Jo voted for war - against her Constituents wishes.

by Campsie SSP member, Neil Scott

Far from NOT being a vote for war, as some like our local MP Jo Swinson have billed the recent Syria motion that was defeated in Westminster, a yes vote would have meant that attacking Syria would have very much been on the cards.  The resulting no vote actually stayed the murderous hands of the US military as well as our own for long enough to ensure that Assad was talked round by the Russians and his chemical arsenal is now being destroyed by international experts.

Jo, as I wrote in a blogpiece, here had a dilemma - she says her instinct is to vote against war, but thought that the international community should be able to rain down from sky borne drone and missile, it's moral authority and disregard the wider authority of the United Nations.  She says as much in the blogpiece.

There is a dichotomy - a contradiction actually - in her words and in her actions.  There is definitely a contradiction in her "relief" at a UN "approach"; the fact that the motion did NOT give the UN primacy and the fact she actually feels that the UN is not the place that the final decision would be made.

On the contrary - Swinson felt that an undefined "international community" should be able to act without the consent of the United Nations.

Who are this "international community?"  The proposed action, of course, was proposed by the US.  An action the UK colaition did all they could to support.  Does Jo think that this country and the US have the moral authority to act alone in intervention in civil wars because other countries like China and Russia have "...such scant regard for the human rights of its own citizens?"

I won't defend obvious human rights abuses by China and Russia - but do we wield moral authority like Gods of Gods? Is she implying the moral authority of the UK is without stain?

The US - a country that has jailed Bradley Manning, the Cuban 5 and many without trial in Guantanamo Bay is unquestionably a moral authority above the rest?  Really?

 And our country that has recently carried out human rights abuses such as the police killings of Jean Charles de Menezes, Azelle Rodney and Ian Tomlinson; the torture and the deaths in UK armed forces custody of Iraqis such as Baha Mousa;  historical torture of Northern Irish political prisoners and the shootings and beatings of demonstrators there; the alleged collusion of security forces in the killings of lawyers, Pat Finnucane and Rosemary Nelson; the death in custody of the refugee Jimmy Mubenga and the continued detention of child refugees, despite assurances from the Liberal Democrats that this practise would stop. Or is it just because we are Western English speakers that gives us moral superiority?

I really am at a loss to see why we above the others are purest.  The list of human rights abuses carried out in this country goes on - but you get the picture. Jo believes that our Government, along with the US, have the moral right to police the world. The fact is, Russia nor China are muscling in on the middle East in quite the same militarist, missile laden and murderous drone way we are.

As well as that, Jo, in her letter below, admits that "all [of those constituents who contacted her prior to the vote]were against the UK taking military action in the immediate future..."

Yet, she felt she had the moral authority to 

1. keep the military option live by voting yes and 

2. by open admission in her blogpiece, ignore the UN if China and Russia had blocked a UN motion to take action ("I accept that the doctrine of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ can mean that action to prevent humanitarian calamity is appropriate.  I don’t accept that a country like Russia or China that has such scant regard for the human rights of its own citizens should always be able to stop an otherwise united and outraged international community from acting in extreme circumstances.")

All of the nonsense in the email below about her voting for this motion because it was not a direct call to arms is negated by her want to disregard how the UN security Council would have most likely voted - ie. no to military intervention in Syria.


Nick Clegg's stuttering and obfuscating on the night of the vote, when asked if this motion would mean that their would be a further Parliamentary debate, in my opinion, meant that the House voted no.  Clegg swung the vote through the perception of his dishonesty.  A man few in the UK now trust.  

Of course he couldn't guarantee that such a mealy mouthed motion would stop the PM bringing us to war by, for example the use of the Queen's Prerogative as Blair did in 2003 when he ordered "our boys" in to Iraq (the Queens Prerogative is a power that should have no place in a modern Western democracy; a power that it is used as a smoke-screen by ministers to obfuscate the use of power for which they are insufficiently accountable and a power that has brought us to war despite the democratic wish of the people or its elected representatives, of the UK).


