Tag: Speeches

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, at Harvard Law School in the USA on 8 March 2004.

I am very pleased to be here in this great city and University which are both such powerful symbols of the strength of our shared history and connections. A history which has not – of course – always been harmonious but which has perhaps rarely been closer than it is today. I am reminded of a story about our first Ambassador to the United States – then based here in Boston. A year passed during which time no communication was heard from him. Silence which gave rise to some concern back in Whitehall. So much so that the Prime Minister and the then Foreign Secretary communicated and agreed that should a further year pass without any word from across the Atlantic they would have to write a letter to him. What a contrast to today when our Governments correspond and speak perhaps on a daily basis.

The Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States are often depicted in their responses to the international terrorist threat as destroying traditional human rights and freedoms. I want this evening to explore and indeed challenge that theme, partly through the prism of history and the development of ideas and partly by reflecting on the reality of the challenges that face us today and indeed with which I engage on a daily basis through my work as Home Secretary.

I take as my starting point the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which recognises that the most fundamental human rights are those of life, liberty and security of person. This implies for me that people who are killed or maimed, bereaved or put in fear by terrorists are stripped, cruelly and arbitrarily, of their rights and that security and safety is the underpinning raison d’etre of government.

So the dichotomy which some people seek to establish between the rights of people to be protected against terrorists and their right to enjoy traditional liberties is I believe a false one. It is not a question, therefore, of choosing between rights, but achieving a balance which maintains those rights. Our Lord Chief Justice, who doesn’t always take my side, said in a speech to the British Academy in October 2002:

“There are pressures created by the need to protect this country from merciless acts of international terrorism. These pressures will test the Human Rights Act. But the Human Rights Act is not a suicide pact! It does not require this country to tie its hands behind its back in the face of aggression, terrorism or violent crime. It does, however, reduce the risk of our committing an ‘own goal’. In defending democracy, we must not forget the need to observe the values which make democracy worth defending.”

I wonder if Abraham Lincoln in his letter to the Albany Democrats was not making a similar point when he said: “Thoroughly imbued with a reverence the guaranteed rights of individuals” and explained that he had been “slow to adopt strong measures”. He predicted however that “the time was not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many”.

Any politician with these responsibilities can immediately empathise with the tension that Lincoln is identifying. Someone with a progressive outlook who was faced with extraordinary challenges of the time.

As we confront today the awful prospect of the suicide bomber, we need to continue that crucial and necessary debate – a debate I led in the House of Commons two weeks ago – about how to maintain that vital balance, and the options we have in maintaining our democratic values, whilst protecting our democracy.

The development of our traditional rights

Fortunately we do not come to the task unguided by our history. The insights which help guide us in striking the balance between the security and liberty of the many and the rights of the individuals have been the work of centuries.

Some may argue that some of those blows for liberty were struck in this very city against some of my predecessors in office.

It is often argued that the traditional rights enjoyed by citizens of Britain and the United States can be traced back to Magna Carta – albeit at that stage rights for a rather limited strata of society! I have recently been reading about this very period, the context of the time of King John and so the development of Magna Carta – or its immediate re-write to be more precise. It has certainly been a reference point for the development of these ideas.

With your own founding fathers other rights were added – freedom of religion and speech – building on the protestant tradition of John Locke – freedom of assembly and of the press, rights relating to privacy, which of course brings its own contradictions, and the separation of powers – building on the ideas of the French philosopher Montesquieu.

At the same time, in Europe, Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau were attempting to square the circle in a different way, focusing on democracy and active participation, rather than a fixed constitution, as their preferred way of reconciling individual freedom with society’s need to pursue shared aims and values.

John Stuart Mill too, in his own way, tried to reconcile his belief in individual freedom, passionately set forth in ‘On Liberty’, with his commitment to social progress and rational social choice, which showed through in his writings on government and the utilitarian philosophy.

All these thinkers appreciated the value of the individual, and individual freedom, but also appreciated that extending that freedom more widely – beyond the leisured intellectual class – would not happen automatically, but required some positive action on the part of the state. They disagreed on what form that action should take, of course – but when didn’t philosophers disagree!

It often seems as if modern politics does not leave us with time today to be philosophers but just as our ideas are shaped by the thinking and questions of the past, so I believe that it is important for us more directly to allow the insights of the past to speak to us afresh.

That does not of course mean that we cannot move from the ideas of the past. In our own day we have taken forward this agenda of the development of human rights and made our own distinctive contribution. I would point especially to the legislation we have introduced in both our countries against discrimination and exploitation. For example, the common law provided no general protection against unfair discrimination on racial grounds. That is now enshrined in legislation. In Britain this protection was first introduced by one of my predecessors as a Labour Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in the 1965 Race Relations Act and others have built on that, most substantially in 1976 and recently further changes by my immediate predecessor Jack Straw.

But perhaps the more dramatic challenge for our own day is to protect our freedoms in the far more complex global environment in which we now operate. An environment which means economically, through trade, communication and politics that we have to address these big issues afresh with a world – rather than national – stage in view. A stage in which the additional challenge of balancing collaboration and intervention with pressures for isolation and disengagement brings its own strain.This also has implications for international military action. Our Prime Minister outlined precisely this approach following the Kosovo war and repeated it in a speech last week. He called for a “doctrine of international community, where in certain clear circumstances, we do intervene, even though we are not directly threatened. because in an increasingly interdependent world, our self-interest was allied to the interests of others; and seldom did conflict in one region of the world not contaminate another”.

Isolationism and protectionism may be possible and may bring benefits in the short term but neither will sit with finding a way through the challenges for world stability and justice. And ultimately, we cannot keep the challenges and problems perhaps stemming from other parts of the world entirely from our own shores.

