Report for October-November
November 30, 2009
You can now download my report for October-November 2009.
It covers the Queen’s Speech; housing; the UK public’s support for the war in Afghanistan; transport issues; speeches on Palestine, nuclear weapons, Latin America; meetings attended; and local events.
Where’s the democracy?
November 25, 2009
On Monday the House of Commons debated the foreign affairs and defence sections of the Queen’s speech. Most of the discussion was about Afghanistan and the Middle East, with prescient remarks about the Chilcot inquiry, which opened this week. The house did not like being reminded that British troops have been in Iraq for almost seven years. Even less did it like being reminded that there had been no substantive parliamentary vote on the deployment of British forces before the invasion took place.
The Chilcot inquiry is not without its limitations. Membership was appointed by the Prime Minister, it has no judicial function, witnesses are not required to take an oath and it has no counsel to interrogate those giving evidence. However, it could provide some answers as to how the British political system permitted an illegal war and how it is that the protagonists for military action have so far escaped any legal censure.
The root of the problem is the British parliamentary system’s supine relationship with the executive and the lack of parliamentary power in the constitutional structure. Executive powers and parliamentary accountability coexist amid a rich cocktail of patronage, inheritance and chicanery. To invigorate the elected chamber of the House of Commons a number of reforms need to take place. There should at the outset be an understanding that an elected parliament is there to represent the democratic wishes of the people and to hold government to account.
The House of Commons at the moment is essentially a creature of government, rather than a representation of the wishes of the people. MPs need to be empowered to decide what business the house should follow and what legislative programme it is to undertake.
Under current arrangements the government controls virtually all of the business time in the house and has no difficulty in controlling the time allocated for its own legislative programme. The Prime Minister’s Office has inherited the power of the royal prerogative and this can and is used to bypass Parliament. It is high time that all prime ministerial decisions were brought under parliamentary scrutiny. Additionally, orders in council signed by the Queen are subject to no parliamentary scrutiny whatsoever.
This was illustrated when the Chagos Islanders were denied their right to return and when the autonomous government of the Turks and Caicos Islands was suspended by royal fiat. In both cases, there was no possibility of parliamentary debate.
Prime ministerial patronage extends effectively to the appointments of most members of the House of Lords and to a vast number of quangos. Through the power to appoint ministers and officials of the house, including the leader and the chief whip, select committee appointments are also the subject of the same patronage.
If we want an effective democracy, the House of Commons must assert itself and show that it has the authority of the electorate.
MPs too often operate in their comfort zone. They are willingly being told what to do by whips - to vote for Bills they have not read on subjects they don’t understand.
There is a campaign going on for the establishment of a citizens’ convention. This is useful in promoting serious debate and discussion about democracy, but some caution should be exercised on the idea of the right of recall. The right of recall is often used by the rich and powerful to try to undermine a democratically elected government. For example, vast resources were expended to try to remove Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
And in the United States, some wealthy lobby groups campaigned for a right of recall to remove Democrat governor Gray Davis of California, who was then replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. One can imagine the kind of forces that would have activated a power of recall against Tam Dalyell when he was pursing the truth about the sinking of the General Belgrano. Many would have also wanted Tony Benn out of the picture when he was industry minister in the 1970s because he was upsetting the captains of industry with his pursuit of industrial democracy and planning agreements.
It’s important that MPs are elected for a specific geographical area and are accountable to localised political forces and communities rather than the dubious democracy of huge multimember constituencies.
Democracy was fought for to bring about rights for every citizen for health, education, housing and protection from destitution and poverty. It was also to control what governments do in our name.
It’s time the debate moved onto this fundamental territory.
Last chance to get back on course
November 17, 2009
Today will be the last state opening of this parliament, and Gordon Brown will produce what will, in reality, be a “wish list” of things he would like to do now that there are probably only 70 sitting days until parliament is dissolved for the general election campaign. The latest opinion polls on the back of the Glasgow by-election show a small increase in Labour support but still a depressingly large Conservative lead.
The political classes and punditry all offer some analysis of Brown’s problems, but in reality are talking up the prospect of a Conservative government, not analysing Conservative policy and generally giving Cameron an incredibly easy ride. The Liberal Democrats, after proposing huge public-spending cuts at their conference, have since realised how unpopular they are and are saying nothing more about them, and accept Nick Clegg’s proposal that we spend 70 days reforming the British constitution.
