Labour members should reflect on the legacy of Attlee and our humanitarian interventionist traditions
NATO intervention in Kosovo helped put an end to ethnic cleansing
Jeremy Corbyn and I serve together on the Executive Committee of the British Group of the Inter Parliamentary Union. Although I do not share his one sided view of Middle East policy, his friendship with Hamas and Hezbollah, or his rose tinted attitude to the government of Venezuela, there are issues on which we do agree, including support for women’s rights, LGBT rights and opposition to the death penalty.
We were both Labour candidates in the General Election of 1983. Jeremy was elected to Parliament for the safe inner London constituency of Islington North and began his 32 years as a rebellious left-wing backbencher. I was the defeated candidate in the outer London suburban of Ilford North.
Despite the civil war within the party following our 1979 defeat, the 1981 Special Conference and the SDP split, there was a great deal of enthusiasm in 1983 among the party rank and file.
Although we did limited canvassing, in Ilford North we had enthusiastic crowds around our campaign street stalls, big contingents on the huge CND marches and anti-Cruse missile protests encircling Greenham Common. Thousands came to our Labour rallies during the campaign to hear Michael Foot, deputy leader Denis Healey and others.
My election material was firmly in line with party policy as set out in the campaign document, The New Hope for Britain, which had hurriedly been agreed as the election manifesto by an exhausted NEC. Labour would withdraw from the European Economic Community (without a referendum), unilaterally scrap Trident and remove all US nuclear weapons and bases – whilst staying in NATO.
Although I privately knew I would not win it came as a great disappointment to many activists when we suffered a terrible defeat. Labour’s vote dropped by 8,345. The Conservative majority went up from 7,195 to 11,201. With just 10,841 votes, I only just kept second place over an SDP candidate who had done almost no campaigning. Worse still, marginal neighbouring Ilford South remained firmly in Conservative hands.
Jeremy Corbyn has made clear in numerous speeches and articles over the years that he remains committed to the policies on which he was first elected and on which Labour was resoundingly defeated in 1983. Indeed, he would go further: Labour has always, even in our brief unilateralist period, been pro-NATO, but Jeremy has consistently opposed NATO membership.
He recently said that Poland should not have been allowed to join NATO. He says its expansion to other democratic ex-Warsaw Pact countries was a mistake. He blames the USA and NATO rather than Putin’s imperialistic Russia for the crisis in Ukraine.
Labour has been here before. At the 1935 Party conference the great transport union leader Ernest Bevin denounced the pacifist George Lansbury over his opposition to possible League of Nations military action against Italian imperialism in Abyssinia. Lansbury resigned and eventually the Parliamentary Party elected Major Clement Attlee as interim Leader.
It was under prime minister Attlee and foreign secretary Bevin that the 1945 Labour government, in co-operation with the United States, played a decisive role in creating the institutions of the modern era, including the United Nations and NATO. It also ensured that Britain had its own independent nuclear deterrent. Britain also played a vital role supporting the United Nations forces in the Korean War.
Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters have made much of his opposition to the Iraq War and military action in Syria. But Jeremy also opposed the UN-authorised interventions in Afghanistan and Libya, and action to stop Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Labour members should reflect on the legacy of Attlee and our patriotic, internationalist and humanitarian interventionist traditions.
Although Jeremy Corbyn was personally successful in 1983, many other Labour candidates were not. If Jeremy becomes Labour leader next month his anti-nuclear, anti-NATO, anti-American, anti-interventionist and Eurosceptic message will be welcomed by some in this country and by some abroad. But it is unlikely to be welcomed by Kurdish and other anti Da’esh forces in Iraq, by anti-Assad democrats in Syria, by democratic Central European NATO states like Poland, or by Ukrainians.
Above all, though, it will be resoundingly rejected by the British people, and lead Labour in 2020 to an even worse defeat than we collectively suffered in 1983.
Mike Gapes has been Labour and Co-operative Member of Parliament for Ilford South since 1992. He is a member and former chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
59 Responses to “What would a Jeremy Corbyn foreign policy mean for Labour?”
Paul Frame
Hear hear. Although obviously you should have studied at Aberystwyth innit đ
Paul Frame
Achieved nothing? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a064fb9a94ff95b20cbc2d1f559c8fd0dfa08659e93db597ceec55eac4f7e12.jpg
It has enfranchised millions, it was also backed by the UN FWIW.
The UN did back intervention in Libya, there was a UNSC resolution that authorised this: http://www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=S/RES/1973(2011).
Asteri
Negotiating with the Taliban, putting Taliban members back into high office (the man responsible for destroying the Bamiyan Buddhas was put back into office by NATO), out of control opium production, introducing Islamist legislation into law to pacify hardline Islamists?
Where in that link does it say NATO has the authorisation to bomb Sirte into rubble, arm a load of rebels we know nothing about and kill the county’s leader? You do know the new gang of hooligans ruling parts of Libya have have killed thousands of, enslaved and ethnically cleansed black Libyans don’t you? NATO just left the country collapse into anarchy.
Ross
Aye it says it in the charter but the UN’s history has been swamped with problems in putting all this into practice.
Also, so if the the UN is not cut out for the modern day issues such as intra-state conflict and small scale affairs, is launching a nuclear missile or full on intervention into regions already simmering with disorder and resentment for previous unilateral non UN-backed interventions a calculated move?
In answer to your question I believe a UN peacekeeping force should be deployed in Syria in order to allow those to deal with its humanitarian consequences for the protection of civilians, this would be backed by air power from a range of UN nations including UK France USA etc if you like, and explicitly ensured its purpose to counter fears from states like Russia and others that the real objective is regime change, which we all know went spectacularly well in previous Middle East interventions.
David Lindsay
Happy Retirement, Mike.
Now, to serious business. This week’s Jewish Chronicle has apparently been edited by Walter Mitty.
Its circulation of 22,460 in June 2013 is almost certainly even lower now. Yet that newspaper presumes to issue a series of “demands” to the political phenomenon of the decade, Jeremy Corbyn. As if he would care. Or even notice.
Such behaviour is routine in small-circulation Leftist publications such as the one that is about to have to increase its print run very dramatically because one of its columnists is about to become the Leader of the Opposition while its Parliamentary Correspondent is about to become the only member of the Lobby with much access at all to the people running the Labour Party.
No doubt, papers reaching a few thousand Britain First supporters are very much like that, too. As, no doubt, is the Daily Express.
Such is the category in which the Jewish Chronicle, the senior Jewish newspaper in the world, has chosen to place itself. This is a very sad day.
There are of course very high-circulation newspapers that seek to hector and bully elected politicians into obeying the will and serving the interests of foreign powers, especially the United States (and not even the present governing element in the United States) and Saudi Arabia.
But this is of a different order. It recalls the days of Soviet Weekly, which I suppose might at certain points have had a readership of comparable size to that of the Jewish Chronicle today, and which made no pretence to be anything other than its name declared it to be.
No politician of any importance ever paid the slightest attention to that. Nor will they to this. An MP who is considerably more recognisable to the electorate than most members of the Cabinet are, is most definitely never going to treat these funny little “demands” with anything even so demanding as his contempt.