The outcome of result might sound music to many who might dance on hearing the word ‘labour’ as in most of the world, the term is almost deleted in the ‘vocabulary’ of political discourse. In the United States, there is no Labour. There is the fight between two parties of white ruling elite dominated by the corporate interest with little interest for the common person. Now, Labour party returned to power after 14 years and with massive majority but are the Conservatives decimated in UK?  Has the Labour anything to do with the left politics? What brought Labour to power in UK?

The fact is that the historical route of Conservative Party does not indicate the growth of ‘left wing’ political forces in Britain. The fact is this landslide to Labour party is more to do with the faulty electoral system that UK has been following termed as First Past the Post System which result in huge gap between the vote share and the number of seat got. FPTP can be useful if there are only two to three parties as well as a high voter turnout. In the absence of it, the mandate can always be haunting though at the end of the day, it does not matter, how much is the vote share, it is the number of seats that matter.

The fact of the matter is that out of 650 seats, Labour Party has won 412 seats which is almost 65% of seats though the vote share was merely 34%. Its rival Conservative Party with 24% vote share acquired 121 seats. Liberals got 71 seats with 12% votes. Another right wing under the name Reformist Party, though, only got 4 seats but with 14% vote share. Led by Nigel Farage, Reformists are being blamed for the route of the Tory government. Conservative, Liberals and Reformists mostly hail from the same variety of political ideology of right wing. Their combine vote share is much powerful than that of Labour. The left leaning groups are mostly independent and Green Party.  Interestingly, Labour could only increase its vote share of about 2% from 2019 when it fought under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn who contested as an independent candidate and won from Islington North constituency by over 7,000 votes defeating the nearest Labour Party rival. Corbyn has been representing this constituency since 1983 and has won for a record 11 times.

Many people might be happy to see return of a ‘Labour’ government after one and a half decade but is it really so. Leave aside the ‘vote share and seat got’ issue, the fact is most of the western electoral system particularly influence by British and American models are already captured by the right-wing capitalist forces. The quality of the ‘western democratic model’ is in its propaganda and comparison with the Russian and Chinese system despite the fact that both the countries are today a power house and rising high economically. Look at the rise of other powerful groups in UK like Liberal Democrats and Reformists both ideologically close to Conservatives but is ‘Labour’ truly dedicated to left or the working classes. The problem with the ‘liberal democracies’ in the world is their hypocrisy on human rights issues. If Labour Party was truly dedicated to the idea as its name suggest then how come powerful leaders like Jeremy Corbyn thrown away from the party. Is it because he was considered more radical and a threat to the Empire and its elite. How is the current leadership of Labour different than the Conservative? The brazen shamelessness of Kier Stramer in refusing to condemn the Israeli brutalities and assault on Gaza shocked all those who filled the Streets of United Kingdom demanding a complete ceasefire in Gaza. It was Kier responsible for humiliating and ousting Jeremy Corbyn and other left leaning leaders from Labour Party. Most of these leaders fought independently won with a handsome margin and defeated their nearest Labour rivals. The poll result suggest that British electorate are swinging between different conservative forces and Labour got acceptability because it threw away radical left forces led by Jeremy Corbyn. So essentially, British political system is highly dominated and controlled by the Conservatives who may not be Conservative Party but also Labour, Liberal and Reformists.

The Crisis of Electoral System

The British model of electoral system or simply FPTP is not reflective of the real verdict of the people. It is basically manipulative of the power elite and therefore most of the time legitimize a ‘minority’ government as ‘majority. All the colonies of the ‘Empire’ has this system which is used by the power elite of those countries using or misusing the contradiction among different groups. The difference between vote share and seat won is too high. The Labour got nearly 34% of total vote polled out of 60% votes that were polled during these elections. Which simply mean 40% people did not vote during the election. Now, in terms of seat, the party got 412 seats out of 650 which is nearly 64%. Under the Proportional Electorate System, Labour with 34% vote share would have just got 221 seats much below the majority mark. Conservatives with 21% vote share would have got 156 instead of 121 which they have at the moment. Liberal with 12% vote share got 71 seats while Reformists with 14% vote share got just 4 seats. Under the Proportionate system, Liberals could have got 78 and Reformists 91. Even a 4 seat Green Party with 7% vote would have got nearly 46 seats.

How credible is the electoral system where party getting 34% votes which also mean 66% votes that were polled did vote against you. Interestingly, a party with 14% vote share get just 4seat while that with 12% vote share 71 seats. Now, how can such a system be justified as ‘democratic’. We all have the same crisis and the result is that the ruling parties and government actually rarely listen to people’s’ voices. The amount of massive street protests that London witnessed in support of Palestine was always looked down upon by the power elite and the media. The governments these days speak through the power elite and opposition leader spoke the language of the prime minister when he openly supported the previous government’s stand on Palestine.

No change in Foreign Policy

Actually, western democracies are liberal to the large extent related to individual freedom, right to faith, criticism of the government and allowing protests in the streets but at the same point of time we need to understand why a leader like Jeremy Corbyn was ousted from Labour? Why he has been a persona non grata for the ‘liberal’ circles. A similar thing happened in United States where Bernie Sanders is despised by the ruling elite. The liberal democracies can’t accept Julian Assange and felt him the biggest threat. It needs to be understood why these democracies do not listen to the voices of protests in the streets.

Broadly, the western democracy will remain pro capitalist and market driven and nothing much is expected to change on the foreign policy matters though the new Prime Minister as already rescinded the Rwanda policy for refugees which is a great step in right direction. The Tory government wanted to privatise the prestigious National Health Services but could not do so. The railway network is already in distress. Will the new government take initiatives to strengthen these services or will it be the same government that was headed by Tony Blair?

The issue of minorities and immigrants are extremely important and resulted in victory of four independent candidates who defeated Labour candidates. The party has to see whether it will follow the ‘right tilt of Tony Blair or really work differently particularly on the issue of Palestine. It needs to understand that the combine vote share of the right-wing parties is much higher than it and if it ignore wider concern of minorities and immigrants then it might loses the support of progressive forces as well as ethnic minorities then Britain might see rise of radical left forces in the coming years. Unlike the United States, Britain still has got space for minorities and immigrants in the political structure. Will Jeremy Corbyn and other leaders emerge more powerful in the coming years or the pressure of capitalist?

Lesson for India

A democracy is successful when its institutions are robust. Britain has a powerful legacy in that regard. The election process is extremely simple and voting opens at 7 am and continue till 10 pm. The parliament still is responsible and debates there are worth watching. Prime Minister’s Question hour with leader of opposition is extremely fascinating but then we can’t have that in India.

The New Parliament has 23 Muslim members (A big country like India has just 24) and over 60% of the members belong to ethnic minorities reflecting Britain’s diversity. One thing need to be clarified. A criticism of the British system does not mean we are better than them. They have a robust system and more over basic curtsies among the political class there remain far superior than us. The swiftness with which the new government took charge with in a day remain remarkable. Everything was done without any chest thumping or ‘victory’ speeches. It is also important to understand the difference of ‘right wing’ or Conservatives in Britain, Europe and India. The Conservatives or Right Wing there are mostly against immigration policies of the government but none of them have ventured inside the personal lives of people. Right wing in India and its neighbours are basically religious fanatics who have issues with your personal choices whether food, faith or marriage. There are no hate speeches and diversity of representation is always a plus point for political parties.

Britain’s elections have big lessons for us and our political class. That elections in vibrant democracies today is on ballot paper and not through EVMs is a reality. Secondly, we did not hear any complaints of electoral malfunctioning or fraud. The counting and declaration process was simple and Prepoll surveys or Exit polls were not hyped. The prime minister did not take time in vacating his official bungalow and gone to submit his resignation to the King when results were just coming in and he conceded his defeat gracefully. The transfer of power was so swift and meticulous that there was no time for any confusion and uncertainty.  Yes, electoral system has issues of representation\ and vibrant democracies find their own solution. Britain will certainly have to look into it as this might become a major issue in the coming days.

Let us hope new government will fulfil the aspirations of the people but expecting a different perspective on Ukraine and Israel will be next to impossible as foreign policy matters in these countries are mostly static and fixed with United States. A change in its Ukraine or Palestine policy will need Jeremy Corbyn at the helm of affair which does not seem a possibility in the near future.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are the author’s personal views, and do not necessarily represent the views of Sabrangindia.

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London: Preet Kaur Gill, an Indian-origin British Sikh MP, in a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, has sought protection and urgent action against rising crimes against the community in the UK.

Quoting hate crime statistics 2021-22, Gill, an MP from Birmingham, said hate crimes against Sikhs rose by 169 percent in comparison to a 38 percent increase in reported religious hate crimes overall.

“I am deeply concerned by these new statistics. 301 hate crimes against Sikhs were reported in 2021-22, up from 112 in 2020-21. The 169 percent increase is compared to a 38 percent increase in reported religious hate crimes overall”, Gill said in the letter, which she released on Twitter on Monday.

The 2001 census recorded 336,000 Sikhs living in Britain.

Gill said 301 hate crimes against Sikhs were reported in 2021-22, up from 112 in 2020-2021.

The letter, which was also addressed to Simon Clarke, secretary of the department for levelling up, housing and communities (DLUHC), comes as 28-year-old Claudio Capos from Manchester was awarded a three-year jail term recently for attacking 62-year-old Avtar Singh in broad daylight this June.

Singh had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, a stroke caused by bleeding on the brain and multiple fractures to his cheek, jaw and eye socket as a result of the attack, the BBC reported.

Gill, in her letter, urged Braverman to implement the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report on British Sikhs, which was published in 2020.

The report found that the lack of an official term was a contributing factor as to why crimes against Sikhs go largely “unnoticed, unreported and unrecorded”.

This report, Gill said, was shared with both the home secretary and communities secretary at the time and was an attempt to consult the government on the definition of Anti-Sikh hate.

“However, despite multiple promises of substantive response and offers of a meeting, the home office and DLUHC, between them, have failed to respond,” she added.

Courtesy: The Daily Siasat

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Jeremy Corbyn tweeted yesterday, September 4” Everyone should watch this powerful moment.” And powerful and nerve tingling it is as one of our own (a turban sporting Sikh Member of the British Parliament) takes on the most powerful in his country, the prime minister. He was challenging Boris Johnson on his racist remarks on Muslim women.

Says Tanmanjeet Singh Desi,

“Mr Speaker if I decide to wear a turban, or you decide to wear a cross; or he decides to wear a kirpan or a skull cap. Or she decides to wear a burqa or a hijab. Does that mean that it is right open season for members of this Hon’ble House to make derogatory and divisive remarks about our appearance!
“For those of us from a young age have had to endure and face up to being called names such as ‘tower head’ or ‘Taliban’ or coming from Bongo Bongo land, we can appreciate full well the hurt and pain being felt by already vulnerable Muslim women when they are being described as bank robbers or letter boxes! (shame, thumps)..

“So, rather than hide behind sham and whitewash investigations, when will the prime minister finally apologise for his derogatory and racist remarks? (cheers, thumping approval from the House)

“Racist remarks, Mr Speaker, that have led to a spike in hate crime. And given the increasing prevalence of such incidents within his party, when will the prime minister finally order an Inquiry into Islamophobia within the Conservative Party, something which he and his Chancellor promised on national television?

Monitoring group Tell MAMA [Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks] had unveiled research earlier this week which claimed that Islamophobic incidents rose by 375 per cent in the week after Johnson’s references to the burqa as “oppressive” in the newspaper column.

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Image: Theresa May and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, March 2018. PA Images/Victoria Jones, all rights reserved.

A former Research Fellow at Chatham House and the ex-Director of the World Development Movement, British historian Mark Curtis has published several books on UK foreign policy, including 2003’s Web of Deceit: Britain’s Real Role in the World, endorsed by Noam Chomsky and John Pilger. Ian Sinclair asked Curtis about the recently published new edition of his 2010 book Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam.

Ian Sinclair: With the so-called ‘war on terror’ the dominant framework for understanding Western foreign policy since 9/11, the central argument of your book – that Britain has been colluding with radical Islam for decades – will be a shock to many people. Can you give some examples?
Mark Curtis: UK governments – Conservative and Labour – have been colluding for decades with two sets of Islamist actors which have strong connections with each other.

In the first group are the major state sponsors of Islamist terrorism, the two most important of which are key British allies with whom London has long-standing strategic partnerships – Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. The second group includes extremist private movements and organisations whom Britain has worked alongside and sometimes trained and financed, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. The roots of this lie in divide and rule policies under colonialism but collusion of this type took off in Afghanistan in the 1980s, when Britain, along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, covertly supported the resistance to defeat the Soviet occupation of the country. After the jihad in Afghanistan, Britain had private dealings of one kind or another with militants in various organisations, including Pakistan’s Harkat ul-Ansar, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), all of which had strong links to Bin Laden’s al-Qaida. Covert actions have been undertaken with these and other forces in Central Asia, North Africa and Eastern Europe.

For example, in the 1999 Kosovo war, Britain secretly trained militants in the KLA who were working closely with al-Qaida fighters. One KLA unit was led by the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri, then Bin Laden’s right-hand man. The British provided military training for the KLA at secret camps in Kosovo and Albania where jihadist fighters also had their military centre. The ‘dirty secret’ of the July 2005 London bombings is that the bombers had links with violent Islamist groups such as the Harkat ul-Mujahidin whose militants were previously covertly supported by Britain in Afghanistan. These militant groups were long sponsored by the Pakistani military and intelligence services, in turn long armed and trained by Britain. If we go back further – to the 1953 MI6/CIA coup to overthrow Musaddiq in Iran – this involved plotting with Shia Islamists, the predecessors of Ayatollah Khomeini. Ayatollah Seyyed Kashani – who in 1945 founded the Fadayan-e-Islam (Devotees of Islam), a militant fundamentalist organization – was funded by Britain and the US to organise opposition and arrange public demonstrations against Musaddiq.

More recently, in its military interventions and covert operations in Syria and Libya since 2011, Britain and its supported forces have been working alongside, and often in effective collaboration with, a variety of extremist and jihadist groups, including al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria. Indeed, the vicious Islamic State group and ideology that has recently emerged partly owes its origins and rise to the policies of Britain and its allies in the region.

Although Britain has forged special relationships with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, it has not been in strategic alliance with radical Islam as such. Beyond these two states, Britain’s policy has been to collaborate with Islamist extremists as a matter of ad hoc opportunism, though it should be said that this has been rather regular. Whitehall does not work with these forces because it agrees with them but because they are useful at specific moments: in this sense, the collaboration highlights British weakness to find other on-the-ground foot soldiers to impose its policies. Islamist groups appear to have collaborated with Britain for the same reasons of expediency and because they share the same hatred of popular nationalism and secularism as the British elite.

IS: Why has the UK colluded with radical Islamic organisations and nations?
MC: I argue that the evidence shows that radical Islamic forces have been seen as useful to Whitehall in five specific ways: as a global counter-force to the ideologies of secular nationalism and Soviet communism, in the cases of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; as ‘conservative muscle’ within countries to undermine secular nationalists and bolster pro-Western regimes; as ‘shock troops’ to destabilise or overthrow governments; as proxy military forces to fight wars; and as ‘political tools’ to leverage change from governments.

This collusion has also helped promote two big geo-strategic foreign policy objectives. The first is influence and control over key energy resources, always recognised in the British planning documents as the number one priority in the Middle East. British operations to support or side with Islamist forces have generally aimed at maintaining in power or installing governments that will promote Western-friendly oil policies. The second objective has been maintaining Britain’s place within a pro-Western global financial order. The Saudis have invested billions of dollars in the US and British economies and banking systems and Britain and the US have similarly large investments and trade with Saudi Arabia; it is these that are being protected by the strategic alliance with Riyadh.

IS: You include a chapter in the new edition of the book exploring the UK and West’s role in Syria. Simon Tisdall recently noted in The Observer that the West has been “hovering passively on the sidelines in Syria”. This is a common view – including on the Left. For example, in September 2014 Richard Seymour asserted “The US has not been heavily involved” in Syria, while in February 2017 Salvage magazine published a piece by Dr Jamie Allinson, who argued it was a myth that “the US has pursued a policy of regime change” in Syria. What is your take on the West’s involvement in Syria?
MC: These are extraordinary comments revealing how poorly the mainstream media serves the public. I’ve tried to document in the updated version of Secret Affairs a chronology of Britain’s covert operations in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime. These began with the deployment of MI6 and other British covert forces in 2011, within a few months after demonstrations in Syria began challenging the regime, to which the Syrian regime responded with brute force and terrible violence. British covert action, mainly undertaken in alliance with the US and Saudi Arabia, has involved working alongside radical and jihadist groups, in effect supporting and empowering them. These extremist groups, which cultivated Muslim volunteers from numerous countries to fight Assad, have been strengthened by an influx of a massive quantity of arms and military training from the coalition of forces of which Britain has been a key part. At the same time, Britain and its allies’ policy has prolonged the war, exacerbating devastating human suffering.

UK support for Syrian rebel groups long focused on the Free Syrian Army (FSA), described by British officials as ‘moderates’. Yet for the first three years of the war, the FSA was in effect an ally of, and collaborator with, Islamic State and al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra. London and Washington continued to provide training and help send arms into Syria despite the certainty that some would end up in the hands of jihadists. Some of the militants who joined the Syrian insurgency with British covert support were Libyans who are believed to have been trained by British, French or US forces in Libya to overthrow Qadafi in 2011. Some went on to join Islamic State and also al-Nusra, which soon became one of the most powerful opposition groups to Assad.

Britain appears to have played a key role in encouraging the creation of the Islamic Front coalition in Syria in November 2013, which included groups which regularly worked with al-Nusra; these included Liwa al-Tawhid – a group armed by Qatar and which coordinated attacks with al-Nusra – and Ahrar al-Sham – a hardline Islamist group that rejected the FSA. Both groups contained foreign jihadists, including individuals from Britain. Ahrar al-Sham’s co-founder, Abu Khalid al-Suri, was linked to the 2004 Madrid bombing through a series of money transfers and personal contacts; a Spanish court document named him as Bin Laden’s ‘courier’ in Europe. The same network was connected to the 2005 London terror attack.

The UK role in Syria has not been minor but has been an integral part of the massive US/Arab arms and training operations, and British officials have been present in the control rooms for these operations in Jordan and Turkey. Britain also consistently took the lead in calling for further arms deliveries to the rebel forces. British covert action was in the early years of the war overwhelmingly focused on overthrowing Assad: evidence suggests that only in May 2015 did UK covert training focus on countering Islamic State in Syria.

IS: What role has the mainstream media played with regards to Britain working with radical Islam?
MC: It has largely buried it. In the period immediately after the 7/7 bombings in 2005, and more recently in the context of the wars in Libya and Syria, there were sporadic reports in the mainstream media which revealed links between the British security services and Islamist militants living in Britain. Some of these individuals have been reported as working as British agents or informers while being involved in terrorism overseas and some have been reported as being protected by the British security services while being wanted by foreign governments. This is an important but only a small part of the much bigger picture of collusion which mainly concerns Britain’s foreign policy: this is rarely noticed in the mainstream.

IS: The British public and the anti-war movement are not mentioned in your book, though they seem a potentially important influence on the nefarious and dangerous British foreign policies you highlight?
MC: Yes, it’s largely down to us, the British public, to prevent terrible policies being undertaken in our name. We should generally regard the British elite as it regards the public – as a threat to its interests. The biggest immediate single problem we face, in my view, is mainstream media reporting. While large sections of the public are deluged with misreporting, disinformation or simply the absence of coverage of key policies, there may never be a critical mass of people prepared to take action in their own interests to bring about a wholly different foreign policy.

The mainstream media and propaganda system has been tremendously successful in the UK – the public can surely have very little knowledge of the actual nature of British foreign policy (past or present) and many people, apparently, seriously believe that the country generally (although it may make some mistakes) stands for peace, democracy and human rights all over the world. When you look at what they read (and don’t read) in the ‘news’ papers, it’s no surprise. The latest smears against Corbyn are further evidence of this, which I believe amounts to a ‘system’, since it is so widespread and rooted in the same interests of defending elite power and privilege.

