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A New Dream of Politics – go out and vote for it
The Booker prize-winning writer Ben Okri was called a genius by Jeremy Corbyn in his Labour party conference speech in 2015. Here he responds:
They say there is only one way for politics.
That it looks with hard eyes at the hard world
And shapes it with a ruler’s edge,
Measuring what is possible against
Acclaim, support, and votes.
They say there is only one way to dream
For the people, to give them not what they need
But food for their fears.
We measure the deeds of politicians
By their time in power.
But in ancient times they had another way.
They measured greatness by the gold
Of contentment, by the enduring arts,
The laughter at the hearths,
The length of silence when the bards
Told of what was done by those who
Had the courage to make their lands
Happy, away from war, spreading justice
And fostering health,
The most precious of the arts
Of governance.
But we live in times that have lost
This tough art of dreaming
The best for its people,
Or so we are told by cynics
And doomsayers who see the end
Of time in blood-red moons.
Always when least expected an unexpected
Figure rises when dreams here have
Become like ashes. But when the light
Is woken in our hearts after the long
Sleep, they wonder if it is a fable.
Can we still seek the lost angels
Of our better natures?
Can we still wish and will
For poverty’s death and a newer way
To undo war, and find peace in the labyrinth
Of the Middle East, and prosperity
In Africa as the true way
To end the feared tide of immigration?
We dream of a new politics
That will renew the world
Under their weary suspicious gaze.
There’s always a new way,
A better way that’s not been tried before.
Consequences
Anyone tempted to listen to the anti-Corbyn propaganda should remember this: most of the measures described in the article below were contained in the Tory Welfare Bill 2015. That was passed in the Commons during the Labour leadership contest. Acting leader Harriet Harman told her MPs to abstain in the vote on the bill so that us voters would understand that Labour could be “trusted on benefits.” 184 of them did. 48 of them voted against it (including John McDonnell, who said he would “swim through vomit” to do so). Jeremy Corbyn was the only leadership candidate to vote against it: Yvette Cooper abstained, Andy Burnham abstained, Liz Kendall abstained. The bill was passed, with the predictable results below.
Now then, which one of those abstaining beauties would you prefer as Labour leader? Jeremy is criticised for having voted against the Labour whip in Parliament many times since his arrival there in 1983. But that’s because he’s got principles. If others had done the same over the Iraq war, we’d be in a better place today. And if those 184 Labour MPs had joined with the 48 and the SNP and other smaller parties that night in 2015 and voted against the whip they could have beaten George Osborne’s bill. And the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society would be in a better place as they face the months ahead.
Please read the article.
For peace – and against ceasefires
Am I missing something? I’m tired of the United Nations wringing its United hands about Aleppo and acting surprised because a ceasefire has failed, humanitarian aid hasn’t been delivered and the bombing has got worse. Of course it has. All the nations of the world are united in believing in war; all of them are armed to the teeth, the big and strutty ones with WMDs. War is the opposite of humanitarian. It’s the opposite of aid. War is destruction. War is murder. That’s what it’s for. Why would two (or in the Syrian situation, Gawd knows how many) antagonists at war be interested in aid to their victims? Or a ceasefire? (“Will it hold?” “Oh dear, there seem to have been violations.” What a surprise!).
This is why I can’t stand the mushy sentimentality surrounding the Christmas truce during the First World War. One English language textbook a few years ago used it in one of its lessons. The class weeps over a bilingual “Silent Night” in the trenches, sighs as it realises that the very next day both choirs went back to war, and then the class joins in singing some old wartime song popular with the British troops.
I don’t have an answer to all this. We don’t need ceasefires or humanitarian aid. We need to stop believing in war. Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t believe in war but, if he does get into government, I don’t know how he’ll try to persuade others. He’s set himself the task of trying to persuade his own party not to renew Trident (there’s a mountain to climb) and we can only join him in that effort and keep our fingers crossed. But it feels as if it could all be too late, especially since Iraq, and our creation of ISIS.
So, as I say, I’ve got no answer. I’m just tired of it, that’s all.
Conflicting objectives?
Alan Johnson, my local MP, who ran Labour’s Remain campaign, blames Jeremy Corbyn for the Brexit vote. He says that Jeremy, or his “office”, “worked against the rest of the Party”, had “conflicting objectives” and had “undermined” the campaign. He offers no evidence. I replied on the Hull Daily Mail’s website today as follows:
“It would be useful to hear some analysis of the way the media marginalised the Labour case for staying. Jeremy was ignored by the mainstream media most of the time, as was Alan Johnson. Just the odd clip or specific comment, almost never a whole speech or extended quotes from their speeches. While the Boris Johnson/Gove v. Cameron show got full coverage, as did Farage’s every move. So the impression was that Labour wasn’t saying much, or was ‘lacklustre’. As for Jeremy’s office ‘working against the rest of the Party’, having ‘conflicting objectives’ and seeking to ‘undermine’ the campaign, you need to give examples, Alan, and say how, why and who. The consequences of just making and repeating accusations are disastrous. Especially when they make no sense.”
Here’s the original article:
On the eve of a referendum …
Several friends have told me that they are voting Remain in the EU referendum – but with a heavy heart.
I’m voting Remain too, in spite of France tear-gassing protesting workers who are resisting their government’s, and the EU’s, plans to ditch their rights (Jeremy, don’t imagine the EU is on your side here) and tear-gassing (again by France) of refugees in Calais (ditto, Jeremy) and its refusal to allow aid through to Calais. I’m voting Remain because I don’t want Johnsonism and Goveism to have the whip hand in government and I also want to save Jeremy from the Blairites and the assorted Gawd-knows-whatites waiting to get rid of him if there’s a No vote. It’s not the right time to vote Leave.
If we get a Labour government committed to rolling back NHS privatisation, rejecting TTIP, bringing the rail network and the energy companies into public ownership, restoring the trade union rights that have been eroded since Thatcher and getting rid, amongst other noxious things, of zero-hour contracts, that would be several major steps forward. A Corbyn-led government could do that, and it could reaffirm the principles of the Refugee Convention rather than bolster the profits of the tear-gas manufacturers. The EU would certainly oppose such a Labour programme, since much of it would break EU rules, laws and protocols. Then we could oppose the EU, and then, if change proves impossible, vote to leave – and defend policies worth defending.
Will any of that happen?
Don’t know.
But if we vote Leave now, we are playing into the hands of the Right, including the very nasty Right.
Defending workers’ rights against the EU
A major part, perhaps the major part, of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument for remaining in the EU is that we will be able to defend workers’ rights across Europe if we stay in. We enjoy many of them, his argument runs, thanks to the EU and we can defend and maintain them more effectively from inside the club than from outside.
Whether we enjoy them “thanks to the EU” is debatable. But one thing is not. The French Socialist Party (SP) government is busy attacking workers’ rights in France like there’s no tomorrow. And the unions, through strikes and demonstrations, and protest meetings, are opposing the changes. According to today’s Observer, the argument
“boils down to whether it should be as easy in France for employers to sack workers, cut their pay and arbitrarily change their working conditions as it is in post-Thatcher, post-BHS Britain.”
A protest meeting of the Left took place today. One of the participants spoke of the “docility” and “treachery” of SP Members of Parliament and called President Hollande’s government “a government of the right”.
But what was interesting in terms of Jeremy Corbyn’s argument was the claim by Danielle Simmonet from the Parti de Gauche (Party of the Left). She argued that the proposed law was not just a proposal by the French government. It was concocted by the government, the bosses – and the European Union. The proposed law is a “demand” of Brussels, she said, and a “deal” made with the European Union institutions themselves. So how to break this deal? Danielle is clear: “To fight the [proposed] law we need a general rebellion … we need to [be] an insubordinate people.”
So, if we remain, it looks as if our rights will not be protected by the EU. Instead we will have the EU institutions themselves to contend with. Jeremy Corbyn paints too rosy a picture of workers’ rights in the EU. Judging by the current events in France, maintaining and defending them if we vote Remain will take just as much effort and commitment as defending them against Boris Johnson and Michael Gove: it won’t just be a matter of sending Hilary Benn in to the Council of Ministers. We will, beyond that (and perhaps instead of that), have to become “an insubordinate people”.
We can, of course, do that – In or Out.
Here’s the Libération article: http://www.liberation.fr/france/2016/06/12/loi-travail-valls-on-organise-ton-pot-de-depart-dans-la-rue_1458935
And the Observer article: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/04/observer-france-labour-unrest?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Referendum blues, and the dangers of wishful thinking
On Question Time last night, Owen Jones raised the question of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and its threat to the NHS remaining in public ownership. He claimed that the UK now has an exemption from TTIP when it comes to the NHS. He said the following:
“Because people protested and campaigned here and all over Europe we not only got an exemption for the NHS (forced upon this government against their will) but because people protested and campaigned all over Europe TTIP lies in ruins. Don’t let anyone say we can’t change the European Union.”
