1 July 2010 : Column 1906 2.34 pm Lord Hylton:
My Lords, I intend to confine myself to our objectives within the Middle East. Our national interest lies in trade. On Tuesday, I took part in a live video link between this Parliament and some Palestinian MPs, all of whom, as it happens, were threatened with deportation from east Jerusalem. Did we, I wonder, supply the equipment that made that link possible?
Trade also requires peace. Peace processes that never provide conflict resolution are not enough. Conflict management, which leaves the poor in their poverty, is also not enough. We have to try much harder than in the past to achieve peace with justice. Anything less leaves western powers paying for UNWRA, for rebuilding Iraq and for mine clearance and reconstruction in Lebanon. Doing this kind of guilt payment relieves the main actors from responsibility for their actions.
I believe that justice involves respect for international law and the creation of just systems within each country. Our long evolution of law can sometimes help. The rule of law is probably more important than instant democracy in countries that have no tradition of it. We should study the concept of transition, by which I mean that countries may peacefully move from authoritarian and sometimes corrupt regimes to a better future which will empower all their citizens. Civil society in each country has a huge role to play. Trades unions, co-operatives, credit unions and community groups can all contribute wherever they can work within the local culture.
This country should use its soft power to help local civil societies, especially the free media. I understand soft power to include the English language, the BBC, the British Council and our welcome to foreign students. The over-professional sport of football can be helpful. In Isfahan, in Iran, I recently found that many of the locals support British teams. More practically, a few visiting matches in Gaza, Baghdad or Mosul could do a great deal of good. It just needs some imagination and some courage.
To achieve our objectives, we should improve our understanding of the religious contexts of the Middle East. This can be quite difficult for diplomats and policy-makers who have grown up in a wholly secular and scientific culture. They must discover that religion has given sometimes illiterate people the courage and endurance to resist enemies occupying their land. Religion is closely linked with personal honour-izzat, in Arabic. This is all too often humiliated by foreign interventions. Islam, as the majority faith, feels under attack and occupation. In the past, this arose from Russia, and now comes from Israel and the United States. This perception legitimises the idea of defensive jihad. Local grievances combine with the wider sense of persecution. Together they generate anger and hate, which in turn inspire individual terrorists, whether in the Middle East, Britain or the United States. A first step towards our objectives would be to end indefinite detention, torture and totally inhuman treatment of suspects.
I come now to three specific middle eastern situations. Unresolved conflict, as has been mentioned already, between Israel, Palestine and their neighbours has worldwide repercussions. It blackens the name of the West and affects the behaviour of some small minorities in Britain. Can we, therefore, persuade our friends in the United States and the European Union to pursue more enlightened policies? Can we help them to use the full leverage of their differing kinds of power? In both Jerusalem and Baghdad the religious dimension is hugely important. This means listening to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Hamas. The regional context is equally crucial. The Baker-Hamilton commission wisely made this point for Iraq, but it is equally valid for Israel and Palestine. Someone said that peace in Jerusalem must pass through Damascus, so please do not disregard the Arab League. In Iraq, the religious leaders are hard at work, most recently in efforts to reduce corruption.
We should pay closer attention to Turkey, especially since the tragic killings on one of its ships bound for Gaza. Turkey has combined strong Islamic faith with education and economic progress, and it began détente with Armenia and with its own large Kurdish minority. Both moves, alas, seem to have faded away. It is much in our interests to help détente to succeed both in Turkey and for the Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria. I have been to Arbil, which shows what Kurds can do given reasonable autonomy. Perhaps Scotland and Wales can show the way in devolution. We should enshrine trade, peace and justice as our objectives in middle eastern foreign policy.
My lord,
The best friendly way I know of, for recognising and agreeing vital Needs & Hows and at the same time win-win-win solving Problems thereto, between two or more persons, parties or nations, is the participatively-cooperative Method III, first expounded I believe in six-steps by Dr Thomas Gordon.
It may fit right here,with step 6 assumed into Step 5:
Five Step Method III, for Friendly ‘Win-Win-Win’ Cooperative Problem-Solving and for Needs & Hows Recognition.
Introduction: Read through every part of the following lines before attempting to judge or even to think about this methodology: you will see why the guidelines are of primary and ‘deal-breaking’ necessity – the method is both voluntary and participatorily cooperative, win-win-win not like the alternative authoritarian legal-processes which are directive, competitive and win-lose.
Guidance #1 (Rule): No-one comes with any competitive advantage: each comes ’empty-handed’.
Each participates equally, with patience, non-competively, non-invasively, non-leadingly, non-pushily, non-manipulatively.
