Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland | ukwatch.net

Iraq "Surge" Met With Despair

Alex Doherty — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:07:21 +0000

President George W. Bush’s announcement that the United States is committing an additional 21,500 troops in order to escalate the war in Iraq has thrown Britain’s establishment into political turmoil.

The reaction of much of the media to the announcement was open despair. Though the decision had been trailed for weeks, this did not lessen its impact and the recognition of just how bad the situation now faced by Britain has become.

It was left to Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to lend mealy-mouthed support to Bush’s speech, a mark of the gravity of the crisis that has been provoked. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke only briefly to a local television station in southwest England, a platform so obscure that it was picked up by only a handful of media sources. He described Bush’s policy as “sensible.”

Britain’s ruling circles viewed the defeats suffered by the Republicans in November’s elections as the writing on the wall. They demonstrated that the massive opposition to the Iraq war and occupation in Britain was shared by the majority of the American people and showed that it was not only a question of facing a military debacle in Iraq, but a political debacle at home. As the repeated references to Iraq as a new Vietnam demonstrated, there was a broad recognition that the war was creating a dangerous schism between the ruling elite and working people.

There was near universal support for a change in strategy, with hopes centred on the Iraq Study Group. This was advanced as a call for finding a diplomatic solution through negotiations with Iran and Syria and renewed efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Republican and Democratic bipartisanship, Britain hoped, would be matched by a renewed multilateral approach on the world arena.

Domestically, the government had been forced to pledge the withdrawal of up to 3,000 British troops over the next months from southern Iraq. Now, in addition, Blair was urged to use whatever influence he had with Bush to press for the Baker-Hamilton proposals.

When Blair instead once again lined up behind Bush, who all but dismissed the ISG report and stated that his policy would be determined by the Pentagon, the sense of dismay was palpable.

Over the next weeks, the media produced extensive analysis of the report by the American Enterprise Institute, on whose provisions Bush’s “surge” policy is largely based, replete with numerous warnings of disaster.

The response of the Financial Times, Britain’s leading business journal, to the adoption of this dreaded scenario was bitterly hostile. Its editorial of January 11 stated, “George W. Bush’s new direction in Iraq is certainly not a strategy for victory, whatever that word, which is used ever more desperately by the US president, now means….

“Right now, Mr. Bush has the support of no more than one in four Americans for this so-called surge of an extra 20,000 or so troops. Very soon, as the already indecipherable ethnic and sectarian patchwork of Iraq is pulled further and even more bloodily to pieces, he will have none.”

For its part, the Guardian, the house organ of British liberalism, appeared paralysed. Nothing could now be done, other than to hope for a change of government that cannot take place for at least a year. Referring to Bush and Blair, its editorial stated, “Both men are on their way out. By stringing the war along without admitting defeat, it will become the business of another British prime minister and another American president to end it.”

Some commentators hoped that the US decision would not suck Britain deeper into the Iraqi quagmire. Writing in the__Daily Mirror,__ Paul Routledge proclaimed, “At last Blair fails to follow US precedent.” He referred to Beckett’s claim that Britain was “not in the same position” in Basra as that faced by the Americans in Baghdad and that there would be no increase in troop numbers. Others demanded that the planned troop withdrawals go ahead.

However, Beckett gave no such assurances. Rather, she said that any reductions in troop strength would be conditional on the situation on the ground.

Such a caveat largely precludes any possibility of a troop withdrawal. The claim that the situation in Basra can be insulated from that in Baghdad is patent nonsense. The initial aim of the US operation is to work alongside the Shia-dominated Iraqi government forces in what amounts to an ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in Baghdad. But Washington has made clear that, in the medium term, the political survival of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki depends upon his readiness to take on the Shia militias on which his government relies, particularly the Mahdi army of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

This will, of necessity, escalate the conflict in Basra and its environs.

BBC “Newsnight” presenter Jeremy Paxman pressed Defence Secretary Des Browne on this very question, asking him what contingency plans existed for an uprising in the Shia-dominated south following the US offensive in Baghdad. Browne had no answer to give.

In addition, Britain’s own plans for withdrawal demand a stepping up of military hostilities. British troops are currently involved in “Operation Sinbad,” with the stated aim of clearing out sectarianism and corruption in the Iraqi police and security services. Its most high-profile action was the Christmas Day attack on the headquarters of the Serious Crimes Unit in Basra, which destroyed the building and led to the deaths of seven policemen.

The justification for this assault—which was protested by the Iraqi authorities—was that the Serious Crimes Unit had been taken over by Islamic militias. This declaration is extraordinary. British and US policy, including Bush’s “surge,” is supposedly to lay the basis for “Iraqisation”—the transfer of police and military functions to the Iraqi regime. Yet they admit that the very forces this strategy depends upon, including the Maliki government itself, have been largely co-opted by or are in thrall to rival militias.

More fundamentally, Bush’s military “surge” cannot and will not be confined to Baghdad, or even to Iraq. His speech was in large part framed as a direct threat to Iran and Syria, which were blamed for fuelling the insurgency. Within hours, US forces raided the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq, seizing five of its diplomats. And, as the US dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf to menace Tehran, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that Iran and Syria had “chosen to align themselves with the forces of extremism,” and would be dealt with accordingly.

Far from being able to elaborate an independent “exit strategy,” Britain is riding the coattails of the US into the firestorm of a regional war. And the media and political establishment know this very well.

The Financial Times editorial continued, “this policy will not succeed in fixing an Iraq traumatised by tyranny and war and then broken by invasion and occupation. But it may end with the US ‘surging’ into Iran—and taking the Middle East to a new level of mayhem that will spill into nearby regions and western capitals.”

Simon Tisdall wrote in the Guardian that Bush’s statement “marked the opening of a new, far more aggressive phase which could extend the conflict into Iranian territory for the first time since the 2003 invasion.” And a Guardian editorial stated, “From Iran’s point of view, the US presence in the region is rapidly becoming more aggressive.”

This is precisely the scenario suggested by Blair’s keynote speech on defence policy delivered before an audience of academics and military commanders in Plymouth on Friday. In it, he insisted that there could be no retreat from a policy of British military engagement in every corner of the globe.

If Britain’s “reach, effect and influence” were not to be “qualitatively reduced,” he insisted, it would require “Armed forces that are prepared to engage in this difficult, tough, challenging campaign, to be warfighters as well as peacekeepers; for a British foreign policy that keeps our American alliance strong and is prepared to project hard as well as soft power; and for us as a nation to be as willing to fight terrorism and pay the cost of that fight wherever it may be….”

For the military, the price meant accepting that “conflict and therefore casualty may be part of what they are called upon to face,” while “the public…need to be prepared for the long as well as the short campaign,” including the necessary “increased expenditure on equipment, personnel and the conditions of our Armed Force.”

Blair’s declaration in support of continued bloodshed in Iraq and further wars of intervention throughout the world is at the same time a declaration of war against working people. It is they who will be “called upon to face” the sacrifice of their own lives, or those of their sons and daughters. And it is they whose living standards and democratic rights will be slashed in order to further the cause of Britain’s imperial ambitions.

Blair's Imperialist Ambitions

jeppe — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:59:02 +0000

The visits by Prime Minister Tony Blair to Pakistan and Afghanistan and by Chancellor Gordon Brown to Iraq continue the desperate efforts of the British government to rescue its imperialist ambitions following the defeats suffered by the Bush administration in the United States mid-term elections.

Blairs key foreign policy address to the City of London last week saw him make a call for greater international involvement in Iraq from regional powers such as Syria and Iran, in order to deal with the growing insurgency.

However, his proposals amount to little more than a wish list, the fulfillment of which depends on factors outside of Britains control.

The fact that it was left to Brown to make a low-key and unannounced visit to Basra indicates the scale of the problems facing the government. Britains Iraq policy is effectively in limbo. Entirely dependent upon the US, it can only be formulated once the factional conflict that has erupted in Washington finds some resolution. At present, Britain is pinning its hopes on the possibility that the Iraqi Survey Group will recommend a timetable of phased withdrawal, but this is by no means assured. The only certainty is that all sections of the Republican Party and the Democrats are united in their resolve that the insurgency cannot be seen to have won raising the immediate prospect of worsening violence and bloodshed, rather than a let-up in hostilities.

For its part, the Blair government is just as clear that a defeat in Iraq would be a devastating blow to the strategic interests of British imperialism.

All that Brown could do in Basra was to promise additional financial aid towards Iraqi reconstruction and to suggest that troops may be withdrawn some time in the future. But without a dramatic scaling back of Britains military commitment, it faces the prospect of defeat in Afghanistan the consequences of which would be just as damaging.

Blair was not only avoiding Iraq when he chose to visit Lahore and Kabul. His meetings with Pakistans President Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistans Hamid Karzai were made necessary by the ever-worsening situation facing British troops. Forty-one British soldiers have died since the start of the US-led war in 2001, 36 since June of this year.

He used his meetings with the two leaders and an address to British troops to argue for greater emphasis to be placed on the Afghan conflict by the NATO powers. In a five-minute speech before 800 servicemen and -women at Camp Bastion in Helmand province, Blair made the extraordinary declaration that Here in this extraordinary piece of desert is where the future of world security in the early twenty-first century is going to be played out.

It was not long ago that Blair was making similar claims about the central significance of Iraq to justify a war that did nothing but destabilise the entire Middle East. To pin the fate of world security on the military subjugation of Afghanistan is no less disastrous. This is a region that Britain was never able to bring under control, even at the height of its empire.

All that has so far been achieved since the US-led offensive that brought down the Taliban regime is the setting up of a puppet government that has little authority outside of the capital. Throughout the country, the 31,000-strong United Nations-mandated International Security Assistance Force face continuous attacks.

Former US president Theodore Roosevelt famously summed up his approach to US foreign policy as Speak softly and carry a big stick. Blairs approach to British foreign policy amounts to shouting loudly, whilst waving a twig.

