Devolved government in Scotland was supposed to bring democracy closer to the people. It was a risk to vested interests. As Members of the Scottish Parliament finally move into the newly built parliament this month, we can ask about the extent to which that risk has been averted.

David Miller argues that the signs of undue corporate influence on the Scottish Parliament are already visible

It is hard for even jaded cynics not to be amazed at the apparent naivety of the MSPs involved in the Scottish Parliament Business Exchange (SPBE). This is the body which fosters closer connections between MSPs and business, and has been criticised for allowing big business privileged access to the Scottish Parliament. First Margaret Jamieson admits that she has signed a 10 year confidentiality agreement with US drugs giant Pfizer. Then Elaine Thomson was revealed not to have known that the ‘lawyer’ shadowing her had no legal qualifications, and was in fact a lobbyist working for Saltire Public Affairs, the lobbying subsidiary of law firm Shepherd & Wedderburn. Thomson’s failure to even inquire which clients her shadow worked for shows an alarming naivety. She along with four other MSPs is on the board of the SPBE. The thought that it might be abused by lobbyists seems never to have crossed her mind. Fellow MSP and board member David Davidson also exhibited a tenuous grip on the real world of lobbying, saying a lobbyist simply ‘gets your message across’. The Exchange by contrast is about ‘information exchange and understanding’.

‘The greatest threat to the corporate world's reputation comes from the Internet, the pressure groups newest weapon. Their agile use of global tools such as the Internet reduces the advantage that corporate budgets once provided.’

Last month Britain made the people of Iraq more secure from terrorism than at any time since the fall of Saddam Hussein. And millions of Iraqis are grateful for having the best public services - from schools to clean water and power - they have had since the first Gulf war.

‘I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change.’ 

So wrote the British ambassador to Indonesia, in a letter to the Foreign Office in 1965.  British complicity in the slaughter of a million people in Indonesia is one fragment of the hidden history of the long and bloody British involvement in international affairs.  Mark Curtis compellingly documents the real record of British brutality and support for repression throughout the post 1945period.   

According to the Ministry of Defence the British Army was involved in 53 separate counter-insurgency campaigns between 1945 and 1969.  Yet most British citizens would be hard pressed to name more than a handful.  Curtis skilfully excavates the real history from secret government files examining British misdeeds in Iran, Indonesia, British Guiana, Malaya, Kenya and others.  He also brings the story up to date with chapters on Afghanistan, Iraq and on the foreign policy of New Labour. 

Arguing that New Labour changed little in its foreign policy, Curtis launches a devastating attack on the ‘ethical’ foreign policy and on the sadly misnamed Department for International Development.  His account of recent pronouncements shows clearly that underneath the PR spin, most public pronouncements from Labour have not even pretended to ethical concerns in their haste to endorse neo-liberal free market ‘solutions’ to poverty.   The blinkered outputs of both media and academia are part of the explanation for our lack of knowledge and help to allow officials who are complicit in murder and sometimes in war crimes to escape justice.  In many cases they go on to become respected ‘public servants’ – not least in Scotland. 

A case in point is the ambassador to Indonesia, Sir Andrew Gilchrist – cited above –  who went on to become the head of the Highlands and Islands Development Board in the 1970s.  A more recent example is the case of the second in command of the SAS during the Iranian embassy siege.  In the SAS raid on the building two hostage takers surrendered and threw their weapons out of the window.  When the SAS arrived they were ‘pushed… against the wall and shot’.   No charges have been laid against any of those involved.  The second in command of the SAS on that day did later enter prison, but only in the guise of Scotland’s Chief Inspector of Prisons where he gained plaudits for his humanitarian approach.  He was later supported by the SNP as a candidate for the job of Freedom of Information commissioner and was called on by the Scotsman to provide armchair commentary on the attack on Iraq in 2003.  Clive Fairweather is able to settle into retirement with no blemish on his character. 

This is a perfect illustration of the web of deceit which operates to draw a veil over the real record of state operatives.  How many others implicated in torture, murder and even war crimes continue to find a place in the sun in Scottish public life?   The chief virtue of this book is that it shows how little foreign policy aims and methods have changed over the years from the colonial period to the 21st century. 

Today global trading rules imposed by the WTO replace the need for classical empire.  But the recent history of US and UK imperialism does show that armed interventions are necessary to shore up elite interests.  Curtis argues that the military end of imperial strategy as witnessed in Iraq this year is fully integrated into the strategy of economic control and exploitation through the WTO.   The link between the policy of the British state, the interests of transnational capital and human rights abuses is drawn strongly in Web of Deceit.  It is an indispensable guide to the rot at the core of British foreign policy.

Added: May 5th 2004
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Political debate in the mainstream in the US and UK increasingly resembles the dystopian vision encapsulated in the film the Matrix. Here the reality of human bondage to the system is disguised by a sophisticated virtual reality - the matrix - from which it is difficult to break free.