There will be many ’rounds’, allowing every-one equal time and whiteboard-space.
Each step needs to have advocacy rounds, representing those not present in the meeting.
The penultimate round should probably be preset to be the ‘final revision’ round allowing questions and suggestions for improvement or better clarity and for confirmation, before moving on to the next step, and ultimately to the closing of the meeting.
Guidance #2: Move from person to person in one direction around the table or circle. Each person gets equal non-transferrable time.
Remember that for the first few meetings every-one will be learning, and many patient rounds will yield better results than a few grasshopper jump-arounds or fast ‘pedagogic’ sweeps.
Guidance#3: Silence is golden.
Since each individual may be needing to delve deep inside their own self, to find their own most real and important need and to formulate that into words, there needs to be a whole lot of silences.
Guidance #4: At each step keep going round a second, third, fourth or fifth time, until each participant is satisfied with their own finding so far and with the way they have worded it.
Guidance #5: Remember: NO interrupting, interpreting, nor altering; NO competing.
Let each finish verbatimly at first.
Have the advocacy rounds.
And have one or two penultimate rounds allowing for clarification or improvement-suggestion before making the final necessarily unanimous confirmation of the findings and of the way they have been written-up on the whiteboard and in the publishable-record.
Begin the five sequential Steps of Method III : Practical sequence of a Method III meeting:
Step 1 : Each participant submits wording or amendment to describe the Problem-Situation at first needing to be written up on a whiteboard or butcher’s-paper, and agreed by each participant before moving on. Keep going around until what your scribe has written up on the whiteboard is perfectly approved by each participant.
Step 2: Each participant suggests a solution they imagine might meet every-one’s need in the above-written situation. Once again no interrupting, no paraphrasing, no ‘improving’ the speaker’s wording.
Step 3: Go round and round, evaluating each ‘imagined’ solution; e.g. by a show of left-hand = 1 point, right-hand = 2 points, both hands = 3 points, no hands = 0 points.
Step 4: Select one of these shortlisted solutions; OR cobble-together an eclectic-solution made up of the best features from any of the solutions submitted in Step 2.
Step 5: Go round and round again, this time constructing firstly a Plan A, that will best honour and ‘win-win-win’ meet each participant’s (and absentee’s) most-important real-need. That settled, go round and round again constructing a Plan B, for what to do, for whatever could go wrong in Plan A ‘from the inside’, or sabotage it ‘from the outside’.
Further back-up (contingency) plans could be decided upon at the end of this step.
[ Further Steps will be the organisation, administration, implementation and actual execution on-the-ground, in every-one’s real-world, of your above-agreed plans,
i.e. the coordination of equipment and other practicalities needed on-the-ground, among-the-grass-roots, by and for each real individual little life as a component-part of your Vital Needs & Hows Collective-Plan ].
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Preparatory and Supportive practical manuals are:
“Health Care Together” by Mary Johnston & Susan Rifkin under the spirit of the 1978 Primary Health Care Declaration of the UN WHO, for training people in two-way communication, fact-gathering, problem-solving and decision-making (which was never used by Britain because there was a pre-existing dominant Primary Medical Care under which all of that Declaration got swept, my lord).
“Working Together For Land Care” Chamala & Mortiss.
“Joining Together” Johnstone & Johnstone.
“People Skills” Bolton.
“Every-one Can Win” Cornelius & Faire.
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(jsdm1240M0507)
Thanks for this interesting comment which I have just got around to reading. I would be most interested to now at what level(s) and in what situations you have seen Dr Gordon’s 6-step method used? Were the results good? Can you imagine it being applied at international level, and if so, how?
“Did we, I wonder, supply the equipment that made that link possible?”
I had live video webcam links with a Palestinian chum ten years ago, so why the noble lord should imagine there is anything special in it, I cannot imagine. It was Yahoo! and he used to enjoy blowing smoke in to the camera to make me give an e-cough, I guess.
Merely because people live in squalor does not mean they do not have state of the art personal computers.
“Trade also requires peace”
but the trade of warmongering does not; a monger like any other.
“Peace processes that never provide conflict resolution are not enough”
If the war mongering is not stopped/does not stop, then you can not start talking? Quite.
“We have to try much harder than in the past to achieve peace with justice. Anything less leaves western powers paying for UNWRA, for rebuilding Iraq”
It only seems fair that you should tidy up where you have made one hell of a mess. Yes.
Rebuilding Iraq probably means allowing more Iraqis to move to the UK to work, and take their money home with them, to …..rebuild Iraq. There were 200,000 Iraqis or so who changed nationality conveniently in 2003, when they became temporarily unpopular.They have now emerged once again as Iraqis!!