Jo Swinson has, over and over again, been seen to vote against what the people of East Dunbartonshire first voted her in on.  The Liberal Democrats once proudly boasted their record on voting against war. Jo, swung by the ambitious ex-Tory Nick Clegg has voted against the council of her own constituents. From University fees through to the privatisation of the English NHS, her support for the impoverishing and dreadful welfare bill, some of which has been highlighted by the UN as it expressed it's "shock" at how aspects of it were pushing people into poverty; to rely on foodbanks and to suicide.  

So much for the coalition adhering to the advice of the UN.  

I have reproduced the email I received from Jo below.  Our original FOI request is at the bottom of this article.  

Her statement that it "was not as straightforward as constituents asking me to vote yes or no," would be laughable if it were actually not so sinister.  This was a vote for or against keeping the military on standby - and in fact more than that - it allowed the military to begin a build up towards intervention - an intervention she knew would happen.

If not, she is self deluded about her responsibility to her constituents.  

She obviously thinks she has the authority to overrule the electoral authority those who voted for the "anti-war, anti-tuition fees, left of Labour" Lib Dems.

Dear Mr Scott,



Thank you for your email.



As an MP handling correspondence from constituents, I am not subject to Freedom of Information legislation (but I will do my best to answer your question nevertheless). If you want to make a Freedom of Information request to my Department (which is subject to FOI), details of how to do so can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/make-a-freedom-of-information-request. There is no reason that constituents should attempt to contact me at the Department, however, as I publicise this email address as my constituency address. Personally, I am not aware of any constituents having contacted my via the Department about this.



To answer your question, many of the emails I received where before the motion we were due to vote on was even published, and of those that were sent afterwards hardly any referred to any specifics of the motion itself. Therefore it was not as straightforward as constituents asking me to vote yes or no. In fact from the comments I received I think many people were under the impression that the House of Commons would be voting on military action, which of course as you know, we were not.



You will note, for example, that the motion we were voting on did not permit the UK carrying out military action alone unless a further vote had taken place, and called for the UN weapons inspectors to be allowed to finish their work. Many of those who emailed me argued along similar lines. Whilst all were against the UK taking military action in the immediate future, many people attached conditions in which they felt military action would be justified, whereas others simply stated that there should be no military action at all.



From the end of July until the evening of 29th August (when the vote took place), I received 57 emails from constituents on this issue. This included several from people who emailed more than once. Of those, 22 were sent prior to the motion even being published at 6.55pm on 28th August, and so could not have been specific to the actual motion. Of those sent after, the vast majority continued to comment on the issue generally, rather than the specifics of the motion.



The media so often like to present such matters as ‘for’ and ‘against’. However, these issues are generally more complex than that and I felt I had a responsibility consider what we were actually voting for: a motion condemning the actions of the Syrian regime in using chemical weapons against innocent civilians, noting that the UN weapons inspectors be allowed to finished their work, and noting that no military action would be taken without a further vote. There was nothing I disagreed with in that.



I hope that this answers your question. However, please do let me know if there is anything else I can assist with.



Yours sincerely,



Jo Swinson MP

Review - The Truth About Empire

The Imperial Controversy: Challenging the Empire Apologists
By Andrew Murray, Manifesto Press
Foreword by George Galloway
152 pages, paperback £12.95

REVIEW BY ALEX MILLER

In the past decade or so, politicians, journalists and academics of various stripes have attempted to rehabilitate the notions of empire and imperialism. For example, in 2009 the then British PM Gordon Brown told the Daily Mail newspaper: “The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over. We should move forward. We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it”. Likewise academic historians such as Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts have attempted to rewrite the history of the British Empire as something essentially beyond criticism. Ferguson has said, “I am fundamentally in favour of empire. Indeed, I believe that empire is more necessary in the 21st century than ever before”, while according to Roberts, “Imperialism is an idea whose time has come again”. Of course, these defences of historical imperialism serve merely as a prelude to a defence of the contemporary neo-colonialist projects promoted by the likes of former US president George. W. Bush and former British PM Tony Blair.

