Why Corbyn Must Stay For Now - New Labour created the Iraq war and the seeds of Labour's defeat in the banking crisis - and Corbyn's challengers are New Labour

Jeremy Corbyn is certainly not particularly eloquent or charismatic, and his performance at Prime Ministers’ Questions has sometimes been poor.

There probably are people who would do a better job in terms of presentation.

But there are more important issues at stake than which party wins the next election, or which person would help Labour do that.

The MPs moving against Corbyn are the core of New Labour.

Tony Blair and New Labour, who were great at winning elections until the banking crisis hit, also created many of the problems that the country faces today.

New Labour’s strategy of just adopting most of the Conservative party’s policies and rhetoric had disastrous effects in the long run, both for the Labour party and for the country.

Iraq

By adopting the Conservative policy of following the US on foreign policy it got large numbers of people killed in the Iraq war, others tortured and left far more grieving. And the only people to benefit were some oil and arms companies and firms like KBR – a subsidiary of Cheney’s Halliburton – which were allowed to overcharge the US military for supplies (1) – (2).

Polls in the US showed that a majority only backed an invasion if US allies took part. So Blair and his acolytes could have not only prevented British troops dying in it, but stopped it happening at all (3).

Instead Al Qa’ida was handed a boost – and from al Qa’ida came Islamic State.

Some want to “draw a line” under Iraq. Not so easy for families who lost loved ones in it, but let’s look at other issues.

Deregulation and the banking crisis – and “welfare reform”

Thatcher began deregulation of the financial sector with her 1986 “Big Bang” deregulation of the City of London. New labour adopted the Conservative policy of deregulation, euphemistically renaming it “light touch regulation”, or the oxymoron “self-regulation”.

That led to the banking crisis and subsequent recession which destroyed voters’ trust in Labour’s economic competence and led to it losing power in 2010.

Some will try and claim it was a global crisis. It was not. Countries like Norway, Demark, Sweden and Canada, which had regulated their banks properly after earlier banking crises in the 1980s and 90s, did not suffer any banking crisis. Countries like the UK and US which had deregulated most, suffered most (4) – (5).

Blairites try to pin the blame for the 2010 election loss entirely on Brown’s personality, or him not being right wing enough. Any Labour leader would have lost that election, and Brown, while his rhetoric was slightly more left wing, maintained just as many policies adopted from the tories.

For instance “welfare reform”. ATOS first got its contract to strip disabled people of their benefits under New Labour. And the Bedroom Tax was piloted for tenants in privately rented accommodation under New Labour too.

“Welfare reform” ensured that when the recession caused by the banking crisis hit, people had less of a safety net.

The Housing shortage and PFIs /PPPs

The housing shortage is largely the result of governments from Thatcher’s on selling off council houses without providing councils with any budget to buy or build anything like enough replacements. New Labour guilty too, again.

PFIs – another Conservative policy – were expanded massively under new Labour, renamed PPPs, because it sounded nicer. They result in new hospitals at lower initial cost, but cripplingly high annual charges, lasting up to 80 years, paid by NHS trusts and local councils to consortia of private companies. That results in less beds and staff in PFI built hospitals compared to those they replace (6).

The centre moved right by New Labour adopting tory policies

Another result of New Labour adopting so many Conservative policies was that the Conservative party moved even further right. So today we have a Conservative party whose “moderate” wing (Cameron and Osborne) have done things Thatcher would never have dared to do – cutting benefits for the genuinely disabled, and privatising the Royal Mail for instance.

New Labour did make progress in a few areas – the National Minimum Wage, which was vital, had been opposed by the Conservatives, and has since been maintained and increased even by Conservative governments – and devolution.

But in so many other areas the political centre was moved right – a long term strategic defeat.

Same old New Labour today

The MPs who are trying to make Corbyn resign today are led by the same people who voted for the Iraq war, who nodded through deregulation, privatisation, PFIs, council house sales without replacements. Like Angela Eagle MP for instance, who voted for the Iraq war and served as a minister under Blair.

And they showed before Corbyn was elected that they hadn’t changed.

 In July 2015 acting Labour leader Harriet Harman MP and 183 of her colleagues voted to abstain on and so basically accept Conservative benefit cuts. Harman also pretty much apologised to voters for not being more like the tories (7).

Their only idea remains adopting Conservative policies, and to hell with the effects on ordinary people , and the long term consequences.

48 Labour rebels including Jeremy Corbyn actually did the job of an opposition and voted against the cuts to child tax credits, unemployment benefit, housing benefit for under 25s and the abolition of legally binding child poverty targets.

Democracy In the Labour Party

The other issue involved in the stand-off between Corbyn and New Labour MPs is democracy in the party.

Before the leadership election which Corbyn won, Labour leadership elections had an “electoral college” which made each Labour MP or trade union leader’s vote equivalent to those of tens of thousands of other party members.

Ed Miliband finally brought in the One Member One Vote system for electing party leaders which New Labour had pushed for, but for motives other than democracy.

They believed that this and the “supporter” category of associate member would make Labour leadership elections more like US Democratic party style "primaries” in which voters who are not party members can take part. They expected this to mean more ‘New Labour’ candidates would be elected and less left wingers.

When it became clear that the result was the exact opposite, with Corbyn elected, they were horrified by the results of greater democracy.

And the figures showed Corbyn would have won even if the vote had been restricted to full party members, even without the now “controversial” supporter category (8).

He’d only even got enough nominations from MPs to get on the ballot by getting nominations from some MPs who didn’t want him as leader but thought he should be in the campaign debate.

From Kinnock through to Blair the “modernising” party leaders had mostly ended any internal democracy on making party policy. Even votes by party conference became “non-binding” on the leadership – i.e they could ignore them if they wanted to and have a different policy.

Corbyn began changing this, giving ordinary members more say.

What we have now is a stand off between the majority party members, and the majority of Labour MPs . Mostly ‘New Labour’ MPs, some of who, like Angela Eagle, have never had to face an challenge from other candidates to replace them since they were selected as candidates in 1992.

The New Labour MPs ridiculously claim they have a mandate from the 9.5 million voters in their constituencies to tell Corbyn to go, despite the fact that they have not asked these voters whether they want Corbyn to go - and many of them won't have voted Labour

Corbyn said that if he won a second leadership election he would bring in mandatory re-selection for MPs – meaning sitting MPs would have to face votes by their constituency party on whether to keep them as the candidate before every election. (9).

The MPs decided to try to avoid the risk of party members re-electing Corbyn.

They’re pushing for a change in the rules through the National Executive Committee requiring the sitting leader to be nominated by 50 MPs the same as any other candidate for leader (10).

They hope Corbyn wouldn’t be able to get 50 MPs to back him, so wouldn’t get to take part in the leadership election.

Not only this, but they’ve said they may not even do this till the party conference in September, creating paralysis in the party, and trying to blame it on Corbyn’s refusal to resign.

This shows that New Labour don’t really believe that Corbyn has lost the support of a majority of party members.

Under the existing party rules MPs can only be deselected by a majority vote of their Constituency Labour party and replaced with a different candidate in the run up to a General Election.

So there is no way for ordinary members in Constituency parties to deselect MPs who refuse to accept Corbyn as leader, until another election is called, unless the party rules are changed through the National Executive Committee (which is also deadlocked in the civil war currently).

The best solution would be to get a left wing , or at least non New Labour, MP who has represents the views of ordinary members and will let policy be made by majority votes of members, but is more charismatic and a better speaker than Corbyn.

But no such MP seems to exist currently and sitting MPS can’t be deselected or replaced till a General Election.

 So Corbyn seems a better alternative than handing control of the party back to New Labour MPs who will ignore members .

Conclusion

If there was a candidate standing against Corbyn who was both more charismatic, a better speaker, and had shown the same commitment to democracy within the party and ensuring policy is decided by the majority of party members, it would be better for Corbyn to be replaced by them.

But while the only candidates standing against Corbyn are New Labour careerists who are responsible for the Iraq war and banking crisis that lost so many lives, caused so much hardship and lost Labour voters’ trust, and whose only policy idea is to adopt more disastrous Conservative policies, he must stay for now.