In his efforts to rally the troops, he declared, If your enemy is fighting youand they are our enemythen your response should be to fight them back even harder and with more determination. Speaking alongside Karzai, he promised to stick with it until the job is done.

However, Britain has fewer than 6,000 troops, which have been unable to effectively subdue the Helmand Province. And as for staying until the job is done, he went on to speak of Afghanistan as a generational struggle adding quickly that he was not suggesting that this would be the duration of Britains military presence.

For all his bellicose rhetoric, the real aim of Blairs trip was in fact to call for someone else to come and do the fighting.

In the first place, his visit to Pakistan was an attempt to secure the support of the Musharraf regime in suppressing the Afghan insurgency. This focused on complaints made earlier by Britains Lieutenant-General David Richards, NATOs commander in Afghanistan, that Pakistan was failing to police its border and that its secret service, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, was backing the Taliban.

Faced with such criticisms and more serious threats from Washington, Pakistans armed forces have carried out a number of military operations, including the destruction of an Islamic school in Chingai that killed at least 80 students and teachers.

Far more is now being demanded. Blair made clear that aid to Pakistan would be tied to its readiness to effectively police its 1,400-mile border with Afghanistan and to clamp down on Islamic extremism. Britain and the US have criticised Musharrafs agreement last month to withdraw Pakistani forces from the autonomous northwest provinces on the Afghan border dominated by Pashtun clans that they claim are being used by the Taliban to hide and regroup.

Of equal significance, Blair also pledged to deepen collaboration between Britains intelligence services and the ISI. The ISI has already been one of the main sources of intelligence regarding high-profile terrorist plots, including the July 7 London bombings. This is despite a wealth of evidence of its own ties to Islamic fundamentalists and terrorist activity, its frame-up of political opponents, and its use of torture and fabrication of evidence.

Blairs reliance on the ISI is a damning refutation of the democratic pretensions in which he has sought to cloak Britains neo-colonial policies. It can only accelerate the attacks on democratic rights in Britain and overseas. And even if Musharraf gave Blair everything he is demanding, this would run the risk of spreading the Afghan conflict into Pakistan.

Musharraf made a desperate appeal at the joint press conference for a Marshall Plan-style development programme as the only effective way of defeating terrorism, in response to which Blair offered a paltry £480 million in additional funding for education and gender balance and to help develop moderate Islamic schools.

Ultimately, Blair is pinning his hopes on presenting a convincing case for greater military involvement in Afghanistan by the European powers.

His visit was made in advance of the NATO summit in Riga scheduled for November 28-29. The NATO powers Germany, Italy, France and Spain have all placed severe restrictions on the relatively small contingents they have deployed in Afghanistan, excluding them from a combat role. Blair wants these restrictions removed. His position is supported by NATO secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, as well as Canada and the US. In Washington, Daniel Fried, assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said NATO shouldnt have countries saying, No. We dont do fighting. We dont get our hands dirty.

But however anxious the European powers are to strengthen their military role on the world arena, this does not translate into a desire to become embroiled in the Afghan conflict. Ahead of Riga, Chancellor Angela Merkel ruled out redeploying any of Germanys 2,900 troops in Afghanistan to fight in the south. The German military is fulfilling an important and dangerous task in the north, providing security and backing reconstruction, she told parliament. The Bundeswehr will continue to take responsibility there within the framework of its mandate, but I do not see any military commitment that goes beyond this mandate.

Middle East Policy Shift

Alex Doherty — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 10:51:14 +0000

British Prime Minister Tony Blairs speech to the City of London Lord Mayors annual Mansion House banquet on November 13 was an attempt to reformulate British foreign policy in the aftermath of the popular repudiation of the Iraq war and the defeat suffered by the Bush administration in the US elections.

Already deeply compromised and bereft of popular support, Blairs political standing and authority have been further undermined. He evidently felt compelled to respond to a widespread view in British ruling circles that his support for the Iraq war and his uncritical alliance with the Bush administration have embroiled Britain in a debacle that has destabilized the entire Middle East, with potentially disastrous consequences.

His speech was made just one day before he was to be interviewed via closed circuit television by the Iraq Study Group, led by James Baker, the former secretary of state to George Bush senior. It was intended to reassure his critics that he would take the opportunity to influence the foreign policy debate that has opened up in the US so that British concerns are taken into account.

The Iraq Study Group encompasses leading Republicans and Democratsmany of whom were involved in the late 1980s and early 1990s in setting into motion the abortive Israeli-Palestinian peace processwho are critical of the neo-conservatives and believe that their policies have severely damaged US interests throughout the Middle East.

While stressing his support for the US, defending the invasion of Iraq and insisting that a rupture with Washington would be insane, Blair signalled that a change in course was necessary. Just as the situation is evolving, so our strategy should evolve to meet it, he said.

Without referring to any withdrawal of British or US troops, Blair emphasized that the task was to empower the Iraqi leadership to take responsibility for leading and winning the fight against terrorism. Ultimately, he said, any solution depended upon a strategy towards forces outside Iraq that are trying to create mayhem inside Iraq. Blairs whole Middle East strategy began with efforts to bring Syria and Iran onboard.

Though not directly contradicting the stated position of the White House, Blair made certain statements aimed at placating critics of Bush administration policies. For example, he described fears that the US was seeking a military solution in Iran as genuine, if entirely misplaced. He held out the prospect of a new partnership if Tehran suspended its nuclear enrichment programme, helped the Middle East Peace Process and stopped supporting terrorism in Lebanon or Iraq.

Retaining the ultimatistic tone that has characterized American and British declarations on Iran, he threatened the country with isolation should it fail to agree to the conditions he had laid down.

Britain is actively working towards this end. In his speech, Blair stressed that Iran and Syria do not at all share identical interests. Earlier this month, his personal advisor on foreign affairs, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, was in Syria, where it is reported he told President Bashar al-Assad that he could either continue his alliance with Iran or break with Iran and normalize relations with the West.

At any rate, Blair continued, the starting point for any Middle East settlement began not with these countries, or with Lebanon, but with Israel/Palestine… That is the core.

Blair has long urged Washington to use its influence over Israel to pressure it to accept a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This time, however, his cautious remarks were addressed not only to the Bush administration, but also to its critics, in the hope that, given the weakened position of Bush and the sacking of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his advice might stand a better chance of having an impact.

But Blair, more than any other European leader, is constrained as to how far he can risk antagonizing the Bush administration, and even his tentative remarks were rebuked by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Speaking in Germany, she explicitly rejected any connection between Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict and ruled out talks with Syria and Iran.

This renders Blair incapable of articulating the deep disaffection within Britains ruling elite. It is instructive to contrast his speech with the editorial published on November 14 by the Financial Times prior to his interview with the Iraq Study Group.

In what amounted to a root and branch critique of the policies of the neo-conservatives in Washington, focusing on US relations with Israel, it demanded a reappraisal of policy towards the Middle East as a whole.

In a remarkably grim appraisal of the state of affairs throughout the Middle East, the newspaper declared that the Iraq fiasco had led to the country sinking into a cesspool of ethnic cleansing and rule by militia. The US-backed Israeli war on Lebanon this past summer had strengthened Hezbollah, and as a result an essentially pro-western government is imploding. The Israeli offensive in the West Bank and Gaza Strip had created a situation in which the Palestinian territories were facing societal collapse.

The editorial denounced Israels illegal settlements in the West Bank, criticized its walling off of Palestinian territories and its erection of 500 Israeli checkpoints, and rebuked Blair for playing third fiddle to the Americans and Israelis.

It offered a blunt and sweeping indictment of US-British-Israeli policy: Their combination of diplomatic fecklessness and faith in the use of force has been lethal. It has given organizations such as Hamas and Hizbollah power and prestige well beyond their natural constituency. At the heart of this mayhem is the failure to get a comprehensive settlement based on land for peace.

The last five years have seen Israel extend and consolidate its hold on the West Bank and Arab east Jerusalem despite western rhetoric. That, every bit as much as the unprovoked invasion of Iraq, is what constantly threatens to set the region alight.

The Financial Times urged a comprehensive settlement between Israel and the Palestinians based on land for peace as the centrepiece of a new Middle East strategy that would require engagement with Iran and Syria.

Neither Blair nor any other British politician is in a position to make such sweeping demands on the White House. In a separate piece, Financial Times columnist Philips Stephens acknowledged that in Washingtons attempts to reformulate its Middle East strategy, domestic politics will weigh much more than sober strategic calculationor any sense of obligation to Americas closest ally. All that remained was an appeal to Blair that sometimes truth must be spoken publicly to power.

The Financial Times and many others within the British foreign policy establishment are pinning a great deal of their hopes on the ability of the Iraq Study Group to deliver the goods. But as New York Times columnist David Brooks, a Republican, noted, The idea that the commission is going to come up with some magic plan that we havent heard about is not true… These plans are all out there, and none of them are particularly pleasant.

More fundamentally, Blairs support for the Iraq war was almost universally endorsed by the British ruling elite. This reflected the recognition that Britain as a declining imperialist power could assert its interests against its more powerful rivals only by aligning itself with the US. This situation has not changed.

Blair reminded his critics of these geopolitical realities by devoting a major portion of his Mansion House speech to reiterating the fundamental importance of maintaining this alliance. He insisted that none of Britains vital concerns can be addressed, let alone solved, without America. Alluding to the growing assertiveness of Russia and the rising economic power of China and India, he said, New powers are emerging, in the face of which it is necessary to forge alliances with nations that share our values.

This reliance on the US is a source of profound instability, not just for the Blair government but for the entire British bourgeoisie. More than any other, its fortunes are linked to the outcome of the factional struggle that has erupted in Washington and the worsening situation in the Middle East that has prompted it.

Jack Straws anti-Muslim Provocation

Alex Doherty — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 10:09:33 +0000

Only in a climate of deliberately cultivated hostility to Muslims could the comments by Jack Straw opposing women wearing the veil be described as a contribution towards a debate.

