SUPPORT THE TROOPS - BY BRINGING THEM HOME NOW.
With eight British young men killed in the last 24 hours in Afganistan, what is most remarkable is the lack of any real debate about what the war is supposed to achieve.
It is time to support the troops - by bringing them home.
Try telling your supporters on my blog. I heartily agree with your post, though.
Comment by oldrightie — 11 July, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
“With eight British young men killed in the last 24 hours in Afghanistan, what is most remarkable is the e lack of any real debate about what the war is supposed to achieve.”
But there has been considerable debate about the Afghan war recently. In newspapers such as the Express which seems to have adopted a troops out position. And much discussion on radio phone-ins such as Nick Ferrari on London’s LBC who even invited Lindsay German on to the show last Thursday.
What is truly remarkable and terribly disheartening is the inactivity of the Stop the War Coalition on the matter. What campaigning have they undertaken at a national so far this year regarding Afghanistan? Nothing much is the answer.
In my local StWC, Afghanistan as an issue was put on the back burner while the group responded to national office directives to support Palestine, to demonstrate against police brutality and to defend the Muslim community.
Well what has been on the back burner has exploded and StWC has no profile whatsoever. To such an extent that in today’s Guardian extensive coverage of the spike in military deaths in Afghanistan, there is no quote from StWC.
Yes StWC has called an emergency demonstration on Afghanistan for Monday 13th July (5.00pm Downing St.) But I am undecided whether to go.
Of course I want to protest against soldiers being killed for Brown’s political expediency. On the other hand I am reluctant to associate with cynical shroud wavers who see death as a posturing opportunity and clearly have no commitment to sustaining a decent broadly based campaign in the long term.
Comment by Hugh — 11 July, 2009 @ 7:15 pm
It has to be said - I am very surprised that StWC has not organised a major demonstation.
What is going on with Lindsey German et al?
This is first item on national news.
There is a clear ‘why are we there’ issue.
Miliband has futilely attemped to explain it, but nobody’s listening. There is something not right here. Explanations?
Comment by Alan Sharples — 11 July, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Hugh, you’re not making any sense. First you criticise the StWC’s apparent lack of activity over Afghanistan, then you refer to Monday’s emergency demonstration called by StWC and tell us that you’re “undecided” as to whether you’ll go.
Then you go on to attack StWC’s decision to hold the protest.
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
I’d say well done to StWC for calling the protest and let’s all try to get there if we can.
Comment by communist — 11 July, 2009 @ 7:53 pm
Communist - does too little too late mean anything to you?
BTW that I gave details of the demo about Afghanistan (5.00pm Downing St on Monday 13th July) is a little clue as to where this member of StWC from the start is at!
Comment by Hugh — 11 July, 2009 @ 8:22 pm
Ok Hugh, now you’ve had your moan and hopefully feel better, do you think we should support Monday’s protest or not?
Comment by communist — 11 July, 2009 @ 9:03 pm
OK comrade. CU there.
Comment by Hugh — 11 July, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
I added a link to your blog on my blog: http://amte.wordpress.com
I would appreciate it if you returned the favor.
Comment by AMTE — 11 July, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
There are young men - some technically teenagers - dying in a re-run of the Great Game.
BTW, to those people who argue against withdrawal - why not secure the territory already supposedly controled by the Afghan govt. Why try to take over all of Helmand?
This is the fall-back argument, in my view.
Comment by Charlie Marks — 11 July, 2009 @ 11:21 pm
We agree on something ! Though maybe not for the same reasons.
Comment by Laban Tall — 12 July, 2009 @ 12:03 am
We agree on something ! Though maybe not for the same reasons.
(with the right link this time)
Comment by Laban Tall — 12 July, 2009 @ 12:04 am
I’m all in favour of getting imperialism’s professional killers out of countries which they are occupying. However equating this with “supporting the troops” is a conceptual leap too far.
Why do socialists need to “support” the troops of the ruling class? There’s a bit of a Jade Goody factor here. She got a lot more popular when she started dying. People were less exercised when the British army was slaughtering its way across Afghanistan but now that it is taking relatively small numbers of casualties its troops are national heroes. Playing along with this wave of sentimentality is a poor basis for giving real explanation of what the British army has been doing over there.
Comment by Liam Mac — 12 July, 2009 @ 12:29 am
It is interesting how the press rarely show the funerals of all the hundreds, thousands of Afghans, Iraqis and Palestinians.
Yes we should be supporting ‘our troops.’ That is supporting them to resist, give them help to go AWOL. Picket the recruitment centers, demand decent paying real jobs and a real future.
Bob Dylan once sang the answer is blowing in the wind, but I think the answer lies in our hands now.
Are we going to let another generation down?
I hope you guys get out there in big numbers on Monday and hopefully this will start to reinvigorate the anti-war movement in the US.
Comment by Peter Hine — 12 July, 2009 @ 6:57 am
Yes, lets bring the troops back. A reasonable, if not exactly original, idea. But what do you say if they don’t return soon?
It is they who have invaded a foreign country and the Afghanis do have the right to defend themselves against an aggressor.
Comment by timothyMN — 12 July, 2009 @ 7:13 am
@ 12
It is comments like that from extremists that distance socialists from the mass of people; millions of people have served their country via the armed forces in the UK with many millions more family and friends supported them, and you painting them as murderers will not endear you to anyone.
Especially when the freedom that you enjoy to do so was fought for and secured by British soldiers and their willingness to lose risk their lives for that freedom, whereas you just take it for granted without any personal risk at all. If it wasn’t for “imperialism’s professional killers” you would be speaking German and goose-stepping your way to work right now.
Comment by Mr8 — 12 July, 2009 @ 4:34 pm
I think you’ll find WW2 was over sixty years ago, Mr8. The afghans aren’t likely to invade us any time soon…
Comment by Charlie Marks — 12 July, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
And your freedom is still owed to British soldiers, without “imperialism’s professional killers” you would hardly be in a position to be commenting at all on a socialist website - it was good enough then, but not now - is that your argument?
Soldiers go where soldiers are sent - it is the politicians who need this venom aimed at them, not squaddies.
Like I said, you are just alienating millions with that perverted hatred, and especially now.
Comment by Mr8 — 12 July, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
Mr8,
I think you may do well to disregard the history you were taught in school.
Any account of history from the state is about as honest as an MP’s expense account.
You should remember that socialists and communists were going off to fight fascism in Spain while the state and big business were supporting the goose stepping Nazis
Fighting for freedom? When African American soldiers came back from fighting for freedom- do you think they came back to freedom?
No sir, it was back to the US and back to the back of the bus.
WW11 was about who controls the markets.
Read Sidney Lens ‘The Forging of the American Empire’
You are right when you say ‘it is the politicians who need this venom aimed at them, not squaddies’.
But don’t kid yourself that the army brings democracy and freedom. Soldiers are cannon fodder.
It is ordinary people out on the streets protesting and DEMANDING that brings us freedom.
The bosses would still have slave labor or child labor if they could get away with it.
The list is endless of people who have been killed by ‘their’ government (pick ANY country you like)while standing up for the rights of workers.
Armies are NOT there to protect people, but to protect profits. NO MORE BLOOD FOR OIL. End imperialism.And that which causes it- capitalism
Comment by Peter Hine — 13 July, 2009 @ 7:04 am
The posters above who seek a purist anti-imperialist argument for the anti-war movement reveal the bankruptcy of a Far Left that will ensure its never-ending marginality. Unfortunately they also have a disproportiinate influence in the Stop the War movement.
There is nothing left-wing about being against the presence of British Troops in Afghanistan. Even a cursory reading of the tabloid and right wing press would reveal that let alone a conversation on the proverbial Clapham omnibus. There remains a majority who are unconvinced the troops should be there , have enormous respect for the courage of those that are there, but would just like them brought home before any more die for no good reason.
The message ‘Support our Troops - Bring them Home’ is absolutely correct. It has the potential to galvanise the kind of breadth of support and numbers of 2003 once again. Anything else will leave the Stop the War movement the marginal and in headlong decline campaign that it swiftly became after 15 February 2003.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 7:28 am
mr8 #15 - For Europe’s freedom from Nazi tyranny we have the Red Army to thank. In truth, the British, American, and Commonwealth troops were lined up against just 15 divisions of predominately second rate German troops, while the Soviets were up against some 80 divisions of Germany’s best trained, equipped and motivated troops.
Mark P #19
Support The Troops - Bring Them Home is a cowardly, unprincipled message from a wholly ineffective, supine British anti-imperialist left and its even more supine middle class outgrowth in the shape of Stop the War. I don’t know about you, but I’m on the side of the Afghan resistance. Our role is to help effect the defeat of the British army by trying to demoralise them, making sure they know they do not have blanket support at home. They are not heroes, they are invading and occuping a Third World country and killing peasants.
Stop the War has been defeated. It has had absolutely zero impact. To suggest anything else is to add insult to the injury of the untold victims of British atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comment by lovely sunny day — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:09 am
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/features/why_i_don_t_support_the_troops
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:13 am
‘Lovely Sunny Day’ please keep posting in order to reveal the total inability of whatever fragment of the Far Left you subscribe to build anything resembling a popular movement.
You simply don’t get it do you? A majority is out there who want to support our troops and bring them home. This would be a major defeat of this rotten war-mongering government. On the other hand theres a couple of thousand purist anti-imperialists like yourself capable of achieving absolutely zero.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:18 am
What majority? Where is this fictional majority of people clamouring to bring the troops home? The only thing that will bring the troops home is the sight of more coffins being brought back. Prior to last week there was hardly a peep about Afghanistan over the 8 years British troops have been there. In fact, the vast majority of people in Britain supported the war in Afghanistan.
If that changes, and people begin to raise their voices at last, it won’t be because of anything the anti war movement has done. It will be a result of increasing numbers of British soldiers being brought back in coffins.
What about the people they’ve killed and are killing though? Where are the parades for them?
Comment by lovely sunny day — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:35 am
#19 “There is nothing left-wing about being against the presence of British Troops in Afghanistan.”
Everyone on the left should be against their presence in Afghanistan. Some people on the right are against it too. Fine, so much the better: more chance of success.
I don’t think praising the troops’ “courage” is useful though. After all, they’re murdering men, women and children for an oil pipeline.
The slogan “Support our troops - bring them home” is a good one. The left’s aim is to get UK troops out of Afghanistan, and that’s a broad slogan calling for an end to the war. “Support the Afghan Resistance Against British Imperialist Troops!” would mobilise about one person in a million in this country. Either you want to be successful or you don’t.
And yes, we can “Support” stopping working class men and women getting shot in an imperialist cause. That’s a different kind of support to what the bourgeoisie promotes - the slogan is a subversion of their propaganda.
Comment by little black sister — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:41 am
We have to be careful when it comes to either side of the argument on this. While I agree that we shouldn’t go out and alienate support with a maximumalist position, we have to ensure that we don’t get sucked into the establishment position of according the troops the status of heroes either.
The slogan as it stands isn’t quite enough. It must be made clear that the troops do have an enemy, but that this enemy is at home.
