As bombs pour down on Serbia and Kosovo, the Labour government has exposed itself as the most virulent and militaristic partner in the NATO alliance. It has been the first to revise and extend the aims of the campaign: the first to suggest that they include the overthrow of Milosevic, the first to talk of a NATO protectorate in Kosovo, the first to propose a ground invasion. It has engaged in virulent attacks on those who question or oppose its policy, with Clare Short a particularly enthusiastic enforcer. It has created an opportunity for Blair to define a new doctrine enshrining the right of imperialism to intervene wherever it chooses. Under Labour’s direction, British imperialism is pursuing its own agenda as well as supporting that of the US. It is, after all, second only to the US in terms of its global interests, whether these are measured by overseas assets or arms exports.
Labour’s barbarity is not new. Every single previous Labour government has been willing to use military means to defend the interests of British imperialism. Between 1945 and 1951 Labour:
- Brutally suppressed the Malayan national liberation struggle;
- Committed British troops to aid the restoration of French colonial rule in Vietnam and Dutch rule in Indonesia;
- Continued military intervention in Greece against the ELAS, and blockaded Iran following the nationalisation of the British-owned Anglo-Persian Oil Company.
- Ruthlessly exploited the British empire in Africa to aid post-war reconstruction in Britain.
Later, between 1964 and 1970, it:
- Unconditionally supported the US onslaught on Vietnam;
- Defended apartheid South Africa, blocking calls for sanctions in the UN. It capitulated to the racist settler regime in the former Rhodesia;
- Sent troops into Ireland in 1969;
- Was responsible for the routine torture of suspected freedom fighter detainees in Aden.
Finally, between 1974 and 1979, it:
- Continued to defend apartheid South Africa in the UN;
- Supported the Shah of Iran as he faced a mass popular uprising against his tyrannical regime;
- Began the infamous sales of Hawk aircraft to Indonesia at the height of the genocidal war in East Timor;
- Implemented a ruthless regime of torture against republican prisoners in the North of Ireland.
Back in opposition, Labour’s unqualified militarism continued unabated. In 1982, it supported the war in the Malvinas/ Falklands. In 1991, during the Gulf War, Neil Kinnock thundered “Our forces are engaged in pursuing a legitimate objective and should enjoy full support across the political spectrum…Dictators don’t withdraw, they have to be defeated.” Earlier, the Labour Party conference of October 1990 voted 7:1 to send in troops; Tony Benn was prevented from speaking in the debate. Shadow Foreign Secretary Gerald Kaufman had accused the Tories of being “slack, lax and negligent” in their drive to war. Two days before “Desert Storm”, 55 Labour MPs voted against military action. They preferred, along with Tony Benn, to allow further time for UN sanctions. Eight years later we know the price the Iraqi people have had to pay for those sanctions — over 500,000 child deaths, 4,000 a month at present.
In the last two years under Labour’s direction, more bombs have been dropped than under 18 years of Tory rule. This is the reality of Labour’s “ethical” foreign policy: a fig leaf to cover a ruthless drive to ensure Britain’s place at imperialism’s high table. It is doing what it has always done, and as ever uses all sorts of “democratic” and “humanitarian” imperatives to hide its murderous intent. The bogus character of such “humanitarianism” is revealed by its initial refusal to admit any more than a handful of Kosovan refugees whilst it railroaded its new Asylum Bill through parliament.
And what of its pitiful left wing? Although there are twice as many Labour MPs as there were in 1990, only 13 voted against the NATO onslaught when it was debated in Parliament, of whom only nine were drawn from the 44 supposedly left-wing Socialist Campaign Group MPs. Ken Livingstone’s stand in favour of the war confirms the old adage that if you scratch a Labour left-winger you will find a shameless imperialist, particularly as they come closer to any position of real power. Livingstone’s driving ambition is to be Mayor of London. Tony Benn has no such ambitions left, but when he was a Cabinet member of the 1964-70 government, he was quite happy to sign a contract with RTZ for the supply of uranium illegally extracted from the Rossing mine in apartheid-occupied Namibia.
Yet the left outside the Labour Party is no better. Whatever position various groups adopt, they refuse to go on the offensive against Labour and imperialism. They are absolutely united in denying the particular interests of British imperialism. They describe the war as NATO’s or US imperialism’s, never Labour’s. Blair is accorded a secondary role, a “fellow traveller of US imperialism” (New Worker), Clinton’s “American factotum” (Tariq Ali, Independent 28 March), “cheer leader of US imperialism” (Socialist Appeal). This has a purpose: it enables the left to minimise the culpability of the Labour government, the Labour Party, or those who refuse to break from the Labour Party. Hence Socialist Worker can describe the stand of MPs who voted against the war as “courageous” when in reality it is no such thing. None of these MPs will put their own positions at risk. Setting out their position in May’s Socialist Campaign Group News, neither Alan Simpson nor Alice Mahon mention the government, whilst Tony Benn merely alludes to Blair’s commitment to the war without offering any comment, let alone criticism.
