(Originally published on The Sharpener)

The Euston Manifesto, officially launched today, proclaims itself as a way forward for “the left” – and is again defended by one of its writers, blogger and Manchester University Professor Norman Geras, over on the Guardian’s website.

Fine – a laudable aim. The British left has needed a way forward ever since the gang of four split the Labour party, a problem only compounded by the fall of the Soviet Union and Tony Blair’s careful guidance of the party towards the centre ground. The British left has to seriously reconsider its approach to the promotion of socialist ideals, and to what parts of the old left-wing obsessions are likely to be acceptable to the electorate in this post-Thatcherite age of rampant capitalism.

Obsessing over the Iraq war achieves none of this. M’colleague Garry has covered one part of the problem, but there’s another, broader one: the Iraq war is an irrelevance to the left’s attempts to revitalise itself after a quarter of a century of what amounts to a repeated defeat of left-wing ideology in successive British elections. It is an irrelevance to what the drafters of the Euston Manifesto profess to be their main aim.

Was Ken Livingstone elected Mayor of London first time around because he’s a socialist? Bollocks – it’s because we all knew it would piss Tony Blair off, and the candidates from the other two main parties were crap. Was George Galloway elected at the last general election because he was a socialist? Likewise bollocks – that was about the Iraq war and the government’s response to terrorism, not his economic beliefs.

This is the real crisis of the British left, not Iraq: the irrelevance of socialism to the modern political system. On the economic front, the right has won, and the left has little chance of a resurgence.

So where to next? Is the launch of a manifesto seemingly based on the Bartlet Doctrine from the fictional West Wing President’s second inaugural address seriously the best the British left can come up with – a wishy-washy, well-meaning but utterly impractical belief in international humanitarian interventionism? What about domestic policy? What about left-wing strategies for helping the poor of THIS country, which used to be what the British left was supposed to be all about?

The Iraq war has happened, whether you agreed with it or not. None of its western instigators are going to face prosecution. So get over it already.

The current insurgency is not thanks to the illegality (or otherwise) of the war. It’s due to the instability that removing a dictator who ruled an articifically-constructed country packed with internal religious and ethnic tensions was bound to produce (even if not necessarily to quite these extremes). If anyone with power had listened to Lawrence of Arabia after the first world war we’d never have been in this mess.

Take away the presence of foreign armies, what is happening in Iraq now is what happened in Yugoslavia after the fall of communism. That was another artificial construct of a country held together through the fear of the state, and fear of the state alone. Once the power of the state was destroyed, in both Iraq and Yugoslavia the suppressed intenal tensions rose to the fore.

Whereas other former Soviet or dictator-run states managed a peaceful transition to post-dictatorship existence (notably Czechoslovakia, peacably dividing itself along cultural lines into the Czech Republic and Slovakia), in many others similar tensions to those of Iraq continue, from Ukraine’s (now apparently failed) Orange Revolution to east Germany’s resentment of the west of the country, the Baltic states’ ongoing difficulties in accepting their Russian minorites as their own to Spain’s post-Franco problems with the Basque seperatists, the partition of India after the British Empire withdrew to the continuing problems endemic in the ex-Soviet central Asian states, mostly held together purely through fear and force by post-communist dictatorships.

The thing that has to be accepted is that Iraq is filled with numerous different cultural identities, split on loosely geographical lines. The most obvious are Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish. The logical solution is to divide the country between the three, and create three new states – ignore the oil factor, that can be solved through negotiation or creating a loose alliance between the three along the lines of the devolved United Kingdom. The chaos and bloodshed of the partition of India could, under the supervision of an international force, be avoided – as long as all three groups were able to gain from the partition.

But when it comes to the ongoing arguments in the west – especially in Britain and America – even these incredibly vague generalisations seem continually to be ignored, with the whole debate over the situation in Iraq divided purely into “pro-war” and “anti-war” camps, both of which repeatedly misrepresent the other and assume that only their interpretation of events is correct.

Me? I don’t care for either. I didn’t support the war, nor did I oppose it. I simply realised that I didn’t know enough about an incredibly complex situation to form a viable opinon. I still don’t – largely thanks to having got thoroughly bored of the whole thing before the invasion officially started and having changed the channel whenever Iraq news has come on for at least the last two years – which is why I so rarely discuss the bloody thing.

