Tariq Ali & Jeremy Corbyn: Best buds
Tariq Ali is a Marxist intellectual who this year humiliated himself with a particularly unpleasant smear of Jo Cox.
He reappeared on the scene making the far left case for “Lexit”, described by the always readable Tendence Coatsey here: https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2016/06/21/tariq-ali-joins-with-smears-against-jo-cox/
I suspect that Jo Cox may have known more about the conflict in Syria than Tariq Ali, given that she chaired the All Parliamentary Select Committee on Syria. Cox had worked in international aid, and approached the Syrian conflict without the angry partisan anti-West bias that is so common amongst the far left.
For Ali to share this meme only a few days after she had been tragically murdered was particularly mean spirited, implying that Jo Cox supported fascist death squads. It also potentially undermined valuable fund raising for Syrians.
Not to say that these issues are easily understood, or that misinformation does not occur. Famously during the Gulf War the Kuwaiti Ambassador enlisted his daughter, Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ, to present to Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers take babies from incubators and leave them to die. It wasn’t true, and if anything served to undermine the human rights abuses that Iraq was responsible for (on a grand scale).
The White Helmets do, however, seem to be one of the few civilian defence organisations that are helping to save lives and support civilians. They have faced a wave of misinformation describing them as a NATO/George Soros propaganda tool. Their role is described as underpinning the West’s attempt to undermine the secular Assad regime and forment jihadi violent groups. It is not very far from the conspiracy theory that the CIA created ISIS. In fact if you google “Jo Cox” and “white helmets” the internet will provide you with an overwhelming selection of these arguments.
I’d heard of Tariq Ali on a couple of occasions. He defended Margaret Johnstone’s Fools Crusade which downplayed Serbian war crimes, contributing to an open letter of support when a Swedish magazine revolted against its editor giving her a platform. He is a Patron of Stop the War, which by this point has lost all credibility, claiming at one point that impending genocide upon the Yazidis on Mount Sinjar was a CIA plot.
(Hilariously/desperately sad: Kamal Majid is *still* a Patron of Stop the War. Kamal is the founder of the British Stalinist Society, unfortunately the website is no longer available, but here we are talking straight up denial of Stalin’s responsibility for the horrors of the Holodomor, forced Ukrainian famine, the purges and the Katyn Massacre. Well and truly through the looking glass.)
Here he is talking about Syria:
This is an aimless rant that focuses upon Israel, Jeremy Corbyn, and criticising Hilary Benn because he sounds like his father but takes his “ideas from Tony Blair and George Bush”. It may be an uncharitable comment but he doesn’t sound very bothered about Syrian civilians.
Elsewhere Stop the War posted comments like this:
They’ve since deleted this, and other news releases, after it was pointed out how shameful, and pro-war, much of their work was. Tariq Ali mentions “slanders and smears” in his speech above, which is interesting, given the number of deletions they eventually made. Deleted Stop the War content is usefully stored here: https://therealstopthewar.wordpress.com/
I am sure that in his life Tariq Ali has held ideas that are not shameless or stupid. This light character assassination is only to position him on a particular wing of the far left. To his credit he was an early supporter of Kenan Makiya, Iraqi emigre who wrote to uncover the Baathist terror and violence in Iraq. He has written criticizing Islamism and there is much to agree with here: http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/04/25/letter-to-a-young-muslim/
… although in his response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre he opted to highlight an essay by Henri Roussel, the 80 year old founder of the orginal Hebdo, whose overriding message was Hebdo’s ‘provocation’ “didn’t need to be done”.
‘I think we’re ignorant and imbeciles who have taken a pointless risk. That’s all. We think we’re invulnerable. For years, decades even, we do provocative things and then one day the provocation comes back at us. It didn’t need to be done.’
Hammer of the Left is John Golding’s description of his role as a “right wing” Labour fixer during 1979–83, where with great glee he beat the “lunatics” at their own game. Via laborious organisation he and colleagues slowly responded to the far left’s takeover by obtaining key seats on committees. In 1982 they kicked Benn and other far left MPs off the NEC. In 1983 he managed to ensure Benn had to compete in the more difficult Bristol East (Cocks took Bristol South) which he subsequently lost.
Golding revels in his own bloody minded aggression, and is not sensitive about stigmatising mental health illness. But by and large he is a likeable narrator, with self-deprecating self awareness. The book is valuable in providing a challenge to Tony Benn’s own personality cult established via his diaries and many fans. Benn comes across — as in the documentary The Wilderness — as dishonest, destructive and obsessed with leading the party.
And so it was interesting to see Jeremy Corbyn pop up in Hammer of the Left.
In 1982 Tariq was a prominent public Marxist — indeed my mother, now in her late 60s remembers him as “very good looking” (?) — and had stood as a Socialist Unity candidate against Labour, winning 77 votes. He had been a member of the International Marxist Group and angling for Labour membership informed Michael Foot that he’d left.
Within the Labour Party “Org” structure Golding and others moved that Ali should be interviewed to establish whether he accepted the parliamentary route to socialism. Funnily enough, mainstream political parties struggle when their members call for the violent overthrow of the state. Benn unsuccessfully argued that he be accepted.
Ali’s case was not helped when in an interview with Peter Kellner in the New Statesman he argued that the difference between his (Ali’s) and Tony Benn’s position was that “in the ultimate analysis, the state and its institutions cannot be reformed.” It would ultimately be necessary to “throw the whole thing aside.” Not ideal.
Despite being told not to, Hornsey CLP admitted Ali in December 82, and in March 83 issued him with a membership card. The regional report into the meeting read:
A motion was before the meeting to accept Tariq Ali into mebership and instructing the constituency party secretary to issue him with a membership card This motion should not have been accepted. The chairmanship of recently elected Jeremy Corbyn, backed by newly elected treasurer Pauline Ashbridge, was the most extraordinary study of bias and manipulation of rules and customs that I have ever witnessed.
Despite being told again that Tariq Ali should not be a member the motion was passed — it appears this was then rejected by the Org.*
Oh Jeremy.
A few thoughts come to mind that relate to current events.
1. The Labour Party cannot succeed without some degree of party loyalty and adherence to the rules. Ian McNicol is now being abused by Corbyn supporters for upholding the constitution and the NEC’s decision. This is his literally (for want of another word) his job. Corbyn supporters would surely want a General Secretary who would go to the wall to defend decisions of a more Corbyn-friendly NEC.
2. The Labour Party simply cannot expect to pick up moderate or even ex-Tory voters if it presents itself as flirting with revolutionary socialism. I am yet to hear any reflection from Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne, Burgon or Owen Jones on the disaster that is Venezuela. Come a snap General Election I would fully expect to see Labour criticised for supporting an economic model that includes forced labour laws that compel citizens to work in the fields. Amnesty Internation criticised this a fortnight ago.
3. It never fails to amaze me the sheer degree of nepotism and closed small male network that is the Corbyn leadership. Here we have a small group of friends that go back 20–30 years. Even Richard Burgon — lecturing on the establishment Blairite careerists — it transpires his uncle was an MP!
*This is all directly from Golding. I don’t understand why he was chairing Hornsey CLP, I understand he was elected to Islington North in 1982. I can see that wikipedia suggests he was a delegate from Hornsey CLP to Party Conference in 1978.