Oath of Allegiance

Anyone observing the opening of the new UK Parliament session yesterday will have been aware of the fatuous flummery of absurd rituals. But this is just window dressing, complete with garters, for a more fundamental point: all new members of Parliament must give an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown or else they cannot take their seats. Nobody thinks that the Queen runs Parliament, but this oath acts as a shorthand way by which patriotism and solidarity with the British state is expressed, no matter which government is in power.

The Oath takes one of two forms. The most commonly used is:

I, [member’s name], swear by Almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law. So help me God.

For those whose belief in the Almighty is a little shaky, but who still believe in the majesty of the British state, the version is:

I, [member’s name], do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law.

Being an atheist is now OK, but failing to have the correct national faith is not.

So it is that the Irish republican party, Sinn Féin, boycotts the House of Commons, despite having won seats in the British Parliament. As Mary Lou McDonald, the leader of Sinn Féin, put it, party members would not be willing to ‘swear an oath to a foreign power’.

Jeremy Corbyn, soon to be not leader of the Labour Party, and all other sitting MPs have taken the Oath. But that did not stop him being criticised for failing to pay attention to the Queen’s speech on Christmas Day. This was a sure sign of insufficient patriotism, and one to be included with his other alleged misdemeanours in the vox pop media interviews at the time of the General Election.

The political climate that all this suggests is pretty bad. It gets worse still when you consider the mentality that must underlie the singing of the National Anthem at all big events, especially in sports.

Study the main verse of this obsequious dirge and weep:

God save our gracious Queen!

Long live our noble Queen!

God save the Queen!

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,

God save the Queen.

However, it does not take much deciphering to see that this is not really an expression of undying love for the monarch, although you will not get far in Britain without showing due deference. It is the hope that h/she will persist, but as the head of a victorious, happy and glorious country of ‘us’. The eternal reign – eternal because the Anthem is applied to succeeding monarchs – is therefore a deep, patriotic wish that British power will persist too, and that its magic will enrich all loyal subjects.

British citizens want to count themselves as beneficiaries of such magic and will sing the Anthem. It is an incantation, an expression of exaggerated pride and bolstered self-confidence to give hope for a better future for ‘us’. It is no wonder that their members of Parliament have to take the Oath of Allegiance.

Tony Norfield, 18 December 2019

Politics & the Imperialist Grinding Machine

On 5 April in London, I gave a talk for the ‘Great Moving Left Show’ on the world economy and political responses to how it works. The projector was not working, so I had to conjure up some images verbally. One was of an imperialist grinding machine. Readers will have to excuse my less than expert ability to create exciting graphics, but this is shown below in the first image. It highlights how dominant global economic and political structures – the grinding machine – stop the world’s resources from benefiting humanity. Below that are copies of several slides giving the background to key features of contemporary politics.

The British Labour Party was one topic in this talk.[1] Like many other parties that (sometimes) give the impression of wanting to change things, Labour just ends up oiling the imperial machine or tinkering with it. But if you don’t want to end up in the machine’s output tube, you have to get rid of it. Destroy the power of the machine and you are more likely to get closer to achieving the output society needs from the inputs that are available.

It is difficult to capture the principal aspects of imperialism today in one simple image, or even in several. Among other things to include are the hierarchy of power, the economic and political forms of that power, and the social and political structures that legitimise the system and keep it ticking over.

The image I most often use is my own Index of Power chart, derived from data for around 200 countries and usually given showing the top 20 or so. However, although it is implicit that the big guys will have a much bigger say in running the system as a whole, it does little to map out the connections between countries.

As one way of showing connections, I made a separate table of international trade relationships for the top 20 countries. But this does not directly indicate which ones write the rules for those relationships.

Political dimensions are even trickier to summarise. It is not only that political influence reaches beyond an individual country. Also within a country there must be an allowance for the political deal between the ruling elite and the mass of people. Unless there is sustained state repression, something like a ‘deal’ has to exist in order to make the economic and social structure legitimate, or at least tolerable and able to work without continued political turmoil.

All such things change over time, but the stains of history can remain evident in contemporary life even when the circumstances that brought them about might have disappeared. For this reason, assessing the historical backdrop is critical. This is particularly so in a time when people in the richer countries react to unwelcome changes. They are informed by their political heritage. When this rests on what they think is a deserved privilege in dealing with the rest of the world, they react by demanding that their state restores the status quo ante, rather than seeing that the game is up and putting the legitimacy of the capitalist/imperialist system in question.

The imperialist grinding machine

 

Politics today

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Norfield, 8 April 2019

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[1] I have published a number of articles on this blog about British Labour Party politics, for example here. Use the search option on the right hand side of the page and look for Labour Party, Corbyn, welfare state, colonialism, Zionism, immigration, etc.

Jews, Zionism and Israel

The reason behind the turmoil in the British Labour Party about anti-Semitism is not any actual anti-Semitism among party members. Instead, the turmoil is largely promoted by supporters of Israel who have worries about Jeremy Corbyn, and it is joined by other Corbyn opponents. Here is a leader of a major British political party who supports (some) Palestinian rights and who has dared to criticise the Israeli government for oppressing them. Given that the Labour Party has traditionally been the major pro-Israel force in British politics, one can see why the pro-Israelis have been apoplectic. Issues brought out by this episode (‘series’?) lead me to examine the relationship between being Jewish, Zionism and Israel.

Religion and ethnicity

Judaism is an unusual religion in having an ethnic, or genealogical dimension of how a ‘Jewish’ person is defined, rather than focusing only upon religious affiliation. Religion is commonly a social-political marker, not an ethnic one, although often people follow the religious label, if not the religious practice, of their parents or of the community in which they live. In the cases of Christianity and Islam, anyone who decides to follow the relevant beliefs can become a Christian (Catholic, Protestant, etc) or a Muslim (Sunni, Shia, etc), once they have gone through certain rituals. But it is a more protracted process to become Jewish, and is often bound up with whether one’s mother is also determined as being Jewish. If the mother is not, that does not bar the son or daughter from becoming Jewish. But if the mother is already considered to be Jewish, then automatically her son or daughter is so too, even if that person does not practice Judaism. For example, it is possible to be a ‘Jewish atheist’. The line only seems to be drawn against those who openly practise another religion, who thereby are no longer defined as being Jews.

This genealogical factor is reflected in Israel’s infamous 1950 Law of Return, whereby it is possible for all Jews, both ‘ethnic’ and religious, to go to Israel and gain citizenship. As a 1970 amendment to the Law defines it: ‘For the purposes of this Law, “Jew” means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion’. That amendment also added in the ‘grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew’ for good measure.

Although the genealogical criterion of Judaism is not the same as a purely ethnic definition of ‘Jewishness’, it is something that fits very well with the Zionist political objective of identifying Israel as the ‘homeland of the Jews’, one from which they had supposedly been cast out some two thousand years before. There are many ironies and contradictions in this, not least that early Zionism was mainly atheistic and had been in conflict with Orthodox Judaism. David Ben-Gurion, a future founder of the state of Israel, was also not religious and did not believe in the ‘exile’ story – though by 1948 he had abandoned this view.[1] To add to the mix, one should also note that some branches of Judaism reject the establishment of an Israeli state before the coming of the Messiah, while some Christian Zionists see the ‘ingathering of the exiles’ as a precursor to the Second Coming of Jesus!

Zionist mythology

There is no evidence for any mass expulsion of the inhabitants of ancient Israel, by the Romans or by anyone else. But an ethnic definition of Jewishness seems to have taken root among Zionists who were heavily influenced by the blood and soil racism of 19th century Europe, and who looked to define an ethnic people for their corresponding ‘national home’. (That the Zionists were responding to anti-Semitism and pogroms, especially in Eastern Europe, does not excuse their reactionary views.) Studies showing close links between the DNA of many different groups originating in the Middle East, Jewish and non-Jewish, undermine the notion of a specific Jewish people. Judaism has also long been a proselytising religion, converting people in Europe, Asia and Africa, an inconvenient fact covered up by the story of an ethnic group that must ‘return’ to its lost land.

But let us suppose for a moment that this Zionist mythology were true. Let us imagine, for example, that all the Jewish settlers in Palestine who come from the US, from Poland, from Russia or wherever could claim to trace their bloodlines back to King David. Would this have any bearing on how to assess the state of Israel? It is no justification at all for the expulsion of Palestinians and the seizure of their land after the 1947 UN Plan of Partition or in the 1948 war – in which over 700,000 Palestinians were expelled – or in the subsequent years. Just imagine being kicked out of your home because somebody shows up and claims that their ancestors lived there more than a thousand years ago! Of course, Jewish settlers in Palestine do not need to make this absurd claim; they can just rely upon the power of the Israeli state to drive out, kill or marginalise non-Jews.

Jews, the Holocaust and Israel

Many people who identify themselves as being culturally or religiously Jewish may not support political Zionism. To be more specific, they may not support political organisations and parties labelled Zionist, and especially not the right-wing parties that now dominate Israeli politics. But how many do not support the state of Israel, or do not see it as a necessary haven just in case there is a resumption of murderous anti-Semitism seen in Europe from the early 1930s and in the Holocaust? Those events turned even some prominent socialists and anti-Zionists into supporters of Israel.

The problem with this view is that it takes the crimes of Europeans and asks, even demands, that the Palestinians pay for them! Somehow, the slaughter of Jewish people by Europeans is seen to justify the dispossession of Palestinians from their land. This foundation stone of the state of Israel in 1948 is commonly ignored in public debate. At most, concerns are raised only about the subsequent outrageous injustices and land grabbing of the Israeli regime.

To understand the establishment of the state of Israel one needs to examine imperialist politics, not the Old Testament of the Bible or Hebrew scriptures. Important issues were not so much the efforts of Zionists to designate Palestine as the rightful homeland of ‘the Jews’. More significant were the rabid nationalism that swept Germany in the wake of the post-1918 international treaties that had impoverished and humiliated it, and the more general conditions of the time that had promoted fascism. Attacks on Jewish communities were rife, not only in Germany, and major countries like the US and the UK had also taken steps in their immigration laws to restrict the influx of Jewish, and other, refugees. In that context, the Zionist choice of Palestine as a destination became an attractive option by the time of the post-World War Two deliberations among the major powers.

Imperialist politics

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 that the British ‘Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ is widely seen as the beginning of the process to establish the Israeli state. But while it was the first major concession to Zionist opinion by a big power, its main aim was to build support for Britain’s war effort, both in Europe and the US. It was a deceitful document, pretending also to be concerned with the rights of other communities in Palestine, and it was not seen by the British then as a definite commitment that they could or would need to implement in the future. Above all, the Balfour Declaration was an expression of imperial arrogance, relating to a land that the British had not yet even taken from the Ottomans. However, this seizure was later endorsed by the League of Nations, and the British Mandate for Palestine included the terms of the Balfour Declaration.

In the event, British policy was not especially pro-Zionist in the thirty years after the Balfour Declaration. This was both because there were different factions in the British ruling elite and because its policy was mainly concerned not to ruin important relationships with Arab countries – for example, the UK abstained in the vote on the 1947 UN Plan of Partition. Although the British put down Arab rebellions in Palestine and British military and police commanders usually supported the Zionists, they also limited the immigration of Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. Zionist leaders continued to press their case with the British, but this did not stop their terror attacks on the British in Palestine – notably the King David Hotel bombing in 1946. They also moved to do deals with the French, who, rivals with the British for control of the Middle East, provided Zionist militias with military aid with which to oppose British control.

Zionist leaders were fully aware of the precarious position they would find themselves in with their plans to steal Palestinian land. That problem was to be overcome by a deal with one or more of the major powers. The early, but only partial success was with the Balfour Declaration, with some British statesmen seeing the future Israel as a ‘little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism’, so they were open to such deals. Later, the French would also cooperate with any local force to combat Arab nationalism opposed to its colonial rule in the region. The culmination of these views resulted in the British-French-Israeli plot against Egypt’s Nasser in the 1956 Suez crisis. But when that failed, and the British and French were revealed as second rate powers, the Zionists turned more fully towards cooperation with the US, which was growing concerned about how to control the Middle East.

These days, Israel’s US connection is paramount, exemplified by US support in terms of military supplies, of US vetoes at the UN of any resolution criticising Israel and by the billions of dollars of US government aid and private contributions every year. However, support from European powers is also important for Israel. Europe is sometimes more critical of Israel, but offers special trade deals and, highlighting the contradictions of the ‘Jewish homeland’ supporters, allows Israel to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest and to be affiliated with UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations!

Too much trouble?

Israel was established as a tool for imperialism. It remains one today, but in recent years Israel has become more of an embarrassment than an unquestioned asset. It is a ‘country’ that cannot define its borders, because it always wants to seize more land; a ‘democracy’ that oppresses a large proportion of its citizens on ethno-religious grounds, with discriminatory laws, checkpoints, police brutality and murder; a racist, gangster state that repeatedly threatens destabilising military action in the Middle East and steps beyond its boundaries by interfering in major power politics. Israel has another problem too: recollections of the Holocaust that in past decades had given it so much unquestioned support are fading as a political force. Despite the efforts of pro-Israel lobbies to talk up the threat of anti-Semitism today, and despite the continued acquiescence of mainstream media in covering up its crimes, the foundational non sequitur, Europeans kill, so Palestinians must pay, is no longer enough completely to silence liberal concern about the massacres in Gaza and to prevent questions being raised about the nature of the Israeli state.

Tony Norfield, 22 August 2018

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[1] On these topics, I would recommend the book by Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, Verso, 2009, and also Sand’s more recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, ‘How Israel Went From Atheist Zionism to Jewish State’, 21 January 2017.

The British Labour Party and Israel

Why was Moshé Machover expelled from the Labour Party on 4 October for anti-Semitism? Machover, an emeritus professor of mathematics, was born in Israel and has been a lifelong socialist, anti-racist and critic of Israeli policy. For the Labour Party’s Legal Queries Unit to allege that he has been anti-Semitic is ludicrous, so much so that there has been widespread support for Machover from within the Labour Party itself. But this absurdity reflects two things that stem from a third: imperialist politics.

Israel and imperialist politics

Firstly, there is the attempt by supporters of Israel to label all critics of that 1948 creature of imperialism as being anti-Semitic. This is a longstanding policy of Israeli governments, their foreign embassies and support groups. But this Israeli policy has become more hysterical in recent years as opposition to their oppression of Palestinians has become more widespread, and as Israel has found itself facing a more uncertain future. A series of disasters in the Middle East for imperial policy – from Iraq, to Libya, Syria and the rise of Islamic State – has led the major powers to play a more direct role in the region, a development that threatens to sideline the traditional Israeli role as policeman for these powers.

Secondly, a keystone of UK foreign policy has been to support Israel. This has been based upon Israel’s value in helping undermine Arab nationalism. An early example was the 1956 Suez fiasco, a deal between the UK, France and Israel to stage an invasion of Egypt to try and depose Egypt’s President Nasser. Another little noted example is how Israel fostered the growth of Hamas in the 1980s to undermine the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. This promotion of an Islamist group to defeat an enemy has backfired, as have similar imperial enterprises like backing Al-Qaeda (in Afghanistan, etc) and Islamic State (in Iraq, Syria, etc).

That Israel could play a role for different major powers was evident even before the state’s foundation in 1948,[1] following a resolution from the United Nations to replace the former British Mandate over Palestine and partition the territory.[2] But the creation of Israel was based upon a fundamental injustice: Palestinians were made to pay the price for the European slaughter of Jews in the previous decade![3] From its birth, the military and terror forces of the new Israeli state seized Palestinian land and property, through mass expulsions and murder.

The razing of Palestinian villages and destroying signs of Palestinian culture and society, even uprooting olive groves, tries to construct the Zionist myth of ‘a land without people for a people without land’. These crimes were prettified by the Jewish National Fund, a ‘charity’ that gives Palestinian land to those who claim to be Jewish. Many UK Conservative Party and Labour Party leaders have supported this organisation – most recently Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.[4]

The British Labour Party’s links to Israel were acknowledged in the autobiography of a senior Labour politician, Denis Healey, The Time of My Life, published in 1989. He noted that ‘the Labour Party was overwhelmingly Zionist, and had far closer relations with Israel than the Conservatives – apart from a small group of Tory Zionists such as Churchill himself, Julian Amery and Hugh Fraser’. This relationship was often based upon Labour’s racism towards Arabs, and was supported by Labour’s notion that European Jews could bring ‘civilisation’ to the Middle East in a way that would also be aligned with British interests.[5]

Supporting the Palestinians?