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:48 am
‘Lovely Sunny Day’ do you actually read the papers. 56% polled over the weekend either want the troops home today or by the end of the year. Do you actually talk to anyone outside of whatever tiny far left grouplet you belong to? There is no depth of support for the troops being in Afghamistan compated to, say, the Falklands, or the ‘first’ Gulf War. ‘Support the Troops ‘ Bring them Home’ has the potential to relate to that 56% and build on it, while your strategy will mobilise a few thousand far leftists. Mmm, difficult choice.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:51 am
The danger is of course that by currying support for the troops we make it impossible to oppose them under any circumstances. The troops do from time to time play a domestic role. For example, it looks very much as though a strike by Edinburgh binmen is about to take place, over the Council’s decision to slash their wages by 30 percent. Recently, the local paper carried a story about the likelihood of the army being used as scab labour in the event.
Kind of makes it difficult for the left to on the one hand support the troops and on the other condemn them for undermining a workers’ struggle, doesn’t it?
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 9:01 am
Lets have that argument once they’re ‘home’. The campaigning priority right now is for no British troops to be risking their lives in Afghanistan for a war which a majority believe has no legitimate purpose.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 9:07 am
Guardian poll has different numbers to those cited by Mark P and appear to show support for the Afghan war has actually *increased* over time;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/13/afghanistan-war-poll-public-support
Comment by Eddie Truman — 13 July, 2009 @ 9:11 am
Anyone who has seen the conditions under which comabat takes place in Afghanistan or has any dealing with the soldiers who are sent there knows that the slogan ’support our troops bring them home’ is highly effective in both reaching out to the soldiers and highly disruptive to the official presentation of the issue to them by their officers.
Some career officers and soldiers want to go to Afghanistan to advance their careers. Most private soldiers and junior NCOs are too young to either have a full grasp of the issues and like young soldiers everywhere think they are invincible. This feeling is reinforced by their social isolation, group loyalty, indocrination and their perceived technological superiority over their ‘enemy.
These factors are quickly undermined by the reality they encounter (especially if they are deployed in a forward position).
The public’s solidarity with the soldiers and the attitudes of the military families is an ideological battleground in which our slogans are critically important. The Today programme this morning had a piece written by an officer that was so out of touch with reality that it functioned as anti war propaganda. However, it did touch on the strong point in the ‘official’ presentation of the war which is the strong feelings of group solidarity that provides the glue that holds military units together and which gives the officer caste leverage over the thinking of the private soldier.
Even if a majority does support a war this is always temporary and dependent on a range of factors including the perceived purpose and the attrition rate. The casualties over the past period are an important factor in beginning to change public attitudes.
If British troops were to be used in breaking a strike in Britain the knowledge that the trade unions and the left had ought for the ‘rights’ of the soldiers, campaigning against the unecessary risks they faced in fighting an unjust and imperialist war and stood up for the ordinary soldier and his/her family would be the best possible basis for weakening the resolve of those soldiers to be used as strike breakers and would make it more difficult for their commanders to deploy them in such a situation.
Thus a pricipled opposition to British imperialism exists ina virtuous circle with the day to day interests of the British working class.
Comment by Nick Wright — 13 July, 2009 @ 9:49 am
Personally, I am not comfortable with any slogan that has “support the troops” in it and I am even less comfortable with slogans saying “support OUR troops”.
Surely a simple “troops out now” would suffice - it has been quite acceptable in relation to the continuing struggle for Irish self-determination - and it avoids confusing the issue about the anti-working role of the army in times of acute class conflict.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 13 July, 2009 @ 10:09 am
Eddie
There must be a war-monger, or two, amongst, the Guardian headline writers cos the poll reveals. 42% want our troops home now, 14% by the end of 09, thats 56% for starters, plus another 4% by the end of 2011.
Nick Wright is absolutely right too. ‘Support Our Troops - Bring them Home Now’ has the possibility of connecting to this majority, purist arguments over anti-imperialism and ‘whose’ troops are they don’t. Get them home, the those arguments might actually have some purpose.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 10:18 am
Nt9n, fine you indulge yourself with your purist anti-imperialism while entirely bypasing the 56% of the population who actually might be engaged by a popular campaign of ‘Support our Troops - Bring them Home.’
Do keep posting tho, it helps enormously with the argument why the Far Left is, and will always be so marginal.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 10:56 am
#34 Why would a simple “Troops Out Now” slogan alienate this 56% though?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 13 July, 2009 @ 11:01 am
#32 Mark P: warmongers at the Guardian ??? Say it isn’t true.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 13 July, 2009 @ 11:16 am
That Guardian headline is misleading. Opinion polling doesn’t show strong support for the armed forces continued deployment in Afghanistan - I think that the recent deaths will harden support for both sides.
The slogan “support the troops, bring them home” subverts the militarist logic of not questioning the mission once it’s started.
I agree with Mr8 that politicians should get the venom - I know people in the armed forces and foremost in their minds was not joining a strike-breaking organisation, but getting a good job to support their families. My grandfather was a volunteer but when he got a job as a security guard on leaving the armed forces, he joined the union, he didn’t try and break it…
Comment by Charlie Marks — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
#36
“be recipe for disaster for socialists”
And the current state of the left isn’t disastrous?
Comment by Andy Newman — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:04 pm
“And the current state of the left isn’t disastrous?” precisely because idiots like you, perryman and the rest of the stalinist mainstream have held sway for so long with your strange mix of petty nationalism and support for oppressive regimes. A bit of consistent working class politics would be better.
Comment by nt9n — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:09 pm
#38
I had no idea I was so influential.
Comment by Andy Newman — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Mmm. well nt9n (another pathetic psudonym to hide behind) I;d be interested to know in which particular mass movement I’ve enjoyed such a leading role in to bring it into such a disastrous state? C’mon my ego would benefit from knowing my incredible powers.
Mark P (the ‘P’ stands for ‘Perryman’, unlike you I don’t hide behind a pseudonym).
Comment by Mark P — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:21 pm
Well let us see how “disastrous” my approach is.
I live 5 miles from Wotton basset, where the demonstrations in support of the troops take place when the bodies go through. I live in a town and county that is steeped in the military.
the BBC have just invited me onto the radio for the drive time show to discuss the need to withdraw the troops home from Afghanistan, in dialogue and debate with those who will firmly identify with the troops.
Now, if I adopted the approach that the Britosh army are “professional killers” and “mercenaries”, there would not only be no dialogue, but the BBC would almost certainly not have wanted to have me on.
The question is, do you want to just feel smug in your tiny, ineffectual circles of like minded people, or do you want to try to engage in the mainstream political debate, and shift it in a more anti-war direction.
Comment by Andy Newman — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:37 pm
#43 So what points are you thinking of prioritising in this debate (if you get a chance to make them, of course)?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 13 July, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Nt9n- why is not wanting British soldiers to be killed necessarally nationalist? If they werent there to be kiled that would be a victory for anti-imperialism, wouldnt it?
The position that simply puts British servicemen and women in the bracket of murdering tools of imperialism separates all those who adopt it from the huge numbers of working class people, whose sons, dughters, parents, siblings and close friends so many of those servicemen and women are.
I am aware that some on the far left who believe the majority of British working class people to be themselves tainted with imperialism (and in fact not to be truly working class for that reason)are not bothered about this. However, in my opinion that is a useless and simplistic method.
A lot of opposition to the war comes from families and friends of service people who are at risk from being killed in the conflict, and not simply for that reason
It is perfectly consistent for them to be against the war BECAUSE THEY DON’T AGREE WITH IT and not to want their (often teenage) family members to be killed or maimed.
Do we deal with the world (including people ) as if it is , or as if it were the way we want to be? I find it remarkable that so many who go for the latter option describe themselves as Marxists (and therefore presumably materialist.
Comment by Armchair — 13 July, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
#44
I am fairly confident that i will get my points across.
My argument will be that the understandable feeling of human solidarity with the famillies and friends of the fallen should not get in the way of a political discussion about what the war is about.
The army get sent where they are sent by the politicians, so the debate needs to be focussed on why thw politicains have sent the troops there.
And I will point out that there can be no end to the war without a political solution acceptable to the Afgans, and that the british army may be making that less rather than more likely.
Probably a solution acceptable to the Afghans would need the removaval of NATO troops, and a regional solution including input from all the neighbouring countries, as well as the Afghans.
Comment by Andy Newman — 13 July, 2009 @ 1:08 pm
#45
“what will you do when the BBC interviewer asks what you think of the calls by the Viva Palestina trustees for the killing of british troops?”
I am assuming that the interviewer will be a professional BBC presenter, and not a member of a deluded trotskyite cult, and so this question is unlikely to be raised.
Comment by Andy Newman — 13 July, 2009 @ 1:09 pm
Andy, absolutely spot on, everything you have said.
I am actually extremely opposed to our troops in Afghanistan just as I was in Iraq, what I objected to here, what seriously offended me was the nasty spiteful, hateful ignorant lie that British soldiers are nothing more then murderers.
As a former soldier who served in UN operations in Bosnia and Rwanda, amongst many other places, I know first hand that some of our deployments are beneficial, even it if just in a small way, and of the immense heart and compassion of the average squaddie, many of whom suffered serious mental health issues after serving in these places for the very fact that they cared too much.
These are ordinary young lads, almost exclusively working class and they don’t deserve the venomous hate poured upon them by some extremists.
Whatever anyone has to say, it was the RAF who stopped the Nazis invading Britain, it was the RN who supported that and it was British soldiers who stood ready to fight if they did - not the Russians, not communist not anyone other then the British Armed forces.
They protected the freedoms you enjoy now.
Comment by Mr8 — 13 July, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Mr8:
Whatever anyone has to say, it was the RAF who stopped the Nazis invading Britain, it was the RN who supported that and it was British soldiers who stood ready to fight if they did - not the Russians, not communist not anyone other then the British Armed forces.
Me:
It was also the British Army who slaughtered and tortured the Mau Mau in Kenya, who slaughtered Palestinians during the British Mandate there, who allowed the wholesale rape and plunder of the Indian subcontinent by British merchants. It was the British Army that was sent to suppress the struggle of Scottish workers in 1919, the British Army who slaughtered innocent civilians in Derry in 1972…need I go on?
Mr8:
They protected the freedoms you enjoy now.
Me:
Yes, the freedom to be homeless, to starve, to be unemployed, to go without heating, to live on the poverty line.
Paradise indeed.
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
Mr8 - the difference is that the forces then were conscripted. Now they are not, although there is an arguement that there is an element of economic conscription.
Comment by Steve — 13 July, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
@ John Wight
“It was also the British Army who slaughtered and tortured the Mau Mau in Kenya”
Were the Mau Mau not murdering people (whole families too with machetes being the weapon of favour) raping people and torturing them?
“who slaughtered Palestinians during the British Mandate”
No; they played an unenviable balancing act between the various warring tribes and ethnicities who each vied for supremacy and each attacked the British in turn - exceedingly difficult circumstances, but of course circumstances that a keyboard warrior like you has never faced.
“who allowed the wholesale rape and plunder of the Indian subcontinent by British merchants”
British soliders do not “allow” anything, politicians do.
“British Army that was sent to suppress the struggle of Scottish workers in 1919″
Under the orders of elected politicians.
“the British Army who slaughtered innocent civilians in Derry in 1972″
Soliders are fighters, not policeman, it is not thier function and especially shock troops like the Para’s; You can thank the politicians for that idea.
The situation, the contemporary climate and above all the training and function of this particular regiment primed these combat soldiers to act with extreme aggression. Were shots fired at them first in any case? Many reports indicate that Mcguinness himself fired the first shot; many factors involved, but never having been under fire you have no idea how you would react, now do you?
