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Yearly Archives: 2015
We must be brave – and not just leave it to Jeremy
Jeremy Corbyn has resigned as Chair of Stop the War. In his statement he says:
“I am sure you all understand the reasons – it is now my job to lead the Labour Party, including in the struggle for peace and international justice, and that is demanding my undivided attention.”
We can certainly understand that. And he also says:
“In stepping down as Chair, I want to make absolutely clear my continuing solidarity with the Coalition and its work against wars of intervention.”
We would certainly expect no less from him.
But if we recognise the demands of the Labour leadership on Jeremy’s time we must also recognise the pressures on him when it comes to Labour Party policymaking too, and that maybe those pressures are also a factor in his decision to resign. For the pressures are arguably having an impact. Although he is still against the renewal of Trident missiles he nevertheless has to, as he has said, have a debate in the Labour Party and try to persuade them of his case. Naturally, he recognises the dangers involved and, if he loses, he says he will submit to that defeat because, as he told Jon Snow, “I’m a democrat.”
Likewise, though he is still against NATO, he is not now arguing for leaving it but for making it democratic. When Owen Jones suggested that the UK should develop a “constructive role” within NATO, Lindsay German (Convenor of Stop the War) mocked the idea on Facebook: “A constructive role for Britain in Nato? Please!” Her comment is also surely appropriate to the notion that there could be a democratic NATO.
Likewise again: there are reports that people are urging him to allow a free vote on airstrikes on Syria to avoid open warfare in the parliamentary party. This, however, would enable Labour’s old guard to rally support for any Tory proposals in the next few weeks to join airstrikes. And then there would be airstrikes. What to do?
What he clearly wants to do on all the issues raised during the past few months is widen the debate and decision-making, so that it’s not just Labour MPs that make policy decisions but the wider Labour Party – including all the new members who joined during the leadership campaign and afterwards. Let’s hope he can do it, and let’s hope it works.
Whatever he does, of course, he’s damned by somebody. And he’s a brave man for starting down this road. And I want him to succeed – to win the arguments and the battles and become prime minister in a government that changes the face of British politics. I certainly don’t want him to end up like the left-wing hero of Chris Mullin’s novel, who became prime minister but then became the victim of “a very British coup”![1] But neither do I want him to be trapped into making so many concessions that in the end there’s no sign of the reasons we voted for him in the first place.
So in the afterglow of the leadership election result we dare not underestimate the forces against him: the Tories, of course; but also Labour’s old establishment knocked off their perches for now, but eager to clamber back up; the media; the security agencies; and any number of dirty-tricks departments. And he needs our active support.
So here’s an idea: perhaps all of us who paid our £3 to vote for him should now bite the bullet, refuse to be couch potatoes, and instead become full Labour Party members and be the counterweight to the forces against him.
Now, there’s brave for you.
Here’s Jeremy’s statement: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/news/jeremy-corbyn-statement-to-the-stop-the-war-conference-19-september-2015
[1] Mullin, Chris (2006), A Very British Coup, Politicos (Methuen), London.
Answering the question asked – a new approach in British politics
This exchange took place last night on Channel 4 News between Jon Snow and John McDonnell, Labour’s newly appointed shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. It had a slightly odd start because Snow had been asking about economic questions. He said that trust (by the electorate) would be important. “The last Labour government”, Snow said, “left Britain with the worst deficit since the Second World War.” MacDonnell nodded. Snow continued, “And establishing trust is difficult.” Then without any warning he changed the direction of the interview:
“Snow I mean, if we take your case, for example, if we take something like what you said about the IRA, people will find that very hard to understand …
McDonnell [nods] Yes.
Snow … Why would one honour the IRA with their guns and bullets? – to quote you.