 

(1) = Observer 31 Jul 2011 ‘BP 'has gained stranglehold over Iraq' after oilfield deal is rewritten’, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2011/jul/31/bp-stranglehold-iraq-oilfield-contract

(2) = BBC News 13 Dec 2013 ‘Bush warns 'oil overcharge' firm’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3312015.stm

(3) = Gallup 08 Oct 2002 ‘Top Ten Findings About Public Opinion and Iraq’, http://www.gallup.com/poll/6964/top-ten-findings-about-public-opinion-iraq.aspx ; under bolded sub-heading ‘5. Allied, U.N. Backing are Prerequisites of Public Support’ says only 38% of Americans polled would support sending in ground troops if allies didn’t take part

(4) = The National (UAE) 08 Dec 2012 ‘Scandinavia avoids the financial crisis’,http://www.thenational.ae/business/industry-insights/economics/scandinavia-avoids-the-financial-crisis

(5) = Financial Post 10 Oct 2012 ‘Canada’s banks shake off global sector crisis’, http://business.financialpost.com/news/fp-street/canadas-banks-shake-off-global-sector-crisis

(6) = www.theguardian.com 29 Jun 2012 ‘How PFI is crippling the NHS’, by Professor Allyson Pollock, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/29/pfi-crippling-nhs

(7) = www.independent.co.uk 21 Jul 2015 ‘Welfare bill: These are the 184 Labour MPs who didn’t vote against the Tories' cuts’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/these-are-the-184-labour-mps-who-didn-t-vote-against-the-tories-welfare-bill-10404831.html

(8) = www.independent.co.uk 12 Sep 2015 ‘Jeremy Corbyn won a landslide with full Labour party members, not just £3 supporters’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-won-a-landslide-with-full-labour-party-members-not-just-3-supporters-10498221.html

(9) = Huffington Post 28 Jun 2016 ‘Jeremy Corbyn Plans ‘Mandatory Reselection Of MPs’ If He Wins Fresh Leadership Mandate’, http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-mandatory-reselection-of-labour-mps-leadership-contest_uk_5772b097e4b0d257114a9487

(10) = www.theguardian.com 30 Jun 2016 ‘MPs divided over Corbyn as Eagle delays leadership challenge’, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/30/labour-mps-divided-over-how-to-depose-jeremy-corbyn ; 2^nd last paragraph ‘Meanwhile, the party’s national executive committee is expected to meet soon to vote on whether Corbyn ought to be placed on the ballot automatically or if he will have to collect the nominations of MPs.’

Story that Iranian government websites say kill all Jews and annihilate Israel with nuclear weapons based on word of one Iranian defector to US first published on birther websites

One of the latest rumours on Iran going round the internet and published by the Jerusalem Post and the Daily Mail, is that Iran’s supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini said it was time to kill all Jews, starting with Israel’s – and that Iran should use nuclear weapons to do this (1) – (2). Even the International Institute for Strategic Studies are reporting what may well be just a rumour spread by one Iranian exile, possibly for ulterior motives, as fact (3).

When challenged to provide evidence of this those spreading the rumour then claim that it wasn’t Khameini himself who said all this, but his “adviser” or “strategist”, Alireza Forghani, in an article published on several Iranian government websites.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, by contrast, that Alireza Forghani is 'an independent blogger and computer engineer'(4).

It seems the original story about Forghani being an adviser to Khameini and making these statements on Iranian government websites comes from World Net Daily and The Daily Caller (5) – (6).

The Daily Caller and World Net Daily are purveyors of conspiracy theories including the birther one that Obama was born in Kenya(even when their supposed evidence is proven not to be evidence) and their sources on this include former advisers to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (7) – (9).

The source for all three sites on the Forghani articles is Reza Khalili, which is the alias used by an Iranian defector to the US and former CIA agent. He has also called for a US war of regime change in Iran. He could well have the same motives as Iraqi defectors had to make things up to encourage a war of regime change that could get them in control of the new government (10) – (12).

Many WMD stories on Iraq using Iraqi exiles as their sources – including the mobile weapons labs one, turned out to be entirely false.

So what we have is not Khameini, nor someone proven to be a close adviser to Khameini saying something, but that an Iranian blogger said something and the Iranian government didn't censor it. We have no idea even what exactly the original actually said, as despite it supposedly being all over the FARS and every other Iranian government website, there are no links to the original provided by anyone claiming any of this, despite Iranian government websites having english versions where anyone could read exactly what it said if links were provided)

The actual statements by Iranian military and political leaders talk about destroying the Israeli regime (i.e government), which is not a threat to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons (13).

One blogger claims to have got a translation of the Forghani article on the Alef website (which is not an Iranian government website, but is a website which backs and is not banned by Khameini’s government the way sites critical of the Iranian government usually are - with some bloggers even jailed). He says he asked for a translation from a Farsi speaking Iranian professor at the University of California, Muhammad Sahimi, who has lived in the US since 1978.  Sahimi says the article advocates “pre-emptive strikes” on Israel with longest ranged Shahab 3 missiles, but says nothing about killing all Jews, only referring to a duty of defensive Jihad to protect other Muslims. Sahimi does not mention any talk of Forghani proposing these attacks being nuclear – and says the Alef website says the views expressed in the article are the author’s, not the website’s

Sources

(1) = Washington Times 17 Jul 2012 ‘Ariz. sheriff says Obama birth certificate is fake’,
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/17/ariz-sheriff-says-obama-birth-certificate-fake/

(2) = 'Kill all Jews and annihilate Israel!' Iran's Ayatollah lays out legal and religious justification for attack’, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097252/Kill-Jews-annihilate-Israel-Irans-supreme-leader-lays-legal-religious-justification-attack.html

(3) = International Institute for Strategic Studies 02 Aug 2012 ‘Potential Change in Iran’s Nuclear Fatwa?’, http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/potential-change-in-irans-nuclear-fatwa/

(4) = Haaretz 20 Mar 2012 ‘Wiesenthal Center raises funds 'against the Iranian threat'’, http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/wiesenthal-center-raises-funds-against-the-iranian-threat-1.419627

(5) = WND 05 Feb 2012 ‘Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, annihilate Israel’, http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/ayatollah-kill-all-jews-annihilate-israel/

(6) = The Daily Caller 10 Jun 2012 ‘Islamic world must have nuclear weapons, says Iran’, http://dailycaller.com/2012/06/10/islamic-world-must-have-nuclear-weapons-says-iran/

(7) = The Daily Caller 28 April 2004 ‘Reminder: Before Obama ran for president, he falsely claimed to have been born in Kenya’,
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/24/reminder-before-obama-ran-for-president-he-falsely-claimed-to-have-been-born-in-kenya/

(8) = WND 10 Sep 2012 ‘Israeli science website: Obama birth certificate forged : Award-winning, former Netanyahu adviser behind assessment’,
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/israeli-science-website-obama-birth-certificate-forged/

(9) = http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthers/booklet.asp ; 1991 booklet claiming Obama born in Hawaii an error by the person writing his biography for it

(10) = See (5) above

(11) = http://atimetobetray.com/

(12) = Washington Times 26 Oct 2011 ‘KAHLILI: Iran already has nuclear weapons’, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/27/iran-already-has-nuclear-weapons/?page=all

(13) = FARS news agency (of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) 20 May 2012 ‘Top Commander Reiterates Iran's Commitment to Full Annihilation of Israel’,
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9102112759 ; ‘TEHRAN (FNA)- Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi said threats and pressures cannot deter Iran from its revolutionary causes and ideals, and stressed that the Iranian nation will remain committed to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime of Israel to the end.’

The Real Michael Foot

“We are not in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress.

No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and more crippled than ourselves.”

Michael Foot MP, 1983

Michael Foot has been caricatured as having been an ineffective leader, as having been responsible for Labour’s election defeat in 1983 and as senile, ‘loony left’ and too naive and weak to oppose real threats. He was none of these things. He was the only leader who all the fragments of a divided party would accept at a time when all parties were divided because none had any working solution to "stagflation"; and both main parties were divided on Europe. He was intelligent, honest, blended principle with pragmatism and was as much a democrat as he was a socialist. Unlike his successors he accepted that Labour party policies were decided by votes by its' membership. He was against the appeasement of Franco’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazis when Churchill and Roosevelt were still backing the fascists as the supposed "lesser of two evils" - and he volunteered to serve in the Second World War, but he was also against wars that didn’t have to be fought. Some of the policies of the 1983 Labour manifesto were controversial - on unilateral nuclear disarmament and leaving the EU for instance - but overall it certainly wasn't any more extreme or 'ideological' than Thatcherism with its blindly ideological monetarism, but because the Murdoch press were allied to Thatcher they painted a very one sided picture which too many people accepted as fact. Thatcher would also have lost the 1983 election if it hadn't been for the Falklands war, because monetarism failed - it cut inflation but increased unemployment by 50% from 2 million to 3 million. That war was entirely avoidable (and Callaghan had avoided it in a similar situation a few years earlier) yet many voters rewarded Thatcher for her failure to avoid it, despite the many deaths and destroyed lives involved.