One political party leader for whom endorsing the Jewish National Fund is off limits is Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn. But, to go back to my opening question, how then did Moshé Machover’s expulsion from the Labour Party occur when the leader of the Labour Party supports the Palestinians?

Denials of Palestinian rights by the Israeli state have been so outrageous that one would have to be an accomplished ignoramus, an anti-social psychopath, or an ardent Zionist, not to have any sympathy with the Palestinians. The Israeli oppression of the near two million people in Gaza, which has become the world’s largest prison camp, possibly stands out most. These things have now led to a smaller number of Labour MPs to sign up for membership of the Labour Friends of Israel lobby group.[6] But what form does that sympathy take for Jeremy Corbyn? It is the ‘two-state solution’ and an acceptance of the 1948 deal that set up the Israeli state in the first place.

At the Labour Party conference in September 2017, Corbyn said: ‘Let’s give real support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and illegal settlement expansion and move to a genuine two-state solution of the Israel-Palestine conflict’.

For Corbyn, the ‘50 year’ point only refers to Israel’s extension of its borders to seize yet more land in the 1967 war with other Arab states. Similarly, the ‘settlement’ point refers only to the further seizure of land that has continued since 1967, ones that are illegal even under United Nations law – but violations of which have gone unpunished, given the service that Israel has provided for the major powers that run the world. The failure to recognise the crime of 1948 and the setting up of Israel in the first place – on the majority of Palestinian land – reflects an all-too common view, even among those sympathetic to the Palestinians, like Corbyn.

Getting back to the 1948 set up would endorse the UN decision for the two states, one led especially by the US, but also by the Soviet Union (despite the Balfour Declaration, the UK abstained in the UN’s 1947 vote on partitioning Palestine, not wishing to damage its position with other Arab countries). A 1948 starting point would also leave unchallenged the additional Zionist seizure of land at that time, beyond what was envisaged by the UN’s calculation, let alone the additional annexation of land in later years.

Corbyn’s endorsement of a ‘two state solution’ does not recognise that one of the parties has the imperial jackboot on its neck and a gun to its head in any negotiations. It is also out of bounds for Israel, given the nature of the Israeli state. A state that cannot even define its borders, a state that has an ethnic definition of citizenship, a state that has promoted the influx of hundreds of thousands of subsidised settlers on Palestinian land – that state is hardly likely to agree a return to pre-1967 borders. Nevertheless, a minimum demand on the Israelis to achieve some justice for the Palestinians remains: Give back the land you have stolen!

The imperial modus operandi is that when people rise up against injustice they are killed, or at least prevented from upsetting plans, perhaps by co-opting their leaders. Palestinians have rarely been in the latter, more ‘lucky’ situation, so they remain terrorised and defamed. However, the image of continual Palestinian oppression can still be an embarrassing bloodstain on those who talk about the values of western democracy.

Changing times

For Jeremy Corbyn to raise the issue of Palestine in his Labour Party conference speech might be seen as a breakthrough. Until now, there has not been the slightest indication that the Labour Party would move from its faithful backing of the global power structure that has Israel as its armed guard against Arab nationalism. But the rise to prominence of Corbyn’s view reflects a subtle change in how Israel is now seen by the major powers.

Israel’s increasingly reactionary policies have become a problem for politicians claiming to hold a progressive view, especially under Netanyahu’s Likud Party. No longer can pro-Zionist Labour politicians point to those Potemkin villages, known as kibbutzim, as examples of socialism in action. For every celebration of rejuvenating desert land, there are dozens of Israeli bulldozers destroying Palestinian homes, and systematic brutality meted out to Palestinians by Israeli police, soldiers and settlers. For those of a more conservative outlook, who do not worry about such things, Israel is also beginning to be seen as more of a troublemaker than a useful ally.

The structure of imperial support for Israel was built upon acceptance of its immunity from UN resolutions, no matter what it does, an immunity backed especially by the US. That has worked well before, but now less so, given that a more overtly pro-Israel Donald Trump also tramples liberal opinion in the wider world. If this US backs Israel, and the US is overturning the established order with an ‘America First’ policy, then it indirectly also helps to undermine acceptance of Israel’s policies by the other powers. For now, although maybe not for much longer, the traditional political support for Israel stays in place. But its foundations are being eroded.

These crumbling foundations are the reason the Labour Party machine is now accusing Moshé Machover, a committed socialist and anti-racist, of anti-Semitism. With support for Israel under threat, it is urgent for pro-Israel advocates to argue that being anti-Zionist is also to be anti-Semitic. One lesson from World War Two is that this version of racism is not acceptable in polite company, so this smear is a way of indirectly sustaining support for Israel.

The role Israel plays for imperialism has probably not yet diminished enough to lead UK political parties to criticise its policies in any way that has consequence. In line with this, I would not expect Jeremy Corbyn to reject the absurd allegations against Moshé Machover. The issue is one of imperialist politics, not common sense. Even if Corbyn did, a socialist should not look for a place in the pro-imperialist Labour Party.

Tony Norfield, 26 October 2017

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[1] For example, the French assisted Zionist militias in their war against the British prior to 1948, reflecting the rivalry of the two powers in the region. See James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle that Shaped the Middle East, 2011.

[2] Just to make clear, I do not accept that the United Nations, dominated by the major-powers, can be considered as some kind of neutral or fair arbiter of justice. The British state, much weakened by the mid-1940s, was in no position to manage its Palestine Mandate any longer, which was why it left the decision to the UN. The decision to set up a ‘national home’ for ‘Jewish people’ on Palestinian land was based partly upon Britain’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, a deliberately ambiguous and deceitful document that promised both a Jewish state and that the rights of the local non-Jewish population in Palestine would not be harmed. Labour had the same idea for a Jewish state before this declaration and also fully supported it when it was published.

[3] Germany has been singled out for this slaughter, but this ignores the other western and eastern European countries who also took part in the crime. The refusal of the US and the UK to accept more than a token number of Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s should also be noted.

[4] The notion that Israel is the ‘ethnic homeland’ of people calling themselves Jewish is rubbish. For example, historians such as Shlomo Sand (see his Invention of the Jewish people, 2009) document how followers of Judaism were ardent proselytisers and converted Europeans and Asians, and others, to their faith over many centuries. So, far from all current ‘Jews’ being able to trace back their ethnic heritage to ancient Israel, they mostly come from elsewhere. In any case, the point comes down to imperialism – where the political institutions stand in relation to the major powers – not to ethnicity.

[5] For more on this point, see the excellent article by John Newsinger detailing the historical relationship of the Labour Party to Zionism and anti-Semitism here. 

[6] Al-Jazeera did an exposé of how such groups are used to whitewash Israel and bring down any critics, see here. One of the key Israeli embassy officials involved was recorded as complaining that not enough young people or MPs were now joining Labour Friends of Israel.

Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and the Turing Test

Last night on UK television there was an audience question time and an inquisitor interrogation time (from the supposedly formidable Jeremy Paxman) for both Theresa May, UK Prime Minister, and Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour opposition. These were held separately, not as a debate, owing to May’s risky ineptitude and her increasingly evident weakness. Somewhat to my surprise, they showed that Jeremy Corbyn had managed to learn from his previous grillings how to handle himself much better. In particular, he passed the Turing test easily.

Alan Turing was a British mathematical genius hounded to his death by the UK authorities in 1954. As part of his contribution to understanding science, he proposed a test to judge whether the answers to questions posed could be judged as coming from a human or from a machine/computer. If the answers from the machine were answers that an observer could distinguish from those a human would give, then it had failed the Turing test. These days, many establishment politicians would fail too, as was seen most embarrassingly in the case of Marco Rubio in the US presidential election campaign in 2016, which led to his nickname ‘Marcobot’.

Theresa May, unelected UK prime minister, has also failed to pass the Turing test since her time in office. She is desperately seeking to find legitimacy in the 8 June UK general election and, in the past month especially, her PR advisers have given her a small set of vacuous phrases to use safely and not risk tripping up. So much so that a growing portion of the electorate wonders whether it is hearing a corporate answering machine: ‘Press 1 for Strong and Stable Government, press 2 to Get the Best Brexit Deal Possible, press 3 to oppose a Labour-led Coalition of Chaos’. In the TV discussion last night, Theresa May continued to fail the Turing test.

By comparison, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn looked convincingly human. The UK media attacks on him have been so relentless – a supporter of terrorists, willing to abandon nuclear weapons, not supporting the Queen, etc – that this has raised some popular scepticism about media bias. As a result, Corbyn’s steady message in favour of national welfarism paid for by higher taxes on ‘the few’ seems to have gained some traction in an electorate worried about continued austerity. From a deficit of some 20 percentage points compared to the Conservative party a month ago, Labour is now more like 5-12 percentage points behind, according to the latest set of varied opinion polls. The Conservative message of needing a ‘Strong and Stable Conservative Government’ to lead the UK into the sunny uplands post-Brexit now looks less plausible.

This narrowing lead ahead of 8 June, compared to the previously expected devastating Conservative victory, was one factor that forced Theresa May (unconvincingly) to renege upon a manifesto commitment to curb welfare payments on older generation people who were more likely to be Conservative voters. An electoral lead of some 5%+ might still translate, although far from precisely, into a decent majority of seats for the Conservatives. But it would be far less than they had thought, and so will look like a problem for them. It would also be another stage in the disintegration of traditional UK politics.

Tony Norfield, 30 May 2017

A May Election in June

Prime Minister Theresa May has called a UK general election on 8 June. Given the 2011 law on fixed term elections, which means that it should have instead been in 2020, this was a surprise announcement. The brought forward date has to be agreed by Parliament first, but this will very likely happen, given that the Labour Party must back it or else appear afraid to go to the electorate. However, the bigger questions are what this election will be about and what it reflects about British politics today.

The news media were puzzled, if not annoyed, in the hour or so ahead of May's Downing Street statement. Why did they not know before what was going to happen, or even have any clue? Surely this was not a declaration of war, or the UK’s own missile strike somewhere?! Could it be a resignation? Her slightly unsteady gait and frail looking pose had already led to gossip that she might be about to step down due to ill health. Surely, sacking Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary would not demand a Downing Street declaration. A few minutes ahead of time, the tip off came to limit the media’s blushes of ignorance: it was to call a snap UK general election!

Outside 10 Downing Street, May did another of her performances trying to look a determined and decisive leader. But she remained unconvincing to anyone who has paid attention to events. The snap election was claimed to be necessary to bring about a more strongly positioned government to secure successful Brexit terms with the EU – more of a majority than the comfortable Conservative Party one of 17 House of Commons seats.[1] She claimed there was too much opposition to her planned good deeds in this negotiation within the existing parliament. This rather overlooks the problem that it does not matter what the Brits want, whether 100% of their MPs or not. What matters in the Brexit negotiations is what deal will be agreed by the 27 countries in the rest of the EU.

