In the wake of the murder of British soldier Drummer Lee Rigby earlier this week in London, there have been numerous public discussions about the use of the word ‘Terrorist’ in reference to the killers. Kojo Koram wrote an excellent piece on the Banter, arguing that the term has basically become meaningless after Bush and Blair declared a ‘War on Terror’ and has used it to refer to anyone the US/UK government deemed to be an enemy. In a similar vein, Glenn Greenwald broke down the double standards regarding the use of the term, and concluded that the term ‘Terrorism’ is only used when Muslims commit acts of violence against the west:

It is very hard to escape the conclusion that, operationally, the term has no real definition at this point beyond “violence engaged in by Muslims in retaliation against western violence toward Muslims”. When media reports yesterday began saying that “there are indications that this may be act of terror”, it seems clear that what was really meant was: “there are indications that the perpetrators were Muslims driven by political grievances against the west” (earlier this month, an elderly British Muslim was stabbed to death in an apparent anti-Muslim hate crime and nobody called that “terrorism”). Put another way, the term at this point seems to have no function other than propagandistically and legally legitimizing the violence of western states against Muslims while delegitimizing any and all violence done in return to those states.

It is difficult to disagree with this logic. We have been engaged in wars in the Middle East for decades and have caused untold amounts of bloodshed in the name of ‘freedom’. Many of the people affected by the violence harbor deep seated resentment towards our governments, and they do not regard our foreign adventures as noble causes predicated on a desire to liberate them. Anyone vaguely aware of geo political reality understands that our involvement in the Middle East has little to do with freedom and a lot to do with access to oil reserves – a fact that Muslim countries understand all to well. To the inhabitants of the countries we have invaded, we are the terrorists, and their attacks against us are acts of military defiance. It is a difficult concept for us to understand given how removed the majority of us are from the violence our governments commit. When an act of brutality happens on our doorstep, it appears to be out of nowhere – a random, senseless act of barbarism without justification or cause.

But the truth is, it isn’t. As far as we know, the killers of Lee Rigby were politically motivated – Michael Adebolajo had a history of extreme Islamic political activity, and spoke articulately on the reasons for killing Rigby. ”There are many, many ayah throughout the Koran that says we must fight them as they fight us,” he told a passer by. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today but in our land women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

Adebolajo and his accomplice, Michael Adebowale, targeted a soldier who had signed up to fight for his country, who had been in Afghanistan and who was part of a system that they believed killed and oppressed other Muslims.

These are not easy facts to digest, particularly given the horrific nature of Rigby’s death, but they are facts nevertheless.

There is no doubt that both the UK and US governments engage in state sponsored terrorism – they have engaged in illegal military activity throughout their histories in wars for resources and political power – many of which fall directly under the definition of ‘Terrorism’. Britain in particular has a storied history of terrorism against its colonies, subjecting native populations to awesome acts of brutality including starvation, genocide and rape.

The authors of the Iraq invasion strategy ‘Shock and Awe’ wrote that the military tactic was designed to “impose this overwhelming level of Shock and Awe against an adversary on an immediate or sufficiently timely basis to paralyze its will to carry on…The appropriate balance of Shock and Awe must cause … the threat and fear of action that may shut down all or part of the adversary’s society or render his ability to fight useless short of complete physical destruction.”

In short, you terrorize a population into submission through an overwhelming use of force.

But does this mean Rigby’s death was not an act of terror, but a military counter attack as a part of a broader war between western governments and the Islamic world?

No. And here’s why.

The acts of terror committed by our government do not detract from the astonishingly cruel act doled out to Lee Rigby in broad daylight, in front of the public and near to a school full of small children. The depraved crime was designed to shock the British public, to intimidate them and create a climate of fear to further their own political agenda. The two men didn’t simply kill Rigby, they hacked him to pieces in a psychopathic attack of almost unparalleled brutality. It was a crime designed to terrorize a nation, and should be labeled for what it was – terrorism. Adebolajo and Adebowale also stormed police officers with their weapons, no doubt aiming to kill them. The police have nothing to do with the military, and play no part in Britain’s foreign policy. Their role is to protect and serve the public, so there cannot be even the vaguest justification for attacking them.

The truth is that just because the British government engages in acts of terror doesn’t mean acts of terror against it don’t count. Adebolajo said it himself: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth” – or an act of terror for an act of terror.

 

There’s a big hullabaloo going on in Britain about Margaret Thatcher’s death and the subsequent celebrations in pockets around the nation.

In Glasgow’s George Square (where protest about Thatcher’s poll tax took place in 1989), hundreds of people gathered wearing hats, opened champagne, and launched streamers to mark her death. In Brixton, London (the scene of massive rioting in 1981) over 150 gathered for an impromptu street party after it was announced on Facebook. Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds and numerous other cities saw people handing out cake and chanting songs like “If you still hate Thatcher clap your hands!”:

The celebrations extended beyond Britain’s borders –  in South Africa, where resentment of Thatcher’s support of the Apartheid government still simmers, political figures expressed happiness at her passing. The Huff Post reported:

Pallo Jordan, a once-exiled ANC leader, was more direct. He told the Guardian: “Good riddance.”

“I’ve just sent a letter of congratulations,” Jordan said. “I say good riddance. She was a staunch supporter of the apartheid regime. She was part of the right wing alliance with Ronald Reagan that led to a lot of avoidable deaths.”

The joyous reactions to Thatcher’s death have been met with stern responses from her fans, and much of the political establishment.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said that the celebrations of Baroness Thatcher’s death were not acceptable, saying, ”Even if you disagree with someone very strongly, you can still particularly at the moment of their passing, you should show some respect.”

Wrote Janet Daley in the conservative Telegraph:

Isn’t it about time we stopped devoting ridiculously disproportionate amounts of news coverage to the handful (and I do mean handful, in proportion to the national population) of youthful idiots and embittered misfits who are “celebrating” the death of the greatest peacetime British prime minister?

So what is the answer? Is it ok to celebrate someone’s death if you believe they caused you, your family or your country unnecessary pain?

I wrote about Thatcher’s tragic legacy yesterday, so don’t think it’s necessary to rehash the specifics. It is suffice to say that through her policies, Thatcher caused an immense amount of damage to large sectors of the British population (and of course abroad in places like South Africa). Britain is a fundamentally different place due to the radical measures she took to deregulate and privatize the economy, and as a result, it is almost irreversibly polarized and unequal. Miners lost their livelihoods, child poverty increased dramatically and workers rights were flushed down the toilet. Thatcher’s policies wrecked lives, and the anger is entirely understandable.

But to take to the streets, sing songs and break out champagne takes that anger to a completely new place, and it’s not somewhere I’d personally like to go.

I don’t wish to lecture anyone celebrating her death – my family wasn’t negatively affected by the Thatcher years (the opposite), so I can only try to empathize with those whose lives were ruined. I can only express my own feelings on the matter and hope that it may provoke some more nuanced debate on the topic.

There are some truly monstrous characters whose deaths are ultimately a good thing. I would personally pull the trigger on many brutal dictators throughout history – Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Josef Stalin, and so on. But these would not be joyous events, just a moral necessity to stop unnecessary carnage and human misery. When the US military took out Osama Bin Laden, it was I believe, ultimately a good thing. I was pleased a genocidal maniac was dead, but not over joyed. I couldn’t really get my head around the celebrations going on around the country – it seemed slightly sadistic and grotesque to be cheering for the pain caused to another human being, no matter how evil they were. If you’ve ever been around real violence or death, it isn’t pleasant, and only people with psychological problems want more of it.

I think it is justified in saying that Thatcher’s presence in British politics caused a lot more damage than good, and her departure from government was of huge benefit to the public. You can be pleased that she is no longer around to do any harm (she hasn’t actually done anything in 23 years), but to celebrate her death is to celebrate someone’s pain and suffering, and that can’t be a good thing.

Martin McGuinness Sinn Fein’s Deputy First Minister at the Northern Ireland Assembly, and long time Thatcher nemesis said it best, tweeting out: “Resist celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher. She was not a peacemaker but it is a mistake to allow her death to poison our minds.”

 

I grew up in London during the 1980′s — a Thatcher child if you will. My memories of the first female Prime Minister are not fond ones. When I started going to school we used to get fresh milk during break time — a result of the government’s effort to help poor children get adequate nutrition. Then all of a sudden, the milk stopped. “Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher” we used to sing in radical defiance to the Tory leader’s cost saving measures. I also remember having several friends with learning difficulties have their assistant teaching hours cut dramatically. The result? They never learned how to read.

So no, I’m not a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher.

Watching the reaction to the death of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher from America has been fascinating to say the least. The media has largely painted the ‘Iron Lady’ as a titan of British politics, a controversial but revered figure who left Britain in a much better place after her 11 year rule. Wrote David Frum in The Daily Beast:

She promoted talent regardless of background and opened the way to an entrepreneurial Britain where acumen mattered more than accent. Thatcher was a woman of fierce principle. Yet – and here contemporary conservatives can take another lesson from her – she lived by facts, not theories.

There is no doubt that Thatcher was a hugely influential figure, not only at home, but abroad. While she made sweeping changes to the British economy and political culture, she did much to project British power abroad. Her invasion of the Falkland Islands and aggressive support of the United States during the Cold War helped redefine Britain as a military super power and a country to be reckoned with. Thatcher reveled in her persona as a woman not to be messed with. “I am extraordinarily patient,” she once said. “Provided I get my own way in the end.”

But while Thatcher’s image, carefully maintained by adoring fans, is one of power, success, and principle, the truth about her legacy is far, far darker. While conservative commentators like Frum believe that Thatcher lived by facts and not theories, the reality is that she was a hardened ideologue who ignored facts and ruled by theory. A proponent of Milton Friedman Libertarianism, Thatcher set about ripping up the welfare state in Britain and implemented market reforms that had catastrophic consequences for the economy and the British people. And these are not theories – these are facts. As Polly Toynbee writes:

When she [Thatcher] walked into Downing Street promising harmony instead of discord, only one in seven children was poor and Britain was more equal than at any time in modern history. But within a few years, a third of children were poor, a sign of the yawning inequality from which the country never recovered.

It was not only children who suffered. Thatcher’s economic reforms plunged the UK economy into recession as soon as they were implemented, creating levels of unemployment not seen since the Great Depression:

This actually happened twice under Thatcher’s tenure, and as Time Magazine reports, “GDP never rose by more than a couple of percentage points annually, even during the 1980s boom years.” All the while, inequality spiralled as the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Just take a look at this graph charting the astronomical rise in inequality during the Thatcher years:

When the realities of Thatcher’s economic policies are seen in graph form, it is incredibly difficult to argue that ‘she left Britain in a much better place’. She did not, and every economic indicator conveys that.

When asked what she felt her greatest achievement in power was, Thatcher replied, “Tony Blair”. In other words, Thatcher shifted the political landscape so far to the right that the Labour Party was forced to elect a politician who essentially carried on the radical conservative agenda of mass deregulation and privatization.

As a child of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, and a teenager of the Tony Blair years, I think my assessment of the cultural impact of this agenda carry some weight. My recollection of Britain in the eighties and nineties is pretty vivid, and I was well aware of the rapid cultural changes going on around me. Britain was, in not so many words, a bit of a crap place to live. The food was horrible, the service culture atrocious, and there wasn’t a whole lot to do in terms of entertainment. A fantastic weekend for me consisted of going to a slightly run down and unhygienic public leisure center to have swimming lessons, then eating a plate of soggy chips (fries) with ketchup afterwards. My cousins would then come over and we’d watch horrendously bad television on one of the four channels available.