What I do find incredibly irritating is when people from either side start generalising about people’s attitudes towards the Iraq situation. The Euston Manifesto is a prime case in point, in that it misses the point entirely – despite having been written by a bunch of people who are obviously intelligent and whose obsessions with Iraq means they know far more than I.

The point about the divisions on the left is not that there is a pro- and anti-war split. It is that the left as a whole has somehow lost the overarching socialist ideology which once held it together. Although there are still a few Marxians knocking around – including a few of the contributors to this site – the majority of the people who currently make up the left no longer have any real unifying political ideology.

The Euston Manifesto proclaims itself an attempt to provide a framework for this much-needed new left-wing ideology. But while Eustonite Oliver Kamm’s ideas of anti-Totalitarianism may – in the broad sense – be laudible, and while the Bartlet Doctrine may sound fine on TV, for any new codification of what it means to be left-wing in Britain in the early 21st century to be successful, it has to tackle issues in Britain, not in distant countries of which we know nothing.

After all, if anyone really cared as much about Iraq as the Eustonites seem to think, there’s surely no way in hell Labour would have been voted back into power a year ago. So why do they feel the need to bother? All they are doing is focussing on a single symptom of the left’s fragmentation, not the disease as a whole.

So says Home Secretary Jacqui Smith on The Andrew Marr Show just now.

I’m confused, Ms. Smith. How can the terrorist threat be growing? We’ve been fighting the terrorists constantly for the last six and a half years. How come the threat they pose is increasing?

Surely you can’t be tacitly admitting that government policy in Iraq and Afghanistan has been making Britain more of a target? Surely you can’t be suggesting that the huge loss of life and massive expenditure fighting two wars in two far-off countries (not to mention the increased counter-terrorism measures at home and collusion with other powers around the world) has been a waste of time?

Nah – surely not. After all, we’ve repeatedly been told by the government that the Iraq war had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks in London on 7th July 2005. The terrorist threat must simply be growing organically, independent of government policy, like a particularly virulent form of Japanese knotweed.

Ho hum. It seems there’s nothing we can do to stop the terrorists. A strange admission for a Home Secretary to make…

This post is from Dan Hardie:

Do you like reading fine words? Here is the Prime Minister on the subject of Iraqi ex-employees of the British Government, speaking in the House of Commons on October 9th, 2007: ‘I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances, exposing themselves and their families to danger. I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff, who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in what we know are uniquely difficult circumstances.’

Fine words. What about deeds?

A small number of Iraqis – fewer than a dozen, according to people close to the operation who are in contact with me- were removed from Iraq in the early autumn of 2007. Since the Prime Minister’s admirable declaration of October, how many Iraqi ex-employees have been evacuated from Iraq? According to all the Iraqis that I am in contact with: none.

Here are the words of an Iraqi employee in Iraq, emailing me, today: ‘I am still in Iraq…I hear nothing from your Government yet!’

Here is what this man was told on February 3 by a conscientious British Civil Servant, out in Iraq to arrange the evacuation of Iraqi ex-employees and clearly shocked by the lack of progress: ”I’m sorry that everything is taking so long to complete. Please note that we are waiting to hear what happens next from London and I can assure you all that I will personally contact you as soon as I receive instructions from London to confirm the next arrangements.’**

Here is why he is hiding: ‘They (the militia) keep asking my relatives and my family’s neighbors about me and they keep moving in my family’s street and keep their eyes on our home… they told them: anyone know anything about A__ he should tell us immediately and also they said: we will never give up until we catch A__ .’

And here is what the Right Honourable Bob Ainsworth, Minister of State for Defence, wrote to David Lidington, MP, about this same man on 16th January: ‘Mr Hardie expresses concern over the handling of a claim for assistance by a former employee of British Forces, Mr A_ … Mr A_ is eligible for the assistance scheme, and *we have passed his details on to the Border andmmigration Agency* who will take forward his request for resettlement in the UK via the Gateway programme. Assuming that there are no problems with Mr A__’s immigration checks he should be able to leave Iraq *by the end of January…’ *I added the emphasis, and I can also say that I have it in writing from the MoD that there were no problems with Mr A__’s immigration checks.

