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Yearly Archives: 2015
The wrong kind of Boxing Day
The rail network is mostly shut down for Boxing Day. “Most operators will be running no services on Boxing Day, with the rest running a reduced service”, says The Guardian, and Labour has pointed out the hypocrisy of the Tories on the subject (see the link below).
Well done, Labour, for making the most of this! And it is a serious issue. But I confess to having laughed a lot at some of the quotes here from Network Rail and the government: Mark Carne “acutely conscious” that passengers want to travel to see their families at Christmas. OK then, Mark, er, so, er — hello? Hello? Then there’s the rail minister saying she hoped that “any impacts to services are communicated to passengers”. What? While they’re stuck on a train stalled outside some closed station and reduced to breaking into their Christmas whisky for comfort?
But perhaps there’s good news on the horizon. Labour noticing this situation may mean that its old guard – the Blairites, the Brownites and the Gawd knows what-ites – have woken up to the need to attack the Tories, not their own leader. If so, and if Labour wins the next election, we will see the rail network publicly owned again and, this time (if I’ve read Jeremy right), publicly accountable. Now there’s a thought for comfort while you’re stuck on that train. Hands off my whisky!
Here’s the Guardian story:
John McDonnell at The Peoples Assembly Against Austerity
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell talks about the new politics after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party.
Targets should be to tackle homelessness, food banks, joblessness, withdrawal of social care, climate change not GDP which just measures how much wealth has moved to the top.
John McDonnell MP Shadow Chancellor The Peoples Assembly Against Austerity 05 12 15
“It’s not our war”
When a country goes to war, governments always back up their decision with high-flown rhetoric about defending this or standing up for that. They did it at the start of the First World War in 1914. When the shipbuilding workers of Govan on Clydeside went on strike in, I think, 1915 they were told they were “disloyal”, “unpatriotic”. The workers’ union replied that it was not their war. In his book The First Day on the Somme, Martin Middlebrook didn’t mention such resistance during those years, not just because his focus was on one day in a particular battle during that war, but also because he believed that “[t]he entire country, and beyond it, the Empire, entered wholeheartedly into the conflict.”[1] He did, however, recognise that the reality behind the war was not high-flown at all. He wrote:
“Britain’s stated war aim was to secure the neutrality of Belgium, but in reality she wished to curb the power of Germany, whom she regarded as a growing rival to her trade, maritime and imperial interests.”[2]
So the crime of the workers of Govan was really their disloyalty, not to some idea of “the nation” or to “King and Country” (both of which are routinely dressed up as noble causes) but to something even more questionable as objects of loyalty: Britain’s “trade, maritime and imperial interests”.
In the Foreword to his novel about the First World War, A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway makes a similar point, but with some anger:
“The title of the book is A Farewell to Arms and except for three years there has been war of some kind almost ever since it has been written … I am sure that I am prejudiced, and I hope that I am very prejudiced. But it is the considered belief of the writer of this book that wars are fought by the finest people that there are, or just say people, although the closer you are to where they are fighting, the finer people you meet; but they are made, provoked and initiated by straight economic rivalries and by swine that stand to profit from them. I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts by accredited representatives of the loyal citizens of their country who will fight it.”
Moving on to the 21st century, it seems that the crime of those of us who support Stop the War is similar to that of the workers of Govan in 1915. So let’s keep saying, with them, “It’s not our war.”
[1] Middlebrook, M. (1984). The First Day on the Somme: 1 July 1916, Penguin Books, London, p. xv.
[2] Ibid.
Benediction in the Commons
Excellent. This cuts through Benn’s hypocrisy and blustering rhetoric
As First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton ‘urged’ her husband to bomb Serbia. As the Democratic Senator from New York, she voted for and vocally supported the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. As Secretary of State, she zealously oversaw the bombardment and destruction of Libya. Mrs Clinton’s lucrative and long-standing connections to so-called ‘defence contractors’ are no longer a secret, and, true to form, she is now calling for a ground war in Syria. In spite of all this and more, her impending presidency is sending liberals everywhere into fits of glossolalist rapture.