And so there is an added dimension to that evolving process of balancing rights in our own day. And that is balancing the needs and rights not just of our own citizens but of people throughout the world. And in the same as domestically we are now talking much more about rights alongside responsibilities, so we must do the same in the international context. We must not make the mistake of thinking too much about purely individual rights and too little of duty and responsibility.

Of course at national level we have institutions to help us achieve this balance between individuals communities and the State. And in your own country that also means between the different elements of the State. And I am encouraged that what clearly emerges on both sides of the Atlantic is a subtle dynamic, yet highly robust, sharing of power. In both our systems, power does not rest in one place or with one person or organisation, it moves between them, and as it does so it changes to meet the needs of the time. I believe that these are constructive tensions. I have in mind the image of the mechanisms of a clock – the elements are fixed, the cogs provide movement and the weights ensure balance.

But the developing challenge for today is to seek to extend this same idea into the international forum. We will inevitably have differences of view at different stages about how these fora will develop but we all I think recognise the need for this process of international engagement.

The role of the judiciary and our international obligations

I want to turn now to reflect on the role of the judiciary and the whole judicial process in this task of balance our human rights both collective and individual. In your case the Constitution and the Supreme Court provides the anchor. In our case – and interestingly this takes the form of an international treaty – we have the European Convention on Human Rights. Paradoxically, whilst the ECHR offers safeguards and remedies for individuals it does not allow the Government on behalf of the people a right of appeal to the Strasbourg Court.

Some people attack the ECHR for being insufficiently flexible, too much a creature of its time, to meet the challenges of a new age. But I reflect that within its own terms it did allow us after 11 September to derogate from parts of the convention. Article 15 gives us the right to do so if we face “a public emergency threatening the life of the nation” in order to protect other more fundamental rights namely the right to life for those who might otherwise be threatened with terrorism. Surely a practical example of precisely the flexibility that our Lord Chief Justice had in mind in the quotation to which referred a moment ago.

It was of course precisely to block the re-emergence of the pre-war totalitarianism that the Strasbourg Court and the Treaty which it interprets was established.

And the ECHR and for many countries the European Union itself, have been seen as a symbol and practical means of advancing unity, freedom and progress into democracy.

Take Spain. When I first entered politics, Spain was still under a form of fascist rule. And that was true of other European countries too. And the judicial institutions of Strasbourg together with the economic institutions of the European Union have transformed life for all of those countries. We are about to embark another major expansion of the European Union this coming May with the admission of ten new countries to our number.

And so irksome as aspects of it may sometimes seem. We cannot overstate the positive benefits of this form of international economic and legal engagement.

The changing nature of the threat

But just as the world in which our judicial systems must operate has changed so inevitably have the threats to those systems. If the ECHR and the European Union grew up in a world in which the main threat came from a totalitarian state, or a cold war style military power we face today something totally different and far more elusive. I find it helpful to characterise the threat we face as one from ‘franchised’ terror. Groups which have a certain common ideology and set of values, a certain loose chain of command or at least identity, common training perhaps, but often operating independently. Inspired but not controlled by their leaders.

It is an ideology of hate with a target which is the values, the freedom, and the democracy which is seen by our enemies as encapsulating modernity. It is hatred of the very freedoms and communities that are most basic to us. And yet the paradox is that since 11 September more men and women of the Muslim faith have been killed by these people than those of any other, and you see the indiscriminate merciless disregard for human life, rejoicing in the consequences of terror which means that this is declaration of war against humanity rather than against any religion, country, or community.

So let me describe for a moment my reflections as a very new Home Secretary at the time of the attack on the World Trade Centre and the immediate dilemmas I faced. First of course we thought of those most directly caught up in these terrible events. But then and quite properly we thought of when and where was the next attack to come? And in the days that followed working in collaboration with the United States and with our European partners, we quickly saw action which needed to be taken in a number of areas. Both of our two countries introduced new legislation.

But in reflecting now on where we go from here, we have to keep addressing the issue of how best to provide that balanced approach, and as with the quote from Lincoln, what would happen politically if we got the judgement wrong. The debate then would be very different. And in Britain this is a real challenge for the centre left of politics and we will always have in mind the example of Germany where the very weakness of the Weimar Republic was the strengthening of the Nazi cause.

But let me describe for a moment one part of our anti-terrorism, crime and security act perhaps the most controversial part. We were faced with a specific challenge. A challenge from people who had come here often seeking asylum – ironically perhaps from the consequences of their illegal actions in their home countries. Their asylum claims had failed, they were involved in international terrorism. And yet it has not been possible to convict them of criminal offences. Our own adherence to our international obligations meant that we could not remove them to the countries from which they came because of the threat that they would face if returned. I could not justify to the British people a situation in which we simply left these individuals to walk our streets. And so we introduced a new immigration power in the Act which allowed us to detain foreign nationals whom I certified as international terrorists. Because this is an immigration power these individuals are free to leave the UK whenever they chose – as two of the 17 I have certified have chosen to do. The legality of the power and the derogation it required have themselves been tested and upheld in our courts. The individual certifications are all being scrutinised by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission – equivalent to our High Court. Of the 13 cases so far heard, my decision has been upheld in 12. Cases will be reviewed by SIAC every three months thereafter.

But of course we now know more about both the nature of the threat and the potential means of prevention and intervention. In the case of the ACTS Act, the crucial powers of detention I have described are due to lapse in November 2006. That is why I am calling in Britain for a well-informed debate because I want us to find long term solutions which maintain the balance, protect individual rights, and reflect our mutual risk as citizens reliant on democracy for dual protection against terrorism and arbitrary power. I want this to be a public debate too – not just a debate for lawyers. Taking the public with us, whilst listening to the legal experts, makes sense.