The area I lived in was solidly middle class. There were a couple of streets with some quite rich people, and some surrounding government housing projects that weren’t so well off. I would go to school and visit friends in both ends of the reasonably narrow spectrum. Although I was middle class, I don’t recall feeling particularly different to any of my friends who lived in the housing projects. While everything was a bit run down and there wasn’t much to do, it was a fun time to grow up. We played outside, did sports, had friends from a variety of backgrounds and didn’t think too much about money.

Then it all changed.

The area got nicer as coffee shops and fancy wine bars opened. Housing prices skyrocketed and many of my friends moved to different cities where their families could live better for cheaper. My area got noticeably whiter and richer, and my group of friends started to split according to wealth – the poorer ones went to the crumbling local state schools while the wealthier ones moved to fancy private ones. Crime then began to sky rocket – we had our car stolen from outside our house, several neighbors had their doors kicked down in the middle of the night and their houses raided, and street muggings spiraled out of control (my brother was robbed in our street, along with virtually everyone else I knew). If you were a middle class kid in the late 80′s and 90′s in London, you lived in a constant state of fear of being mugged or picked on by kids from the housing projects. And who could blame them? As the rich started to build custom driveways to park their BMWs and buy their kids Nintendos, the poor saw their wages stagnate and their benefits being cut. Growing up poor in the 80′s and 90′s in London was not much fun, and it created a sense of social alienation that tore what was once quite a cohesive culture apart.

To me, at least, that is what Margaret Thatcher’s legacy represents. I was the beneficiary of the new economic model imposed upon Britain during the 80′s. The value of my family’s properties boomed, my dad rose to the top of an industry that benefited hugely from deregulation, I went to private schools and had private tutors, we had foreign holidays and all my college costs were paid for. My dad worked incredibly hard, but he’d be the first to admit he was also in the right place at the right time. My life has been great, but the memory of what Britain used to be still haunts me. Whenever I walk around my neighborhood in London, I see faces from an era that no longer exists – a community that has been broken by economic division and the imposition of a culture of greed. We recognize each other and nod knowingly, saying silently – ‘I remember you and how it used to be here. It’s not the same anymore’.  I look through the windows of my new neighbors whose lifestyles and aspirations are alien to me and everyone who grew up there.

And that is why Margaret Thatcher remains such a reprehensible figure to so many people. As Thatcher famously stated, “There’s no such thing as society”. She not only took away our milk, she took away our communities.

 

Taking it easy around here at The Daily Banter for a couple of days during the Thanks Giving holiday – back up to full speed next week.

In the mean time, check out George Monbiot’s fascinating piece on the growing trend of children growing up detached from their natural environment and the problems it causes. Monbiot notes that:

The remarkable collapse of children’s engagement with nature – which is even faster than the collapse of the natural world – is recorded in Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods, and in a report published recently by the National Trust. Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision has decreased by almost 90%. In one generation the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from more than half to fewer than one in 10. In the US, in just six years (1997-2003) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half. Eleven- to 15-year-olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen.

Monbiot argues that the effects of this can be extremely detrimental, not just health wise, but intellectually:

The rise of obesity, rickets and asthma and the decline in cardio-respiratory fitness are well documented. Louv also links the indoor life to an increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other mental ill health. Research conducted at the University of Illinois suggests that playing among trees and grass is associated with a marked reduction in indications of ADHD, while playing indoors or on tarmac appears to increase them. The disorder, Louv suggests, “may be a set of symptoms aggravated by lack of exposure to nature”. Perhaps it’s the environment, not the child, that has gone wrong.

In her famous essay the Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity. Reviewing the biographies of 300 “geniuses”, she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world in the middle age of childhood (between five and 12). Animals and plants, she contended, are among “the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play … which the genius in particular of later life seems to recall”.

I grew up in a large city but was fortunate enough to be forced by my parents to regularly go to the countryside. I of course preferred to play video games at the time, but looking back, I am incredibly grateful that I experienced the magnificent British countryside; hiking mountains in Wales, walks through the rugged terrain along Hadrian’s Wall (the wall built by Roman Emperor Hadrian keeping northern barbarians out of occupied Britain), camping in rural fields on the Isle of Wight, weekends on traditional British farms and many other amazing experiences that many children I grew up with in London didn’t get the chance to participate in. Did it make me more intelligent or creative? I don’t know, but I distinctly remember feeling a unique sense of freedom in the outdoors, and it certainly peaked my curiosity in regards to the natural world. I also developed an idea that there was far more to life than sitting in a stuffy room in front of a screen – and that’s something I’ll be forever grateful for.

 

By Ben Cohen: If you know anyone affected by mental illness, you can appreciate just how serious it can be, not only for the person suffering but for the family and friends connected to them. Mental illness is a taboo topic that has forced many people afflicted by depression, anxiety and other debilitating psychological illnesses into silence and shame. And the costs to society are immense. Days off work, massively increased vulnerability to other physical illnesses, drug addiction and crime are all related to mental illness.

Increasing working hours, the relentless pursuit of material wealth and the cult of individuality all contribute to the startling rise in mental illness, so much so that the World Health Organization predicts that by 2030, depression will be the leading cause of disease around the world.

Politicians rarely talk about mental health issues, particularly in hard economic times when jobs are scarce and governments are interested in productivity above anything else. It is a competitive world we live in, and while understanding and sympathy are important for daytime television shows, there isn’t much time for it in the business of running a country.

And that’s why Labour leader Ed Miliband’s speech on mental illness at the Royal College of Psychiatrists was so brave and important. The opposition leader’s call to drastically change the way Britain views and treats mental illness, declaring it “the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age”. His plan ties in with his ‘One Nation’ vision of society where people have a greater stake in the economy giving them more meaning in their working life, where businesses take into consideration the human impact of their work culture, and people are able to access not only drugs but therapeutic treatments to help them cope with the challenges of modern life.

It’s a brilliant speech that should be read by everyone. The full text below:

 

It is excellent to be here with you today at the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

I spoke a few weeks ago in Manchester about the future of our country.

About the huge challenges Britain faces, as we attempt to rebuild our economy and create a stronger society.

A country where everybody has a stake, where prosperity is fairly shared and where we protect and improve the institutions that bind us together.

I called this approach “One Nation”.

One Nation means nobody is left out, or written off.

Because it is wrong.

And we can’t succeed as a country if that’s what we do.

And today I want to talk about one of the most serious challenges our country faces.

One that writes people off in just that way.

Affecting:

North and south.

Rich and poor.

Old and young.

Those who work and those who can’t.

Disabled and non-disabled people.

A problem that can strike anyone.

It blights millions of lives.

And undermines the welfare of our nation.

And it is also a challenge that affects our competitiveness as a country.

That places a huge strain on our public services.

And that costs our economy tens of billions of pounds a year.

I am talking, of course, about the challenge of mental health.

From the people living with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder to those fighting bouts of depression and panic attacks.

Now, you would think a widespread and important challenge like this would be something we would all talk about.

That it would be top of the political agenda.

That every leading politician would be obliged to address to it.

That we would be falling over each other, as we do, to prove that we had a solution.

But that doesn’t tend to happen.

For far too long leading politicians from all parties, including my own, have maintained an almost complete silence about mental health.

Only in emergencies and at the extreme end of conditions do we tend to talk about the issue.

Now there will be some people who say that mental health is the kind of subject we can talk about in the good times, but not when the economy is such a priority. 

In my view, that is the opposite of the truth.

Because mental health is an economic challenge holding back prosperity.

Because however hard the economic challenges, we cannot forget about people’s quality of life.

And, finally, if we want a politics that talks directly to the challenges that British people face in their everyday lives, we cannot allow the silence to continue.

Taboo

And it’s not just politics that is too silent.

It is a taboo running across our society which infects both our culture and our politics. 

It is a taboo which not only blights the lives of millions but also puts severe strain on the funding of our NHS and threatens Britain’s ability to pay our way in the world. 

It is a taboo which must be broken if we are to rebuild Britain as One Nation. 

Mental health is subject we all, whoever we are, still instinctively avoid.

At home, in the workplace and in our communities, it tends to be brushed under the carpet.

Teachers and our parents are unlikely to talk to us about mental illness when we are young. 

And we all fear the unknown.

Today in 2012, far too many people in this country still feel as if they have to pretend they have something else wrong with them when they are struggling with depression.

People can be scared to tell their boss.

Intimidated by the culture that still surrounds mental illness.

Scared into silence.

And it’s not just their employers. 

It’s their family and friends who don’t know how to react either.

As Kevan Jones, a Labour MP who has bravely spoken out about his own depression, said to me recently: if you have a serious physical illness, the get well messages tend to flood in.

But when a friend of his was struggling with depression recently and Kevan sent him a message, his friend told him it was the only one he had received.

Mental ill health can affect anyone, but it is more openly talked about in some sections of society than others.

For people to talk about it and get help, there needs to be a common language and understanding.

If it isn’t recognised, it is as if it doesn’t exist.

People pretend they are OK, family and friends turn a blind eye, nothing happens until it is often too late.

A change of culture has happened with illnesses that have previously been taboo: from cancer to aids to other sexually transmitted diseases.

But it hasn’t yet happened as much as it needs to with mental health.

I’ve seen it in Doncaster, in my own constituency.

Just last Friday, I was at the Depot Community Drugs Project in a town called Mexborough, which does a brilliant job helping with drugs treatment and education, training and rehabilitation.

A man probably in his late forties happened to walk in and told me his story.

About fifteen years ago, his sister died of cancer and his marriage broke down soon after.

He couldn’t sleep.

Because of stress. 

The trauma.

Anxiety and depression.

And he didn’t know what to do.

As he leaned on his gatepost one day, someone he knew walked past and said he could provide something to help him sleep.

It was heroin. 

Having previously smoked cannabis, he tried it and pretty soon he was hooked.

It took eight years of him being pushed to the brink by drugs for him to seek help.

Now six years later, he had found paid work probably for the first time since his addiction.

I talked to him about what had happened.

And he volunteered that if we lived in a culture where the trauma of bereavement and the need to get help for mental health problems were more clearly recognised, things could have been very different for him.

Think of how much better that would have been for him, and think how much better it would have been for the country.

This is the reality for many people today.

From mothers struggling with post-natal depression, young people in schools, people facing stress and anxiety at the workplace, to some of our ethnic minority communities who face a higher incidence of some conditions. 

Mental ill-health is a cradle to grave problem with nothing like a cradle to grave service.

The Scale of the Problem

As I speak here today, one in six people across Britain are affected by a mental illness.

That is one in six people in each town or city, each workplace or community.

Of course, this covers a range of illnesses. 

From people facing catastrophic crisis and collapse to those whose condition is less severe.

There is some evidence that mental illness has become far worse in the 21st century.

Growing as a result of unequal societies, a long-hours culture, and from the erosion of social bonds.

But even if that is not the case, and it was always there, and never fully recognized, the scale of the problem is clear.

According to the World Health Organisation, one in four of us will have a mental illness at some point in our lifetime.

And that really means that mental illness affects everyone in some way.

If it is not you yourself who is struggling, it is your mum or dad, son or daughter, nephew or niece, friend or loved one. 

The WHO predicts that by 2030, depression will be the leading cause of disease around the world.

Physical or mental.

And people can lose years off their lives as mental illnesses undermine their physical health too.

Increasing their vulnerability in the face of cancer, heart disease and all the other great killers of our new century.

It is the biggest unaddressed health challenge of our age.

That means mental health must be at the top of the agenda of the next Labour government.

Fighting the taboo

Fighting the taboo is the first thing we need to do.

People like Marcus Trescothick, Stephen Fry, Fiona Phillips, Labour’s Alastair Campbell and Kevan Jones, and politicians from other parties, like Charles Walker, have all been exceptionally brave in sharing their own painful stories with our country.

