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20^th May 2018

Windsor Castle – book now for 2019….

If every board member of every company listed on the FTSE 100 was a woman, it would not be a step forward for the equality of the sexes.  If every board member were black or gay it would not represent a step of any significance for tackling racial equality or homophobia.  Why?  Because the issue is not gender, race or sexual inclination, it is about oppression.  No matter what race or gender you are from, if you rise to the top in a system based upon exploitation you are simply being incorporated by the exploiters.

The fact that Margaret Thatcher was a woman did not prevent her from being an active enemy of the people.  Theresa May’s gender is not lightening the load of those facing homelessness, universal credit or zero hours contracts.

The aristocracy in the UK, the monarchy in particular, is the ruling class soap opera which is designed to distract people from these considerations.  The incorporation this weekend of a US citizen of mixed race into the British monarchy is, we are told, a sign that the monarchy is changing, becoming more modern, reflecting more closely the society of which it is a part.   To suggest that this is arrant nonsense is regarded as treachery in some quarters but we should not expect anything different from the Neanderthals of Little England.

The same cry taken up by the liberal press in the UK however, cannot be excused.  The gushing coverage of this weekend’s royal wedding, which kicks off the front page by Tim Adams in The Observer (20^th May 2018), is a classic example.  Covering the build up and the service in fawning detail Adams concludes that, because Meghan Markle addressed a conference in Atlanta last year about racism in Hollywood, “you couldn’t help feeling that she had changed perceptions of princesses just a little bit, but perhaps forever.”

Similar twaddle is repeated by Alfua Hirsch, as The Observer continues its seven pages of royal wedding coverage, who suggests that Markle was “allowing her wedding to be not just a pageant of tradition, but also a celebration of blackness”, due to the ethnic diversity of the guests from TV, film and sports ‘royalty’.  Jess Cartner-Morley may have been the victim of some vicious sub editing but the piece on Markle’s wedding dress with her by-line was headlined, “cool and beautifully simple, a dress fit for a princess and a feminist icon.”  Feminist icon, really?

Buried further on in the comment and analysis section of The Observer it fell to Kenan Malik to restore a semblance of sanity to coverage, stating,

“As for the belief that Meghan will break down barriers for black people and make minorities more accepted as truly British, that’s as anachronistic as the monarchy.  Faced by an abusive skinhead or by a police officer about to stop and search me, my first thought has never been: “If only there was a black Windsor, then I might be accepted more.””

Meghan Markle may well be a perfectly decent, humanitarian and well intentioned person.  Swapping a relatively successful acting career for the job of selling royalty as celebrity to the British people however, may be her biggest performance to date.  As Kenan Malik concludes,

“Equality does not mean making inherited privilege more “diverse”.  It requires us to get rid of the whole shebang.  Adding a splash of colour to a feudal relic is not my idea of social progress.”

However it is dressed, the royal wedding was a knees up run by millionaires to celebrate their continued privilege, while the nation could only look on and count the cost.  At the end of the day, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, whatever the colour of those on the guest list, when it comes to the British ruling class the only colour that really matters is the colour of money.

 

22^nd April 2018

Amber Rudd – boasting she would get “ruthless” with illegal immigrants

Since becoming Prime Minister Theresa May has stated her desire to see the Tory Party shake off its tag as the Nasty Party.  The past week, in particular the events surrounding the so called Windrush generation, have simply reinforced the inherent nastiness of the Tories.  Nastiness is endemic, it is part of the Tory DNA, and no amount of scrubbing will ever wash out the stain.

Following the Second World War Britain made a call to the nations of the Commonwealth to send citizens to help with post war reconstruction.  The first such ship, the Empire Windrush, landed at Tilbury Docks on 22^nd June 1948 with 492 West Indians on board, hoping to make a better life for themselves in Britain.

The name of their ship has become a shorthand for the wave of migration which followed, encouraged by the 1948 British Nationality Act, which enshrined in law the right of all British subjects to have the automatic right to travel to and settle in the United Kingdom.  The following two decades saw increasing numbers migrating from the Commonwealth but increasing tensions as the politics of race increasingly took centre stage in the UK.

The political debate took on a new momentum with the famous “rivers of blood” speech by right wing Tory politician, Enoch Powell, in 1968.  Powell’s speech led directly to racist attacks and increased intimidation of the black and ethnic minority community in the UK.  Powell gave a veneer of respectability to deeply held prejudices in British society and laid the basis for race riots which continued in parts the UK in the seventies and early eighties.

