kindly asked my views on Ted Heath. I’ll just start by noting that the number of living ex-prime ministers has halved this year, from four to two; and I wouldn’t be surprised if it were to halve again before it increases.

On Northern Ireland, the picture is mixed. The gross security errors of Bloody Sunday, internment and the Falls Road curfew, crucial iconic incidents in poisoning the relationship between the British Army and many Catholics, all of which directly strengthened the Provisionals, all took place earlier in his term of office, and Heath must carry ultimate responsibility for all three (including internment, technically Faulkner’s decision but one that could hardly have been taken without Heath’s knowledge or consent). Suspending Stormont was obviously the right thing to do – but perhaps this should have happened much sooner. And Heath then further bolstered the legitimacy of the Republican movement by flying in Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams (as spokesmen for the IRA, note, not Sinn Fein) for the famous London talks with Willie Whitelaw.

On the other hand, Sunningdale was indeed an accomplishment – an agreement in many ways less flawed than the 1998 one (voluntary coalition rather than forced, largely brokered by Heath himself, and essentially wrecked by Harold Wilson’s failure to stand up to Loyalist intimidation. Some analysts blame Heath for calling the first 1974 election early, and handing the Loyalists the propaganda coup of winning 11 out of 12 Northern Ireland seats. I would defend him on this – the election was coming at some point anyway, and in those days Westminster elections were practically second-order elections in Northern Ireland. It should also be said that the whole Sunningdale process, from the suspension of Stormont in early 1972 to the inauguration of the power-sharing executive in 1974, took less time than even the 1996-98 Mitchell talks, let alone the entire process from Downing Street Declaration of December 1993 to the present day.

I don’t write much here about Northern Irish politics, but two sites which I do scan from time to time are the Slugger O’Toole weblog, providing commentary from a number of different perspectives, and The Blanket, which also presents a diversity of views, but is essentially run by disgruntled Republicans who believe that Gerry Adams has essentially settled for the same deal that was on offer in 1974, and complain that this devalues the entire armed struggle since then. I’d put it a little differently; I agree that Gerry Adams has indeed essentially settled for the same deal that was on offer in 1974 (strictly, 1973), but would say this demonstrates the worthlessness of the entire armed struggle since then.

Going back to Heath, two last notes. First off, last night’s TV documentary showed how important he was in getting the UK into the European Economic Community as then was (and didn’t mention Northern Ireland once). This is probably his most valuable political legacy, and he deserves a great deal of credit for it. Second, a friend of mine stood against him in Old Bexley and Sidcup in his last election, in 1997. The national papers ran a feature on the largest age gap between any two candidates in the same constituency – 54 years: Heath was then 80, while Iain had been born in the week of decimalisation, when Heath had already been prime minister for six months. Heath won handsomely, of course, but for the last time.

[Edited to add] Journalistic assessment from Belfast Telegraph here. Key phrase, “the Sunningdale settlement turned out like so much of the Heath record, to be either a glorious failure or too much too soon”.

Bolded those of you I’ve met, at least to the extent of “hello, you must be…” in the pub; strictly I should italicise those I have spoken to on the phone but not met, however I don’t think that applies to anyone.

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Who have I missed?

I’ve written before about Mini-Europe, the attraction up at the Heysel stadium where famous buildings from all over the European Union are reproduced in miniature. Obviously since last year they’ve had to rearrange the display while introducing new exhibits for the ten new member states, and Anne’s brother had managed to wangle an invitation to the formal opening of the new Maltese exhibit this morning.

Unfortunately it proved impossible to get key members of our party ready in time for the formal event, but we went along to Mini-Europe anyway, and I got a few decent pictures:

F turning the wheel that makes the Kinderdijk windmills turn and the water pour into the canal.

The new Latvian exhibit – I’ve never been to Riga but apparently this is the Freedom Memorial, looks pretty spectacular.

The ostensible reason why we should have been there, the new Maltese exhibit, prehistoric temples.

Ah well, back to work tomorrow – but Thursday is a day off!

All very good fun, as these events are supposed to be. My cousin is from the Bengali side of our family; she commented that the 150 invitees were basically her close relatives and about ten friends. Not sure how pleased she’ll be with the first two of these pictures (reflecting, alas, my own not too finely honed photographic skills) but the third I think is pretty good:

The evening before

Arriving at the venue with my uncle

The happy couple after the ceremony

My brother got rather better pictures of the ceremony itself.