The other, very much linked, problem, relates to the lack of real democracy in the UK and the narrow elitist decision-making in foreign policy. Governments retain enormous power to conduct covert operations (and policies generally) outside of public or parliamentary scrutiny. Parliamentary committees, meant to scrutinise the state, rarely do so properly and almost invariably fail to even question government on its most controversial policies. Parliamentary answers are often misleading and designed to keep the public in the dark. Past historical records of government decision-making are regularly withheld from the public, if not destroyed to cover up crimes. British ‘democracy’, which exists in some forms, otherwise resembles more an authoritarian state.

There are fundamental issues here about how policy gets made and in whose name. It’s not an issue of whether Labour or Conservative is in power since both obviously defend and propagate the elitist system. Jeremy Corbyn himself represents a real break with this but the most likely outcome, tragically, is that the Labour extremists (called ‘moderates’ in the mainstream) and the rest of the conservative/liberal system which believes in militarism, neo-liberalism and the defence of privilege, will prevail if and when Corbyn becomes Prime Minister.

The signs are already there in the Labour manifesto for the last election, which would have continued the present extremism in most aspects of UK foreign policy, even if it promised some change and still represented a major challenge to the establishment. Again, it will obviously be up to us to change policies, democratize the media and transform British governance more broadly.

Ian Sinclair is the author of The March That Shook Blair: An Oral History of 15 February 2003, published by Peace News Press. He tweets @IanJSinclair.

Courtesy: https://www.opendemocracy.net/

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Image: Entrance to the Aida Palestinian refugee camp near Bethlehem, Wikicommons.

Spending time in the Calais ‘Jungle’ refugee camp last year I asked people there what they thought of British politicians’ words. I heard one answer again and again: ‘You know Britain came uninvited to our countries, and created many problems we experience now’. 

Returning from Calais to a research role with the Quakers, I embarked on my own process of self-education. I began by looking up the UN figures on where cross-border refugees are displaced from. Of 22.5 million people, 5.5 million came from Syria, 5.3 million from Palestine, 2.5 million from Afghanistan, 1.4 million from South Sudan. And so it continues – 1 million from Somalia, 646,000 from Sudan, 432,000 from Eritrea, 308,000 from Iraq…

I then began the process of reading up the histories of each of these countries. I knew some of it – but not from my school-time history lessons. In common with many people educated in Britain, the history I was taught principally covered the Roman and Norman invasions of Britain, a quick jump forward to Henry the Eighth’s wives, and then the Second World War, three times over (although mainly the European bits).  The only British occupation we learnt about was in post-Nazi Germany. 

Missing from the curriculum was Britain’s involvement in the same countries from which people are fleeing now, many of them attacked or ruled by Britain in my grandparents’ lifetimes: 
Palestine: Occupied by Britain in 1917, part of which in 1948 became Israel after the British mandate ended. 

Afghanistan: Invaded by Britain in 1838, continued military actions in 1920s and 30s, invaded with others again in 2001. 

Somalia: Occupied by European powers including Britain in 1888, and ruled in part (Somaliland) until 1960. 

Sudan: Divided and ruled by Britain from 1898 to 1956. 

Eritrea: Occupied by Britain in 1941, ceded to Ethiopia in 1952 laying the groundwork for the long running civil war that followed. 

Iraq: Invaded by Britain in 1917, 1941, 1991 and 2003.  

The list continues: Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, India, Iran, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe. All of them countries which thousands of people have fled from, all of which have been occupied or ruled by Britain or British interests within living memory.  

Taken together, they account for well over half of the world’s refugees. Include Syria – being attacked by British forces right now for the third time in a century, and it’s more than three quarters. 

With my heart in my mouth I then made my way to the figures for what proportion of the world’s refugees reside in Britain. There it was: around 0.5%. 

The point of this exercise is not to make British people feel bad. It’s to say that the story of people being forced to flee their homes did not begin in 2015 when it reappeared on our television screens. This is the effect of a decades-old cycle of violence – fuelled by resource exploitation and arms sales – which can have effects for generations. 

It’s a cycle of violence which has been accelerated in the past fifteen years. As with the rise of IS/Daesh – beneficiaries of the recent British military interventions in Iraq and Libya – the effects can sometimes be both rapid and catastrophic. 

So now, in the week that marks a hundred years since Britain’s broken promise of the Balfour Declaration it’s time to call out the half-truth. 

Next time someone says that Britain has a proud history of welcoming refugees, it’s time to reply that it has a shameful history of creating them.

Timothy Gee is a researcher for the Quakers.

Courtesy: opendemocracy.net

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Public art protest organised by Victoria Gugenheim in solidarity with persecuted freethinkers, at the conference in London. Photo: CEMB.

In the ten years of its existence, the Council for Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB) has organised annual conferences to draw attention to issues facing ex-Muslims, their status as apostates and blasphemers, the distinction between Islam and Islamism, islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism, the links with other religious fundamentalisms, and religion and women’s rights.

To mark CEMB’s tenth anniversary, the international conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression that took place in London last month was bigger and bolder than any before it. Appropriately, substantial time was devoted to the journeys and testimonies of women and men who asserted their right to live free from religion and found themselves at best forsaken by family (and that’s no easy option) and at worst risking death and imprisonment.

Whenever speakers gather from around the world I’m reminded of the truism that context is everything. At this conference, those who came from Muslim majority countries tended to be harsher in their condemnation of Islam – one even called it a “virus” – than speakers who have lived in the west where minority status, security concerns and tendencies to see all Muslims as terrorists have obliged them to tread a careful path between the religion and its politicisation.

Jimmy Bangash, a gay Pakistani living in Britain, broke with that pattern in a session called ‘Out, Loud and Proud,’ saying he struggled with the distinction between Islam and Islamism. He referenced the case of Jahed Chaudhury, the first Muslim gay man in Britain to marry, who was spat at and threatened with acid attacks by Muslims. Bangash said it was disingenuous to call this Islamism when it was simply people following Islam.

With that remark, Bangash landed on a central faultline in the conference between those who were practising, progressive Muslims and those who felt that the door marked ‘exit’ was the only option as Islam was essentially unreformable. Could these two groups of people work together in a secular alliance or do atheists and ex-Muslims feel silenced because their critique of religion is seen as offensive by some believers?
 
Could these two groups of people work together in a secular alliance or do atheists and ex-Muslims feel silenced because their critique of religion is seen as offensive by some believers?

These simmering tensions surfaced during a panel entitled ‘Secularism as a Human Right’. Chris Moos, council member of the National Secular Society, lit the fuse when he said it was not helpful to describe religious people as ‘stupid’ (in reference to comments made earlier at the conference) if you are trying to build an inclusive secular movement. He argued for more religious people to be part of campaigns for secularism, but said he feared they stayed away feeling their beliefs “were on trial”.

In her closing statement on this panel, Karima Bennoune, UN special rapporteur on cultural rights, emphasised that while the struggles of atheists are important, they are separate from those of secularists. This drew a passionate response from Maryam Namazie, founder of CEMB. Namazie said her “whole life has been bulldozed by Islam”. She expressed frustration at lacking space to say that Islam offends her, for fear of offending some of her religious sisters in a secular alliance.

Gita Sahgal, director of the Centre for Secular Space, argued from the floor that atheism got a raw deal in secular circles. She also talked passionately about the price paid by some ex-Muslims for whom “simply to pronounce their atheism was to fall into a human rights void”, losing their homes, jobs, custody of children and all their civil and social rights.

Ex-Muslims in Muslim majority countries have had to undertake dangerous journeys to becoming visible in order to find and give support to other ex-Muslims. Ex-Muslims in the west have had access to many more potential allies. But, as many speakers reiterated, finding the right allies can be a minefield. 

In another conference session, Benjamin David, editor of Conatus News, talked about the ‘regressive left’, the ‘liberal left’ and the ‘progressive left’. Later, David Silverman, president of American Atheists, delivered a high-octane, humorous presentation on ‘wrong left’ and ‘wrong right’ allies. Although talking of the American context, much of what he said applies to the UK too.

A slide from Silverman’s talk at the conference in London.Though deliberately reductionist, Silverman’s talk made some serious points. Black and minority ethnic (BME) feminists in the west, and particularly in Britain, have never received support from those who should have been their natural allies – the left – in their struggle against religious fundamentalism, particularly Islamic fundamentalism.

Silverman noted that the ‘wrong left’ believe that criticising Islam is racism, and in fact make no distinction between Islam and Islamism. He said the ‘right to not be offended’ has been gaining ground among left-liberal circles, shutting down free speech.

A recent example of this is the refusal by organisers of the Pride 2017 march in London to support Maryam Namazie and other ex-Muslims against a complaint filed by the East London Mosque which which described a CEMB placard saying “East London Mosque incites murder of LGBT” as itself “inciting hatred against Muslims”. The mosque said it had a “track record for challenging homophobia in East London”.

In a statement, Pride organisers said their community advisory board was considering whether CEMB could join the next march in 2018. “If anyone taking part in our parade makes someone feel ostracised, discriminated against or humiliated, then they are undermining and breaking the very principles on which we exist,” it said. “Pride must always be a movement of acceptance, diversity and unity. We will not tolerate Islamophobia”. (That old chestnut!)

the ‘right to not be offended’ has been gaining ground among left-liberal circles and shutting down free speech

At the London conference, Asher Fainman, president of the Goldsmiths University Atheist Society, deplored how universities had become bastions of the ‘right to not be offended’. He described an infamous incident when he invited Namazie to speak and her talk was repeatedly disrupted by students from the Islamic Society. They literally pulled the plug on her Powerpoint presentation when she showed cartoons of Jesus and Mo.

Namazie has been disinvited from talks at a number of universities on the basis that she is an Islamaphobe (a favourite tactic in shutting down criticism). At the conference, Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of Index on Censorship, said it was a tragedy that the right to free speech was increasingly associated with the right – though it is too important a right for progressive people to relinquish.

A slide from Silverman’s talk at the conference in London.I am not sure there is a ‘right right’ or what its position would be but, in Silverman’s framework, the ‘wrong right’ is racist because it posits Christianity as morally superior, therefore justifying all critiques of Islam. This position leads logically to support for ex-Muslims but this support is the kiss of death because it further alienates potential left supporters.

Silverman described the paradox that “the right doesn’t care about rape culture, homophobia or sexism unless it is in Muslim culture and we have a left that cares a lot about these things unless it is in Muslim culture. The right says Islam creates terrorists, the left says that criticising Islam creates terrorists”.

In this landscape, organisations like CEMB, Southall Black Sisters and Centre for Secular Space have been trying to occupy that lonely space where the primacy of universal rights is respected, regardless of brickbats from the left and right, of the ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ kind. Challenging religion should have no greater consequences than the crossfire of intellectual debate.

Rahila Gupta is a freelance journalist and writer. Her work has appeared in The Guardian and New Humanist among other papers and magazines. Her books include, Enslaved: The New British Slavery; From Homebreakers to Jailbreakers: Southall Black Sisters; Provoked;  and ‘Don’t Wake Me: The Ballad of Nihal Armstrong (Playdead Press, 2013). She is co-authoring a book with Beatrix Campbell with the title Why Doesn’t Patriarchy Die? Follow her on twitter @ RahilaG

This article is part two of a series on the Conference on Free Expression and Conscience, which took place in London in July 2017.

This article was first published on openDemocracy.

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General Election 2017. Danny Lawson/PA Images. All rights reserved.

The previous two columns in this series have explored the idea that a Conservative Party landslide, with at least a 150-seat majority, might not after all be the outcome of the United Kingdom's general election on 8 June. The earlier one expressed "a niggling sense that something may be developing below the surface that could break through even in the short time left” (see "The Corbyn crowd, and its message", 18 May 2017).

That notion was based partly on the way in which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was repeatedly attracting large and enthusiastic crowds at open-air events arranged at short notice, apparently responding to a felt need for a less regimented and more engaged kind of politics. Within a week, this sense of a trend had begun to evolve into something rather more definite, and Labour activists were beginning to think the Conservatives might be denied an overall majority (see "Corbyn, and an election surprise", 26 May 2017).

This latter column indicated a possibility of wishful thinking, but the trend of the last few days suggests that it is now distinctly possible. Part of this sudden and unprecedented shift reflects the Conservatives' campaign errors, especially over confusion on its policy over social care. But it is also clear that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is connecting with people in a remarkable way – his popularity is growing day by day and, far from being an obstacle to Labour’s electoral ambitions, he is becoming their star player.

Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is connecting with people in a remarkable way – his popularity is growing day by day and he is becoming their star player.

In light of these two columns, Oxford Research Group has just published a briefing that extends the discussion to look specifically at Jeremy Corbyn’s views on international security. These views were expressed in his Chatham House speech on 12 May and further developed in a thoughtful response to the devastating Manchester Arena attack late on 22 May.
 

A turning-point

In terms of conventional electioneering wisdom, defence and security are assumed to be Labour’s weakest policies, certain to be bitterly criticised as unpatriotic by the great majority of the national print media. Such criticism certainly followed the Chatham House speech and the subsequent Manchester intervention, but they had much less effect than intended. Indeed Corbyn’s view that the war on terror was failing and that there must be a fundamentally new approach to international security got much more support than expected, and certainly did nothing to dent the growing popularity of the party.

Jeremy Corbyn addressing crowds in 2003 against going to war in Iraq.

The ORG report concluded:
“[After] more than fifteen years of the war on terror, failed or failing states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and Somalia, close to a million people killed and over eight million people displaced, the argument for some serious rethinking on Western approaches to security is hardly difficult to make.

This is where Jeremy Corbyn’s Chatham House speech is so significant since it breaks away from a near-universal Western state consensus and may be much more in tune with what many millions of people may be thinking. Whatever the outcome of the general election next week, space has been opened up for much wider debate. Independent organisations such as Oxford Research Group that take a critical but constructive approach to security will have a particular responsibility to aid the quality of that debate.”

The ORG report does, though, include one serious caveat. If in the coming weeks, ISIS loses both Raqqa and Mosul and then collapses, making it look like the war on terror is at last something of a success, then any chance of rethinking security, whichever party is in power, will be much diminished. At the time of writing the ORG report, such a collapse did not look too likely but what is relevant here is that further, wide-ranging evidence from just the last few days strongly confirms that view.
 

Three days, four theatres of war

That evidence comes from Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and the Philippines.

In Iraq, the army’s extended operation to retake Mosul was expected to be completed in barely ten weeks, but is now likely to take at least three times that. Der Spiegel reports that during the fighting, ISIS has deployed over 850 truck-bombs hundreds of young men ready to kill themselves. Even now, there are still around 1,200 ISIS paramilitaries defending a small core of the old city and the Iraqi army is only able to deploy a similar number of its elite task-forces one and two of its "golden division" (i.e. special forces).

So many of these troops have been killed or seriously wounded that the division is reported to be greatly depleted, with little capability of providing a professional core to the army when ISIS moves fully over to insurgency mode. Already that insurgency is evolving, the latest grim result being the bombing of a Baghdad ice-cream parlour in a Shi’a district of the city on 30 May, killing thirty-five people and injuring more than a hundred.