“need I go on?”
No, you have proved what an ignorant hateful extremist you are, all the time using the freedoms secured by the British Armed Forces to attack the British Armed Forces.
“Yes, the freedom to be homeless, to starve, to be unemployed, to go without heating, to live on the poverty line.”
Besides that is hardly the real experience of the vast majority of Britons - you missed out the freedom of speech to spout your venomous hatred.
But answer this:
1) If British soldiers really are the deranged heartless murderers you make then out to be, why is it that veterans of Bosnia have the highest suicide rate amongst all the veterans of any conflict in British history?
2) If you actually feel so outraged and justified that British soldiers really are just ruthless mercenary murderers, why don’t you get off your arse, away from your keyboard, and take a placard down to Wotton Basset and protest?
You disgust me as much as you disgust all ordinary decent people.
@ 48
“the difference is that the forces then were conscripted. Now they are not, although there is an arguement that there is an element of economic conscription”
Not really true - the all volunteer British Army stood at 897,000 at the start of WW2 and at 1.65 million at the Battle of Britain, some were conscripted after WW2 but a lot volunteered; that can be gauged by the Local Defence Volunteers, the Home Guard, that numbered 1.5 million volunteers.
Comment by Mr8 — 13 July, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Mr8 - Were shots fired first??? I think most people are aware of what happened. People, including teenagers were shot and murdered while demonstrating for civil rights. Those that were killed were not carrying weapons, many were running away or even attending the injured and dying. The British Army then tried to cover up what happened and have been doing their best to keep it that way.
Comment by Steve — 13 July, 2009 @ 6:44 pm
#50 Yes, quite right Steve. It needed saying, again - and, of course, recruitment to the IRA increased rapidly after the atrocity of “Bloody Sunday”.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 13 July, 2009 @ 7:30 pm
Mr8:
Were the Mau Mau not murdering people (whole families too with machetes being the weapon of favour) raping people and torturing them?
Me:
Sorry, but when we go around the world colonising people they do have a tendency not to be too happy about it. As for raping and torturing, I can think of no organisation that’s done more of that than your beloved BA.
Mr8:
The situation, the contemporary climate and above all the training and function of this particular regiment primed these combat soldiers to act with extreme aggression. Were shots fired at them first in any case? Many reports indicate that Mcguinness himself fired the first shot; many factors involved, but never having been under fire you have no idea how you would react, now do you?
Me:
Yes, the attempt at cover up is well known. It’s certainly known to the people of Derry and to Republican communities throughout the six counties. It is why the British Army remains so reviled and hated there.
Mr8:
If British soldiers really are the deranged heartless murderers you make then out to be, why is it that veterans of Bosnia have the highest suicide rate amongst all the veterans of any conflict in British history?
Reply:
Which is why they shouldn’t join up and those that have should refuse to serve. Then they become real heroes.
They do have a choice - a hard choice, maybe, but a choice nonetheless. On the other hand, the people living in the countries they occupy have no choice.
Mr8:
If you actually feel so outraged and justified that British soldiers really are just ruthless mercenary murderers, why don’t you get off your arse, away from your keyboard, and take a placard down to Wotton Basset and protest?
Reply:
I certainly think the antiwar movement should be protesting these sickening parades of homecoming troops the govt and the army’s been staging. Protesting dead soldiers, however, is just sick. They’re dead, killed for nothing excpet securing oil and gas transportation roots, reconstruction contracts for multinationals, and US strategic objectives. This is the reality, which you and others like you try to dress up as heroism. They are fighting an ignoble, colonial war. Let’s call it what it is.
Mr8:
You disgust me as much as you disgust all ordinary decent people.
Me:
Does that include the est million Iraqis who’ve been killed or the untold thousands of Afghans? Or is your description of ‘ordinary decent people’ confined to one race of people only? Who are these ordinary decent people exactly? The people who’ve been sucked in by the deluge of pro-war, proo-military propaganda perchance?
As of now the British Army is in the process of making this country less safe. It is making another attack on civilians in this country well nigh inevitable, leading again inevitably to more attacks on our civil liberties, making us less free.
The people who protect our freedoms are not the troops, never have been the troops, and never will be the troops. The people who protect our freedoms are the men and women who struggled to win us the right to vote, the right to strike, the right to a home, the right to work, the right to protest, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to universal sufferage…the last I checked I didn’t see British troops fighting the police alongside the miners. I don’t think they’re doing duty protecting the houses of people from the bailifs when they’re being repossessed. I never see them standing on picket lines.
Where are they exactly when it comes to protecting our freedoms? And whose freedoms? The freedom of the rich, the bankers and big business to continue ripping the arse out of the vast majority? Whose freedoms are they protecting exactly?
Not mine, I can tell you that.
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 8:43 pm
@ 50
“I think most people are aware of what happened”
Given that you were so recklessly erroneous on your other point about WW2 being fought by conscripts I am not really surprised to see you stumbling around here either.
Oddly enough, most people do not know what happened that day because most people were not there, including you; and those who were there have very disparate accounts of what took place, and some have varying motives for their accounts which is why the most expensive and longest running inquiry has taken place into those events despite the government in 1974 stating those who were killed on ‘Bloody Sunday’ should be regarded as innocent of any allegation that they were shot whilst handling firearms or explosives.
The IRA were present, we know that for a fact; and there is as much evidence to suggest Mcguinness himself fired the first shot as there is to suggest he didn’t; the same applies to the evidence that the IRA were openly practising tactics prior to ‘bloody sunday’
@ 51
“and, of course, recruitment to the IRA increased rapidly after the atrocity of “Bloody Sunday”
Exactly, who benefited the most out of this debacle?
Having served in NI I can tell that your IRA are not a noble band of freedom fighters but primarily gangsters, extortionists, drug smugglers and thieves, who would stop at nothing to further their very profitable cause.
In fact, after the troops were first sent to NI to protect the catholics, it was all going so well with the catholics getting on with the British Army that the IRA used murderous tactics to derail it. That is a fact.
@ John Wight
“Sorry, but when we go around the world colonising people”
You really don’t understand the command structure of the British military do you? The politicians order, the army carries out the orders to the best of its ability. The British Army did not colonise anyone, politicians did.
“As for raping and torturing, I can think of no organisation that’s done more of that than your beloved BA”
You really push the line so far out with your hate, you are just a nasty piece of shit.
What about the SS for one? Or the NKVD?
What evidence do you have of the British Army routinely raping and torturing?
“Yes, the attempt at cover up is well known”
The government of the day admitted those who were killed on ‘Bloody Sunday’ should be regarded as innocent of any allegation that they were shot whilst handling firearms or explosives, but as the inquiry has found, it was not at all clear cut and many claim that the IRA fired shots first.
“and to Republican communities throughout the six counties”
Yeah right. The IRA count.
“It is why the British Army remains so reviled and hated there”
Really? Why did even Mcguinness condemn the recent murder of the two young soldiers in NI then?
You are talking out of your ignorant, inexperienced, prejudiced, extremist arse.
“Which is why they shouldn’t join up and those that have should refuse to serve. Then they become real heroes.”
You really do push the line, you really do.
You have no idea of what you are talking about. Many, many lives were saved by British soldiers in Bosnia that would otherwise have been lost, I know, I was there. One prevalent example was that although British soldiers were under UNPROFOR SO’s not to intervene when firing took place they did in any case, often driving unarmoured landrovers, and themselves, into the line of sniper fire to offer civilians some protection.
What risks have you ever taken to save lives? What do you know of heroes?
“On the other hand, the people living in the countries they occupy have no choice.”
You stupid, ignorant arsehole - the Bosnia deployment was not even remotly an occupation but a successful attempt to prevent civil war and genocide.
“I certainly think the antiwar movement should be protesting these sickening parades of homecoming troops”
Why don’t you do it then? Why spend your life relying on others to do things for you?
Go and protest with your hateful banners and see how the ordinary decent people of Britain react to it.
“Protesting dead soldiers, however, is just sick”
What a cop out - surely as heartless, torturing, raping, murdering mercenaries they and their families deserve everything they get and you should be down at Wotton Basset protesting as loud as you can from your fully justified and moral position?
“Does that include the est million Iraqis who’ve been killed or the untold thousands of Afghans”
So you now claim that the British army has murdered millions of Iraqis and Afghans? You are mad.
“As of now the British Army is in the process of making this country less safe. It is making another attack on civilians in this country well nigh inevitable”
By whom?
“The people who protect our freedoms are not the troops, never have been the troops, and never will be the troops. The people who protect our freedoms are the men and women who struggled to win us the right to vote, the right to strike, the right to a home, the right to work, the right to protest, the right to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to universal sufferage”
And it was the British Armed forces that allowed all of this by protecting the entire country from those that would impose their own systems upon us, such as the Nazis.
And all these freedoms that you now say we have directly contradict the other ones you said in your last comment we didn’t have:- the freedom to be homeless, to starve, to be unemployed, to go without heating, to live on the poverty line.
You are just a clueless nasty piece of agitating work.
“Where are they exactly when it comes to protecting our freedoms?”
On the front line fighting and dying so twisted mouthy back stabbing cowards like you don’t have to.
Comment by Mr8 — 13 July, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
Mr8, or is it Rambo?
Take a look at this. An example of your brave BA protecting our freedoms.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/13/baha-mousa-inquiry-opens
Comment by John Wight — 13 July, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
#53 “Exactly, who benefited the most out of this debacle?
Having served in NI I can tell that your IRA are not a noble band of freedom fighters but primarily gangsters, extortionists, drug smugglers and thieves, who would stop at nothing to further their very profitable cause.”
I am not somebody who would want to romanticise “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland for one moment, and I am sure that there were examples of those types of criminality involved right throughout the history of the republican movement. But to characterise the republican movement primarily as a criminal organisation is completely wrong - and it is what its bitterest enemies tried to do, people like Margaret Thatcher, I mean.
The core of the republican movement was made up of the Catholic working class, with some Catholic middle class support. And it was an intensely political movement. Republican hunger strikers like Bobby Sands who defied Thatcher to the bitter end were not criminals, they were just very determined Irish nationalists who wanted to force occupying British troops out of their country. Criminals do not starve themselves to death, some freedom fighters are prepared to do so, however.
“In fact, after the troops were first sent to NI to protect the catholics, it was all going so well with the catholics getting on with the British Army that the IRA used murderous tactics to derail it. That is a fact.”
No, it isn’t a fact. The first bit of your statement is true - the Northern Irish government did call for British troops to come in to protect Catholics against the loyalist pogromists – and yes, there was a short “honeymoon period” between the two parties.
But it wasn’t long before relations between the Catholic population and the British Army started to break down because of the way the troops were behaving. One example of this was the Falls Road curfew in the summer of 1970 . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falls_Curfew
The IRA campaign against the British Army did not actually begin until early in 1971 and tensions were further exacerbated by the introduction of internment without trial in August 1971. Over 300 republicans were arrested at that time. Then five months later, the massacre of Bloody Sunday took place. The IRA eventually took their revenge at Warrenpoint.
You do yourself no credit at all by pretending that the IRA shot at British paratroopers first. Read up on the Saville enquiry and the continuing struggle by activists to get more of its deliberations released into the public domain.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 13 July, 2009 @ 11:18 pm
Anyway, given that we are all certain that it would be nice if young men weren’t fighting an expensive war in Afghanistan - can we all agree to disagree on the rest?