Foot was not to blame for the divisions in and splitting of the Labour Party, which were due to Stagflation which began under Heath

The 1983 election has been presented as a failure which was supposedly all down to Michael Foot’s leadership failures. This is hugely unfair and simplistic. The Labour party was deeply divided before Foot became leader. These divisions were the result of ‘stagflation’ (unemployment combined with inflation) which was first seen in the 1960s but became much worse under Heath’s Conservative government in 1973 after the Arab members of OPEC increased oil prices to put pressure on ‘western’ governments who backed Israel after the Arab defeat in the 1973 Israeli-Arab war. The causes of stagflation are still debated by economists. One theory is that a sudden increase in the price of a vital commodity such as oil can cause inflation of the prices of other things which at the same time leads to reduced economic growth as profit margins are cut or wiped out by increased costs for businesses.

Another is that it may be due to a governments printing more money or providing more credit (causing the value of money to fall as the supply of it increases relative to the demand – one cause of inflation as the same amount of money is now worth less than it was before) while excessive government regulation and taxation of businesses can simultaneously cause ‘stagnation’ – reduced economic growth and increased unemployment.

( My own, very amateur and partial, explanation is that it may also be the result of rapid economic growth combined with very unequal distribution of the new wealth created by that growth, so that the majority have less money to spend, leading to inflation of prices due to the increased money supply produced by growth, combined with reduced spending by most consumers, reducing demand and so causing unemployment and reduced economic growth – the counter-argument being that the wealthy will invest their extra money, providing investment to new businesses)

Like the ‘credit crisis’ the ‘stagflation’ of the 1970s was a worldwide problem. Of course, like the credit crisis, the suffering caused by it in the ‘developed’ world was fairly minor compared to the constant hunger and illness of most of the population of the ‘developing’ world, but people struggling to pay the bills were still stressed and tired – and votes would go to whoever could present a convincing solution to the crisis.

The Wilson and Callaghan (both Labour) governments of 1974 -1979 faced stagflation and didn’t know what the causes of it were, nor what the solution to it was any more than anyone else did (previously there had been recessions or inflation, but never both at once). They adopted a watered down version of Milton Friedman’s right wing theories of complete free trade and monetarism (later adopted with greater enthusiasm and even more disastrous results by Pinochet in Chile and Thatcher in Britain).

In accordance with this theory they cut public spending and went to the IMF for a loan. The IMF, as usual, attached all kinds of monetarist conditions including more public spending cuts and tax cuts. Unemployment in the UK reached an unprecedented 2 million. Thatcher’s Conservative party promised in opposition to cut unemployment. In government it made further cuts, making more public sector workers unemployed, leading to them having less money to spend, leading to private sector sales and profits falling, leading to higher unemployment in the private sector too. Unemployment would soon reach over 3 million.

The right of the Labour party blamed the trade unions and the left wing of the party and it’s Keynesian economic views and idealism for losing the 1983 election. (Keynesianism is an economic theory calling for increasing public spending and cutting taxes during recessions to get out of them, while cutting public spending and increasing taxes during economic booms to prevent unrealistic expectations of infinite growth leading to a sudden panic and crisis. Labour had become too socialist and too idealistic in their view. Keynesianism had been developed as a solution to the Great Depression of the 1930s. It worked then, but stagflation was a new problem.)

The left blamed the right of the party under Callaghan for cutting public spending, accepting the IMF’s monetarist principles and so sacking public sector workers – and refusing to accept the demands of striking trade unionists - causing many of Labour’s traditional allies and supporters to stay at home and not vote. In their view Callaghan had lost the 1979 election by not being socialist enough.

