When silence implies consent

Listeners to last weekend’s Swansea Sound phone-in will have since deduced that the two ‘independents’ accused of advocating eugenics have been neatly sand-bagged. It turns out that community regeneration cabinet member Alan Robinson was asked from across the floor “Are you proposing compulsory sterilisation?” and the St Thomas councillor was dumb enough to nod or something.

It then seems that Wendy Fitzgerald, who seldom knows when to stay quiet, couldn’t help but to do her usual Hermione Granger impersonation and blurt out that “it went on in European countries” – an assertion which she later elaborated in an e-mail to the opposition.

Besides the predictable media-fest ably seeded by tory Rene Kinzett, the suggestion of someone in high places being in favour of mandatory social engineering has already got Swansea’s anti-fascists banging on again about how the BNP strangely failed to put up candidates against Robinson and his running mate at the last council elections despite contesting three adjoining wards on the city’s eastside.

Of course, Robinson and Fitzgerald may be guilty of nothing more than naivety in thinking that what is said in a private seminar for politicians is somehow going to stay private. On the other hand it could be argued that having two naive and patently un-streetwise individuals in responsible positions is a dubious idea - not to mention a questionable call by the Lib Dem leadership who picked them in the first place.

Both of the councillors have gone on the record as stating that they did not suggest compulsory contraception or sterilisation as a social measure nor did they use the phrase. But the elephant in the chamber is that the pair have failed in being just as unequivocal in saying whether they are opposed to the practice. Until that happens then the issue, which includes continuing questions about their suitability for office, is patently not going to go away – as shown by today’s intervention from the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon.