block explosions in 1999, which launched the second Chechnyan war and brought an unknown politician and former KGB and FSB officer, Vladimir Putin into prominence.

I shall be writing about the book at a later stage but now I shall concentrate on David's talk given yesterday to the Henry Jackson Society. (Full declaration of interest: David Satter is a good friend.) To anyone who has looked at that terrifying story and at the extraordinarily high death rate among people who tried to investigate what happened when those four apartment blocks blew up and when the fifth one did not, the answer seems obvious: it was a provocation organized by the FSB in order to get Yeltsin off the hook (his popularity had sunk to about 2 per cent), get a "reliable" person into the presidential seat and divert attention from all Russia's problems to just one, Chechnya, where the first war had been a costly and vicious disaster. (The second one is no better only with greater levels of cruelty.) While 9/11 truthers are coming up with ever more bizarre stories, this remains the reality but the breathtaking cynicism behind it and the readiness on the part of the Russian political elite to kill their own people in order to achieve their particular nasty aims makes it difficult for many to accept that this is what happened. In fact, I have heard at least one person who is well in with officialdom proclaim that he knew nobody, nobody at all who believed that it was the FSB. My reply was that I knew nobody, either Russian and British who did not believe that it was the FSB and that happens to be true.

David Satter started with the Yeltsin years and the catastrophe they turned out to be. This, I think, is a tremendous shame as the beginning of the period did seem quite hopeful. Indeed, looking back on those years from where we are now, they still seem quite hopeful. I agree with David that Yeltsin was not a democrat in any real sense and was, in many ways, an inadequate leader and wrote so when he died.

The problem, David Satter said, is the strong misunderstanding of what was required to extirpate the Marxist/Communist system, which grew out of a misunderstanding of the system itself. When the Soviet Union collapsed the assumption was in the successor states as well as the myriads of Western advisers and, let us face it, people who were hoping to benefit personally, that the main problem was economic and privatization of state property, which was practically everything, will solve it all. Of course, some of us said even at the time that privatization without an understanding of the rule of law will not work.

Communism first and foremost was a system of morality that had led to complete immorality and criminality. There is no place here to discuss all that but it is clear and was even in the early nineties that to overcome its noxious effects, another system of morality had to be established. Sadly, there were very few people who could produce this (the Russian Orthodox Church being notoriously deficient in ideas that oppose the state) and even fewer who could put them into practice. The great academician Sakharov died far too early.

So privatization proceeded with little regard as to who benefited and far too many people lost out economically and intellectually in that what they had been supposed to believe disappeared almost overnight with nothing in its place. To some extent people gave up and that explains Putin's early popularity: he was going to hand something back to Russia and Russians. For various reasons, not unconnected with the rise in oil and gas prices he also presided over a period when more people had a materially better life than anyone in Russia could recall.

Putin's present popularity, which, inevitably was raised in discussion is based on the various lies and distortions that the now almost completely state controlled media pours out but it is also questionable. The recent news that the only independent polling organization, Levada, has been named "a foreign agent" by the Ministry of Justice thus making its work well-nigh impossible indicates a fear in the Kremlin that their polling results will not be the ones that are wanted.

One could say that they are lucky. The infamous census of 1937, which showed a far lower population in the USSR than expected (after collectivization and the attendant famine as well as the early purge arrests) the results were destroyed and those who conducted it arrested and sent to the Gulag. A new census was conducted in 1939 after two more years of frenzied arrests, deaths and executions with the figures coming out considerably more favourably than in 1937. Go figure.

David Satter's view is that Russia is now in a grip of a mass psychosis and he speculated what would have happened if the explanations for the explosions (it was the Chechnyans though there was a complete denial on their part and the explosions did not bring about a favourable situation for them) and, especially, the fifth would-be explosion (it was just a test to see whether people are aware of the danger) had been met with the sort of open scepticism in Russia and abroad that they deserved.

Would Russia have avoided the Nord-Ost siege of 2002 and the Beslan school siege of 2004, both started by Chechnyan terrorists but both witnessing a far higher number of hostages killed by the OMON personnel? Would we have seen the invasion of Georgia, the occupation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine that has already claimed something like 100,000 victims? Impossible to tell. But as Putin has started so he has gone on and the ending of the story is not going to be good for anyone.

It is, as David Satter said, and I entirely agree with him, the duty of Western politicians, writers, journalists, analysts and intellectuals (whoever they may be) to tell the truth about the regime and about its origins. That includes not "forgetting" about those apartment blocks as too many people seem to.

Fifteen years ago

DEFIANCE!

Flag-waving in the worst possible taste

Yes, the Last Night of the Proms is upon us and the usual rows have emerged in the newspapers: is it a nasty chauvinistic flag-waving event or is it just a jolly party for people who have attended many if not most of the Proms concerts?