As ever, the PM appears to be indecisive and very cautious. I would hope that in the last few months of this parliament, he could at least concentrate on three crucial issues - wars, environment and inequality. During his speech in the City, amid all the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s banquet, he made a lame attempt at justifying the Afghan war on the rather spurious grounds that it somehow made Britain safer. At the same time, he indicated that the British military presence there had not succeeded in either occupying, pacifying or controlling the country, and that he would host a conference on handing “authority” over to the Afghan government.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the United States realised that the game was up in Vietnam and moved into “Vietnamisation.” I hope that Brown’s latest statement is a coded version of abandoning the whole misguided strategy in Afghanistan. With all the losses, carnage and costs, it’s a shame that Brown cannot just accept that the whole strategy has been wrong from the very beginning, making the world more dangerous and costing the lives of thousands of people who didn’t deserve to die.
US President Barack Obama is clearly going through a huge debate with his military, and one hopes that he will not put another 40,000 troops into Afghanistan and follow the McChrystal line of total occupation.
Moving on to the vital issue of the environment, next month, the Copenhagen summit will possibly agree on a global response to the environmental disasters that we’re heading into, but the omens are not good. In Rome, the very same leaders have so far failed to agree on a strategy for dealing with the food crisis. Instead, they’ve allowed the rich countries to carry on buying land in Africa and other places in order to guarantee their own food security, while the starving local populations look on. It’s the same poor people all over the world who suffer the consequences of draught, flooding and desertification of their lands, and are forced to migrate to the fetid shanty towns that surround every big city in the southern half of the globe.
Copenhagen must be about dealing with inequality and social justice, at the same time as protecting the environment.
Inequality in Britain is yet another issue that ought to dominate the next election campaign. New Labour has deliberately encouraged greater personal wealth, while simultaneously putting more money into the services that have benefited many of the poorest in our society, such as tax credits, nursery places and children’s centres.
The stark reality is that we have one of the most unequal societies in Europe.
A Tory government would do nothing to change this except perhaps to make it worse, with the promotion of tax havens and the reduction if not total abolition of inheritance tax.
Last Saturday, the Labour Representation Committee met and discussed a number of proposals for protecting jobs, promoting trade union rights and reducing inequality within our society. Brown would do well to pledge that there will be no cuts in socially valuable public spending. He should announce greater investment in housing, railway infrastructure and a continuing programme of direct investment in the health service. The only cuts should be in the Trident nuclear missile system and defence spending.
He would also do well to announce the protection of pensions and end the bid to privatise any part of the Royal Mail. The banking crisis of 2008 was bailed out with huge public investment. That investment should be used to create a socially responsible and accountable banking system which does not allow the private sector to once again transform Britain into a casino economy.
The broadcast media and most of the newspapers have reduced political debate either to personalities or to the endorsement of the concept of a Tory victory next year.
We need to show that there is an alternative to increasing defence expenditure, cutting social spending and creating even greater inequality.
It’s up to the Labour Party to rediscover itself and offer a radical alternative that conquers inequality and poverty.
Migration and detention
November 16, 2009
Just outside Bedford there is an industrial estate based on a WWII airfield, with bleak open spaces and gaunt buildings. The security at the entrance directs you to a series of diverse companies including Red Bull Racing, and a Home Office facility.
Yarlswood is a new, state of the art, detention centre built alongside the site of the one that was burnt down in the notorious fire when the detainees objected to their incarceration.
The site of the old centre is surrounded by walls topped with razor wire - a fence guarding an empty space.
I visited Yarlswood with my colleague Diane Abbott on Monday. We were shown around the centre, the facilities, the medical unit, the rooms and the education and library facilities. I have visited some of the more modern prison facilities. As doors were opened, and closed, behind us with the prison key and interlocking doors programmed to remain locked until its neighbour was locked it felt like a prison. The rooms overlook a security perimeter area with a high wall, topped with barbed wire, and the sun peeps over the clouds that scud across the sky. The detainees are well aware that they are being detained.
As we asked questions about conditions and policies we had to remind ourselves that the detainees have committed no crime, the children watching videos and using computers are guilty of nothing, and that this is detention, British style.
I have met many asylum seekers or over-stayers who have been detained and whatever the conditions, they never forget the experience. The stories are sad and harrowing. Young women orphaned by aids who fled from the misery of lonely poverty in Africa; others victims of social isolation through their sexuality; and others who were fearful of being dragged into military conflict.