McD Yes, I need to explain quite a bit, and I’ll do it briefly if you don’t mind. This was 13 years ago at a time when the peace process was extremely fragile, and we were worried at that stage that, if elements within the IRA, or the Republican movement, thought they were going to be humiliated and defeated, there’d be a major split, and that way the bombings and the military campaign would continue on. So some of us had to go out there – I might not have chosen the right words – but actually explain to them that they could stand down with dignity, they weren’t being defeated, they were standing down, they could put their weapons all aside – and I was saying that to both sides. Now, I know as a result of that I got attacked, but actually it worked, and if it saved one life it was worth it.”
Two things: it’s interesting that by this account people like McDonnell (Republican sympathisers, who had for a long time been accused of being IRA apologists) were absolutely essential to keep the peace process going. It wasn’t just Blair and Clinton, and Senator this and Representative that, the great and the good who all got medals. Nevertheless the McDonnells and the Corbyns have been vilified and sidelined ever since.
Secondly, Corbyn’s approach to Hamas and Palestine/Israel seems similar: “We have to talk to Hamas, we can’t just ignore them.” He’s been criticised for saying that and for meeting Hamas but reckons that everybody knows it’s true, including Israel, and says, “Blair has spoken to Hamas more times than I have.” But it seems that Blair, our ludicrously named “peace envoy”, had little success in bringing the several sides together. There’s no surprise in that. It needs someone with a bit of form to get in there.
Vilified and sidelined, did I say? Well, until now. Because now, Corbyn has proved himself electable. And McDonald had a fairly optimistic take on the future in the interview:
“Snow … why is it that so many of your colleagues think that you are so far out as to be unfit to be Chancellor?
McD Well, it’s because in this place [the House of Commons] I’ve had to oppose a lot of things and sometimes that’s meant swimming against the stream, and that has meant Jeremy and I have been isolated. But actually we were right on many of these issues – we were right on Iraq, we were right to vote against the privatisations, we were right to vote against the cuts that even New Labour introduced to benefits. So I think we’ve been proven right. And I think the tide is now with us.”
And I, for one, hope you’re right, John.
Babe-in-arms
But for the grace,
Put down your
Fearful vanity
Rise up
Reach out
With Love
Embrace
In every face
Your own Humanity
~
Life’s Hope captured
In the tiny stillness
Of immeasurable sorrow,
Be not in vain,
Else here, then, lies
Where all the World’s tomorrows die.
~
Aylan Kurdi, Galip, Rehan, may your Light shine in the darkness.
A plea for sanity. Mine.
I have sent the following plea to Andy Burnham in response to the latest email he sent out in his attempt to become the next leader of the Labour Party:
“Andy,
I have registered to vote in the Labour leadership elections. I am not a member of any other party and my values are, as far as I can see, Labour ones. In your latest email, you say (in an apparent swipe at Jeremy Corbyn), “We’re … at grave risk of returning to the in-fighting of the early 80s”. I’m sorry to have to say it, Andy, but if anyone is engaging in “in-fighting” it’s you, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper. Jeremy Corbyn’s behaviour is as far from that as it could possibly be. He has gained enormous support and enthusiasm by talking about his policies (that seems to be what you mean by “in-fighting”), and his meetings get larger. The irony is, of course, that the more popular – and surely, therefore, electable – he becomes, the more you all claim he’s unelectable. Can you stop doing this please? It’s doing my head in.
Yours,
Bob Mouncer”
It will come as no surprise, dear reader, when I tell you that, within seconds of receiving my how-to-vote instructions from the Labour Party, I cast my vote for Jeremy. Please do it if you can. While you’re thinking about it. Like, now.
Go, Jeremy!
According to The Guardian, “[Harriet Harman] has written to every Labour MP with the names of people in their constituency who have signed up as party members or registered as supporters since the election.” She “wants the MPs to report any of the new members or registered supporters who are members of other parties or are known troublemakers.”
Well, I’ve signed up as a supporter. I’m not a member of any other political party. I am, however, a known trouble-maker (ask my MP, Alan Johnson, who is, by the way, a known supporter of Yvette Cooper).