Last Wednesday, we in Britain were reminded that we have a hawkish Hilary of our very own. Towards the end of a parliamentary debate on bombing Syria, the shadow foreign secretary delivered a theatric speech in which he euphemistically enjoined the House of Commons to ‘do [its] bit’ in a land which is already being ravaged by the…
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Tell your MP: “all necessary measures” – against war
The Labour Party decided at its conference this year that military intervention in Syria by the UK should not take place without
- authorisation from the United Nations;
- a comprehensive plan for humanitarian assistance for any refugees who may be displaced by the action;
- assurances that the bombing is directed exclusively at military targets associated with ISIS;
- the subordination of any military action to international diplomatic efforts to end the war in Syria.
I’m not sure if the UN Security Council’s post-Paris call to take “all necessary measures” against ISIS counts as authorisation, although I think David Cameron thinks it does. It looks like he will present proposals for bombing to the House of Commons this week or next and he’s been telling the French president not to worry: it’ll be “shoulder to shoulder” again apparently.
A good many Labour MPs are flexing their shoulders in anticipation of voting with the Tories and against the Labour conference decision and the advice of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and others. They’re jumping the gun, of course, if you’ll pardon the expression. Even assuming that the Security Council’s “all necessary measures” count as authorisation, there are three other Labour Party conference criteria to be met before Labour MPs should even consider hoisting their shoulders into war. The Guardian thought that meeting all four criteria would be difficult if not impossible “in the short term”. Or in the long term, I would add. Even if, by sleight of hand or smoke and mirrors, Hilary Benn, say, declared they had been met, those vague criteria couldn’t possibly guarantee that refugees would be protected, that only military targets associated with ISIS would be bombed, or that international diplomatic efforts would be able to end the war in Syria while the politicians “pitilessly” (the word used by the French president) extend it.
Politicians quite like shoulder-flexing. But we must absolutely refuse to give them permission. Although John McDonnell has suggested that Labour MPs might have a free vote, I’ve told my MP (Alan Johnson) to vote against war. Please tell yours. And sign a petition, pass a resolution in your union branch, or at your local Labour Party meeting, and go on a demo.
Because the truth is that the history of previous shoulder-to-shoulder events (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, then back to Iraq again) cries out for them not to do it again. It doesn’t work. It won’t work with French shoulders either. What it will do (to use a phrase that was quite often used by my mother) is send us all to buggery.
In today’s Guardian, Frankie Boyle argues that “Britain clings to its bombing addiction with the weary rationale of a junkie.” He concludes:
“If we wanted to get well as a society, we would end up like anyone in recovery: sitting around a table talking, having awkward conversations and making compromises. Instead, a few months from now, we’ll be dealing with the kind of horror that is unleashed when British MPs are told they can vote with their consciences.”
Jeremy and John, I don’t know how you’re going to play this but, given the malleability of many Labour MPs’ consciences in the past, I don’t feel safe with a free vote.
Some worries about looking too responsible
I assume that John McDonnell’s original “we’ll vote for it” take on the government’s Charter for Budget Responsibility was about trying to reassure people that Labour was taking a “mature” approach to public finance, etc. “We’re not irresponsible, profligate spenders, we’ll balance the books, we know what good housekeeping means” was the message. But he was wrong. Voting for the Charter would have meant voting for the consequences of the Charter under a Tory government – increasing austerity for the poor, increasing wealth for the rich. He was right to make a U-turn.
Unfortunately, I think he’s trying to look “responsible” again, this time on his approach to Tory cuts to working tax credits. He has written a letter to George Osborne asking him to please think again:
“What I’ve said to George Osborne is I think he should do a U-turn on this one … [I]f he does a U-turn in full to protect people in the tax-credit system I will not make political hay out of it – in fact I’ll support the government” (Channel 4 News, 25 October 2015).
But why would Osborne respond positively to a polite request to do a U-turn? The government isn’t interested in protecting vulnerable people. Its aim is to exploit them, to punish them for asking for more, and to demonise them. That’s why a single parent with two children, working at two jobs and working 16.5 hours a week will lose £16 a week when the cuts come into force; it’s why a single parent working 16 hours a week and earning £8,500 a year will lose £16 a week. Someone on Channel 4 News (I can’t remember who it was, somebody in the House of Lords opposing the policy) said that the government didn’t realise the consequences of its own policy. Get real, Lady Whoever-you-are, of course they realise the consequences of what they’re doing – that’s why they’re doing it.
So when John McDonnell told Andrew Marr on Sunday that the situation for people on working tax credit has become so serious that it’s above politics he was wrong. Cameron and Osborne will ridicule him for that. For them it’s politics, their politics, always has been. So he shouldn’t be offering to support the government in any deal based on a breakable, spin-doctored promise by the Tories to protect vulnerable people. Instead let’s have more of the John McDonnell who said, when the Welfare Bill made its first appearance in the Commons before Corbyn’s election and the then Labour “opposition” decided to abstain in the vote on it:
“I would swim through vomit to vote against this Bill – and, judging by some of the speeches I’ve heard so far, I may have to …”
If the pressure to make the offer to Osborne came in part from Labour’s old guard – the Blairites and Gawd-knows-what-ites who lost Labour the last election – then they need to be pulled into line. I know, in a way, it’s easy for me to say that. I don’t have to do it. But I saw some hope in Jeremy Corbyn’s election, especially by such a majority, and the appointment of John McDonnell as shadow Chancellor. And I blogged here that those of us who voted for Corbyn as supporters should join the Labour Party as members. So I’ve just been to my first Constituency Labour Party meeting for 30 years. And I shall continue to go, and do whatever I can do. But we need to be tough. We mustn’t make ourselves look naïve. And we mustn’t bother about proving how responsible we are when what is “responsible” and what is not is defined by the Tories.
A chance to break the cycle of war?
Before you read this, David Cameron may have announced that he will put his proposals for UK airstrikes on ISIL in Syria to parliament this week. If the Commons votes Yes to those proposals it will make UK military support for US attacks official, as opposed to the till-now-unofficial support, most of which has been unacknowledged, although we learnt belatedly of the drone attack that killed two UK citizens quite recently.
How should Labour MPs vote?
On the face of it, they ought to vote No. The Labour Party Conference in September voted against military action in Syria unless four strict conditions were met. The proposer of the emergency motion, Ivan Monckton, a member of Unite, made his reasons for proposing the motion clear. For one thing, he doesn’t want the party involved in “another illegal war”. Plus (and what a plus it is):
“The repeated British interventions into the Middle East at the behest of the US have seen huge resources ploughed into conflicts – each of which has further destabilised the region, creating still more refugees and led to uncounted civilian deaths.
“It is time to break this cycle of war, which is why this party must tell Cameron to pause for thought. Over the past year, there have been some 6,000 airstrikes on Iraq and Syria by the US and its allies. They have dropped over 20,000 bombs.
“The outcome has been that Isis has expanded the territory that it controls still further. There is no evidence that more bombing will lead to a different outcome.”
And the four conditions?
- Military action must have UN authorisation.
- There must be a comprehensive plan for humanitarian assistance for refugees displaced by the action.
- The bombing must be directed exclusively at military targets associated with ISIL.
- Military action must be subordinated to international diplomatic efforts to end the war in Syria.
To quote Rajeev Syal in The Guardian: “The conditions will be difficult, if not impossible, to meet in the short term.”[1] So, if conditions aren’t met, how should MPs vote?
You know already, dear reader, what I’m going to say. They should vote No.
But will they? About half the shadow cabinet is against a No vote. About 50 Labour MPs seem to be conspiring with the Tories to ensure a Yes vote.[2] Plus, Rajeev Syal tells us that “conference motions are advisory rather than binding”. I believe him. There’s a long history of conference decisions made in Brighton, Blackpool and Scarborough which have then been routinely trampled on by Labour leaderships after the conference has safely ended. This history goes back at least to Harold Wilson and probably even further – but I shouldn’t claim more than I can remember!
But we are in a new era now, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn. Policy is no longer to be imposed but debated by the party and agreed. This policy has been debated and agreed. If time had allowed it, there could have been a longer and wider debate right across the party branches, taking into full account the views of the new influx of members and supporters – the kind of debate that Jeremy Corbyn is arguing for. But time waits for nobody. If that had happened I suspect the answer would have been an even more resounding No to another war.
So I’ve written to Alan Johnson (he’s my MP – it’s best to start at home, eh?!) asking him to vote No.
There’s talk of a “free vote” for MPs on grounds of “conscience”. This is part of Jeremy’s willingness to listen to opponents, to be democratic, inclusive, to put an end to the old undemocratic, contemptuous ways of the past (Wilson saw his critics as dogs that could be told to stop barking: “Every dog has his day,” said he.) But I want Jeremy to do something else now, and he can do it without giving up his clearly demonstrated commitment to democracy, inclusiveness and respect. He has a wider audience to listen to and to heed than just the Parliamentary Labour Party. There’s all of us – who, when he stood for the leadership, saw some light at the end of the tunnel. Now, to make that more than wishful thinking, Jeremy needs to listen to us all, forget free votes, and pull Labour MPs into line behind a democratic conference decision and a mass movement that demanded and still demands change.
[1] Syal, R., “Labour conference sets terms for supporting UK military action in Syria”, The Guardian, 30 September 2015.
[2] Helm, T. & Boffey, D., “More than 50 Labour MPs to defy Jeremy Corbyn in vote on Syria”, The Observer, 10 October 2015.
“Reply” to complaint
I have received a reply to my complaint about the Channel 4 News report on the Labour Conference decision not to have a debate on Trident:
“Dear Mr Mouncer,
Thank you for contacting Channel 4 Viewer Enquiries regarding CHANNEL 4 NEWS: Labour Avoids Trident Debate.
We appreciate the time you have taken to write to us and I am sorry to read of your concerns with the report. Please be assured that your feedback has been forwarded to the News Editor to consider for future reports.
Complaint to Channel 4 News
I sent the following complaint to Channel 4 News tonight:
“On Channel 4 News tonight Matt Frei claimed that there was not going to be a debate on Trident at this week’s Labour Party Conference because Jeremy Corbyn “shied away from it, apparently. The unions backed him up.” No evidence was presented for this claim, and the rest of the report seemed to demonstrate the opposite of both those statements. For one thing, on arrival at the Conference Corbyn is interviewed showing no signs of “shying away”, and he clearly expects a debate and wants it. He says:
“There will be a debate on Trident, of that I’m sure. Conference will come to pass a decision, possibly they’ll refer this to elsewhere – to be quite honest, at this very moment I don’t know.”
But Matt Frei was determined to present him as “shying away” from a debate at Conference and says, “The unions backed him up.” However, Gary Gibbon, momentarily singing from another hymn sheet, blamed the vote against a debate on two unions with members in the defence industry: they “wouldn’t back Jeremy Corbyn”. That, presumably, is the Jeremy Corbyn who wanted a debate not the mythical “shying away” figure conjured up by Matt Frei. Gary Gibbon, however, seems to have been given Matt Frei’s hymn sheet in the end and declared of Corbyn: “He’s avoided a bloody fight here he really didn’t want” – presumably “avoided” is slightly more polite than “shied away”.
Perhaps this might be explained by the rough-and-tumble of journalists trying to piece together a complicated story which has to be edited to fit the very short Sunday-night edition of the programme. Unfortunately for such a generous explanation, Matt Frei, in the comfort of the studio, pursued his theme in his interview with Lisa Nandy, still without producing evidence for his claims. He stated as fact that Corbyn had “shut down” the debate on Trident. He then went further, saying that “shutting down the debate on Trident … was surely doing what Labour used to do, which was trying to control things from the top.”
It’s difficult not to conclude that the aim of Channel 4 News in this report was to set up Jeremy Corbyn as a fixer of the old school and a hypocrite. If Corbyn ever became those things you would have a duty to report it. But don’t cynically assume it from the start and doctor the evidence.”
They promise to reply. I’ll let you know.
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