The Border and Immigration Agency is the Home Office Agency handling the last phase of the operation to resettle Iraqi ex-employees. And it is the BIA, according to every source of information that I have, that is delaying the evacuation of the Iraqis.

It is also supposed to be the Home Office that is co-ordinating the provision of housing to those Iraqis who do get resettled in the UK. In the House of Lords last month there was a debate on Iraq at the request of Lord Fowler, whom I had briefed on Iraqi ex-employees. Lord Chidgey, later backed by the Earl of Sandwich, asked a very pertinent question of the Foreign Office Minister Lord Malloch Brown, and he did not get a good answer: ‘…on the resettlement of Iraqis at risk under the Gateway Protection Programme, the Minister will be aware that its success is dependent on a sufficient number of local authorities participating. There is considerable concern that this is not the case at present. Will he advise what steps the Government are taking to ensure that local authorities will come forward?’

There are many operational and logistical difficulties in the way of an operation: I know that. But the Government has known about these people for at least six months, and has been publicly committed to helping them for over four months. That is enough time to plan for the difficulties- far more time than you usually get in a war.

The Home Office is dawdling while people are threatened with death.This is either incompetence in the face of a crisis, or it is a deliberate policy of putting bureaucratic obstacles in the face of fugitives. Neither is acceptable.

And beyond that, the policy itself is being used to keep out Iraqis who can prove that they worked for British forces, and who can prove that their lives are at risk as a result. One man, Hamed, worked for British forces on Shaibah Logistics Base for over two years, as the Government accepts. He was threatened by the militias, and gunmen went to his house, so he moved his family to Syria and slept on the base’s floor. He continued to work for the British. Hamed finally was given ‘notice to quit’ Shaibah when the base closed, and fled to Syria, where he cannot legally work and where he and his family are safe (so far) but hungry. The British Government knows who Hamed is. A British Army NCO who knew him has confirmed every detail of his story to me, saying that he knew that Hamed had reported the threats against him to the military authorities. The Government has written to Hamed to reject any claim for help, since he was ‘not directly employed’ by the military.

Another man, Waleed, was directly employed by the military, in 2005 and 2006. He worked as an interpreter for one Army unit for its six month tour, during which time he was fired upon and chased by militiamen as he made his way to the base; he started work for a second unit, after which he received a threat on his mobile phone detailing where he lived, what he did, and what would happen to him if he ‘collaborated’ any more. He was also hunted in Iraq, and has also fled to Syria. A British Government letter, which I have seen, informed him that he would not be assisted since he had not worked for the twelve-month period specified by the Government’s policy- which, alas, the militias do not seem to respect.

We got the Government to admit to its moral responsibilities. Now we have to get them to match their deeds to their words.

Please write a letter to your MP. His or her address is The House of Commons, Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA. If you don’t know who your constituency MP is, go here and type your postcode in. When you’ve sent a letter, follow it up with an email: his or her address will normally be SURNAMEINITIAL@parliament.uk – for example BROWNG@parliament.uk

Two or three days after you have written the letter, call the Parliamentary switchboard on 0207 219 3000 and ask for your MP’s office. Repeat your concerns to the secretary or research assistant you speak to (and be nice: most of these people work damn hard for little reward), check that your letter has been received, and politely request that the MP ask questions of Ministers and reply to you. In your email, your letter, and your phone calls, *you must be courteous*: insulting an MP or a research assistant will discredit this cause. Talking points for the letter are below:

– The Prime Minister announced a review of British policy towards its Iraqi ex-employees, due to the threats of murder they faced, on August 8th 2007, and he announced a change in that policy on October 9th, 2007. The Foreign Secretary made a more detailed policy statement on October 30th, 2007.
– Nearly four months later no Iraqis who have applied under the scheme have been evacuated from Iraq.
– Not one Iraqi ex-employee living as an illegal immigrant in Syria or Jordan has been resettled under the scheme.
– A debate in the House of Lords on 24th January 2008 contained several references to resettlement being blocked by the failure of the Home Office to provide housing in the UK. The Home Office has had between four and six months to plan for this eventuality: it is inexcusable that they have not done so.
– Would the MP please put down written Questions to the Home Secretary asking why the Home Office is unable to live up to the Prime Minister’s publicy expressed commitment to rehouse Iraqi ex-employees whose lives are at risk for having worked for British forces?
– Would the MP please write in private to the Home Secretary, and to the Immigration Minister, Liam Byrne MP, asking what provision their department has made to implement a policy decided in early October, and further asking them if they are aware that lives are at risk and that rapid action needs to be taken?
– Would the MP also please write to the Foreign Secretary and the Defence Secretary asking how many Iraqis who are ex-Employees of their departments have been resettled, and asking why Iraqis who are at risk for having worked for British forces are being abandoned for having ‘worked for less than 12 months’?
– Can the MP please forward these letters to the Prime Minister, who personally approved the change in policy.
– And finally, can the MP please reply to you with details of any Government response.
– If you want: you can give your MP my name and email address (danhardie.blog@gmail.com) and tell them that I am in contact with a number of Iraqi ex-employees inside and outside Iraq, none of whom have received help from the Government, and that I would be happy to brief them with confidential details of these cases, either by telephone, email or in person at their Parliamentary offices. They should feel free to contact me.
– When you get a reply to your letter, email me (again, at danhardie.blog@gmail.com) – it’s very important that I know which MPs are sympathetic and what the Government is telling them. And email me if you have anything else that needs saying. Thank you.

So the British government has admitted that they’ve twice been in breach of the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances over extraordinary rendition flights. And Foreign Secretary David Miliband has – bless him – said sorry for the “accidental” misinformation.

Not, of course, sorry to the people being extraordinarily rendered, whoever they might be – nor for breaking international law…

And our dear Prime Minister has also weighed in, eloquence personified (is he getting lessons from Donald Rumsfeld?)

It is unfortunate that this was not known and it was unfortunate it happened without us knowing that it had happened but it’s important to put in procedures [to ensure] this will not happen again… We share the disappointment that everybody has about what’s actually happened

But admitting a couple of flights landing in transit on the remote UK territory of Diego Garcia is somewhat different to the main accusation – that the UK itself was used as a stop-off point. What about the 73 to 200 other flights that our current beleaguered Chancellor – as Transport Secretary – and the National Air Traffic Service noted had been identified by campaigners as having potentially been used for rendition back in March 2006?

The question asked two years ago by Lib Dem MP Michael Moore (no relation), and quoted in that last linked piece, remains entirely pertinent:

A fundamental question remains unanswered. Has the UK government actually asked the United States how many individuals have been rendered through Britain? If this hasn’t been asked, then why on earth not?

Saying sorry for a couple of accidental (honest, m’lud) breaches of international law is all very well and good. But what about the other 200 potential rendition flights via the UK itself?

As I noted a year and a bit back, the UN regulations on “enforced disappearances” (aka state kidnappings), explicitly state that:

Acts constituting enforced disappearance shall be considered a continuing offence as long as the perpetrators continue to conceal the fate and the whereabouts of persons who have disappeared and these facts remain unclarified [emphasis mine]

Now that the British government has admitted that it hasn’t got a clue what’s going on, can we expect a full and thorough independent inquiry? Because not to investigate further having admitted incompetence on this issue would, surely, be to stick two fingers up at the UN by refusing to clarify the issue, and thus to deliberately stay in breach of international law.

Plus, as the EU’s investigation into extraordinary renditionnoted:

It is implausible, on the basis of the testimonies and documents received, that certain European governments were not aware of the activities linked to extraordinary rendition on their territory

Yet this appears to be precisely what David Miliband is claiming to be the case.

And so another question must be asked: if a foreign power can land an illegal cargo on British territory without the British government’s knowledge – as appears to be the excuse here – that flagrant lapse in security is in itself surely worthy of immediate, urgent investigation? Isn’t that an indication of criminal incompetence at a time of heightened threats from foreign sources? Shouldn’t heads roll?

I await the announcement of an inquiry with baited breath… (And precisely no expectation of one coming…)

Update: This. Spot on, from the really rather good Obsolete.