Inevitably with so many relatives gathered together there had to be more group photos.

My brother, my mother, me, my sister

My mother, me, my sister-in-law, my brother, my sister, my brother-in-law

(Anne had had to stay behind in Belgium)

And a couple of pictures of some of the Aberystwyth end of my family:

My godson (also my cousin) plus wife and stepson

My godson plus brothers plus partners plus young Sam again.

I had a great time, though unfortunately seem to have picked up a stomach bug on Thursday evening that left me unable to really appreciate the lovely food on Friday (and still haven’t completely shaken it).

I was also very glad on Saturday morning to have the chance to catch up with two of my closest friends from college days (I guess known only to and ) who kindly gave me a lift to Heathrow.

Got back here safely; will write up today’s adventures in due course.

… or perhaps, send me a link!

Thanks to ‘ note on JK Rowling’s admiration for Jessica Mitford, and his link to her cover version of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, I have now become aware of her brief singing collaboration with Maya Angelou. From her obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Mitford’s resonance is complemented by Angelou’s wide-ranging harmony as both lace their performance with intriguing Cockney accents. As they follow the adventures of two frustrated furniture movers (“After striving, heaving and complaining (pronounced complaye-ning) we was getting nowhere”) in “Right, Said Fred”), one can’t help thinking of early Sonny and Cher recordings.

8) Keepers of the Peace, by Keith Brooke

Keith is the very nice guy who edits the infinity plus website – I didn’t realise that he was also an author, and snapped this up when I saw it, oh, somewhere recently. A straightforward young-soldier’s-rite-of-passage tale, a la Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Haldeman’s The Forever War, or Lucius Shepard’s Life During Wartime, and TBH not quite of the quality of any of those. But competent enough, and I’ll keep an eye out for his other two novels.

7) The Hallowed Hunt, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Sorry, Potter fans, this is the book I’d been waiting for for ages, and got on publication from Amazon in May – but have only now had time to read it (Anne of course had first crack at it). This is a new book in the world of The Curse of Chalion and Paladin of Souls, with (as far as I could remember) an entirely new set of characters and a slight shift of geographical focus, but the same religious setting of five gods who are very real indeed; in this case there is also an Ancient Curse that has to be lifted. I was worried that it was a bit slow-moving and info-dumping at the start, but once we get the Grand Revelation about one of the central characters it really picks up, and I couldn’t put it down while reading the second half. Bujold’s usual well-rounded characters, including those who would be villains in a lesser author’s book, combined with an intriguing puzzle which is solved with due regard to internal logic. So, I liked it, and it doesn’t really need you to have read either of the previous two.

6) The Rules of Management, by Richard Templar

I like to buy the occasional personal development book, and this was a) cheap and b) the best-selling such at Heathrow Airport so I bought and read it pretty quickly. It’s simply 100 top tips for managers, each explained in one or two pages, not in fact very well structured except that the first third are things to do with your team and the rest are things to do with your own work habits. A couple of ideas that gave me pause for though, but I must say the other books I’ve read in this genre were much more potentially useful.

5) The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, by Christopher Hibbert

Have made it safely home and now just noting all the books I read while on planes or up in the middle of the night with stomach problems. First up, this mid-70s volume on the famous Italian family who took over Florence and Tuscany and were (on some readings) responsible for the Renaissance. The best bit is the first section, on the rise to power of Cosimo de’ Medici in the early fifteenth century; after that it all seemed to descend into a succession of biographical data including each family member’s patronage of the arts. Disappointingly little context was given; I’d have liked to know a bit more about the precise role at that time of a cardinal (or indeed of a pope, as two of them ended up there), and some explanation of why Florence went from the thriving metropolis of Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent to the impoverished backwater of the eighteenth century. Filled in a few blanks for me though.

So, now in a public library internet terminal in Petersfield, Hampshire, preparing for my cousin’s wedding this afternoon.

Until yesterday, Petersfield was a rather insignificant dot on the map for me. But now I know that it has a superb second-hand bookshop, one with suitably winding shelves and passages and books of all ages. (And for all ages.) The one thing I really miss about where we live is the lack of decent English-language second hand book shops. (I understand there is one in Antwerp.) So I have bought:

A.A. Milne, Now We Are Six (F’s sixth birthday is very soon)
Shakespeare, Complete Works, edition smells like it’s about 100 years old.
Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories (also probably for F)
Juvenal in English, Penguin Classics edition of dozens of different translations
Pamela Sargent, The Shore of Women, which I understand is a seminal (if I can use that word) feminist sf text
Bram Stoker, The Lady of the Shroud, set in an unspecified Balkan principality that sounds very like Montenegro
Ellis Weiner, National Lampoon’s DOON, for 50p
Charles Schulz, Snoopy Stars in the Pursuit of Pleasure, also for F
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, Second Stage Lensmen – I have never read anything by him and have to start somewhere
Seamus Cullen, Astra and Flondrix – think I read something about this somewhere recently which made me want to look out for it
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage – not especially expecting to enjoy this but I understand it’s an American classic and it was cheap
Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky – still waiting for Going Postal to come out in paperback but this will keep me going.

Also mandatory Shreddies from Waitrose. Have been catching up a little on livejournal but have probably missed anything of importance (except tagging me for the idiosyncracies meme).

OK. Better go back to my B&B and change into wedding-type clothes. Home tomorrow, see y’all then.

Gebzhalia – rolled slices of cheese in mint sauce. Mmmm.

So, I went to South Ossetia on Monday. This is a small territory which fought and won a war against Georgia in the early 1990s and is kept going now by Russian military and economic support. (There is also a North Ossetia, which is one of the republics within Russia, and which is where the awful massacre at the school happened last year).

Ossetian is a language related to Persian but written in Cyrillic script. This is the sign outside the Foreign Ministry and an inspiring and uplifting slogan on display at the deserted main square:


I was told that the Ossetian for Ossetia, “Iryston”, comes from the same root as “Ireland”, and that “Belfast” means “Broken Spade” in Ossetian. Make of that what you will.

The Foreign Minister, Mr Dzhioev, was very pleased to see me. I don’t think he gets many visitors, given that even the Russians have not recognised them as an independent country:

When I asked him what I should take pictures of, he said, “Well, you didn’t come here for our scenery or our climate, did you, you came for the political situation!” (In fairness, the climate up in the foothills of the Caucasus was much more pleasant than on the sun-baked plain of central Georgia.) Irina and Teimuraz, our minders, suggested I should try taking a picture of the one tourist attraction in Tshinvali, the city theatre, unfortunately burnt in an accidental fire last year:

Actually, here are Irina and Teimuraz in front of the Foreign Ministry:

The other slogan on display in the deserted main square was in Russian, and expressed the desires of the South Ossetian people in so far as anyone has bothered to ascertain them:

“230 Years With Russia”

Personally I think they are doomed. The Georgians at the moment are publishing peace plans without actually communicating them to the South Ossetians, which I don’t take seriously; but sooner or later the Russians will get tired of maintaining the South Ossetians in the style to which they have become accustomed (itself sharply reduced by Georgian economic sanctions and military actions from a year ago) and will cut them loose. Later rather than sooner, I expect, given Russia’s current difficulties in the North Caucasus, but the day will come.

The guy I mentioned in my previous post has published his side of the story in RFE/RL:

AN INSIDER LOOKS AT MOLDOVA’S PASAT CASE

By E. Wayne Merry

On 27 June, the trial of former Moldovan Defense Minister Valeriu Pasat in connection with the sale by his government in 1997 of 21 MiG-29 jet fighters to the United States got under way. The ostensible offense for which Pasat, who served as defense minister from 1997-99, is in the dock is that he defrauded the Moldovan state of $54 million by selling the planes to Washington for a mere $40 million.

The arrest and trial are widely viewed as politically motivated, due to Pasat’s association with a previous Moldovan administration and his current connection with Russia’s Unified Energy Systems (EES), for which he works as a consultant. The image of a political trial is reinforced by the fact it is being held behind closed doors at the request of the prosecution, purportedly for national security reasons.

Whatever else Pasat may have on to account for, the MiG sale was a good financial deal for Moldova. I oversaw the purchase as Regional Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia in the office of the U.S. Defense Secretary. I conducted the initial negotiations with Pasat, although I left the Pentagon for a Congressional staff assignment a few weeks before the final purchase.

