Initiatives of Change - UK: Newsroom editoria detailed view

'If we were not prepared to use violence, nobody would pay any attention.'

'If we hadn't gone outside the law, we wouldn't be having this interview on your programme now.'

'We had no alternative.'

Is it okay to do wrong things in order to achieve a good thing? How far should exceptions be made to normal standards of civil liberties in order to protect populations from terror attacks? Would you condone using torture, for example, to obtain vital information that could save hundreds from an imminent bomb plot? In what circumstances is force justified? Never has the debate about ends and means been more relevant – and urgent – as it is today.

As a provincial lawyer in Arras, the young Robespierre defended the victimized and argued against capital punishment. As a leader of the revolution in Paris, where he was known as 'the incorruptible', he used terror to refine and reinforce 'Republican virtue'. To speed on his vision of a people's republic he sent hundreds to die under the knife of the guillotine. At the age of 36 he himself became one of its final victims. Nearly 200 years later 1.7 million people died as a result of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot's attempts to build a peasant utopia in Cambodia. His deputy, 84 year old Nuon Chea – known at the time as 'Brother Number Two' – is currently standing trial for crimes against humanity.

Reviewing a recent book on Robespierre in The Times, Ian Finlayson concludes that idealist politicians can be dangerous ones. In their hurry, he says, they are prone to take short cuts. 'For the love of freedom they will bribe, blackmail, manipulate, rig committees and deal out death.'

To resist these short cuts takes courage and genuine moral stature. 'Let it never be said that to gain it [the goal of full stature as citizens for Black people] we used the inferior methods of falsehood, malice, hate and violence,' said Martin Luther King. He looked to Gandhi, who was unequivocal on the subject. 'They say "means are after all only means"', he wrote. 'I say "means are after all everything". There is no wall of separation between ends and means… There is the same inviolable connection between the means and the end as there is between the seed and the tree.'

This applies in our personal relationships as well as on the larger world stage. I need to see in my own life where I am tempted to take short cuts to achieve my (good) aims. Being at times, in the well-known euphemism, 'economical with the truth' is one most of us would own up to. I once was party to helping to side-line a rival for a position from which I was sure I could contribute so much. But it was hardly an example of the ideal of love and unselfishness I was trying to live by.

On a larger canvass, Dr JJ Irani, Director of the main board of the giant Indian multi-national, TATA, is clear how this applies to industry. Speaking at the Caux conferences in 2006, he pleaded for a longer term view as opposed to focusing on short term results. The temptation to take short cuts should always be resisted. 'The end never, never justifies the means,' he said. 'Values provide the necessary breaks to keep leadership from going astray. They provide us with internal discipline.' He went on, 'Ethics is vital in business and it pays. You should play the game by the rules, even if your competitor does not.'

Such voices need to be heard more often and from religious leaders and politicians as well as from industry. Even if there is no universal easy answer, we need this debate about ends and means because when we do bad things for good ends we risk starting an unstoppable cycle of revenge and retaliation.

As we enter 2008 it might be worth reflecting on some lines which Anglo-American poet WH Auden wrote 69 years ago in 1939,

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn:
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.