My local postmaster, a British subject and an Iraqi, is an excellent example; a delightful man.
“Doing this kind of guilt payment relieves the main actors from responsibility for their actions.”
But not from murder while war-mongering, unless compensation is paid for that too.
“We should study the concept of transition”
and GET ON WITH IT! the only way that democracy and the Rule of Law of the UN and international law will be achieved is by the sponsorship of the ECO (Economic Cooperation Organisation) in central Asia, and other international Organizations such as the Black Sea Cooperative, the Silk roads Association. not I might add EURASIA for anything other than drug cartel beating, contrary to Lord David Howell’s opinion.
The last two paragraphs Milord Hylton, have some pretty sound truths in them, which correspondents will do well to mull over.
I shall be glad to see a strengthening of the Ottoman presence, in the middle east, both westwards to Israel and eastwards to Central Asia.
The UN the rule of law and the development of Pluralist democracies are crucial to a peaceful world.
The noble lord has not mentioned pluralism (nor have I) but I am grateful to him for thought he has given to my previous posts.
I wonder whether the concept of pluralism should be on the agenda for him soon! Pluralist democracy is part of the UNCHR law.
PLURALISM.
I am sorry that this subject has only attracted two replies, in view of the good value of Lord Hylton’s speeches.
I am not at all sure of his “conflict resolution” approach, but it is a way of thinking, and his pacifism, his desire for world peace, is surely not in doubt.
Perhaps the new parliamentary session in October will bring a rash of newly interested bloggers to this Message board.
Until then I expect the only news will be from the olive groves of Italy.(the most important of all!)
The delay in posting up the blogs must surely deter many would be enthusiasts. It detered me for 18 months in the first place, since it seemed that my post was not being sent after
pressing “Post”, so I did not trouble to return until I found 18 months later that there was a post I had written some time before.
Home education attracted a large number of thoughtful posts which was good. Perhaps somebody will write a resumé of what we have done over the last year, to support or condemn the work of their Lordship’s house.
I too am most uncertain and uncomfortable when widely-generalistic terms such as ‘conflict management’ are loosely used in places where specific clarity is possible or needed.
Take the non-aggressive positive sounding term “assertion”; in the context of ‘difference of needs, intentions or interests’ it was intended to mean ”I hereby stand-up for the win-win-win fulfilment of every-one’s need, not merely of my own”; but in everyday usage it definitely means “I am simply here to get my own needs satisfied”.
Conflict-resolution: The two traditionally dominant practices are firstly
Method I whereby the Parents, Employers, Government, usually wins certain kinds of conflict e.g. “Kids! It’s gone 10pm; off to bed please; chop-chop”. (There is also a bit of a ‘mixed message there, too; which is common in governmental-speak too).
Method II is where the children usually win a different sort of conflict e.g. “Saturday afternoon, Dad; we’re off to the Park” (to play ball).
Method III is ‘egalitarian’ and takes much longer when first being learned and used: no-one comes to the ‘empty-round-table-of-friendly-problem-solving’ with any competitive or comparative advantage. (See JSDM comment above at 1247M05July10);
and please note the slight but important difference between first-resort Friendly Method III winwinwin Problem solving and the next stage ‘down-the-slippery-slope’ towards hot-crisis, namely second-resort (method III-like)win-win-win Conflict resolution.
‘Conflict-management’ could easily mean “send in 10,000 more peace-keeping troops”, or “double the ‘sanctions’ against the State of Irmania“; each of which is actually a stage in a Crisis, much further down the ‘slippery slope’, the first being quite bare-flamedly or ‘bayonets-fixed’ Hot, and the second ‘heating-life-up-a-bit for the renegades’.
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A further serious enthymeme is similarly omitting to succinctly-define ‘Trade’ which surely we want to be limited to positive, healthy, non-harmful goods/services.
Britain is currently among a number of international victims being targeted by shoddy and life-threatening ‘goods’ by ‘trade-agreemenst’ with China which has companies making poisonous ‘goods’ under ursurped labels (such as Smirnoff Vodka, Cigarettes, Toys-for-children, and Electrical safeguards)and distributing them to established outlets all over the World.
There should also be a specific-upfront-term for Arms Trade, and suchlike singularly or potentially harmful ‘goods’.
So with other headwords like ‘Justice’ (currently a Muslim woman in an Arab country been sentenced to ‘Stoning’ ?)
do we need to show the details of the German ‘Final Solution’?
is it ‘justice’ when a government has been overpaying a dependant disadvantaged subject without that subject’s knowledge and without that subject being able to check what the payments should have been, but suddenly that government reclaims that money with legislation that ssya the subject is totally-culpable unless s/he proves in that country’s court-of-law that 1. that government was 100% at fault in making the overpayments, and having done that go on to a second court and prove that s/he ‘had no idea that s/he might possibly have been being overpaid’ ?
