Marooned Dinosaurs

Real Labour Please

We are like sea-dinosaurs marooned on a sandbank and the tide has gone out’

That was the bleak metaphor from an ‘Old Labour’ Lord on the situation of those of us who remember the passion of the 1945 election.

Earlier I welcomed a civil servant who I had last seen when she lobbied me in 1994. She was so fired up then by the prospect of New Labour obliterating the injustices of the Major Government that she joined the Labour Party. She progressed to become Chair of her local branch. Sadly she is no longer a party member. She is disillusioned by Iraq and, what she sees, as the neglect and bullying of the civil service by this government.

Another dire warning is in last week’s poll that white working class people feel that no-one is representing them. While there is new love for the Tories or the LibDems the loyalty of our traditional vote can no longer be guaranteed. They are crying out for Government initiatives that powerfully express the aspirations of the dinosaurs that are waiting for the tide to turn.

Lost in Vain

  ‘The cavalry will not be coming over the hill,’ was the message I tried to get across to the Canadian High Commissioner at Canada House this lunchtime.

Canada has lost 79 of their soldiers in Kandahar. Only we have lost more with 89 deaths. The Canadian Parliament will discuss the continuing commitment to 2011 next week.

Their MPs are divided. Tragically the loss of lives cannot be justified in any improvements in life in Kandahar or Helmand. No progress on winning hearts and minds. A little reconstruction but the drugs situation has deteriorated. Ground won last year will have to be fought over again this year. Only a third of Afghanistan is controlled by Karzai and lubricated by corruption. The rest is run by warlords and Taliban. The Helmand mission was meant to last three years now might drag on 30 years.

To avoid facing the utter failure of the Helmand and Kandahar missions we comfort ourselevse with the myth that all will be will if Germany, Spain, France and Italy pulled their weight. It’s all their fault so we have an excuse for not thinking.

France may well up their numbers of soldiers a little in safe areas. The other countries have no intention of contributing more blood and treasure in an impossible cause. Let’s be impractical. Consolidate the gains around Kabul. Conquering the south of Afghan with a few thousand more troops is a delusion. Ask the Russian, they had 110,000 there and they were driven out by the Mujahaddim.

Unless we act, we will be facing Britain’s Vietnam.

Buttering up the Butchers

Congratulations to Wales’ largest trade union that vowed to strip Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells of his political sponsorship because his support for the army in Colombia.

Campaigners have condemned Dr Howells after he was pictured apparently sharing a joke with a controversial general with alleged links to human rights abuses in the strife-torn South American country. I made similar comments of this blog last month.

But Andy Richards, regional secretary for Wales of the trade union Unite said he found Dr Howells’s approach “reckless and wholly unacceptable”. Andy is as mystified as all the rest of are by Kim’s claiming that most of the Colombian trade unionists killed had been murdered by the Farc.

Liam Craig-Best, the director of Justice for Columbia said, “Not even the Colombian Government claims that Farc is responsible for most of the murders of trade unionists.

An estimated 3,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia in recent years during a bitter conflict between the Marxist guerrilla movement Farc and the Colombian government. Human rights groups have alleged links between the Colombian army and right-wing paramilitary death squads.

Mr. Richards visited Colombia and met families of trade unionists who had been brutally tortured, murdered and mutilated.” We were left in no doubt that aid from the British Government was ending up with groups that are involved in the murder of trade unionists. He described the trip as traumatic.

Incredibly he reports that Kim refused to meet Mr. Richards and his colleagues to discuss their heartfelt concerns.

Our conduct in Colombia is shameful. Only Britain and Israel are giving military aid to Colombia. It should end and the money diverted to humanitarian aid.

Comments

[Ian]

What the hell is Kim up to? Doesn't he realise what is going on over there? The union movement haven't exactly been quiet about this issue and for someone of Kim's background to make this misjudgement is incredible.

I hope that he is not too proud to admit he is wrong.

[paulflynn]

Agree entirely Ian. I tried to grapple with this in a previous posting.:-
Cuddling the torturers
Kim Howells is a natural banner-carrier. Wherever the flow is heading, he likes to be in front carrying the banner.

Kim’s joined a sit-in at Hornsey School Art when student demonstrations were fashionable in 1968. No one knew what the protest was about, but it was more fun than painting. The son of communist, Kim was a member of the communist party too when he was employed by the National Union of Miners. It was the thing to do – especially as his boss Arthur Scargill was a party member.

When taxi driver David Wilkie was killed by two striking miners who dropped a concrete block off a local bridge on to his taxi. On being told of the incident in a telephone call from a reporter of the South Wales Echo, Howells rode his bicycle to the NUM offices, and destroyed the maps and information associated with co-ordinating the strike for fear of a police raid. He later commented that same day that the incident was a result of pressure to get the miners to return to work.

Then his odyssey to right began. He adjusted his views to a mould that was acceptable to New Labour as candidate in Pontypridd. The metamorphosis from communist to Blairite loyalist was swift when he was elected.Kimhowells460x276

Now he has reached his ultimate destination. He had his picture taken cuddling up to soldiers who murder trade unionists. It’s a matter of pride and displayed on the Foreign Office website. Smiling Kim Howells is close to a general linked to paramilitary death squads and soldiers of a notorious unit of the Colombian army accused, including by Amnesty International, of torturing and killing trade unionists.

Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of the union Unite, called for an end to British support for the Colombian regime: "Colombia is the world's leader slaughterhouse for trade unionists and it defies belief that the British ministers should be cuddling up - literally, judging by the photographs - with the perpetrators."

I wonder if the High Mountain Brigades have a banner. Kim would have been pleased to carry it.