But Harriet is missing something important in all her talk of Labour under Jeremy being unelectable. The same Guardian story tells us: “Figures show that 20,000 new members and a further 21,000 registered supporters have signed up since nominations for the leadership closed.” If, as she seems to be implying, those thousands are Corbyn supporters, this surely means that Jeremy himself is very electable. These figures seem to show a kind of surge away from “they’re-all-the-same-ism” to a hope that Jeremy might not be an “all-the-same” person. Don’t you want an electable leader, Harriet?
Anyway, I invite Alan Johnson to check my credentials, revisit my emails, and send the results to Harriet. She will find that I was against (for example) all the wars since the Falklands, whether they were Tory wars or Labour wars; that I am against the jailing of asylum seekers (and their children), whether under Labour, Coalition or the present Tory government; against letting migrants drown in the Mediterranean or dogs being set on them in Calais; against the Welfare Bill; against austerity, either heavy or lite; and against the economic crisis being paid for by the poor rather than the bloated geniuses who caused it.
Go, Jeremy!
Here’s the Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/04/labour-must-end-the-madness-over-jeremy-corbyn-says-alan-johnson?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
Let them know you’re not fooled
Here’s somebody standing up for the poor against the bloated. Jeremy Corbyn will vote against the government’s Welfare Bill. Sign the petition to show that not everybody swallows the government line, and not everybody thinks it’s “progressive” to condemn families to poverty:
jeremyforlabour.com/childtaxcredits
And remember: if you belong to a union or other organisation affiliated to the Labour Party, it may mean you can vote in the leadership election. If so, please vote. For Jeremy Corbyn. And remember that if he doesn’t get elected, we will have nothing to vote for in the next general election except three Tory parties.
Let the dogs out!
This afternoon, Heidi Alexander (Labour MP for Lewisham East) asked David Cameron a question. She deplored the fact that people have drowned in the Mediterranean “because they are simply fleeing war, violence and poverty”, and she continued: “Is the reason why the UK is failing to take its fair share of refugees because this government finds human suffering easier to bear if it is just made someone else’s problem?”
In his reply David Cameron boasted about British rescue operations rescuing 4,000 people from the sea. (He failed to mention that British rescue operations only exist at all because the previous government’s policy of “let them drown” had caused such an uproar that he’d had to change it.) He then answered the question:
“But do I think that it is somehow a – the correct act to be part of a relocation scheme for people who’ve already arrived in the EU? No, I do not, because I believe it would add to the business models of the smugglers. So, you know, the idea that you can only have a moral, upright position on this if you take part in a European scheme that I believe to be misguided I think is just wrong.”
So, in fact, it’s worse than Heidi thought: he doesn’t actually want anybody to be relocated anywhere in Europe. Just sent back to the war, violence and poverty they fled from. He didn’t stop to explain how this puts him in “a moral, upright position”.
But he did apparently want to reassure us that he was in favour of cooperation and “taking part” in things when it really mattered. In answer to a question on the migrants in Calais, Cameron explained that he had had discussions with the French president about how we could help the French. We are going to spend money, he said. On what? Well, of course, “on providing fencing and other action, including sniffer-dog teams and the like, to try and help the French and work together with them to reduce the problems in Calais.”
So “let them drown” has been replaced by “set the dogs on them”. There’s progress for you.
The land bids me tread no more upon it
Back to the Mediterranean migrants. Lest we forget.
The response of the previous government was to abandon rescue operations and let the migrants drown. The response of the present government is to send them back to the countries they fled from, increase the help given to those countries in policing their own borders and engage in military operations against the traffickers’ vessels. What the government doesn’t want to do if it can possibly help it is provide shelter for desperate people. It doesn’t want them here. As Chancellor George Osborne sees it:
“We are a humanitarian nation … But in the end you have to break the link that enables someone to get on a boat and then claim asylum in Europe and spend the rest of their lives on the European continent.”