Our approach to terrorism

But let me finish by looking at the wider way in which we are seeking to tackle terrorism in the United Kingdom. Our approach has four main pillars to it – prevention, pursuit, protection, and preparedness! Let me take each of these in turn.

Prevention. Perhaps the most important but long term agenda. Domestically it means that we have to engage with the communities most directly being abused by the terrorist cells and their agents. So that they can become our eyes and ears. People themselves being alert, but not alarmed, and helping us.

The same principle applies in reflecting on what feeds the terrorist armoury, but allows them to demonise modernity, namely us. For the hatred which motivates them is often hidden by a cloak which pretends to be concerned about injustice and unjust treatment . So what can we do? We cannot eliminate their threat by removing what they claim to be the causes of their hatred. But tackling injustice would assist us in appealing to the decent, to the thinking, to those looking to take on the terrorist with us but finding themselves in real difficulty. I have recently visited Pakistan and I heard at first hand from people – people basically very well disposed to us – of the extent of the distrust and anger in that country at the way in which Muslim communities, and Muslim suffering throughout the world but especially the Middle-East are perceived to be treated. However much one might disagree with the overall analysis, however much one might explain – as I did – the steps our countries are taking to bring peace to that part of the world, the important thing is to note for these purposes is how powerfully this view held by Muslim communities is believed and felt. In other words it fuels a sense of grievance and injustice which is used by others as a cloak to hide their own more fundamental hatred. We must therefore continue to address these issues and injustices both in our own countries and in the wider world.

Secondly pursuit – again both domestically against known terrorists and their associates but also internationally against the sources of that domestic threat.

I don’t intend to go into the much rehearsed arguments about Iraq beyond the fact that the key issue now for us is the importance of continuing to work together internationally to address the kind of problems I have been describing. It is all the more important that we should do so together and there is a danger that as a result of that conflict countries will feel less inclined to co-operate and work together. This underlines my point that we are in this together, this is all our business, both because we are all the target and so we must have a global response.

Successfully thwarting a terrorist operation requires a co-ordinated international approach. Sharing information, fully engaging with those countries who unwillingly harbour terrorists and themselves are at risk from the network. And I pleased to note that co-operation of this kind is very strong.

This opens for me another key aspect of the debate I have launched back in Britain – namely the balance between the disruption of terrorist activity and its successful prosecution. There is a fundamental challenge here both for Governments and for our police and security services. A challenge made more complex by the fact that often these operations have an international dimension.

The longer you can allow an operation to develop, the longer the surveillance, the more chance you have got of securing conviction, but there is an obvious risk attached to this and those countries like the US which have been subject to an attack will obviously feel that even more keenly than we do. This is a matter of making really fine judgements.

And pursuing terrorists, as we all know, means pursuing money launderers, organised criminals, people traffickers and other smugglers, those exploiting the international banking system, drugs barons and racketeers.

But co-operation, worldwide linkages, and intelligence can work and be effective. This underlines my point about the need for our international systems to develop alongside the way in which our world is becoming more global both in its opportunities for positives such as trade but also negatives such as terrorism.

Thirdly public protection. working together on what you call homeland security. We have, for example, undertaken a major mapping exercise of vulnerable sites in the UK to protect and provide proper advice for those responsible. Again we have had to move on from the cold war mindset and think about other things – food distribution, industrial plants etc. I could talk all night about our work on this but will spare you the details for another occasion.

And finally preparedness. Preparing for the consequences of terrorism. Or course, you could spend half the national income on this and we could still be prepared for the wrong emergency. But public reassurance for political survival and for good operational preparedness is vital. We need to do what makes sense.

This challenge is to corporate responsibility and not just government at every level.

From informed and vigilant individuals through to responsible business this is the challenge to us all.

We are updating our own emergency powers legislation at the moment to provide for a better and more flexible response at regional and local level to any emergencies.

It is a comprehensive but necessary programme of work. It involves us in trying both to master the detail but also to keep sight of the big picture and the challenges which face us. All of which means that the job of Home Secretary has probably changed out of all recognition because we are not simply living with the threat, taking overall responsibility for our response to it, but also weighing up where to place the emphasis, the resources and the expertise in response. Holding your nerve without being complacent. Informing the public without creating fear. Alert but not alarmed. Living with the issues and the danger, but not allowing them to destroy the sense of perspective.

All of us across the world who are close to this face the same difficulties. I reflected with Tom Ridge about this on Boxing Day last year and of course the extent to which we succeed will a matter for the judgement of history. Balancing human rights and the institutions which sustain them with the basic right for life and freedom from fear. Retaining proportionality whilst trying to explain the very real danger and scale of the threat. Doing so when you can only explain part of the case, part of the evidence, and doing so by using the strength of our democracy not undermining it. This is much, much more difficult to achieve in the most open democracies in the world. But we are better for it, with a greater and more worthwhile challenge. That is the nature of the task for us in Britain and the US in the 21st century.

We must and we are taking on that challenge together.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, in Boston, USA, on 9 March 2004.

I am very pleased to be invited to this celebration for the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

The Institute has become an increasingly influential source of ideas and new approaches in this country and both directly and indirectly in other parts of the world too and has certainly been an important stimulus to my thinking. Over the past 15 years, I have been able to visit some of the programmes growing out of the work of the Institute and its predecessors – including the Compstat system in New York, the Centre for Court Innovation, La Bodega de la Familia and Operation Ceasefire in Boston. I’ve even succeeded intempting one of your distinguished alumni Paul Evans across the Atlantic! And I have had long-standing links with the Kennedy School as a whole through Professor Robert Putnam.