This acquisition involved confidential matters that I am not at liberty to discuss, but the intention of the U.S. government was to remove the planes from any potential illicit sales on the international arms market and to assist Moldova during a period of extreme economic hardship. The Pentagon saw the transaction as, in part, a type of assistance to Moldova. The amount the United States was willing to pay for the aircraft and associated equipment seemed generous to U.S. officials involved.

The Moldovan side, including Pasat, did not understand the concept of “fair market value,” to put it mildly. Officials in Chisinau felt the planes must be worth at least what they had cost the Soviet Union to build, rather than what anyone with real money was currently willing to pay for them. They wanted much more that $40 million, and it took months for them to recognize the limitations of the market.

The aircraft in question had been left in Moldova by the Soviet collapse. Although local mechanics kept the planes in good repair, they were of no practical use to the Moldovan state, which could not even afford fuel for training. The planes had no viable military purpose, as Moldova barely has enough airspace for high-performance fighters to turn around in the sky.

There were no other legitimate buyers for the aircraft, my research at the time revealed. Several other governments operated MiG-29s, but none wanted to add to their inventories; indeed, most were shifting to NATO-standard aircraft. The Moldovan planes lacked a source of spare parts and support/repair systems, making them of little value for a new customer. Russia, the producer of the MiG-29, made clear to potential customers that it would supply parts only for planes purchased from it or with its concurrence. Russia would not encourage the competitive sale of MiGs from sources like Moldova, which might cut into its own export market.

The only other potential customers for the Moldovan planes were the so-called “rogue states.” Washington felt it had legitimate concerns about the leakage of Soviet-made weaponry of all types from the arsenals of post-Soviet and former Warsaw Pact states to rogue governments. For Moldova, such an option would have been a disaster because the United States would have terminated its bilateral assistance programs if the MiGs fell into rogue-state hands as required by U.S. law. I have no doubt Washington would also have used its influence in international financial institutions to punish Moldova severely as an object lesson to other countries to discourage this kind of commerce.

The Moldovan government in 1997 was informed of these realities and came, although slowly, to understand the United States was its only serious potential customer, that the offer was a fair one, and that the United States would pay real money immediately in contrast to the vague promises so common in the global arms trade. After several months of negotiations and high-level interventions from the U.S. side, the deal was done. It was a good deal for Moldova.

The sale was a disappointment to many in Chisinau who imagined the aging aircraft to be a goldmine of astronomical worth. In fact, $40 million was more than many people in Washington wanted to pay. I remember having a hard time finding so much money for a country of less-than-primary importance to the United States. The Pentagon proceeded as part of its policy to develop cooperative defense relationships with all the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet states.

I do not know how the $40 million was used. The payment was a simple inter-state financial transfer with no cash or funny business involved. The money went to the Moldovan Finance Ministry.

Anyone with experience of Moldova knows how far short it falls in comparison to Western standards of business practices. Corruption and malfeasance have been rife there throughout its years of independence. However, the sale of 21 aircraft for $40 million was an entirely legitimate transaction. The thinly veiled accusation behind the Pasat trial that the United States in some way defrauded or swindled Moldova in this matter is false.

(E. Wayne Merry is a former U.S. State Department and Pentagon official and current senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington.)

I’m not sure if this is really chicken. It tastes better than any chicken I’ve ever eaten. (Let alone cooked.)

Pickled garlic, and the best dolmades I’ve ever had. With tkemali.

For the first time ever, my name badge is in Cyrillic. But I can’t reproduce it here, as this is an SMS post.

[Edited to add:] Николас Уайт.

Tarragon-flavoured lemonade and chvishtari by the river as the sun goes down.

Is this the first ever livejournal post from South Ossetia? Given the large number of Russian-speaking lj users, possibly not.

Hot.

4) Skinny Dip, by Carl Hiassen

The usual hilarious romp of crime, corruption, ecology, sin and redemption in Florida. Great!

3) The Balkan Trilogy – The Great Fortune, The Spoilt City and Friends and Heroes, by Olivia Manning

The first installment of Manning’s books about the second world war. In book 1, Harriet Pringle, recently married to her husband who works for the British Council, arrives in Bucharest just as the second world war is breaking out around them. The book finishes with the fall of Paris. In the second book, Romania gradually crumbles into the German sphere of incluence. In the third, the Pringles have made it to Greece, which also falls to the Germans at the end, though they have escaped to Egypt. The story is heavily autobiographical.