Anyone dispassionately listening would be moved by the human plight, yet these are the voices that do not get heard, the stories the popular media simply do not want to print. Much easier to appease the mob and scream for vengeance.
Three weeks ago it emerged that the Home Office had not deported released prisoners. In the cases where a Judge in Court, had ruled that deportation should follow completion of sentence, clearly there had been an error. In other cases the released prisoner was no different to any other ex convict. They had been released. The scream for vengeance has led to people who migrated to the UK many years ago such as Ernesto Leal from Chile. He served a sentence, following which he has lived an exemplary life and worked in the community. The hue and cry created by the popular press led by the Sun has resulted in his detention pending removal. We do not live in rational or normal times.
Our economy, particularly in London is heavily reliant on armies of people who are prepared to get up at 3am to clean offices and work in cafes. Many of those are badly exploited and lead precarious lives.
Not only do they have to work very hard, they cannot protest at their conditions as the employer could simply inform the Home Office and they could be deported. They have no access to health care or justice as their whole survival depends on anonymity. Their children attend school but fear being hunted due to their parent’s lack of the prized immigration status.
Jack Dromey of the T&GWU was forthright and clear when he pointed out over the weekend that these workers are doing no more than we expect of everyone else: working to support their families and achieve a reasonable standard of living. The Union, and other Unions, are well aware that if we have two grades of worker in Britain those without status can be used to undermine the conditions of others.
Strangely across the Atlantic in the USA there is huge popular protest in support of migrant workers. The racist and xenophobic utterances in the USA of the Republican Right about migrants from Mexico and Central America have provoked a massive response. Migrant workers pick fruit, wash cars, serve in check-outs, and build houses and sweat to achieve their dreams. Fed up with being denigrated, the revolt and marches have shown that they are united and care, and that they have economic power. The Bush administration, wary of the growing voting power of the legal migrants and their sympathies are talking openly about an “amnesty”. However, at the same time 6,000 national guardsmen have been ordered to the Rio Grande to protect the border from the south.
It is surely a statement of our times that the US should deploy troops along a border where there is no threat of invasion, only of people desperate to work. Will it be shooting next?
The popular papers could hardly contain their glee when six cleaners were found in the Immigration Offices who apparently did not have papers. In the resulting scrum and feeding frenzy nobody asked how much they were paid, by whom, or that they had actually done their jobs efficiently. Surely it is time for some humanity in the system. What is the point in armies of officials chasing those who work and provide and who due to their lack of status become prey to vicious exploitation?
In the wider world context, the disparities of wealth and power make victims of millions. Forced off land by globalisation, food dumping or drought the desperate seek a life somewhere. In exactly the same way the poor of central Europe and Ireland made the dangerous passage to the USA or Australia in the 19th century millions seek work and safety.
I saw a sad clip on the news two weeks ago. Apparently some people had their holidays “ruined” on the Canary Islands as the sight of hundreds of poor and emaciated people staggered on to the beaches having made the treacherous and dangerous crossing in open boats from Africa. Hundreds more did not, and their bodies were left at sea.
We need humanity and principle. Humanity to recognise the needs of people within our society, and principle to develop economic, social and environmental justice across the globe.
Afghanistan, again
November 11, 2009
Last Sunday at War memorials all over the country the ceremonies recalled the horror of the millions slain in the two world wars, and in other more recent conflicts. The events inevitably encourage discussion on the role of the military, the purposes of war and of those who pay the ultimate price.
As the news of further losses of British soldiers in Afghanistan came out in the instant news fashion we are now accustomed to, the debate inevitably turned to why British troops are there at all.
Remembrance Sunday news coverage variously focused on Gordon Brown’s handwriting, his abilities at bowing his head, and a series of statements by former military chiefs who choose to blame all the problems of the military on equipment and thus the Government. The same process is going on in the USA.
British deaths are rising rapidly and the BBC website takes up a full twenty three pages of pictures of all the young men who have died in Afghanistan since 2001. As the bodies come home and the families grieve and politicians and generals alike mouth platitudes about fighting for their country and making our streets safer, many think rather more deeply about it.
Opinion polls taken for Remembrance Sunday show that nearly two thirds of the people questioned do not support the war and want the British troops home. Perhaps more tellingly, about half do not understand what the war is for. Indeed the more questions that are put to successive defence ministers on the purpose of the troop deployment, the more vague are the answers.