Comment by Charlie Marks — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:28 am
Mr8 - re conscription
‘In August 1939 Adolf Hitler had long been making speeches suggesting he was going to send the German Army into Poland. The British government began to prepare for war with Nazi Germany, and Neville Chamberlain asked Parliament to approve the Emergency Powers (Defence Act). Passed on 24th August, it empowered the government to take measures to secure public safety, the defence of the realm and the maintenance of the public order.
Over the next five days around 100 new measures were taken. This included the calling up all military reservists and Air Raid Precautions (ARP) volunteers to be mobilized. About half a million people enrolled in the ARP and others enlisted in the Territorial Army or the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
On 27th April 1939, Parliament had already passed the Military Training Act. This introduced conscription for men aged 20 and 21, who were now required to undertake six months’ full-time military training.
Parliament also passed legislation that protected some important occupations from national service. After consulting with business leaders, the government published the Schedule of Reserved Occupations. Employers were also able to ask for individual key workers employed in one of these occupations not to be conscripted into the armed forces. By the end of 1940 more than 200,000 men had been granted deferment at their employers’ request.
On the outbreak of the Second World War, Parliament passed the National Service (Armed Forces) Act, under which all men between 18 and 41 were made liable for conscription. The registration of all men in each age group in turn began on 21st October for those aged 20 to 23. By May 1940, registration had extended only as far as men aged 27 and did not reach those aged 40 until June 1941.
Provision was made in the legislation for people to object to military service on moral grounds. Of the first batch of men aged 20 to 23, an estimated 22 in every 1000 objected and went before local conscientious objection tribunals. The tribunals varied greatly in their attitudes towards conscientious objection to military service, and the proportions of conscientious applications totally rejected ranged from 6 per cent to 41 per cent.
The political and moral views of the tribunal chairman were vitally important. It was difficult always to get a fair hearing in London, especially during the Blitz. On one occasion the chairman told the applicant that his request was rejected because “Even God is not a pacifist, for he kills us all in the end”.
On 18th December 1941, the National Service Act was passed by Parliament. This legislation called up unmarried women aged between twenty and thirty. Later, married women were made liable to be directed into war-related civilian work, although pregnant women and mothers with young children were completely exempt.
By the end of 1939 over one and a half million men had been recruited into the armed forces. Of these, 1,128,000 joined the British Army and the remainder were equally divided between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force.’
As you are an apologist for murder in Ireland and elaewhere I am surprised that facts even matter to you at all.
Comment by Steve — 14 July, 2009 @ 10:02 am
@ John Wight
I see; not a single answer to back up your lunatic rantings, just a pathetic attempt at an insult and a pathetic link to a “video of a British soldier shouting abuse at Iraqis.”
But then how could you possibly answer any of those points in all reality, when you have been thoroughly exposed as a demented, deluded, hate-filled lying crank?
@ 55
“But to characterise the republican movement primarily as a criminal organisation is completely wrong”
I would like to know where you get your information on the IRA from because it is certainly not through first hand experience; is it through the book and films you have choosen to read / watch from the safety and comfort of your living room?
The IRA extorted pubs and clubs for protection money; took over the black cab business in West Belfast; extorted businesses like McDonalds with threats to bomb them unless they paid; robbed banks and post offices; smuggled drugs and guns; carried out contract killings; kidnapped people for ransom (and a horse or two) and robbed cars and plant.
They were and still are involved in quite a few activties of this nature, primarily drugs on an international level and are involved with gangs in Columbia and further afield; just last year the IRA threatened the PSNI when it held a UK wide conference on drugs in NI.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KzlTlkVGyE
“Republican hunger strikers like Bobby Sands who defied Thatcher to the bitter end were not criminals”
He was a criminal who was convicted of the possession of four firearms and also a member of a criminal terrorist organisation. That was why he was in jail.
“Criminals do not starve themselves to death, some freedom fighters are prepared to do so, however.”
Yes they do, Ian Brady has been trying to do just that for years.
“No, it isn’t a fact”
Yes it is; the IRA as a tactic deliberately provoked troops with shots, abuse and rioting, and then when they ostensibly destroyed the British Army’s appearance of neutrality they threatened and actually severely punished any catholic that dared to show any support for British soldiers.
“the British Army started to break down because of the way the troops were behaving. One example of this was the Falls Road curfew in the summer of 1970 . . .”
Again, you do not know what you are talking about; the search for weapons came about because the IRA were shooting at police and soldiers and as a final straw took up sniping positions in a church.
Throughout the search the IRA fired at soldiers and threw grenades - how did you expect combat soldiers to react to such terrorists?
“The IRA campaign against the British Army did not actually begin until early in 1971″
Rubbish - the PIRA campaign started when it formed in December 1969 with its “Provisional Army Council” and it started its tactical agitation against the British Army, taking shots and organising riots.
“The IRA eventually took their revenge at Warrenpoint.”
You sound very proud that PIRA managed to murdered 18 people seven years after that event in a cowardly terrorist ambush.
But you missed out the initial OIRA “revenge” on 22 February 1972 that killed 7 civilians including a Catholic priest.
“You do yourself no credit at all by pretending that the IRA shot at British paratroopers first”
And you do yourself no credit at all by pretending that I am pretending that the IRA shot at British paratroopers first when it is not me saying it but numerous people that, unlike you or I, were actually there that day and involved in it.
You sound very much like an IRA fan and just as twisted as your ‘British soldiers are murdering, raping torturing mercenary” buddy.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 2:05 pm
@ Steve
You know nothing about the military or the English language. You post an unsolicted piece of spam that took you God knows how long to find, but fail to even understand it.
Miltary reservist are under contract for recall; liable for conscription is no conscription; recruited is not conscription; full-time military training is not deployment and men under 20 were not sent overseas and into combat until 1942.
And the figures in your spam are false anyway: the all volunteer British Army stood at 897,000 at the start of WW2 and by the end of 1939 the strength of the British Army stood at 1.1 million, just 203,000 men more.
But as an IRA apologist facts mean nothing to you.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 2:16 pm
Lindsey German,representing the Stop the War coalition, appeared on bbc 2’s Newsnight last night ,which was featurung the issue of “why we are in Afganhstan ?”.
As far as I was concerned,unusually, she appeared hugely ineffective and was unable to put a few clear words together.
Equally the recent STW booklet on Afganistan is poorly produced and indequately thought through and doesnt present sufficiently articulate and robust arguments for why British troops,along with Us and other imperialist forces, are “really” fighting a war of occupation in Afghanistan and why they should be withdrawn now.
For too long the STW focussed on Iraq at the expense of neglecting the issue of the equally unacceptable and illegal war and occupation of Afgahnistan and now finds itself inadequate and ill prpepared for the task for challenging the issues in respect to Afgahnistan,which is now for the moment the main focus and “concern” of mainstream capitalist imperialist media.
As far as I am concerned,on one level it needs to present the war in a critical context,in a historical and present political context in relation to itself and the imperialist war in Iraq and threats against Iran and Britain’s role in support of the racist Isreali apartheid system.
Britain,as we should all know, has a very bloody interconnected colonial history of involvement in both Iraq, Afghanistan,Iran,from Pakistan and Palestine,from Asia to the Middle East over centuries as well, of course elsewhere throughout the World but we need to focus.
The anti war movement needs clearly inform and articulate strong arguments to fully challenge the spurious New Labour lies, imperialist/colonialist (”humanistic intervention”) and military arguments and duplicitous justications for why “we ” are fighting in Afghanistan.
- anti terrorism,anti Al Queda and the Taliban
- to bring “stability”,”freedom and democracy” and “development” to Afghanistan etc
- most laughably that British troops are fighting for their country to defend our democracy and freedom at home.
- full spectrum dominance
- resource wars
- Geo politics
We need to argue that it is for the Afghani people to resolve issues within Afghanistan just as it is the case in Iraq for the Iraqi without outside imperialist intervention,invasion, war and occupation and control in propping up deeply corrupt and murderous puppet governments and dictatorships.
It should be for all peoples to resolve our their own issues within their own countries.
“WE” ARE A MAJOR PART OF THE PROBLEM NOT THE SOLUTION.
TROOPS OUT NOW !
I feel succumbing to the support our boys argument is similar to going all with the reactionairy and racist British jobs for British worker argument.
Fully expose,primarily, the massive and very very bloody and brutal slaughter of the war and of war,the appalling human cost to the Afghan people forces in terms of death and destruction,the past present and ongoing injury and injustice injury,the systematic abuse, torture and disappearence committed by US and British occupation forces alike.
No to pportion blame and guilt to individual soldiers suffice to say they are part of an imperialist war machine whether they choose to see it,like that or not.
They chose to join the British army,naively or not, and accept all that that does and has entailed for centuries of murderous British imperialist military internventions throughout the World ……….cruising,travelling and seeing the Word(as if it were like some sick for of tourism and holidaying),being trained to kill invading other people’s countries,killing people and being killed.
Ultimately, the body bags that are sent back to Britain and the US and elsewhere will continue unabated until people,in Britian’s case, the British tax payer has had enough.
Enough is enough !
Troops out now !
No more war and occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq
No more war.
The anti war movement needs to graphically confront people with these gross and appalling realities in an way the mainstram media does not.
Expose the vast cost, financial, economic interms of tax payers money spent on this profilgaste imperialist adventure or “tour of duty” in the “theatre”(sic).
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
Fleabite misses the whole subversive essence of the ’support the troops, bring them home’ slogan. It stands in the tradition of the post dadaist german workers illustrated press in which bourgeois, nationalist and fascist slogans and images were subverted.
Rather than a wooden-headed assault on the slogan (and on the strategic line of the Stop the War coalition (which is often the real target behind these polemics) we should be finding new and more striking ways to bring home – to the people whose opinions we need to change– the reality of this war.
Pious and ever-so rrrrevolutionry anti imperialist slogans get nowhere near changing opinions.
Incidentally Fleabite, an Afghani is a coin. The people call themselves Afghans.
Comment by Nick Wright — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Mr8 - Britain had around 875,000 in Sept 1939 due to the standign army and those who volunteered. From October those aged between 20-23 were required to register for one of the armed forces (unless they were in a reserved occupation). After that and as the war continued, people in other age groups recived their ‘call-up’ papers.
If there really was no conscription, how did this happen? How were some jobs exempted and why was their a panel set up for conscientious objectors?
Comment by Steve — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:11 pm
#58 “I would like to know where you get your information on the IRA from because it is certainly not through first hand experience; is it through the book and films you have choosen to read / watch from the safety and comfort of your living room?”
Books and films? Yes, of course - but also from ex-members of the IRA that I used to go out drinking with.
“He was a criminal who was convicted of the possession of four firearms and also a member of a criminal terrorist organisation. That was why he was in jail.”
Bobby Sands was fighting for Irish independence and he had massive support in the Republican community. That was why they elected him as their MP despite the fact that he was in prison. He was not a criminal despite the efforts of the Tory government under Thatcher to criminalise Irish resistance.
“You sound very proud that PIRA managed to murdered 18 people seven years after that event in a cowardly terrorist ambush.”