But that is not my theme for today. Instead the issue I want to address (and it’s one which never goes away) is a more fundamental one. Does Government matter, what kind of Government and for what purpose? On our side of the Atlantic we have exactly the same debates and challenges: people call for action on every front one day and demand that we devolve responsibility and downscale resources the next.

I’ll come later to the contradictions of a liberal left who want more Government at home and less abroad and the right preaching no Government at home and big Government abroad.

I start from the premise that Government matters, Government is the alternative to anarchy, to disintegration and to conflict. Government is about resolving differences, determining priorities, allocating resources peacefully and without conflict not to mention its more ancient and fundamental role of providing the basic framework of protection from harm necessary for both communities and individuals. One of the first books I read at University was by Professor Sir Bernard Crick, “In Defence of Politics”. I believe that Bernard’s analysis holds good for today.

But the question is not whether we need politics or Government or even good Government, but what kind of Government, what role Government can play in the 21st century and how democracy can be revitalised and renewed in an era of global capital, the world wide web, mobile phones and multi channel media. And of course this leads us into wider questions. What is the glue that holds society together? How do we build on the family, what should we do to reinforce self-reliance and mutuality?

If we are to answer these questions, we must be very clear about the nature of the challenges that now confront us. Above all it seems clear to me that the challenge is one of the most enormous change both in terms of scale but also rapidity. Change economically, socially and globally. Change which can bring enormous benefits to individuals, communities and countries but which can also be threatening for all of these. In particular change which can undermine the cohesion, the social capital, the networks and support structures which are crucial part of every area of human activity – economic, educational and personal and family life. Old certainties have disappeared – but there is no room for nostalgia, we have to develop a new sense of identity and belonging – and government has to look to build new forms of social capital, new networks and new cohesion which will help us all to thrive in the new world in which we find ourselves.

I want therefore to explore for a moment what it is that determines the level of social capital in a society?

It seems to be affected in a negative way by a number of contemporary trends. Firstly, the breakdown of family in the traditional sense which can undermine our sense of where we belong. Secondly, mobility – if you don’t expect to stay long in one place you are unlikely to invest in the social networks that bind communities together. And thirdly, the decay in people’s sense of community can lead to the disintegration of actual communities – with people leaving, crime rising, drug use, and despair which can become a vicious cycle

But of course Government should not be a purely passive player in this. And the steps we are taking – for example to give people and local communities the powers and the confidence to tackle anti-social behaviour – are I believe helping to turn this round. Perhaps more important still for long term change is our approach to education – which brings not just personal strength, hope, and the capacity to cope with change, but also gives people a stake in society. And finally, ownership, financial and material assets, which of course also gives people a stake in society. Research I commissioned while at the Department of Education, using data from the National Child Development Study, suggests that asset ownership brings wider social and psychological benefits. Having savings appears to be correlated with enjoying better health, and having more interest in politics. This applies to community assets as well as individual assets. When physical capital in a community goes up, so too does social capital.

This suggests for me a new and different role for Government. The challenge for government is, by taking a more enabling, facilitating role, to help individuals and communities see a way forward – not by doing things for them but by doing things with them, as a means to lasting change. Leadership is crucial – not just government, but also schools and colleges, churches, community organisations. But without participation, the difference leadership makes will be temporary not permanent. Let me give you some practical examples of precisely this kind of change in the UK.

In London, the Families in Focus initiative at Ampthill Square, Camden, has clearly shown the benefits of involving residents in working with ‘at risk’ children and young people. Anti-social behaviour has fallen sharply. Caretakers estimate that problems of vandalism, graffiti and litter have been cut by 70%. According to the local Council’s lead on anti-social behaviour, “the area went from being well-known for youth anti-social behaviour to being well-known for the lack of it.”

In Birmingham, Balsall Heath, once a blighted red-light area, has been revived by community activists who engaged local residents through 22 self-help associations. House prices have risen and local people are more satisfied with improvements made to their area than other parts of the City.

I know that Britain does not have a monopoly on these kinds of initiatives. In Dudley, one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Boston, and a deteriorating and crime-ridden wasteland in the early 1980s, the area was saved by a civic association that knocked on every door, overcame ethnic differences, and now plays an ongoing role in the neighborhood. At countless community meetings, at multicultural festivals, and through side-by-side labor, organizers helped people in the neighborhood connect and reconnect. A major achievement has been gaining control of unused land, convincing Boston’s city government to give the neighbourhood power of ‘eminent domain’ over various parcels of land. This gave local people greater control of the neighbourhood, and a ‘place at the table’ during discussions surrounding development of their community. More than 300 of the 1,300 abandoned plots of land have been transformed into high quality affordable housing, gardens and public spaces.

This is the kind of control which neighbourhoods should be getting – not the gated, fenced, walled off communities which are a symbol of the importance of security, but also a warning. Once this way of striving for security takes over, society is fractured as those who try to withdraw from perceived danger also withdraw their talents and resources from any attempt to reverse the cycle to which I referred earlier. The flight from the most difficult urban areas denudes the neighbourhood of the capacity to recover and the downward spiral can only be reversed by drastic remedial steps. We end up with a kind of community isolationism.

There are parallels here with the international sphere – where we in the UK, or you here, cannot truly gate-off our countries from terrorism, organised crime and other threats to world stability. Migration, globalisation mean that we need to work together to look for solutions to our common problems. And when the terrorist threat increasingly knows no borders, we have to respond to the threat by reaching out for international solutions rather than retrenching into isolation.

