“Faith has to be its own reward
It seems to receive no other
The ‘faithful’ wields the murderer’s sword
And bombs his praying brother...”
From Proverbs of Piety by Bachchoo

Lenin observed that one capitalist swallows another and we on the Left saw that as a “bad thing”. It explained why the European Left regarded the enterprise of the European Union with suspicion. It was seen as a grand mechanism to facilitate the movement of capital and labour and thereby set back by a few paces the World Revolution.

I confess that theory and observation have led me to conclude that the World Revolution is still several historical steps away. This loss of innocence has left me with but one personal and pressing complaint against the European Union. This Union and its laws have, in a small way, criminalised me.

The Union has banned, for reasons of hygiene, the importation into Europe of Bombay Duck in any shape or form. In the Indian supermarkets of London they sell, on the condiment shelves something called “Bombay Duck Flavoured Pickle”. This is tantamount to ordering paya and being served the gruel from the pot lamely (sic) labelled “paya soup”. It’s like buying a hamburger and finding no ham in it... (That’s enough useless comparisons — Editor.)

I have consequently been reduced to secreting packets of dried Bombay Duck (which, as everyone knows, is an eel!) and jars of Bombay Duck pickle in my luggage and guiltily passing through the “Nothing to Declare” customs channel at London’s airports. Apart from criminalising me, this manoeuvre does very little for the good odour of the clothes in my luggage. A moral suggests itself: “The ‘Duck’ is more powerful than the Vacuum Pack.”

Apart from this idiotic ban, I have in the main been a supporter of Britain’s membership of Europe. Nevertheless the last week has thrown up two topics of debate in the UK which can be instrumental in causing a rethink. Firstly, there was the question of the aid that the UK gives to India. It amounts to £280 million a year. Last week it was announced that India had decided to buy French fighter planes instead of British Typhoons. This was seen in Britain as gross ingratitude. Even Andrew Mitchell, the minister in charge, said that the aid was proffered in the hope that India would favour trade with Britain. It wasn’t a deal, just the unwritten part of a special relationship.

India apparently didn’t get the message. In fact, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said we don’t want aid from the UK, with or without invisible strings. India doesn’t need it. Pranabda may be right, must be right, but he should now surely tell the nation what his government is doing to alleviate the conditions that this UK aid was aimed at. “We don’t need your aid, we can feed our own people... etc” Question, Mr Mukherjee: Are we feeding them?

That’s what India, in rejecting the aid, should be debating.
In the UK, the Eurosceptic MPs demanded stopping all aid and instead trading in skills and goods with countries such as India. This would mean withdrawing from the European Union, stopping the free immigration of Poles and other eastern European labour to Britain and allowing Indian labour to take its place. Fat chance! These same Eurosceptics are the wing of the party which has opposed and vilified “coloured immigration”. Hypocrites and opportunists all!

The second episode which really does demonstrate an aspect of the impotence of British sovereignty is the case of one Abu Qatada. This gentleman has, for the last 10 years, been under the scrutiny of the British state, first as a dangerous person to be watched and then as a guest of Her Majesty in a penal establishment.

Qatada advocates the bombing and killing of “infidels” and has a small following amongst disaffected Muslim youths. A Spanish judge called him Al Qaeda’s chief in Europe. He is a Jordanian citizen and lives with his wife and five children at the expense of the British taxpayer in a large house for which social services pay the rent. He draws, free from the state, £1,000 a week for maintaining himself and family.

Qatada is wanted in Jordan for terrorist offences and the UK home office has been attempting to send him back there to face charges. He has hired a lawyer called Edward Fitzgerald (I am sure it’s not because he is a fan of the similarly named Victorian’s translations of Omar Khayyam: Qatada’s brand of Islam is spoofy, not Sufi), who has fought the order to extradite him for the last six years in the European Union’s courts.

These courts at first ruled, under EU Human Rights legislation, that Qatada shouldn’t be sent to Jordan because he would be tortured there. Britain counteracted this ruling by obtaining an assurance from Jordan that no torture would be used and that Qatada would be given a fair trial which could be internationally scrutinised. Qatada’s lawyers went back to the EU courts and had them declare that Qatada couldn’t be extradited on the grounds that the evidence which would be used against him may have been obtained by torture.

Fitzgerald then took the case for bail to the British courts and won. Qatada has been held in jail for six years pending the deportation decision and hasn’t been charged or tried for any offence. The British courts agreed with his lawyers that whatever danger it was thought he posed to the public, his imprisonment was unreasonable. The judge agreed and set Qatada loose under conditions which don’t allow him a mobile phone or Internet access but do allow him to accompany his youngest child to school and back.

The law has made an ass of the home secretary’s powers. One of the ways of escaping this predicament is to ignore the European courts. The other, say the Eurosceptics, is to leave the EU and be free of its Human Rights legislation.