In this tightly argued book Andrew Murray, who is chair of the British Stop the War Coalition, takes on both historical imperialism and its contemporary neo-colonialist variant. Murray demonstrates that the British Empire, far from being the benign paternalistic force portrayed by the apologists, in fact delivered war, racism, famine, state terror and the suppression of self-determination and democracy on a scale comparable to that wreaked by Hitler’s Third Reich. For example, Murray points out that in the 18th century, there were 119 recorded wars involving the British Empire, and 72 such wars during Queen Victoria’s reign in the 19th. In the 20th century, major colonial conflicts occurred in South Africa, Kenya, Palestine, Malaya, Iraq, Egypt, Yemen and Ireland, and Murray also lists Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Iran, India, Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Guatemala/Belize, as sites of British military involvement, not to mention the invasion of Bolshevik-led Russia after World War I and more recent interventions in Greece, Cyprus and the attack on Yugoslavia. Far from being a “Pax Britannica”, the British Empire waged endless war “both against rivals anxious to share the spoils, and, more persistently the peoples of the subject territories themselves”.

In addition to detailing the vast human cost of colonial war, Murray highlights the racism at the core of the imperial project and demonstrates what it meant in terms of lives lost due to man-made famine. For example, the mass starvation suffered by the indigenous Irish population in 1845-7 was not, as is commonly thought, the result of crop failure caused by potato blight. Murray points out that this crop failure was general across Europe, and that only in colonial Ireland did it lead to widespread starvation. Murray quotes the historian T.A. Jackson who asserted that “the amount of corn, cattle etc exported from Ireland in these years would have fed all those who hungered twice over”, and he identifies the “absolute priority given by the government in London to maintaining the social position of the landlord class in Ireland” as the reason for the mass starvation. As Murray notes, a concomitant of this was a racist attitude towards the Irish peasant, regarded as a subhuman to be condemned on the basis of class and religion as well as race. This was not an aberration in the history of the British Empire: “anything from 12 to 29 million people died from starvation across India in the famines largely caused by the structures of economic development imposed by the Raj and greatly exacerbated by laissez-faire dogma and official indifference”.

In addition to highlighting the Empire’s frequent resort to state violence and terror – often in the service of quashing local movements for elementary democracy and national self-determination – Murray also marshals overwhelming evidence “that imperialism, far from promoting economic advance, actually undeveloped the colonies”. In colony after colony, as a matter of deliberate policy “indigenous routes to industrialisation were blocked off, monocultural crop economies were imposed on the widest scale possible, forced labour utilised to maximise profit to capitalist investors and the entire course of development subordinated to the needs of the imperial power”.

Nor were endless war, famine, racism, state violence and the suppression of democracy features specifically of British imperialism: Murray summarises the “achievements” of Belgian, German, French, Dutch and Italian imperialism to show that they were comparable to those of the British.

Some interesting political facts emerge. For example, the famous Liberal Party leader William Gladstone is described by the Marxist writer R. Palme Dutt as supporting imperialism “under a rose-tinted eiderdown of pacific sentiments” – but “No sooner had he taken office than he continued and carried to new heights Tory imperialist foreign policy”. Gladstone’s duplicity is now taken a further step by his descendant as leader of the British Liberal-Democrats, Nick Clegg, who “opposed” the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but now serves as Deputy PM in a Conservative-led coalition fully committed to the ongoing neo-colonial occupation of Afghanistan. Moreover, although the Labour Party has contained over time many committed anti-imperialists, the pro-imperialist sentiments of Blair and Brown were apparently shared by the first Labour PM, Ramsey MacDonald, who advocated “socialist imperialism” based on “pride of race”.

Murray reserves his most scathing arguments for erstwhile “left-wing” journalists such as Christopher Hitchens and Nick Cohen (who described the British army in Iraq as “the armed wing of Amnesty International”). Murray very effectively takes to pieces their arguments in favour of the invasion of Iraq, and shows that the “peace, prosperity and democracy” promised for the Iraqis is as illusory as that cited by 19th century apologists for imperial involvement in India or Ireland.