This is now the ninth year that British troops have been in Afghanistan, longer than the two world wars, and longer than any other conflict of the twentieth century excepting Northern Ireland. The best estimate from any of the Military is that on current strategy, they could leave in five years; some talk of thirty years.
In 2001 the World Trade Centre was attacked and collapsed, and over three thousand people died. George Bush and the US military decided that Afghanistan was the spiritual and military home of Al Qaeda, and after a perfunctory attempt to show a diplomatic effort which might enable the extradition of Osama Bin Laden, an attack on Afghanistan was launched.
Not surprisingly the Afghan army was quickly defeated and the country occupied. A coalition of war lords and pro western loyalists formed a Government of sorts, millions of dollars were poured in for “reconstruction”, and the country was meant to become a Western democracy.
Clearly this whole strategy is a failure; thousands of wholly innocent Afghan people have died, drug production is at record levels, the warlords are in the government buildings and support for various groups of Taliban fighters is rapidly rising. The Western forces largely rely on air support to move around as the roads are too dangerous. Karzai’s proclaimed re-election is a travesty of any democratic process, and the Western public are supposed to believe that there are successes in nation building.
The political problems of withdrawal are a smokescreen for the real purposes of being there.
The Bush doctrine of the Project for a New American Century used the Afghan military effort of 2001 to not only invade that country, but also to create a ring of bases and military capability all over central Asia; issues of oil pipelines to the sea and the huge untapped mineral potential of the country were, and remain, major considerations.
The argument about changing Afghanistan is clearly seriously flawed as the war has spread into Pakistan, and increasingly potential a civil war situation is developing there. The post colonial border has always been the subject of dispute; yet another legacy of Britain’s division of colonial India.
The legacy of the whole Afghanistan adventure is a combination of horror for the people, losses of young soldiers from the USA, Britain and other counties, and enormous damage to international law and civil rights.
Afghanistan brought us Bagram air base, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay and in the USA the dubious concept of “homeland security”; on this side of the Atlantic we now have the anti terror legislation that undermines the independence of the judiciary.
President Obama seems mired in a debate he cannot win. Having allowed General McChrystal to make public demands for 40,000 troops and envisaging a process of saturation coverage of the country, with embedding troops in every town and village, will surely gobble up thousands more. In Europe the opposition to the war is intensifying. In Britain our 9,000 troops are due to increase by another 500.
This is a turning point. If the McCrhystal formula is adopted, the losses will rise, the costs will rise, and the likelihood of an ever more humiliating withdrawal a few years down the line increases.
Vietnam cost the lives of millions of Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans. Afghanistan, more high technology on both sides, is an equally unwinnable conflict and an indication, as if one were needed, of the terrible to dangers to the whole planet of the thinking of the Bush administration in 2001.
How many more illegal acts will it take?
November 3, 2009
At one of the border points between Syria and Iraq, reached after a four-hour drive across the stony desert from Damascus, the road is barred to all vehicles and travellers by a checkpoint.
Those allowed through drive on. This is the road to Baghdad, where armies have marched, peace-makers have travelled and refugees have fled. Beside it, where the huge lorries lumber up to speed, are the refugee tents covered in standard-issue UN High Commission plastic, makeshift roads and bored kids wandering about.
These are the refugees who have left Iraq but have not yet been allowed into Syria. Their stories are heart rending. I meet many families and am moved by so many tales of the endless search for a place of security and hope, always dashed. I sit in a tent - carpeted and clean, but still a tent - with a couple and their children.
Both are Palestinians born in Baghdad, whose parents lived and thrived as children in Haifa until the state of Israel was founded and they were driven out as unwanted residents from a land given to somebody else. They joined the hundreds of thousands who fled. Many went to Iraq, others to Jordan, Gaza and all over the region - and indeed the world.
In Iraq they had identity and recognition as Palestinians and held onto the dream of returning to their homes. But life was never easy and they worked hard until the invasion of 2003.
In the chaos of the ungoverned post-Saddam Iraq, the Shia crowds turned on the Palestinians and accused them of being Saddam stooges and supporters of the Sunnis. Death threats followed and some were assassinated. Fearing the worst, many families either went into hiding, fled to other parts of Iraq or tried their luck in neighbouring countries.
Despite all the pro-Palestinian rhetoric of most countries in the Middle East, only Jordan and Syria have taken in Palestinians.
The border camp at alTanaf is home to hundreds of people as they await their fate.
The family explain how their lives consist of daily bread and basic food deliveries from the UN and a primary school in the camp. It is bitterly cold at night and they are fearful of snakes, scorpions and fires which can set tents ablaze during cooking. But these families do not criticise their treatment by Syria or the UN but by Iraq and the big powers.
In the midst of such apparent hopelessness, the children are an inspiration for the future. A bright 12-year-old girl tells me of her ambitions to be a doctor and her family proudly listen. All have one aim: to get out of the camp.
Other camps house Palestinians as the UN bears their food and living costs, waiting for decisions on where they will go. These Palestinians are the children of the survivors of the “nakba” of 1948, when huge numbers were displaced from their homeland, along with the victims of the “liberation” of Iraq who now await the outcome of complex negotiations as to their ultimate destination. Meanwhile, the weather worsens and conditions deteriorate.
Four hours down the road there are more Palestinian camps, or rather Palestinian towns that happen to be in Syria.
On Monday - Balfour Day, when Arthur Balfour gave his infamous declaration of support for a Jewish state of Israel - I sit in a crowded room with a group of Palestinians who describe their lives and their dreams.
Clearly well aware of all aspects of their history, they roundly condemn Britain and the US for their plight and take a keen interest interest in the putative talks for a settlement of the conflict. Their lives forever blighted by the war and loss of nationhood, it seems appropriate that another big disappointment awaits on Balfour Day.
Once again the Israeli tail wags the US dog as Hillary Clinton drops demands to even halt new settlements as the Netanyahu government pushes to continue its dismemberment of the West Bank.
Barely a week has passed since the British and US did not vote at the UN Human Rights Council on the reference of the Goldstone Report on the Gaza war to the security council.
Just what more illegal acts does Israel have to commit before it is condemned? Israel’s argument about living space convinces some that they have the “right” to continue to take Palestinian land and water.
Yet across the region and the world, six million Palestinians wonder what happened to their rights.
Wars always leave a trail of human suffering that goes on and on. Those freezing on this isolated border - victims of the power politics of the 1940s and the absurd and dishonest assertions of Bush in 2003 - are but one tragic example of this incontrovertible truth.
No place for Blair as EU leader
October 27, 2009
The media is full of speculation about the new European president. Probably within a week the way will be open for the new appointment.
Sadly, the Irish ‘Yes’ vote to the Lisbon Treaty leaves only the Czech government with any power in the situation. The Czech Republic has suffered grievously from invasions and clearly values its sovereignty. It has rejected the US missile defence system and its desire for independence in foreign policy may well lead to a rejection of the Lisbon Treaty. But, should President Vaclav Klaus allow the treaty to pass, the door will be opened to a new president of Europe.
The position is a sort of executive head of the government of Europe. He or she is to be elected for two-and-half years and would be allowed to seek re-election for a second term. The president is supposed to operate by consensus to ensure “continuity” in European policy-making. Working almost in parallel will be another new position, that of foreign affairs and security representative.
The European Union has always suffered a serious democratic deficit and the new positions would make the situation even worse. For all the talk of the new leader’s “election,” the situation is more akin to the College of Cardinals electing a new Pope. The 25 heads of government will meet and agree by a majority who the new president will be. Thus 13 heads of government can elect a president for the entire continent. The European Parliament will have no say, national parliaments will have no say and perish the thought that the people should have any say.
The creation of the post of president is a triumph for the tenacity of the European long-sighters. The project has always been to create a huge free-market Europe, with ever-limiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy.
The proposed European constitution met a swift end when it was rejected in France by people concerned about the marketisation of Europe and the explicit limiting of the public enterprise role of national governments.
But the European council of ministers was undeterred. It set about creating the much more innocuous-sounding Lisbon Treaty. In reality it is little different from its predecessor. It too requires member states to subscribe to a common foreign and defence policy, a European role for NATO and an economic system based on markets with a limited role for the state.
Europe’s social agenda has been under constant threat over the past few decades. The Maastrict Treaty looked to price stability rather than social cohesion as the cornerstone of economic policy. Limiting government borrowing and deficits in the eurozone demonstrates a certain conservative view of the role of the public sector, not to mention a whole host of “liberalisation” methods such as competition in postal services.
Therefore, who the new president is matters a great deal.
David Miliband says we need a president “who stops the traffic in Beijing and all the world’s capitals,” which seems a strange way to approach such a decision. It’s no secret that the man he has in mind is our former PM Tony Blair.
On Iraq and Afghanistan, Blair demonstrated exactly where his priorities were, displaying his contempt for the UN and international law. His decision, taken without any parliamentary consultation, to invite the Bush administration to use Fylingdales and Menwith Hill as part of the US missile defence system showed a contempt for democracy.
Anyone who seriously thinks he should be president of Europe should examine their thinking.
Blair sees things in terms of some self-proclaimed north Atlantic moral superiority in dominating the affairs of the world. The Iraq invasion, its dishonesty and appalling consequences come directly from that kind of perverted logic.
Post-Lisbon the European president and the foreign and security representative will have enormous and largely unaccountable powers. Tony Benn famously described democracy and accountability to a Labour Party conference by advising us to ask three questions of all leaders.
“From where do you derive your authority? In whose interests to do you deliver it? How do we remove you from office?”
Wise words indeed.
Remembering a fine comrade
On Friday, Redmond O’Neill will be buried. Redmond died too young and in great pain. He worked all his life in socialist causes in a disciplined and focused way. As head of administration in City Hall under Ken Livingstone, he did an enormous amount to foster a radical agenda and facilitate the historic visits of Jessie Jackson to the Stop the War million-plus rally in 2003 and of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2006.Last Saturday the Stop the War rally on Afghanistan held a minute’s silence in his memory. Thank you, Redmond, for your tenacity, efficiency and determination
Popular pressure is the only way now
October 20, 2009
George W Bush decided in September 2001 that the tragedy of the World Trade Centre could be avenged by an attack on Afghanistan and prepared for war. Never one to be outdone in the hyperbole stakes, Tony Blair quickly offered a British “blood price.” The UN was stirred into action on the dubious claims that to attack Afghanistan was an act of self-defence and we duly went to the battlefront. Most parliaments of the many participating countries acquiesced in this. They were equally supine when a whole raft of anti-terror laws aping the US Homeland Security Act were introduced.
That was eight years ago - longer than the second world war.
Today, when backed into a corner Brown and other ministers fall back on the argument that this near decade of conflict has our streets safer. However, few would consider themselves safer since 2001. Most would accept that the continuing military presence in Afghanistan and the disaster in Iraq have made their lives far more precarious.
And life for Afghans eight years on from the invasion remains desperate. The Afghan people have known little peace in almost 30 years and their country is under occupation, covered in land mines. The decades of war have created thousands of injured and disabled victims.
Production of poppies for drugs, meanwhile, is at a record high and suggests that either corruption or fear of the consequences mean no action has been taken to stem drug production. The option of converting such products into the painkiller dia-morphine, of which there is a world shortage, has been ignored.
Beyond that, widespread corruption by officials and the consequent loss of enormous sums of western aid to them beggars the question of the whole strategy over the past eight years. In the land of the free, however, the pressures to change this failing strategy are all coming from the wrong direction.
US President Barack Obama was himself elected partly because of his opposition to the Iraq war, and always asserted that the “real” battle was in Afghanistan. Since then he has come under a lot of pressure from hawks in his administration, becoming a prisoner of his own rhetoric on the subject. His subordinate General McCrystal has done what his many very political predecessors have done by making his demands for more money and more troops public.
In response, Obama has opted for a lengthy policy evaluation in which the debate is around troop numbers and whether another 40,000 will suffice. This macabre debate on sending young soldiers to kill, or be killed, will not end with the numbers game.
As with the Vietnam war, a troop increase will heighten tensions and the insatiable demands for more troops will be hard to resist for any president, once set on the course of an elusive “victory.” With this in mind, on Saturday the Stop the War Coalition, together with CND and the British Muslim Initiative, are holding the first demonstration concentrating on Afghanistan since 2001.
The aim of the protest is very obviously to put pressure on British politicians to recognise the huge error of current Afghanistan policy, but there is another dimension to the London demonstration. Around the world people will see the growing opposition being organised in Britain and can themselves be inspired to help end the war - which is already on a precarious footing.
The news that Afghanistan President Karzai will face a run-off election has not been received with much good grace. That widespread fraud was discovered and a partial recount demanded must call the whole election into question. Its impact on the traditional arguments used to justify the conflict has been powerful - after all the West was supposed to be bringing democracy to the region when it invaded in 2001.
And aside from the dubious electoral practices there are other even more serious concerns. While we are tragically all too aware of the deaths of 237 British soldiers, there is much less evidence regarding the number of Afghan dead. Bar sporadic reports of weddings destroyed and tankers bombed the true figure is unknown and probably not recorded.