The article by Straw, the former Labour foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, in the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, a local newspaper in his Blackburn constituency, was a calculated provocation. It was an appeal to prejudice intended to solidarise Straw with attempts in government circles and the media to generate Islamophobia so as to justify Britains warmongering and attacks on democratic rights.

There was, in fact, no need for Mr. Straw to initiate a debate on the veil. Amongst Muslims, including Islamic scholars, there is no agreement on the veilknown as a niqaband many oppose it. It is generally considered a cultural preference rather than a doctrinal issue.

When the subject has previously been discussed, debate has centred on whether or not wearing the veil is a choice freely exercised by women or whether there is an element of coercion. An overriding consideration has generally been an insistence on the freedom of worship.

Straw framed his column on entirely different grounds. He opposed wearing the veil because he personally dislikes it and claims that it prevents face to face discussions that are vital to ensuring social cohesion.

There was a calculated undertone of nationalism to Straws argument. He described meeting a man and his wife who are constituents. She was friendly, polite, respectful, and gave off signals which indicate common bondsthe entirely English accent, the couples education (wholly in the UK).

This jarred with the fact of the veil, which made him feel uncomfortable, he wrote. He decided that in future he would ask his female constituents to remove the veil when they came to his surgery because wearing it made better, positive relations between the two communities more difficult

There are, of course, personal political considerations involved in the publication of this column. Straw was replaced as foreign secretary by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the insistence of the United States. His constituency is 30 percent Muslim.

In March, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Blackburn and reportedly told President Bush of her concern that Straw could not be trusted to take a hard line in the so-called war on terror. He had already expressed reservations on a military strike against Iran. Less than two months later, Straw was demoted from the Foreign Office to leader of the Commons.

With his column, Straw aimed to restore his political credentials in right-wing circles and to set out his stall for the upcoming Labour Party leadership contest. That he chose to do so by playing on anti-Muslim sentiments speaks volumes not only about the character of the Labour Party, but of the political climate it has created.

Straw knew that his smoke signals would be read correctly in the right quarters. His stance was immediately praised by Rupert Murdochs Sun.

His comments dovetail with the governments claims to be waging a struggle for civilised values and democratic freedoms against religious extremism. Blair has described both his foreign and domestic policy as part of a struggle between what I will call Reactionary Islam and Moderate, Mainstream Islam. Home Secretary John Reid has lectured Muslim parents to guard against fanatics looking to groom and brainwash your children for suicide bombing, and at the Labour Party conference he announced to applause that he would not be bullied by Muslim extremists.

Straws decision to attack the veil, while making a point of defending the headscarf, or hijab, is in keeping with this type of propaganda His comments open the way not only for all manner of attacks on Muslims, but also for an intensification of the ongoing shift away from Britains traditional policy of multiculturalism in favour of the cultivation of a proscriptive national identity.

Straws article echoes other recent statements by government ministers that explicitly link opposition to radical Islam with pronouncements on the failure of multiculturalism. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly has suggested that it encourages segregation, as has the Labour-appointed chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips.

There is no question that the policy of celebrating cultural differences has been utilised in the past to encourage divisions within the working class, and that this policy was championed above all by Labour. But the governments sudden discovery of such problems is nothing but an attempt to justify a lurch to the right on questions of social policy and civil liberties.

It is a measure of how sweeping this attack is that the BBC gave as an example of Britains brand of multiculturalismnow being called into questionthe passage of laws to protect minority groups from religious as well as racial discrimination It also suggested that Straws debate could be extended to include Sikhs wearing turbans and Jews wearing kippahs

Laws against religious discrimination are not examples of British multiculturalism. Freedom of worship is a fundamental democratic right and is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted in 1948.

This states: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance.

In the aftermath of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust against the Jews, no one was in any doubt about the utterly reactionary character of attempts to impose a common national identity based on the whipping up of prejudice against religious and cultural traditions that others found objectionable.

These principles are now under sustained attack, with Muslims most often the immediate target and a convenient scapegoat to justify measures that can be later used against the entire population.

Across Europe, policies are being enacted against Muslims, such as the banning of the headscarf in France and certain German states, and even the denial of welfare benefits to veiled women in parts of Belgium Accompanying this has been the publication of cartoons portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a suicide bomberjustified as an expression of free speechand demands by the European Union that laws be enacted to regulate what can be taught in mosques.

As in the 1930s, this attempt to poison social discourse by cultivating racism and xenophobia is bound up with a return to imperialist colonialism by the European bourgeoisie.

There are few men in the world today who have less right to initiate a debate on the rights of Muslim women or on social cohesion than Jack Straw. He should be bracketed alongside Blair, Bush and their ilk as war criminals and enemies of democratic freedoms.

Straw was home secretary from 1997 to 2001 and then foreign secretary until 2005. As home secretary he presided over the extension of anti-terror laws and restrictions to the right to trial by jury. As foreign secretary he played a crucial role in mounting the campaign of lies and disinformation used to legitimise the invasion of Iraq.

These considerations are what shapes his own intervention and animate the new-found preoccupation of a host of former liberals and social democrats with the oppression of women by Islamfigures who one must anticipate will now come forward in Straws defence In contrast, working people must oppose all such attempts to whip up anti-Muslim prejudice and any and all proposals to curtail religious and civil liberties. This is an essential component of the struggle against militarism and war.

After Heathrow

Alex Doherty — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:22:50 +0000

There is still little substantive information on the alleged plot to explode transatlantic flights from Britain to the US in mid-air. To date, the British government has provided no facts to substantiate its claims of a conspiracy to commit mass murder in the air.

Unless and until it does so, the public has both a right and a political responsibility to withhold its judgment on the governments claims.

Most press commentary is given over to reporting on the lives and backgrounds of many of the 23 people being held in Britain as a result of last Thursdays police sweep. (One of the 24 initially arrested has been released.)

Such coverage is legally presumptive and suggestive of guilt. It prompted an admonishment by Attorney General Lord Goldsmith and Home Secretary John Reid that the media was in danger of prejudicing any future trials.

The governments warning is disingenuous. It was Reid himself who held a press conference on the morning of the police raids in London and the West Midlands at which he baldly stated that the main players in a terrorist conspiracy had been arrested.

The following day, in an unprecedented move, the Bank of England froze the assets of 19 of those held in custody and published their names. The youngest is 17 and the oldest 35. This action, authorised by the Treasury, began a media feeding frenzy that has included camping outside family homes, publishing photographs and quizzing residents and friends.

This has been accompanied by assertions that more than 1,000 British citizens are committed to fundamentalist Islamic ideology and involved in terrorist activities. In addition to this core group, politicians and the media have denounced the Muslim community for failing to address the alleged cancer in its midst and being blinded to reality by religious dogmatism.

The Sunday Times editorialised against The Enemy Within. This it described as fanatical British-born Muslims educated in the country and brought up within a tolerant democracy, many of whom seem all too ordinary, perhaps enthusiastic about football and cricket and living normal westernised existences, but who are amongst a generation of disaffected Muslims who see any excuse as a reason for killing their fellow citizens.

In an article entitled What Makes a Martyr? the Sunday Telegraph wrote of a sophisticated network of Islamic fundamentalists that casts its net wide over many hitherto-moderate Muslim youngsters. Its modus operandi is now a well practised, psychological approach aimed at brainwashing clean skinsthose with moderate backgrounds.

The Telegraph cited a recent government report that, amongst young Muslims, both the well-educated and the disaffected poor are ripe for conversion, first to radicalism, sometimes then to terrorism: the former in our universities, the latter in mosques or prisons through a sense of disillusionment with their current existence.

If such claims are to be taken at face value, it means that hundreds of young people from all walks of life, including the highly educated, are preparing with cold-hearted indifference to kill and maim their fellow citizens.

Yet, despite the gravity of the scenario presented, neither the media nor the government make any attempt to explain how such a situation could come to pass. With one voice, they bitterly denounce any suggestion that the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and Britains support for Israels attack on Lebanon have contributed to this disturbing state of affairs.

On the Conservative Party right, the Telegraph declared, ... in fact, the extremists who plot mass murder give very little evidence of being motivated by the details of Britains foreign policy. The nominally liberal and pro-Blair Observer denounced the suggestion that Britains actions overseas were perceived as anti-Islamic as ludicrous lies. Foreign policy should not be adapted so as to placate those who had crossed a line into psychopathic criminality, the newspaper declared.

A similar litany has been repeated ad nauseam by the Blair government so as to suppress all criticisms of its wars of aggression in the Middle East. It dovetails with President Bushs declaration that either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.

Such claims turn reality on its head. It is not those who oppose imperialist war and warn of its political impact who are endangering the lives of the British people, but the architects and defenders of these wars.

Even as it denies that British foreign policy plays any role, the media fails to offer any alternative explanation for the influence of Islamic fundamentalism. The July 7, 2005 bombings in London, like 9/11 and the attacks in Bali and Madrid, are attributed simply to brainwashing. The Observer says in passing that alienation amongst young Muslims must be tackled, but does not attempt to address where it comes from, much less say what is to be done about it.

One week prior to last weeks police raids, Blair made a speech in the United States on British foreign policy in which he denounced reactionary Islam and advocated as an alternative a set of supposed global values based on freedom, respect for difference and diversity. Such rhetoric from a man who has trampled over civil liberties and the democratic process, and has conspired and lied in order to flout international law, can only fuel contempt for official hypocrisy.

Blair demands of the disaffected that they worship at the altar of Mammon and accept Washingtons claim that its wars for regime change in pursuit of oil and other vital resources are about spreading democracy.

The impact of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Lebanon is, in reality, a crucial starting point in explaining the growing alienation of Muslim youth in Britain. But in itself it does not explain why antiwar sentiment, which is shared by the majority of the British population, would find expression in an inclination to commit murderous and reactionary attacks.