Overall, Murray’s book provides an important and timely reminder that imperialism, whether in its historical or contemporary form, is in Galloway’s apt phrase “murder in the guise of a civilising mission”. In writing it, Murray has done a great service to the progressive and anti-war movement.

[Available from www.manifestopress.org.uk]

Cuts in Services, Jobs, Wages and Pensions to Pay for Their Crisis

by Raphie de Santos

Cuts: that’s what all the major parties - Labour, SNP, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - are arguing about. But not if there is an alternative to the cuts but who would be the best at making the cuts. But let’s be clear we are bailing them out of the complete mismanagement of their economic and financial systems.

Bring on the Clowns

Governments led by Thatcher, Blair, Brown, McConnell and Salmond have supported the changes to the running of the financial and economic system that have led to the greatest crisis since the 1930s. They have overseen the deregulation of financial markets and institutions and the liberal use of interest rates that created a huge speculative bubble in every type of debt and a mountain of 700 trillion US dollars of unregulated derivatives. They bailed these systems out with hundreds of billions of pounds of borrowed money which they are asking us to pay back through cuts.

Having all cheered from the sidelines patting each other on the back for their wonderful creation they now blame everyone but themselves for the mess and are asking us to pick up the bill for their reckless folly.


Bailouts

The shortfall in money has come from a bailout of the crisis ridden financial system and a deep UK recession caused by the resultant collapse of consumer credit. So far the government has spent about £150 billion (bn) bailing out the banks and another £150bn on quantitative easing (QE) – where they print money and buy back government and other debt from financial institutions. They are going to spend another £25bn on QE and are prepared to underwrite another £700bn of the banks bad debts. Practically none of the money spent so far has found its way into the real economy - about £2bn has gone into mortgage lending helping to temporarily stop the fall in house prices. Most of the bailout money is being horded by the banks to pay off losses and to have for any future potential losses. So far the money spent amounts to 25% of what we produce (gross domestic product) annually.

At the same time central government revenues are falling because of the recession they have caused. Rising unemployment has a double edged sword of reducing tax revenues and increasing benefits payments for central and local government. In August of this year there was a £17bn deficit in the UK budget from this trend.

One way to pay for the shortfalls is borrow money on the international financial markets through issuing UK government debt – called gilts. Then pay it back over several years with increased revenues from a growing economy. The average that was raised in the five years prior to 2009 by the UK government in this way was £47 bn per year. In 2009 the estimate is £146bn and in 2010 the forecast is £180bn. The problem with this model is two fold: one the economy will not recover (if at all) sufficiently to create extra tax revenue to make these payments; second the UK economy is so fundamentally weak that Bank of England interest rates will have to remain at very low levels which means a weak currency and therefore nobody – domestic or international – will want to buy these UK government bonds.

That is why all the plans put forward to make cuts by the major parties are so vague: nobody knows how much will have to be cut to cover the unknown developing black hole in the UK’s finances. That is why there is a general message of we are all going to have “bear the pain over several years” to sort out their mess.


But if we are correct about the prospects for the UK economy – years of stagnation or decline – then the cuts will be on a massive scale year after year with the dire social consequences that will bring for the majority of the working class.

The SNP

These cuts will affect central and local spending. Local spending by councils is financed by a block grant from central government making up about 75% of the local budget – the rest comes from council tax. Similarly the Scottish government receives a block payment from central government to finance services such as heath and education. The SNP minority government are in effect administering the cuts from London whether Tory or Labour. They have made matters worse for local councils by freezing council tax and refusing to implement a progressive local or national income tax. Even if such a proposal was defeated by the other parties in Holyrood it would have the effect of galvanising a campaign amongst Scottish voters for a commitment for such future tax changes from the next Holyrood election. It would also have strengthened the argument for independence for Scotland.

But the SNP did not want to rock capitalism’s boat and instead be quite happy to implement the cuts and makes some noises that it is all London’s fault.

