Reform UK’s MPs are ready to justify violence – whether it’s carried out by the police or used against them

Posted on by symonhill

It has not taken long for the five MPs from Reform UK to reveal themselves as a gang of far-right thugs in suits.

Nigel Farage has spent much of the last two days denying that he stoked up the racist violence in Southport on Tuesday. The reality is that Farage recorded a video only hours before the violence began in which he challenged the police’s statement that the murders of children were “not terror-related”.

Farage told his viewers:

“I just wonder whether the truth is being withheld from us. I don’t know the answer to that.”

Farage is right about one thing: he does not know the answer to that. He knows no more about this horrendous attack than most of us do – which is very little. He also knows that despite saying he does not, know, his comments were likely to be heard as strongly implying that the truth is indeed being withheld from us.

Yesterday, he defended himself on GB News, claiming that the police should have been clearer about the identity of the murderer. Disgracefully, Farage claimed:

“That’s what led to the riots last night. That’s what led to people being outside that mosque in Southport. You know, sometimes just tell the public the truth and you might actually stop riots from happening.”

If Farage is implying that people would not have attacked a mosque if they had known the murderer was not a Muslim, then he is in effect suggesting that it would have been acceptable to attack a mosque if the killer were a Muslim.

Reform UK leader’s reluctance to believe police statements contrasts remarkably with Reform UK’s attitude when a police officer was filmed jumping on a suspect’s head as he lay prone on the floor in Manchester airport last week.

Reform MPs rushed to defend the police involved, saying that police officers had been viciously attacked, including by the person whose head one of them later jumped on.

They missed the point that nobody was defending violent assaults on police officers. But Reform MPs defended equivalently vile behaviour – because it was done by police officers. There is no context in which it is acceptable to kick and jump on someone who is lying prone on the floor, whatever that person has done.

Tice went so far as to post a photo of a young police officer with blood on her face, claiming she had been attacked by the men in Manchester Airport. The picture turned out to have been taken in Leicestershire four years ago.

A week later, this demonstrably false photo is still on Tice’s Twitter feed.

Tice, however, must cede the award for most ludicrous response to his fellow Reform MP (and former Tory MP) Lee Anderson – the man known for telling refugees to “fuck off”, telling anti-monarchists to emigrate and telling people in poverty that it is possible to cook a meal for 30 pence.

Anderson didn’t just try to shift the focus away from police violence. He actively welcomed the violence. He wrote on Twitter:

“The vast majority of decent Brits would applaud this type of policing. We are sick of the namby pamby approach. Time to back our boys in blue.”

This is the first time I have known the phrase “namby pamby” used to mean “not jumping on people’s heads”. Anderson (as usual) cites no evidence that “the vast majority of decent Brits” are in favour of police assaulting suspects as they lie prone on the ground.

But Anderson surpassed even himself in his comments in a BBC interview, saying:

“The message I am getting loud and clear from my constituents is they are fed up with seeing police dancing around rainbows and being nice to people and running off from rioters. They want police to do their job, and I think these police yesterday should be commended. In fact, I’d give them a medal.”

You might need to read that again. The most shocking statement from Anderson is not that he wants to give a medal to people engaged in a violent assault. It is that the police behaviour to which he objects include “being nice to people”.

Yes, he really said that. He said his constituents are fed up with seeing police “being nice to people”.

What an outrageous way to behave – being nice to people. This is a party whose MPs defend people who engage violence against a man lying prone on the floor, but who object if those same individuals are being nice to people.

Reform’s enthusiasm for the police suddenly changed, however, when it came to the horrific murders of children in Southport on Monday.

With the Manchester airport incident, Tice, Anderson and their mates had taken it for granted that everything said about the suspects’ attacks on police was true. Now it may well be true, but it’s worth noting that they did not even stop to consider whether it was.

In contrast, the police statements that they do question are not those involving the disputed details of a violent incident but factual statements about an arrested individual.