The same is true with regards to the growing social polarisation within Britain that has condemned many young people to enormous hardship. Millions grow up with no prospect of achieving many of the things their parents took for grantedcareer advancement, their own home, a secure and decent-paying joband have a sense that they inhabit a world that is indifferent to them.

All of this combines to fuel hostility to the existing political and economic order. But for this to pass over into a readiness to kill innocents and commit suicide in the process, other factors must be at work.

At one time, millions of people in Britain and internationally looked to the labour movement as the agent of political and social change. Opposition to economic oppression, attacks on democratic rights and militarism found political expression in the socialist aspirations that animated working people, and the younger generation in particular.

No such avenue is offered today. Instead, the Labour Party and the trade unions are indelibly associated with big business, racist immigration legislation and the promotion of identity politics based on ethnicity, gender and religion, which is used to undermine any class-based approach to social problems.

This is the outcome of a process that has spanned decades, and has had a highly damaging impact on the political consciousness of working people. Ever since the mid-1970s, the labour movement has collaborated in the systematic lowering of the social position of the working class. First under Margaret Thatcher and John Majors Conservative Party governments, and from 1997 on under Labour Party Prime Minister Blair himself, the old workers organisations have embraced a neo-conservative agenda that has transformed Britain into a low-wage, low-tax sweatshop for the transnational corporations and the super-rich.

To make matters worse, they have proclaimed this as the best of all possible worlds and led an international campaign to hail the death of socialism.

Every means for influencing and changing society has been systematically closed down to working people by a government that boasts of its determination to defy the popular will and impose the interests of the financial oligarchy. Not even on such life-and-death matters as war are working people allowed any influenceas was underscored by Blairs dismissal of the mass protests against the imminent invasion of Iraq in February 2003.

The initial manifestation of the official labour movements attack on socialist consciousness was to reduce the aims of the workers movement to the so-called bread and butter issues of trade union struggles. The transformation of society was proclaimed a distant utopia long before it was rejected out of hand. Millions know very well that Labours embrace of capitalism has, in fact, proved devastating from the standpoint of the living standards of the working class. They must understand that it has also exacted an appalling price ideologically.

It is the political vacuum created by the disintegration and decay of the labour movement that ultimately gives succour to the fundamentalists. They are able to exploit feelings of injustice and denounce Western militarism, portraying the reactionary policies of the capitalist ruling elite as a war on Islam. Theirs is indeed a reactionary creed, but it nevertheless makes an ideological appeal by promising a better world than that which currently exists.

If one accepts the claims of the political establishment and the mediadesigned to justify further attacks on democratic rights and new imperialist military adventuresthat large sections of Muslim youth have turned against society as a whole, then one must conclude that the capitalist system, which these same spokesman defend, has demonstrated its utter and irreversible failure.

Only the revival of the workers movement on genuinely internationalist and socialist foundations can overcome religious obscurantism by inspiring and empowering workers and youth with a scientific perspective for unifying the worlds people. And the objective social and political conditions for the emergence of such a movement are growing daily.

Amidst the hysteria that is being whipped up over the alleged Heathrow terror plot, these are the critical questions that must inform the response of working people.

Manoeuvres and Appeasement

Alex Doherty — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 17:11:38 +0000

The response of Europes governments to the US-backed Israeli attack on Lebanon has been cowardly and devoid of principle. Any pretence that the European Union was capable of advancing a foreign policy independent of Washington was put paid by its resolution on the Lebanon crisis issued August 1, calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities to be followed by a sustainable ceasefire.

The separation of the words immediate and ceasefire is all that is politically important in this tortured formulation. The resolution was an exercise in semantics. One would search in vain for a dictionary definition distinguishing an immediate cessation of hostilities from a ceasefire. But this playing with words was necessary to paper over the divisions revealed by the meeting that preclude any possibility of a viable European response.

The original draft, proposed by the Finnish presidency, called for an immediate ceasefire and included a sentence warning that disregard for necessary precautions to avoid loss of civilian life constitutes a severe breach of international humanitarian law.

Both formulations were dropped in order to appease opposition led by Britain and Germany, with the support of the Czech Republic, Poland and Denmark. The resolution instead called on all parties to do everything possible to protect civilian populations and to refrain from actions in violation of international humanitarian law. This is exactly what Israel claims to be doing. The resolution was further altered to place the condemnation of Hezbollahs rocket attacks on Israel before a condemnation of Israels killing of Lebanese civilians in Qana.

France claimed that the resolution was a victory for its diplomacy, but it was actually a significant retreat. From the start of the conflict, major European powers led by France, and including Italy and Spain, have made repeated calls for an immediate ceasefire. However, the EU was never able to advance a unified position.

Britain was, as usual, resolutely opposed to anything that would cut across the drive by the Bush administration to extend the Lebanese conflict to a broader offensive against Syria and Iran, so as to ensure US hegemony over the entire Middle East. Unlike in relation to the Iraq war, this same position was taken unambiguously by Germany.

Prior to the meeting of foreign ministers and in response to Israels bloody assault on Qana, German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a joint statement with Prime Minister Tony Blair stressing Washingtons favoured formulation of a sustainable ceasefire to be declared only when conditions allow. Reiterating the banal and cynical assertions she has made since day one of the Israeli assault that the aggressor was Hezbollah, she told the media, We cannot confuse cause and effect. The starting point is the capture of Israeli soldiers.

The meeting in Brussels demonstrated the weakened position of France, which has hitherto based its entire foreign policy on a Franco-German alliance. Washington demonstrated its ability to wield a dominant bloc of European nations against any who do not fall into line.

The meeting also made clear that none of those who are calling for a ceasefire, including France, have any fundamental disagreements with Americas Middle East strategy. Rather, their central objective is to maintain their own influence in the Middle East and position themselves in the reorganization of the region proclaimed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Frances calls for a ceasefire, in particular, are bound up with political calculations over how to preserve its interests in the region, as well as immediate military concerns.

There is much on which Washington and Paris agree. France is no friend of either Hezbollah or Syria. It has a long and bloody history in Lebanon, where it was once a colonial power. Together with Washington, it was one of the major proponents of the so-called Cedar Revolution, which aimed to end Syrias influence in the country and ensure a stable pro-western government. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, the multibillionaire whose assassination in 2005 provided the pretext for an escalation of the anti-Syrian offensive, was a personal friend of President Jacques Chirac.

In August 2004, Paris joined Washington in co-authoring United Nations resolution 1559, calling for Syrian troops to be removed from Lebanon and for Hezbollahs disarming. Following Hariris murder in February 2005, France joined the US in blaming Syria and insisting on the full implementation of resolution 1559. Even now, French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has stressed, The first condition for a ceasefire is, of course, the disarming of Hezbollah.

Nevertheless, Paris has been dismayed by Washingtons willingness to undermine the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and support Israels destruction of the country. This is only the latest humiliation suffered by France at the hands of the US. The Iraq war saw it excluded from a major area of interest and similar concerns will be raised by the moves against Iran, where it has significant investments.

In opposition to the line of the US, France has insisted that Tehran play a part in ensuring a political solution to the Lebanon crisis. During his latest of three visits to Lebanon, Douste-Blazy insisted that Iran could play a stabilizing role in the region, describing it as a great country, a great people and a great civilization. France, he said, could never accept the destabilization of Lebanon, which could lead to destabilization of the region.

While in Beirut, he met with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and has made clear that he is prepared to travel to Tehran.

Paris clearly believes that it can exploit Washingtons refusal to negotiate with Tehran to its advantage and that this will increase its standing in the Middle East, due to the rising tide of anti-US sentiment.

France also wants to establish its influence militarily by playing a major role in the proposed multinational force that will police an eventual settlement in Lebanon. But it considers a ceasefire and a political agreement by all parties to be a precondition for dispatching an estimated 5,000 French troops.

The US is happy for France to assume a military role, given that its forces and those of its main ally, Britain, are badly extended in Iraq and Afghanistan. Politically also it is helpful to Washington, and London, that a military intervention in Lebanon is not carried out by the same forces that invaded Iraq. But Washington will not accept any French role that is not on its terms.

Last week Paris circulated a resolution to the UN Security Council that echoed all the main elements of Washingtons demands, including the establishment of a buffer zone extending from the Israeli border to the Litani River, but reiterating the call for an immediate ceasefire. Washington countered this by stating it would propose its own resolution.

At the emergency Security Council meeting on Sunday no US resolution was presented and the talks broke up without agreement. On Monday, France forced the suspension of a planned meeting to discuss the composition of the multinational force and threatened to boycott a meeting that had been scheduled for Wednesday on the issue.

A French diplomatic source said, The meeting is premature because we consider that the conditions for force deployment, in other words the immediate end to hostilities and a political agreement, have not been met. For the moment, we do not expect to participate but it will depend on the discussions that are taking place at the moment.

This is the most cynical sort of horse-trading. France acquiesced in the EU resolution to US dictates and it will take part in an international force. But it calculates that it has some leeway before reaching an agreement, as the US wants Israel to have more time to deepen its assault on Lebanon.

France has made clear that once an agreement is reached, it is ready to act ruthlessly to smash up Hezbollah. Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie has insisted that any military force must be 15,000 to 20,000 strong, well-armed, have substantial firepower and armour and empowered to engage in hostilities in support of the Lebanese army. It must be credible and capable of making itself respected by everyone, she said.

Several other European nations are amongst the 30 countries scrambling to ingratiate themselves with Washington while also establishing a toehold in the Middle East through participation in the planned force. But some are less keen than France to be dragged into a Lebanese quagmire. Italy, which supported the French position at the EU foreign ministers summit, said that it would contribute troops only on the condition that it is not a combat force and is not NATO-led.

Similarly, though Frances diplomatic conflicts with the US have focused most media attention on its discussions with Tehran, there are reports of backdoor talks with Syria, Lebanon, and even Hezbollah involving countries as diverse as Italy, Spain and Britain.