Under the right of the Labour party (reluctant monetarists) and the right of the Conservative party under Thatcher (enthusiastic monetarists) monetarism was adopted in the hope that it would end stagflation. Monetarism provided a theory to explain and control stagflation. This was all about controlling the money supply through the amount of notes printed by central banks and the interest rates they set. Unfortunately when governments tried to put the theoretical solutions into practice to try to solve stagflation the results were terrible. Where inflation was reduced it was reduced only at the cost of massively increased unemployment and reduced economic growth. The inflation part of ‘stagflation’ had been cut to nothing, but the stagnation was through the roof. The wealthiest (and in the UK some middle income earners) got better off; for the wealthiest it was an ‘economic miracle’; but the percentage of people unemployed or in poverty rocketed.

Much of the left and the right of the Labour party were now bitterly opposed to each other. Michael Foot was the only person in the Labour party who was so universally respected that every faction in the party would accept him as leader. The worst split took place under Foot’s leadership, with much of the right of the party (social democrats rather than Socialists) forming the SDP and then the SDP-Liberal Alliance with the Liberal party. However it’s unlikely that any party leader could have prevented this. Despite this the Labour party got 27.6% of the vote in the 1983 election with another 25.4% going to the Alliance. Due to the First-Past-the-Post electoral system though the Alliance’s 25.4% share of the vote got it just 23 seats (3.5% of the MPs in parliament), while the Conservatives, with 42% of the vote got 397 seats (62% of the 650 seats in parliament). So if anyone’s assigning blame for Labour losing the 1983 election the Labour MPs who began the SDP – David Owen, Shirley Williams, William Rogers and Roy Jenkins and – must take a large part of the blame. They may point to Foot taking the party too far to the left as the cause of the split, or blame the unfairness of the electoral system – and both of those claims have some truth in them, especially the second one, but they knew the 1983 election would take place on a first-past-the-post electoral system. They may have thought that Labour was now doomed by factionalism and extremism and that a new party was the only hope of holding off Thatcherism. In the event a third party in the first-past-the-post election system failed almost totally. Under a proportional system the Alliance and Labour would have got over 50% of the seats between them to the Conservatives 42% and Thatcher’s government would have been a single term one.

How voters rewarded Thatcher for failing to avoid an easily avoidable war, hundreds of deaths and thousands of ruined lives

Thatcher’s key vote-winner in the 1983 election was a wave of nationalistic jingoism over Britain’s defeat of Argentina in the completely avoidable Falklands War. The Argentine military junta was looking for a ‘patriotic’ war to distract from mass unemployment and political murders. Thatcher, with the worst poll ratings of any Prime Minister to that point, may also have been looking for a patriotic war to distract from her government having increased unemployment to 3 million in its crusade to break the trade unions and the Labour party, after promising in opposition to reduce unemployment. When the junta had made noises about the Falklands under her predecessor Callaghan the Labour government was persuaded by the Chiefs of Staff to send some destroyers to show Britain would fight if the Argentines invaded. When the same problem came up under Thatcher her government decided to withdraw the last Royal Navy ship – the HMS Endurance – from the South Atlantic, giving the Argentine military the impression that Britain wouldn’t fight for the Falklands (1) , (2).

The motive may have been a patriotic war for votes, or it may have been Thatcher’s narrow-minded obsession with cutting public spending as being a good thing in itself (her Defence Minister being chosen for his enthusiasm for spending cuts) which led to HMS Endurance being recalled to save a mere £3 million from a budget of hundreds of billions a year. Either way the decision cost 907 lives – 255 of them British, left 907 families grieving and wounded 1,845 people. Some of the wounded, like Simon Weston, who suffered severe burns in an Argentine missile attack on a British destroyer, still bear the physical and emotional scars. After many years of facial reconstruction operations and mental illness caused by seeing many of his friends and comrades burning to death Simon has partially recovered and has written several successful books on his experiences (1), (2).

If the electorate had been thinking straight Thatcher should have lost a lot of votes for her government’s incompetence or cynicism in losing so many lives totally un-necessarily. Instead many of them rewarded her for winning a war that she could have prevented.