The UK election has instead been called for another reason, basically the dire state of the British Labour Party. Unable to act as an opposition, Labour has slipped in UK opinion polls and May stands well ahead of Labour’s Corbyn. Labour looks unlikely to win back any seats in Scotland after its huge losses to the Scottish National Party in 2015, and the Conservatives have little more to lose there. Changes in Wales or Northern Ireland will make next to no difference to the UK result. Meanwhile, in the main voting country, England, Labour is in dire straits, having been eaten by UKIP and the Conservatives in 2015, and still looking vulnerable to the Conservatives in the lead up to June 2017. The latest polls show the Conservatives with around 44-46% of the UK vote and Labour with 25-26%.

Tactics based on the latest opinion polls are not the best strategic guides, and things could go wrong for May’s latest gambit. Although probably not much wrong, given the politics of the populace. While just under half the UK voting population is not pro-Brexit, and this could grow now that some of the economic consequences for jobs are dawning, there remains a strong base of anti-immigration Brexiteers among English voters, one to which the Labour Party adapts rather than challenges. For example, so far Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has avoided talking much about immigration: saying it is OK loses him votes; saying it is not OK would embarrass his conscience. A view on Brexit also gets little look in, apart from how it must be the best deal possible, for similar reasons. The trial of moving from being an inconsequential backbencher shuffling in the dust of a moribund left to leading, or even managing, the views of the electorate has clearly been too much for him.

The forthcoming UK general election will be both low level tragedy and farce, and tales told by many media idiots, full of sound and invented fury, signifying nothing new.

Tony Norfield, 18 April 2017

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[1] It is possible, nevertheless, that this majority might have been reduced in coming months. Police investigations are taking place into Conservative Party overspending in a number of constituencies in 2015. This could have rendered invalid some Conservative victories, produced new by-elections and cut their majority.

Corbyn’s National Welfarism

In the days, even weeks, leading up to Remembrance Sunday on 13 November, all public figures in the UK must wear a poppy. This is not actually obligatory; it is just the way things are done. Some 45 million poppies were attached to clothing this year, a total that far outweighs the number of celebrities. If you are not seen wearing one, then perhaps you forgot, perhaps it is on a different jacket, perhaps your mum or dad did not buy you one and your pocket money was insufficient, perhaps you are a household pet, or, heaven forbid, you might have some questions about this totem for honouring/remembering the war dead in their sacrifices for ‘Britain’, otherwise known as British imperialism. Just to make sure he was not numbered among the latter persona non grata, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn made sure that he was wearing a poppy when he appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that day.[1] To reinforce his patriotic credentials, Corbyn also made sure to note that he would be standing at the Cenotaph later on Remembrance Day with a 92-year old friend, a Labour party supporter and veteran of World War Two. Thus began his exposition of how Labour’s policies would meet the demands of the UK electorate.

The interview with Andrew Marr covered lots of questions. Corbyn came out clearly against racism, responding to recent political developments in the US and Europe. In the aftermath of the UK’s Brexit vote, he also stressed the importance of keeping its access to the EU single market and the provisions for workers’ rights existing in the EU. But my main focus here is on how Corbyn’s comments illustrated a common feature of leftwing views in many rich countries, national welfarism.

National welfarism

National welfarism is somewhat different from simple nationalism, which can be summed up as demanding that government policies should benefit the people of a particular country (usually meaning the corporations). Instead, national welfarism cloaks a nationalist policy in progressive phrases and proclaims the need to protect the common people from the depredations of the market. In all cases, national welfarism amounts to a call for the capitalist state to implement such policies, not for a struggle of people to protect themselves from such depredation. Furthermore, it avoids naming names. Rather than singling out capitalism as the problem, and the capitalist state as the enemy’s enforcer, it is a demand for different government policies. It is the stance taken by those who do not like capitalism’s impact on people’s lives, but who do not want to make a fuss about opposing capitalism. One might think this is just letting discretion be the better part of valour, but it is more than that. It is a facile belief that good bits of capitalism can be salvaged from the bad bits of capitalism.

Worse than this, national welfarism pays no attention to whether the state in question is one of the major powers in the world that spends its time oppressing others, either directly, or indirectly in making sure that the general system of oppression and privilege for the major powers remains in place. The reason is that this oppression by their own powerful state is something from which, implicitly at least, the national welfarists would like to benefit.

Answering the questions

Andrew Marr, a pillar of the BBC’s establishment opinion making elite, asked some pertinent questions. Corbyn answered clearly.

Why has there been a political shift to the right in many (rich) countries, and why has the left failed to channel popular anger? Corbyn thought that the previous New Labour agenda was mistaken and could not meet popular concerns, because it ignored the deindustrialisation of Britain and focused on globalisation. This was how he introduced his alternative Labour Party policy.

While Trump in the US and Marine Le Pen in France were in favour of trade protectionism, to stem the loss of domestic jobs, Corbyn countered with the view that there should be new investment in industry and ‘fair trade agreements’. He did not openly endorse tariffs and protectionism, but was very open to other forms of trade control – to make it ‘fair’, of course – which would go back to the Labour left and British Communist Party ‘alternative economic strategy’ programmes of the 1970s and 1980s. In this, he ends up posing foreign countries as the barrier to economic welfare for the Brits, not the market system, and still less capitalism. So the capitalist state should take measures against those who are not playing by the rules that the major powers, such as Britain, have introduced. Environmental concerns were also used to bolster his position. This is the common fashion among radicals these days – and is essentially a dig at China, in line with major power policy – despite the fact that the major powers have done by far the most to destroy the global environment.