The most open diplomatic initiatives with Syria have been mounted by Germany, with the aim of splitting it from Tehran. German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier of the Social Democratic Party reportedly offered Syrian President Bashar Assad trade incentives with the EU in return for breaking with Tehran and aiding the insertion of a multinational force. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo DAlema also praised Syrias constructive role in helping to achieve stability in the region.

There are real concerns amongst all the European powers that Washingtons support for Israels war of aggression in Gaza and Lebanon will prove to be the beginning of a regional conflagration. But what unites them all is their refusal to contemplate an open confrontation with the US.

Two factors dictate this policy of appeasement.

In the first instance, they calculate that no combination of European nations, including the entire EU, has the ability to militarily challenge the US. They are awed by the eruption of US militarism that began with the first war against Iraq in 1991 and which finds its most finished expression in the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. Their greatest fear is that political opposition would provoke Washington to end all collaboration with international institutions such as the UN and pursue an avowedly unilateral course as a global hegemon.

Secondly, the occupation of Iraq and the advanced preparations for hostilities against Iran signal a reordering, not just of the Middle East, but of the entire globe that will determine who has access to strategic resources such as oil and gas. All the European powers hope for is that they will be allowed a share of the spoils in return for their subservience to Washington.

Blair, Murdoch and the Oligarchy

Alex Doherty — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:20:20 +0000

As Tony Blair once again lines up behind another US-backed war in the Middle East, in defiance of public opinion, millions might ask just whom Britains prime minister really represents. The answer was made clear this week, and not only by his joint appearance with US President George W. Bush.

Blairs July 28 White House press conference took on a major significance due to events in Lebanon. But his flight to America was in fact planned months ago so that he could address the annual gathering of the executives and journalists of Rupert Murdochs News Corp.

Even given the political imperative of solidarising himself with Bush, Blair spent just a few hours at the White House before flying to California to begin five days of engagements addressing movers and shakers in the business world, of which Murdochs gathering was the centrepiece.

Media reports of the News Corp. event would lend the impression that Blair was the star of the show. But that is in no small part due to the veil of secrecy drawn over the gathering in an attempt to spare the political blushes of others seeking to curry favour with the media magnate.

The panel of leading politicians assembled by Murdoch provides an insight into the domination of a global financial oligarchy over world affairs. Indeed, the title of U2 singer Bonos talk on his campaign against poverty and AIDSThe Power of Oneis a more fitting description of the gathering in California.

Joining Blair at the exclusive Pebble Beach resort were former President Bill Clinton and his wife and potential Democrat presidential candidate Hillary; former US Vice President Al Gore; the current frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain; and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In addition to the stellar Republican-Democrat line-up, Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres scheduled time out from waging war against Lebanon to make a speech on Islam and the West.

Blair stands out from the crowd only in the extent of his reliance on the backing of Murdochs media empire. He even used his speech on leadership in the modern world as part of his ongoing efforts to defend himself from criticism over his support for Washington and Tel Aviv.

Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that all those in attendance were hawking themselves to the man who is undoubtedly the worlds highest bidder.

As Blair departed from Britain, there were reports that Murdoch might offer him a position in News Corp. after he leaves office. If so he would join former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Marie Aznar, another staunch supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. For his part, Bill Clintonwho closed the eventalso has direct ties to Murdoch. News Corp. Executive Vice President Gary Ginsberg was a lawyer in the Clinton White House, and last month Murdoch hosted a New York fundraiser for Hillary.

Even if Blair does not take up a job offer, he remains Murdochs creature.

Consider the implications of his devoting himself to the Pebble Beach jamboree at a time when the world is facing such a major political crisis. Blair can hardly be bothered to maintain the pretence that he functions as the political representative of the British people. As far as his policy goes, it is stamped Made in America and copyrighted by News Corp.

Blair considers Murdoch as his most important and strategic backer, someone whose publications such as the Sun make him a political kingmaker. This view is shared by Murdoch.

In a recent candid hour-long interview on US public television, Murdoch boasted of his ability to set the political agenda of the Blair government. Right now we are giving them a bad time, he said. Weve supported him, but we fought him pretty hard on Europe. We said, stay away from there. Hes come around. His newspapers had also set the governments agenda regarding the breakdown of law and order in Britain and the thuggishness and the social behaviour that has come about through mistaken changes in the law.

When asked whether he would transfer his allegiances to Chancellor Gordon Brown, Blairs likely successor, or switch to supporting the Conservatives, Murdoch replied, I would like to see, well before the next election, a match up between Brown and the new Conservative leadership and just see how they look.

Blairs relationship with Murdoch is only the most high-profile of his dealings with big business. There is a question here of immediate self-interest. Not a few commentators have pointed out that when Blair leaves office, he will be able to make millions from the lecture circuit in the US. His audience will be fabulously rich and overwhelmingly right-wing. His visit to California will, at least in part, have been aimed at consolidating the network of contacts required to launch such a post-governmental career.

However, it is not just Blair that is politically on sale. He went to California as the representative of Labour PLCa party that functions as an instrument of a global financial oligarchy at whose behest it slashes public expenditure, cuts corporate taxes, privatises public utilities and conducts an aggressive militarist foreign policy.

Blairs broader itinerary in California is revealing. Prior to his Pebble Beach engagement, he was the guest of George Shultz, secretary of state under President Ronald Reagan and a leading member of the so-called Vulcanskey neo-con policy advisers to Bush including Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz. Shultz is also on the board of the US engineering giant Bechtel, whose company is bidding to build facilities for the 2012 London Olympics in London.

Blair also met with numerous other CEOs, including John Chambers, the chief executive of Cisco Systems, which is seeking government contracts in IT that include the new biometric identity card scheme.

The prime ministers speech to the News Corp. executives, full as it was with his usual hyperbole and grandiose moralising, was also politically instructive.

Explaining why he had opposed an immediate ceasefire in the Lebanon, he said that it was necessary to deal with the underlying causes of confrontation, whose roots reach right down into a more basic struggle: between those who want to embrace and those who resist the modern world.

Blair presented this as a struggle between Islamic fundamentalism and Western democratic values, but for him the modern world more correctly means the right of global corporations to plunder the oil reserves of the Middle East.

Recognising the imperatives of globalisation must also dictate politics in the advanced capitalist countries, he stressed. Blair repeated his claim that there is no longer any significance in the traditional division between left and right. He added that the fundamental fault line in politics was now open versus closed.

The response to globalisation can be free trade, open markets, investment in the means of competition: education, science, technology. Or it can be protectionism, tariffs, tight labour market regulation, resistance to foreign takeovers, Blair said. The traditional European welfare state and social model is hopelessly inadequate to meet the challenge of the modern competitive global market, and also that traditional civil liberty arguments are not so much wrong, as just made for another age.

The most misunderstood speech I ever made was my Party Conference speech of 1999 about the forces of conservatism, he continued. This was taken as an assault on Conservatives. Actually it was an assault on small c conservatism, resistance to change, which can be every bit as much from the left as from the right.

Blairs bracketing of Islamic terrorism alongside those opposed to the destruction of the welfare state and concerned with the preservation of democratic rights is truly chilling.

Let it not be forgotten that on the eve of his remarks, Israels military machinewith the backing of US and Britainwas reducing Qana to rubble in the name of the war against terror. For weeks, Blair has opposed all calls for a ceasefire and demonstrated his supreme indifference to the terrible suffering of the Lebanese people. He continues to do so, knowing that this will have earned him kudos from both Murdoch and Bush.

But Blairs attitude to Lebanon is only the most debased aspect of a political agenda founded on contempt for the democratic and social aspirations of working people the world over and a determination that nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of the interests of the oligarchy. That is what has earned Blair a favoured place at Murdochs table.

Blair and Lebanon

Alex Doherty — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 12:07:25 +0000

The world is being reminded yet again why Britain earned the sobriquet Perfidious Albion.

After more than two weeks of an unrelenting and escalating military assault on Lebanon that has left more than 420 people dead, it remains the only country other than the United States and Israel itself that has refused to call for a ceasefire.

At the meeting of foreign ministers in Rome on Wednesday, Britains Margaret Beckett took her place alongside US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in rejecting every appeal for a cessation of hostilities on the cynical grounds that it could not provide the basis for a lasting peace.

Beckett was following Prime Minister Tony Blair, who earlier dismissed calls for a ceasefire by stating that it would only make people feel good for a few hours. This is from the man who loudly proclaimed his humanitarian concerns to justify military intervention in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq.

For Blair, peace is a euphemism for the successful realisation of the war aims of Israel and Washingtonthe destruction of Hezbollah, the reduction of Lebanon into a US-Israeli protectorate and the instigation of hostilities against Syria and Iran to consolidate American hegemony over the Middle East.

If anything, the vast gulf separating official politics from the sentiments of the mass of the population, which is overwhelmingly opposed to Israels actions, is even more pronounced in regard to the assault on Lebanon than in relation to the Iraq war. Yet, the government has faced minimal opposition in Parliament to its support for Israel. Only a handful of backbenchers from the Labour and Conservative parties joined the Liberal Democrats in calling for a ceasefire on Tuesdayafter which they broke for the summer recess.

This situation is made all the more remarkable given that Blair has been severely undermined by the exposure of the lies and misinformation used to justify war against Iraq, and by the hemorrhaging of support for his government in recent elections.

Nonetheless, there are those within ruling circles who understand very well that this is a dangerous situation. Amongst these layers there are serious concerns over the political impasse into which the government has led Britain and the dangers posed by the deteriorating situation in the Middle East.

There is a growing recognition that Blair has achieved very little in return for his alliance with the Bush administration. Discredited in the Middle East and elsewhere as a result of its association with Washington, Britain is paying a heavy price through its military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and now faces the possibility of a much more dangerous conflict with Iran.