The false caricature of Foot as naive pacifist

Michael Foot as Labour leader decided to back the war on the basis that the people of the Falkland islands wanted to be under British rule and that the Argentine invasion was unprovoked aggression and a breach of the UN charter and international law. He also condemned Thatcher for her ‘betrayal’ of the Falkland islanders in failing to signal to the junta that British forces would defend the islands.

Despite this most of the press – especially Murdoch’s ‘Sun’ Tabloid – tried to present Foot as a senile, naive, old pacifist blinded by ideology using quotes from him like “I am an inveterate peace-monger”. Foot was certainly a peace-monger when it came to avoidable wars but he was no appeaser. Once the Argentine forces invaded the Falklands he backed military action. He condemned the Chamberlain government over it’s appeasement of Hitler after the German invasion of Czechoslovakia just as loudly as Churchill did. (He also volunteered to serve in the army after Britain declared war on Germany, but was turned down due to his severe asthma.) Unlike Churchill he had also campaigned against the Baldwin government’s appeasement of Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War in the 1920s (in which British Conservatives from Chamberlain to Churchill had no criticism of the government policy of not arming the elected Republicans and anarchists while making no attempt to stop Hitler and Mussolini sending arms, troops and entire squadrons of bombers to fight for Franco’s monarchists, largely on the grounds that fascists were seen as preferable to communists. The results of the policy were to make the Republicans reliant on Stalin and the Soviet Union for arms, dividing the Republicans and ensuring a fascist victory.) At that time Roosevelt was still referring to Mussolini as "that admirable Italian gentleman" (3), (4).

Foot was also opposed to the Iraq war, though he didn’t stop supporting the Labour party over it.

Foot, like Churchill, was prepared to fight when the alternative was to appease fascist regimes bent on world conquest and with the militaries to carry their threats out; Unlike Churchill he never backed wars of choice and Empire like the Boer war though.

The false caricature of Foot as ‘loony left’ - and the reality of a principled, reasonable, educated democrat

The Murdoch press also tried to paint Foot and the Labour party under him as ‘loony left’ using invented stories, like the ones about Labour controlled councils banning singing ‘baa baa black sheep’ as racist.

On nuclear weapons he took an uncompromising position of unilateral disarmament which not even his former hero Aneurin Bevan had adopted – but with the ‘Gang of Four’ and their supporters having left the party the majority of the party supported this position. I’m one of many people who disagree with this policy (in fact it's one of the few issues that i'm closer to Thatcher's views on), but Foot never forced this policy on his party in the 1983 Labour Election Manifesto. Under his leadership all decisions on party policy were decided democratically by a majority of the members. Critics may point out that union block votes compromised internal party democracy here - and they have a point - but today under 'one member, one vote' (which, in fact, still doesn't give equal votes to all members in conference or leadership elections) votes are irrelevant, because if the party leadership dislike the result, they ignore it. The last Labour leadership election was almost Soviet style, with only one candidate - Gordon Brown - on the ballot, with party members denied the right to vote for other candidates because too few MPs supported other candidates - most MPs being largely selected due to the influence of party leaders.

Since Foot never took the power to decide party policy himself he can’t be blamed for adopting policies supported by the majority of party members, whether they lost the party votes or not (and they may actually have increased the turn-out of Labour's core voters). Nor did Foot ever lie to get support for a policy he supported, the way Blair did on Iraq.

After Kinnock replaced Foot as leader democracy died in the Labour party. Under Kinnock, Blair and Brown votes by party conference are taken as ‘non-binding’ on the party leadership – in other words if they don’t like the result of a vote they ignore it and write their own policy instead. From Kinnock on if the party leader dislikes a candidate selected by a constituency party the leader or the National Executive Committee vetoes their candidacy and imposes a candidate they chose themselves – sometimes suspending or expelling the entire constituency party if it objects. The Conservative party is barely an more democratic internally. As a result the membership of the three largest parties in the UK has fallen steadily.

There have been a lot of crocodile tears since from party leaders about ‘public apathy’ and phony ‘attempts to reconnect with the voters’, but the truth is that party leaders have centralised all decision making in their own hands. While telling party members they have a duty to campaign for the policies and principles the party stands for they completely ignore the views of their members on what policies the party should have and removed the power to choose candidates by democratic votes too; So party members have left in droves. When one of the main parties has been out of power for a long time there’s a short-lived rise in membership as people too young to know what it was like in power the last time join up, along with some degree of opportunism. After the reality that their views are not wanted where they conflict with the latest u-turn by the leadership sink in they leave again. So Labour membership rose rapidly in 1997, but is now lower than ever before.