And some newspapers from the Sunday Express and Observer have tried to break the taboo and they too are to be congratulated.

But far too often there is scepticism and abuse.

Abuse that reinforces the taboo.

And it’s not just casual name calling in the streets or the school playground.

There are still people who abuse the privilege of their celebrity to insult, demean and belittle others.

Such as when Janet Street-Porter in a shocking article says that depression is “the latest must-have accessory” promoted by the “misery movement”.

And Jeremy Clarkson, who may have at least acknowledged the tragedy of people who end their own lives, goes on to call them “Johnny Suicides” whose bodies should be left on train tracks rather than delay journeys. 

It is attitudes like these that reinforce the stigma that blights millions of people’s lives.

And holds our country back.

The fight against racism, against sexism and against homophobia, made the acceptable, unacceptable. 

So we should join the fight against this intolerance.

It is wrong.

It costs Britain dear.

And it has to change.

But it is not just open prejudice that we have to overcome.

We have to confront the unspoken discriminations too. 

Like the vast inequalities in funding for research.

Like the lack of training in mental health of many NHS staff – whether in GP surgeries, outpatient clinics or A&E. Eight out of ten primary care professionals say they need more training in mental health than they have.

Like the lack of understanding of mental health that seems to characterise parts of the social security system.

And like the willingness of governments to make the first and deepest cuts in services for mental health.

Indeed, it is a very troubling sign that for the first time in a decade we have seen a cut in total spending on mental health.

A reduction of £150million, including cuts in crisis services and out-reach programmes.

Imagine if this had happened in one of the key killer physical diseases. 

People would have been up in arms, and rightly so.

The Consequences of our Inaction

The toll of all this neglect is enormous.

In the trouble stored up over the years as minor problems become major ones. 

The extra physical healthcare necessitated by mental illness costs the NHS a further £10 billion a year, according to the London School of Economics.

The criminal justice system also picks up the bill.

Seventy percent of those in our prisons have a mental illness.

But it is not just our public services that bear the burden.

British business does too.

In time off work.

In unproductive days at work.

Mental ill health costs Britain’s businesses almost £8.5 billion in sickness absence each year.

The single biggest cause of long-term sickness absence.

It costs almost £2.5 billion in replacing staff who are unable to continue at work.

And it costs £15 billion in reduced productivity.

That’s almost £26 billion a year.

Or £71 million each and every single day.

And think how little we talk about this major burden on business.

Costs our economy cannot afford.

So mental health is an economic as well as a social challenge.

Our failure to act is a national failure.

It’s one we must put right if we are to be a One Nation Britain, where everybody has a stake and we build shared prosperity.

One Nation

So can we do it?

It is often hard for a country to admit that the time has come to confront new problems.

Particularly when economic times are difficult.

But our country has faced these kind of challenges before.

Major unaddressed challenges that affect the whole country.

Challenges that seem to too big to overcome.

It was true in the 19th century.

The speech that Benjamin Disraeli used in 1872 to launch the idea of One Nation was, in fact, about sanitation.

He called upon Britain to rise to the challenge of public health.

To take on the squalor in our towns and cities and to reject “unsanitary living conditions” wherever they were to be found.

Because it was in all of our interests.

It took at least thirty years for British politics to respond fully.

It was only when unfit and unhealthy soldiers were sent to the Boer War and were unable to rise to the demands of the conflict that governments dared properly to act.

In the 20th century, in the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was apparent that the patchwork of private and charitable health services was inadequate.

But it took the Second World War and the great reforming Labour government that followed it, to rise to the task and establish the National Health Service.

The 21st century challenge of mental health is as profound.

Like sanitation, it is a massive public health challenge, affecting millions.

Like the demand for an NHS in the 1930s, our national response is wholly inadequate against the scale of the challenge.

In both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it took war to shock us out of complacency.

This time we can’t wait for greater crisis.

We must act.

It means changing the ways that we do things in this country so that we actually save money.

And improve lives.

But it requires us to break the taboos, to build a consensus for action, to change our NHS and to deploy all the resources of Britain – a truly One Nation solution – to put it right.

One Nation Solutions

So, we need to change the status of mental health in our National Health Service and in our wider society.

I don’t come today with all the solutions but a clear direction of travel.

The last Labour government began to transform mental health provision in our country.

It made well-respected, evidence-based therapies available to more people than ever before.

Taking mental health treatment into communities that had never received them.

We need to do all we can now to protect those programmes.

But even the last Labour government did not do enough to acknowledge the scale of the challenge.

Too often governments have been stuck in a mindset that thought that physical health should always take priority.

That waiting lists for cancer or heart surgery were always going to be more important than those for mental health.

I am proud that Labour peers won the fight to go further than we had in government and ensure that the Health and Social Care Act contained a commitment to “parity of esteem” between mental and physical health.

This was accepted by the Government.

But here is the problem.

Governments are in the habit in this country of passing laws and then forgetting about them.

Think how radical a commitment to parity of esteem between mental and physical health really is.

Waiting times.

Access to treatment.

Professional knowledge.

Patient experience.

Making “parity of esteem” real is a monumental and generational task.

Here’s where we should start.

We should rewrite the Constitution of our National Health Service.

The Constitution is a great thing because it sets out the rights and guarantees patients have. 

But it is inadequate in mental health.

For example, the Constitution does give patients the rights to drugs and medical treatments, for mental health problems. Something I suspect that many people don’t know.

But it doesn’t give them the right to therapies.

This seems the wrong approach, particularly given concerns about over-prescription of medication in mental health.

So we should re-write the NHS Constitution and create for citizens a new right – for the first time – to psychological therapies that help people recover from conditions like anxiety and depression.

Currently there is money allocated in the NHS budget for this purpose, but reports suggest it is not always being spent on what it was intended for.

This is a completely false economy.

Wrong for patients.

And wrong for the country.

Talking therapies can help people and can save money, so they must be a NHS priority.

And we need to look right across the board at how we can make parity of esteem real in practice.