But I want to focus here on the domestic context. Professor Putnam’s work has helped to draw attention to the links between how individuals interact and the wider effects on society. It is essential we continue to refine our understanding of these links and examine more precisely not just the apparent correlations, but the underlying causes. ‘Social capital’ has come to be used to describe a wide range of activities and relationships, from informal volunteering, engagement with civic institutions, to any form of group activities, socialising beyond family members, to community activism. How these are affected by, and in turn affect, other social, economic and political factors require careful but also imaginative thinking. And that’s where we politicians look to the social and political scientists like you for help.

In Britain in the last few weeks, there has been a good deal of controversy about the related issue of whether the left should really believe in diversity, if it makes other progressive values, like redistribution and the welfare state, more difficult to pursue. Here in the US, I know that Professor Putnam – while not questioning the value of diversity – does believe that some on the left underestimate the challenges it presents, in terms of its effects on social capital.

There are those on the left in Britain have reacted in a way which suggests that it is dangerous even to raise these questions. My own view is that we need to be rigorously honest so that the debate is one worth having. The idea that there is a potential tension between supporting diversity and other progressive aims, is not a new one – it goes back at least to Friedrich Engels. And the evidence that diversity is correlated with a decline in social capital is sufficiently powerful – both in the US and in the UK, through work carried out by MORI – that we need to address it. For my part, as I have said, I am convinced that instability through high mobility and therefore turnover of population is a central factor in contributing to the decline in social capital. I have an open mind as to whether diversity of itself has a similar impact but the important thing is that I am convinced that we can combine diversity with integration and therefore with stability, leading to a greater capacity to manage difference. The sense of belonging and identification clearly matters.

In Britain we’ve just introduced a proper ceremony for naturalisation purposes, whereas you have had them for 100 years. The ceremonies will be firmly anchored in the local communities. These symbols are important – but of course they can only support, not replace, hard-edged action at local level. The example I gave earlier, of Balsall Heath, shows how communities with real problems – and also diversity, whether or not that is related – can turn themselves around, with help from government help, and rebuild their social networks, and with that tolerance and ultimately, mutuality. As well as Balsall Heath, parts of London display the same kind of virtuous circle – with minority groups for example often involved in the most active and open church organisations – whilst in other communities elsewhere, for example in the North of England, diversity has taken a different route, with segregation leading ultimately to fracture. We need to understand why. We need to think about how the experiences which have worked can be shared and replicated across other local areas – without losing the vital sense of connection with particular local energy and concerns.

I promised earlier to deal with the contradictions of a liberal left who want more Government at home and less abroad and the right preaching no Government at home and big Government abroad. There is also the paradox that those in favour of no government are usually quick to recognise the potential of government in terms of awarding contracts, when it comes to an election.

But I realise this is a caricature. There are genuine disagreements over the value and scope of government. Instead of choosing between a picture of a government which does everything for us or a government which prides itself on trying not to do anything, we need to move towards a new compact between government and governed. This means responsibilities and duties resting with the individual and community as well as with the Government, the politics of something-for-something, with rights and responsibilities going hand in hand. This is an extension of the family, where mutual help has to be balanced by willingness to self-help. But self-help is impossible in many circumstances without mutual help – and without a more equal distribution of resources and opportunities. We are struggling to address this, not just in re-shaping the relationship between Government and governed but in defining where accountability should lie.

This is about hard-edged policy in capacity-building for civil renewal and for youth engagement – and for making the link between the political and civil aspects of democracy. All the evidence shows that those with assets engage, those who engage also vote, those who vote influence, those who are very wealthy have the most influence. But crucially those who do not engage and do not vote have little or no influence. Their lack of both alienates them from broader engagement with society as well as from the formal decision-making process. And those, including those in the media, who foster cynicism and preach doctrines which alienate are never the ones who disengage themselves, they know better! But when people disengage, especially those who most need help, the public domain is drained of legitimacy.

Which brings me back to my original theme or question – why do we need Government? Well, we invented government because we had to, not just for defending ourselves and guaranteeing our protection and security, but also because we amount to more, we achieve more, if we work in common rather than as isolated individuals. This is why government is still needed today – because left purely to individual choice we will not invest enough in social capital, and not in a co-ordinated enough way, to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing world.

So Government is about making things possible, by sharing resources, including where gross inequality prevents any sense of community, and by fostering a public space which is inhabitable by us all – and here I mean not just the physical space, but also the space of opportunities and life chances, together with the ability to grasp those life chances, the ability to be independent, self-reliant and self-determining.

I believe that this way of understanding what government is about transcends traditional political divides. The choice is not between being “on your own”, or “under the dead hand of Government” – it is whether government, which must exist and will always affect people’s lives, can do so in a way that enables them both as individuals and as communities.

There are areas in our lives where we offer to share sovereignty and invest together because individually we could never realise our goals and values. Not just obvious areas like defence, but also public education, social capital and the settling of differences. In other words, the different ways in which we socialise our civic and democratic sphere. Without that ability to inhabit a shared public space, we have dysfunctional communities and dysfunctional states. With it we have the chance of a civilised democracy which is as much about participation as it is about primaries and Presidential elections.

Below is the text of the speech made by David Blunkett, the then Home Secretary, at Methodist Hall in London on 28 April 2004.

