Sardanapale

Evolution, sophisticated Europeans like to think, is only controversial in backward parts of the US.

Would that it were so.

Watching Richard Dawkins’ latest series “The genius of Charles Darwin” - broadcast by Channel 4 recently - I realized that creationist myths exert undue influence on this side of the Atlantic as well.

Says Dawkins:

“This is multicultural Britain. And one of its fault lines runs straight through our children’s classrooms. How do we reconcile scientific truth with the deeply held convictions that bind religious communities?”

Dawkins finds out by visiting a high-school in London, and finds astonishing resistance to Darwinian ideas on the part of students. (Clip here)

He then takes them to a beach and look at fossils, and only then are some of the kids willing to accept that evolution might be a fact.

Later, in the high point of the series, he confronts the kids’ teachers to find out why they failed so abysmally to acquaint with basic scientific facts.

The answer is clear: the teachers are unprepared to challenge religious views that contradict science.

“We can’t get in to the business of knocking down kid’s religions and the religions of families,” one says.

Dawkins retort sounds banal - but it obviously bears repeating:

“There really is something special about scientific evidence.

Science works; planes fly. Magic carpets and broomsticks don’t.

Gravity isn’t a version of the truth; it is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth floor window. Evolution too, is reality.”

Yesterday David Davis, the shadow home secretary, took a step that is almost unheard of in British political history.

He resigned as a member of parliament – and as the second most senior conservative leader after David Cameron – and promised to run again for his seat on a platform of defending “British liberties”.

Davis took pissed off his party – which is a year or two away from being elected – to take a moral stand, a day after the House of Commons passed a law extending detentions for terror suspects.

Many find his move baffling or quixotic. But his stirring resignation speech is worth quoting:

“Up until yesterday, I took the view that what we did in the House of Commons representing our constituents was a noble endeavour because with centuries or forebears we defended the freedoms of the British people. Well we did up until yesterday.

This Sunday is the anniversary of Magna Carta, the document that guarantees that most fundamental of British freedoms - Habeas Corpus, the right not to be imprisoned by the state without charge or reason.

Yesterday this house decided to allow the state to lock up potentially innocent British citizens for up to six weeks without charge…

Now the counter terrorism bill will in all probability be rejected by the House of Lords very firmly. After all, what should they be there for if not to defend Magna Carta…

But in truth, 42 days is just one - perhaps the most salient example - of the insidious, surreptitious and relentless erosion of fundamental British freedoms.

And we will have shortly, the most intrusive identity card system in the world, a CCTV camera for every 14 citizens, a DNA database bigger than any dictatorship has, with thousands of innocent children and a million innocent citizens on it.

We have witnessed an assault on jury trials - that bulwark against bad law and its arbitrary use by the state….

The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws that stifle legitimate debate - while those who incite violence get off Scot-free.

This cannot go on, it must be stopped.

And for that reason, I feel that today it’s incumbent on me to take a stand.

I will be resigning my membership of the House and I intend to force a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden….

I will argue this by-election, against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this government. “

On Saturday the BBC aired an excellent documentary on Enoch Powell, entitled “Rivers of Blood”.

Powell is Britain’s equivalent to Jean-Marie Le Pen in France: not only are you not supposed to say anything good about him –you are supposed to slate him.

That is exactly what filmmaker Denys Blakeway refuses to do. He dispassionately analyses the 1968 speech that both made Powell famous and relegated him to the political wilderness.

Powell warned that Britain’s open-door immigration policies would lead to increased tension, citing Virgil’s vision of “the River Tiber foaming with much blood”.

Forty years on, Blakeway argues, Powell has to a large extent been proven right.

He was certainly correct in his prediction that by about now, one in ten people in Britain would be foreign-born (it was 9.7% at the last count in 2005).

And mass immigration has in place bred separatism and violence (the film mentions the race riots in Brixton in 1981, those that flared across northern England in 2001, and the July 2005 attacks).

Blakeway’s defense of Powell is qualified. He deplores Powell’s rhetoric («wide-grinning piccaninnies»): by focusing on race, Powell neglected the fact that the main problem would be cultural - the refusal by whole communities in this country to accept British values.

In the end, Blakeway basically says, Powell gave anti-immigration positions a bad name.

For my part, I disagree with Powell on substance. Powell did not understand the economic advantages of immigration (Britain would be a much poorer place if it had shut out immigrants), and very much exaggerated the cultural conflicts (most newcomers adopted British values).

But all that should be open to debate without throwing accusations of racism – and that Blakeway must be praised for doing just that.

He could also have mentioned that in the 1970s the political establishment, while treating Powell as a leper, adopted the policy that obviously followed from his warnings – the end of mass immigration.

In 1972, the British governments introduced an openly racist exception to the ban on non-European immigration: you could qualify for a UK Passport if you have a British born grandparent.