Alternative

There is an alternative to the bank bailouts and cuts.

• take all the banks under full ownership and control turning their toxic loans into social rents and social projects and cancelling their destructive derivative contracts;
• a redistributive tax – a one off greed tax would repair the damage already done to our public services and a permanent progressive tax could generate an extra 33% to the total Scottish budget; and
• scrap the expenditure on nuclear weapons, withdraw from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and reduce our armed forces to one for defence not invasion.



This is the alternative the Scottish Socialist Party is fighting for in the Glasgow North-East by election and the forthcoming UK and Scottish elections. It is the rationale alternatives to what the major parties are offering us - that we pay for their crisis. It is the start of the building of a society that operates in the interests of the majority instead of the few.

Indict Blair...

A new campaign has been launched to indict Tony Blair in the Hague as a war criminal.

The petition text is below, follow the link to sign it.

To: President of the United Nations General Assembly and the UK Attorney General

BWCF - THE BLAIR WAR CRIMES FOUNDATION

To The President of The United Nations General Assembly, H.E. Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, and The Attorney General of the United Kingdom, and their successors in office.

RE ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR

We, the citizens of the United Kingdom and other countries listed, wish to uphold The United Nations Charter, The 1998 Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court, The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Rule of International Law, especially in respect of:-

1. 1949 Geneva Convention IV: Article 146
   The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention.
2. 1907 Hague Convention IV: Article 3
   A belligerent party which violates the provisions of the said regulations shall, if the case demands, be liable to pay compensation. It shall be responsible for all the acts committed by persons forming part of its armed forces.

We therefore call on you to indict Anthony Charles Lynton Blair in his capacity as recent Prime Minister of the UK, so long as he is able to answer for his actions and however long it takes, in respect of our sample complaints relating to the 2003 Iraq War waged by the UK as ally to the United States of America.

We are concerned that without justice and respect for the rule of law, the future for us and our progeny in a lawless world is bleak, as revealed by recent US declarations about the use of torture and the events of December 2008 in Gaza show.

The following are our sample complaints relating to the Iraq War 2003-2009:

1. Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, 4 million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.
2. Employing radioactive ammunition causing long-term destruction of the planetary habitat.
3. Causing the breakdown of civil administration, with consequent lawlessness, especially looting, kidnapping, and violence, and consequent breakdown of womens’ rights, of religious freedom, and child and adult education.
4. Failing to maintain the medical needs of the populace.
5. Despoliation of the cultural heritage of the country.
6. Supporting an ally that employs ‘waterboarding’ and other tortures.
7. Seizing the assets of Iraq.
8. Using inhumane restraints on prisoners, including dogs, hoods, and cable ties.
9. Using Aggressive Patrolling indiscriminately, traumatising women and children and wrecking homes and property.
10. Marking bodies of prisoners with numbers, writing, faeces and other degrading treatment.
11. The use of cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons including white phosphorous on shake and bake missions.
12. Supporting indiscriminate rocket attacks from F16 fighter planes on women and children in Fallujah in Nov 2004
13. Supporting the shooting up of ambulances and medical personnel in Fallujah in Nov 2004
14. Supporting the expulsion of the entire population of Fallujah save for young men of military age, for a reprisal attack on that city in Nov 2004.

Film

Alan McCombes on election result

Click here for election analysis from Alan McCombes:

We fought in hope, and we got beat. Big time.
But last Thursday’s electoral rout does not mean that the Scottish Socialist Party is a spent force, or that we’re about to implode for months on end to indulge in self recrimination and doubt before tentatively hitting the streets again.
While the media lens was turned on the race for Holyrood, time didn’t stop and life went on inexorably, the rich getting that little bit richer while the poor got poorer, the private sector expanding while public sector waiting lists sprawled off the end of the page, luxury flats going up while council housing came down, war raging while peace foundered, people dying of excess while others were wasted through want.
And just as surely as this goes on, so too does our fight for the radical alternative.

More on the SSP main website - click here: