HANDS ACROSS THE POLITICAL DIVIDE

SYRIA AND THE APPEASERS: A CASE TO ANSWER

The Labour Party chooses not to remember George Lansbury who was the leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935. Lansbury’s history in the early Labour Party was a noble one, however he was a fervent pacifist, stridently opposing any programme of re-armament in spite of the growth of Fascism and Nazism on the European continent; even opposing sanctions against Italy in response to the Invasion of Abyssinia. He met with both Hitler and Mussolini and seems to have developed a relatively benign view of both men. In 1938 he welcomed the Munich agreement.  Those on left have a tendency to present appeasement as a purely right wing affair, it was not. There is also a tendency to think of appeasement as a purely historical phenomenon, something belonging to the years 1937 -1939. It is not.

Douglas Hurd the former Foreign Secretary was speaking the other night on the BBC programme The World Tonight, busy re-writing history. Douglas Hurd was Foreign Secretary during the early years of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He is most famous for saying of lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government, ‘at first sight it seems an act of justice’, he said, in practice it would merely create a ‘level killing field’. The only possible inference to be drawn was that he preferred an uneven killing field. Now in the guise of ‘wise older statesman’ he performs a thoroughly unscrupulous slight of hand by seeking to replace the demand he then faced that the embargo be lifted, with a demand that British Troops be placed on the ground, which few were calling for:  his resistance so to do he stated has been vindicated by the Iraq war![1] This thoroughly dishonest and spineless man, not only wrung his hands whilst pogroms occurred on the European continent the like of which had not been seen since World War Two, his actions actively facilitated the process; such deceit, such absence of honour or shame. Now with brazen shamelessness he offers this same ‘wisdom’ with respect to the situation in Syria.

But Mr Hurd was not alone in his policy of ‘non-intervention,’ Tony Benn, and the Trotskyites of the SWP stood shoulder to shoulder with him in his policy of keeping the killing field distinctly uneven. Contemptibly they presented themselves as standing on the moral high ground, waving their consciences in the air like distressed virgins; all the while bemoaning the folly of it all.

 After Srebrenica, indeed after Kosovo, was there any mea culpa, any recognition at all that a policy of allowing Milosevic free reign had led to ethnic cleansing and the massacre in Eastern Bosnia?  Of course there was not.

 Like Hurd they continue to be engaged in a constant process of re-writing history, the guiding principle of which being their retention of the moral high ground.

Now the Syrian people stand betrayed by the liberal elites of the West, to the sound of the same tawdry voices, uttering the same dishonest mantras as in the Balkan conflicts. All the usual suspects assemble, The Green Party, Jeremy Corbyn Seamus Milne, Stop the War Coalition; aiming their venom, not at the Assad regime, not at Russia or Iran, certainly not at Hezbollah, now fighting alongside Assad’s vile Baathist regime; no the accusations, the slogans, the diatribes are all firmly focused on the West; we are the true guilty party.

The most often trotted mantra by those ‘pundits’ who have sought to frustrate supporting those fighting Assad is that ‘the situation is complex.’ As if any situation was not. Supporting the Republicans fighting Franco was complex, particularly given the intervention of the Stalinist Soviet Union; this made it no less right. Certainly the situation in Syria is a lot more complex now than in the days of the Arab spring when the Syrian people first rose up against those who tormented and tortured them. The Islamacists have now climbed on board, the role of Saudi Arabia and Qatar is mischievous and anti democratic in intention. The optimum moment has passed. Still there are those fighting to create a Syria free of the dead hand of Assad that rejects fundamentalist Islam; they are fighting for a free and open society. Socialists and liberals in the west ought to be their natural allies; we should be standing shoulder to shoulder with them.

Instead we have the Stop the War Coalition.

I think we are long past the point when this crowd condemn themselves by the company they keep, the crimes they seek to explain away and justify, by the record of dictators and demagogues they have sought to prop up. Let them go on braying B Liar, Hands of Iran,  No Intervention in Syria until they go Tory blue;  it is they, along with the likes of the deceitful Mr Hurd, who have a case to answer  

---

[1] There is a small sub text to Mr Hurds involvement in the former Yugoslavia. ‘ Douglas Hurd treated Milosevic as a moderate and necessary middleman, refusing to accept that he was in fact a genocidal thug who had instigated the violence. At the Dayton peace talks, where Neville-Jones was the chief British representative, she argued energetically – and successfully – for an end to sanctions against Serbia. What no one at Dayton knew, but Hurd has since confirmed, is that at the same time she was in touch with NatWest Markets about the possibility of a job in the private sector. Hurd himself had become deputy chairman of the bank shortly after resigning as Foreign Secretary, and Neville-Jones joined him as managing director in July 1996 – whereupon they jetted off to Serbia to cash in on the abolition of sanctions. At a ‘working breakfast’ in Belgrade, Milosevic signed a lucrative deal whereby NatWest Markets would privatize Serbia’s post and telephone system for a fee of about $10 million. For a further large fee, they agreed to manage the Serbian national debt’ Clive James Guardian, 24 June 1998. Say what you will about Neville Chamberlain, one cannot say that he benefited financially out of appeasement.

Having visited this page I would be grateful for your feedback, either tick one of the boxes below or make a comment via the comments button.