All this is based on an old, worn-out background narrative of “They come over here to live off our benefits and steal our jobs and homes.” Plus, “If they can afford to pay the traffickers, they can afford to stay where they are.” Well, I can provide some answers to that one.
There was the case of a Kurd who had suffered political persecution in Turkey and was put in jail. He escaped – and his family, who owned a couple of shops, sold one of them to finance his escape to the UK in the 1990s. (The story, however, doesn’t end well: disgracefully, the narrative about benefits, jobs and homes had done its work in the minds of some and he was murdered while walking to his home on a Glasgow housing scheme.)
When I was researching the treatment of asylum seekers I met a woman from Côte D’Ivoire who, together with her family, had suffered political persecution at home. She was put in jail and, while there, needed hospital treatment. One of the doctors at the hospital turned out to be a friend of the family and he helped her escape from the hospital and arranged her journey to the UK, no doubt at some risk to himself.
I also met a computer engineer from Iran who had suffered political persecution. At his asylum interview in the UK his Home Office interviewer told him he was not a refugee but an “economic migrant”. He had made the hazardous journey on foot and by lorry not for asylum, said the interviewer, but “for money, for work”. The surprised Iranian replied:
“No. I was computer engineer [in Iran] and I had computer shop. Every month I [had my] salary – it’s about 600 dollars – and you can live just in bad situation in Iran, 300 dollars, you know. Every month I [get] 600, or more [than] that. But I leave Iran just for save my life.”
So he had paid the agent and escaped.
Sometimes people with little money to pay the agent are still trafficked, but the agent keeps track of them once they are here (there may be a package deal in which the agent has found them a job, knows where they live) and keeps tabs on them until the “debt” is paid. In cases like this, the trafficker may remain a threatening presence for years.
But however they manage it, people are still coming and many are still drowning. Some who survive their journey across continents and seas get themselves to Calais, hoping to get across to the UK. Last night, Channel 4 News reported (23 June) on how a ferry workers’ strike in Calais resulted in traffic jams of lorries on both sides of the Channel and on the opportunity this gave to desperate migrants. Waiting by the motorway, and faced with a traffic jam stretching back miles, hundreds of the migrants organised themselves into a great cooperative operation. Too often in the past, much of the news media have portrayed the migrants as a disunited rabble, fighting among themselves. There was no sign of that last night in Calais, just mutual help, brilliantly undertaken. Matt Frei watched as the migrants converged on the traffic-jammed lorries:
“Watch carefully. The trick is to run up behind the lorry and jump on with the help of your friend, preferably unnoticed by the driver. There is no shortage of trucks, no shortage of passengers, and no shortage of willing assistance: this is a truly communal effort.”
The UK government thinks nothing of the migrants’ desperation and despises their communal spirit. Its main concern is to keep them out. So if stowaways are found in lorries on arrival in the UK the drivers are fined £2000 per passenger. That’s why a lorry driver who spotted an attempt to board his vehicle jumped down and went to the back of the lorry to check inside, then closed the door.
The story tonight (24 June) was the same. Ali came from Syria, fleeing “war, torture, prison, kidnapping”. Crispin Blunt MP, chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, when asked why Ali should be stuck in a camp and reduced to jumping on lorries, seemed to think Ali only had himself to blame. He could have gone to a UNHCR camp in Lebanon or Jordan. Ali didn’t get the chance to answer that, so we’ll never know why he didn’t take that option, if option it was. Blunt then said that, since the first “safe country” that Ali had passed through was Turkey, he should have applied for asylum in Turkey, because that was the rule. But Ali knew a bit about Turkey, perhaps a bit more than Crispin, and had already expressed his view: “Turkey is not a stable country,” he said. “Problems may happen at any time and they may kick Syrians out of their country.”
Ali had earlier told Paraic O’Brien that in Syria he had been a teacher and had studied English language and literature. His favourite Shakespeare play was Antony and Cleopatra. O’Brien finished his report by quoting some Shakespeare. I don’t know if it was from Antony and Cleopatra – but it was apt:
“Hark! The land bids me tread no more upon it. It is ashamed to bear me.”