I don’t think we’ve got an exemption and I don’t think TTIP lies in ruins. The latest information I can find after a quick search is from the Daily Mirror and The Guardian of 19 May, where a No. 10 spokesperson is quoted as saying that the government would accept the Commons amendment to the Queen’s speech (put by Peter Lilley (Tory) and Paula Sherriff (Labour), and supported, I think, by the SNP), which proposed that the Commons should
“respectfully regret that a Bill to protect the National Health Service from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was not included in the Gracious Speech.”
I understand from this that getting an exemption would involve an Act of Parliament, so I don’t see how Owen Jones can say we’ve got an exemption now. I’d have thought it would mean some more jiggery-pokery at EU Central too.
At my Constituency Labour Party meeting last month, when I asked a question about whether TTIP was a threat to the public ownership of the NHS, Peter Prescott (arguing for a Remain vote), agreed that it was – but claimed that TTIP would have to be agreed to by all 28 members of the EU and that therefore we would have a say at that stage, and that he couldn’t see France, either, agreeing to this aspect of TTIP under a Socialist Party government. He didn’t mention an exemption. (He didn’t mention, either, that President Hollande is apparently the most unpopular president of France since records began, so who knows whether there will be a Socialist Party government of France when TTIP gets to that stage?)
I’m not clear what “accepting the amendment” means anyway, particularly as the said No. 10 spokesperson seemed a bit dismissive of it: “As we’ve said all along,” he said, “there is no threat to the NHS from TTIP. So if this amendment is selected, we’ll accept it.” So, as I said, I don’t believe we’ve got an exemption and Owen Jones’s claim is, at best, wishful thinking.
I could vote either way in the referendum: there are lots of reasons why I’d like to see us out of this club. I hate what the EU and the European Bank did to Greece (they boasted they’d given Tspiras “a mental waterboarding”), I find the claim that the EU will make it easier to defend workers’ rights (also cited by Jones) more than questionable in the week after the French “socialist” government tear-gassed workers protesting against its proposed laws, which are set to tear up their rights, I hate the EU agreement with Turkey to send Syrians (who are the most vulnerable ones) back to Syria. (This means that every time EU bureaucrats or politicians take a breath they are breaking the Refugee Convention.)
But I’m thinking of voting Remain. Part of that has always been because of the racist arguments of a substantial part of the Leave campaign. But (and this is not unconnected with that reason) a successful Leave vote would also likely result in Boris Johnson and Michael Gove running the government, even more enthusiastic in “punishing the poor”, as Ken Loach described the Tories last week, than even Cameron and Osborne. There is no worse prospect, we don’t need it and we don’t deserve it. So I’m inclining at the moment (and this isn’t set in stone) to adopt Paul Mason’s approach: Get out, but not yet. The time to leave would be when a Labour government is prevented by the EU from implementing its programme (e.g. defending the NHS, bringing back the rail network into public ownership) and then, when it becomes obvious we can’t change the EU, calls another referendum. Then we could leave, heads held high, Corbyn intact.
And that’s another thing: on 23 June, a Leave vote would probably mean, not only the rise of Johnson and Gove, but the end of Jeremy Corbyn. Labour MPs would call for a new leadership election before you could say “plot”, and he would be gone.
And then I would retire from politics!
Desperate – but with one more card to play?
A friend of mine in Miami was wondering this week, in the wake of Trump’s apparent victory, when we would hear that the GOP itself is dropping out of the race! Last night it almost sounded like they were planning to do that, judging by Mitt Romney’s comments! In our parallel European world, a friend of mine on Twitter, quoting the comedian Mark Steel, was wishing the other day that there was some way the EU No campaigners and the Yes campaigners could both lose! We are all getting increasingly desperate.
And there’s more to feed our desperation: according to today’s Guardian, North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, “who was supervising [help!] the test-firing of newly developed multiple rocket launchers, said North Korea’s situation had become so perilous that it should have the option of launching a ‘pre-emptive attack’”. Oh, good. We have Kim’s finger on North Korea’s button and we may soon have Trump’s finger on America’s button. Imagine – people thought the Cuban missile crisis was dangerous! Come back Kennedy and Khrushchev, all (no, not quite) is forgiven!
Still, hold on – there’s still Jeremy!
EU 2: You will be voting against migrants whichever way you vote
How to vote in the referendum if you support a humane response to the current migration crisis? Many in the No camp sound like they just want to “secure our borders” and keep the migrants out. But if we want a humane response what do we do?