The police in Southport said that the individual they have arrested is 17 and was born in Cardiff to parents from Rwanda. Today a court ordered that his name be made public. The police have said the incident is not “terror-related”, which I think is a bizarre expression but basically seems to mean that the motivation was not an attempt to bring about political change.

While I have little or no faith in the police, the police statements that seem to me to be most likely to be accurate are those concerning the age, nationality and so on of suspects.

This has not stopped far-right types claiming on social media that the killer is a Muslim and/or an asylum-seeker. But as he was born in Cardiff, he literally cannot be an asylum-seeker. A Rwandan family is pretty unlikely to be Muslim. Even if he were Muslim, this would not take away from the reality that Muslims in Southport are as appalled as anyone else by the horrific murders of children.

Farage’s language about the truth being withheld played directly into the hands of those who claimed that the basic factual statements about the arrested individual are not true. Reform MPs were too late to undo their damage when they took to social media on Wednesday morning to condemn the violence in Southport the previous night.

Within less than a month of Reform UK gaining five MPs, they have revealed the reality that they side with violent thugs – whether those thugs are attacking police officers, or are police officers themselves.

Draconian jail terms for Just Stop Oil show why Labour must scrap Tory anti-protest laws

Posted on by symonhill

On Wednesday morning, police entered a café in London and arrested a group of customers. They were planning a peaceful protest at the State Opening of Parliament against the UK’s government’s military support for Israel.

On Thursday, five members of Just Stop Oil were each sentenced to between 4 and 5 years in prison for planning to disrupt the M25 in protest against the UK government’s inaction on climate change.

These two incidents have two things in common.

Firstly, they both involved people being punished not for what they did but what they were thinking about doing.

Secondly, they were possible because of recent Tory legislation restricting peaceful protests and introducing new powers to arrest and punish people simply for planning protests.

It is now vital that the Labour government repeals the legislation that enabled these outrages.

I write as one of the first people arrested under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022.

At least, the police told me that I was being arrested under that act when they bundled me into a police van for expressing anti-monarchy views at a royal proclamation in Oxford. But they later told the media that they had arrested me under the Public Order Act 1986.

The reality is that many police have little idea about the law relating to protests. It is not only recent Tory laws that need repealing, but the whole framework of laws and culture relating to freedom of expression and rights to assemble and protest.

The trial of the Just Stop Oil protesters that finished yesterday was particularly unfair, with the judge’s bias being blatant throughout. He tried to stop them giving evidence about the reality of climate change, even ordering the arrest of protesters who sought to emphasise the right of juries to acquit on the basis of conscience.

The defendants said that this undermined their own promise to tell “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Thus they have been nicknamed the Whole Truth Five.

The judge clearly did not want the jury reminded of other occasions on which juries have exercised their right to acquit peaceful protesters. This has happened many times. For example, in 1996 the four women who disarmed a warplane bound for Indonesian attacks on East Timor were found Not Guilty on all charges after spending six months in prison on remand.

Personally, I do not support all the tactics and attitudes of Just Stop Oil. I fear that they focus far too much on disrupting ordinary people’s everyday lives rather than the activities of the powerful. Some of them fail to connect climate change with other injustices such as inequality, poverty and war, with which it is inextricably bound up.

But anyone who cares about climate change and about freedom to protest – whatever their views on Just Stop Oil – should be alarmed that people have been imprisoned for planning a protest.

The excessive length of the sentences is chilling. The Whole Truth Five will spend longer in prison than some people convicted of sexual offences and violent crime. This is really frightening.

I do not yet know what will happen to the members of Youth Demand who were arrested in a café on Wednesday simply for planning a peaceful protest over Israel at the State Opening of Parliament in London. I will be watching out for further news.

The Labour policies announced in the King’s Speech shortly after those arrests were in several ways more progressive than I had feared. But they do not go nearly far enough, and they include nothing about repealing Tory attacks on political freedoms.

Arrests and convictions must not deter us from exercising our freedom of expression and our rights to peaceful protest. And we must ramp up the pressure on the new government to overhaul protest laws and police powers.

Otherwise, any of us could be facing five years in jail before too long.

My book The Peace Protesters: A history of modern-day war resistance explores nonviolent activism, particularly peace activism, in the UK in the last 40 years (published by Pen & Sword, 2022).

Sunak is fuelling militarism with his dangerous ‘National Service’ plan

Posted on by symonhill

If patriotism is “the last refuge of a scoundrel”, then militarism is the last desperate hope of a Prime Minister clutching at the thinnest of straws as he plummets to defeat.

Rishi Sunak’s plan to bring back so-called “National Service” might get some militarists and Daily Mail writers salivating with delight. It might even win him a few votes from right-wing hardliners tempted to vote for Reform UK.

Many of the most hardcore militarists have attacked Sunak’s government for not increasing the UK’s already massive military budget by as much as they would like. The billions that this scheme would cost would in effect mean another big rise in military spending.

But that’s far from the worst aspect of it. Eighteen-year-olds who join the armed forces for a year would be part of an institution that is exempt from basic employment laws. Armed forces personnel have no right to join trades unions or to give notice when they wish to leave. Unlike people in almost any other job, they can be imprisoned for refusing to do what their boss tells them to do. The orders that they can be required to obey include orders to kill others without reference to their own conscience.

Sunak’s proposed ”civilian” alternative to joining the armed forces would be little better. The experience of many other countries makes clear that those who choose the military option are often treated with greater esteem and have more chance when it comes to applying for jobs later.

For those who choose the civilian option, Sunak offers a weekend of “voluntary” work once a month for a year. This “voluntary” work would be compulsory. It is obvious that the concept of compulsory voluntary work makes as much sense as a square circle. While some of this work may well be beneficial to the community, it is not hard to imagine a scenario in which it is used to plug gaps in services that have resulted from government cuts and underfunding. Unpaid “volunteers” (in effect, conscripts) would be doing work that should be done by paid professional workers.   

And what of the 18-year-olds who refuse to be part of the scheme at all, as the Peace Pledge Union has today urged them to? James Cleverly said this morning that nobody will be imprisoned but that refusers will face other “sanctions“, whatever that means.

Thankfully, this ludicrous plan is unlikely to be introduced as the Tories have almost no chance of winning the general election. This does not mean that the proposal is not dangerous. It has already caused damage by making such militarist policies more mainstream.

Some years ago, the only people who talked about “bringing back national service” were right-wing pub bores and retired colonels writing angry letters to the Daily Telegraph. This has changed because of the deliberate ramping up of militarism in the last 15-20 years. In the wake of public opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, militarist politicians and their allies have introduced Armed Forces Day, the Cadet Expansion Scheme, “military ethos” projects in schools and “armed forces covenants” for local authorities and other institutions to sign.

It is this rise in everyday militarism that has brought us to a point at which a proposal to bring back conscription can be taken seriously. This Tory policy, even if it is never introduced, will further help to normalise militarist attitudes and practices in the UK.

I can only hope that the number of people who will challenge and resist the proposal will help to increase resistance to militarism as well. Everyday militarism must be met with everyday conscientious objection.

“The Jews” did not kill Jesus

Posted on by symonhill

Jesus was executed by the authorities of the Roman Empire.

This is one of the few features of Jesus’ life on which nearly all historians agree. There are many historians and biblical scholars who spend a lot of time arguing about which of the sayings and actions attributed to Jesus are likely to be historically accurate, about which of the incidents recorded in the gospels took place as historical events.

Scholars are on a spectrum from those who take the gospels as broadly accurate accounts of Jesus’ life to those who doubt all but a few details .

Virtually all of them, however, accept that Jesus was crucified. Crucifixion was a Roman method of execution (not a Jewish one) used against political troublemakers and rebellious slaves. It is almost inconcievable that Jesus’ followers, living in a tyrannical and violent regime, would have invented a story that would immediately label them as followers of someone that regime had executed as a threat.

