Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
The Rise of Britains New Politics
October 6, 2017
As more Britons turn toward Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, the British
establishment is upping the pressure on the radical Corbyn to conform to
U.S.-U.K. militarism and interventionism, as John Pilger explains.
By John Pilger
Delegates to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town
of Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance. The
worlds third biggest arms manufacturer, BAe Systems, supplier to Saudi
Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships and fighter
aircraft.
Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Great Britains Labour Party.
It seemed a perfidious symbol of a party in which millions of Britons now
invest their political hopes. Once the preserve of Tony Blair, it is now led
by Jeremy Corbyn, whose career has been very different and is rare in
British establishment politics.
Addressing the conference, the campaigner Naomi Klein described the rise of
Corbyn as part of a global phenomenon. We saw it in Bernie Sanders
historic campaign in the US primaries, powered by millennials who know that
safe centrist politics offers them no kind of safe future.
In fact, at the end of the U.S. primary elections last year, Sanders led his
followers into the arms of Hillary Clinton, a liberal warmonger from a long
tradition in the Democratic Party.
As President Obamas Secretary of State, Clinton presided over the invasion
of Libya in 2011, which led to a stampede of refugees to Europe. She gloated
at the gruesome murder of Libyas president. Two years earlier, Clinton
signed off on a coup that overthrew the democratically elected president of
Honduras. That she has been invited to Wales on Oct. 14 to be given an
honorary doctorate by the University of Swansea because she is synonymous
with human rights is unfathomable.
Like Clinton, Sanders is a cold-warrior and anti-communist obsessive with
a proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. Sanders
supported Bill Clintons and Tony Blairs illegal assault on Yugoslavia in
1998 and the invasions of Afghanistan, Syria and Libya, as well as Barack
Obamas campaign of terrorism by drone (although he did vote against George
W. Bushs invasion of Iraq). These days, Sanders backs the provocation of
Russia and agrees that the whistleblower Edward Snowden should stand trial.
Sanders has called the late Hugo Chavez a social democrat who won multiple
elections in Venezuela a dead communist dictator.
While Sanders is a familiar American liberal politician, Corbyn may be a
phenomenon, with his indefatigable support for the victims of American and
British imperial adventures and for popular resistance movements.
For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the Chagos islanders were expelled from
their homeland, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, by a Labour
government. An entire population was kidnapped. The aim was to make way for
a U.S. military base on the main island of Diego Garcia: a secret deal for
which the British were compensated with a discount of $14 million off the
price of a Polaris nuclear submarine.
I have had much to do with the Chagos islanders and have filmed them in
exile in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they suffered and some of them
died from sadness, as I was told. They found a political champion in a
Labour Member of Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn.
So did the Palestinians. So did Iraqis terrorized by Tony Blair, a Labour
prime ministers invasion of their country in 2003. So did others struggling
to break free from the web of Western power. Corbyn supported the likes of
Hugo Chavez, who brought more than hope to societies subverted by the U.S.
behemoth.
A Silent Foreign Policy
And yet, now although Corbyn is closer to power than he might have ever
imagined, his foreign policy remains a secret. By secret, I mean there has
been rhetoric and little else.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at a
Democratic presidential debate sponsored by CNN.
We must put our values at the heart of our foreign policy, he said at the
Labour conference. But what are these values?
Since 1945, like the Tories, British Labour has been an imperial party,
obsequious to Washington: a record exemplified by the crime in the Chagos
islands. What has changed? Is Corbyn saying Labour will uncouple itself from
the U.S. war machine, and the U.S. spying apparatus and U.S. economic
blockades that scar humanity?
His shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, says a Corbyn government
will put human rights back at the heart of Britains foreign policy. But
human rights have never been at the heart of British foreign policy only
interests, as Lord Palmerston declared in the Nineteenth Century: the
interests of those at the apex of British society.
