by
John Pilger
Delegates
to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town of
Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance.
The world’s third biggest arms manufacturer, BAe Systems, supplier
to Saudi Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships
and fighter aircraft.
It
seemed a perfidious symbol of a party in which millions of Britons
now invest their political hopes. Once the preserve of Tony Blair, it
is now led by Jeremy Corbyn, whose career has been very different and
is rare in British establishment politics.
Addressing
the conference, the campaigner Naomi Klein described the rise of
Corbyn as “part of a global phenomenon. We saw it in Bernie
Sanders’ historic campaign in the US primaries, powered by
millennials who know that safe centrist politics offers them no kind
of safe future.”
In
fact, at the end of the US primary elections last year, Sanders led
his followers into the arms of Hillary Clinton, a liberal warmonger
from a long tradition in the Democratic Party.
As
President Obama’s Secretary of State, Clinton presided over the
invasion of Libya in 2011, which led to a stampede of refugees to
Europe. She gloated at the gruesome murder of Libya’s president.
Two years earlier, Clinton signed off on a coup that overthrew the
democratically elected president of Honduras. That she has been
invited to Wales on 14 October to be given an honorary doctorate by
the University of Swansea because she is “synonymous with human
rights” is unfathomable.
Like
Clinton, Sanders is a cold-warrior and “anti-communist” obsessive
with a proprietorial view of the world beyond the United States. He
supported Bill Clinton’s and Tony Blair’s illegal assault on
Yugoslavia in 1998 and the invasions of Afghanistan, Syria and Libya,
as well as Barack Obama’s campaign of terrorism by drone. He backs
the provocation of Russia and agrees that the whistleblower Edward
Snowden should stand trial. He has called the late Hugo Chavez – a
social democrat who won multiple elections – “a dead communist
dictator”.
While
Sanders is a familiar American liberal politician, Corbyn may be a
phenomenon, with his indefatigable support for the victims of
American and British imperial adventures and for popular resistance
movements.
For
example, in the 1960s and 70s, the Chagos islanders were expelled
from their homeland, a British colony in the Indian Ocean, by a
Labour government. An entire population was kidnapped. The aim was to
make way for a US military base on the main island of Diego Garcia: a
secret deal for which the British were “compensated” with a
discount of $14 million off the price of a Polaris nuclear submarine.
I
have had much to do with the Chagos islanders and have filmed them in
exile in Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they suffered and some
of them “died from sadness”, as I was told. They found a
political champion in a Labour Member of Parliament, Jeremy Corbyn.
So
did the Palestinians. So did Iraqis terrorised by a Labour prime
minister’s invasion of their country in 2003. So did others
struggling to break free from the web of western power. Corbyn
supported the likes of Hugo Chavez, who brought more than hope to
societies subverted by the US behemoth.
And
yet, now Corbyn is closer to power than he might have ever imagined,
his foreign policy remains a secret.
By
secret, I mean there has been rhetoric and little else. “We must
put our values at the heart of our foreign policy,” he said at
the Labour conference. But what are these “values”?
Since
1945, like the Tories, British Labour has been an imperial party,
obsequious to Washington: a record exemplified by the crime in the
Chagos islands.
What
has changed? Is Corbyn saying Labour will uncouple itself from the US
war machine, and the US spying apparatus and US economic blockades
that scar humanity?
His
shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, says a Corbyn government
“will put human rights back at the heart of Britain’s foreign
policy”. But human rights have never been at the heart of
British foreign policy — only “interests”, as Lord Palmerston
declared in the 19th century: the interests of those at the apex of
British society.
Thornberry
quoted the late Robin Cook who, as Tony Blair’s first Foreign
Secretary in 1997, pledged an “ethical foreign policy” that would
“make Britain once again a force for good in the world”.
History
is not kind to imperial nostalgia. The recently commemorated division
of India by a Labour government in 1947 – with a border hurriedly
drawn up by a London barrister, Gordon Radcliffe, who had never been
to India and never returned – led to blood-letting on a genocidal
scale.
Shut up in a lonely mansion, with police night and
day
Patrolling the gardens to keep the assassins away,
He got down to work, to the task of settling the fate
Of millions. The maps at his disposal were out of
date
And the Census Returns almost certainly incorrect,
But there was no time to check them, no time to
inspect
Contested areas. The weather was frightfully hot,
And a bout of dysentery kept him constantly on the
trot,
But in seven weeks it was done, the frontiers
decided,
A continent for better or worse divided.
- W.H. Auden, ‘Partition’.
It
was the same Labour government (1945-51), led by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee – “radical” by today’s standards — that
dispatched General Douglas Gracey’s British imperial army to Saigon
with orders to re-arm the defeated Japanese in order to prevent
Vietnamese nationalists from liberating their own country. Thus, the
longest war of the century was ignited.
It
was a Labour Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, whose policy of
“mutuality” and “partnership” with some of the world’s most
vicious despots, especially in the Middle East, forged relationships
that endure today, often sidelining and crushing the human rights of
whole communities and societies. The cause was British “interests”
– oil, power and wealth.
In
the “radical” 1960s, Labour’s Defence Secretary, Denis Healey,
set up the Defence Sales Organisation (DSO) specifically to boost the
arms trade and make money from selling lethal weapons to the world.
Healey told Parliament, “While we attach the highest importance
to making progress in the field of arms control and disarmament, we
must also take what practical steps we can to ensure that this
country does not fail to secure its rightful share of this valuable
market.”
The
doublethink was quintessentially Labour. When I later asked Healey
about this “valuable market”, he claimed his decision made no
difference to the volume of military exports. In fact, it led to an
almost doubling of Britain’s share of the arms market. Today,
Britain is the second biggest arms dealer on earth, selling arms and
fighter planes, machine guns and “riot control” vehicles, to 22
of the 30 countries on the British Government’s own list of human
rights violators.