Most newspapers, whether or not they support an immediate ceasefire, have been severely critical of the governments unquestioning support for Israel and its failure to advocate a diplomatic solution. Only the Murdoch press and the Observer have been resolutely supportive of the governments line.

There are also reports of widespread disaffection within the Foreign Office at the governments failure to consult Whitehall over its policy, which amounts to waiting to see which way Washington wants Britain to jump.

For many, these concerns were epitomised by the exchange between Bush and Blair during the G8 summit in St Petersburg that was accidentally picked up on a microphone. Like a court sycophant, Blair pleaded with his liege to be allowed to visit the Middle East, only for Bush to dismiss his request in between mouthfuls of food.

The embarrassment and humiliation within ruling circles at Blairs subservience to Bush was acute.

The Telegraph on July 25 editorialised, Since the crisis broke, France has had its prime minister and foreign minister in the region, Germany its foreign minister. Britain, once seen as a major player in the Middle East, has been represented by a junior minister who has sown confusion, and even incited ridicule. His trip, and the evacuation, have been sorry evidence of incoherent policy-making and managerial incompetence. To echo Churchill, in the past week Mr. Blair has had a lot to be modest about.

Writing in the same newspaper, Simon Heffer entitled his own scathing attack on the government, A Third World War Loomsbut Britain Has No Foreign Policy.

Even the pro-Labour Guardian complained, The perception that our government has set British and European interests aside in order to stay in the slipstream of the US administration is in certain respects a caricature…. But the caricature contains enough truth to further weaken British interests abroad and to further damage the governments already weakened standing at home.

The longer the conflict continues, the more worried the governments critics have become. Israels military campaign has met with greater resistance from Hezbollah than either Israel or its backers anticipated. And the images broadcast around the world of the devastation and human suffering inflicted on the Lebanese have deepened the repugnance felt by millions.

Such is the scale of public anger in the Middle East that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a US ally, has now warned, If the option of peace fails as a result of Israeli arrogance, then the only option remaining will be war, and God alone knows what the region would witness in a conflict that would spare no one.

Syria is said to be at its highest state of alert and has said that it will react if Israel comes close to the Lebanese/Syrian border. In turn, the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mohammad-Reza Sheybani, warned, There should be no doubt on this issue: If Syria is harmed, even in the slightest way, we will respond with force.

This has lent renewed urgency to calls for a ceasefire and even demands for a rejection of Washingtons refusal to seek a diplomatic solution.

The Financial Times on July 26 attacked US foreign policy as reckless. It complained: Ms. Rice blithely asserts that we are witnessing the birth pangs of a new Middle Eastan unfortunate metaphor set against the background noise of the death-rattle of a recently resurgent, pro-western Lebanon.

The Financial Times continued: [T]he point is that fighting could now easily spread, and not just by sucking in Hizbollahs patrons in Syria and Iran. Israels assault on Shia Lebanon has inflamed the Shia majority in Iraqthe community preventing the total meltdown of the US occupation…. The US and its friends need to engage with all parties in the region. That includes Syria and Iran.

The following days edition of the Guardian editorialised, What Ms. Rice needs to do is cancel her trip to Malaysia and return to the Middle East sharpish, and not just to Israel. The US has to end its policy of blocking diplomacy in order to allow Israel time to deal with Hizbullah militarilyan option that Israel may be finding less attractive anyway in the face of stiff Hizbullah resistance. Ms. Rice needs to push for an immediate ceasefire and that can only be achieved by persuading not just Israel but Hizbullah and its two backers in the region, Iran and Syria.

Yesterday, Sir Stephen Wall, a former leading adviser to the Labour government, decried Blair and Bush for having weasel-worded their way through Israels onslaught on Lebanon. Britain had lost moral authority across much of the world, Wall said, because of Blairs conviction that he has to hitch the UK to the chariot of the US president. The government has too readily lost sight of the fact that Britains interests, and those of the US, are not identical, he continued.

The problem for those issuing such advice is twofold: first, the government is deaf to all entreaties that it stand up to Washington, and second, they themselves offer no substantive alternative to Britains alliance with the Bush administration. Indeed, on the fundamental question of maintaining the special relationship with the US, there is unanimity with Blair.

But to maintain an alliance with Washington means doing exactly what Blair is doing.

Blair is being compared unfavourably with other prime ministers who were equally concerned with preserving the special relationship. Some have noted that even Margaret Thatcher had at least objected in 1983 when the US invaded Grenada, part of the British Commonwealth, without even a by your leave.

All this proves is that even then, the British bourgeoisie did not ask much.

But this is not the 1980s. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, US foreign policy has undergone a fundamental shift. Faced with the absence of a significant military rival, America is intent on securing its global hegemony against its economic competitors by utilising the one factor in which it still retains an overwhelming advantage. The naked pursuit of imperialist interest by force of arms has become the order of the day.

The only alliances Washington is willing to contemplate are those that accept this reality. Anything else is wishful thinking.

All of the dangers inherent in British foreign policy, and the subservience it entails, are not the product of Blairs personal failings. They express the historical decline in the fortunes of British imperialism. We have come a long way since the Suez crisis in 1956, the last occasion that the British bourgeoisie attempted to act independently of the US, and was made to pay the price.

If the US fears being eclipsed economically by its rivals in Europe and China, then this is even more the case for British capital. Britain lost its place as the worlds fourth largest economy to China last year. In addition, its armed forces would struggle to function independently of the materiel, technical and logistical support of the US.

On what basis, therefore, could London contemplate alienating Washington?

That is why the essential foundation of the governments foreign policy is the hope that riding Bushs coat-tails will provide Britain with a share in the spoils of an imperialist re-division of the world. And it is also why Blair, despite the lack of popular support for his government, is still able to dismiss his critics. Their greatest fear, like his own, is that the US will go it alone, cutting Britain out of the carve-up of the worlds markets and resources.

Moreover, such is the development of global economy and the dominance of finance capital that there is a real sense in which it is difficult to speak of a British bourgeoisie capable of articulating some peculiarly national interest. If Blair has taken on the characteristics of an American politician, or at least someone who takes his orders from the White House, it is because he is the representative of an international financial oligarchy that also dominates Britains economic and political affairs.

Blair used to claim that in orientating to Washington he was also acting as a good European. It was, he argued, the only way of preventing the growth of American unilateralism and influencing its policy to the good. Many of those who are unhappy with his performance over Lebanon now complain that he should orient more towards Europe in order to better curb Washingtons excesses.

They do so at the very point where Blairs position has become dominant throughout the continent. Whereas at the time of the Iraq war France and Germany refused to join Bushs coalition of the willing, today they are clamouring to be let on board. Paris and Berlin may be formally in support of a ceasefire, but they will not allow this to affect their relations with the US. Blair may have assumed the role of the most craven apologist for Washington, but appeasement is the order of the day throughout Europes capitals.

No section of the ruling class, in Britain or the rest of Europe, can be entrusted with opposing the US-inspired assault on Lebanon, or averting the growing danger of a wider war in the Middle East. That task falls to the working class. What is required is an international political movement of workers and young people against a worldwide resurgence of imperialist militarism that only finds its most advanced expression in the criminal actions of the Bush and Blair.

Colluding in Rendition

Alex Doherty — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 12:19:52 +0000

Europes governments and Washington have disparaged a report accusing them of collaborating in the illegal kidnapping and torture of terrorist suspects by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Washington dismissed the report as a rehash, adding that the Bush administration was disappointed by its tone. The response in Europes capitals to Council of Europes findings was to denigrate the report as offering little substantive evidence and to continue their denial of any knowledge of CIA extraordinary renditions.

The Council of Europe monitors human rights in Europes 46 nations. The report, prepared by Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the council, was commissioned after press accounts of European collusion with Americas rendition (transfer) of detainees and the kidnapping (extraordinary rendition) of terrorist suspects to be sent to countries where they could be tortured. Reports by the media and human rights groups also alleged the presence of secret CIA detention facilities, so-called black sites, in Poland and Romania.

Martys report insists that the allegations made against the US and a total of 14 European governments are substantially true. Some had let the CIA abduct their citizens, while others allowed the agency to use their airspace. European governments simply agreed not to want to see, he said.

The report details what it describes as a global spiders web of detention facilities run by US government agencies, stretching from official facilities such as Guantánamo Bay to those that remain shrouded in secrecy. These include black sites in Eastern Europe and those of other allied foreign powers that permit torture.

The ex-Stalinist countriesPoland, Romania, and the former Yugoslav republics of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovinahave played a particularly important role for the CIA. Regarding Macedonia, Marty states that its intelligence service, the UBK, is well practiced in the conduct of clandestine surveillance and detention operations, having exploited its own network of secret apartments for decades. Information obtained from our internal sources indicates that the UBK is equally skilled in working on behalf of the CIA.

Britains Prime Minister Tony Blair said of the report, The Council of Europe report has absolutely nothing new in it. Renditions were a longstanding practice that was perfectly legal, he continued, insisting that he would say nothing more on the issue.

The Times of London said that the report was inconclusive and lacks the hard evidence to clinch its case. Germanys Frankfurter Rundschau described evidence of German collusion as a bit thin and the report as merely a detailed press review.

For their part, Poland and Romania denounced as slander Martys findings that evidence strongly indicated the presence of black sites on their territory.

The Council of Europes report is attacked for containing nothing new by the very governments who have refused to make any accounting for their actions and which have blocked any investigation or public inquiry into the renditions scandal. One after another, they have insisted that they have not and will not even ask for what purpose CIA flights have utilized their airspace or landed on their soil. Alternatively they have taken the line of the British government that they are prepared to accept Washingtons reassurances that it does not allow torture to take place.

The Council of Europe has no powers to gather evidence or to subpoena witnesses, forcing Marty to rely largely on existing evidence. Marty notes that in gathering information for the report he encountered a lack of willingness and commitment on the part of national institutions that could, and should, have completely clarified these allegations, but which have instead responded with silence and obvious reluctance. This also means it is legitimate to assume that there are more such cases than can be proven at present, he concludes.

However, it is not true that Martys report contains nothing new. He managed to collect the flight logs of planes run by CIA-front organizations and match them against reports of known abductions. By doing so he provides strong circumstantial evidence of collusion with extraordinary renditions and the existence of black sites in Poland and Romania.

More importantly, the evidence gathered together by Marty, based on eyewitness statements including those of the CIAs victims, proves that Europes governments are complicit in human rights abuses of a kind normally associated with fascist dictatorships. These include governments that, in the case of Germany and Sweden, claimed to be opposed in principle to the war against Iraq, or, like Britain and Italy, hailed it and the accompanying war on terror as a struggle for democracy.

Behind the scenes they all complied with appalling crimes.

Marty focuses his report on extraordinary renditions because there is no denying that these are illegal in international law. He provides detailed accounts of the fate of 17 people who say they were unlawfully taken into detention by US authorities and matches the testimony of those who have since been released to paint a picture of grotesque treatment during abductions and subsequently in captivity.

These well-documented cases of abductions, some of which are the subject of legal actions in the courts, are used by Marty to establish a pattern of how the CIA snatch squads operate on European soil against European citizens.

The kidnap victim is taken to a small room (described as a locker room, a police reception area) where he is searched and blindfolded by upwards of four CIA agents dressed in black with their faces covered. The victim is shackled and his clothes cut from his body. Some are beaten during this operation. The naked man is then subject to a full-body cavity search, and photographed.

Several accounts speak of a foreign object being forcibly inserted into the mans anus; some accounts speak more specifically of a tranquiliser or suppository being administered per rectum.

Afterwards, the victim is dressed in a nappy or incontinence pad and a jumpsuit, shackled hand and foot, his ears muffled and a cloth bag placed over his head. Bundled onto a plane, he is strapped to a mattress or seat: in some cases the man is drugged and experiences little or nothing of the actual rendition flight; in other cases, factors such as the pain of the shackles or the refusal to drink water or use the toilet make the flight unbearable.

The experience of two detainees described in the report is typical. Khaled El-Masri is a German citizen of Lebanese descent. After he was seized in Macedonia he eventually arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan where he was kicked and beaten during four months of detention.

While held captive, El-Masri was visited by a man he has since identified in a police line-up as Gerhard Lehmann, a German intelligence officer. His case is currently under investigation, but there is substantial evidence of German collusion in his extraordinary rendition by the CIA.

Binyam Mohamed al Habashi is an Ethiopian citizen with residence status in the UK who was seized in Pakistan and is now held in Guantánamo Bay. According to his diary, letters and first-hand accounts from family members and his legal representative, Binyam was subject to the most brutal forms of torture whilst held in Morocco.

At its worst, the torture involved stripping Binyam naked and using a doctors scalpel to make incisions all over his chest and other parts of his body: One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once and they stood for a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over. They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists.

Later Binyam describes being taken to another location 30 minutes away during which he explained how his clothes were cut off his body in front of English-speaking witnesses. There was a white female with glassesshe took the pictures. One of them held my penis and she took digital pictures. When she saw the injuries I had, she gasped. She said: Oh my God, look at that.

Blair makes much of the supposed distinction between renditions and extraordinary renditions, acknowledging that Britain accepted two rendition requests from the US. But Binyam has been selected as one of a group of ten prisoners who is due to appear before a special US military commission next year. As such he is an example of how detainees that have been supposedly subjected to legitimate detention are routinely treated by the US and its allies.

Marty states that much of the personal information used against Binyam during his torture could only have originated from the UK intelligence services. Since the purposes to which this information would be put were reasonably foreseeable, the provision of this information by the British government amounts to complicity in Binyams detention and ill-treatment, he states.

(It should be noted that according to Amnesty International, Binyam says that he was in fact interviewed by UK intelligence agents and that Moroccan interrogators had told him they were collaborating with the UK intelligence services.)

The blanket dismissal of the report confirms that the CIA and other US government agencies will continue to abuse and torture detainees and that the European powers will maintain their collaboration with Washington. White House press secretary Tony Snow said, International cooperation in the war on terror is essential for winning, and rendition is not something that began with this administration, and its certainly going to be practiced, Im sure, in the future.

The Blair government also made clear that it was business as usual as far as Britain was concerned. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram has said that Britain is under no obligation to ask the US about the purpose of its flights, and that the US does not have to reveal them.

Like other European governments, all that Britain requires from Washington is that it is able to deny culpability. As constitutional affairs minister, Harriet Harman, said to the BBC, I think if we didnt know about [renditions] we wouldnt know whether we didnt know about [them].

Marty states that the US treatment of detainees is utterly alien to the European tradition and sensibility, and is clearly contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But his own report demonstrates that where Washington leads, Europe follows.

The drive to carve up the worlds markets and resources between the great powers and to secure the unrestrained exploitation of the working class by the major corporations is incompatible with the preservation of democratic rights. It necessitates the brutal suppression of all social and political resistance and opposition, both domestic and foreign. The war against terror is only the most grotesque and highly developed expression of this repression. That is why the Council of Europe acknowledges that, whereas the US created this reprehensible network of detention and torture, it could only do so through the intentional or grossly negligent collusion of the European partners.

The Euston Manifesto - Ex-Liberals for Imperialism

Alex Doherty — Thu, 25 May 2006 12:13:21 +0000

On May 25, the Euston Manifesto is to be officially launched at a rally in London. Described by its authors as the basis for a new progressive democratic alliance, it is being depicted by the British media as a major political and intellectual event.

There can be few occasions in which so much hype has been devoted to something of so little worth, and where the actual content of a document has been so misrepresented.

The manifesto was drafted by a number of former left and liberal academics and journalists. Most of its prominent supporters defended the Iraq war based on the premise that US and British imperialism should be entrusted with opposing dictatorship and spreading democracy. Amidst the bloody debacle created by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, its authors are now seeking to elaborate a rationale for continuing to advocate imperialist interventionat a time when preparations are already well advanced for war against Iran.

The major figures involved in popularising the manifesto are Norman Geras, emeritus professor of politics at Manchester University, who was once associated with the New Left, and Nick Cohen, a columnist on the Observer who combines criticisms of the Blair governments relations with big business with a strident advocacy of all aspects of the so-called war on terror.

They were amongst a group of 20 or so like-minded progressives who met in a pub in Euston, London, in May 2005. They include both individual supporters of the Labour government and moving forces behind various campaign groups and web sites with a pro-Labour, pro-Iraq war message. Many come from a left-Zionist background and are now grouped around Engage, which is dedicated to identifying and opposing left and liberal anti-Semitism in the labour movement.

Prior to and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this layer had the wind in their sails. They were feted by the media and called on to write op-ed pieces denouncing anti-war protestors as apologists for Saddam. With the US and Britain now widely loathed within Iraq, and public hostility to the war and occupation continuing to grow within Britain, the manifestos authors clearly feel themselves to be an embattled minority. However, this experience has not caused them to reconsider their previous apologias for imperialism.

The manifesto states that the founding supporters of this statement took different views on the military intervention in Iraq, both for and against. But any signatories who may have opposed the Iraq war now have no difficulty in aligning themselves with the pro-war majority within the group. The manifesto asserts that all are agreed the overthrow of the Baathist regime represented the liberation of the Iraqi people and laid the foundation for democracy.

The document begins with a call for a fresh political alignment that reaches out beyond the socialist Left towards egalitarian liberals and others of unambiguous democratic commitment.

In truth, the Euston group has nothing but contempt for what they choose to describe as the socialist Left. The manifesto is largely made up of denunciations of unspecified left groups and individuals for supposedly betraying the democratic ideals that the authors alone continue to uphold. They complain that they are a constituency [that] is under-represented…in much of the media and the other forums of contemporary political life, given that the rest of the left has lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values.

The real flexibility with regard to democratic values is displayed by the Euston group. They do everything they can to minimise and belittle the attacks on civil liberties carried out by the Bush administration in the United States and the government of Tony Blair in Britain. The most glaring example is the authors attitude to the illegal war against Iraq, epitomised by the statement that they are not interested in picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.

Instead, the manifesto proclaims: We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic anti-imperialism and/or hostility to the current US administration.

It continues: The violation of basic human rights standards at Abu Ghraib, at Guantanamo, and by the practice of rendition must be roundly condemned as a departure from those universal principles for which the democratic countries themselves, and in particular the United States of America, bear the greater part of the historical credit. But anyone who makes too much of such departures is accused of double standards and moral relativism. Even Amnesty International is attacked for making a grotesque public comparison of Guantanamo with the Gulag.

With regards to the United States, the Euston group resorts to the type of sleight of hand of which they accuse their opponents. They make no distinction between the reactionary clique in the White House and the American people, in order to condemn opposition to the Bush administration as motivated by anti-Americanism. The US continues to be the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name, the manifesto declares, obscuring the fact that these very achievements are under ferocious assault by the US administration and ruling elite.

Much of the document consists of platitudes and truisms, such as its description of terrorism as a crime under international law and professions of support for the democratic principles of the Enlightenment that are meant imply that the Euston groups political opponents do not share these beliefs.

The manifestos authors gather together every slander ever made against the anti-war movement and regurgitate every excuse for the predatory actions of Washington and London.

Leftists who make common cause with, or excuses for, anti-democratic forces should be criticised in clear and forthright terms, they state, portraying opponents of the occupation of Iraq as de facto allies of Islamic fundamentalists.

No such condemnation is made of the political right for supporting anti-democratic forces. On this front, the Euston group is preoccupied with finding only light amidst the darkness. Conversely, the manifesto continues, we pay attention to liberal and conservative voices and ideas if they contribute to strengthening democratic norms and practices and to the battle for human progress.