The only time I went to the Last Night was in the summer after my A levels when I had a season ticket for the second half of the series and, whoever was in the seats, the Arena and the Gallery was filled with people like me. That is, the second half really was just a party for people who loved music, went to the concerts and were celebrating the end of another successful series.

Since then, the Proms have gone from strength to strength but, in my opinion, unfortunately, the Last Night has become an institution on its own. There are people all over the world who are a little hazy what the Proms are but know for certain that there is a Last Night and it is wonderful or quite wonderful or whatever. The Proms in the Park all over the country is not a phenomenon I welcome - it erodes the quality of the music and makes it impossible to watch or listen to the Last Night in the Albert Hall. Still, many other people like the whole development and it is only one night of the year. I can ignore it all and usually do though I do listen and even go to some of the concerts. (Not the Arena any more but the Gallery sees my presence.)

This year another ingredient has been added to the brew of insane discussions: the anti-Brexiteers who are still fighting a lost battle. Various groups have raised money to buy lots of EU flags (because the Common Fisheries Policy and the European Arrest Warrant and the Common Agricultural Policy and legislation that can be initiated only by the Commission are essential to good music) to hand out to Promenaders. They can then wave them to their heart's content while everyone sings Rule Britannia to prove how much they hate nationalism and flag-waving.

The Guardian reports today that the plan seems to have gone ahead though how many of those blue flags with gold stars will be waved in a few hours' time is unknown. The comments made by the organizers (who do not care to give their names) are priceless in their stupidity:

In a statement, the organisers, who want to remain anonymous, said: “Music doesn’t recognise borders, religion, gender, age, status or creed and most orchestras, shows and music schools rely heavily on talented musicians from inside and outside the EU.”

They added: “Accordionist Romano Viazzani summed it up perfectly when he said: ‘Music is the universal language. It builds bridges and tears down walls’.”

On Saturday morning the team tweeted a picture of concertgoers with EU flags gathered outside the venue. They captioned the image: “First prom-goers arrive with EU flags in solidarity with musicians and music.”

Um yes. Musicians inside and outside the EU. So why do we need to wave EU flags and set up those walls and boundaries that the blue and gold flag signifies. And how does the Common Fisheries Policy fit in with music being international?

Tuesday Night Bloggers: Children as witnesses to crime

Yes, dear readers, we are back. The Tuesday Night Bloggers had a month off and are back with the creepy theme of Children in Crime. That could be anything: children as detectives (and this may be a good time to re-read some Enid Blyton and Malcolm Saville), children as victims (tends to be very grim), children as criminals (from Fagin's gang to The Bad Seed) and children as witnesses. I am being a little lazy and turning to the obvious source, Agatha Christie.

Famously, Christie was no respecter of persons. Anybody could be a victim and anybody could be a criminal though she was writing at a time when some decencies were kept by most writers. I am a great fan of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver books but one knows for certain that the young and not so young couples are going to turn out to be innocent. Not so with Christie. Nothing of the kind can be assumed. That nice young man who sits opposite you on a train or an aeroplane? I wouldn't trust him any further than I could throw him. The delightful young lady who appears to be victimized by nasty bullies? Make sure you do not stand between her and a fortune.

There is no protection for children in any way. Most readers can remember the child victims of Hallowe'en Night (1969) but what of the boy who cleans windows in Murder is Easy (1939) and the very ordinary girl guide in Body in the Library (1942)? All disposable. One particularly grim but excellent novel has a child of about twelve as the murderer and I am not stupid enough to tell you which one it is.


In this posting I intend to look at one of Christie's books in which children are witnesses to a series of crimes, which take place in Meadowbank, a very select and highly regarded girls' school, Cat Among The Pigeons.

The slightly chaotic plot starts in Meadowbank school, moves to Ramat, a fictional Middle Eastern country where a routine coup is taking place, the prince is being flown out with his personal pilot and British tourists are being shepherded out by harassed embassy officials and returns to Meadowbank with few necessary interruptions. The start is the first day of term with new girls arriving, being assigned to rooms and unpacked with their parents handled firmly if tactfully. The headmistress, Miss Bulstrode, temporarily distracted by the unexpected appearance by the dipsomaniac Lady Veronica Carlton-Sandways (Christie had a good ear for names and no respect for the aristocracy) misses something the very sensible Mrs Upjohn says, something that she will much regret missing.

Missing and not noticing things is one of the novel's themes: Miss Bulstrode misses Mrs Upjohn's story, Adam Goodman the gardener at the school (who is neither Adam Goodman nor a gardener but a Special Branch agent sent by our old friend Colonel Pikeaway) does not notice Princess Shaista's knees thus causing Poirot annoyance and Jennifer Sutcliffe manages not to notice anything while believing anything anybody tells her at any time. One cannot help wondering what possessed Miss Bulstrode to give such a dimwitted child one of the school's much sought after places.