In Afghanistan, the Trump administration is overseeing a rapid expansion of its air-war against the Taliban and ISIS offshoots, with 460 weapons released in April 2017 compared with 203 in March, the April total being the highest since the peak of Obama’s “surge” in August 2012. The paramilitary response is wide-ranging, including one of the largest truck-bombs ever detonated, killing over eighty people and injuring more than a hundred, just outside Kabul’s “green zone”.  

In Egypt, the recent bombing of Coptic Christian churches was followed by attacks by ISIS gunmen on a small convoy of Copts going on a pilgrimage to a monastery 150 miles south of Cairo. The assault in Minya province killed at least twenty-eight people, the latest in a series that has taken the lives of more than 100 Copts since December.

In the Philippines, the army has been caught out by a sudden surge in paramilitary activity from a group linked to ISIS, in violence made worse by Philippine army casualties caused by “friendly-fire” incidents. The impact, and the sense of a government unable to cope, was enough to persuade President Duterte to cancel a visit to Japan. The continuing insurgency and counter-violence in the southern province of Mindanao, where martial law is now in force, is part of a growing climate of insecurity in which the state plays a major role.
 

A time to rethink

These and many other incidents – including, of course, Manchester – are reminders that ISIS and similar movements are simply not going away, and for Trump to promise more force will be the equivalent of piling yet more combustible material onto the blaze.

ISIS and similar movements are simply not going away.

The implications for Britain are that at some stage there has to be a fundamental rethinking of its defence posture and how it responds to al-Qaida, ISIS and the like. Even if Theresa May’s Conservative Party is re-elected, that process will eventually become impossible to avoid.

But if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party were to achieve the near-impossible and form a minority government in the coming weeks, its chances would be greatly boosted. Just one reason for anticipating a Labour success is that the much needed rethinking might happen sooner rather than later.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy's international security adviser, and has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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On Sunday, Ariana Grande played to a packed house of 60,000 fans at Manchester’s Old Trafford Cricket Ground, in tribute to the 22 people killed at Grande’s Dangerous Woman concert in the same city two weeks ago. She was joined on stage by pop stars including Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Justin Bieber and Pharrell Williams

.

One Love Manchester aimed to counter the effects of terrorism by spreading messages of unity and love through music, harnessing pop as a personal and collective coping mechanism in the face of tragedy. But in troubled times, can music really heal?

The Manchester bombing is the latest in a line of assaults on entertainment venues, including the attack on the Eagles of Death Metal concert at Paris’s Bataclan Theatre in 2015, and at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last year. These are seemingly inspired by a desire to curtail Western liberal freedoms, and specifically the freedom of women, the gay community and the young people who are celebrated in pop music.

Given the sentiment of the event, Grande drew some backlash on Twitter for performing her risqué song Side to Side. But as she revealed during the concert, she had changed her set list after talking with the mother of 15-year-old Olivia, who was killed in the bombing. During their emotional meeting, Olivia’s mum said that she “would’ve wanted to hear the hits”.

Evidence shows that bereaved families increasingly choose to commemorate loved ones with contemporary songs with which they, or the deceased, personally identify. An Australian funeral services provider reported Queen’s The Show Must Go On or Another One Bites the Dust were increasingly popular funeral songs. In the same way, pop concerts are built on a known repertoire of songs, which the audience predicts. This assists in the ritual communication of emotion.

It was music’s capacity to arouse different emotions that allowed One Love Manchester to achieve Grande’s aim for her concerts to be, “a place for them to escape, to celebrate, to heal, to feel safe and to be themselves.” It is now well established that mechanisms such as rhythm, shared emotions and the memory of specific events make music a powerful tool for connecting with other people.

Pharrell Williams’ upbeat Happy embodied the concert’s defiant stance on terrorism, suggesting that fear can be triumphantly overcome through the enactment of happiness and joy. Coldplay’s touching performance of Fix You allowed for the expression of mourning and collective grief.

Robbie Williams led the audience in a version of his song Strong, changing the lyrics to, “Manchester we’re strong, we’re strong”. Cultural studies theorist Graeme Turner has argued that this sort of sharing brings with it a temporary experience of equality and comradeship between many people.

Black Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love?, inspired by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US, has become an anthem for countering terrorism and related anti-Islamic sentiment. It provided the Manchester audience with an emotional bridge to the larger, global community of those affected by terrorism.

We need to do more research to understand how these shared emotions and experiences can be galvanised to create longer-term resilience and solidarity. But for this night, One Love Manchester demonstrated the power of music to heal an urban community and bring people together.

Courtesy: The Conversation

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Jeremy Corbyn

This June 8, British voters will decide whether or not to continue with the conservative status quo, or take a chance on a new kind of left-wing politics that would represent a firm break with the orthodoxies of the ruling Conservative Party and the Labour Party’s establishment wing.

The post Jeremy Corbyn Dares to Speak Truth About the ‘War on Terror’—and British Voters Are Responding appeared first on SabrangIndia.

[Westminster Bridge Road, Westminster, London. Image by ktanaka via Wikimedia Commons]
 

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