Lesson 8

Crackdown- подавление

Dissent- инакомыслие

Retribution- возмездие

Custody-содержание под стражей

Detain (v.)- содержать под стражей

Violate (v.)- нарушать

Chant (v.)- скандировать

Lesson 9 Summary of Text 3 (Unit 2)

The institutions of the unwritten UK Constitution have evolved over the centuries. The constitution that emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been described as a 'balanced' constitution.

Wolfe-Phillips provides a convenient idealized description of the structure of the United Kingdom Constitution. The constitution comprises:

• a revered head of state insulated from politics

• a government led by a prime minister with a parliamentary majority produced in a free and fair election by a mature electorate.The government is bound to carry out policy approved by the Cabinet and if it loses the support of Parliament it must resign. If incompetence or maladministration be proved the minister must resign.

• The “unwritten constitution” has the “virtue of flexibility” and permits both evolutionary and constitutional change.

• Wolfe- Phillips does not mention the courts, but they could be regarded as another source of stability added to the monarch and the House of Lords.

Wolfe-Phillips himself seems doubtful whether this ideal represents reality. He seems to regard electors as the dupes of party political propaganda, and elections as providing only a limited choice between party machines.

Elliot adopts a similar perspective. Elliot would describe:

• the cabinet as a group of politicians who sink or swim together.

• Parliament, except in very rare circumstances, provides at best lobby fodder for the government.

• “Into this increasingly rotten basket Britain has lobbed all its constitutional eggs” subject to a small number of marginal reforms - the ombudsman and select committees.

Others argue that the mainsprings of power are in the hands of informal networks of personal relationships both inside and outside government - the so-called “establishment”. On this view the operation of the British constitution depends upon the relationship between the elected government and the 'networks', and involves an “inner constitution” based upon shared values and patronage.

Dicey, writing from the point of view of the lawyer, and also as a champion of private property rights, regarded the primary characteristics of the UK Constitution

• the rule of law;

• parliamentary supremacy;

• the distinction between conventions and law.

Other lawyers have been added to this list. The main legal features of the constitution are as follows.

• A monarchy

• The legislative supremacy of Parliament

• A “bicameral” (two-chamber) Parliament

• An elected Lower House

• No strict separation of powers, but an independent judiciary

• A highly centralized executive dependent mainly on statutory powers, but with significant common law or prerogative powers

Task 1 (c), Task 2, Task 4 Article

The establishment uncovered: how power works in Britain

In an exclusive extract from his new book, Owen Jones explains how the political, social and business elites have a stranglehold on the country

Definitions of "the establishment" share one thing in common: they are always pejorative. Rightwingers tend to see it as the national purveyor of a rampant, morally corrupting social liberalism; for the left, it is more likely to mean a network of public-school and Oxbridge boys dominating the key institutions of British political life.

Here is what I understand the establishment to mean. Today's establishment is made up – as it has always been – of powerful groups that need to protect their position in a democracy in which almost the entire adult population has the right to vote. The establishment represents an attempt on behalf of these groups to "manage" democracy, to ensure that it does not threaten their own interests. In this respect, it might be seen as a firewall that insulates them from the wider population.

Back in the 19th century, as calls for universal suffrage gathered strength, there were fears in privileged circles that extending the vote to the poor would pose a mortal threat to their own position – that the lower rungs of society would use their newfound voice to take away power and wealth from those at the top and redistribute it throughout the electorate.

The worries of those 19th-century opponents of universal suffrage were not without foundation. In the decades that followed the second world war, constraints were imposed on Britain's powerful interests, including higher taxes and the regulation of private business. This was, after all, the will of the recently enfranchised masses. But today, many of those constraints have been removed – and now the establishment is characterised by institutions and ideas that legitimise and protect the concentration of wealth and power in very few hands.

The interests of those who dominate British society are disparate; indeed, they often conflict with one another. The establishment includes politicians who make laws; media barons who set the terms of debate; businesses and financiers who run the economy; police forces that enforce a law that is rigged in favour of the powerful. It is unified by a common mentality, which holds that those at the top deserve their power and their ever-growing fortunes, and which might be summed up by the advertising slogan "Because I'm worth it". This is the mentality that has driven politicians to pilfer expenses, businesses to avoid tax, and City bankers to demand ever greater bonuses while plunging the world into economic disaster. All of these things are facilitated – even encouraged – by laws that aregeared to cracking down on the smallest of misdemeanours committed by those at the bottom of the pecking order – for example, benefit fraud. "One rule for us, one rule for everybody else" might be another way to sum up establishment thinking.