On the other hand there is Julia Upjohn, daughter of the woman whose story Miss Bulstrode misses at the beginning, who has, as her mother says, quite a good brain. She notices things and, more to the point, she puts two and two together, getting four, which puts her ahead of the police and Special Branch. It is something of a truism in numerous detective stories that children have sharper eyes and ears and often notice things that adults miss. Not in this novel: Jennifer is positively deaf and blind while Julia works out things because she has extra information purely because of her friendship with Jennifer. No adult could have worked it out where the jewels (not a secret, as it happens) might have been.

When she does find them she very sensibly takes them to Poirot, knowing about him from Maureen Summerhayes of Mrs McGinty Is Dead, who happens to be her mother's friend. She explains to George, Poirot's servant that she has come to talk about some murders and a robbery and adds to Poirot himself that there is also the kidnapping but she does not think that is her business. Naturally, Poirot is fascinated but he had already read a certain amount of what has been going on at Meadowbank in the newspapers, which have been carefully refolded.

The kidnapping is that of Princess Shaista and the trick is the same Christie had used in The Girdle of Hyppolita, one of The Labours of Hercules. In that story Miss Pope, the headmistress of what is little more than a finishing school, is treated with amused irony; Miss Bulstrode is taken far more seriously as is her school. The differentiation is quite interesting as Christie herself did not attend a school at all and is usually seen as someone who held somewhat old-fashioned views about women's education and careers. As ever, she manages to confound the various assumptions made by critics about her.

In fact, headmistresses apart from Miss Pope are seen as highly intelligent and knowledgeable. Poirot asks the advice of Miss Emlyn in Hallowe'en Party and it is absolutely sound. She knows exactly who can and who cannot be trusted. More than that she is the only person who understands the significance of one particular detail about the party and urges the witness to tell Poirot who also works out from that who the killer must have been. None of the children, one may add, have noticed anything. So much for their sharp eyes. Miss Emlyn is also an old friend of Miss Bulstode who has, by the time of of Hallowe'en Party retired (she is on the verge of it in Cat Among The Pigeons) but the Meadowbank has gone on, changed but also with its traditions.

Poirot also consults Miss Battersby, the former Principal of Meadowfield school and present tutor of mathematics, in The Third Girl. Again, he receives a no-nonsense, accurate assessment of the girl Norma Restarick and her family. Altogether, headmistresses are a good thing in Agatha Christie's novel.

Cat Among The Pigeons ends with a different child, the boy Allen, son of the late Prince Ali Yusuf, whose life is about to change drastically as his mother inherits the jewels that had been put aside for her. Julia Upjohn acquires one emerald, green for mystery. It is no more than she deserves.

And now for something jolly

Before I turn my attention to the dire European Arrest Warrant and some of its particularly noxious effects, I shall post a link to a rather jolly site that was called to my attention by one of this blog's readers.

It's called The Neglected Books Page and is just that: a blog that deals with books and writers that have been neglected over the years though they were reasonably well known when they were published. One could (and one often does) argue that most neglected books and authors are that for a good reason: they are simply not good enough to remember for any length of time. But that ignores fashion, laziness, political thinking, ordinary changes in taste. Some neglected books and authors are revived to great acclaim.

I actually do recall the literary periodical that asked various writers and critics which authors they thought had been unjustly forgotten. Two people, Philip Larkin and Lord David Cecil, picked Barbara Pym, who was still around but unpublished and attracting no interest. Barbara Pym, an extremely good writer, immediately became known, published and reprinted. There has been a biography as well and it would be rather difficult to write about the British literature of the second half of the twentieth century without mentioning her and her characters.

Who knows, maybe The Neglected Books Page will revive many more Barbara Pyms.

Yes, it is about politics

So far I have kept out of the burkini row, considering it as a vast red herring, designed to take our attention away from more important matters, such as the spread of of Islamist ideology and also of unacceptable aspects of Islamic community behaviour such as the growth of Sharia courts. However, it has become such a big question that some comment needs to be made even though the Economist thinks that the row will now start dying down with the holiday season coming to an end. The Economist has been known to be wrong before in its predictions and, in any case, also thinks that this issue, which has now become linked to the whole subject of French identity in the light of terrorist attacks is likely to be important in the forthcoming presidential elections.

They are not wrong on the latter. Nicolas Sarkozy, who has announced his candidature, seems to be proposing a change in the French Constitution with an article that would ban burkinis. I cannot help feeling that is going a little over the top even by Sarkozy's standards.