Those British soldiers who were killed at Warrenpoint were part of an occupying military force and were therefore legitimate military targets for Irish freedom fighters. Whereas the civilians murdered by the British Army on “Bloody Sunday” were not legitimate targets at all - now that was a “cowardly terrorist ambush”.
“You sound very much like an IRA fan and just as twisted as your ‘British soldiers are murdering, raping torturing mercenary” buddy.”
Thanks, very kind of you to say so - I thought that I was going soft in my old age.
I sometimes wonder if I had been a young Catholic chap at the time of “Bloody Sunday” what I would have done afterwards. You know, if I had been on that march and seen innocent people gunned down by marauding soldiers. I expect that I would have wanted to strike back but would I have had “the bottle”? Who can say? I just hope so. Brits out!!
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:20 pm
I didnt say there was no conscription, I said many, many were volunteers and they were: One top of the nearly million strong all volunteer standing army, the next biggest group to enter (or re-enter) service was the reservists who were previously volunteers and who were voluntarily contracted to recall.
But you are not really interested in the history of this at all are you? Its just another warped way to pour venom on the British Army.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:24 pm
@ stockwell pete
There we go, out in the open as an IRA apolgist and supporter.
And trust me, I have drank in many an Irish bar globally and if everyone I drank with who said they were in the IRA really were then the IRA would have been 20 times bigger then it really was.
But down to the real core of you nasty hatred - you think that murdering 18 young men was fully justified as they were an “occupying force” when you have already admitted that the Army initially got on well with the catholics because they were sent there to help them.
If the British army had not been sent to NI there would have been a bloodbath, civil war, sectarian cleansing and the odds of the catholics even surviving that let alone winning were slim to none. But that’s always the trouble with armchair critics like you, you are very good at spouting the IRA propaganda line but no good at addressing the actual realities of the situation.
You are a disgrace.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
#65 “You are a disgrace.”
I know - I don’t care. Ha-ha-ha!!
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
I can see that, and having just done a search on here to see what other perverted causes you support it was absolutely no surprise to see just a couple of weeks ago you were banging the drum and flying the flag for pedophila.
You really are twisted lowlife waste of oxygen.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
“Fleabite misses the whole subversive essence of the ’support the troops, bring them home’ slogan. It stands in the tradition of the post dadaist german workers illustrated press in which bourgeois, nationalist and fascist slogans and images were subverted.”
What are you on Nick Wright,you patronising git? post dada blah blah blah to what effect?………..Hilter, fascism and nationalism rose and for a time conquered until finally defeated.
I’m not saying the anti war movementy lace it’s arguments against the war and for withdrawl with anti imperialist rhetoric.
I am saying we attempt to strongly counter and expose as creatively and imaginately as possible, graphically and politically, the false arguments and lies justifying the ongoing slaughter, the massive cost,both human and economic to this and other wars such as Iraq.
I certinly dont think we should pander to British patriotic war bollocks,cosying up to,satisfying and satiating, pumping up and comforting many Brits grossly hypocritcal ultra sick and cosey,sad and pathetic patriotic psyco pathological delusions and illusions or otherwise about the British fucking army and the bloody oh so bloody history of British imperialism, past and present.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing remotely “subversive” about “the support our troops” and bring them “home” slogan.
Troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.Troops out now!
Say what you mean and mean what you say. Clear and unambiguous.
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
File under British imperialism,colonialism,Afghanistan past and present,anti war.
Another deception and or delusion ,possibly “nuance” even as Andy might prefer, currently doing the rounds of the CPB and the New Labour Left and the Morning Star,the daily communist newspaper of the CPB (not the Left),devious war voting MP Colin Burgeon and not so red Ken Linvingstone as a prime examples is that somehow it is only the US which is imperialism and we,Britain,simply need to unhitch ourselves from it’s coat tails……….get a life !
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:09 pm
#67 “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children”
http://ibnkafkasobiterdicta.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/bobby_sands_mural_in_belfast320.jpg
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:10 pm
CONTENT DELETED
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:16 pm
#71 Oh paedophilia is so last week, Mr8. Get with it man - necrophilia is the “new thing”. Honestly!!
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
Cosying up to many people’s nationalistic delusions about Britian’s oh not so glorious bloody colonial past and present is a recipe for disaster and is morally and politically bankrupt.
Lest we forget New Labour lead weight Prime Minister’s famous words several years ago, when Gordon Brown unleashed his campaign to slip into 10 Downing Street, he said that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over.”
Many puzzled observers scratched their heads, wondering when either the Labour Party or its opponents had ever apologised for the empire on which the sun never set and the blood never dried.
Appropriately enough, Mr Brown chose that bastion of progressive values, the Daily Mail, as the appropriate vehicle to air his views on the supposed lasting benefits of empire.
“We should celebrate much of our past rather than apologise for it,” he declaimed, quoting British ideas of “tolerance, liberty and civic duty” and strong British traditions of “fair play, of openness, of internationalism.”
Strangely enough, those at the sharp end of Britain’s colonialist expansion saw things rather differently, from Ireland to India, from Ghana to Guyana and from Aden to Australia.
For some reason, the victims of empire seem obsessed with trafficking in human beings, prison ships, slavery, indentured labour, massacres, repression, rape, torture, dictatorship, plunder, exploitation and, above all, racism.
For hundreds of years, various parts of the world - at its height, a quarter of the Earth’s land mass - were denied all rights to self-determination while Britain’s ruling class enriched itself and spun tales of its unique status as a paragon of virtue and enlightenment.
It is not surprising that the Mail - a paper whose backing for Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts and support for racist immigration legislation complemented its pro-empire views - should welcome Mr Brown’s espousal of views that he would once have spurned.
What is more perplexing is why the incoming leader of a party that was set up by Britain’s trade unions should choose this course.(It was ever thus with every preceding Labour Government’s continued loyal adherence to a continuation of and adherence to the global capitalist system and a tight maintenance of a clearly and unrepentant British imperialist foreign policy defending British capitalist interests and capitalist imperialist dominance globally.
Is it that the colonialist-concocted fiction of empire’s “civilising mission” lends itself to current ideas of benevolent or humanitarian interventionism as fig leaves for imperialist invasion and occupation?
The three ideas and three traditions that he recommended are worthy aspirations, but they fly in the face of colonial practice and imperial nostalgia.
Mr Brown has already taken a pot shot at one former colony, Zimbabwe, this week, demanding that it bow the knee, despite opposition throughout southern Africa to his plan for Harare to fall in line with the imperial plan.
His most recent target is Myanmar, where a military junta is denying people their democratic rights and is holding democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.
The democratic rights that Mr Brown now champions were totally absent in the British colony of Burma that was part of his beloved empire until 1948, from which Aung San Suu Kyi’s father was forced to flee to China when he led the Burmese people’s struggle for self-determination.
They remain absent in such states as, among many others, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that the Prime Minister and his commander-in-chief in the White House regard as compadres in the wars against terror and for democracy.
Of course, as with all capitalist crises, the present so called “recession” is a perfect recuitment sergeant for yet more canon fodder for the British army as unemployment increasingly blights towns and cities throughout this pesky little Island……………Sergeant Musgrave’s dance by John Arden……curious how the RUC or as it is now called the POLICE SERVICE of “Northern Ireland”(PSNI) (as against the north of Ireland) employed new white water canon against republican protestor’s yesterday inorder to allow the forward march of British loyalism and the British mainstream media fleetingly refers to past hooding practice’s(it cant quite bring itself to say TORTURE practice’s) employed by the British army in Ireland in respect to hooding and torure practices employed past and presently by the British army in both Iraq and Afghanistan…….time to join up the dots isnt it?
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:41 pm
When Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) sent a letter to the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown two weeks ago describing as “disturbing” his decision to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), this was another example of the active campaigning of this international pressure group. The letter says: “Your becoming a patron of JNF-UK can be seen as a tacit acceptance of an unacceptable status quo, and also places you in the position of not being an unbiased mediator in the peace process.”
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
Fleabite is patronised by having his attention drawn to the origins of the most powerful genre of anti fascist propaganda – the brilliant photomontage of John Heartfield – which appeared in the pages of the Illustrierte Arbeiter Zeitung.
What Heartfield did was take the slogans of the Nazis and recontextualise themwith slogans that subvert their meaning
Have a look at this stuff and see how it compares to the mindless sloganeering that is sometimes presented as the most effective way of approaching people who don’t agree with us
http://quazen.com/arts/visual-arts/the-extraordinary-anti-nazi-photomontages-of-john-heartfield/
Incidentally, Fleabite, before running away with the deception (69) that the Communist Party argues that “somehow it is only the US which is imperialism and we,Britain,simply need to unhitch ourselves from it’s coat tails” should take a look at the party’s website and maybe order the latest pamphlet ‘Africa and British Imperialism Today’
http://communist-party.org.uk/index.php?page=shop.product_details&category_id=1&flypage=flypage-ask.tpl&product_id=191&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=4&vmcchk=1&Itemid=4
Comment by Nick Wright — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
Support the troops by bringing them home is a perfectly good slogan, particularly when address families of said troops. For those endlessly concerned with their own left credentials they could always peruse one of the conditions of entry to the third international: to agitate amongst soldiers.
Comment by johng — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Fleabite (post 69) claims that the CPB and the Morning Star have a blind spot when it comes to acknowledging the existence of British imperialism.
Go to www.communist-party.org.uk and try reading. You will find countless references to British imperialism (including in the most recent party congress resolution). It is central to the CPB’s analysis. What’s the title of the newest CPB pamphlet advertised there? ‘Africa and British Imperialism Today’.
Go to the Morning Star online. Try “British imperialism” in the search engine (and then go to countless entries relating to CPB statements and articles by its leading members, and to Morning Star editorials).
Is Fleabite a liar, lazy or just stupid?
Comment by Party hack — 14 July, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
I still don’t understand why a simple “Troops Out” would alienate anyone, including military families. Are comrades saying that they would be uncomfortable with it? If so, why?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:00 pm
In respect to DEATH AND WAR PROPAGANDA …….many many people in British society,even many wishy washy liberals and wishy washy lefty liberals within the anti war movement collude in this highly delusory idea that somehow the BBC and the British army are somehow neutral and impartial !!
On the subject of joining the British army……isnt it quite preverse and sick for someone to want to do a paid job which involves being trained to kill other people which is essentially is what a soldier’s job is along with being paid to obey orders without question? There again the second is what most people are programed and conditioned to do through the higly dysfunctional so called British education system which mainly produces the officer class through the private school system’s and the caritable status and the canon fodder through the state system.
Isnt it amazing how differently the media covers the different deaths differently?
Educate, agitate and organise
Not to mention or describe, as most media management outlets fail to do so, the vast and horrific scale of death and injury amongst the Iraqi and Afghan people as the war spirals off into Pakistan , potentially engulfing the whole region by accident or design.
When Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) sent a letter to the new British Prime Minister Gordon Brown two weeks ago describing as “disturbing” his decision to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), this was another example of the active campaigning of this international pressure group. The letter says: “Your becoming a patron of JNF-UK can be seen as a tacit acceptance of an unacceptable status quo, and also places you in the position of not being an unbiased mediator in the peace process.”
Educate, agitate and organise
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:11 pm
The CPB and accompanying communist party hacks spew forth with their pseudo anti imperialism but in reality the majority of people wouldnt touch the stalinist CPB with a barge pole,not now not ever.
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
The Morning Star may have under gone a much needed superficial face lift but it still remains the daily paper of the CPB as against the daily paper of the Left to which it tries, in vain, to misrepresent.
It still remains irrelevant and unknown to the vast majority.
It still reamins unread and unsold in the few outletd wherever iis on sale.
It still reamins a very sad flimsy and wholly unconvincing and unsatisfactory 20 minute read,if that,for a measely 60p.
Whatever happened to Anita Halpin’s MILLIONS and was wacko Jacko on the CIA pay roll ?
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
#73
“Mr8 is a prime example of the racist and reactionary mindset of the volunteer soldier”
Well actually M8 started off perfectly reasonable until you all started picking on him.
The facts are these: connections with the British military are deeply rooted in the working class of our country, we nearly all have connections with the forces. My mum and dad met when they were both in the army. When I had my 5 year old’s birthday party last sunday there were serving members of the RAF there with their kids. two of the main activists in our local stop the war group are former wives of soldiers. My supervisor at work is ex-RAF, and the guy I have lunch when I am in the office is ex-Army, and the guy whose deak s next to mine used to be in a submarine. the landlord of the pub round the corner from where I live has a boy serving in Afghanistan. Working in engineering like I do, you realise that most of the blokes who have served a proper aprenticeship nowadays have done so in the forces. I know a trade union offical locally whose brother was in the SBS during the invasion of Afghanistan.
So if you want to have any inflence at all in working class politics, you need to have some nuanced appreciation of how to deal with the armed forces.
Now Britain is both a liberal democarcy and an imperial and former colonial power; so there is some ambiguity about the role of the armed forces. People do identify with the heroism and solidarity of the armed forces, and they are justifiably proud of their kids getting through training, getting their bodies fit, submitting to some discipline and making a go of it. they are proud of the spirit of sacrifice that these young men and women are prepared to put themselves on the line. Some parts of our soceity are worth defending
Of course it is also true that the armed forces have participated in the defence of Empire, and the suppression of peoples abroad, and at home. it is true that the armed forces have broken strikes, and that there is a terrible tradition of bullying, and racism.
But it is also true that the British Army fought the fascists in North Africa, in Italy and on the beaches at Normandy. It is also true that the Royal Navy defended the convoys taking the arms and machine parts through the arctic convoys to Murmansk that helped keep the Red Army in the field to defeat Hitler, and kept the sea lanes open to malta and across the Atlantic - without which fascism would have triumpheed in Europe. Young men in the RAF, often hardly more than children defended the skies, depsite terrible personal losses, and stopped nazi jackboots stepping foot on English soil.
We have to recognise both parts of the equation.
Comment by Andy Newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Oh dear, Fleabite seems terribly upset and indignant to have been caught out lying (#81). The rest of us know how much credibility to attach to his assertions in future.
Comment by Party hack — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:38 pm
British imperialism along with US imperialist forces etc in alliance the soviet stalinist imperialism fought the second world war esssentially against German, Italian and Japanese fascist imperialist expansion which threatened it’s global interests but it was the global capitalist crisis of the twenties and thirties which gave rise to fascism both in Britain and elsewhere throughout Europe and the World..
Lest we forget that the Channel Island were occupied by the Nazis and the British authorities and much of the population to a large extent colluded in this occupation as would no doubt have been the case had fascist forces conquered the British isles.
Lest we forget the support given to the British union of fascists led by Oswald Mosley by the Daily Mail, members of the British monarchy and large swathes of the ruling class,the top brass of the British military,business and industry,as well as significant sections of the working class, who also strongly aligned themselves with the fascism of Hitler,Mussolini and Franco.
Fight racism
Fight fascism
Fight imperialism
Sorry Andy, your prefence for “nuance” is wholly unconvincing and illusory…… the anti war troops out now message should be exactly that, anti war and troops out, not some kind of manky dogs dinner of a muddled and confused accomodation with people’s equally confused patriotic emotions and militaristic ,conscious and unconscious racist imperialist deceptions and delusions.
Comment by Fleabite — 14 July, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
“Mr8 is a prime example of the racist and reactionary mindset of the volunteer soldier. The way he’s been frothing at the mouth throughout this thread leads me to the conclusion that anyone stupid enough to hand him a weapon should immediately be charged with criminal negligence.”
Well, I think Andy has just about summed up the immense and alienating nonsense behind your hateful rhetoric as well as I could, and I really don’t think the likes of you and stockwell pete are worth any more time from decent people, so I will just add this:
You do not represent the vast majority of socialists nor the vast majority of non-socialists.
I was wondering how long it would take for you to gratuitously call me a racist and, well, you got there in the end.
The real truth of the matter though is that I have done more to save lives of all colours and flavours - including Bosnian muslims, Rwandan Tutsi and Irish catholics- and taken more risks to help them then the deluded and deranged likes of you, stockwell pete and ten thousand more like you put together will ever come close to.
If you really believed your hateful bile that British soldiers are nothing less then heartless, torturing, raping, murdering mercenaries, and if you had any balls whatsoever and an ounce of conviction in your position, like I said you would get off your arse and away from the keyboard and take a placard down to Wootton Bassett and protest from your position of full justification morality.
But you won’t will you? You will just spout your hatred from a nice safe place.
Comment by Mr8 — 14 July, 2009 @ 7:20 pm
Mr8
“said you would get off your arse and away from the keyboard and take a placard down to Wootton Bassett and protest from your position of full justification morality.”
As I have to live down here, can I please ask people not to come to bassett with that intention!
Comment by Andy newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
#88 Don’t worry, Andy - I think you realise that 99.9% of socialists would think that it would be grossly inappropriate to intrude on families in that way when they were grieving for their loved ones.
Have you done that interview yet? How did it go?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
#55 I just need to correct a mistake I made in this post. After the link provided for the Falls Road curfew of 1970, the next sentence should read . . .
“The Provisional IRA campaign against the British Army did not actually begin until early in 1971.”
In fact, the Provisionals first killed a British soldier in February 1971.
And it was the Official IRA who engaged the British Army in the Falls Road disturbances in the summer of 1970 as the link makes perfectly clear. The Officials subsequently declared a ceasefire in May 1972.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 7:57 pm
#88
Yes I did the interview last night, and it went well, my position of not being anti-Army won me the sapce to get past the BBC presenter’s preconceptions about woolly pacifists, and onto a substantive discussion about the futility of the war, and the fact that there cannot be a military soluytion without a political solution aceptable to the Afghan people.
It ended with an issue that I hadn’t anticipated, but one I think we will hear more of, with the BBC guy suggesting that our troops need to be fighting Islamist terrorists over there, rather than them fighting us over here.
I repsonded by saying that if we hadn’t had sanctiosn against iraq, and then invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, then we wuldn’t have a problem with terrorism in the first place, and that there is no military solution to terrorism, the political root causes of the conflict need to be addressed.
Comment by Andy newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
#91 Oh right, squaddies are gay, very progressive.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 14 July, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
#92 Yes, that sounds good. Were you able to make an explicit call for troops out? It was BBC local radio you say, was it just the Swindon area, or was it wider than that?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 8:53 pm
#93 Pardon???
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 8:56 pm
#93 Oh - I see what you mean now, Eddie, about the “pop up”. I didn’t notice it before, must have been reading the blurb.
Right, here is the non-homophobic version . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWMQ43LpjDc&feature=related
Andy, can you please delete my link at 91. Apologies to everyone.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:02 pm
Check out the label that appears on the YouTube video you posted.
But carry on anyway, I was just pointing it out.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:02 pm
Well the one you posted at #96 describes the IRA as the uindefeated army, more accurately, I read somewhere th good Friday Agreement being described as the surrender of the IRA, but a surrender where Sinn fein were to fly to admit it, and the unionists were too dumb-arsed to realise.
Comment by Andy Newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
#94
Q: Were you able to make an explicit call for troops out?
A: I said that the troops shoudl be pulled out of Afghanistan immediately, and replaced be security forces acceptable to the Afghan people.
Q: It was BBC local radio you say, was it just the Swindon area, or was it wider than that?
A: Wiltshire and Swindon, it covers most of the areas where the army are based.
in the build up to the war on Iraq, I was interveied by “Stars and Stripes”, is distributed throughout the US Army, which I was pleased with, explaining why there was a lot of local opposition to the Americans using RAF Fairford to bomb Iraq.
Comment by Andy Newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:25 pm
53: Having served in NI I can tell that your IRA are not a noble band of freedom fighters but primarily gangsters, extortionists, drug smugglers and thieves, who would stop at nothing to further their very profitable cause.
In fact, after the troops were first sent to NI to protect the catholics, it was all going so well with the catholics getting on with the British Army that the IRA used murderous tactics to derail it. That is a fact.
Jeez, I never credited Brit troops with any abundance of intelligence but I would hope that this level of ignorance is from you wishing that all the anti-Irish propaganda was true rather than actually falling for the lies.
I guess you think that British forces are actually in Afghanistan to save the people of Middle Earth from Sauron.
Comment by Ciarán — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
#98 I think that it is generally accepted that the military struggle had reached a stalemate. Tony Blair certainly thought so . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmF4t9ICGEU
So a draw then - which means that the IRA were undefeated.
Please, please, please delete my link at #91.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:46 pm
Since we’re posting videos, here’s one made by éirígí in the run-up Britain’s first Armed Forces Day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8POHGBhFK7A
Comment by Ciarán — 14 July, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
I’ll throw in my tuppence worth.
In the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq a mass movement developed where I live, Edinburgh, Scotland, as it did across the world.
It was the most amazing phenomenon and I am so proud to have participated in it.
But we failed.
Troops from the British Army were a part of the invasion of Iraq.
The mass movement melted away and the invasion and subsequent occupation proceeded.
One of the things that the mass movement gave birth to was 5 Scottish Socialist Party MSPs in the Scottish Parliament in May of 2003.
One of the first things those MSPs had to deal with was the reality of Scots soldiers being killed in Iraq.
On June 28th 2004 Trooper Gordon Gentle was killed in Iraq.
He came from the community of Pollok, in Glasgow.
He joined the army one day when he went to sign on, it was, for better or worse, an escape from what he felt was a dead end existence.
Keith Baldassara repeatedly made the point after Gordon’s death that he was an economic conscript.
I worked as SSP press officer in the Scottish Parliament at the time and spent the next 3 years documenting in photographs Rose’s fight for justice for her son, who she convincingly argued had died because of negligence on the behalf of the MOD.
Rose fought the Ministry of Defence tenaciously and the MOD is a government department that has carte blanche to behave as it wishes.
Rose was told that the vehicle Gordon was in didn’t have equipment that was stockpiled in stores.
With the evidence, we organised a press conference to tell the press.
We had a Sunday Herald journalist ready to write an exclusive story.
The MOD issued a ‘D Notice’ on it, a very British way of censoring information.
The chairman of the D Notice committee at that time was the editor of the Sunday Herald.
You can (hopefully) see a Facebook gallery of the photographs of Rose’s campaign here;
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=20055&id=524177649&l=dc8266e3a8
During that time I met many other families who had lost children in Iraq; Reg Keys, Susan Smith and others. All were devastated by their loss but united against the Iraq war and came together in Military Families Against The War.
On the other side of the argument, I have a great respect for Jim Slaven of Edinburgh’s Connolly Society, I hope he won’t mind his opinions being cited.