For much of Christian history, however, Christians have put the blame on Jews – often on “the Jews” as a whole, as if every one of them bore responsibility for the killing of Jesus. This is particularly absurd given that Jesus was a Jew.

This claim has not only served as a justificiation for persecuting Jews. It has also helped to sidestep the intensely political nature of the death of Jesus. He was executed by an imperial power who objected to him promoting the Kingdom of God rather than the Empire of Rome (when you read the words “kingdom” and “empire” in an English Bible, they are translating the same Greek word, basileia).

The gospels, to varying degrees, show the Jewish leaders of the time colluding with the Roman authorities to execute Jesus. Matthew’s Gospel and John’s Gospel seem particularly keen to hold them responsible. There are various possible reasons for this, much debated by historians. All the gospels make clear, however, that in the end Jesus was executed on the orders of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

If the Jewish leaders encouraged Pilate to execute Jesus, this would not make all Jews responsible. But even here we need to be careful. Who were these Jewish leaders? They were the Roman-approved leaders: in practice, Rome would only allow a Jewish High Priest who did not resist Roman rule. It is unsurprising that when Jews rebelled against Roman rule in 70 CE (about 40 years after Jesus’ crucifixion), the Jewish rebels killed the High Priest and his colleagues. They were collaborators with the empire. They were not representative of the Jewish people.

I have been shocked in the run-up to Easter this year to see how persistent is the belief that “the Jews” killed Jesus. Perhaps I have become too used to academic New Testament scholarship (where Roman responsibliity is accepted) or to left-wing Christian groups (where the political nature of Jesus’ execution is emphasised).

I recently heard a street preacher in Birmingham declare that Jesus had been killed by “his own people, that’s the Jews”. I was shocked to see a reflection in the Church Times last week by Charles Moseley, in which he repeated the tired old claim that Pilate did not want to execute Jesus but gave into Jewish public opinion. Moseley did not not try to argue this point, or acknowledge that it has now been discredited. He simply asserted it as he might have done if writing 30 years ago.

Sadly, it seems that antisemitism is alive and well in many Christian circles at Easter. Ironically, those of us who campaign against the horrendous assaults of Israeli forces against people in Gaza are accused of antisemitism by political right-wingers and apologists for aggression. Yet Jesus was born in an empire, in a place where imperial soldiers controlled the population and religious leaders colluded with oppression. It is not dissimilar to the situation faced by many Palestinians today. This point is made repeatedly by Palestinian Christians, even when western Christians do not seem to have ears to hear it.

It is not resistance to empire and war that is antisemitic – to make such a claim is to conflate Jews in general with the current Israeli government and its forces. It is attempts to ignore the inherently political nature of Jesus’ death that lead to the blame being put on “the Jews”. Throughout Christian history – and still today – antisemitism has served the interests of those who want us to forget that Jesus challenged the political and social order. Following Jesus means continuing to challenge injustice and empire today.

The first Palm Sunday was a riot

Posted on by symonhill

At LGBT+ events that have turned into commercialised parties, it is not uncommon to see critical placards declaring that “Stonewall was a riot”, or “Pride is a protest”. I was delighted to see that the Queer Theology podcast in the USA now sells T-shirts that declare “The first Palm Sunday was a riot”.

Palm Sunday – which is today – celebrates Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey at the head of what was clearly a controversial protest. The occupying Roman authorities and their collaborators were surely threatened by crowds cheering the “Son of David” – a title associated with people claiming to be kings of Israel. Passover was approaching, a time when the authorities grew nervous of rebellion and Roman troops stood armed by the Temple, ready to react.

This reality is too much for many churches today, who have turned the event into a fluffy story about donkeys, palm leaves and the importance of Jesus.

But that importance, I suggest, can be really understood only its social and historical context. In marching through a city in a parody of an imperial procession, Jesus’ followers were claiming that it was Jesus, not the Roman Emperor, who was their real king.

This is significant: if we seek to serve the Kingdom of God, we will not be serving the kingdoms and powers of this world. Sadly, it’s a message that many churches are keen to avoid.

Admittedly, it requires a broad use of the term “riot” to ascribe that word to Palm Sunday – because this was a nonviolent protest, but no less disruptive and illegal for that.

Once we see that Jesus’ march into Jerusalem was a planned protest, certain confusing details in the gospels make a lot more sense. For years I was rather baffled by a part of the story, before the march begins, in which Jesus asks some of his disciples to go and fetch a colt that they would find tied to a door. If anyone asked them why they were taking the colt, they were to say, “The Lord needs it”. According to the gospels, when they said this, the people let them take the colt (Mark 11,1-6; also Matthew 21,1-3 and Luke 19, 29-34).

Why would they do such a thing? Surely the phrase wouldn’t make sense to people unless they were following Jesus. If that were the case, why not just talk more straightforwardly?

It all made a lot more sense when I realised that the collection of the colt was a pre-arranged event. The pyhrase “the Lord needs it” seems to have served as a sort of password, letting the people with the colt know that the people collecting the animal had indeed come from Jesus. An illegal protest cannnot be organised too openly.

Ched Myers, in his excellent book Binding the Strong Man, points to a number of similar instances in the text that probably arise from this sort of underground planning.

Later in the story, when Jesus is preparing for the Passover that will be his last meal before his arrest, he tells two of his disciples that they should follow “a man carrying a jar of water”. They are to follow him to a house, and they are to say a particular sentence to the people in the house, who will then show them to the right room (Mark 14,12-16).

But water-carrying was generally done by women. Myers suggests that a man carrying water would stand out, so that the disciples would know who to follow. Indeed, the idea of a man carrying water was sufficiently odd that Matthew, in his editing of Mark’s account, changed the description to “a certain man” (Matthew 26,18).

Historians and biblical scholars spend a lot of time and energy debating which of the stories in the New Testament are more or less likely to be historically accurate. The events of Palm Sunday (if not every detail of every story) tend to score highly. Early Christians were unlikely to have invented a story that made clear that Jesus was a threat to the vicious rulers of the Roman Empire under which they still lived.

Jesus led a dangerous and unlawful protest against the authorities – a reality that many churches have spent centuries trying to ignore.

Confessions of an extremist

Posted on by symonhill

I am an extremist. I object to the killing of Israeli children and to the killing of Palestinian children. That, it seems, is enough to make me an “extremist” in the eyes of Rishi Sunak’s government.

Communities Secretary Michael Gove is planning to change the definition of “extremism”. So far, he has not published a list of groups that he wishes to define as “extremist”. Commentators have suggested that the new definition is likely to cover people campaigning against the Israeli attacks on Gaza, as well as several groups concerned with tackling climate change.

Meanwhile, the UK government continues to sell weapons to the aggressors of Saudi Arabia and Israel, to maintain enough nuclear warheads to wipe out much of the world, to further reduce the right to strike and the right to peaceful protest, and to preside over a massively underfunded NHS and declining welfare state as more and more people in the UK are pushed into poverty and ill health.

None of these policies, however, are to be labelled “extremist”.

The biggest problem with Gove’s plan is that it is absurd to have a simple definition of the word “extremist” at all. It is surely obvious that different beliefs are extreme in different situations. Therefore, what consitutes extremism depends on the context.

150 years ago, you would have been an extremist if you called for women to be given the vote. Now you would be considered an extremist if you said that women should not have the vote. Even 30 years ago, you would have been an extremist if you said that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry with legal recoginition. This “extremist” position is now law in the UK, and many other countries.

Surely we should be debating not whether a particular idea is extreme or extremist, but whether it is right.

As Martin Luther King wrote in 1963:

“The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

The UK government’s current definition of extremism includes opposition to democracy and “British values” – as if everyone in Britain has the same values. This allows ministers to formally place the views of certain of their opponents beyond the limits of acceptable beliefs. It is similar to the way McCarthyites labelled left-wing views as “unamerican”.