Corbyn later criticised Donald Trump for demonising foreign workers, but, despite his anti-racism, he still managed to point to migrant labour as a problem for British workers. Even from his own perspective, he could have more simply said that migrant labour is not the problem, it is the capitalist labour market, and that he would demand the same conditions for all workers, whether migrant or not.

Immigration and UK politics

It was on the explosive popular issue of immigration that Corbyn was most evasive. He posed regional investment as a solution! The implicit logic was that if the state could encourage investment in those areas that were most anti-immigrant (basically, in England, and probably also in Wales), then such sentiment would fade away. This stepped aside from the post-Brexit issue of who is meant to benefit from the national investment policy, while his statement would, of course, be taken as meaning the ‘national’ working class. When asked about whether he agreed with the view of Keir Starmer, Corbyn’s Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, who has argued that immigration should be lower, Corbyn said:

‘I think it [immigration] will be lower if we deal with the issues of wage undercutting, deal with exploitation, but we should also recognise that the migrants that have come to this country work and contribute, and pay taxes, and the NHS would simply not survive without the level of migrant labour, doctors, etc, because we have not invested enough in high skills in our own economy.’

So, migrants are justified on the basis of their economic contribution, but there is also the hope that training domestic workers, and enforcing higher wages, will cut immigrant job applications! This is the national welfarist’s solution to the anti-immigration outlook of his electorate. Just in case you thought that Corbyn was ignoring the demand from a sizeable chunk of that electorate for immigration to be checked, even reversed, he wants to stress that his policies will help do just that.

In a final, summary comment, Corbyn makes the broader points that his economic policy is for ‘left behind, broken Britain, poverty Britain’, one that will oppose the Conservative government’s policies on the National Health Service, etc, and appeal to the electorate that there really is an alternative that the Labour Party under Corbyn can implement. But there’s the rub. How to reconcile the predatory demands of capitalism and imperialism with the social welfare outlook of the reformer, while not giving too much ground to popular reactionary nationalism that the middle class, for now, still finds unacceptable?

Tony Norfield, 16 November 2016

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[1] Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Marr starts around the 16-minute mark in this video.

A Dreadful Waste of Money

'Crowdfunding' has become common in recent years to accumulate small sums of money from many people to achieve a particular objective. So far, so social and, potentially at least, progressive. But what is one to think of the reported 180,000-plus people who have recently joined the British Labour Party at a cost of £25 each, giving it some £5 million? Even with the lower value of sterling, that is a dreadful waste of money.

The Labour Party deserves disdain, at a minimum, even if one were ignorant of its blood-strewn history as a defender of (British) imperialism when in government. In all manner of wars and subterfuges, from the partition of India, to Vietnam, to Ireland, to Iraq and the Middle East in general, the Labour party has been the proponent of, or an ally in, a wide variety of imperial crimes.
An apparently saintly Jeremy Corbyn, embattled leader of the Labour Party, shares the same sins. Apart from being a member of the Labour Party for more than 30 years, he is now a member of the Privy Council. This Council includes senior political figures from all major parties, who are informed about the ill-doings of the British state and pledge not to tell. The oath is as follows:
 

“You do swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful Servant unto the Queen’s Majesty, as one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal, but you will let [ie stop] and withstand [ie prevent] the same to the uttermost of your Power, and either cause it to be revealed to Her Majesty Herself, or to such of Her Privy Council as shall advertise Her Majesty of the same. You will, in all things to be moved, treated, and debated in Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion, according to your Heart and Conscience; and will keep secret all Matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated of secretly in Council. And if any of the said Treaties or Counsels shall touch any of the Counsellors, you will not reveal it unto him, but will keep the same until such time as, by the Consent of Her Majesty, or of the Council, Publication shall be made thereof. You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance unto the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates. And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to Her Majesty. So help you God.”

Corbyn's principal divergence from this blood-oath loyalty to the British state shortly after becoming Labour Party leader was ... not to kneel before the Queen. Perhaps his knees were playing him up a bit.

My message to those who have already pledged their £25 to the Labour Party, or may do so, is that they would have a much better chance of a positive outcome by betting on a three-legged horse next running in the Grand National.

Still better a reward would be secured by purchasing, reading and reflecting upon an informative book by, admittedly, a right-wing, former Labour Party member, Edmund Dell: A Strange Eventful History, Democratic Socialism in Britain, Harper Collins, 2000. It should be read with critical eyes (what should not?), but this book is well-written, full of enlightening information and is available at much less than the otherwise wasted £25.

Tony Norfield, 21 July 2016

Origins of the UK Welfare State

The golden age of the British Labour Party was the 1945-51 Labour government. So it is worth noting some little known aspects of its policies to cast some light on the political background to the modern day resurgence of ‘Corbynism’. Highlights of this administration in British popular consciousness are the introduction of the welfare state, establishing the NHS and a pension system. While there were economic problems in spending on welfare, since the UK was essentially bankrupt in 1945, the Labour government rose to the challenge. How did they do this? By using British imperial power!