Some sections of the left avoid the issue of confronting Labour by calling for Kosovan independence, or by supporting the Kosovan Liberation Army (KLA). Whatever the flavour, it all amounts to a cover for imperialism. There can be no self-determination for Kosovo or any of the Balkan nations whilst NATO remains in the region. The KLA is no more than a pawn in imperialism’s game. It calls on NATO to continue its bombing campaign, and sections of the British left support it. They capitulate to Labour’s war drive.
Others oppose the KLA, but use the Labour left to avoid a confrontation with the Labour Party itself. When the SWP argues in its pamphlet Stop the War that “Labour is rarely united behind war”, it gives the game away. Its strategy is to tailor any anti-war movement to what is acceptable to the narrow, self-interested sectarianism of the Labour left. It resolutely opposes any slogan which hints at the slightest criticism of Labour, such as “Labour, stop the bombing” or “No to Labour warmongering”. It will police its so-called “broad-based” movement to drive out any anti-imperialist tendency and so protect its alliance with the Labour Party. Even when the Socialist Party asserts in Socialism Today that “The support of Blair, d’Alema, Jospin, Schröder and company for NATO’s first war marks the final stage in the bourgeoisification of the social democratic parties”, it has no practical content; Lenin had already concluded this 85 years ago when the European social democrats supported the imperialist war in 1914.
The Labour Party has always been an imperialist party. It has always represented the narrow self-interest of the middle class and more affluent sections of the working class whose privileged position is maintained by the super-profits of British imperialism. Today’s left draws its membership overwhelmingly from these strata. Hence to confront imperialism, it has to confront the material basis of its own privilege and the party that sustains it — Labour. This the left will not do. It will find any excuse to duck the issue. Even acknowledging the historical role of the Partisans is out of the question — Tito and the communists had to fight the Yugoslav social democrats of their day because they had sold out to western imperialism.
There is now no crime that Labour can commit which will drive the left into open, campaigning opposition. It will always compromise. But it is clear that there can be no anti-war movement unless it is anti-imperialist and therefore anti-Labour. This is the movement that Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! calls on socialists and democrats to build.
Hands off the Balkans!
No to the Labour warmongers!
For the defeat of US and British imperialism!
What we said then…
…during the Falklands War
The Labour left – shamefaced imperialists
“The Labour left has found itself in disarray. It cannot afford to be seen to fully back the Thatcher government. But the fact is that the Labour left does not oppose British claims of sovereignty to the Malvinas/Falklands islands. They merely object to the means of pursuing the claim. Hence Benn said: ” There is unanimity in the House on the question of opposing the aggression of the junta. There is also unanimity on the right of self-defence against aggression.” Benn merely wants to use effective economic sanctions rather than military force to “strangle Galtieri” and force negotiations with all cards in British imperialist hands. Under all the left’s talk of “fascist juntas” hides a shamefaced refusal to fight the real enemy of British workers and the oppressed — the British imperialist ruling class…Those who today cling to the hope of a socialist anti-war movement coming from the Labour and trade union movement are at best fools and at worst sowers of illusions.” (FRFI 20, June 1982)
…and during the Gulf War
“What of the Labour left? 55 of them voted against a war, but they remain in favour of the use of sanctions. In other words, their dispute with Kinnock is not over aims, but means. This tiny gesture, however, which demands no sacrifice of themselves whatsoever, had proved quite enough for the SWP to hail their “courage” in opposing Kinnock’s naked militarism.
“What of this “courage”? It is not two years ago that Tony Benn said that the “the Labour Party is not and probably never was a socialist party”. That has had no practical consequence for him, even now when the Party has endorsed a holocaust throughout the Middle East. Indeed, the only outcome is that the left has felt obliged to leap to its defence. For instance, John Molyneux in Socialist Worker argues that socialists still have to vote Labour because “notwithstanding its bourgeois leadership, Labour remains at base a workers’ party”….
“…the conclusion is, as always, that no matter what bestiality Labour commits, the John Molyneuxs of this world will still be queuing at the ballot box, ready to prove they are not cut off from a privileged, ever-so-British working class. (FRFI 99, February/March 1991)
FRFI 149 June / July 1999
