Back Corbyn to the Hilt: Don’t Trust Him to Deliver
There are defining moments in history and, although later acknowledged as such by all shades of opinion, they are often over-looked at the time by people too bound-up in their previous views to realize that they are being tested and that their response will, collectively, greatly influence the subsequent course of events.
One such event was the murder of 14 civilians by the British state in Derry, Ireland, in 1972. On that occasion the liberal middle class of Britain — the broadcasters, writers, accademics and constitutional representatives, the people who largely decide the prevailing national narrative — almost universally turned their back on truth, justice and principle and backed the whitewash concocted by a willing judiciary. They failed the test; failed, in most cases to even comprehend that it was a test and the result was a conflict that lasted another quarter of a century with thousands more lives lost. What the cowardly, un-principled British response achieved was not, as was intended, a swift end to a troublesome problem by uniting around a (false) premise of national unity but the delivery of the civil rights struggle of the six counties into the hands of the Provisional IRA who held out the promise of a solution when no-one else would.
The murder of 17 unarmed civilians by the Israeli apartheid state on the 30th March 2018 is such a moment in history. It is not the deaths, nor the number of deaths that make it so. Unfortunately Palestinian blood is spilt regularly both by the Israeli occupation forces and by criminal Zionist vigilantes. Indeed, seventeen deaths is rather a minor affair when simply compared to the carnage in Syria or Yemen or Myanmar. What makes this event a turning point is it’s political context.
Oppressive regimes fall, even the strongest, most impervious looking police states, when they can no longer function in the old way. The Stalinist regimes of eastern Europe succumbed in the end to their inability to compete economically in a world market to which they were always, despite ideological denials, subject. Their economic model was simply not competitive enough and without political change the model could not be ditched.
On the 21st March 1960 Apartheid police shot dead 69 unarmed civilians demonstrating against the race laws of the Apartheid state.
The same was true of the original Apartheid regime, South Africa between 1948 and 1991. By the late 1980s the violence engendered by the racist South African state coupled with a worldwide Anti-Apartheid movement which successfully campaigned for economic sanctions meant that the game was up. Racism was no longer the best way to ensure profitibility for South African big business and the regime negotiated a transfer of power to a liberal democracy. That liberal democracy hasn’t delivered much to the majority but it was never intended to. That aside, the point here is that the end was pressaged by an earlier event, the Sharpeville Massacre. On the 21st March 1960 Apartheid police shot dead 69 unarmed civilians demonstrating against the racist laws of the Apartheid state. That despicable act of pre-meditated state murder kick-started an unshakable determination among progressive people everywhere that the abhorrent crimes of the South African regime would be stopped. It took 30 years and the main credit must go to the non-white men, women and children of South Africa who themselves endured the evils of Apartheid and who’s tireless, selfless action for justice eventually forced an end to that state. They themselves, however, acknowledge the crucial support they had from around the world, from ordinary people who increasinly over those 30 years demanded more and more action from their own states and refused to be cowed by the conservative, spineless apologists for racism. British prime minister Thatcher referred to Mandella as a terrorist till the end. Gerry Adams, leader of the Provisional IRA for most of it’s war with Britain, was invited to carry the coffin at Mandella’s funeral.
The ideology of Zionism can offer no more to it’s followers than another Peterloo.
In 1960 and in 1972 and at countless other times in history, people have been asked to choose. On the 30th March 2018 we have been forced to choose which side to take at the start of a now inevitable, un-stoppable end-game for Israel. This vile apartheid regime will fall just as surely as the Orange regime in the north of Ireland fell and white minority rule fell in South Africa and in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). When a state spends millions around the world trying to convince others that it is a genuine democracy and yet feels compelled to murder, openly, in front of the world’s media, unarmed, peaceful protestors it proves that not only is it not a democracy of any sort but that it’s ruling class has run out of ideas. The ideology of Zionism can offer no more to it’s followers than another Peterloo. This is a regime on the way out.
Just as we were told at the time that Britain couldn’t possibly allow the Orange State to fall because Loyalists would be massacred or that South Africa needed the white big business to survive we will be assailed with lies, deformation and racist bigotry. The apologists for racism and the supporters of Israel who do so because they are themselves anti-semitic and want Jewish people out of their own countries will ceaselessly try to smear the growing numbers of oponents by insisting that the destruction of the apartheid state is the same as the destruction of it’s citizens. It won’t work anymore and it will increasingly work less and less well untill the day that Palestine returns to being a country where all citizens, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and any other, live peacefully alongside each other in a democratic state. It hasn’t always been so in the past either but we don’t excuse European imperialism on the grounds that it existed previously; instead we strive for improvement. Only a racist would assert that those young Palestinian women and men — those still alive — who are currently camped on the Gaza prison fence intend anything other than building a modern, civilized country where none currently exists.
So where does Corbyn come in ? Corbyn has been a life-long anti-racist and therefore a long-time supporter of the Palestinian struggle for human rights and their right to the rule of law. Since being elected as Labour leader he has been relentlessly bullied by the enemies of the labour movement and for the most part he has resisted. Those pernicious, spiteful forces have now found a weakness. Despite actual, independent data proving the opposite and despite the Chakrabarti Report confirming those data Corbyn has started down the path of all previous Labour left leaders. By accepting the lies about Labour anti-semitism in a desperate effort to stem the onslought of propoganda he has jeapordised electoral success, not strengthened it’s chances. It is the achilles heel of the Labour left that they ultimately believe that they can achieve the miracle of governing for the nation, for both the exploited and the exploiter. They naively expect, despite the lessons of history, that their enemies can be persuaded to do the right thing once it is clear how much support a left-leaning Labour Party really has.
Sugar doesn’t think Corbyn is anti-semitic, he thinks he’s a Socialist and he hates Socialists
In the 1970s Labour chancellor Dennis Healy, an ex-Communist Party member, promissed to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked. He never did. He was bullied by the Capitalist class and he gave in. He retired on a fat pension to an East-Sussex mansion.
On the 30th of March 2018, when our would-be chancellor should have been railing against the crimes in Gaza, John McDonnell was more interested in grovelling to the Capitalist thug Alan Sugar. Sugar doesn’t think Corbyn is anti-semitic, he thinks he’s a Socialist and he hates Socialists. No amount of grovelling will change that but it will make Sugar’s class stronger and the working class weaker.
Right now Corbyn is on his knees; that is not a position from where he will win an election
Corbyn and McDonnell believe that they can cleverly ride-out the storm of each vicious onslought from the media, the Tories and big business, appearing serenely on the other side smelling of roses with their poll rating intact. These manufactured crises have nothing to do with the skeleton they happen to have been lashed to but are the gathering war against a Socialist government and any crisis will do. Give in on one and the next will be pre-fabricated and ready to deploy. Already loyal Labour Pary members are desperately trying to talk up other issues and pretend Israel’s crimes haven’t happened; they will not be allowed to carry on while the enemy is left free to set the agenda.
Gaza is a long way from Britain but if we cannot trust Corbyn to maintain principle over such a clear-cut matter how can we trust him not to cave in on any other issue ? Right now Corbyn is on his knees; that is not a position from where he will win an election.
A defeat for Labour at the next general election would be a disaster. Millions of people are hoping for an end to Tory austerity and a shift of wealth from the rich to the rest of us. I doubt the Labour left will deliver but I do expect a Labour Goverment to provide the conditions in which the labour movement will recover some power, make gains and grow in confidence, becoming, in the process, equipped to deliver real and lasting change. Either way a defeat would give a green light to those free-market fanatics who seek to use Brexit to re-calibrate Britain as a low-wage, low tax gold mine for the world’s most unpleasant Capitalists.
Making the right choice at this decisive moment in history is not just a matter of doing the right thing by the oppressed people of Palestine. It is also the mark by which Corbyn will or will not play his small part in history by defeating May and her lying, thieving, racist, war-mongering cronies at the ballot box.