And we need to match parity of esteem in the NHS with an end to the artificial divide between physical and mental health services and ensure that they are properly integrated.

As Andy Burnham has said, the commitment to proper integration of mental, physical and social care will run through Labour’s whole approach to health care.

We need to see more mental health specialists working in teams with GPs, nurses and carers.

We need to look at extending personal health budgets that enable patients to select the best combination of services and treatments for themselves.

Both mental and physical.

We also need all health professionals to see promoting good mental health and spotting signs of mental ill-health as part of what they do.

So we should ensure that the training of doctors, nurses and all professional staff who work in the NHS includes mental health.

So a One Nation solution to the challenge of mental health starts with our National Health Service.

Beyond the NHS

But fully to rise to that challenge, we need also to look beyond the NHS itself.

Too often we act as if the answer to our health crises starts and stops with new government programmes.

And we don’t ask enough of others in our society.

Thinking of the service provided by government as the answer on its own misses the point of how we can succeed as a country.

Mobilising the contribution, the talent, the expertise of the patient, the parent, the carer, and changing the way our wider society works, is as important in determining whether any public service can succeed in its intentions. 

Good mental health doesn’t start in hospital or the treatment room.

It starts in our workplaces, our schools and our communities.

So the task falls as much to organisations like British business and the CBI as it does to the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

In fact, everybody has a part to play.

Only a nation acting together can overcome the challenge we face. 

That is what One Nation is about.

There are already some excellent examples of new plans for mental health in Britain today.

Take British business.

A few years ago, British Telecom acknowledged that mental ill-health was costing their firm dear.

Holding them back.

So they implemented a new mental health strategy across the whole firm.

They abandoned pre-employment medical checks that had blocked opportunities for those with mental health conditions. 

They saved £400,000 a year in the process. 

And instead they said that mental ill-health should be no barrier to working at their company. 

And they offered new training to managers so they could help everyone in the firm play their part.

And they found that after four years, sickness absence rates due to mental health problems had not risen, as you might expect, but had fallen by a third. 

Despite all the pressures and stresses that people have been facing in recent years.

It is the kind of transformation we need to see across our economy.

One encouraged by the campaign Time to Change, which has done a fantastic job in tackling mental health discrimination at work and the new Mental Health Discrimination Bill currently before Parliament.

And it’s not just business that needs to change.

The same is true in our schools. 

The last Labour government placed an emphasis on the mental well-being of their students.

To give them the emotional, psychological resilience that they need. 

To help them face the challenges of the twenty-first century.

But David Cameron’s government dismisses these concerns as peripheral and they’ve told the school inspectors to ignore them.

Offering no incentives to innovation.

No encouragement to teachers who know that children who are mentally and emotionally tougher are also better able to pass exams and make their way in the world.

It is a short-sighted, old-fashioned, conservative in the worst sense of the word, way of running British education.

It is as simple as that.

So too we need to tackle mental health issues in criminal justice, which I have already talked about, in the social security system, in families.

So we need a mental health strategy outside as well as inside the National Health Service.

Tackling the culture and changing the way our society treats mental health.

A One Nation solution will bring together people from every walk of life to address this problem. 

And that’s what I have asked Stephen O’Brien, chair of Barts NHS Trust and Vice President of Business in the Community, to do as he leads our new Mental Health Taskforce.

We will ask searching questions about the culture of work in Britain, about the impact of inequality, about the way our schools work and relate to their wider communities. 

We will learn from the best of the rest of the world.

We will plan what needs to be done.

And when we are in government we will act. 

Conclusion

I don’t remember people talking about mental health much when I was growing up.

Times were different.

The taboo was even more intense then than it is now.

The problems hidden even deeper under the surface.

I am proud to live in a country where that taboo has been challenged by some.

To live at a time when some people are beginning to speak out.

But I know that not enough has yet been done.

I know that far too many still suffer in silence.

Too many stay away from their GP.

Or work in offices and factories not set up to help.

Or live in communities with far too few services.

Or feel isolated and alone.

The next Labour government won’t be able to put all this right overnight.

Silences in our culture are hard to break.

Taboos are resistant to being overcome.

But just as Disraeli was right back in the nineteenth century that we could not build One Nation unless we addressed public health, so it is true today we cannot build One Nation unless we all speak out about mental health.

The next Labour government will reform our health service to guarantee that mental health enjoys real equality of status.

The next Labour government will work with British business to improve our workplaces, helping people stay in work and make their contribution.

And the next Labour government will work with our schools to prepare our children for the demands of life.

But most of all the Labour Party I lead will speak out against prejudice.

We can’t prevent all mental ill-health.

There are not cures for all conditions.

But we can help change the culture in our country. 

We can insist that everyone counts.

That everyone matters.

And that no-one dealing with any form of illness should ever feel ashamed.

That’s how you bring real change to Britain. 

That’s how you build One Nation.

By Ben Cohen: The banking crisis in 2008 should have resulted in prison sentences for hundreds of Wall St executive and regulators responsible for decimating the global economy. Thus far, no major executive or government official has been carted of to jail – a horrifying indicator of just how corrupt the US government is. Both political parties in America refused to punish banks for their extraordinary behavior, and Wall St wields as much power today as it did in 2007. While there was enormous public outrage over the crisis, elected officials essentially pretended to get angry, then did nothing. The crisis exposed the truth about who runs the world – and it isn’t national governments working for the public interest.

In Britain, another serious  banking scandal has been uncovered, and given the public’s reaction to it, the consequences could actually mean something this time around. Matt Taibbi provides the background:

The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts).

The banks gamed LIBOR for two semi-overlapping reasons. As noted here last week, there were instances of Barclays traders badgering the LIBOR submitters to “push down” rates in order to fatten their immediate bottom lines, depending on what they were trading or holding that day. They also apparently rigged LIBOR downward in order to produce a general appearance of better health, essentially tweaking their credit scores a few ticks upward.