I really enjoyed the first two books. I don’t know Romania particularly well (my grandmother knew it better) but the whole mentality seemed very familiar from my Bosnia days and from my subsequent experiences of other former Ottoman territories. There were several aspects of the story that I felt very familiar with: the personalities and quirks of the small expat community, the total uncertainty of what is going on will happen next – I remember one night in 1997 when I was living in Bosnia, driving home late from the office I unexpectdly came across a column of British tanks; when I turned on the radio to listen to the BBC world service I found out that they were moving in to occupy the police stations in the town.

And the relationship between the Pringles is delicately, almost painfully observed. When I persuaded Anne to come out to join me in Bosnia, we had at least been married for three years and had known each other for nine (and it was by then a former rather than future war zone, at least I hope so); Harriet Pringle’s leap of faith, moving to a Romania with a husband she barely knows, is almost incomprehensible, and her difficulties therefore seem a bit self-inflicted, though at the same time her husband’s behaviour is rather self-obsessed.

The last of the three books, chronicling their time in Greece, is rather different, and a bit disappointing (which is rather similar to my time in Croatia, the last third of my own Balkan experience in 1997-98). Greece was and is of course much more integrated with Western Europe than Romania, but it’s a country I don’t know particularly, so I found the setting more unfamiliar. Harriet’s long drawn-out dalliance with a potential lover is I suppose understandable but I found it a bit frustrating that they took so long to get to the point. And the casual disposal of Prince Yakimov, one of the more attractive characters from the series, was a bit sad.

I never caught the 1987 BBC miniseries based on Olivia Manning’s books, but knowing that it was made allowed me to imagine how bad Ken and Em would be in the title roles. To my delight, the one character who really ought to be played by Alan Bennett, Professor Lord Pinkrose, actually was played by Alan Bennett. I’ll look out for the DVD, but second-hand, I think.

Summary: enjoyed the first two books, less so the third.

Ha, turns out my flight isn’t until 1920, rather than 1445 as I thought, and goes direct to Heathrow. So today’s travel looks a bit less gruelling. (Though I still get to Georgia at stupid o’clock tomorrow morning.)

A good day today. I made it into Leuven to do some shopping for my field trip next week – one of our staff has just got married, and another needed cuff-links, so some browsing in unexpected quarters of Leuven; thanks to for her tip about the cuff-links. And managed to get and read the new Daniel Clowes book.

Tomorrow I’m off to the country that calls itself საკართველო, leaving by a mid-afternoon flight to Gatwick, followed by the usual soul-destroying bus transfer to Heathrow, finally arriving in the capital city, თბილისი, at stupid o’clock on Monday morning. Later on Monday, once I wake up, I’ll make a field trip to Цхинвал (aka ცხინვალი), capital of the rebel-held territory of Хуссар Ирыстон (aka სამხრეთი ოსეთია) and then from Tuesday to Thursday I’ll be in intense discussions of the disputed region known to most of its current inhabitants as Լեռնային Ղարաբա (or just Արցախ for short) though the other side of the dispute prefer to call it Dağlıq Qarabağ. (If your computer chokes on some of those alphabets, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.) Then on Thursday I’m flying to the UK as my cousin is getting married in Hampshire on Friday. And then I get home on Saturday.

I’ll get my cousin a wedding present in Georgia. (Not ‘s Georgia, which does not refer to itself as საკართველო, no matter how much Belgian beer is consumed.)

2) Ice Haven, by Daniel Clowes.

Last time I read anything by Daniel Clowes, people whose opinions I respect (well, and , anyway) said I should look out for more of his work, especially Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron. Well, in the comic shop this morning picking up a present for F’s teacher (a Calvin and Hobbes book) I didn’t see Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron but my eye did fall on Ice Haven and I bought it. It’s a quick read, I understand previously serialised in a single Fantagraphics monthly, but very good – doings of various characters in a small town, much going on under the surface, unspoken fantasies, how we react to literature and writing, children’s views of the world.

There’s a good review of it here which links to three other thoughtful reviews. Now I’m going to read it again.