The war has long since spun out of control. It has spread over into Pakistan and it has not acknowledged the unsettled demands of the Pashto people dating back to British India and partition.
The Taliban actions in Pakistan have provoked a huge reaction by the military, and enormous numbers of people displaced and forced into internal exile. The political consequences of this are huge as instability and more western aid follow.
If this continues, the demands for Western forces to go into Pakistan will grow. What, then, is the reaction of India? Or China?
Is it not time to realise the need for a foreign policy based on something better than the kneejerk reaction of George Bush, 10 years ago?
The demonstration will meet at Hyde Park at 12 noon on October 24.
Speech at Le Mouvement de la Paix event in Caen.
October 18, 2009
Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to this very important peace conference here in Caen: a city that was almost totally destroyed in its central part during the bombing after the Normandy landings in 1944. It is therefore fitting that we should be discussing the threat of war in other parts of the world, in this city.
As a lifelong member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, I have witnessed the ups and downs of the peace movement over many years, and the way in which the arguments for peace and disarmament have changed.
Nuclear weapons were developed during the Second World War, and brutally used against the Japanese people in 1945. They then very quickly became instruments of the Cold War, as the USA, then the USSR, followed by France Britain and China (in that order) developed their own nuclear weapons.
As an instrument of the Cold War they were both terrifying, and very dangerous, but many of us refused to accept the “equality of terror” argument, and instead we campaigned for disarmament by building good relations on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
The astronomical cost in financial terms of nuclear weapons made severe demands upon the economies of many countries, particularly the USSR, helping to lead to its demise in 1990.
That should have been the point at which the continued existence of both the Warsaw Pact and NATO should have ceased, and the role of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe should have taken over. Instead, NATO caste around for a role for itself and has since attempted to develop into a strategic arm of both the European Union and of the United Nations.
We are now at a crucial time in the possibilities of world peace and of both nuclear and conventional disarmament. However, conversely, we are also at a time of the most perilous danger possible, following the war in Iraq and the current conflict in Afghanistan. The reasons promoted, particularly by George Bush and Tony Blair, focused on prosecuting the war on terror. This argument led to the occupation of Afghanistan and was later used for the excuse to invade Iraq. The cost has been huge: the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and an international division between the Western countries and the predominantly Islamic countries, which is having, and will continue to have catastrophic consequences for international relations for the rest of this century at least.
Next Saturday in London we are mounting a big march and demonstration against the war in Afghanistan, and demanding the troops be brought home. The British participation is becoming increasingly unpopular. President Obama was elected in large measure because of his opposition to the Iraq War and his approach to the economic problems facing the United States. Unfortunately, he has always supported the war in Afghanistan and as he now grapples with the decision to deploy 40,000 more troops, every day the whole conflict becomes more reminiscent of the Vietnam war of the 1960s and 70s.
At a time of recession, it is unconscionable to think in terms of continuing these wars, noting the enormous social, moral, political and financial costs associated with them. It is also equally immoral to even consider the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons. During the Cold War the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was agreed, placing conditions on the five declared nuclear weapons states to take steps towards disarmament and in return, all other signatories would refrain from developing nuclear weapons in any form, or causing other people to develop them on their behalf.
The NPT comes up for its quintennial review next year in May (in New York), and it is to be hoped that the 5 declared weapons states will announce some progress toward fulfilling their historical commitments.
In the case of the UK, we are campaigning very hard for the non replacement of the Trident Nuclear missile system and for taking the remaining three submarines off patrol, and for not approving expenditure on new warheads. It is calculated that a new generation of weapons will cost the British people 76 billion pounds over the next 25 years.
However, the NPT of itself cannot bring about disarmament. India and Pakistan have both developed nuclear weapons and despite protestations by the Western powers, have in fact received, in the case of Pakistan, a huge amount of military aid, and in the case of India is now receiving nuclear technology support by the United Stations which is virtually a reward for the development of nuclear weapons, in contravention of the principles of the NPT.
The Middle East is clearly a tinder box and at enormous risk, and whilst I do not support any country developing nuclear weapons, it is very clear that Israel’s possession of 200 nuclear warheads, together with the delivery system makes the possibility of a nuclear free zone in the Middle East very difficult, and makes it impossible to argue that no one else in the region should have nuclear weapons for their own self defense. In my view there must be the strongest possible pressure on Israel to decommission its nuclear weapons as part of the process towards a nuclear free Middle East. It is heartening that Iran has now agreed to International atomic energy authority inspections of all of its facilities and this is the most welcome sign we’ve had from the region in the recent past.