How then, according to the Euston group, are these liberal and conservative voices to wage the battle for human progress? Precisely by supporting the continued resort to military force.

Humanitarian intervention, when necessary, is not a matter of disregarding sovereignty, the manifesto states reassuringly. If a state is deemed to have violated the rights of its people, its claim to sovereignty is forfeited and there is a duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue.

These words could have been delivered by Prime Minister Tony Blair. He has specialised for years in feigning selective outrage towards countries targeted for great power intervention, in order to portray regime change as a great civilising mission. Such propaganda has in the past played an important role, given the instinctive popular opposition to the Iraq war and the suspicion, entirely justified, that the real motive of Washington and London is to secure hegemony over Middle Eastern oil supplies.

This type of demagogy has served to divert attention from the implications of the Bush administrations policy of pre-emptive warwhich rejects international legal principles such as national sovereignty whenever and wherever Washington perceives a threat to American imperialist interests. The Iraq invasion and its aftermath have exposed such sophistries, necessitating the desperate attempt by the signatories of the Euston Manifesto to issue their pseudo-democratic apologia for military aggression.

This essential aim of the manifesto is well recognised by the Euston groups target audience. Support has come from two camps. In Britain, it was welcomed by a number of pro-Labour Guardian and Observer columnists, such as Norman Johnson and Will Hutton, and it was signed by Financial Times journalist John Lloyd, as well as Julie Burchill and Oliver Kamm of the Times, all of whom were supporters of the Iraq war. Kamm is the author of Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy.

Christopher Hitchens wrote that he was flattered by an invitation to sign it, and I probably will, but if I agree it will be the most conservative document that I have ever initialled. For Hitchens, it is presumably conservative because it is ostensibly oriented to a political left from which he has long since broken in order to become an avowed admirer of the neo-conservatives in Washington.

He need not have worried over-much, because the manifesto has also been endorsed by the American neo-conservative William Kristol. Writing in the Weekly Standard under the headline A Few Good Liberals, Kristol described the manifesto as an impressive document and asked whether in the fight against tyranny and terror it was too much to hope that decent liberals and conservatives could make common cause? Replying to his own question, he wrote: We think not, and we hope that this clarion call from overseas might contribute to a rebirth of political courage and moral clarity on the American left as well.

There could not be a more damning exposure of the Euston groups political pretensions than Kristols endorsement. A co-founder of Project for the New American Century and a long-time member of the American Enterprise Institute, both notorious right-wing think tanks, Kristol advocated war against Iraq to bring about regime change as early as 1998, pointing to Iraqs possession of a significant portion of the worlds supply of oil.

Kristol has no difficulty recognising, behind the Euston groups democratic window dressing, the movement of a layer of former liberals firmly into the camp of imperialist reaction.

BNP Trial

Alex Doherty — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 18:40:30 +0000

On February 2, Nick Griffin, the leader of the fascist British National Party (BNP), and party member Mark Collett were acquitted of a total of six charges of incitement to racial hatred. The pair are to be retried on a further six charges on which the jury failed to reach a verdict.

The statements on which the charges were brought included Griffins claim that white girls were being groomed for sex by Muslim men and Colletts statement that asylum seekers were coming here to take our whole country, to take everything.

The pair were acquitted for these remarks. The jury failed to arrive at a verdict on Griffins reference to Islam as a wicked, vicious faith and Colletts declaration that Asians were trying to destroy us, as well as his urging, Lets show these ethnics the door in 2004, and his description of asylum seekers as cockroaches.

The trial raises political issues that have an impact not only on the struggle against racism and fascism, but more broadly on the defence of the democratic rights of the working class.

The charges against Griffin and Collett resulted from a sting operation by undercover journalist Jason Gwynne for a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) documentary, The Secret Agent. Gwynne secretly filmed the pair at a number of closed meetings of BNP supporters, where they made their remarks.

Their statements were of a clearly racist character, but state prosecution for comments exchanged in private between like-minded individuals raises a dangerous precedent that should be clear even to those who are rightly hostile to the BNP. In the end, the trial provided the BNP with a platform to posture as the defender of free speech.

It is not possible to determine the degree to which legitimate civil liberties concerns figured in the decision of the jury to acquit the pair on several of the charges. But the BNPs defence relied heavily on the portrayal of the case against it as an attack on democratic rights.

In their closing remarks, the BNPs legal team cited a 1999 High Court judgment that Free speech includes not only the inoffensive, but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative, provided it does not tend to provoke violence. They stressed that these were private meetings to mobilise BNP supporters at which no one would have taken offence from Griffin and Colletts statements.

However, the BNPs defence did not focus exclusively on this issue. It argued that the statements made were not racist as they were directed against a religionIslamrather than a racial group, and therefore could not be prosecuted under legislation outlawing incitement to racial hatred. Whether or not anyone agreed with the views expressed by Griffin and Collett, they were a legitimate point of view, the defence lawyers argued.

Much of Griffins own testimony consisted of a sustained attack on Islam, which he declared was incompatible with democracy.

The claim that Griffin and Colletts statements were not racist is patently false. Both referred repeatedly to Asians and Pakistanis attacking white people, and used the word Muslim interchangeably with Asian. The charges brought against the two reflected this.

As a political organisation, the BNP sets out to foment racial hatred. Its web site declares that its political mission is to guarantee the continued existence, as the clearly dominant ethnic, cultural and political group, of the native peoples of these islandsthe English, Scots, Irish and Welshtogether with the limited numbers of peoples of European descent who arrived as refugees or economic immigrants centuries or decades ago, and who have fully integrated into our society. It denounces the idea of human equality as an absurd superstition and proclaims racism to be part of human nature.

The prosecution ruled out any challenge to such views. Rodney Jameson QC told the jury that the trial could not be a mini-referendum on the BNP. The last thing we ask you to do, he said, is to say, I dont like the BNP, I think their ideas are unpalatable, therefore Ill convict these two men.

The prosecutors added that they were not seeking to prevent a discussion on the very sensitive issues of race or immigration, which are matters of legitimate political debate. They stressed that the states complaint was that Griffin and Colletts remarks went far beyond robust comment.

In his summing up, Judge Norman Jones QC issued the directive that the issue before the jury was whether Griffin held a genuine belief in his antipathy to Islam or whether it was a cloak he was using to cover the fact he was attacking a race.

Such statements were clearly a contributory factor in Griffin and Colletts acquittal, but this alone does not explain why statements that clearly constituted incitement to racial hatred were deemed legal by all or some of the jurors.

It is not a question of bemoaning the failure to secure a conviction of the BNP fascists. Rather, the case underscores the basic political fallacy of relying on the capitalist state to oppose racism and the activities of the far right.

There were political calculations behind the decision to prosecute the BNP. The BBC documentary aroused significant public anger, and the trial was no doubt seen by the police as an opportunity to distance itself from charges of institutional racism.

It is also significant that the case against the BNP was taken out by the Crown Prosecution Service just 24 hours after Prime Minister Tony Blair had called the May 2005 General Election.

Blair has sought to distance himself from obvious expressions of anti-Islamic sentiment and portray his government as a defender of ordinary Muslims. To this end, the government has cultivated relations with various Islamic leaders and is attempting to introduce a law outlawing incitement to religious hatred.

The essential purpose of such posturing is to legitimise Britains role in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and stem Labours massive loss of support in many inner-city areas, which are heavily populated by immigrants.

But it is Labour that has created the fertile soil on which the BNP feeds. The fascists are able to tap into the campaign waged by the government and the media to generate fear over Islamic fundamentalism in order to justify war mongering in the Middle East and the ongoing attack on democratic rights at home.

This reached a new high even as the BNP trial was underway, with the publication across Europe of anti-Muslim cartoons that were first produced in a right-wing Danish newspaper. Griffins rant against Islam in the court was in no way dissimilar to editorials that have appeared in one European country after another. The BNPs proclamation of a clash of civilisations now passes for good coin in much of Europes ruling elite.

The BNPs central demand for a clampdown on immigration is, moreover, common to both the Blair government and the opposition parties. Griffin and Collett could argue in court that many of their statements were based on press reports because Britains media is full of articles scapegoating asylum-seekers for the social devastation caused by Labours big business policies.

The danger of the development of a mass fascist movement arises from the political and organisational demobilisation of the working class. The collapse of the old workers movement and the transformation of the trade unions and the Labour Party into avowed defenders of big business not only leaves workers unable to combat the attacks on their living standards, it politically disarms the working class in the face of a sustained ideological offensive aimed at cultivating racial and religious divisions.

The struggle against fascism and racism demands a political struggle to raise the consciousness of the working class and mobilise it in the struggle for socialism. The unification of workers, irrespective of race, religion or nationality, is possible only on the basis of a programme that aims at genuine social equality through the abolition of the profit system.

Moreover, there are numerous historical examples in which legal action against fascist groups set a precedent that was then used to attack the civil liberties of working peoplemost famously the Public Order Act enacted ostensibly against Oswald Mosleys Black Shirts in the 1930s.

The same holds true with regards to the trial of Griffin and Collett. Besides legitimising the use of hidden surveillance to build a court case, the trial, having failed to secure a conviction, is now being used by the government as an argument in favour of its Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill and other measures that can, and will, be turned against left-wing opponents of the ruling elite in the future.

The bill supposedly offers the same legal protections to religious groups that are presently afforded to ethnic groups. However, it has met with significant opposition because it not only criminalises the intentional whipping up of hatred against a particular religion, but also makes illegal reckless words and behaviour merely critical of a particular religion. Touted by its supporters as a means of opposing anti-Islamic sentiment, the bill can just as easily be directed against Muslims, atheists and socialists.

The clause concerning reckless words had to be abandoned after it was rejected in Parliament as an attack on free speech. However, following the failure to convict Griffin and Collett, Home Secretary Charles Clarke declared that the dilution of the legislation could be exploited by the far right, and warned that any weakening of the governments proposed anti-terror laws would be exploited by other extremists.