From yesterday’s RFE/RL:

WASHINGTON SAID TO HAVE FORCED CHISINAU TO SELL AIRCRAFT IN 1997. Former Moldovan President Petru Lucinschi said at a trial of former Moldovan Defense Minister Valeriu Pasat on 4 July that the United States pressed Moldova into selling its warplanes cheaply to Washington and dismissed charges that Pasat defrauded the state, Reuters reported. Pasat is currently standing trial on charges of selling too cheaply 21 MiG-29 jet fighters to the United States in 1997 (see “RFE/RL Newsline,” 28 June 2005). Lucinschi told journalists that Moldova had received an offer of $93 million for the planes, but had to yield to Washington’s bid. “We did receive an offer from a South Korean firm ready to pay $93 million, but the Americans told us the planes would end up in Iran,” he noted. Washington offered to buy the fighters as part of a plan to make arms stocks in the former Soviet Union safe (see “RFE/RL Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova Report,” 7 July 2005). JM

This may all seem ludicrous and conspiratorial, but I actually met a former US diplomat a couple of years ago who told me that he had been on the other end of this deal (which in his account was pretty much as ex-President Lucinschi describes it) and that the story was a little more complicated…

Google Earth is great, but I notice a few limitations – in particular, the overlay of borders doesn’t always exactly match the reality on the ground. Here, for instance, is a screenshot of the Albanian/Macedonian border on the south-eastern shore of Lake Ohrid (40°54’41” N, 20°44’27″E):

I know this area quite well, and in fact the large pool of water in the middle of the picture (the source of the Black Drim river) and the monastery complex to the west (left) of it are firmly in Macedonia, having apparently been given to the King of Yugoslavia by King Zog of Albania some time in the 1920s. So the yellow line is off by about 700 metres, I think.

So the lesson is, don’t plan delicate details of international diplomacy with Google Maps. But do use it and say, Wow!

Especially since you can generate pictures like this:

This is one of my favourite places – the former palace of the Emperor Diocletian in Split (in Croatia, here looking roughly south). The octagonal building in the middle was built as Diocletian’s tomb at the end of the 3rd century AD. It’s now the city’s cathedral (note large bell-tower attached to the octagon, built almost a thousand years later). Given the Emperor’s record of persecuting Christians, he’d be turning in his grave (if it weren’t for the fact that they threw him out of it some time ago).

And this, the work of nature rather than of humanity:

There is nothing quite like Mount Everest, is there?

Good for Ken Livingstone, finding the right words. Though a part of me wishes he had consistently taken this line throughout his career.

Sounds like anyone I know was safely out of the way, for which, as ever, much thanks. For Londoners, of course, it’s not something especially new, although it is always shocking.

I have been mulling ‘s somewhat provocatively phrased comments, and find myself in close agreement with ‘s response. Slightly rearranging ‘s final paragraphs, he says:

I don’t think it’s overstating to say that no matter how Utopian the society there will always be someone, somewhere, so unhappy, so outraged, so extreme in their opposition to it that they will be moved to violence. To imagine that countries like the UK can heal the causes of terrorism by amending their foreign policy is to assume that those committing acts of terrorism would even care, or believe, or choose to understand. On the contrary, I don’t think anything the UK or others could do would satisfy them.

That doesn’t absolve us from blame. It doesn’t mean, of course, that we shouldn’t try to be wise, fair, and open-minded in our way of life and our dealings with other countries. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to remove hypocrisy and self-serving interests from our politics. Of course we should. Some terrible, tainted, ideologically abhorrent acts have been committed in the name of democracy and freedom. And in general if we clean up our act it might improve the international climate. Gradually. A little. But it won’t prevent terrorists from emerging, and it won’t satisfy the ones already in existence.

I think that’s entirely realistic, as someone whose day job actually revolves around analysing the use or potential use of violence, and then trying to get the major countries of the world to adopt a wiser, fairer and more open-minded foreign policy. One doesn’t want to get too far down the line of saying “You should adopt these policies because it will reduce your exposure to terrorism” – that comes much too close to allowing violence to dictate the agenda; I prefer to say “You should adopt these policies because they are the right thing to do”. And if I get the answer, as sometimes happens, “We can’t possibly do that because it’s what the men of violence want”, my response is, “In that case you are letting them set your agenda, and any lone madman with an AK-47 is in a position to determine your policy.” Not thinking of any particular examples here, though I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.

