Crises

I was born in 1937, when, for the next two years I presume (I could hardly be aware) our politicians and diplomats were desperately working to contain the  expansionary foreign ambitions of Hitler in and Mussolini.  They failed and on the day before my second birthday war was declared on Germany. 

This War expanded to involve most of the world, caused between 70 and 85 million deaths, mostly Soviet and Chinese civilians, and was only ended by the dropping of two nuclear bombs  by “our side” on two Japanese cities, together causing between 150 000 to 246 000 deaths.

 I have yet to hear a rational explanation which justifies the use of the second atomic bomb.

On the conclusion of hostilities the victorious Allies  set up a new world order aiming to avoid such a disaster in the future and secure economic prosperity and peace for all.

Although imperfect and subjected to many breaches,(think Palestine, Suez, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine ) that order has endured, battered but intact, until today.

It came nearest to collapsing in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the Soviet Union led by Nikita Khrushchev sent  a convoy across the Atlantic to set up nuclear missiles in Cuba, America’s “back yard” and President Kennedy vowed to stop them. 

I was living here in Birdsall and teaching in Batley and can’t honestly remember being at all worried about it.  We were confident that the “adults” were in charge and no one cold be so stupid as to risk such a devastating conflict again.

  And we were right.  Mr Khrushchev agreed to lose face and ordered the convoy with the missiles  to turn back, and as a quid pro quo President Kennedy agreed (secretly) to remove the missiles pointing at Russia from Turkey, the Soviet Union’s “back yard.”

We need to be considerably more worried now, largely because the key player in today’s crisis may be  “adult” by age, but behaves more like an infant during  a tantrum or an adolescent suffering an identity crisis.  Our sympathies must go out to the West’s political leaders and  the officials of the United Nations.  What on earth are they to do if the US, having virtually annexed Venezuela, goes ahead and uses military force, as President Trump has repeatedly threatened, to take over Greenland?

 Our impotence is partly our own fault.  The US has consistently spent between 3% and 5% of its vast GDP on “defense.”  Few if any of the other NATO countries have matched this  even in percentage terms, and so the US contribution to NATO's defence is double that of all the other members’ combined. 

So President Trump has justification for claiming that Europe’s defence has been provided largely at America’s expense, which is a source of genuine grievance.

Be that as it may, it is hard to know, if Trump does decide to take Greenland buy force, what can be done to stop him.

Sir Keir Starmer has clearly decided to tread carefully, walk a tightrope, utter platitudes but not condemn him.  It is not an honourable position, but it is understandable.

The effective opposition must come from  the American people themselves.

There is considerable hope from this quarter.  Although the Democrats, for the moment, seem to lack and effective, still less charismatic,  spokesperson, those that the have have been very outspoken, indeed outraged, at the actions  taken in America's name.  Eventually, the American people will being Trump down and, if we can leap over the probable horrors of a Vance presidency, the world  of reason may again prevail. 

A start would be a Democrat majority in the Hours of Representatives after the mid-term elections next November.

If we can avert disaster for that long

This Labour Government is not liberal

According to “Labour List” (1^st January) Sir Keir Starmer has appointed a new chair of the Labour  Party.  She is the former MP Anna Turley, who writes that she is so proud of “everything we are doing  to change the lives of working people  across Britain.” (my italics)

Those words “working people” are the first reason why Labour is not liberal.

 Liberals exist to represent  the needs of all people: children, students,  carers, home makers, disabled  people, the retired , criminals (yes indeed, no one should be held in inhumane conditions,) academics, innovators,  migrants and asylum seekers, SME entrepreneurs,  -   what the Prayer Book calls “all sorts and conditions of men (and, in updated editions, women.)”

Labour has its roots in the past when it can be argued that the “working class” needed special protection for which they  deserved  absolute priority. But the modern world  has moved on from a world of ”the bosses v the workers.”  

 Certainly some workers do still  need protection, not least those on exploitative zero-hours contracts and the young unable to find employment other than as unpaid “internships, but there are other and equally important sources of conflict: we citizens v the overweening power of the state; the state v overmighty conglomerates; misinformation v truth; might v the rule of law; fairness v the influence of the rich an powerful.

 

It is on many of these other sources of conflict that the Labour government is found wanting.  Recent examples are:

Labour’s failure to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, the “civilised” European norm:

The confiscation of migrants' phones;

Measures to reduce the right to protest;

The absurd prosecution of those who have peacefully displayed support  for the aims of  Palestine Action;

The failure to remove the restriction on voting and the powers of the Electoral Commission imposed by the Tories;

The proposal to impose compulsory digital ID on those seeking work, clearly the thin end of a wedge;

The ban on freely elected councillors permitting a four-fay week for their council workers:

The shameful cuts to Overseas Aid;

The failure to fund adequately and defend the BBC;

The failure so far to stand up for the rule of international law and condemn the US invasion of Venezuela.

The tendency to place destructive economic growth above the green measures necessary to preserve the habitability of the planet;

An obsession with social mobility, and hence a tiered society, rather than an aspiration for social and political equality.

For  a genuinely liberal future we still need the Libel Democrats.