House of Lords votes against allowing Britons to help terminally ill die at ‘suicide clinics’
(from http://news.bbc.co.uk/ 7 July, 2009.)
Those north-of-the-Border Scots interested in the debate over the right to assist in or choose one’s own assisted suicide may have their interest piqued when reading the Telelgraph’s headline. They would remember the latest attempts in the Scottish courts when Debbie Purdie’s 2009 appeal and Jeremy Purvis’s 2005 private member’s bill failed. However, the Telegraph’s inclusionary ‘Britons’ is soon rectified when they clarify that the
amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill would be a “slippery slope” towards the legalisation of assisted suicide in England and Wales
No such qualification is given in The Independent, The BBC, The Mail, The Times, or The Guardian, although all cited articles bandy the terms ‘UK’ and ‘Britons’ around freely. The Mail offers this
The last time the Lords voted on assisted suicide, over Lord Joffe’s private member’s bill three years ago, the proposal was heavily defeated
Perhaps not an untruth, but certainly in light of the Purdie case, the subtext of ‘there has not been a challenge to an assisted suicide bill in the UK for three years’ is clearly wrong – only the geopolitical scope of the challenge is outside of the Anglo-centric worldview.
At the time of writing this [July 8, 02:42] neither The Scotsman nor The Herald had posted any coverage of this story. A search of their databases using ‘assisted suicide’ revealed that they had not covered the history of the attempt to change the English/ Welsh bill either.
As I wrote about education in Expelling 7-year-olds, the ‘England-as-Britain’ trope also has a relevancy in law. It is well-known that Scottish law is separate from English law, but what is much more difficult for the layman to understand is the degree to which the two systems are linked. The Bill in question here is the Coroners and Justice Bill.
The Bill states explicitly that it deals with judicial matters in England and Wales;
160 Extent
(1) Subject to the following provisions of this section and any other provision of
this Act, this Act extends to England and Wales only.
The ‘provisions’ listed outline criteria for the armed forces and other scenarios where there is connectivity between constituent parts of the UK.
A variant of the ‘England-as-Britain’ trope is the ‘hidden England-as-Britain’. The Viagra story showed this clearly: legislation relevant only to England passed off as affecting the whole of the UK. Whenever the extent of a limited survey, law, or policy is not clarified, the existence of Scotland (or N. Ireland/ Wales) is ignored. It should go without saying that this is unforgivable, but the irony of not saying so would be lost on those not expecting to hear it.
However hidden Scotland is in Britain in these stories, the fact that England is in Britain serves to complicate the semantics in statements such as:
At least 115 people from the UK have gone to Swiss clinic Dignitas to die [BBC]
But at least 100 Britons have travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich to die [Mail]
Debating the issue, Lord Falconer told peers that 115 people had travelled from Britain to Switzerland for help to commit suicide [Times]
Of these ‘British’ people, how many are from England or elsewhere? The articles focus on a change to English law, and there is a similar prohibition in Scottish law against assisted suicide. It is justifiable to believe that the numbers represent departures from all parts of the UK. Yet the current articles in question deal with (albeit hidden) English law. It may well be that 85% of these 115 people were English as England has 85% of the UK population. Or it may be different. Without full disclosure, there is no way of knowing, which subsequently reduces the veracity of the articles.
If things happen in England, it should be reported as such. It may be that the English are hypersensitive to their own national scope and are (mistakenly) inclusive, or it may be that they simply see the word ‘Britain’ as a referent to them and do not really care about the other 15% tagged on. I suspect the latter. Whichever version is true, both serve to minimise Scotland’s input in the Union, and I would argue that both serve to undermine the integrity of what is England.
