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from ammocity.com politics and society
AMMO CITY managed to get a personal interview with baroness amos just prior to her appointment. an edited version of this interview may also be found in the current issue of trace magazine which funnily enough is themed 'black girls rule!'. prior to her new appointment baroness amos was a british foreign minister, one of five reporting to jack straw, the uk's foreign secretary. each of the ministers has geographical responsibility as well as interlinked themes. she is one of the uk government's spokespersons in the house of lords on foreign and commonwealth affairs as well as the principal spokesperson on international development. the scale of her responsibilities has been daunting to say the least. baroness amos has responsibility for africa, the caribbean and britain's overseas territories which have self rule but whose defence and foreign affairs is provided by the uk, places such as gibraltar, falkland islands, cayman islands, montserrat, anguilla and pitcairn. baroness amos has been responsible for the commonwealth policy of the uk foreign office. the commonwealth represents the interests of over 1.7 billion people or 30% of the global population, a group of 54 developed and developing countries of numerous faiths, races, languages and cultures. the baroness also carries the can for personnel both in the uk and overseas including recruitment, the people and their welfare. if this wasn't enough, baroness amos also had responsibility for consular services which is the care of british travellers abroad and given that the british make around 58 million overseas trips a year to pretty much anywhere in the world, you can imagine the scale of the challenge ranging from the simple losing of passports to the imprisonment of british citizens for drug smuggling, death whilst overseas and missing persons. valerie amos was born in guyana and came to england when she was 9 years of age. her father arrived first by a couple years followed by herself and the rest of her family. she studied sociology at the university of warwick, contemporary cultural studies at birmingham and then a research project at the uea looking at the transition of black girls from school to work. she was awarded with an honorary professorship at thames valley university in 1995 in recognition of her work on equality and social justice and holds honorary doctorates in law from the universities of manchester, warwick and staffordshire. for someone who wasn't intending a career in politics baroness amos has done well moving rapidly through the ranks of a traditionally stuffy, white male dominated, upper class establishment. she admits to having an activist streak which very much came to the fore during her university years. on the development front, as a student, she campaigned against apartheid in south africa, the civil wars in angola and mozambique. on the home front she was involved in issues ranging from social justice to racial equality to women's rights. a vocal advocate and thorn in the sides of the people then in authority or part of the bureaucracy she found herself promoting certain issues or different ways of doing things. she left university with the belief that in order to change things she had better get into a position where she could affect change. she began working in local government in the london boroughs of lambeth, camden and hackney before heading up the equal opportunities commission from 1989-94. valerie was appointed a life peer, i.e. a baroness, in august 1997. the title of baroness is one of five possible ranks of duke, marquess, earl, viscount and baron, originally military titles dating back to the 13th century and bestowed as a knighthood by the monarchy in a very traditional ceremony full of pomp and pageantry. a peerage used to be hereditary, historically from a narrow section of british society, i.e. senior influential nobility and other chinless wonders. however since the peerage acts of 1958 it became possible to be made a life peer nominated by the prevailing prime minister and leader of the opposition and appointed by the queen. to understand the significance of this it is necessary to explain how things work within the british political establishment. the british parliamentary system originated around the mid 13th century and from the 14th century was based on a two chamber system, the house of lords and the house of commons. the houses sit separately and are constituted on different principles. the house of commons is the centre of government power and is directly responsible to the voting electorate. it is where the elected politicians debate and harangue each other on the parliamentary issues du jour. new laws and acts debated by the commons are brought before the lords for further debate, a sort of checks and balances procedure. the house of lords is also the highest legal court in the land. on the face of it a good idea until you realise that in the past the lords being composed of unelected members of wealthy and affluent aristocracy had the right to reject or delay legislation proposed by the 'democratically' elected commons. the cynics amongst us could argue that this was an effective backstop, rearguard action, to prevent the commoners affecting the interests of the 'landed gentry'. this changed during the mid 20th century when the lords had some of it's powers reduced and then by 1999 when reforms removed the right for most hereditary peers to sit and vote in the house. today only 92 of the 700 peers sit in the house by virtue of their hereditary peerage the rest like baroness amos sit as a result of being a life peer based on merit rather than gene pool. this said the house of lords has a very long way to go before it is reflective of the cultural and social diversity of the british population. "the demography of the house of lords is very interesting", baroness amos explains, "people aren't paid to be in the house of lords, you get an allowance, so it has always