Spotted in a decent French article on Kosovo’s independence, a throwaway line that made me ponder:

L’indépendance du Kosovo se fera sous supervision internationale. Malgré ces divisions, l’Union européenne a décidé, sans l’aval de l’ONU, de déployer au Kosovo une mission de quelque 2 000 policiers et juristes pour « accompagner » les débuts de l’indépendance du Kosovo.

Or, in other words:

The independence of Kosovo will be under international supervision. Despite this, the European Union has decided, without UN approval, to deploy in Kosovo, a mission of some 2000 policemen and lawyers to “accompany” the beginnings of the independence of Kosovo. [emphasis mine]

Of course, a significant reason why the anti-war protests back in 2003 felt so justified to so many was the lack of a UN resolution supporting military action against Saddam Hussein in Iraq. There are no such protests about unilateral military action in Kosovo – nor have there really ever been during the last decade of NATO deployments there.

Is this because Kosovo is too low-profile for anyone to really care – or is there a more significant, wider-ranging reason?

Kosovo has declared independence. Many western countries – including the UK and US – are likely to declare their official recognition. Russia has explicitly stated the declaration to be illegal – and China has also made disapproving noises.

With two members of the UN Security Council opposed to Kosovo’s independence, it cannot be recognised by the UN – and so will not legally be a state, despite thinking it is. Likewise, the situation in Darfur is officially not a genocide (despite all the evidence) thanks to the UN having failed to declare it as such – partially thanks to pressure from China, keen to preserve her arms trade.

In situations such as these, is it acceptable to bypass the UN? If so, why here and not five years ago in Iraq? And, if bypassing the UN is sometimes acceptable, what useful purpose does this supposed final arbiter of international law actually serve any more? And does the lack of protests over military action in Kosovo indicate an acknowledgement of this?

For the record, I despise this regime more than words can express.

What in hell’s name are we doing assorting with such people? This kind of wanton, gleefully unjust barbarity puts them on a par with the Taleban, while the 9/11 terrorists were primarily Saudi. Yet rather than invade to overthrow the bastards, we faun in front of them with full red carpet treatment and sell them billions of pounds’ worth of high-tech (and not so high-tech) weaponry, backed up with bribery and corruption.

Yes, getting oil’s lovely. But it’s not THAT lovely, surely?

(Yet another reason why I don’t write about the middle east – it simply enrages and disgusts me too much…)

Dan Hardie has the latest, following recent (rather odd) newspaper rumours of a change in government policy on the UK’s attitude to those who have worked for the British army in Iraq, and who now face torture and death as a result.

As David Cameron has (literally) just said in the Commons, “people who have risked their lives for Britain should never be let down by Britain”. The thing to remember, however, is that it’s not just the interpreters who have risked their lives, but every Iraqi who has done any kind of job for the army out there. They should not be let down either.

Oh, and the venue for tomorrow’s meeting’s had to change at the last minute.

So, Gordon’s cunningly timed his announcement of troop withdrawals for the day of the shadow Foreign Secretary’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference – who’d have thought it?

But amidst all this playing politics over Iraq – a Blair legacy that neither Brown nor Cameron have any desire to inherit – attention has shifted from the more pressing concerns. British forces haven’t been in central Basra for a good month now, based instead at the airport on the outskirts, and now there’s going to be 1,000 less of them. What little impact they were still having, what little security they could still provide, is being further eroded.

Retreats are never pretty – but why are we leaving so many men and women behind? The Iraqi support workers who have been helping the British army, often not out of ideology but necessity, have once again been forgotten as attention has shifted to conference season and silly speculation about elections and referenda.

But they’re still there, and they and their families are still facing death and torture on a daily basis, with no help whatsoever from the British government.

So, remind your MP about the meeting at the Commons on Tuesday 9th October. Pester them. Get them to go and make a real difference to people’s lives, rather than wasting time on petty political point-scoring at the conferences.

The Iraq war was always going to be unpopular, it’s turned into a disaster – let’s salvage what little moral credibility we still can before its’ too late.

When we pulled out that time, we tried not to leave anyone behind – the chap in charge of the unfortunate rear-guard even popping back in a motor-boat the day after the evacuation finished to see if anyone was still about.

Hell – we even got a decent chunk of the French out.

