When Prime Minister Gordon Brown spoke recently about his government’s
devotion to the United States, “founded on the values we share”, he was
echoing his Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, who was preparing to
welcome the Saudi dictator to Britain with effusions of “shared values”.
The meaning was the same in both cases. The values shared are those of
rapacious power and wealth, with democracy and human rights irrelevant,
as the bloodbath in Iraq and the suffering of the Palestinians attest,
to name only two examples.
The “values we share” are celebrated
by a shadowy organisation that has just held its annual conference. This
is the British-American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP), set
up in 1985 with money from a Philadelphia trust with a long history of
supporting right-wing causes. Although the BAP does not publicly
acknowledge this origin, the source of its inspiration was a call by
President Reagan in 1983 for “successor generations” on both sides of
the Atlantic to “work together in the future on defence and security
matters”. He made numerous references to “shared values”. Attending this
ceremony in the White House Situation Room were the ideologues Rupert
Murdoch and the late James Goldsmith.
As Reagan made clear, the
need for the BAP arose from Washington’s anxiety about the growing
opposition in Britain to nuclear weapons, especially the stationing of
cruise missiles in Europe. “A special concern,” he said, “will be the
successor generations, as these younger people are the ones who will
have to work together in the future on defence and security issues.” A
new, preferably young elite – journalists, academics, economists, “civil
society” and liberal community leaders of one sort or another – would
offset the growing “anti-Americanism”.
The aims of this
latter-day network, according to David Willetts, the former director of
studies at Britain’s right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, now a member
of the Tory shadow cabinet, are simply to “help reinforce Anglo-American
links, especially if some members already do or will occupy positions
of influence”. A former British ambassador to Washington, Sir John Kerr,
was more direct. In a speech to BAP members, he said the organisation’s
“powerful combination of eminent Fellows and close Atlantic links
threatened to put the embassy out of a job”. An American BAP organiser
describes the BAP network as committed to “grooming leaders” while
promoting “the leading global role that [the US and Britain] continue to
play”.
The BAP’s British “alumni” are drawn largely from new
Labour and its court. No fewer than four BAP “fellows” and one advisory
board member became ministers in the first Blair government. The new
Labour names include Peter Mandelson, George Robertson, Baroness Symons,
Jonathan Powell (Blair’s chief of staff), Baroness Scotland, Douglas
Alexander, Geoff Mulgan, Matthew Taylor and David Miliband. Some are
Fabian Society members and describe themselves as being “on the left”.
Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, is
another member. They object to whispers of “a conspiracy”. The mutuality
of class or aspiration is merely assured, unspoken, and the warm
embrace of power flattering and often productive.
BAP conferences
are held alternately in the US and Britain. This year’s was in
Newcastle, with the theme “Faith and Justice”. On the US board is Diana
Negroponte, the wife of John Negroponte, Bush’s former national security
chief notorious for his associations with death-squad politics in
central America. He follows another leading neocon, Paul Wolfowitz,
architect of the invasion of Iraq and discredited head of the World
Bank. Since 1985, BAP “alumni” and “fellows” have been brought together
courtesy of Coca-Cola, Monsanto, Saatchi & Saatchi, Philip Morris
and British Airways, among other multinationals. Nick Butler, formerly a
top dog at BP, has been a leading light.
For many, the
conferences have the revivalist pleasures honed by American PR
techniques, with management games, personal presentations, and a closing
jolly revue to lighten the serious business. The 2002 conference report
noted: “Many BAP alumni are directly involved with US and UK military
and defence establishments.”
The BAP rarely gets publicity, which
may have something to do with the high proportion of journalists who
are alumni. Prominent BAP journalists are David Lipsey, Yasmin
Alibhai-Brown and assorted Murdochites. The BBC is well represented. On
the popular Today programme, James Naughtie, whose broadcasting has long
reflected his own transatlantic interests, has been an alumnus since
1989. Today’s newest voice, Evan Davis, formerly the BBC’s zealous
economics editor, is a member. And at the top of the BAP website home
page is a photograph of the famous BBC broadcaster Jeremy Paxman and his
endorsement. “A marvellous way of meeting a varied cross-section of
transatlantic friends,” says he.