First of all, I should like to get this out of the way: those burkinis are truly hideous and stupid garments. Why would you go to the beach or into the sea if practically every inch of you skin is covered? Possibly because you have been bullied by the men in your family and community (who, incidentally, do not cover themselves up but prefer to wear cool and open garments) or possibly because you have somehow accepted that this is of vital importance to the Muslim religion. Certainly, the link that has been displayed by protesters between a ban on burkini on beaches and Islamophobia would indicate that those people certainly believe that covering women from top to toe is central to their religion. A good many non-Muslims, either on the left or among supposed liberals and libertarians appear to support this point of view.

Apart from many articles on the subjects there were a few interesting developments. Hizonner the Mayor of London took it upon himself to lecture the Mayor of Paris (who, not having a beach handy, had not actually issued a ban) that women must not be told by anyone what they can and cannot wear. That is, of course, absolute piffle. Women and men are frequently told what they can and what they cannot wear in public places. I am sure Hizonner would not be too happy if any women decided to wander round in Nazi uniforms or KKK hoods (not that I am advocating that they should) though, I am equally sure, he would see nothing wrong in them wearing Maoist caps, Red Army insignia or t-shirts with pictures of that mass murderer Che Guevara.

In any case, is this the same Mayor of London whose first decision was to ban certain ads on the tube because he did not think women could be trusted to be able to deal with certain images of bodies without either getting impossibly depressed or rushing off to emulate the pictures? It would appear that Hizonner's thinking on the subject is somewhat erratic while his understanding of his own position and of the French constitutional structure non-existent.

So then we had the supreme French administrative court overturning the ban at Villeneuve-Loubet, which could have had implications for the other towns where it had been imposed except that those Mayors insisted on it continuing. Most people will leave those beaches this week-end at the latest with les vacances coming to an end, but not all. Will the row continue despite the Economist's prediction?

There is many an indignant comment from human rights organizations, Islamic groups and various so-called liberals and libertarians as well as those on the left who can be relied on to produce the usual waffle that these bans have nothing to do with security and everything to do with politics. Indeed so. But then the wearing of the burkini is a political decision. You may think that it is not worth getting excited about but let us not pretend: it is not a fashion or lifestyle choice, it is a political point made rather obviously and forcefully.

Consider some other garments whose use has grown in the last ten - fifteen years. It so happens that I have lived for years in areas where there have always been many Muslim families, shops and businesses. Most of them are either immigrants from the Indian sub-continent of their descendants. Until about fifteen years ago the women often wore traditional clothes that were light and comfortable and covered their heads, if at all, with a loose scarf. We did not even know the words hijab and niquab as they were of no importance in the societies we lived in. Any women in veils (niquab) or burquas (another word we have had to learn) were to be seen around Harrods or Harley Street. They were visitors.

All that has changed, partly because there are now more people here who have arrived from the Arab Middle East and North Africa but most importantly because clothing is being used to make political points. Far more women now wear tight scarves and even veils; even little girls are now covered up and wear those scarves. Those are not fashion choices. They may be lifestyle choices but, above all, they are political statements, as are the burkinis. They say something quite definite: we do not want to integrate, we insist on keeping in our separate communities and, most importantly, in those communities women are hidden away one way or another, unequal in their lives.

As it happens, there are certain complexities even in that. There are a good many young Muslim women of different backgrounds in Britain who do wear often highly colourful and excitingly patterned headscarves and wear what might be called "modest" clothing, i.e. trousers and long coats and jackets. They are also highly educated, in jobs and careers. It seems that hose headscarves are a matter of identity for them and the way they can reconcile their integration into British society with their background. This is a relatively new development and one cannot quite predict how it will work out. One knows young women who then marry equally advanced Muslim men or even men outside their religion and continue along the path of complete integration; one also hears stories of young women of that kind being put under pressure and worse by thir families and being forced to retreat into oppression and backwardness.

Should we fight the burkini? It's not precisely a problem in Britain but France is not that far away. On the whole, it is not quite as poisonous as the wearing of the niquab, that should be, at the very least, considered on the same level as any other clothing that hides the face. People are not allowed to wear motorcycle helmets? Then they should not be allowed to wear niquabs either. That seems fair enough. Of course, the veil is a symbol of the oppression of women and always has been. Should we legislate against it? That raises all sorts of other issues but the general move in opinion in a number of European countries is towards legislation, precisely because it is a political issue.

What of the burkini? My argument with people who are determined to get that hideous garment banned is that this is not a battle we could ever win. So, do not let us fight it. Beyond that, while I dislike the garment and really dislike the political point it makes I cannot help feeling that the women who go to the Riviera do have more privileges than most of their co-religionists. If they do not want to use those privileges to fight for their own and others' freedom and equality, as many very courageous women do in far worse circumstances and if they want to look like particularly inelegant versions of seals, maybe we should just leave them to it and concentrate on other battles.