Will
this stop under a Corbyn government? The preferred model – Robin
Cook’s “ethical foreign policy” – is revealing. Like Jeremy
Corbyn, Cook made his name as a backbencher and critic of the arms
trade. “Wherever weapons are sold,” wrote Cook, “there
is a tacit conspiracy to conceal the reality of war” and “it
is a truism that every war for the past two decades has been fought
by poor countries with weapons supplied by rich countries”.
Cook
singled out the sale of British Hawk fighters to Indonesia as
“particularly disturbing”. Indonesia “is not only
repressive but actually at war on two fronts: in East Timor, where
perhaps a sixth of the population has been slaughtered … and in
West Papua, where it confronts an indigenous liberation movement”.
As
Foreign Secretary, Cook promised “a thorough review of arms
sales”. The then Nobel Peace Laureate, Bishop Carlos Belo of
East Timor, appealed directly to Cook: “Please, I beg you, do
not sustain any longer a conflict which without these arms sales
could never have been pursued in the first place and not for so very
long.”
He
was referring to Indonesia’s bombing of East Timor with British
Hawks and the slaughter of his people with British machine guns. He
received no reply.
The
following week Cook called journalists to the Foreign Office to
announce his “mission statement” for “human rights in
a new century”. This PR event included the usual private
briefings for selected journalists, including the BBC, in which
Foreign Office officials lied that there was “no evidence”
that British Hawk aircraft were deployed in East Timor.
A
few days later, the Foreign Office issued the results of Cook’s
“thorough review” of arms sales policy. “It was not
realistic or practical,” wrote Cook, “to revoke licences
which were valid and in force at the time of Labour’s election
victory”. Suharto’s Minister for Defence, Edi Sudradjat, said
that talks were already under way with Britain for the purchase of 18
more Hawk fighters. “The political change in Britain will not
affect our negotiations,” he said. He was right.
Today,
replace Indonesia with Saudi Arabia and East Timor with Yemen.
British military aircraft – sold with the approval of both Tory and
Labour governments and built by the firm whose promotional video had
pride of place at Labour’s 2017 party conference – are bombing
the life out of Yemen, one of the most impoverished countries in the
world, where half the children are malnourished and there is the
greatest cholera epidemic in modern times.
Hospitals
and schools, weddings and funerals have been attacked. In Ryadh,
British military personnel are reported to be training the Saudis in
selecting targets.
In
Labour’s current manifesto, Jeremy Corbyn and his party colleagues
promised that “Labour will demand a comprehensive, independent,
UN-led investigation into alleged violations … in Yemen, including
air strikes on civilians by the Saudi-led coalition. We will
immediately suspend any further arms sales for use in the conflict
until that investigation is concluded.”
But
the evidence of Saudi Arabia’s crimes in Yemen is already
documented by Amnesty and others, notably by the courageous reporting
of the British journalist Iona Craig. The dossier is voluminous.
Labour
does not promise to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia. It does not
say Britain will withdraw its support for governments responsible for
the export of Islamist jihadism. There is no commitment to dismantle
the arms trade.
The
manifesto describes a “special relationship [with the US] based
on shared values … When the current Trump administration chooses to
ignore them … we will not be afraid to disagree”.
As
Jeremy Corbyn knows, dealing with the US is not about merely
“disagreeing”. The US is a rapacious, rogue power that ought not
to be regarded as a natural ally of any state championing human
rights, irrespective of whether Trump or anyone else is President.
When
Emily Thornberry , in her conference speech, linked Venezuela with
the Philippines as “increasingly autocratic regimes” –
slogans bereft of facts and ignoring the subversive US role in
Venezuela — she was consciously playing to the enemy: a tactic with
which Jeremy Corbyn will be familiar.
A
Corbyn government will allow the Chagos islanders the right of
return. But Labour says nothing about renegotiating the 50-year
renewal agreement that Britain has just signed with the US allowing
it to use the base on Diego Garcia from which it has bombed
Afghanistan and Iraq.
A
Corbyn government will “immediately recognise the state of
Palestine”. There is silence on whether Britain will continue
to arm Israel, continue to acquiesce in the illegal trade in Israel’s
illegal “settlements” and treat Israel merely as a warring party,
rather than as an historic oppressor given immunity by Washington and
London.
On
Britain’s support for Nato’s current war preparations, Labour
boasts that the “last Labour government spent above the
benchmark of 2 per cent of GDP” on Nato. It says, “Conservative
spending cuts have put Britain’s security at risk” and
promises to boost Britain’s military “obligations”.
In
fact, most of the £40 billion Britain currently spends on the
military is not for territorial defence of the UK but for offensive
purposes to enhance British “interests” as defined by those who
have tried to smear Jeremy Corbyn as unpatriotic.
If
the polls are reliable, most Britons are well ahead of their
politicians, Tory and Labour. They would accept higher taxes to pay
for public services; they want the National Health Service restored
to full health. They want decent jobs and wages and housing and
schools; they do not hate foreigners but resent exploitative labour.
They have no fond memory of an empire on which the sun never set.
They
oppose the invasion of other countries and regard Blair as a liar.
The rise of Donald Trump has reminded them what a menace the United
States can be, especially with their own country in tow.
The
Labour Party is the beneficiary of this mood, but many of its pledges
– certainly in foreign policy – are qualified and compromised,
suggesting, for many Britons, more of the same.
Jeremy
Corbyn is widely and properly recognised for his integrity; he
opposes the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons; the Labour Party
supports it. But he has given shadow cabinet positions to pro-war MPs
who support Blairism, tried to get rid of him and abused him as
“unelectable”.
“We
are the political mainstream now,” says Corbyn. Yes, but at
what price?
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