For the news reports mentioned, see:
http://www.channel4.com/news/catch-up/display/playlistref/240615
Search for an epitaph
The BBC reports the death of Ron Moody, the latest old trouper to go. It quotes Moody as saying: “Oliver! was a moment in one’s life when you find where you really are”. Moody, of course, played Fagin in “Oliver!” Now (aside from the grammar), if I’d been Ron, I’d have wanted a better epitaph than that at the top of the story. Because, if the quote is accurate, I’m not sure what it says about him. And it reminded me of an old Jonathan Miller story: Miller said that when he was making The Merchant of Venice, with Laurence Olivier playing Shylock, Olivier told him, “There is one thing we must avoid at all costs: we must be careful not to offend the Hebrews.” Miller told him, “The best way to avoid offending “the Hebrews” is to make sure that Shylock doesn’t look like something out of Oliver!”
I’m with Jonathan Miller.
Disorderly conduct
Trust the Vatican to try to spoil the party. Vatican secretary of state Pietro Parolin (“seen as second only to the pope”, according to The Guardian[1]) pronounces that the Yes vote in Ireland’s gay marriage referendum (opposed by the Catholic Church) was “a defeat for humanity”. This was in reply to Dublin archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who said after the vote that the Church now needed a “reality check”. The Yes vote was, of course, a defeat, not for humanity but for the Catholic Church, at least in Ireland. So in the real world, Pietro, the party has not been spoiled.
Some Catholic gays had hoped that the election of this new pope, Francisco, might lead to change in the church. He is often seen as being cut from a different kind of cloth to previous popes. Maybe he will “pronounce” (like Parolin), but this time in favour of equality. Not so. He sends Pietro to the barricades with the same old message. Which is that gay relationships are wrong, sinful, definitely against God’s will.
The Catholic catechism (which sets out the teaching of the Church on most matters)[2] has stern views on the subject. “Sacred Scripture”, it declares, “presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity”, and
“tradition has always declared that ‘homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.’ They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”
Homosexuality, says the catechism, is an “inclination” which is “objectively disordered”. So “Homosexual persons are called to chastity.” They are called to “fulfill God’s will in their lives and … to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition” – in other words, to stifle and kill their deepest desires and needs. But we surely know by now what psychological, emotional and social disorder this nonsense leads to.
In the middle of all this there is a glaring contradiction. For the catechism lays down that “people with deep-seated homosexual tendencies” must be accepted “with respect, compassion and sensitivity”. There must be no “unjust discrimination” against them. But if you were serious about that, Pietro and Francisco, you would get rid of the rubbish about “grave depravity”, stop calling people “intrinsically disordered” and stop sending them into the nightmares of disorder your teaching condemns them to.
Could Francisco help? According to The Guardian, on a recent visit to Brazil, he seemed quite relaxed, if a bit ambiguous, about the matter when he was asked whether there was a “gay lobby” in the Vatican:
“‘I think that when we encounter a gay person, we must make the distinction between the fact of a person being gay and the fact of a lobby, because lobbies are not good,’ the pontiff told journalists, while at the same time joking that, while there was a lot of talk about a gay lobby, he had never seen it stamped on a Vatican identity card.”
A pontiff joking? A bit laid back? But then he sent out Parolin to reiterate the hard line to the journalists. Catholic gays should not hold their breaths. But they should keep fighting. Because rights are always won, not given. The Irish government didn’t “grant” the right to gay marriage. It was the long, painstaking, obstinate work of people over decades that made demands, overcame the prejudice against them and got the referendum and will now get the law. You get rights only if you fight for them, the powerful don’t hand them out as gifts.
And if you finally get Church dogma changed you might discover that you don’t actually need a pope at all.
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/26/vatican-ireland-gay-marriage-referendum-vote-defeat-for-humanity?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
[2] http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
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