One of the 1945-51 Labour government’s priorities was to maintain Britain’s imperial role. For good measure, this also included re-establishing French and Dutch colonial power in Asia, as a sign that the status quo ante could be revived in Burma, Malaya, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. Using colonial Indian troops and Japanese troops to bring this about highlighted British politicians’ pragmatism and flair. Who else would have come up with the idea of defeating anti-colonial nationalists with soldiers both from a colony and from a recently defeated imperialist power? A stroke of imperial genius![1]

Although these events might seem to be an unfortunate foreign policy to liberal souls, having nothing to do with progressive social policies at home, in fact the two things were closely linked. Just look at how the new welfare state was financed.

Britain’s finances in 1945 depended upon foreign loans in 1945 amounting to £2,100m, or a massive 20% of GDP (note that £1 used to be worth something in those days). Of this sum, £1,100m was from the US. It was not exactly enthusiastic about Labour’s spending plans, but it was happy that the Brits were playing a necessary role worldwide in suppressing ‘communism’. For example, apart from the colonial efforts, think of Britain’s role in the defeat of Greek radicals and establishing a military dictatorship after 1945. So, history will record that the US played a role in funding the setting up of the UK welfare state! Another £250m was from Canada, which was both politically close to the UK and had done well out of the Second World War. Significantly, Britain’s colonies ‘lent’ £750m through the financial mechanism of the Sterling Area that gave them no choice but to do so. These were borrowings by Britain whose international value was reduced when sterling’s exchange rate against the US dollar fell in later years.[2]

After 1945, the welfare system quickly became unaffordable on the basis of Britain’s economy, especially when Labour increased defence spending during the Korean War. Apart from charges for prescriptions of medicines, something that led to ructions in Labour’s ranks and the resignation from government of Labour saint Aneurin Bevan in 1951, it also led to several years of rationing goods even more stringently than during the war. Above all, it prompted ever more nefarious plans to milk the colonies for economic resources in addition to the previous Sterling Area financial rip offs. Details on the former are set out in my article on this blog, 'Labour's Colonial Policy', 7 December 2014.

That is some of the historical background to typical Labour ‘progressive, alternative’ policies. It is based on using Britain’s privileged position in the world economy to deliver benefits to the British populace, completely consistent with Britain’s imperial role and nothing that could be described as a socialist view of policy in the world economy, far less anything that is anti-capitalist.

Jeremy Corbyn may know the history, in which case being a longstanding, proud member of the Labour Party raises a few questions. If he does not know the history, then it would reflect the more widespread arrogance, all appearances to the contrary in his case, of assuming that the rest of the world owes the Brits a living.

Tony Norfield, 8 October 2015

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[1] I am not making this up. See Christopher Bayley and Tim Harper’s book, Forgotten Wars: the End of Britain’s Asian Empire, Allen Lane, London, 2007.

[2] There are few studies of these embarrassing (for Labour loyalists) events. One accessible source, written from a pro-capitalist market, although strikingly critical, perspective, is Edmund Dell, A Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain, Harper Collins, London, 1999, especially Chapter 7.

Labour ‘Leadership’ and British Politics

The British media is focused on Jeremy Corbyn, the radical outsider who, according to opinion polls, might win the Labour Party’s leadership vote. That vote is in about seven weeks’ time, so don’t hold your breath. But it is worth making some comments on what this reveals about British politics.

Most of the Labour leadership contenders make Ed Miliband look like a charismatic guru who could inspire followers to walk over burning coals and not feel a thing. By comparison, Corbyn is an exception, at least in having a personality and some political beliefs. I would only point out that his political beliefs have not prevented him from remaining a Labour Party Member of Parliament for more than thirty years. Just consider what that means. So many years and so many crimes, either committed by, or supported by, the party to which you belong. Was the Labour Government’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq weird anomalies – against which a critical voice could build an effective opposition? Or would history judge instead that Labour has always supported British imperialism’s interests and that dissident voices reflected naivety at best?

However, Corbyn’s dissident beliefs on Iraq and Palestine, among other things, are not the basis of his support, either in his London constituency or among ordinary Labour party members in this leadership contest. Instead, that support comes from his anti-austerity stance. Yet while his inner-City constituency might support Corbyn’s position on opposing cuts in welfare payments, the rest of the UK does not. Against his stance, one has to consider why the other Labour leadership contenders basically support the Conservative government on the need to slash welfare payments, something summed up by the recommendation of Harriet Harman, acting Labour leader, to abstain in the recent Parliamentary vote on welfare cuts. The Conservative government’s proposals reflected not just a Conservative prejudice, but also a view that they would go down well with their supporters and others. Recall that, in the May 2015 UK general election, close to 50% of the British electorate voted either for the Conservatives (36.9%) or for UKIP (12.6%).

This is the substance of the horror expressed in the news media, by Tony Blair and others who are shocked by Corbyn’s rise to prominence in the polls. A vote for Corbyn as Labour leader will make Labour even more unelectable! It is not a question of his anti-New Labour beard, or even his opinion that the government should discuss with Hamas and Hezbollah. The key point is that he has failed to reflect in his political stance the fundamental conservatism of the British electorate.

It will take an eruption some years in the making even to begin to alter the scene. Perhaps that will come when this Conservative government eventually encounters its own ‘Poll Tax’ moment, a wall that Thatcher hit after believing that British politics was at her command. But, at close to the peak of her power, even she could not make her favourite adviser, Alan Walters, like Caligula’s horse, a consul and instead lost Nigel Lawson, her once-feted Chancellor. This miscreant group of slimeballs has less ability. It is full of low-grade chancers, not least Boris ‘water cannon’ Johnson, so it could unwittingly contrive to generate protest from the UK populace. However, personally, I do not bet on that eventuality making any real difference.

Tony Norfield, 25 July 2015
(some small amendments to the text on 31 July)