In 2014, when rickety boats filled with people fleeing war and persecution began to sink, dragging their passengers to the bottom of the Mediterranean, or their bodies got washed up on the nearest shore, there were some who shouted, “Close the borders”. The Tory-led coalition (really the Tories dragging the pathetic so-called Liberal Democrats behind them) said, in effect, “Let them drown” and withdrew its support for the Italian-led rescue operations. Under pressure after this common Tory gut reaction Cameron said they would take in a tiny number of refugees – but not from the Mediterranean. They would take them from the refugee camps in Lebanon and elsewhere. Because, you see, people contemplating a journey across the Mediterranean had to learn a lesson: “Don’t set out in the first place.” So when, predictably, the drowning continued, presumably the Tories thought, “Don’t come whining to us – it’s your own fault.” By April 2015 there were fifteen times more deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean that year than in the whole of 2014.
More recently, during the crisis in Calais, in the camp called “the Jungle”, Cameron seems to have been forced (through actual or threatened legal action in the courts) to concede that at least some children there, with family in the UK, have the right to come here. But he’s done bugger all about it and most of them are still in Calais.
It’s arguable that if we vote to leave the EU we will be turning our backs on desperate people and putting their fate in the hands of a politician (whether Cameron or Boris Johnson) who would let migrants drown, let them rot in the garbage of Calais or send them packing back to where they came from.
So what would we be doing if we voted to stay in the EU? Other EU states seemed at first to be different. Germany took large numbers of refugees and there was talk of sharing responsibility across the EU states. But many were reluctant from the start, they couldn’t agree how this might be done and they began to squabble amongst themselves. So there was deadlock and some of them began to close their borders – those borders which, under the Schengen Convention, were the pride and joy of the EU, open borders within the Union. Another cry went up: “Schengen is finished.”
For those who don’t like the EU because they don’t like foreigners this is good news. For them the EU is finished, and good riddance. For those who hoped that the EU would provide a humanitarian solution it is bad news. So how to vote? Jeremy Corbyn is still optimistic as, on behalf of the Labour Party, he argues to vote Yes to the EU:
“‘There has to be an agreement all across Europe that [the EU states] all take a proportion of [the refugees],’ he said. ‘The problem is that the degree of inward-looking politics that’s going on has meant that Greece is making a huge effort, Italy is making a huge effort and Germany is making a huge effort. Every other country is putting barbed wire entanglements along their borders to keep desperate people out … Surely in the 21st century the least we can do is reach out and try to help these people in some way; by the political solution in Syria; by the support for what the Greek government is trying to do and take a proportion all across Europe.’”[1]
That, presumably, would be the policy if there was a Labour government. But yesterday the French began to bulldoze the people in Calais out of their makeshift homes. The French had originally said that the process of moving people would be done by gentle persuasion over many weeks, not with force or violence, not with bulldozers. The French Minister of the Interior spelt this out only last week: the government’s plan, he said, was not “to carry out a brutal evacuation of the camp by using bulldozers, this is not how we operate.” But yesterday the bulldozers appeared and the destruction began.
On Channel 4 News last night Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked Sylvie Bermann, the French ambassador to the UK: “Why did you say ‘no bulldozers’ and then use them?”
Bermann: I think we are using bulldozers to clear the camp, not to force all these migrants to go.
Guru-Murthy: But you said you wouldn’t.
Bermann: Well, our ministers said we wouldn’t force people to go, but at the same time what I cannot understand is – well, your reporter said it was filthy, stinking conditions. So how could you consider it better to live in these squalid conditions than to be relocated in accommodations [sic] where you have water, heating, electricity?
Guru-Murthy: But you don’t have enough space. There are thousands living there and there aren’t enough spaces in the shipping containers. They’re not flats, are they, they’re shipping containers, where you’re suggesting they go and live in?
Bermann: They are temporary accommodations, that’s true, but some of them will be relocated in other camps in France.
Guru-Murthy: Can you guarantee every one of them a comfortable roof over their heads?
Bermann: They will be relocated, but conditions will be far much better [sic] than it was in the Jungle.[2]
At the end of all this ducking and diving, there was no answer to the question, “Why use bulldozers when you said ‘no bulldozers’?” But then Sylvie is a diplomat.
So referendum voters who want a humanitarian solution to the migration crisis aren’t going to get one, in or out of the EU. The Tories will close the UK’s borders either way; the EU states will do the same; and France, our nearest neighbour, will bring out the bulldozers at the drop of a hat despite its much-vaunted pride in being the home of human rights.
How to vote? With some difficulty.
[1] The Guardian, 29 February 2016.
[2] Channel 4 News, 29 February 2016.
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.
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