Most intriguingly, or perhaps disturbingly, there were revelations last week that Bank of England deputy Governor Paul Tucker had a conversation with Diamond at the peak of the crisis in 2008. The conversation reportedly left Diamond, and subsequently his traders, with the impression that the bank had carte blanche to rig LIBOR downward in order to help allay spiraling public fears about the banks’ poor financial health.

The British public is taking the Barclay’s/Libor banking scandal extremely seriously. The press is all over it, and with a criminal investigation underway, it could lead to some very high profile heads rolling. Here was Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England’s take:

It is time to do something about the banking system…Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal.

As Taibbi writes, King “Responded the way a real public official should (i.e. not like Ben Bernanke), blasting the banks.”

What’s interesting about the scandal is that the story has barely made the headlines in the US, despite it having extremely serious ramifications. Writes Robert Reich in the Guardian:

It’s becoming apparent that Barclays’ reach extends far into the US financial sector, as evidenced by its $453m settlement with American as well as British bank regulators, and the US justice department’s active engagement in the case. Even by American standards, the Barclays traders’ emails are eyepopping, offering a particularly a chilling picture of how easily they got their colleagues to rig interest rates in order to make big bucks. (Bob Diamond, the former Barclays CEO, says the emails made him “physically ill” – perhaps because they so patently reveal the corruption.)Most importantly, Wall Street will almost surely be implicated in the scandal. The biggest Wall Street banks – including the giants JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America – are likely to have been involved in similar manoeuvres. Barclay’s couldn’t have rigged the Libor without their witting involvement.

The difference in the reaction to the scandal between Britain and America – two countries where the financial sector wields more power than anywhere else in the world – is quite revealing. As Yves Smith notes, both major political parties in Britain are not beholden to banks, meaning politicians actually ask serious questions and can force government to act:

The Labor party in England really does represent different interests than the Tories, and is willing to go after the Tories and their allies in a much more persistent manner than our Dems, who ultimately depend on the same funding sources as Republicans. In England, as the News International scandal showed, there is the possibility of real amplification: of media discoveries being fed into political investigations, which in turn lead to more media ferreting. The fact that someone who seemed to have such a lock on power as Rupert Murdoch could be cut down is no doubt a bracing message to the British press, that they have infuence that for the most part they have failed to exercise effectively. So, ironically, a country where banking is a much larger percentage of GDP than the US may be the one where banking misconduct is finally unearthed and at least some of the perps suffer. And that would show our own officials’ failure to act to be the disgrace that it is.

In Britain, there is still a belief that government should, and can act on the behalf of the public, and that is reflected in the political dialogue that seems completely alien to Americans. Here was Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party on the scandal today:

“Last September I said to the Labour party conference that Britain needed a different kind of economy. An economy based not on the short-term, fast buck, take-what-you-can culture we see too much of in our banks today. But on long-termism, patient investment, and responsibility shared by all.

“Today I am going to tell you what a better banking system would look like. I will describe the first steps towards moving from the casino banking we have to the stewardship banking we need.

“It will mean root-and-branch change for our banks if we are to deliver real change for Britain”

While Obama has scolded banks on occasion, there has never been a promise to fundamentally change how they operate. Americans have long given up on the idea that the government works in their interest and simply moves on when astonishing corruption is unearthed. The media knows that attacking major power centers like the financial sector can have serious ramifications, so they rarely move unless the scandal is so blatant it has no choice. The British press go out of their way to uncover corruption whereas the US press simply reacts as events unfold (anyone remember a major scandal Fox News or MSNBC uncovered in recent times?). This culture pervades public, political and media circles and it leads to dangerous apathy that severely harms public policy. With an apathetic media comes an apathetic public, and with an apathetic public, there is no pressure on government to behave responsibly. It’s a vicious cycle that feeds itself, and only a real sense of public anger will change the status quo. While the Brits could learn a thing or two about fixing their economy from the US, Americans could learn a thing or two about getting angry from their Trans-Atlantic cousins.

It’s time to get mad America, British style.

 

By Ben Cohen: Predictably, elites in finance, business and the media have resoundingly condemned the Leftist uprising in Europe, complaining that the populist economic policies they are proposing will ruin the global economy. Take for example David Brook’s latest piece in the NYTimes, where he argues deficit spending cannot solve Europe, or America’s problems:

We structuralists do not believe that the level of government spending is the main factor in determining how fast an economy grows. If that were true, then Greece, Britain and France would have the best economies on earth.

Brooks believes structural reform (code language for mass privatization) is the only way to create a growing economy – a myth that should have been dispelled long ago. The Conservative party in Britain have been dramatically rolling back the state since getting into power – the results? A double dip recession with dire projections for future growth.

Matt Taibbi has written a great post on Rolling Stone outlining the principles the rich believe will solve the global economic crisis:

Markets all over the world freaked out over the prospect of having ignorant European voters meddling in the recovery process the geniuses of the high finance world had already painstakingly laid out for them.

The model for economic progress in the financial bubble era, after all, is supposed to go something like this:

1. Let banks inflate massive asset bubbles with the aid of cheap or even free government cash, and tons of leverage;
2. Before it all explodes, carve out gigantic sums for bonuses and compensation for the companies that inflated those bubbles;
3. After it explodes, get the various governments to bail those companies out;
4. Pay for it all by slashing services to what’s left of the middle class.

Why anyone thinks that the ideology responsible for crashing the global economy will help us get out of it is completely beyond me. I have this argument with my conservative friends on a very regular basis, and I’m often left thinking I am missing something. Those in charge of the financial system should be the last people we want determining policy. In a true market system, their complete failure to do their jobs in the first place would have led to their departure from the industry. But in today’s economy, you apparently fail upwards.

By Ben Cohen: After enacting extreme austerity measure in the UK with the promise that cutting spending would solve the economic crisis, the Conservative government has a lot of explaining to do after it was announced last week that Britain was falling back into recession again.