If you have an electoral system designed to hugely over-represent two large established parties and under-represent (or not represent) anyone else - and you then combine that with the members of the big parties having no say in what the parties’ policies are – the sad but obvious result is that a large minority of people are discouraged and give up on trying to influence their country’s government or politics at all.

Under Tony Blair billionaires like Lord Sainsbury made donations to party funds, were made Lords and then cabinet ministers – just as under Cameron the Conservatives have made Lord Ashcroft a Lord for making big donations to party funds – and if they win the next election they’ll make him a government minister too. Michael Foot never let big donations from billionaires influence party policy, nor did he ignore democratic votes by the majority of party members on policy.

Foot was a pragmatist on many issues. For instance he supported the Blair and Brown governments on their introduction of a national minimum wage and successful peace negotiations in Northern Ireland.

While I concede those two things were real achievements of ‘New Labour’ in government i can’t support them. I admit that the Conservatives would be even worse than Blair or Brown have been, but Blair and Brown continued and expanded the worst policies of the Conservatives under Major . They expanded the PFIs and PPPs begun under Major (resulting in increased taxes but cuts in the number of fully trained staff in the NHS and in schools), increased public subsidies to privatised rail firms (while they pushed rail fares up at several times the rate of inflation), continued arming and backing dictatorships and human rights abusers; and lied in order to take us into a war which could only cost more lives than it saved – and increase terrorism rather than reduce it.

That only underlines the fact that Foot was far more of a pragmatist and far less of an idealist or extremist than some of his critics said he was though. The one exception was his support for unilateral nuclear disarmament, but that was understandable in someone who heard live reports of the effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Having said that he never abandoned his principles – and his principles were not idle intellectualism, they were about helping those who needed the help.

Foot said that “We are not in this world to find elegant solutions, pregnant with initiative, or to serve the ways and modes of profitable progress. No, we are here to provide for all those who are weaker and hungrier, more battered and more crippled than ourselves. That is our only certain good and great purpose on earth..”

Thatcher meanwhile missed the entire point of the parable of the Good Samaritan by saying “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he only had good intentions. He had money as well.”.

Margaret Thatcher was far more extreme and ideological in most of her policy positions than Foot ever was, but because her policies involved cutting taxes on the wealthiest, breaking the trade unions using anti-union laws and allowing Murdoch’s News International to avoid taxes in return for his newspapers’ support in elections much of the media shone a kindly light on Margaret Thatcher. Someone who wore the right clothes was forgiven for destroying the lives of thousands through an avoidable war and through a calculated policy of creating mass unemployment to drive down wages and break the trade unions and the main opposition party. Meanwhile Michael Foot, an honest, intelligent, principled, democrat was presented as if he was a senile lunatic because he wore a warm coat over his suit and black tie at the Cenotaph. Thatcher, responsible for so many needless deaths and so much suffering by the unemployed, the homeless and the opposition to Apartheid in South Africa (who she refused to help in any way and denounced as “terrorists”) was seen as a great heroine. Foot, who served both his country and the causes of democracy and equality worldwide, was looked down on as inferior for his sartorial inelegance. That is a measure of how shallow, how trivial and how confused our view of things can become when we allow manipulative alliances between media barons and politicians to distort our judgement and draw our eyes away from what’s really important. Michael Foot may have looked like he was wearing a “donkey jacket” at the cenotaph, but looking at his record and Margaret Thatcher’s there’s little doubt about which one often wore ideological blinkers that brought disaster and which one always fought to reduce the suffering of others.

Sources

(1) = Lawrence Freedman ‘The Official history of the Falklands War’

(2) = Anthony Seldon & Daniel Collings ‘Britain Under Thatcher’ , Chapter 2, page 20

(3) = Anthony Beevor ‘The Spanish Civil War’ , Chapter XI

(4) = Wolfgang Schivelbusch 'Three New Deals : Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939' p. 31