Enemies and friends of the state

 There are few experiences more dispiriting than attending a planning appeal hearing. There is the facade of objectivity, and the outward resemblance to a court of law. Witnesses are called and each side may be represented by a lawyer: one for the local planning authority which has refused the planning application; and one for the developer who is appealing against this refusal. But the outcome is largely pre-determined. At the most recent hearing I attended, the planning application was a poorly-drafted cut-and-paste affair. Our village was mistakenly located many miles from its true location and on the wrong half of the county. The proposed development was on high-quality open farmland on the side of a beautiful hill, to be covered with a banal estate of houses that could be built anywhere. The developer’s case was presented by a smooth KC, whose website recorded his many successes in previous appeals and the vast tracts of English countryside concreted over as a result. He was supported by witnesses paid by the developer to make spurious claims that the proposed development would be ‘sustainable’ because people would be able to travel to work using our infrequent bus service or by cycling many miles down narrow and winding country lanes. The appeal was of course allowed by a single planning inspector (a civil servant pretending to be a judge) who had spent an hour or two viewing the site. The passionate opinions of local people and their elected representatives counted for nothing. The planning inspector reached his decision because government planning policy is strongly tilted in favour of developers and against local authorities and protesting village communities. 

The various departments and agencies that constitute the modern state each have their own sets of friends and enemies. Friends are those organisations which share objectives with the agency, often facilitated by the similar social backgrounds of their leaders, and promoted by shared social events. Friends of the agency help it attain its smooth functioning, promoted by incentives. Enemies are those organisations and groups of people who are seen by the agency as impeding its objectives or which generate additional work for its senior officers. Enemies of the state are subject to sanctions rather than incentives. In the case of planning, the developers are the friends of the state while the people of rural England (often denounced as ‘NIMBYs’) are its enemies.

Sometimes the enemies of the state win. This is particularly the case on the rare occasions when they succeed in overturning longstanding official policy through political action (usually after many years of campaigning) or by a favourable judicial ruling. But these victories often sour. Victims of official malevolence may be compensated, but this is usually much delayed and niggardly. This is true of the schemes for the sub-postmasters persecuted by the Post Office, the families of those who died because of the official incompetence that led to the Grenfell Tower fire, the ‘Windrush people’ deported because they lacked documentation, the victims of the infected blood scandal, and the veterans whose health suffered when they were exposed to nuclear tests. 

By contrast, the friends of the state rarely suffer. Rather than prosecute, governments set up lengthy and very costly public enquiries, which reward lawyers, divert funds from compensating victims, and aim to outlast public indignation. The heads of agencies and their friends whose malevolence and neglect caused widespread suffering are never punished and never fined, although they may experience transient embarrassment. The next set of public contracts are handed out to the same miscreants by the same agencies. 

Challenging institutional injustice and cruelty is not easy. It requires sustained action by campaign groups, the acquisition of expertise by lay people, and the support of one or more members of parliament as well as of some elements of the mass media. But political campaigns of this kind are the only means of ensuring that the institutions of the state come to seek the friendship of the people of this land rather than just a favoured circle of the powerful.