One immediate impact of the Powell speech was a new immigration act in 1971, which stemmed the flow of new Commonwealth immigrants, while granting those who had already arrived indefinite leave to remain.

In spite of this we are now in a position where up to 50,000 migrants are facing problems securing citizenship, health care and benefits as the Home Office demands proof of their right to be here.  Even the Church of England, hardly a hotbed of radicalism, has been moved to call for an inquiry into immigration policy.

Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has been forthright stating,

“The truth is now out.  Hard working, tax paying immigrants who were invited to this country to help with post war reconstruction have been treated appallingly.  It is never too late to repent, but it is unwise for the penitents to boast about their achievements.  Instead the government needs to set up an inquiry urgently to discover where other aspects of our immigration policy are treating people as less than human.”

The current scandal dates back to the decision of then Home Secretary, Theresa May, in 2013 to create a “really hostile environment” for people living in the UK illegally.  This was the policy which introduced the now infamous Home Office ‘go home’ vans, with billboard size slogans stating “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest” emblazoned on the side.

The Immigration Act 2014 includes measures to restrict NHS access, limiting so called ‘benefit tourism’, as well as introducing the “right to rent” policy.  The impact of the latter measure, according to the Residential Landlords Association has been that the checks on tenants mean that 42% of landlords are less likely to let to anyone without a British passport.

Quite how May thought these measures would lighten the Tories’ nasty image is anyone’s guess.  The racist character of much of the Leave campaign, allied to the hi-jacking of the Brexit debate by the anti-immigration lobby, has served to reinforce a climate of intolerance and xenophobia in the UK.  This has allowed the Windrush issue to go virtually unnoticed, in spite of having been consistently reported in the national press, over the past six months.

Theresa May’s initial reluctance to meet Caribbean leaders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting this week had to be quickly reversed and the Prime Minister was forced to issue an apology, claiming that she is “genuinely sorry” about the treatment of Windrush era migrants and their families.

That is scant compensation for many who have been denied medical access, lost jobs due to being unable to verify their citizenship status and then being denied access to benefits for the same reason.

Current Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has not resigned over the scandal.  The main perpetrator as Home Secretary and current Prime Minister, Theresa May, has not resigned.  For both they would appear to regard glib apologies as being enough.  For many still caught in the anti-immigration net that may simply not be enough.

Speaking at the Welsh Labour Party Conference this weekend Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn said,

“This week, something rotten at the heart of government has come to the surface. The Windrush scandal has exposed how British citizens who came to our country to rebuild it after the war have faced deportation because they couldn’t clear the deliberately unreachable bar set by Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ for migrants.

“And it’s not as if they weren’t warned. At the time the Tories were pushing their hostile environment policy through parliament, some of us – sadly far too few – warned about the consequences for those born in the UK and those born abroad alike. So now we’re seeing those consequences in a string of harrowing human stories. People’s lives ripped apart because of the personal decisions and actions of Theresa May and her government.”

Labour will continue to press for a review of immigration policy and a reversal of the “hostile environment” policy.

 

 

26^th March 2018

John Bolton – his appointment as National Security Adviser is bad news for the people of Iran

The appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser to President Donald Trump signals a confirmation of the US administration’s tough line on the Iran nuclear deal.  Jane Green assesses the implications for the Iranian people and the wider political situation in the Middle East.

During the administration of George W Bush the under secretary of state for arms control, one John Bolton, was an enthusiastic supporter of the invasion of Iraq.  In spite of the catastrophe which followed in human, political and military terms, Bolton remains an enthusiastic interventionist.

With recent titles such as To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran under his belt it does not take a great deal of digging to find that Bolton’s position has not fundamentally changed in the intervening 15 years.   If anything, Bolton’s position has hardened as he has openly argued for regime change in Iran in recent years.

Bolton’s appointment follows hard on the heels of the recent sacking of Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, in favour of former CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, another confirmed hardliner and outspoken opponent of the Iran 5+1 nuclear deal.  Taken together these appointments shift the balance in the White House towards a shredding of the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated at great length with European partners, as well as Russia and China, under the Obama presidency.  The new balance signals the greater likelihood of a military option being considered in relation to Iran.

The US position will have been further reinforced by the visit last week of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  Fresh from his UK visit, in which he emerged bristling with arms, the US will be looking for bin Salman to add to the $54 billion spent by the Saudis with US arms suppliers in the past nine months.

As President Donald Trump made clear,

“Saudi Arabia is a very wealthy nation, and they’re going to give the United States some of that wealth, hopefully, in the form of jobs, in the form of the purchase of the finest military equipment anywhere in the world.”

The Crown Prince added that last year’s Saudi pledge of $200 billion in investments will rise to approximately $400 billion and that a 10-year window to implement the deal was already under way.

The Saudis also have a longer term agenda however in their engagement with the United States, which is to fulfil their aspirations to become a nuclear power.

In spite of their massive oil reserves the Saudis have been in negotiations for some years with the US over diversification of their energy base and are keen to negotiate access to technology which would allow them to build a nuclear reactor.

The Iran nuclear deal was predicated upon the unfounded assertion that in developing a civil nuclear programme the Iranian regime would inevitably move towards the creation of nuclear weapons.  The inspection regime imposed by the agreement however prevents the Iranians from enriching uranium and reprocessing plutonium to weapons grade levels.  In exchange, the 5+1 deal obliges the West to lift some of the sanctions imposed upon Iran and allows for greater capacity for Iran to trade in international markets.

In spite of these restrictions, and the crippling impact which sanctions have had upon the Iranian economy, the Saudis cannot countenance a Middle East in which Iran has even a limited civilian nuclear capability if they have none.  Saudi ambitions to develop nuclear energy are, on the one hand, about keeping pace with Iran and asserting dominance as the regional Islamic superpower.

In his recent US visit Crown Prince bin Salman, in an interview with CBS News, openly stated that

“Saudi Arabia does not want to acquire any nuclear bomb, but without a doubt if Iran developed a nuclear bomb, we will follow suit as soon as possible.”

Not only has bin Salman referred to the Iran nuclear deal as a “flawed agreement” he has made clear that any deal relating to the development of nuclear energy in Saudi Arabia will not be subject to the same limitations, in particular regarding the capacity to upgrade uranium and plutonium to weapons grade levels.

While some in the US are understandably nervous about the prospect of a Middle East nuclear arms race, the danger of the Saudis going to the Russians or Chinese for nuclear technology rings even greater alarm bells.

The warnings to Iran were ramped up even further last week when Israel, strategically allied to both the US and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, admitted to bombing a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and took the opportunity to warn Iran that it would not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons.

While the Syrian reactor was purely for civilian energy generation purposes, the Israelis nevertheless argued that this could lead to weapons capability and thus launched the pre-emptive strike, only now admitted due to the de-classification of previously secret Israeli intelligence material.

Further instability in the region is fuelled by the recent revelations that 1,000 Pakistani troops are to be sent to Saudi Arabia, as part of a long standing bi-lateral agreement between the two countries, on a so called ‘train and advise’ mission.  While it is claimed that the troops will not be used in the Saudi conflict with Yemen the deployment coincides with the culmination of a weeklong joint exercise between Pakistan’s Navy and the Saudi Royal Navy in the Arabian Sea.

Retired Pakistani army chief, Raheel Sharif, has recently been appointed as the first commander of the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) which is being described as the “Muslim NATO”, an alliance of largely Sunni Muslim Islamic states led by Saudi Arabia.  Not surprisingly Shia Muslim Iran is not part of this alliance.

Given the international outrage the Saudi role in Yemen has raised, the appointment of Sharif and the current troop deployment puts Pakistan in danger of being drawn into a wider Middle East conflict, with the Houthi rebels in Yemen being backed by Iran.  One observer has described Pakistan’s position as “a balancing act that increasingly resembles a tightrope as conflicts and disputes in the Gulf mushroom.”

For the people of Iran there is little good news in the current alignment of forces in the Middle East and in the White House.  Widespread protests inside Iran, expressing disillusionment with the regime’s economic policy, political corruption and human rights record have met with arrests and violent suppression.

The limited lifting of sanctions which the 5+1 agreement was meant to facilitate has not been enough to alleviate the high levels of unemployment and rampant inflation in the Iranian economy.  Those in work are poorly paid and often on short term contracts.  Those out of work are sinking into poverty.  While protests have rocked the government, it has not been dislodged.

The threat of military attack on Iran would be used by the ruling theocracy to justify repression of dissent and as a means to demand total loyalty.  Iranian people need peace to be able to build their movement for a democratic and just future.  That is the only viable route to stable democratic change.

The US support for hawkish regimes in Saudi Arabia and Israel, combined with an increasingly right wing line up of personnel in the White House, increases the possibility of external intervention in Iran.  While the West may have had its fingers burned provoking civil war and outside intervention in Syria, that may not be enough to stop it taking its chances on another military adventure.

Both Saudi Arabia and Israel regard Iran as an existential threat.  Their combined military capability would be a force to be reckoned with.  In military terms, Iran would be no pushover but for the people of Iran any outside intervention would be a step backwards in terms of the fight for peace, social justice and democracy.

Further information at http://www.codir.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

17^th March 2018

 

Theresa May – a dodgy dossier moment?

Misinformation has been the stock in trade of the British state and media for decades.  From the famous Zinoviev letter of the 1920’s, implying Soviet involvement in the first Labour Government, to the disinformation campaigns of the 1984/85 Miner’s Strike, to the 2003 ‘dodgy dossier’ claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, there has been no limit to the extent to which the British public has been consistently misled.

It is not surprising then that many have greeted the current furore about the attempt on the life of British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with some degree of scepticism.  There can be little doubt that the Russian state is more than capable of disposing of those deemed traitors.  The use of a nerve agent, developed in the former Soviet Union and therefore likely to implicate Russia in an assassination attempt, does not however, seem to be an efficient means of execution.

The fact that Skripal appears to have survived the attempt would appear to underline the point.  Also, as an MI6 asset, having shared Russian intelligence of behalf of the UK, Skripal was either not very well protected or not regarded as a likely target, having been traded in a spy swap for UK spooks some years earlier.

The UK government initially held back on blaming the Russian state directly for the attack but from the outset was straining at the leash to do so.  Finally, on Wednesday in the House of Commons Theresa May stated that,

“There is no alternative conclusion other than the Russian state was responsible for the attempted murder of Mr. Skripal and his daughter.”

On Monday May had set a 24 hour deadline for the Russians to explain the attack on Skripal and when they failed to do so, the Russian side claiming that they had no idea what had happened, May set about expelling 23 Russian diplomats, freezing Russian assets, cancelling a planned visit by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and pledged to send no dignitaries or members of the royal family to the World Cup in the summer.

The UK government response, even by its own admission, is based on its assessment that the nerve agent is ‘likely’ to have emanated from Russia, although no concrete evidence as to its origin or method of delivery has yet emerged.  The latest UK media speculation suggests that the agent was somehow smuggled into the luggage of Yulia Skripal, in Moscow, the day before she met her father in Salisbury in the UK.  Quite how she avoided any contact before reaching the pub or restaurant with her father is not clear.

In contrast to the government response Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who has called the attack an “appalling act of violence”, has called for the matter to be referred to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague.  Corbyn has a long history of opposition to chemical, nuclear and all weapons of mass destruction, so it came as no surprise for him to stress,

“Nerve agents are abominable if used in any war.  It is utterly reckless to use them in a civilian environment.”

Corbyn’s response was in part informed by the claim made by Theresa May, in the House of Commons on Monday, that one explanation for the attack may have been that the Russian state could have lost control of supplies of the nerve agent.  As Corbyn asked May directly,

“If it is possible Russia lost control of a military grade nerve agent, what action is being taken through the OPCW?”

May’s only response was to go on the offensive and attack Corbyn for not condemning the Russian state outright, even though she had previously raised the possibility of an alternative explanation herself.

May claimed that the government had sought consensus on the issue but to jump to such a quick condemnation of the Russian state, without any concrete evidence was always going to raise issues for Labour.  It seems to have been equally calculated to stir up divisions and bring the anti-Corbyn tendency out of the woodwork.  That certainly worked with Chuka Umunna, Mike Gapes and Anna Turley all weighing in to criticise Corbyn aide, Seumas Milne, for comments on the situation.  Briefing journalists, as the debate went on in the House of Commons, Milne stated,

“I think obviously the government has access to information and intelligence on this matter which others don’t; however, also there’s a history in relation to WMD and intelligence which is problematic to put it mildly.  So I think the right approach is to seek the evidence; to follow international treaties, particularly in relation to prohibited chemical weapons, because this was a chemical weapons attack carried out on British soil.  There are procedures that need to be followed in relation to that.”

The Russians have asked for a sample of the nerve agent from Salisbury so that they can test it.  The UK has not complied with this request but has said it will send a sample to the OPCW for investigation.

Less reported in the UK media is the debate in the scientific community as to the properties of the alleged nerve agent, known as novichoks, and how easy it is to manufacture.  One school of thought suggests that such agents can be easily manufactured using common chemicals in relatively simple pesticide factories. Any such admission would make it difficult to simply point the finger at Russia, as any number of state or non-state agencies could be implicated.  This view would certainly not fit with the current political agenda.