The NPT is important, but it is even more important that there be a UN sponsored Nuclear Weapons Convention that can insure that all nuclear weapon states meet together and begin a process of disarmament.
We are at a crossroads in history. The world has never been more technically advanced than it is at the present time, yet 1 in 6 of the world’s population are without sufficient food. In the case of the poorest people in the poorest countries, they are facing a shorter life expectancy as a result, and a grim future.
The recession is not a time to re-arm but it is a time for peace, disarmament, and it’s a time for conquering economic, environmental and health inequalities. That is the purpose of the peace movement.
Government selling off the family silver
October 13, 2009
Parliament resumed on Monday after an excessively long recess. Greenpeace got there first and, using the simple expedient of a ladder, climbed over the wall and then onto the roof and unfurled banners about climate change. Sunning themselves on the roof and being waved at by passers-by, they looked like the happiest people in Westminster. They at least had a cause they believed in.
Gordon Brown looked glum, having just paid £12,000 back to the House of Commons, and MPs were frantically awaiting a letter from Thomas Legg about their living expenses. Interesting and important as this is, there was something much more sinister going on.
The government’s first response to the recession was to nationalise most of the banks, increase benefits and promote housing and infrastructure investment as a way of maintaining employment. Not exactly revolutionary, but at least sane and useful. Since then it has faltered, first by refusing to take control of the banks and only vaguely even thinking about executive bonuses.
Then it got worse as the government announced that the banks would return to the private sector - having had £60 billion of state support - and that the deficit on the budget must be paid off or at least halved in four years.
This was a green light for the Tories, who immediately promised £50bn in cuts. The Liberal Democrats also pledged to make cuts, but were not as specific with their figures.
New Labour hated to be trumped by any of this, so the weekend was full of stories about government asset sales. A list of sorts was drawn up and optimistic price tags were put on them - a bit like a family in a financial hole, who have cast around the house for things to sell, load into the car boot and head off to the nearest school playground to flog.
This wouldn’t be a great way of managing family finances but, when it comes to national assets, it’s disastrous.
Cabinet Office Minister Liam Byrne announced that the list will include the Tote, Dartford river crossing, the student loan book and the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Additionally, councils will be told to sell assets to pay for investment in the future.
It is a strategy worthy of Margaret Thatcher in her heyday. Back then, severe cuts in government funding forced local authorities to sell buildings to property companies and then lease them back at huge rents.
The private finance initiative in the health service places much the same long-term burden on patients and taxpayers. The sales proposed will all cost far more than they will bring in. The Tote generates an income, the student loan book would only be worth buying if the purchaser can make money collecting student loans by increasing the charges.
It seems only a short while ago that students received grants and graduates did not start life in debt. Are we to sell educational achievement to financial wide boys?
Selling the Channel Tunnel link sets a precedent. What’s next? The West Coast Main Line with all the billions spent on it? The East Coast Main Line and all its infrastructure?
This is heading straight back to the mentality of Beeching and the late Nicholas Ridley in closing feeder lines that would become a “burden” on the public purse. The sales so far announced will all cost more in the long run to the public if one works on the principle that state enterprises are there for the common good.
To make cuts in a recession merely deepens that recession. To sell assets means a loss of already huge public investments and enables the purchaser to fleece the public for decades to come.
And all this pain for £16bn? How about making beneficial cuts instead?
Gordon Brown has at last recognised the waste and intrusion of ID cards. How about moving on to cancel Trident and its £76bn millstone? The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost many billions already and on current predictions millions more to come. How about aggressively closing tax havens and loopholes to increase government income?
Community development finance institutions are independent organisations that have sprung up which provide finance to individuals, businesses and social enterprises while promoting social justice. In order to ensure citizens have an active role in what happens to their money, such organisations should be supported at government level.
The Tobin tax has also been overlooked, yet is a straightforward sales tax on currency trades across borders, which has the potential to prevent financial crises while at the same time raising an estimated $100-300bn a year to meet other urgent global priorities such as climate change and poverty.
In the end it all comes down to philosophy.
We know what the Tories want. We know the Liberal Democrats essentially approach the recession with the same frame of mind. From Labour we expect - and demand - something different.
