Nick Cohen: Writing from London

If some supreme being could give British leftists of my generation the power to go back and stop one historical event, I have no doubt that we would rewind the tape and wipe out the Falklands war. Before General Galtieri’s fascistic junta invaded the islands Margaret Thatcher had no “-ism” after her name. She seemed a doomed prime minister surrounded by enemies, whose party was third in the polls behind the SDP, a political force I suspect many young readers have never heard of. After Britain’s victory, nothing could stop her and by the time she had finished, British socialism was dead, and the prospects for British social democracy did not seem much healthier.

To the revolted minority who watched her brag that she had made Britain great again, the war was a bloody PR exercise that allowed her to surf a wave of jingoism. Victory in the South Atlantic bought off voters, who should have been worrying about mass unemployment and mass factory closures, with homecoming parades and tales of gallantry under fire. The Falklands were not worth dying for, we insisted. Britain and Argentina were “two bald men fighting over a comb”, snapped Gabriel García Márquez. “Falklanders who wish to remain inviolate and British citizens are on a hiding to nowhere. They are too few. They are too far away,” declared the Marxist historian EP Thompson in the Times, which in the hysterical atmosphere of 1982 provoked Tories to denounce him and the editor of the Times as virtual traitors.

As it turned out, anti-war protesters were on “a hiding to nowhere”.
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“Blair is like Margaret Thatcher now — a politician for whom the broadcasters can never have a good word. In Mo, Channel 4′s otherwise excellent drama-documentary on the last years of Mo Mowlam, Blair appeared as a despicable and vain figure who plotted to take the credit for Mowlam’s hard work. Channel 4 could not say the British Prime Minister had to get involved in the peace process because the Irish Taoiseach and the American President were already involved. It ignored the realities of international diplomacy and dismissed Blair’s achievements because, I suspect, the climate in broadcasting is such that to declare that he was not all bad is like announcing that you have seen the sweet side of a serial killer or possess sympathy for the Devil.

One day, probably about 30 years from now, a cultural historian will go through the political television of our time and wonder why, if Blair was such a palpably evil man, he managed to win so many elections.”
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The personal relates to the political very closely in Gordon Brown’s case because his bullying is not a manifestation of his dynamism and determination but of his childish inability to admit error and acknowledge the need for change. Nowhere are the weaknesses of his character more obvious than in his aides treatment of Alistair Darling during at the start of the economic crisis. Darling had told my Guardian colleague Decca Aitkenhead that we were facing the worst recession in 60 years. If Darling was guilty of anything, it was understatement. But Brown could not tolerate his clear-headed assessment, because it revealed that his supposed economic miracle was an illusion and implied that his failures to regulate the banks and balance the budget would have catastrophic consequences. So out went his attack dogs to undermine the chancellor at the very moment when he needed the Prime Minister’s support.

I heard Charlie Whelan, Brown’s prolier-than-thou public school boy, denounce the Chancellor outside a Soho pub. It says much for Whelan’s certainty that the political press would obey orders that he did not go off the record but conducted his black propaganda operation in a public place where anyone might have overheard him.
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From the Observer
We swap democracy for dictatorship when we go from home to work. Air grievances about politicians as a citizen and you risk nothing. Speak out against managers as an employee and you risk your livelihood. In normal times, biting your tongue is not too shameful a tactic. Not all managers are monsters and, in any case, if workers broadcast their failings, the most obvious beneficiaries are their company’s business rivals, which may profit and grow, and drive the workers’ firm under. The ignored lesson of the Great Crash of 2008, however, is that when normal times end, the dictatorship of the manageriat can ruin companies and the rest of society.
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Imagine an evil corporation; let us call it Megagreed plc. A worker with a fine and principled record speaks out about its directors associating with men who propagate a criminal ideology that has led to the denial of rights to millions in poor countries. Far from listening to her wise objections, Megagreed’s bosses suspend her for exercising her right to free speech on matters of public importance; it is a very evil corporation as I said. Our brave whistleblower tours the streets looking for a human rights lawyer to represent her. But none will because they are all so frightened of incurring the wrath of Megagreed plc they would rather allow an injustice to pass than run the risk of taking up her cause.

Once men and women suffering at the hands of evil corporations like Megagreed could have turned to Amensty International for help. Our heroine has been punished for speaking out, she is being denied the basic right to legal representation, surely Amnesty will act as a court of final appeal and give her a hearing? But our heroine can’t turn to Amnesty because in this instance Amnesty International IS the evil corporation.

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Torture is wrong because… The holding of prisoners of conscience is wrong because… The oppression of women is wrong because… If you finish these sentences with anything other than …because it violates universal human rights, you leave yourself wide open to attack by your opponents.

Although I am sure that Britain is a happier country than Saudi Arabia and that a sensible person would rather live in France than Cuba, the case for basing societies on liberties is not a utilitarian one. Listen to the current debate on rights, however, and you will find that virtually everyone involved pretends that we can enjoy them without paying a price; that a cost-benefit analysis will always show gain without pain.

On the face of it, the Court of Appeal upheld universal human rights when it decided to release a summary of US intelligence that showed American interrogators had shackled Binyam Mohamed, a suspected supporter of the Taliban, and subjected him to sleep deprivation. But a closer examination shows that the judges did not say that Mohamed was entitled to evidence that supported his allegation that MI5 was complicit in his mistreatment, regardless of the consequences for the relationship between the British and US intelligence services.
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Here’s a story anyone who has been watching the moral disintegration of Amnesty International has been expecting. The Sunday Times reports

A SENIOR official at Amnesty International has accused the charity of putting the human rights of Al-Qaeda terror suspects above those of their victims. Gita Sahgal, head of the gender unit at Amnesty’s international secretariat, believes that collaborating with Moazzam Begg, a former British inmate at Guantanamo Bay, “fundamentally damages” the organisation’s reputation.
In an email sent to Amnesty’s top bosses, she suggests the charity has mistakenly allied itself with Begg and his “jihadi” group, Cageprisoners, out of fear of being branded racist and Islamophobic.
Sahgal describes Begg as “Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban”. He has championed the rights of jailed Al-Qaeda members and hate preachers, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual mentor of the Christmas Day Detroit plane bomber.
Sahgal, who has researched religious fundamentalism for 20 years, has decided to go public because she feels Amnesty has ignored her warnings for the past two years about the involvement of Begg in the charity’s Counter Terror With Justice campaign.
“I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International’s integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights,” Sahgal wrote in an email to the organisation’s leaders on January 30. “To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.”

As Martin Bright says, ‘It is difficult to make a stand on these issues and keep one’s friends on the left and in the human rights community, so I take my hat off to Gita. I have often discussed with her how best to raise these issues and she has been deeply frustrated by the way the British liberal intelligentsia gives house-room to right-wing Islamists.’

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From the Observer on the establishment backlash against libel reform

God damn those scheming neocon bastards. Damn them to hell for impugning the fine work of Mr Justice Eady and dear old Carter-Ruck

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