David Whyte - How Corrupt Is Britain?

HOW CORRUPT IS BRITAIN?

How Corrupt is Britain?

Edited by David Whyte

First published 2015 by Pluto Press
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Copyright David Whyte 2015

The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Preface

Liberal thought contends that the United Kingdom is a mature parliamentary democracy, with a House of Commons elected by universal suffrage that is subject to scrutiny and revision by a second chamber, with both chambers underpinned by a powerful unwritten constitution that ensures that neither become too overweening.

Over time Parliament itself, with the assent of the electorate, has created a host of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary bodies, with trusted appointees who hold to account the judiciary, the police, the security forces, the corporations and other powerful organisations in society.

In sum, those living in contemporary Britain are the beneficiaries of a model liberal democratic social order with checks and balances evolving over centuries ensuring everyone, rich and poor alike, lives in a law-governed society in which the corruption of the powerful is an aberration, a threat to the system, and not to be tolerated.

The collection of essays in How Corrupt is Britain? fundamentally challenges this contention. The essays emerged out of a conference of the same title that the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies co-sponsored with University of Liverpool in May 2013. The conference brought together some of the leading experts and campaigners on state and corporate corruption in Britain. As the day progressed a picture was drawn that contrasted sharply with the view that Britain nears the end of an inexorable march towards a transparent liberal democracy.

How Corrupt is Britain? demonstrates that, rather than an aberration, corruption is endemic in powerful institutions in contemporary Britain, both public and private, and is sustained by a culture of impunity that has emerged over generations. Indeed, the main bodies that are supposed to bring the corrupt to book, Parliament and the police, are implicated in corrupt practices to such a degree that it is difficult to conceive how they might be able to hold others to account.

It is a common refrain in contemporary politics that those in power no longer have the trust of the the people. Much of the material source of this distrust can be found in How Corrupt is Britain? The breadth of corruption detailed is remarkable and the lack of accountability of the powerful in British society palpable.

Will McMahon, Deputy Director
Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

Acknowledgements

There are a large number of people who helped, encouraged and inspired the production of this book. I would like to thank everyone who came to Liverpool on 10 May 2013 to the conference How Corrupt is Britain? I am particularly grateful for the support of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. Thanks especially to Will McMahon, the co-organiser of the conference, who wrote the preface to this book and has worked closely with me on this project from the beginning. Thanks also to Sam Harding, Sylwia Szydlowska and Richard Garside for their work in promoting the conference, and to Tammy Mcgloughlin and Rebecca Roberts for helping publish a series of short papers from the conference in Criminal Justice Matters. Among my colleagues at the University of Liverpool who supported the event, a big thanks goes to Rachel Barrett and Steph Tully for their work in promoting and organising the day. Thanks also to the speakers whose work appears in this book. I am also grateful to Steve Acheson, Tom Anderson, Deborah Coles, Carole Duggan, Ken Fero, Penny Green, Ciara Kierans, Carolyn Jones, Colin Leys, Peter North, Rizwaan Sabir, Enrico Tortolano and Hilary Wainwright. The conference was supported by the University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice, and the Lipman Miliband Trust.

I am grateful for the support of David Castle at Pluto who has been important in shaping the development of the book and has always been patient as deadlines inevitably got pushed back. Numerous friends and colleagues have offered encouragement and inspiration. Steve Tombs and Vickie Cooper and several anonymous reviewers diligently read and commented on earlier versions of the Introduction, and I have tried to do justice to their insights. Thank you. The biggest thanks of all go to the contributors of this book who have generously given up their time, energy and expertise for a project that I hope has all been worth it in the end.

David Whyte

Introduction: A Very British Corruption

David Whyte

We Are Not Afghanistan or Russia! Or Are We?

The idea that British institutions are fair and democratic is one of the foundation stones of our self-imagined national heritage. Historically we have construed corruption as something that is exclusively a problem in developing or economically primitive societies, rather than our own. Yet the almost daily reporting of all manner of corruption cases in our most prominent and powerful institutions is beginning to unravel the idea the British establishment is predicated on civilised values of fairness, openness and transparency. As the faade shatters, it reveals the residual racism in the claim that we are not corrupt like other countries in the Global South, or indeed that we are not like our Southern European counterparts. If we have corruption in British public life, we have always been led to believe, it is only found at the margins.

It seems that the margins are getting wider. In the past couple of years alone we have seen several national newspapers involved in routine phone-tapping and payoffs to police officers; we have seen allegations of systematic price-fixing in the energy supply industry; and a major European Commission investigation into the alleged role in price manipulation by key corporate players in the oil industry, including BP and Shell. In the food retail industry, we have had a major meat labelling scandal in which horsemeat was sold as beef by supermarkets and major brands in Britain. As this book goes to press, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has just been fined 297 million and senior executives given suspended jail sentences and deportation orders for bribing Chinese officials. An investigation into similar conduct by Rolls-Royce executives in Indonesia and China is ongoing.

A seemingly endless catalogue of police evidence-falsification cases has been exposed in recent years. Some of the evidence that has reached the public domain relates to historical cases, such as the fabrication of statements that were used against striking miners the 1980s, an alleged police whitewash of the Jimmy Savile case, fabricated evidence