There was no particular reason to bother rescuing the French types who’d been helping fight the Nazis. They’d failed to defend their own country, we’d tried to help out but were unsuccessful, and escaped by the skin of our teeth. To try and get the French out as well risked our own troops, and extended the evacuation by a dangerous couple of extra days.

But, of course, it was the right thing to do. We’d joined the war to help out our allies across the Channel, after all, given some hope of proper assistance, but failed. We could have just cut and run entirely, and let the French try to clear up their own mess (even though, by then, they didn’t have much hope) – but that wouldn’t have been the done thing, would it?

If we could rescue several tens of thousands of Frenchmen using fishing boats sixty-odd years ago, I can see no reason why we can’t help out those few hundred Iraqi chaps who’ve been working as translators, cooks, and miscellaneous support staff for the British army in Basra now that we’ve begun our Iraq Dunkirk. To leave them behind to face the wrath of the insurgents would be akin to leaving the French army on the beach, chugging away while waving, laughing, pulling the odd moonie and shouting back to them with heartening cries of “chin up!” as the Luftwaffe circle vulture-like and the Panzerdivisions lumber over the horizon.

Here’s a reminder, here’s the link to write to your MP for free.

As regular readers will know, I usually couldn’t give tuppence for the situation in Iraq – it’s bored the hell out of me since before it even started to the extent that I’ve been neither for nor against it since around March 2003.

But this is potentially the most cowardly and pathetic media-led action seen in a decade of a media-led government – to avoid a few days’ worth of overblown tabloid headlines about an influx of Iraqis, the British government is prepared to abandon loyal allies and their families to torture and death. It shouldn’t have to be pointed out (though sadly it is), but whether you supported the war or not, that’s simply not on.

I mean, what other explanation can there be for this pile of wilfully-ignorant, almost precisely wrong in every way piece of abject dross?

“The most nauseating aspect of the campaign is the way we are repeatedly told that the Iraqi interpreters worked for ‘us’.
Who exactly is meant by ‘us’? In common with millions of other Britons, I did not want the Iraq war, an illegal invasion of a sovereign state engineered and egged on by a tiny minority of fanatical neoconservatives whose first loyalty was not to Britain but to the cause of Pax Americana.”

I gave up reading the Grauniad several months ago, so I didn’t realise it had turned into a satirical journal – that’s a pretty fine pastiche of the American pro-war right’s standard version of the supposed rabid idiocy of anti-war liberals. Because, I mean come on – no one could write that sort of rubbish with a straight face and genuinely mean it, could they?

But wait – it gets better!

“The interpreters did not work for ‘us’, the British people, but for themselves – they are paid around £16 a day, an excellent wage in Iraq – and for an illegal occupying force. Let’s not cast them as heroes. The true heroes in Iraq are those who have resisted the invasion of their country.”

Yes – you did read that right. Neil Clark just called the nutters detonating car bombs in crowded markets “heroes”.

*applause*

Go read it – it’s fantastic. It’s almost enough to make me want to begin to wholeheartedly support the war, donate all my savings to the Republican Party, plaster my flat with big posters of George W in flight gear, and to chemically castrate and set fire to every single liberal (whether with a small or a large “L” and in the modern and the classical senses, just to make sure) in an attempt to prevent the likes of Clark ever breeding and polluting our world with their gloriously idiotic views ever again.

In more sensible news, read Dan Hardie’s latest update on the campaign, and watch this, courtesy of the decidedly anti-war Tim Ireland (or, in Neil Clark world, Tim Rumsfeld):

See also Mr Eugenedes on the glorious Mr Clark, and if you can be bothered head over to the fiction suit’s testing ground, where the seams of self-righteousness come in for a bit of a battering, but swiftly re-assert their hold through sheer smug self-satisfaction in the knowledge that there’s not the remotest possibility of being wrong when you consider yourself the truest lefty in the world.

Oh, and note to the Guardian: if you want someone to churn out mindlessly ill-considered, utterly un-researched garbage to spew out to your hilariously bipolar online readership, both confirming the prejudices of the American right-wing trolls and acting as a fluffer to the dwindling enthusiasm of the nuttier reaches of the British left, then I offer good rates.

Neil Clark, I salute you – truly amazing levels of delusion, sir, and a wonderful contribution to neocon efforts to smear all lefties as nutters to boot…