Thornberry quoted the late Robin Cook who, as Tony Blairs first Foreign
Secretary in 1997, pledged an ethical foreign policy that would make
Britain once again a force for good in the world.
History is not kind to imperial nostalgia. The recently commemorated
division of India by a Labour government in 1947 with a border hurriedly
drawn up by a London barrister, Gordon Radcliffe, who had never been to
India and never returned led to blood-letting on a genocidal scale.
Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.
W.H. Auden, Partition.
It was the same Labour government (1945-51), led by Prime Minister Clement
Attlee radical by todays standards that dispatched General Douglas
Graceys British imperial army to Saigon with orders to re-arm the defeated
Japanese in order to prevent Vietnamese nationalists from liberating their
own country. Thus, the longest war of the century was ignited.
Mideast Despots
It was a Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, whose policy of mutuality
and partnership with some of the worlds most vicious despots, especially
in the Middle East, forged relationships that endure today, often sidelining
and crushing the human rights of whole communities and societies. The cause
was British interests oil, power and wealth.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush shake
hands after a joint White House press conference on Nov. 12, 2004. (White
House photo)
In the radical 1960s, Labours Defence Secretary, Denis Healey, set up the
Defence Sales Organisation (DSO) specifically to boost the arms trade and
make money from selling lethal weapons to the world. Healey told Parliament,
While we attach the highest importance to making progress in the field of
arms control and disarmament, we must also take what practical steps we can
to ensure that this country does not fail to secure its rightful share of
this valuable market.
The doublethink was quintessentially Labour. When I later asked Healey about
this valuable market, he claimed his decision made no difference to the
volume of military exports. In fact, it led to an almost doubling of
Britains share of the arms market. Today, Britain is the second biggest
arms dealer on earth, selling arms and fighter planes, machine guns and
riot control vehicles, to 22 of the 30 countries on the British
Governments own list of human rights violators.
Will this stop under a Corbyn government? The preferred model Robin Cooks
ethical foreign policy is revealing. Like Jeremy Corbyn, Cook made his
name as a backbencher and critic of the arms trade.
Wherever weapons are sold, wrote Cook, there is a tacit conspiracy to
conceal the reality of war and it is a truism that every war for the past
two decades has been fought by poor countries with weapons supplied by rich
countries.
Cook singled out the sale of British Hawk fighters to Indonesia as
particularly disturbing. Indonesia is not only repressive but actually at
war on two fronts: in East Timor, where perhaps a sixth of the population
has been slaughtered
and in West Papua, where it confronts an indigenous
liberation movement.
As Foreign Secretary, Cook promised a thorough review of arms sales. The
then Nobel Peace Laureate, Bishop Carlos Belo of East Timor, appealed
directly to Cook: Please, I beg you, do not sustain any longer a conflict
which without these arms sales could never have been pursued in the first
place and not for so very long.
Belo was referring to Indonesias bombing of East Timor with British Hawks
and the slaughter of his people with British machine guns. He received no
reply.
The following week Cook called journalists to the Foreign Office to announce
his mission statement for human rights in a new century. This PR event
included the usual private briefings for selected journalists, including the
BBC, in which Foreign Office officials lied that there was no evidence
that British Hawk aircraft were deployed in East Timor.
A few days later, the Foreign Office issued the results of Cooks thorough
review of arms sales policy. It was not realistic or practical, wrote
Cook, to revoke licences which were valid and in force at the time of
Labours election victory. Suhartos Minister for Defense, Edi Sudradjat,
said that talks were already under way with Britain for the purchase of 18
more Hawk fighters. The political change in Britain will not affect our
negotiations, he said. He was right.
Modern Atrocities
Today, replace Indonesia with Saudi Arabia and East Timor with Yemen.
British military aircraft sold with the approval of both Tory and Labour
governments and built by the firm whose promotional video had pride of place
at Labours 2017 party conference are bombing the life out of Yemen, one
of the most impoverished countries in the world, where half the children are
malnourished and there is the greatest cholera epidemic in modern times.