been a chamber where people find it difficult to hold down a full time career and being in the house of lords. so unless you are retired or otherwise financed you would find it hard to manage because it's quite demanding, although there has been an attempt to get younger people and women into the house of lords, so the demography is changing slowing." i asked baroness amos what she would suggest to those of us considering a political career and follow her lead. "in my case it is partly a reflection of my history and the interests i've taken in equality and rights issues, running the equal opportunities commission and i guess, getting noticed and being asked when labour came to power in 1997. it's also been a lot of hard work and certainly before i became a minister, and part of the government, i was juggling working as a consultant and running a business as well as this, it was pretty tough. if you really want to make a difference, the challenge can be onerous, demanding hours late into the night with your day job the next morning" she explains. clearly there is challenge here in that for the house of lords to be a truly reflective and modern instrument for british society to question the proposals of our elected politicians it has to be accessible to members that represent the cultural and social diversity of the country. and yet it has taken most of the 20th century to enable non-aristocratic members of the public to enter the house and still there are many practical barriers to entry for the people who could make a real difference. as baroness amos says "there is a debate going on now concerning how people get into the house, whether they are appointed or whether there's a voting procedure, all of these things will affect how people get in here." i asked baroness amos about her views on globalization and whether she felt that this was a positive western ideology for developing world countries. i cited ghana as an example of one of the golden children of free market globalization and yet there are few rich cocoa farmers despite western women's voracious appetite for chocolate. "i think we have to accept that globalization is a reality as opposed to a concept. given that parts of the world are forming themselves into greater and greater trading alliances we have to work out ways in which we can harness some of the undoubted benefits of globalization to actually help developing countries. "one of the areas in which i feel we can do more is in the area of trade and market access. africa, for example, has less than 1% of world trade and there are a variety of reasons for this including the areas in which certain african nations specialise, which if you leave aside the oil rich countries and those wealthy in diamond and other minerals you are left with principally those which specialise in agriculture production. "in the developed world you have agricultural subsidies which quite often result in products going from the developed to the developing world countries at a much cheaper rate than you can even get in the developing world. so we must do something about that as well as the tariff barriers between countries within africa that prevent trade within the continent itself and militates against the movement of goods and products." i was curious about her opinion on the position of britain's role influence in some cases intervention in other nations culture or affairs. i was particularly interested in the recent case in nigeria where amina lawal, a 30 year old mother, was found "guilty" under sharia or islamic holy law for bearing a child out of wedlock. her sentence is death by stoning as soon as her child has been weaned, a sentence which has been upheld by an islamic appeal court. so the question is do we have a right to intervene in such circumstances? "we have to be very careful with what we're talking about when it comes to somebody else's culture. the federal legal system in nigeria believes that the sharia code and its application to certain aspects of the criminal law is illegal but they can't actually rule that until a case is brought before the federal supreme court. i think our influence is through things such as the commonwealth where members abide by common values and principles such as human rights and freedom of the judiciary. the european union and acp (african, caribbean and pacific)states have signed the cotonou agreement that also enshrines principles of values between those countries. "when i was in nigeria not only did i mention this issue with the president i also had a meeting specifically about sharia law with a number of people from different facets of nigerian society in order to understand it and why it was important. what became absolutely clear was that this was not simply about culture but about politics where in nigeria you have a predominantly muslim north and a christian south with a fight for power between the two and the imposition of sharia law in the northern states has not only been a demonstration of the importance of islam in those states but in some of those states it has also been about demonstrating to the federal authority that they have power to do this. "sometimes i think that things are called "cultural" which are much more complex than that, many members of nigerian society and women are really concerned about this and want the support of the international community." at this point we were interrupted by the division bell calling the lords to vote and baroness amos back to work. claire short's resignation was understandable, she was after all one of the only cabinet ministers with the balls to say what many of the electorate were asking. it does look, however, that she has left her post in good hands, it will be interesting whether valerie amos is able to fair better against blair's messianic vision for britain's involvement on the global power stage. perhaps we're not too far away from another female prime minister only this time with a conscience. discuss in citizens forum © copyright 2003 AMMO CITY INDUSTRIES LTD |