David Cameron has desperately tried to argue that his problems were inherited, that the debt crisis was so bad that it has made a speedy recovery impossible, but the historical record shows otherwise. The recession and economic recovery has been one of the slowest in history – a testament to the failure of the austerity measures passed by the coalition government.

The  Office for National Statistics has stated that the cause of the recession stems from a sharp fall in construction output, due in large part to government austerity measures (via the BBC):

The ONS said output of the production industries decreased by 0.4%, construction decreased by 3%. Output of the services sector, which includes retail, increased by 0.1%, after falling a month earlier.

It added that a fall in government spending had contributed to the particularly large fall in the construction sector.

“The huge cuts to public spending – 25% in public sector housing and 24% in public non-housing and with a further 10% cuts to both anticipated for 2013 – have left a hole too big for other sectors to fill,” said Judy Lowe, deputy chairman of industry body CITB-ConstructionSkills, said.

Cameron has stated that he will continue on the path towards debt reduction and austerity, claiming the country’s ability to borrow should take precedence over everything else. Cameron argues that spending in the private sector is key to growth, and government must make it easier for the wealthy to unlock their capital.  This theory is not only deeply flawed, but provably false. How do we know this? Because it isn’t working in Britain, or anywhere else for that matter.

Labour leader Ed Miliband has been raking Cameron over the coals, hammering home the point that it is too late for the Prime Minister to blame anyone else. In a heated debate in Parliament, Miliband also pointed to Cameron’s privileged social background as a key reason behind his lack of understanding:

This is a recession made by him and the chancellor in Downing Street. It is his catastrophic economic policy that has landed us back in recession….Arrogant, posh boys just don’t get it.

I think that Miliband has a point here – Cameron and virtually everyone he is surrounded by come from enormously privileged background. Haven risen through the exclusive British private schooling system, then onto Oxford, Cameron has been bred to believe that the wealthy know what is best for the country. The notion that the rich should not determine economic policy is completely alien to him, and his government reflects the values of his social class – and those values place self interest above all else.

Cutting social spending and giving tax breaks to big business does two things: Firstly, it stops the poor and middle classes from buying anything, and secondly, rather than encouraging business to re-invest in the economy, it encourages them to hold onto their wealth. As Richard Darlington in the New Statesman writes:

Businesses in Britain and around the world are sitting on record piles of cash: $2 trillion globally. But they won’t invest that cash and create jobs until they see the demand for their products and services rising. And squeezed consumers won’t create that demand until they have confidence they can spend a bit more and manage their debts.

It is then up to the government to increase confidence in the economy through investment – something now so blatantly self evident that is is remarkable the Conservatives won’t entertain it. Given they will have to call an election within the next two and a half years, they might have to if they want a chance of staying in power. Otherwise, the Tories will be about as successful as their economic policies -  and so far, they are proving to be an utter failure.

By Ben Cohen: The field of economics is often referred to as a ‘junk science’, mostly because it tries to explain human behavior in mathematical terms. This is almost impossible – humans are emotional and irrational, thus predicting their behavior accurately is harder than predicting the weather. But there are some basic truths when it comes to mathematically modeling the buying and selling behavior of people, and amazingly, they are ignored by many actual economists.

Let’s take the theory that governments should enact austerity measures to pull a country out of recession. The theory goes something like this: A country is losing jobs, seeing a decline in economic activity, and as a consequence, its debt spiraling out of control.  In order to maintain a good credit rating and borrow money, governments must control debt, otherwise interests rates go up and they lose their ability to borrow. Therefore the government must slash spending in order to reduce debt. Many countries in Europe (Spain, Britain and Greece for example) are enacting these policies in order to cut their debt and increase their credit rating.

The results have been a complete disaster, with dismal projections for economic growth for the foreseeable future, continued unemployment and no ability to borrow money at better rates. And there is a very simple reason: The theory is completely bogus.

When economic activity declines and jobs disappear, economies can collapse quickly. If people’s wages are cut, they are less likely to go shopping and spend money. If shops stop selling products, jobs disappear at the shops themselves and from the industries that supply them. In climates like this, banks do not like to lend money to create new jobs for a very good reason: They fear they won’t get their money back. It’s a vicious cycle and if left unchecked, it can be devastating.

This is why it is absolutely necessary for government to step in and stimulate demand. By injecting money into a paralyzed economy through unemployment benefits, government jobs, low interest business loans etc, it encourages economic activity. When private lending dries up, only government can restore order and create stability and certainty. We saw this during the banking crisis in 2008 when the private banking system collapsed and the public assumed the debt and borrowed its way out of trouble. The bailouts worked and the economy did not disintegrate.

When governments then cut spending, economic problems are compounded, and recessions can drag on for years, sometimes decades (take Japan – a country that implemented austerity measures after its economic implosion in the early 90′s and has still yet to recover).

Why is this basic economic truth ignored by mainstream economists in academia and in government? Europe continues to teeter on the edge of another major financial crisis and the US has had one of the slowest recoveries in post war history.

There is a pretty simple explanation for this: Government austerity measures often help the rich. When economies collapse, the wealthy can consolidate their power by buying up assets on the cheap. Let’s take the US as an example – a country where the political system has been largely bought out by the wealthy, particularly the Republican party. When the economy imploded and the rich lost their money, the Republican party enacted and supported government spending to re-stimulate the economy. Once the danger had passed and the rich were safe, they went back to being deficit hawks and insisting on slashing welfare. After the crisis, government became the enemy again and private capital the answer to every problem – an obvious function of the GOP’s complete subservience to the needs of the wealthy.

We’re seeing this pattern play itself out over and over again with devastating consequences. Spain’s unemployment rate is running at almost 25% with no end in sight, and the UK’s economy is at a standstill, yet the rich keep accumulating wealth.

The results are plain to see, and even the IMF, one of the original sources of  ‘austerity at all costs’ policies, has admitted it isn’t working.

Sadly, it is working for the rich, so we’re stuck with it.

 

(Image courtesy of 401kcalculator.org)