On a somewhat lighter note. The careful phraseology of media commentators, none of them wanting to be the first to declare that al-Qaeda type terrorists are responsible, reminded me, I’m afraid, of the Peter Cook sketch about the 1963 Great Train Robbery:

From Wednesday’s Hansard:

Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire) (Con): I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Representation of the People Acts in respect of deceased candidates.

Obviously, I should begin by declaring a recent interest in this subject. May I also say to you, Mr. Speaker, and to Members in all parts of the House, how grateful I have been for the welcome that I have received on my delayed return to the House? Although I realise that that welcome has been genuine, it has also been partly prompted by the fact that every Member knows that there but for the grace of God could he or she have gone. I seek to save any colleague in any part of the House from having to face the sort of long ordeal that I had to face in May and June. I am grateful to the Minister of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs both for her helpful encouragement and for her presence here today.

I shall explain briefly why I seek to bring in the Bill. On 1 May I became the victim of a law drawn up in an era when most election contests were either straight fights or three-cornered ones, before the proliferation of candidates that is now so common in almost every constituency.

There are four main defects in the law. First, the party affected by the death of the candidate has no chance either to field a substitute or to withdraw from the election. Secondly, the law does not distinguish in any way between candidates. If any one of the Prime Minister’s 14 opponents had died, right up until the declaration of his result, he could not have been elected on 5 May. And if Catherine Taylor-Dawson of the Vote for Yourself Rainbow Dream Ticket party had died, there would have been chaos in Wales. She obtained one vote—presumably her own—in Cardiff, North, but she also stood in all three other Cardiff seats, polling a total of less than 300 votes in all four. If she had died, Cardiff would not have been represented in the House at all—and I remember the day, in 1974, when the Government had an overall majority of four. Colleagues should reflect briefly on the consequences of such an action. And what if a single candidate stood against every Member for the Cabinet and then committed suicide? [Hon. Members: “Any volunteers?”] Those are all practical possibilities.

Thirdly, the length of the delay is surely inordinate. Twenty-eight days after the proof of death the writ is reactivated, which gives a minimum of seven weeks’ delay before the new election.

Fourthly, new entrants are allowed into the field. Although the new election is supposed to be, and indeed legally is, part of the general election, new candidates who had not signified their original intention to stand are allowed to enter.

My Bill does not propose to allow dead candidates to be elected, as in the United States, but I propose that the party affected by the death should have choice of withdrawing or substituting a candidate, and that if necessary, a delay of 72 hours would be allowed for the reprinting of ballot papers.

I am also suggesting that the law should not apply to any independent candidate. An “independent” candidate—three of the Prime Minister’s opponents were designated merely by that word—is by definition sui generis, unique, so if such a candidates dies, that is the end of the matter; nobody can substitute. That should not hold up an election. The law should not apply to any party that polled less than 10 per cent. in the constituency concerned at the previous general election, or less than 5 per cent. nationally, if the party did not contest the constituency concerned. That would solve the problem of maverick or mischievous candidates bringing constitutional chaos to the country. I also suggest that no candidate should be allowed to stand in more than one constituency.

My final main proposition is that the delay between the death and the new polling day should in no circumstances be more than 28 days. Last time such a thing happened was in 1951, and in those days the law said that no more than 14 days should pass. Perhaps that timing was a little tight, but 28 days should be ample even for a major party to find another candidate.

Finally, no new candidate who had not signified an intention to stand in the original election should be allowed to stand in the rescheduled election. Nor should any major party be allowed to substitute its original candidate without the certification of the returning officer that the reason is a genuine and acceptable one. I had a new Labour opponent and I am not suggesting that the reasons for the substitution were anything other than genuine and entirely acceptable, but I do not believe that substitution should be automatically allowed.

As it stands, the law at the moment qualifies for Mr. Bumble’s famous description that the law “is an ass”. It needs changing because the case that I have illustrated has brought to wider public attention what can be done by mischief makers or malevolent people. I am most anxious that, before the next general election, we should have tidied up the law.

What I am proposing is a partial repeal of that worst of all laws—the law of unintended consequences. I very much hope that all Members on both sides of the House will feel able to join me and my distinguished sponsors and give the measure a fair wind.

Jeepers, just after the Olympics bid…

Hope you’re all safe.