I’m very grateful to all of you for coming. I’d like to welcome those who are participating during the course of the day, and those of you who have come here as victims of crime, and who are prepared to be brave enough to talk about it. I’d also like to welcome all the partners joining together with the criminal justice system. As Patricia has said, this is the first conference of its kind to be held in recent times and I’m very pleased we’re here today. The critical element will be to ensure that at the end of the day we can take on board the ideas and the critique that people bring to this area. We must do this not just nationally, but through the local criminal justice boards and the new partnership arrangements with the community safety partnerships at local level as well. So thank you very much for joining us.

As you know, I’m committed to trying to ensure not only that the victim of crime has a voice, but also that we who have a voice on the public platform, that those of us who have the opportunity to speak out and to be heard actually reflect the feelings of those whose voices are seldom heard. An old sparring partner of mine who is in the House of Lords, recently on a television programme, said that the problem with David Blunkett as Home Secretary is that he brings too much of his background to the job. Well, I’m very proud to do that. I’m proud to reflect the community I came from. I’m proud to be the voice of that community. I’m proud that we have a system where Cabinet Ministers still hold advice surgeries and where, in my case on a Saturday morning, I can hear the cry for help from people who do not get onto Radio 4, who have no access to columns in newspapers, who never have their voice heard or reflected in that way. In my view, those of us who have the temerity to speak on behalf of others also have a duty to speak out on behalf of those who are literally the victims of crime and of a disintegrating society where respect for each other, and common decency has been undermined over the last forty years. Not that it was a halcyon era, because the 1950s wasn’t. I was a youngster at the time, I confess. There was a great deal of prejudice, there was a great deal of inequality, there was a great deal of hypocrisy. But because people at least understood that in their community and in their family they had a key role to play in the type of society that developed around them. The reinforcement of individualism, and the emphasis on purely individual rights – often for perpetrators – has in my view unbalanced not only the criminal justice system, but also the perspective of community and society.

So bringing together the criminal justice system, the partners working with it, and those who have experienced crime and often the bravery of having to be witnesses (because victims and witnesses are so often synonymous), is crucial in what we are describing today as “victim justice” alongside “criminal justice”. Justice to ensure that people are properly and fairly dealt with, that those who are accused have fair trials and those who are innocent are not found guilty. But justice also for those victims who so often walk away from the system disillusioned, feeling that they’ve been let down and that the process rather than the truth has been paramount in peoples’ minds.

So today I want to touch on the way in which our system and our perspective is changing. The fact that types of crime change, the incidence of crime changes, has to be taken on board. We need to reflect those changes on the way that we develop policy and practice at local level. We haven’t solved volume crime, I wish we had. But there’s been the most dramatic drop in more traditional forms of burglary, of vehicle crime and of robbery. On the latter, we’ve been successful over the last 2½ years with the police, with partners at local level, including local authorities, in being able to work together to have a dramatic impact. With target hardening from community safety partnerships, police have made a big difference to the incidence of burglary and opportunistic crime. With the industry and with those working in relation to car parks and others, we’ve reduced vehicle crime. We’re not there yet but there’s been a tremendous drop. And that has meant that the focus of people’s attention understandably has shifted to other forms of crime, such as personal crime, anti-social behaviour and low level thuggery violence and domestic violence, too often associated with alcohol and drugs.

It is the personalised, what some call low level violence and thuggery, it is the intimidation, it is the fear of what is going to happen to you walking down the street, in your neighbourhood, in the shopping centre, or in entertainment venues that now affects people. And therefore the victim is not simply a victim of loss of income or loss of goods or loss of service, but is actually a victim in terms of their own personal physical and emotional wellbeing.

And the reason I mentioned community is my second point. That because of the shift in the nature of crime, it is whole communities, small neighbourhoods that start to feel as though they are the victim. This is not surprising, because so many of the victims live in focus-targeted areas. We know that those who are subject to the incidence of repeat crime, repeat victimisation, by repeat offenders, make up a very high proportion of those who experience crime. To overcome it, we are rapidly building on existing proposals for prolific offenders and priority offenders. But it also means that communities themselves feel as though they are beleaguered, as though nobody will help, and as though the whole life of the people around them is disintegrating. I feel it because I represent a community that has more than its fair share of crime. When people from newspapers or broadcast media ask whether I understand how people feel, I say that I was brought up there, I’m there every weekend, I hold advice surgeries there, I listen to people, and I attend. This last weekend I held a Big Conversation meeting in my own city about crime and the disintegration of normal parlance of community civilised behaviour. And what people say to me is, “Is it hopeless? You’re on our side”. Thank God they say that, if they didn’t I wouldn’t get re-elected! They say, “Is it hopeless, Mr Blunkett? You’re the Home Secretary, can’t you help us? Is it not possible to turn it round? What can we do when at every end and turn, when legislation is passed, when police numbers are increased, when technology is improved, when the community is desperate for help, why is it that we can’t so often see an end result, that we can’t feel that the system as a whole is on our side?” In the Stubbin estate in my own community, where the people themselves are working together and trying to be part of the solution, individuals are in despair. The police are sympathetic. They turn up. But we need to actually get to the causes and send out the signals to those who are perpetrating the violence, the intimidation, the thuggery, the anti-social behaviour. We need to get the messages across to the families who condone it, to the networks of thugs who support it, and to the opinion formers within the community who may doubt the criminal justice system and what we are trying to do. Because unless we can break that, we cannot help the victims of crime. And that is why, whatever it takes, we should join together in sending the message that at last we are going to put victims at the forefront of our service. We are going to put victims where they belong, at the very pinnacle of what we try to do. We must make sure that the criminal justice system provides a balanced, independent and effective way of securing people’s individual rights, and to secure through victim justice the rights of those who have had their independence and civil rights undermined by those who have perpetrated the crime.

