The last Labour government waged war against Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and Iraq. It remains just as bellicose:
- The assault on Libya, 2011. Only nine Labour MPs opposed Ed Miliband when he supported the NATO ‘no-fly zone’ amidst a hysterical climate demonising Colonel Gaddafi.
- Intervention in Syria, August 2013. Although Labour voted against a motion to join the US in launching airstrikes on Syria, it did not oppose military action provided it had UN blessing.
- Airstrikes on Iraq, September 2014. Labour supported airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq with just 23 of its MPs opposing a return to war. Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said Labour’s support for extending operations into Syria would not be conditional on UN authorisation, declaring that ‘the UK’s moral compass is not set in Moscow and Beijing’.
- Sanctions against Russia in 2014: Alexander has been equally belligerent over the Ukraine crisis, stating in July that ‘Labour has called for further economic and diplomatic measures to ensure that Russia feels both the costs and consequences of its continued aggression towards Ukraine’. He has urged Russia’s expulsion from the G8, the suspension of military and civilian co-operation, and questioned whether Russia should host the 2018 World Cup. In February 2015 he supported the despatch of 75 British military advisers to the Ukrainian army.
Joey Simons
A Labour imperialist
There is no better testament to the rotten, imperialist core of the Labour Party than its leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy. Murphy served as Miliband’s Shadow Secretary for Defence between 2010 and 2013. A notorious supporter of the original invasion of Iraq, he is an ardent Zionist and former chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and a member of the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society. In September 2013, he tabled a Labour amendment to the Defence Reform Bill to make it a ‘specific criminal offence’ to ‘attack members of our Armed Forces’. In two years he has claimed nearly £40,000 in expenses renting a flat in London while letting out one he bought earlier with public money.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 244 April/May 2015
