In August 2011, Britain was rocked by some of the worst racial riots since the war. Never before had there been such a breakdown of law and order in so many prominent towns — London, Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Bristol and Leicester.
The British Prime Minister, Mr David Cameron, who was on holiday, returned the moment the news first broke and summoned an emergency session of Parliament with a stirring call for united action. Even before Parliament met, he gave total freedom to the police to do whatever it took to enforce the law.
In such a situation what is our lot in India? First of all, there will be no question of the Government daring to take Parliament into confidence. Vitriolic condemnations of the Government will fly thick and fast from politicians of every description, top-notch to ha'penny-tuppenny, opposed to the ruling dispensation.
Each one of them will demand, as part of the conditioned reflex, the resignation of every member of the government. The Prime Minister will play the Sphinx to the hilt.
Even were Parliament to meet or be already in session, there will be bedlam, indeed, bloody scenes, within both Houses, followed by adjournments day after day at monstrous cost to the taxpayers, with every party squeezing the last ounce of political one-upmanship.
Back to Britain: I was watching the debate that took place during the emergency session of British Parliament after the August 2011 riots.
The Labour Leader, Mr Ed Miliband, and Mr David Lammy, the Labour MP representing Nottingham, the epicentre of the riots, were so very appreciative of the Conservative Party Government that the Prime Minister was moved to thank them for their ‘powerful words' in support.
STERLING ATTRIBUTES
The debate was smooth and orderly, everyone spoke in his turn, there were few interruptions, the Speaker was instantly obeyed, and the collective determination displayed by all parties sent a strong message to the hoodlums and helped restore normality.
This is world-class political culture. It has other sterling attributes too. No successor Government in Western democracies wilfully overturns its predecessor's policies; indeed, it carries them forward if they are in the nation's interest.
When Mr George Bush, Sr was the US President (from the Republican Party), he initiated the move for a North American Free Trade Agreement, but his term ended before it came through.
The Democratic Party President, Mr Bill Clinton, succeeding him, not only finalised the Agreement but invited his predecessor, the senior Mr Bush, to the signing ceremony and presented him with the pen as a memento.
The party elected to power is left free to implement its mandate without political hooligans taking to the streets to thwart it at every turn.
There could have been no historic commitment of greater consequence than that of surrendering all the power and prestige of the British Empire.
But when the Labour Party in Britain rode to power on this mandate in 1945, the Conservative Party, despite its bitter opposition, went along with it.
TOLERANT AND CIVILISED
There is no instance in Western democracies of successor Governments adopting the barbaric custom of arrests and other atrocities against the members and Ministers of parties of the Opposition which might have been in power prior to them. The autonomy of institutions, such as the bureaucracy and the police, is respected.
Governments in Britain and the US put up with even intemperate and defamatory writings by the media without a thought of wanting to discipline them.
The BBC, for instance, has often been a thorn in the flesh of Governments in Britain but has never been pulled up on that score.
As an article in The New York Times on the Western democratic political culture put it, “Opposing parties, when it was their turn in power, quietly consolidated the best of what the other had achieved ….The British political system gives the majority party much greater power than any party could hope to have in the US, but cultural norms make the political debate less moralistic and less absolutist”, and, may I add, more tolerant and more civilised.
Should ‘world-class' be applied only to goods, products and services?
Why not our political culture too be world-class?
Comments:
This is an interesting, but somewhat one-dimensional (and rosy) view of Anglo-Saxon politics with regard to cooperation between political parties. To gauge civility in politics one must look beyond Commons or the House of Representatives, i.e., consider the tone of political discourse in general. A quite different picture then emerges.
While UK politics is generally civil and shows strong currents of cooperation between the parties, in the US the ultra-right Republican party is vehemently opposed to everything proposed by Mr. Obama, regardless of merit.
Worse, its roots are more sinister than mere peevishness at Democratic control of the executive branch. It has a definite racist subtext, and is aimed at further inflaming the ugly prejudices of the most vicious sections of America's far-right, white Christian fundamentalists, who dominate the airwaves and politics in large swathes of the country.
as an oriental country which has been the reward of conquerors it is not realistic to expect anything better. congress which has ruled the country for most of the period since 1947 is a family firm.the charade will continue . the schmisie will debate. kurup
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