We need to get that message across to each element, each strand in the system, from myself and Patricia Scotland, all the way through to the community support officer and street warden, to the environmental health or housing officer. If we can get it through in terms of the way people are treated when they are a victim of crime then we will get a change of culture within our community. It’s nothing short of a change of culture we need.

Now there are those who say this is just a matter of will. I think they’ve been reading too much Harry Potter, they think that if you throw powder on the fire all can disappear in a flash! If only we willed it everything would change. We know better than that. You know better than that. We know that even when things improve, unless people feel the difference they won’t believe the statistics. We have to address the paradox that change has taken place, but the perception of this is not so. Crime has fallen. The statistics bear it out. Statistics which are comparing like with like, taking exactly the same sample, taking the same methodology, show that crime has fallen. And yet if you talk to many people in the community they don’t feel it and they don’t believe it. Until they feel it and believe it, and until their distress and trauma has been overcome, it is absolutely clear that they won’t believe that people are safer. It is true that the chance of being a victim of crime is at the lowest for 20 years. It’s still not good enough. It’s one in four rather than one in three of ten years ago. But it’s still an appalling statistic and it’s one we need to address. And that is why we’re in it together. You see, the other thing, (apart from if we only had will, we would be able to do it), is the view that on the one hand government national and local should be hands off, should be light touch, should be less intrusive and interventionist; and you don’t just get that from the newspapers, you get it from all the vested interests that we have to deal with: “Please leave us alone”. There is nothing new about this, I used to get it when I was Education Secretary. Teachers said give us the money and leave us alone, don’t bother with literacy and numeracy programmes, they interfere with our professionalism. I get it now in terms of “For goodness sake, your job is not to intervene”. The paradox is that the very people who preach loudest, non intervention, government leaving everyone else alone, avoiding the Big Brother, Big Sister state, are the very people who demand most from government. They demand that we take responsibility and they demand that we account for just about everything, and they insist that whatever goes wrong has to be our fault.

I’ll accept our part of this bargain in terms of getting it right for victims and communities. What I want is that every element, strand, part of the programme, system and society actually are prepared to join with us. The first thing is the building block of society which is the family. We want family to take responsibility for building decency and respect into how they teach, prepare and bring up their children. Also, we want the community to be big enough to stand up for the victims and have a voice heard. We’ve therefore got to make sure that people feel confident that as victims and witnesses the system as a whole will protect them. And thirdly, we need the system in all its guises – from policing, housing, courts, the judiciary, probation, through to the Youth Justice Board, the voluntary sector, and the many who are here today to be able to join together in having a clear voice, being able to act decisively in favour of those at the receiving end. And I don’t think it’s too much to ask that each of us play our part, that each of us do our bit.

Last week we launched the anti-social behaviour prosecutors. This is a way of providing a people’s prosecutor who would get alongside people in the community. Who would be there to ensure that when evidence is gathered and people are prepared to be witnesses that it doesn’t fail at the last hurdle on a technicality or a failure to put the case together properly. When the whole Home Office team were in the West Midlands, we found that people warmed to this, just as they’re warming to the Community Justice Centre idea that we are going to experiment with in Merseyside and hopefully that we will be able to expand across the country. It’s worked. I saw it working a year ago in New York where the community was not only part of the process in obtaining victim justice, but also the part of the solution in terms of avoiding people being victims in the first place. This works by everyone being expected to join together and all those engaged in the services being prepared to go down, from the heights of whatever professional status they’d reached and do what Home Secretaries have to do and sit in advice surgeries and sit in community meetings and listen to people, and engage with them in how to provide solutions.

So if anyone from justice’s clerks through to high court judges or politicians tells you that it isn’t possible for the professionals in the service to undermine their independence by attending community forums and engaging with the neighbourhood and with victims, they are talking garbage. It is perfectly possible to do that and in the best parts of our system in this country, people are doing it. From prosecution and probation through to district judges and magistrates. Some of them were there at my meeting this weekend. And I know that to listen, to learn, to feel makes a difference, not just to the attitude of victims and their confidence, but also to those who attend the meetings from professional organisations. It’s time all of us felt. Some may say that working class lads from northern council estates feel too strongly, and that our language sometimes reflects our strength of feeling. I make no apology for that. I think that it’s time we told things as they are. We need to do so with measured words, we need to do so with maturity, and we need to understand the constraints.

But there are other benefits from working together with the Community Justice Centres and the experimental work that is already taking place. It’s not just confidence from the community. It’s not just a new understanding from professionals. It’s the ability of people to feel that someone is on their side. It’s for victims to have confidence in the fact that someone will be there to listen and to help and to avoid repeat victimisation. It’s also for victims to know that someone will be there helping them through the system and supporting them when they need it. Which is why I’m pleased that Rosie Winterton from the Department of Health is going to be here today. I’m pleased that this is not seen as a Home Office matter, but one where, if you’re a victim the system as a whole engages to help you.

You can rely on fast track treatment in the future, particularly in terms of not having to pay people compensation for being off work, but actually enabling them to get back to work. Not paying them for disfiguration but putting the disfiguration right. Not leaving them for months so that emotional trauma worsens, but intervening quickly to provide help to the individual and families. And that is why alongside the tough new powers that we’ve provided in the Criminal Justice and Sentencing Act past last year, the Anti-Social Behaviour Act passed last year, the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill which is before Parliament at the moment, we’re honouring the commitment to legislate for victims’ rights. The package of measures in those three bills puts together the promises we made to speak out, plan and act on behalf of victims. I know that Susan Herman from the US will be opening up these areas later today and I’m very pleased that she’s been able to join us. All of this is building on recent changes and it’s giving, I hope, new aspirations for a different sort of world for the future.