Now Michael Gove and his colleagues plan to go even further. According to today’s Observer:

“Organisations and individuals that breach a new official definition of extremism will be excluded from meetings or any engagement with ministers, senior civil servants, government advisory boards and funding. Councils will be expected to follow the government’s lead, cutting any financial ties or support to individuals or groups that have been categorised as extremist.”

This policy represents a massive assault on free expression and freedom of association. Ministers would be able, almost on a whim, to ban groups that they oppose from any engagement with official bodies. This is the sort of policy we might expect from Putin’s Russia. And it follows the introduction in recent years of the biggest restrictions on the right to peaceful protest in the UK since the Second World War.

The proposed criteria for labelling a group as “extremist” are so vague that a government could potentially place almost any organisation or individual who they did not like on the list. The Observer reports that a group could be defined as “extremist” if their behaviour includes attempts to “overturn, exploit or undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy to confer advantages or disadvantages on specific groups”.

This is laughable. The Conservative Party has been conferrring advantages on a specific group – the very wealthy – for centuries. But people like me who want more democracy – such as by abolishing the monarchy – can be said to be opposed to the “UK’s system of liberal democracy” and thus regarded as “extremists”.

Of course some of the beliefs labelled “extremist” are views I deplore: such as racism, fascism, fundamentalism and other far-right ideologies. But we should tackle these because they are wrong, harmful and evil, regardless of whether the government regards them as extremist.

Someone who defends ISIS (for example) would rightly be denounced by the vast majority of people. However, ministers would label them as “extremists” even while those same ministers support the equally vile, immoral and murderous regime of Saudi Arabia. Indeed, British ministers are authorising the sale of arms to the Saudi regime, which are used in attacks on civilians in Yemen.

Similarly, supporting the muder of civilians by Hamas is “extremist”, whereas supporting the equally vile murder of civilians by the Israeli “Defence” Force is effectively UK government policy.

So by official definitions, it is not support for violence that makes you an “extremist”, but only support for violence carried out people who UK ministers oppose – rather than the many tryants and aggressors who they support.

Let’s not argue about who should be defined as an “extremist” – the state should not be maintaining a list. Let’s not deny we are extremists – I’m happy to be an extremist for peace, active nonviolence, human dignity and real democracy.

The Levellers, Chartists, Suffragettes and early Gay Pride marchers were regarded as extremist. Many of their views are now accepted by large majorities of people. Let’s be inspired by them to resist this latest attack on our rights and freedoms.

Tory Minister heckled in Coventry over arms sales to Israel

Posted on by symonhill

Security Minister Tom Tugendhat was heckled about arms sales to Israel and Saudi Arabia when he visited the famously anti-Tory city of Coventry yesterday.

Local mother and Christian campaigner Angela Ditchfield was forcibly removed from the building after accusing the UK government of “starving children in the UK and in Palestine”.

Tugendhat responded to the woman in front of him by telling her that she should not be protesting on International Women’s Day. He then spoke about Hamas’ rape and murder of Israeli women, implying that Angela Ditchfield supports Hamas. She does not.

She wished him, “Happy International Women’s Day” before challenging him about women burying their own children in Gaza. He did not respond.

Tugendhat was there to speak about community cohesion – a bizarre subject from a government that is continuously stirring up division. Tugendhat’s Tories have worked relentlessly over their 14 years in government to dismantle the public services and welfare state that are so vital for keeping society together.

As Security Minister, Tugendhat shares responsibility for the UK government’s militaristic policies as well as their repeated attempts to use issues of security to suppress rights to peaceful protest.

Last November, Tugendhat claimed untruthfully that anti-war campaigners were planning to protest near the Cenotaph on Armistice Day. Along with similar comments from other ministers, he stirred up an atmosphere that saw far-right activists turn up to “protect the Cenotaph” and fight with police. In reality, the anti-war march started in a different part of central London several hours later. So much for community cohesion.

Shortly before she stood up to challenge the minister, Angela sent me a message about her reasons for doing so. Her own words express her pain and sadness over the impact of the government’s policies.