The business world benefits from the politicians' and civil servants' contacts, as well as an understanding of government structures and experience, allowing private firms to navigate their way to the very heart of power. Yet there is a logical flaw at the heart of establishment thinking. It may abhor the state – but it is completely dependent on the state to flourish. Bailed-out banks; state-funded infrastructure; the state's protection of property; research and development; a workforce educated at great public expense; the topping up of wages too low to live on; numerous subsidies – all are examples of what could be described as a "socialism for the rich" that marks today's establishment.

This establishment does not receive the scrutiny it deserves. After all, it is the job of the media to shed light on the behaviour of those with power. But the British media is an integral part of the British establishment; its owners share the same underlying assumptions and mantras. Instead, journalists and politicians alike obsessively critique and attack the behaviour of those at the bottom of society.

To understand what today's establishment is and how it has changed, we have to go back to 1955: a Britain shaking off postwar austerity in favour of a new era of consumerism, rock'n'roll and Teddy Boys. But there was a more sinister side to the country, and it disturbed an ambitious Tory journalist in his early 30s named Henry Fairlie.

Early in his career, Fairlie was mixing with the powerful and the influential. In his 20s, he was already writing leader columns for the Times. But, at the age of 30, he left for the world of freelance writing and began penning a column for the Spectator magazine. Fairlie had grown cynical about the higher echelons of British society and, one day in the autumn of 1955, he wrote a piece explaining why. What attracted his attention was a scandal involving two Foreign Office officials, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who had defected to the Soviet Union. Fairlie suggested that friends of the two men had attempted to shield their families from media attention.

This, he asserted, revealed that "what I call the 'establishment' in this country is today more powerful than ever before". His piece made "the establishment" a household phrase – and made Fairlie's name in the process.

For Fairlie, the establishment included not only "the centres of official power – though they are certainly part of it" – but "the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised".

This "exercise of power", he claimed, could only be understood as being "exercised socially". In other words, the establishment comprised a set of well-connected people who knew one another, mixed in the same circles and had one another's backs. It was not based on official, legal or formal arrangements, but rather on "subtle social relationships".

But important facets of power in Britain were missing from Fairlie's definition. First, there was no reference to shared economic interests, the profound links that bring together the big-business, financial and political elites. Second, his piece gave no sense of a common mentality binding the establishment together.

The differences between Fairlie's era and our own show that Britain's ruling establishment is not static: the upper crust of British society has always been in a state of perpetual flux. This relentless change is driven by survival. History is littered with demands from below for ruling elites to give up some of their power, forcing members of the upper crust of British society to compromise.

The monarchy is a striking example of a traditional pillar of power that, faced with occasionally formidable threats, has had to adapt to survive. This was evident right from the origins of a power-sharing arrangement between crown and parliament struck in the aftermath of revolution and foreign invasion in the 17th century, and which continues to exist today. Many of the monarchy's arbitrary powers, such as the ability to wage war, ended up in the hands of the prime minister. Even today, the monarchy's role is not entirely symbolic.

"The Crown is a bit of a vague institution, but it is kind of the heart of the constitution, where all the power comes from," says Andrew Child, campaign manager of Republic, a group advocating an elected head of state. The prime minister appoints and sacks government ministers without needing to consult the legislature or electorate because he is using the Queen's powers.

Although less influential today than it has ever been, the Church of England retains the trappings of its old power. Indeed, the word establishment is testament to its one-time importance: the term is likely to derive from the fact that the Church of England is the country's "established church", or state religion, with the monarch serving as its head. The church's most senior official, the archbishop of Canterbury, is appointed by the prime minister on behalf of the monarch.

Even though Britain is one of the most irreligious countries on Earth, with just one in 10 attending church each week and a quarter of Britons having no religious beliefs, the Church of England still runs one in four primary and secondary schools in England, while its bishops sit in the House of Lords, making Britain the only country – other than Iran – to have automatically unelected clerics sitting in the legislature.

The establishment is a shape-shifter, evolving and adapting as needs must. But one thing that distinguishes today's establishment from earlier incarnations is its sense of triumphalism. The powerful once faced significant threats that kept them in check. But the opponents of our current establishment have, apparently, ceased to exist in any meaningful, organised way. Politicians largely conform to a similar script; once-mighty trade unions are now treated as if they have no legitimate place in political or even public life; and economists and academics who reject establishment ideology have been largely driven out of the intellectual mainstream. Whereas the position of the powerful was once undermined by the advent of democracy, an opposite process is now underway. The establishment is amassing wealth and aggressively annexing power in a way that has no precedent in modern times. After all, there is nothing to stop it.