Livingstone's conference

More about the Mayor of London's conference later this month on “A World Civilisation or a Clash of Civilisations”: you can read about the conference on the Mayor's website here, and see a list of speakers and subjects here.

After my column about the "conference" in today's Times, I went on Vanessa Feltz's BBC London programme this morning to discuss the issue. (If you follow the link, I think you'll be able to hear the programme for the next seven days. Our discussion is around 45 minutes into the programme.) Ms Feltz wondered whether Livingstone's exceeding his remit in order to talk about foreign affairs (as I maintained) was due to egomania on his part. I disagree with this. There is no question but that the Mayor genuinely believes this type of event contributes to a more harmonious London. It is his understanding of foreign affairs and how they relate to the notion of cosmopolitanism that I find half-baked and destructive. I pointed out that, while Ms Feltz's listeners and I might find the proceedings absurd, they are liable to be reported out of context in Middle Eastern media. If, say, you are a Palestinian youth with an unquestionably legitimate national claim and a duty to pursue it by democratic means rather than violence, you may be misled by reports of a conference taking place in London whose host is a prominent political figure. The precise constitutional distinction between Ken Livingstone and Margaret Beckett is not necessarily known to a majority of the British public, let alone anyone else. Political grandstanding on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has consequences, in other words.

I believe the Greater London Authority was asked by the programme to field a representative, but in the end put out a statement that was read on air. The programme's producer has kindly sent it to me, and I am reproducing it below:

Clash of Civilisations

Response to Vanessa Feltz show

Thursday 4 January 2007

A spokesperson at the Greater London Authority said:

'London is the world's most international city. It also has among the most harmonious relations between its communities in the world. It has benefited greatly from globalisation and based its community relations on classic liberal principles - that you should be able to choose to do whatever you like, provided it does not interfere with other people. This is the policy of multiculturalism.

'An entirely opposite view has been put forward that the world is heading towards a clash of civilisations. If true, this would have huge practical consequences for London. London would have reverse its liberal policies and prepare for such a clash with huge implications for community relations and London's openness to globalisation.

'The conference has been organised so people from all communities, faiths and political persuasions can to come together to participate in the debate on these ideas.

'Oliver Kamm accepted an invitation to speak at the conference on 23 December 2006 and the Mayor welcomes the opportunity for an open debate on these important issues for Londoners.'

I hope he does. He might make a start by getting to grips with the argument of Samuel Huntington that he neatly caricatured in his "dossier" defending Sheik Qaradawi last January, and where he refers to "the agenda of part of the neo-conservative right in the United States who claim that the Cold War has been replaced by a ‘clash of civilisations’". By citing Huntington as "the foremost exponent of this theory" and naming him as a neoconservative, Livingstone plainly hasn't understood that - as I quoted in my article (the page reference in Huntington's book The Clash of Civilizations and the remaking of World Order, 1996, is p. 311) - Huntington is an opponent of Western universalism, and therefore of the neoconservative view that Western foreign policy should aim at the spread of liberal democracy. In Huntington's view "imperialism is the necessary logical consequence of universalism".

I'm very sorry that the other liberal writer whom I mentioned in the my article, and who has eloquently criticised the blight of identity politics on the Left, has had to decline the Mayor's belated invitation given the short notice. (I'm sure he won't mind my disclosing that it is Francis Wheen, who has castigated both Huntington and the proponents of identity politics in his book How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World.) Ironically, there will therefore probably be almost no one speaking at the conference apart from me who disagrees with Huntington. The alliance between conservative realism and the supposedly progressive Left continues to amaze.