Inquiries & Tribunals

by Pauline Hadaway

A Ministry of Defence scientist and former UNSCOM weapons inspector is found dead in a wood near to his Oxfordshire home, shortly after being named as a source for a BBC story on the government’s ‘dodgy dossier’ on Iraq. Within days of his death, the British government has invited a senior Law Lord to conduct an investigation into the ‘tragic death of Dr David Kelly, which has brought such great sorrow to his wife and children’. An investigation into the suicide of an obscure civil servant, the Hutton Inquiry actually illuminates Britain’s new post ideological political landscape while allowing us a peep at the possible shape of a post democratic future. For behind the imponderable question why did David Kelly kill himself lies another series of questions, which challenge the legitimacy of democratic forms of government and even the concept of politics itself.

From Widgery to Scarman, judicial inquiries enjoy a long and mainly dishonourable history in UK political life. Since the 1921 Tribunals of Inquiry Act, issues of national importance deemed to be above party politics, have routinely been referred to judicial inquiry. Setting up an inquiry was the traditional fallback position, in the wake of national disaster or major political events, which seemed to pose challenges to the status quo, like Bloody Sunday or the Toxteth and Brixton riots. The public inquiry, used as a diversionary tactic or to restore public confidence through a ‘balanced’ and generally anodyne set of conclusions, appeared to most left and liberal opinion to be synonymous with whitewash.

Criticism of judicial inquiries rests on sound political analysis and justifiable suspicion. For, in every aspect of principle and process, judicial inquiry is the antithesis of democratic debate and action, demanding the surrender of authority to ‘impartial’ arbiters. Where political controversy gives way to mediation and conflict resolution, a focus on technical issues establishes immediate causes at the expense of broader political understanding. Always residing in the aftermath of an event, judicial inquiry is the enemy of political action and subjectivity.
Unusually, given their traditional suspicion, the Hutton Inquiry has been broadly welcomed by many on the left. According to the Guardian’s Hugo Young, the issue of confidence over the government’s conduct throughout the Iraq crisis demands ‘examination and answer by an outsider….there has to be a judge….an agent of untarnished credibility.’

Less explicitly a similar approach has been adopted by sections of the anti war movement, who by turning out to picket Alastair Campbell as he entered the Royal Courts of Justice, effectively legitimised the Inquiry. Questioning the ‘lies behind the war’ and challenging military intervention in Iraq are legitimate and indeed necessary activities. However, not only is it misguided to believe that Lord Hutton will explicitly challenge the government over these issues, it is wrong to abdicate this responsibility in the first place. Apart from anything else, one of the defining characteristics of Hutton, marking it out from all that has gone before, lies in its terms of reference. For in the wake of invasion, ‘regime change’ and the military occupation of Iraq, the question at the heart of the Hutton Inquiry is not the rights and wrongs of military intervention, but why did David Kelly cut his wrists?

Confusion over the meaning of the Inquiry has been reflected in media and public responses, which tend to invest it with a range of contemporary anxieties and concerns from bullying and counseling to political spin and journalistic integrity. For example, according to The (London)Times editorial of 22nd July, Kelly’s death exposes ‘serious institutional failings within the BBC and Whitehall’. In this reading of events, Kelly is dramatised as a dedicated and honest scientist, who blows the whistle and whose life is made intolerable by corrupt, devious politicians and self seeking journalists. Sunday Times columnist Minette Marin creates a darker, more graphic account, in which the blame lies with Alastair Campbell, colourfully described as the 'Fuhrer of Fuddlement', who has launched a 'relentless assault upon our memories' and helped to 'gang rape the truth'. The fiction is heightened by portrayals of an ‘Everyman’ broken on the wheel of events, a war victim trapped in the spotlight of public scrutiny. If Kelly’s questioning before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, particularly Andrew MacKinlay’s robust and accusatory description of him as "chaff" is to be cited as a contributory factor in Kelly’s death, then democracy itself stands accused.

Tony Blair’s style of government, lacking principle, more spin than substance, is hardly a model of democratic political practice, but even in this degraded state, parliamentary democracy allows us to hold politicians to account through elections. As such it is infinitely preferable to the implicit imposition of policy by non elected Law Lords, which, resting on the authority of tradition, takes us back to pre-modern and pre-democratic forms of government and justice.

Based on the cut and thrust of argument, democratic politics since the Enlightenment have been ideologically driven. Without the focus provided by conflicting ideas, government is reduced to mere systems of management and stabilising the status quo. With the contemporary emphasis on therapy, counseling and conflict management, the style of government may appear in softer focus. For example, Lord Hutton’s visit to Kelly’s family, in which he reassured them that his Inquiry would neither discredit Dr Kelly’s name nor distress his relatives, elevates care and compassion into a political style. Meanwhile in another moral universe, the real substance of politics continues to be demonstrated by the invasion, and occupation of Iraq and the continuing resistance of its population.

As former Lord Chief Justice for Northern Ireland, presiding over the non jury Diplock courts, Lord Hutton will be well versed in judicial doublethink and the subversion of democracy. The question is, are we willing to accept this ‘agent of untarnished credibility’ as a champion of justice and truth? Or should we not take responsibility for identifying the questions that need to be asked, not merely about the death of a minor civil servant, but bigger questions about the conduct of policy which drove the decision to go to war. This is but the first step towards a wider assertion of the principles of individual and collective authority and control and the primacy of politics.

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