Britain’s imperialist wars and terrorism

Stop Britain’s wars to end terror, says Corbyn—while May offers only repression

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Jeremy Corbyn on the campaign trail (Pic: Neil Terry)

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Tue 30 May 2017 – socialistworker.co.uk

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is expected to make a bold move today, Friday, by linking Britain’s involvement in military interventions overseas and terror attacks at home.

Corbyn will also demand restoration of cuts in police, a sop to the right. But the radical claim he makes will be that the “war on terror” has been a failure.

Protesters were right to oppose the wars

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Corbyn will make the speech in London today as he restarts Labour’s national election campaign.

It is not a moment too soon to return to the political assault on Theresa May’s atrocious effort to use the Manchester bombing to divert attention from the Tories’ collapsing campaign.

Corbyn is set to say, “Many experts, including professionals in our intelligence and security services, have pointed to the connections between wars our government has supported or fought in other countries and terrorism here at home. We must be brave enough to admit the «war on terror» is simply not working.”

He will tell voters that, “To keep you and your family safe, our approach will involve change at home and change abroad. At home, Labour will reverse the cuts to our emergency services and police. Once again in Manchester, they have proved to be the best of us.”

But it won’t be more police that reduces the risk of terror attacks, it will be a rejection of further imperialist adventures.

Challenge

The immensely positive aspect of Corbyn’s expected speech is that it will challenge the idea that it is unacceptable to link the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya with attacks in Britain.

Salman Abedi, accused of setting off the Manchester bomb, is said to be linked to Libyan terror groups. The murderous air assault on Libya in 2011, with Britain in the vanguard, was based on lies and led to chaos.

MPs slam Tories’ Libya intervention ‘failure’

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Even the House of Commons foreign affairs committee said the then prime minister David Cameron had not been «informed by accurate intelligence», and that the assault led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa.

In contrast to Corbyn’s speech, May plans to launch a major offensive to “drive extremism out” of the public sector and civil society by cracking down on “non-violent extremism”. That will mean anyone—in particular Muslims—who criticise British foreign policy will be hounded, harassed and targeted.

Corbyn needs to tear into the brutal imperialist wars of the last 15 years, unmask the falsehoods, torture and murder they are based upon and thereby put forward a real alternative to the Tories.

Combined with a relentless attack on May over social care, the NHS and education, that would make the last two weeks of the election a real contest.

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Jeremy Corbyn at Stop The War protests, Trafalgar Square, London, 2007. David Martyn Hunt under a Creative Commons Licence

The mainstream warnings against the British Labour politician do not hold up to scrutiny, argues Mischa Wilmers. newint.org

Just 2 months ago nobody in Britain could have predicted that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign would morph into the political movement that it has since become. While it looks increasingly likely that he will win the Labour leadership contest, his detractors within the Labour Party are growing anxious. Corbyn, they tell us, is unelectable and what Britain really wants is a (Blairite) centre-ground politician capable of winning general elections. Here are 5 reasons why they are wrong:

Corbyn occupies the centre ground: Alistair Campbell recently warned Labour members that Corbyn is espousing ‘positions that the public just are not going to accept in many of the seats that Labour is going to have to win to get back in power’. However, like many of Corbyn’s Blairite detractors, he declined to mention which policies he was referring to. This is because Campbell and his friends are aware that across a range of key issues – including foreign policy, the economy and the nationalization of public utilities – Corbyn’s views are actually largely in line with public opinion. If the ‘centre ground’ is defined by majority opinion, Corbyn occupies it better than any of his rivals by some margin, and the more discerning of his opponents acknowledge this. Earlier this month the veteran Conservative Ken Clarke warned his colleagues not to underestimate Corbyn, whose popular policies he admitted ‘will be difficult to campaign against’.

Popular political movements are gaining traction globally: All over the world popular political movements are emerging. Whether it’s Bernie Sanders in the US, Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece, people are seeking alternatives to ‘centre-left’ parties whose failure to offer an inspiring vision to counter the Right’s neoliberal narratives and austerity policies has led to a sharp decline in their popularity. In Britain, Jeremy Corbyn has provided a strong focus point for a number of previously scattered grassroots organizations, groups and unions that are campaigning against social injustice and austerity. The likely outcome of this is that Corbyn will mobilize and attract support from sections of the population – particularly young people – which refused to vote at the last election out of a profound disenchantment with mainstream politics.

Corbyn stands the best chance of winning back Scotland: Perhaps the biggest factor which caused Labour to lose the 2015 election was the party’s performance in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party won 56 out of 59 seats on a leftist anti-austerity platform. Unless Labour heeds the advice of Nobel Laureate economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz and presents a strong, unequivocal stance against austerity, it will stand no chance of regaining Scottish seats. Reversing such a resounding defeat will not be easy. But as the only Labour candidate to reject austerity and vote against the recent Welfare Reform Bill, Corbyn is surely best placed to win back Scottish voters who turned their backs on Labour out of frustration at previous leader Ed Miliband’s confused economic message.

Corbyn is well placed to attract disillusioned voters from the United Kingdom Independence party (UKIP): According to conventional wisdom, if Labour wants to win the 2020 election it must regain support from working-class voters in England who voted for UKIP because they felt Ed Miliband was too leftwing. Yet contrary to popular belief, many of UKIP’s 3.8 million voters at the 2015 elections actually hold political views which are to the left of Miliband. A YouGov poll in 2013 found that 73% of UKIP supporters would like the railways to be renationalized and the British Election Study revealed that 77% of UKIP voters agree with the statement that ‘ordinary workers do not get a fair share of the nation’s wealth’. This suggests that Corbyn’s promise to clamp down on corporate tax avoidance and set up a national investment bank to launch a ‘people’s quantitative easing’ programme’ may well prove more popular on the doorstep than his political foes would have us believe.

The mainstream media are not as powerful as they think: Corbyn’s main barrier to power will arguably be the corporate media which is already doing everything in its power to echo the smears of his detractors while avoiding any meaningful discussion of his policies. Yet the more the media attack him, the more his popularity soars in the leadership polls. It is also difficult to see how the press’s savage treatment of ‘Red Ed’ Miliband prior to the general elections could be outdone. This merciless and highly personal onslaught clearly had some effect, with many potential Labour voters choosing to vote for the Conservatives on the grounds that they couldn’t envisage Miliband as a credible prime minister. But despite losing, Miliband – a more awkward figure than Corbyn – still managed to increase Labour’s share of the vote by 1.4%, and that was without the support of a mass movement which Corbyn will likely have behind him.

Furthermore, the power of the mainstream media is being steadily eroded by the emergence of popular social media channels, with important figures on the Left who are supportive of Corbyn – such as Russell Brand and Owen Jones – now able to reach a potential audience of millions without relying on corporate outlets. On the current trajectory it seems likely that by 2020 the power and influence of social media activism will be even bigger than it is today and play a much more important role in the next general election than it did at the last one.

By Mischa Wilmers August 18, 2015

A version of this blog was originally publish on the author’s blog.

Jim Newsham 18 Aug 15

Great analysis although when you see the reaction of the Labour Party hierarchy to someone more left than the new right-wing Labour Party then you get some sense of how the far-more right-wing press will be portraying Jeremy. That said, I believe that Jeremy is a great hope for the country who are beginning to note how wealthy politicians are simply unable to challenge any of the dubious assumptions made by capitalism & its followers. When a former Labour Party PM goes on to own a property portfolio of over £25m then socialism has been left behind. We have reached an era where the majority of MPs feel it is ok to be wealthy and such a backdrop is going to provide massive support for a character like Corbyn who’s political beliefs & determination to change inequalities come well above his own need for wealth, status & success! I admire that and the surge in Labour Party applications suggest that others do too. It is embarrassing to see the rest of the Labour Party squabbling over a done-deal. Corbyn is a certainty in the leadership race so, thankfully, we can move on to looking to build policies which meet the needs of working people as well as policies which seek justice in our world rather than control (which Blair -being a power-monger- always sought). Corbyn is definitely electable. I am 55 and he is the first potential Prime Minister in my lifetime with vision, ideas, and a wish to create a more equitable society. Without Jeremy I would have continued to vote Labour without a shred of interest. Now I believe that the wider world is starting to reject capitalism providing wealth for the wealthy; not concerning itself with looking after the planet; ensuring that the wealthy countries maintain power and control over the rest of the world and, in particular, the resources of the poorer countries. Someone with vision needs to point out that the wealthy are just the people who take more than their fair share. (By global standards the vast majority of the West is too wealthy but the few are disgustingly so.) Corbyn cannot do all this but he will certainly ask plenty of difficult questions of the right-wing. Bring it on!

– See more at: http://newint.org/blog/