So the ‘No Witness, No Justice’ witness care project that we’ve been undertaking, which has worked so tremendously well is going to now be expanded with £36 million over the next three years, and of course increases in funding for all the services that go alongside it to actually ensure that it happens. Victim Support has over the years had its voice clearly heard and its resourcing increased. Not enough, I know, but more than ever before. We’ve increased the funding available from £11.7 million to £30 million over the last seven years. There was funding made available to Victim Support for the street crime initiative, and as we’ve tackled robbery and street crime I’ve made the decision to switch the money into other Victim Support services in order to maintain the spend. It seems to me that we’ve got to take intelligent logical decisions. Congratulations to Victim Support as an organisation on their 30th anniversary.

I hope that the next 30 will actually be ones that are fruitful, that can join with other partners in the support of victims, and those who are now having their voices heard across the country to make it work even better. And of course we need to increase the development funding through the Victims’ Fund. We also need to look at the very substantial sums that go through the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. And we will do so in a way that enhances the rights and the support to victims rather than undermining it.

Patricia Scotland and I have to take difficult decisions in this area to make sure that the funding doesn’t go in administration and in low level gestures rather than in helping to prevent crime and to support victims in a meaningful way. We’re here to listen to people who have got thoughts and views today. Restorative justice and anti-social behaviour are two of the workshops that people will be looking at today. I’d like us to engage in how we can address prevention as well as cure and enforcement. Owning the problem, reshaping for the challenge, engaging as part of the solution, is the wider challenge that all of us face. It’s also the philosophy that we believe in. We are in this together as partners and that at every level we can make it work. Reform requires investment, and investment requires people to examine locally through the local criminal justice board and the community safety partnership where the money is going. It’s inevitable that if you lock people away in jail you spend a lot of money on the perpetrators. That’s just the truth. We need to make sure that the additional resources that are going to support victims across the board – in every area, from every agency and department – are understood and are better put together. We estimate that at least £650 million on services of some kind is going to victims. Again, it’s not enough. But the real question I want to raise this morning is, are people actually feeling it? Where is the £650 million? Do people perceive that support of that sort is available to victims? Can we examine, in what is taking shape and what is available at local level? These issues include separation of the perpetrator and the victim in court, then include the support services when people are arriving in court, or returning home, and then include avoiding cracked trials and the trauma of having to return time after time to the point where disillusionment sets in, the perpetrator gets away with it.

So let’s use new measures. Let’s use the Proceeds of Crime Act. Four hundred and forty five clauses, which actually allow us now to seize the proceeds of crime. We are now able to do so in circumstances where the organiser, the leader, the facilitator hasn’t actually been nailed, but where they live on the proceeds of crime and cannot explain where their lifestyle comes from. That ought to be quite a shock to one or two people across the country. The police can confiscate the flash cars of the drug dealers, and legislation is in place to gradually claw back what has been clawed from us. So putting £4 million into helping victims of sex offenders over the next 18 months may seem very little from the proceeds of crime fund but it’s a beginning. It’s a consistent look at how we can divert what has been stolen from individuals and communities back into supporting those individuals and communities. Increasing counselling services such as those provided by the eight really successful one-stop locations is a key task to us and that is what we will do. So often speedy, supportive help is absolutely critical to ensuring that people feel not only that we’re on their side but that they can be safe for the future, and that they can restore their lives. This is true of domestic violence, where sharing of information, and working together is vital to improve those systems. We have taken this forward with all the measures in the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Bill, which include fulfilling the promise to turn the Victims Charter into a statutory Victims Code of Practice. We established the Victims Advisory Panel last year, and we are making this a statutory part of the new system under the new Act. This will ensure that there is a clear voice for a whole range of those of you who are working with, and for victims. And thanks to David Goldblatt, who will be speaking in a moment, for his work on that panel and for his perspective this morning as to how it is working and how we can improve it. There isn’t in our system a year zero, where if you haven’t got everything right you’ve failed. There’s a year when people do an audit, take a snapshot of what has been achieved and accord themselves some pleasure. We have to to keep cheerful about what progress has been made and keep honest with each other about what new steps need to be put in place to improve the system.

So from small beginnings oak trees grow. The criminal justice system is changing. The latest evidence we have is that confidence is beginning to be restored. We believe that victims feel that at last people are alongside them from probation through to voluntary sector organisations. We believe that the 22,000 extra victims of violence and sexual offences that were helped by the probation service last year alone is a major step in the right direction. But for the future, we need to ensure that at every stage and at every level the quality of information, the quality of service, the putting together of the new Action Plan will affect the way people are treated and feel. It is not just an Action Plan from national level but an Action Plan in each of the Local Criminal Justice Board areas. To provide protection, to deal with prolific and target priority offenders, to turn the Victims Charter into a new Victims’ Code and to ensure that the voice of victims is heard on those bodies and in those advisory groups in a way that actually does change the practice of professionals.

We’re in it together, it’s a partnership for working together. We can pass the laws, we can put in additional resources, we can encourage and cajole, but in the end, we can’t get there unless people have fire in their belly, unless they really want to change things, unless people are prepared to work together to make it happen and feel it in their everyday lives, and above all, unless society as a whole is prepared to stand up and be counted and to say “we won’t simply pass the buck to someone else, we won’t have a blame culture where it’s always someone else’s fault, and if only they’d done it the world would be a better place”. We must appeal to all those who have the ability to influence the actions, attitudes and culture of our communities around us, to take that opportunity to ensure that victims’ justice alongside criminal justice is the slogan of the years to come. Thank you very much indeed.