A neighborhood in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa after an airstrike, October 9,
2015. (Wikipedia)
Hospitals and schools, weddings and funerals have been attacked. In Riyadh,
British military personnel are reported to be training the Saudis in
selecting targets.
In Labours current manifesto, Jeremy Corbyn and his party colleagues
promised that Labour will demand a comprehensive, independent, UN-led
investigation into alleged violations
in Yemen, including air strikes on
civilians by the Saudi-led coalition. We will immediately suspend any
further arms sales for use in the conflict until that investigation is
concluded.
But the evidence of Saudi Arabias crimes in Yemen is already documented by
Amnesty and others, notably by the courageous reporting of the British
journalist Iona Craig. The dossier is voluminous.
Labour does not promise to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia. It does not
say Britain will withdraw its support for governments responsible for the
export of Islamist jihadism. There is no commitment to dismantle the arms
trade.
The manifesto describes a special relationship [with the U.S.] based on
shared values
When the current Trump administration chooses to ignore them
we will not be afraid to disagree.
As Jeremy Corbyn knows, dealing with the U.S. is not about merely
disagreeing. The U.S. is a rapacious, rogue power that ought not to be
regarded as a natural ally of any state championing human rights,
irrespective of whether Trump or anyone else is President.
When shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, in her conference speech,
linked Venezuela with the Philippines as increasingly autocratic regimes
slogans bereft of facts and ignoring the subversive U.S. role in Venezuela
she was consciously playing to the enemy: a tactic with which Jeremy Corbyn
will be familiar.
A Corbyn government will allow the Chagos islanders the right of return. But
Labour says nothing about renegotiating the 50-year renewal agreement that
Britain has just signed with the U.S. allowing it to use the base on Diego
Garcia from which it has bombed Afghanistan and Iraq.
A Corbyn government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine.
There is silence on whether Britain will continue to arm Israel, continue to
acquiesce in the illegal trade in Israels illegal settlements and treat
Israel merely as a warring party, rather than as an historic oppressor given
immunity by Washington and London.
Money for Militarism
On Britains support for NATOs current war preparations, Labour boasts that
the last Labour government spent above the benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP
on NATO. It says, Conservative spending cuts have put Britains security at
risk and promises to boost Britains military obligations.
President Donald Trump touches lighted globe with Egyptian President Abdel
Fattah al-Sisi and Saudi King Salman at the opening of Saudi Arabias Global
Center for Combating Extremist Ideology on May 21, 2017. (Photo from Saudi
TV)
In fact, most of the £40 billion Britain currently spends on the military is
not for territorial defense of the U.K. but for offensive purposes to
enhance British interests as defined by those who have tried to smear
Jeremy Corbyn as unpatriotic.
If the polls are reliable, most Britons are well ahead of their politicians,
Tory and Labour. They would accept higher taxes to pay for public services;
they want the National Health Service restored to full health. They want
decent jobs and wages and housing and schools; they do not hate foreigners
but resent exploitative labor. They have no fond memory of an empire on
which the sun never set.
They oppose the invasion of other countries and regard Blair as a liar. The
rise of Donald Trump has reminded them what a menace the United States can
be, especially with their own country in tow.
The Labour Party is the beneficiary of this mood, but many of its pledges
certainly in foreign policy are qualified and compromised, suggesting, for
many Britons, more of the same.
Jeremy Corbyn is widely and properly recognized for his integrity; he
opposes the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons; the Labour Party supports
it. But he has given shadow cabinet positions to pro-war MPs who support
Blairism, tried to get rid of him and abused him as unelectable.
We are the political mainstream now, says Corbyn. Yes, but at what price?
John Pilger is an Australian-British journalist based in London. Pilgers
Web site is: www.johnpilger.com. His new film, The Coming War on China, is
available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com