[Such cases as the latter are happening today under the Australian Government’s legislations;
so those who are propounding ‘Bring back the British Commonwealth of Nations’ ought to be using a much finer tooth or flea comb than they have been doing, I do suggest;
and it has been more than suggested that our own British ex-servicemen, practically invalided-out from battle-trauma and suchlike, are still being given very short shrift and not the necessary help they need].
So ‘enshrining’ trade, peace, and justice (as Dr Joad of the BBC ‘Brains Trust’ just before WW2 would have never missed saying “It all depends on what you mean by ‘trade, peace, and justice’) does very much depend upon what we mean but, in our dealings with other countries and ‘stakeholders’, my lord, it possibly even more strongly depends upon what they mean, by these supposedly common and universal-human-rights terms.
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So I would have thought that the first step towards ‘our objectives’ would be to start teaching detainees the Friendly Method III Needs, Hows and Costs recognition & win-win-win participatorily cooperative problem-solving; and possibly the slightly different win-win-win Conflict Resolution steps and shortlist of ‘fouls’ thereto.
Axioatically, any-one refusing or reneging on such Voluntary problem-solving can turn away but only into the win-lose tradition of the compulsory court-of-law.
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“The delay in posting up blogs must surely deter many would be enthusiasts”;
This I would return-to-sender for more circumspect re-consideration; because with these very serious Governance and ultimately Human-Race-Survival matters the self-imposed 48 hours promise by the Lords of the Blog I dare wager has no equal anywhere else in Britain nor indeed in the World !
These are current governance matters, not simply ‘chat-topics’.
Click ‘Terms and Conditions’ and see that it is the Peer who posts the Topic and who has to wait for the replies and comments, has to study them, and decide what might be at risk in publishing them.
I would wager there’s is not a huge professional team of Hansard experts or Civil-servants manning the LOTB incoming computer desks 24/7/52, to sort through what could quickly become a 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million strong British public of ‘enthusiasts’.
Yes, many of us are enthusiastic, one could say; but deeply underlying that is real concern not simply for our own lifetime but for the whole future of all Lifesupports on Earth and hopefully on Our next planet ‘somewhere out there’ more long-term safe than is this our present Home.
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Home learning, so I would contend, needs firstly the right all-round curriculum, specialist-syllabus, and all-round sources; and secondly the right mentors and study-buddies to help each and all to progress effectively.
In most family-homes, a prerequisite would once again be competence in using the Friendly Method III Participatorily Cooperative win-win-win Problem-Solving, not just for domestic-timetabling and chores sharing, but possibly for choice of curriculum, syllabus, subject, and even of modules at times, my lords.
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Gareth, I too hope that some-one or some-team is going to do a report, and perhaps an evaluation too, of what we, and our Lordships’ House, have achieved hopefully quarterly but welcomely yearly otherwise.
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With sincere good wishes,
JSDM2051W0707.
Lord Hylton commented that “Islam feels under attack”. Could this be something to do with the practice (whether mandated in the Koran or not) of stoning women to death for adultery?
Lord Hylton: In replying to your reply, in the General Human Interest, I beg leave to be unusually lengthy, please (917 words).
Yes, I have some experience both of Method III working in a Community situation, a governmental situation, and a private family situation; but these were so minimal, like drops of water in a desert, that they would not be useful history.
Dr Thomas Gordon’s “Leadership Effectiveness Training” is still being taught, but evidently not in critical-mass numbers.
In its “Parent Effectiveness Training” form it says that when dealing with children’s overcrowded toys in their play-den the immediate remedy is to “impoverish that environment” i.e. remove most of the toys;
but I (perhaps from having been a church organist and subject to Rationing in world-war-2 and probably now again under the Conservative-Cuts-Culture) would feel much more comfortable with “reduce” rather than “impoverish”; but I think that little drawback to be insufficient to negate either Method III’s other wordings or its practical usefulnesses and minority-successes.
Yes, I can imagine Method III being applied at international level, especially in conjunction with core-know-how from similar “win-win-win” methodologies, such as key parts from the titles below.
Note: “Health Care Together” in its 100 or so pages contains
(1) an historical Introduction stemming from all the work done under the UN Primary Health Care (which should never have been abrogated to be swept under the pre-dominant Primary Medical Care)
(2) the Training methods
(3) a Strategic summary towards implementation of participatorily-cooperative (“win-win-win”) methodology;
as distinct from (but when adequately implemented becomes complementary to) directively-competitive methodologies.