This exception – which allowed many New Zealanders of British origin to enter Britain but barred Commonwealth blacks - remained in the statute books until the 1990s, I believe. Blaweway’s program is summarized here.

PS: On related subjects, I recommend this Economist special, and this excellent column by the Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby.

Britain is consumed by the controversy triggered by the Archbishop of Canterbury’s pronouncement that the adoption of some aspects of Sharia law was “unavoidable”.

Rowan Williams said that many UK citizens did not relate to the British legal system, and that adopting parts of Islamic law would help maintain “social cohesion”.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia courts, which should be part of “plural jurisdiction” in Britain.

Most commentators were appalled.

One of the most vocal and articulate critics was the British writer Christopher Hitchens, who wrote in Slate.com:

“Picture the life of a young Urdu-speaking woman brought to Yorkshire from Pakistan to marry a man—quite possibly a close cousin—whom she has never met. He takes her dowry, beats her, and abuses the children he forces her to bear.

She is not allowed to leave the house unless in the company of a male relative and unless she is submissively covered from head to toe. Suppose that she is able to contact one of the few support groups that now exist for the many women in Britain who share her plight.

What she ought to be able to say is, “I need the police, and I need the law to be enforced.” But what she will often be told is, “Your problem is better handled within the community.” And those words, almost a death sentence, have now been endorsed and underwritten—and even advocated—by the country’s official spiritual authority.

You might argue that I am describing an extreme case (though, alas, now not an uncommon one), but it is the principle of equality before the law that really counts.”

I don’t share Hitchens’s concerns. It seems to me that he confuses two things: criminal and civil law.

Any viable system of criminal law must indeed entail a monopoly. All citizens of a country should enjoy equal protection under a single norm.

The full force of the law must bear on any man who behaves like the bastard in the not-so-hypothetical case Hitchens mentions.

A woman who came to the police with those complaints should secure a prosecution: the guy is clearly committing a number of crimes (assault, child abuse and sequestration).

But what Williams is talking about is civil law - disputes between individuals (or individuals and companies) - and there a plurality of jurisdictions is desirable.

People should be allowed to choose their arbiter - as long as that choice is freely accepted by all parties.

Britain itself has a history of plurality in civil jurisdictions. Until the 19th century, England and Wales had a system “chancery courts” (which was famously denounced by Dickens) alongside other common law tribunals.

Now the chancery courts have gone, but parallel systems of dispute settlement remain, from chartered arbitrators to religious community courts for Jews – which are all recognized in law.

Even Muslims, in matters of divorce, can already go before Islamic Sharia Council.

It sure beats me why any woman would take her divorce case to a bearded man working out of a prefab cabin in a dodgy part of London, as opposed to say Heather Mill’s lawyer.

But as long as it’s her choice, I don’t have a problem with it.

Although I’ve lived among them for years, the English never cease to amaze me.

One of the weird and wonderful aspects of local culture I always puzzle at is the British “scandal” – the type of things that get this most unflappable of races hot under the collar.

The latest such affair, “Crowngate”, has just cost the boss of BBC1 television his job.

Peter Fincham paid the ultimate price who his “deceitful” presentation of a promotional clip for a documentary about the Queen back in July.

It showed Elizabeth having a sartorial difference with a photographer during a shoot. Cut to the Queen walking briskly in Buckingham Palace saying: “I’m not changing anything. I’ve had enough dressing like this.”

But the trailer was edited out of sequence, and Fincham wrongly told the press that the monarch had walked out of the session “in a huff”. When the error was revealed, public outrage led to an independent inquiry.

The report, released on Friday, blamed “misjudgements, poor practice and ineffective systems” at the BBC, and Fincham fell on his sword.

Note that Fincham did not know at the time that the clip had been misleadingly edited. The point is: the mistake should have been spotted beforehand. And he did not apologize until the day after the presentation.

Crowngate is only one of the recent blows to the BBC’s cherished credibility.

The broadcaster was forced to conduct an internal inquiry after it transpired over the summer that several audience competitions had been rigged.

In the most notable offense, producers at a children’s programme ran an online poll to name a cat, but ignored the moniker chosen by the audience (cookie) to give him another (Socks).

This odious “breach of trust” led to an internal investigation, a groveling apology, several high-profile departures, and an unprecedented 70,000 euro fine.

This put me in mind of the mid-1990s, when accusations of corruption against the Conservative government culminated in the “cash-for-questions” affair.

A rich foreign businessman was said to have offered an obscure backbencher a free trip to the Ritz in Paris in exchange for asking a question in parliament.

I come from a country where a star news presenter can fake an interview with a foreign leader with impunity, and where political parties extorted cash from firms bidding for public contracts for years before voting an amnesty for themselves, and marvel at Britain’s ability to wax indignant over Crowngate.