Jim argues very strongly that Rose’s campaign has crossed a line from being for justice for Gordon into support for “our boys”, who are part of an imperialist army of occupation.
I find it very difficult to argue against that.
Finally to John on the possibility of the Army being used in the Edinburgh bin dispute.
I would hope that the first thing socialists in Edinburgh would do is produce a leaflet outlining the fact that squaddies were being used to break a trade dispute between the binmen and the council and that they should refuse to do so.
We all may get tried for sedition but these are the breaks.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 14 July, 2009 @ 10:04 pm
Eddie, well said.
Comment by John Wight — 14 July, 2009 @ 10:08 pm
#101 Wahay!! That one hits the spot, Ciaran. Excellent.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 14 July, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
Well yes. #101
If the main force for acheiving socialism in Britain is going to be the republican minority population in six counties of Ireland, then you have hit the argument squarely on the head.
If however you wish to have a dialogue with and convince the vast majority of the British working class, then you need to have a much more sensitive understanding of the deep roots of support that the armed forces have in british society; and the strong links that many working class communities have with the forces.
the rather self congratulatory tone of those of you who wish to describe the army as mercenaries, and professional killers, etc etc will butter no potatoes; and will simply cut your off from the majority of the population in a totaly unnecessary way.
Comment by Andy Newman — 14 July, 2009 @ 11:36 pm
Andy #105 - Conversely, if you think that we can ever win socialism in this country by pandering to a reactionary consciousness in the working class then you too are right.
To be a soldier is to be willing to subordinate your own natural faculty for independent thought and moral judgement in service to the thoughts and moral judgements of others. It’s an interesting psychology. Eddie mentioned how Gordon Gentle signed up for the forces while signing on at the Jobcentre one day. I’m interested to know what went through the heads of those young men who were also at the Jobcentre signing on that day, whose lives appeared equally as bleak, and who didn’t join up.
Perhaps when the antiwar movement was stronger more focus could have been placed on trying to prevent young men joining up. Sadly, this was never seen as a priority, at least not up here in Edin.
But the fact that sections of the working class support the troops is no reason why we should support them. Our actions when it comes to troops involved in colonial wars must reflect an internationalist perspective. It might not be expedient, but it doesn’t make it wrong.
Comment by John Wight — 15 July, 2009 @ 7:22 am
Surely we should be holding a national demonstration? If not, the movement could be left behind again.
Comment by Steve — 15 July, 2009 @ 7:37 am
Re: #105. I agree with what you’re saying Andy on the need of a debate among the anti-war movement in Britain for the best way to achieve its objectives. Obviously from the Irish perspective we don’t see them as ‘our’ troops or ‘our’ boys or whatever so there’s no issue at our end of things. So my contribution maybe wasn’t in the right place in the middle of this discussion, but I had to respond to Mr8’s nonsense.
Comment by Ciarán — 15 July, 2009 @ 9:04 am
There is a world of difference between heady ‘internationalist’ and super revolutionary rhetoric and practical internationalist work. The priority is to narrow the base of support for the war on Afghanistan among the people who actually support it, or whose worries about the safety of their friends and relatives leads them to conflate these two things.
Slogans and language in mass work that are predicated on a pre existing anti-imperialist understanding may fulfil some emotional need for the sectarian or the simple minded but they, as often as not, finish up reinforcing support for the war.
Take a look at today’s Daily Mail which leads with a front page picture story about a war widow. If we are not careful the right wing press will get a complete lock on the anger of soldiers families while we are running around waving a metaphorical big red flag and convincing no one but ourselves.
If only the right wing take up the very real problems of soldiers and their families then the vital work to weaken support for the military intervention in Afghanistan will be that much more difficult.
In any working class community there are young people for whom joining the services is a practical solution to real life problems. To expect 17 and 18 year olds in Britain today to be able to make informed decisions about joining an imperialist army is pious nonsense. It is returning soldiers and their families and the families of those killed and wounded who are much better placed to explode the government’s justification for the war. And it is these people and the communities from which they come that must be won.
Much of this discussion is reminiscent of the hot air talked about solidarity with the Vietnamese in 1967 and 1968. The daft and the deluded banged on about “Solidarity with the Vietcong’ but when the Young Communists and the Communist Students actually asked the NLF what they needed in the way of practical solidarity they said bikes, medical aid kits!
Comment by Nick Wright — 15 July, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
Nick Wright- like Andy Newman, much more sense than some comments on this thread.
Comment by Armchair — 15 July, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
Nick Wright:
There is a world of difference between heady ‘internationalist’ and super revolutionary rhetoric and practical internationalist work. The priority is to narrow the base of support for the war on Afghanistan among the people who actually support it, or whose worries about the safety of their friends and relatives leads them to conflate these two things.
Reply:
Likewise, there is a galaxy of difference between internationalist work in resisting the received truths that give rise to the support for the war - e.g., the troops are mindless victims and pawns who should not be held accountable for their actions - and succumbing to the easy road of tailing the pro-war, pro-military propaganda of the establishment.
Nick Wright:
Slogans and language in mass work that are predicated on a pre existing anti-imperialist understanding may fulfil some emotional need for the sectarian or the simple minded but they, as often as not, finish up reinforcing support for the war.
Reply:
They also may accord with a concrete analysis of a concrete situation, rather than with a course of action which is nothing more than political cowardice dressed up as pragmatism.
Eight years of such political cowardice masquerading as ‘dadaist’ counter intuitive gymnastics has had zero impact on either pro or anti war sentiment in this country. Returning coffins of dead soldiers have.
Nick Wright:
Take a look at today’s Daily Mail which leads with a front page picture story about a war widow. If we are not careful the right wing press will get a complete lock on the anger of soldiers families while we are running around waving a metaphorical big red flag and convincing no one but ourselves.
Reply:
The Daily Mail reflects the reactionary agenda of the mainstream media which currently dominates the public discourse in this country. To suggest that socialists should take their lead from the right wing press in such matters as war and peace reflects the extent of the success it has had in inculcating some within our own ranks with the notion that such ideas cannot be opposed, merely tinkered with.
Nick Wright:
To expect 17 and 18 year olds in Britain today to be able to make informed decisions about joining an imperialist army is pious nonsense
Reply:
To imply that 17 and 18 year olds in Britain today are incapable of making informed decisions is condescending in the extreme. However, what makes such a descision easier for any young person thinking of joining the military is a supine anti war movement lacking in sharp, politically unambiguous slogans that sufficiently challenge the status quo.
Nick Wright:
Much of this discussion is reminiscent of the hot air talked about solidarity with the Vietnamese in 1967 and 1968. The daft and the deluded banged on about “Solidarity with the Vietcong’ but when the Young Communists and the Communist Students actually asked the NLF what they needed in the way of practical solidarity they said bikes, medical aid kits!
Reply:
Of course, the fact that those daft and deluded helped hugely in the demoralisation of US troops serving in the field, which played a huge part in ending the war, is neither here nor there.
Comment by John Wight — 15 July, 2009 @ 4:45 pm
John Wight
Moralising about the attitudes and motivations of service personnel generally and calling them “arseholes” is useless and as un-maxist as middle class pacifism.
In fact, the debate with Mr 8 over conscription was in reality a bit of a red herring. Most of the millions of workers who faced each other in the trenches in WW1, on any of the fronts did so willingly until fairly late on, including the Russian soldiers who formed part of the vanguard of the revolution when it eventually happened.
Would it have been the correct method for the likes of Lenin to call these workers in uniform arseholes because they were willingly firing shells, poison gas etc at fellow workers?
By the way, I remember what it was like to be 17, and I really dont think I was making properly informed choices about my life (Im in my 4os now).
Furthermore you asked, what about the 17 and 18 year olds in the dole office who didnt decide to join the army. Well, I wonder how many of them said, “I wont join up because I dont want to kill people in an imperialist war”.
Comment by Armchair — 15 July, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Armchair:
Would it have been the correct method for the likes of Lenin to call these workers in uniform arseholes because they were willingly firing shells, poison gas etc at fellow workers?
Reply:
This is an historical analogy which reveals not a jot of concrete analysis. The First World War was fought by mass conscript armies. What we’re talking about here are volunteer soliders fighting in a colonial wars of occupation against poor peasants. A more accurate analogy is between the French fighting in Vietnam in the early 1950s.
Armchair:
By the way, I remember what it was like to be 17, and I really dont think I was making properly informed choices about my life (Im in my 4os now).
Furthermore you asked, what about the 17 and 18 year olds in the dole office who didnt decide to join the army. Well, I wonder how many of them said, “I wont join up because I dont want to kill people in an imperialist war”.
Reply:
Well, obviously in this you speak for yourself. Informed doesn’t mean necessarily politically conscious. But it does mean a decision influenced by various factors, such as the level of counter hegemonic resistance, propaganda, and politics that manages to penetrate.
In my early 20s, like many young working class guys, I flirted with the idea of joining up myself. I’d succumbed to the idea they project that to be a Marine is to be a man and all that nonsense. I went to the recruitment centre, picked up the brochures, and went for an interview.
My old man had been in the military, as had an uncle, so it ran in the family. What stopped me was a contradictory interest in the Irish struggle. It had been a struggle that had interested me since the Hunger Strikes. It was a struggle that exerted enough influence to prevent me joining up.
The point is that the courage and heroism of the Hunger Strikers inspired me to become political. It was a movement which in its politics and slogans flew in the face of the status quo.
People, young people, follow courage.
A recent, more relevant example was the recent Armed Forces Day. In Glasgow the parade was interrupted by a small group of protesters, Irish republican sympathisers, who in effect stood against the tide of expected and demanded support for the troops. Their protest made the headlines in a way that no ‘official’ antiwar action or demo has in years.
It shocked the establishment, had politicians livid with indignation, not to mention the military brass. These were young working class men from Glasgow. What they did was truly heroic in my book.
What do you think?
Comment by John Wight — 15 July, 2009 @ 5:55 pm
I hesitate to respond to John Wight’s rather surprising scholasticism with a little scholarly learning but here goes.
“Eight years of such political cowardice masquerading as ‘dadaist’ counter intuitive gymnastics has had zero impact on either pro or anti war sentiment in this country. Returning coffins of dead soldiers have.”
Berlin Dadaism was one aesthetic response to the horrors of the 1st World War. The best artists among them – mostly returning soldiers – moved onto revolutionary politics and transmuted their technique into some of the most compelling revolutionary propaganda. Ignorance of these processes is excusable but no basis for informed debate. To suggest that either in the interwar years or in today’s conditions that the failure to stop fascism or war is simply a failure of artistic technique is a feeble debating point.
Try this site: Berlin dada, the anti war art movement.
http://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/dada/arthistory_dada.html
John Wight misses the point entirely about the images of the returning coffins. These images are the site of ideological contestation. The editors of the Daily Mail understand this. Recognising this fact is not “taking the lead from the right wing pressl” – it is the starting point of real politics. The point is to find ways of imbuing these images with our meaning not that of the bourgeoisie. The correct slogan might be ‘Bring the soldiers home alive, not in a box!’
Willi Munzenberg, the brilliant entrepreneur who ran the Comintern’s propaganda apparatus understood the power of popular press and propaganda techniques which is why he struggled with the narrow-minded purists who would reduce every campaign to a parade of pieties. Stalin once asked why it was that when the bourgeoisie tell lies they make it sound like the truth and when the revolutionaries tell the truth they make it sound like lies. That is precisely the function of much well-meaning and super revolutionary sloganeering – to empty our slogans of real political content and create barriers to their general acceptance.