I have only a little experience of the more-difficult or rather-longer “win-win-win” methods, presented under titles such as
“Every-one Can Win” (Cornelius & Faire)
“Six Thinking Hats” (Dr Edward de Bono)
“Health Care Together” (Johnston and Rifkin)
“Joining Together” (Johnson & Johnson)
“Working Together For Land Care” (Chamala & Mortiss)
“Mindsets”(Dweck)
“Perceptual Control Theory” (Powers);
and of the cooperative-community-educational methodology contained within “Toastmasters International” training manuals and meetings-agenda-settings.
Englishman Robert Boulton’s (“)Building Resilient as distinct from the dominantly prevailing Western world’s Brittle communities(“) started reaching out around the world from USA in 1980, and in Brisbane Australia was warmly supported by Lord Mayor Sorley whose City Council launched their own major drive to establish a new “people-upwards” democratic process and spacious meeting-places in major suburbs where large plenums of ordinary volunteer citizens could meet and mingle with professionals and ‘parliamentarians’, and work in small sub-groups of from five to nine people to feed-in all facts, factors and life-experiences for eventual prioritisation by the Plenum, and onward delivery to the Parliaments. (Whether this ever reached any sort of critical-mass proportions I have no idea, I have been too busy ‘surviving’ off a ‘poverty-level’ income).
There is a number of ‘newish’ individual-human-development works, that without doubt would form strong support for “win-win-win” collective-progress, salient among which among which I would place
“Effort” (Laban & Lawrence)
“Wisdom of the Body Moving” (Hartley)
“The Centering Book” (Hendricks & Wills).
Among the similarly “win-win-win”-useful support sources, I would place key-knowledge from some programmes on Sky+ channel 275 Body in Balance, especially Mark Whitwell’s (‘)Do Your Own Yoga(‘); a one-to-one talk-only interview ‘Conscious TV’; and Maya Fiennes’s “Kundalini Chakras” the latter as foundation-knowledge about the health-raising effects of doing such yoga as one feels capable of, contrasted with the pathogenic effects of letting one’s chakras be out-of-balance, but as practical yoga Maya demonstrates at advanced-levels, so for beginner’s exercise or body-movement-exploration I find the movement patterns too lengthy, strenuous, and ‘regimented’ – but nevertheless I can enjoy ‘dropping-into’ any positions or movements I find easy and ‘dropping-out’ just as soon as they become too difficult or time-consuming.
In this latter matter, of individual-human-health-and-development, powerfully helpful work was done, following on cleanly from Wilhelm Reich’s early paradigm-shift about our human-energies, by Englishman David Boadella who translated the actual functioning of each of the seven chakras and their alternatively-named seven Christian Sacraments as doing our essential Grounding, Centring, Boundary-ing, Bonding, Sounding, Facing, and Spacing (Boadella’s “Lifestreams” includes significant therapeutic detail also; as do Linda Hartley’s “Wisdom of the Body Moving” and “Somatic Psychology”, and Rudolf Laban’s publications about Human Movement and the education thereof in “Effort” for instance he lists what kind of noticeably-imbalanced body-behaviours result from overdoing or underdoing one or more of the eight basic human-movement elements e.g. under the Weight opposites too much strength or firmness results in Crampedness whereas too much lightness or gentleness results in Sloppiness).
In the absence of any accessible World Central Educational-Support & Library for such advances to be made available, beginning for individuals online, all one can do is take an unconditionally-long ‘sabbatical’ from all community, education, and ‘democratic’ commitments, involvements, and abrogations; until the times do alter and this whole malfeasantly-neglected “Continent” of “win-win-win” knowledge and know-how builds its own critical-mass and thereby begins to become both accessible to all and effective as a first-resort in both world-wide Human Development and international-level politics.
These enablements and subsequent essential democratic empowerments have the great strength, which ironicly also becomes their greatest weakness, of the long timeframes and decades they need to establish a self-perpetuating critical-mass of participants and exemplary-lifestyle-leaders.
Yet paradoxical as it may also seem, such ‘social-siege’ climates as the global-recession and the Conservatives-Cuts-Culture could be very conducive to very low-cost and highly-synergetic local neighbourhood “win-win-win” generic-education advances, and thereupon to subsequent better democratic-empowerments.
All of which should help to lift the whole Human Race higher, including the Middle East with its peculiar and continual “lose-lose-lose” evil-brood of issues.
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JohnSydneyDentonMiles. 0859St23Oct2010.