Quite how John Wight expects 17 and 18 year olds to make informed decisions without finding us a shared language and some human empathy with the real conditions of their lives escapes me. I try to think of a ’sharp, politically unambiguous slogan’ that might have stopped the school friend of my son from trooping off to Bagram with the British army when he found himself an orphan, jobless and homeless.
It is precisely such painfully young ‘veterans’ who make the most convincing critics of New Labour’s war policy when they return, shocked, bewildered, disabled or dead.
I have no idea whether John Wight was politically active in the anti-Vietnam war movement but he misses the point completely about the disputes over language. The political priority for the Vietnamese was to stop Britain from sending troops to aid the USA. The main strategic objective of the anti war movement was to construct a broadly based coalition to achieve this end. Some people, the usual suspects, argued that this objective and the associated language and tactics should be replaced by a direct call for solidarity with the NLF to the exclusion of other more nuanced approaches.
However, when they were directly asked about solidarity the NLF prioritised practical aid. We Communist Students and Young Communists then collected money and bought bikes for the Ho Chi Minh trail and medical kits for the combatants and then convoyed them to the World Youth Festival in Bulgaria where they were handed over to the NLF youth.
For this we were roundly condemned by a coalition of warring trotkyite sects, maoists and Young Liberals for ‘Oxfam’ solidarity. My point is that it was the breadth of the opposition to the war, in Britain and other countries, that was decisive in isolating the US not the stridency of its slogans.
Comment by Nick Wright — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
#109 The Vietnam Solidarity Campaign raised the slogan Victory to the National Liberation Front (NLF). Like many VSC activists I collected for Medical Aid. The representatives of the NLF and North Vietnam I met at the time welcomed our support and did not think we were ‘daft and the deluded’.
Comment by solidarity — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
Letters
Leave Iran to shape its own destiny
The Guardian, Wednesday 15 July 2009
We write to express our support for the popular democratic movement that has emerged in Iran since last month’s disputed presidential elections (Iran election, 13 June). It is striking how both the Ahmadinejad regime and the champions of an attack on Iran agree in interpreting this movement as a pro-western rebellion in favour of liberal capitalism. Even some people on the left share the same view. We reject this interpretation.
All the signs are that the protests are an authentically Iranian movement that, far from representing a turn towards the west, is renewing the original emancipatory potential of the revolution of 1978-79. We are also very concerned that over 2,000 people have been arrested for participating in the protests and that some of them have apparently been tortured and threatened with execution. We demand their unconditional release. Finally, we strongly oppose any attempt to use the crisis to justify military intervention against Iran or the imposition of further sanctions by the United States and its allies.
The people of Iran have begun again to shape their own destiny. They should be left free to do so.
Gilbert Achcar
Alex Callinicos
Judith Orr
Mark Serwotka
Slavoj Zizek
Comment by solidarity — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:12 pm
Hands of the People of Iran………maybe the StWC will finally accept affiliation as Callinicos has signed the letter to The Guardian.
Comment by Steve — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
115 Solidarity
The slogan ‘Victory to the NLF’ was a perfectly valid one – for those in political solidarity with the NLF such as the Communist Party, YCL etc and later on, when they saw the scale of the anti war movement, some of the trotskyist groups.
It was the insistence that this was appropriate for the whole of the anti-war movement that was wrong.
Collecting for medical aid for instance could be hindered in some circles by making the slogan Solidarity with the NLF the core demand.
Comment by Nick Wright — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:24 pm
Nick Wright:
John Wight misses the point entirely about the images of the returning coffins. These images are the site of ideological contestation. The editors of the Daily Mail understand this. Recognising this fact is not “taking the lead from the right wing pressl” – it is the starting point of real politics. The point is to find ways of imbuing these images with our meaning not that of the bourgeoisie. The correct slogan might be ‘Bring the soldiers home alive, not in a box!’
Reply:
And you accuse me of empty scholasticism? Real politics is not reacting to what your ideological opponent or enemy does, hoping to twist it through the adoption of clever semantics. It’s about going on the front foot and making your opponent react to your agenda, if and where possible, including at the level of slogans.
Power only responds to power. Anodyne slogans of which the Salvation Army would be proud to carry are and have been completely and utterly ineffective.
Trawling through Marxist texts to find abstract intellectual formulations, which were created in response to specific material conditions, really doesn’t cut the mustard, Nick, I’m afraid.
Nick Wright:
Berlin Dadaism was one aesthetic response to the horrors of the 1st World War. The best artists among them – mostly returning soldiers – moved onto revolutionary politics and transmuted their technique into some of the most compelling revolutionary propaganda. Ignorance of these processes is excusable but no basis for informed debate.
Reply:
What intellectual self indulgence this is.
Again, like Armchair, you demonstrate a woeful lack of historical analysis in attempting to compare a world war which engulfed Europe, pitting massed conscript armies against one another, and which involved a cataclysmic loss of life. The impact of this carnage personally touched the homes and lives of every working class family back home.
In contrast, the colonial war under discussion in Afghanistan has impacted on a minute proportion of families in this country.
Most people are completely apathetic about the war, which is precisely why the govt and the army have exerted so much effort in trying to curry sympathy and support for the troops. Yet you state that our priority must be in winning the support of this narrow constituency by subordinating anti imperialist politics for a pacifist alternative? All this will succeed in doing is continue the process whereby the current generation of socialists and Marxists in this country have done nothing but bear witness to the slaughter of colonised peoples. Nothing more.
Nick Wright:
Quite how John Wight expects 17 and 18 year olds to make informed decisions without finding us a shared language and some human empathy with the real conditions of their lives escapes me. I try to think of a ’sharp, politically unambiguous slogan’ that might have stopped the school friend of my son from trooping off to Bagram with the British army when he found himself an orphan, jobless and homeless.
Reply:
Why don’t you just go the whole hog Nick and get a job as a recruiting sergeant for the British armed forces?
And by the time this young orphan, jobless and homeless man got to Bagram he’d been brutalised, desensitised, and taught to kill on command.
That’s all right, though - at least he had a job and a roof over his head.
Nick Wright:
It is precisely such painfully young ‘veterans’ who make the most convincing critics of New Labour’s war policy when they return, shocked, bewildered, disabled or dead.
Reply:
What a grotesque formulation. Now that young hitherto homeless and jobless man, after killing however so many people overseas, and being forever mentally and emotionally damaged as a consequence, can be of use to the movement when he returns?
Are you serious?
Comment by John Wight — 15 July, 2009 @ 6:31 pm
Much of the political embaressment of the government has flowed from growing discontent in the ranks: so that ARSE for example, a blog for serving soldiers had to be banned. It would be ultraleftism of the most stupid kind to ignore this. That is if deepening the problems of this pro-war government and trying to win the argument to get out is the priority.
Comment by johng — 15 July, 2009 @ 7:10 pm
johng - reaching disgruntled serving soldiers must be a priority. How we do that is key. The left wing of the antiwar movement has failed to do that. I include myself in that failure.
We’ve left them nowhere to go.
Comment by John Wight — 15 July, 2009 @ 7:14 pm
Dear John,
We really must find a different way of debating these issues. We seem to be using language in ways that do not communicate the essence of our ideas.
I don’t think that sharply-worded, well-grounded criticism of imperialism, “going on the front-foot” as you put it, couched in strong language is wrong nor do I think militant demonstrations or practical acts of subversion are mistaken. On the contrary, for the conscious anti-imperialist and the widest range of allies it is possible to mobilise around such advanced slogans, it is a duty.
But politics is not just about mobilising those already convinced of our arguments.
It is not a question of winning support of a narrow constituency by subordinating anti imperialist politics to a pacifist alternative.
I think you underestimate both the social weight of the military in this society and the purchase on popular imagination that the dilemma of the Afghanistan possesses.
There are round about 100,000 in the military with a high turnover. Most on active service are under 25 and many from the working class communities most hit by the capitalist crisis. You make the entirely correct point that the government and army are trying to stimulate support and sympathy for the troops. They are doing this because the war lacks legitimacy in its own terms.
My sense is that the most professional elements in the military are not convinced by the strategy employed, that among those who have actual combat experience the tactics employed are widely regarded as mistaken and that at some level the collective military view is that the war is unwinnable. (This is fused with a certain Daily Mail type of anti New Labour sentiment).
This mix undermines the credibility of the war and thus its ‘legitimacy’. I don’t think that this is going to be transmuted into a conscious anti-imperialist understanding but is does make the prosecution of the war highly problematic for the government.
However, let us start with the actual case of the young man who went to war. Rather than, as you suggest, ‘killing however many so people’ rather he was given’ intelligence gathering’ duties which involved him in talking to Afghans. He thus came back with less of the burden of guilt and horror that many soldiers bear and as something of an opponent of the war. At a practical level he is able to communicate to ordinary people a more profound understanding of the futility of this war than any number of ‘anti-imperialist’ slogans chanted on a demonstration – valuable those these may be in their own terms.
I can contrast this to others I have encountered whose experiences were very much more traumatic and whose responses range from the bellicose to the deeply anti-war and specifically anti-army. It is precisely their distressed state that functions as a criticism of the war. Talk to anyone working with the homeless and the addicted and you will find many examples of ex-soldiers unable to function in normal society. I would not discount either, the strong antipathy many friends and relatives of soldiers have to the brutalising effects of the war on their sons (and daughters). This was brought home to me very strongly during the first weeks of the Iraq war when I was in Washington. I discussed with a group of Black women – all opponents of the war – with sons and daughters in the US forces. They said two things that impressed me. One was that having a child in the US military was a certain guarantee of access to health insurance and secondly, that service in the armed forces both opened access to training and education but also carried a big risk of emotional damage, domestic violence etc.
I don’t accept your rejection of the analogies I drew on with the 1st World War and its aftermath. Of course the scale was different but drawing out imperialist character of the conflict is a directly analagous political task. Neither do I accept you refusal of the references made to the aesthetic dimension to the propaganda style of that period.
The point I make is that in a media discourse that is conditioned by bourgeois hegemony we have to work with symbols and language that themselves are battlegrounds. In attempting to subvert their dominant meanings we have to employ more creative techniques than is conventional in left wing politics. That is why it is necessary to imbue the images of coffins bearing the remains of soldiers with an anti-war meaning. These images are incredibly powerful in their own right, that is why the Bush government banned them.
It is a simple point but a profound one. Politics is about changing the minds of people who disagree with us or who are unconvinced by our arguments. We have to start where they are and not where we are.
Comment by Nick Wright — 15 July, 2009 @ 8:20 pm
“The left wing of the antiwar movement has failed to do that. I include myself in that failure.
We’ve left them nowhere to go”
Sadly thats not just true of the war or serving soldiers is it? And yes we should include all of us in that.
Comment by johng — 15 July, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
Bring OUR BOYS HOME NOW!!!!!!!!!! It is NOT OUR WAR!!!
Comment by Claire — 29 July, 2009 @ 10:57 am
bring all our sons hubands and boyfrerinds home home safe for good bing all our boys home frome afgsi
Comment by lorraine martin — 5 August, 2009 @ 6:53 pm