This is what Angela said:

This week, we have gathered to hear the minister talk about how to build community cohesion and resilience – a very important topic.

We’ve seen senior Conservative and Labour politicians agree about many policies recently. Can we celebrate that unity?

Ministers have agreed to keep selling weapons to a regime ripping apart every aspect of social fabric in Palestine.

The UK continues to sell weapons to Israel as it bombs churches, mosques, hospitals, schools, universities and whole neighbourhoods full of homes. And now starving people going to an aid truck.

Both parties have agreed to leave poor children hungry in the UK, and cut funding to those feeding starving children in Gaza. 

If we want cohesion and security, we must reinstate funding to the UN in Palestine, and also feed children here.

Tom’s statement celebrates food banks and warm spaces run by churches – as though it’s ok that old people cannot afford to heat their homes and eat, due to government refusal to invest in house insulation and renewable energy.

Still, at least our elderly are not being bombed or seeing their grandchildren massacred.

The government must stop selling weapons to Israel and push for an immediate ceasefire. 

And not just a ceasefire.

If we want security and community, we must call for an end to apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

We must call for a release of the hostages and political prisoners on both sides.

There is a stitch-up of UK democracy between the two main parties. Most of us live in places where our vote doesn’t count, and the MPs supposed to represent us have been told to ignore us if we don’t like genocide or extinction.

Community cohesion has to include talking about refugees and other migrants as human beings, with respect and compassion.

It has to include not demonising anyone who cares about a genocide in Palestine, or about the potential extinction of the human race.

It has to include not stirring up hate against Muslims.

And if we want security for the UK, we need to stop trying to bomb the rest of the world into submission – we must stop bombing Yemen.

We must stop supporting the apartheid regime that is Israel, and call for peace and justice for all in the Holy Land.

Cheer Rochdale, not Galloway

Posted on by symonhill

I’m giving three cheers for the people of Rochdale for having voted for a left-wing candidate standing on an anti-war ticket. I’m offering no cheers for George Galloway, who is sadly the candidate in question.

In the last few weeks, the people of Rochdale might be wondering what they have done to deserve the choice of candidates with which they were faced. The Labour candidate was disowned by his own party for antisemitic comments. This was shortly after the Green candidate had been disowned by his own party for Islamophobic comments.

Other options included two former Labour MPs standing for different parties: Galloway was standing for the Workers’ Party of Britain (the latest version of the George Galloway Party). The far-right Reform Party (the current incarnation of the Nigel Farage Party) was represented by former Labour MP Simon Danzcuk, who previously had to leave Parliament after sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl.

The Conservative candidate was, of course, standing on a platform of supporting the most incompetent government in living memory.

It would be entirely understandable if the people of Rochdale had opted for the Monster Raving Loony Party candidate on the grounds that he seemed a more serious option than most of his opponents.

By electing a candidate who stood primarily on a platform of opposing the war in Gaza, people in Rochdale have shown the strength of anti-war feeling among large parts of the British population, and disproved the common claim that people vote only on narrow domestic issues.

The fact that a local independent candidate came second has clearly taken the London-based media by surprise, given their tendency to overlook local and regional differences and see everything from the perspective of Westminster.

Between them, the three “main” parties scored only 26.7%. It is impossible to know what would have happened if the Labour candidate had retained the party’s support and fought an effective campaign. It is possible that Labour may have won. But looking at the size of Galloway’s victory last night, I find it hard to believe that a Labour candidate would have beaten him if that candidate had not departed from Keir Starmer’s position on Gaza.

One lesson to take away from Rochdale is that independent candidates and alternative parties are on the march.

This is encouraging. I just wish it was someone other than George Galloway who had benefited from it.

In 2020, Galloway described me as a “hero”, for taking nonviolent direct action against the arms trade. In 2022, he mocked me and then blocked me on Twitter after I encouraged him to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as opposing NATO.

The problem with Galloway is not simply that he is a supporter of homophoba and transphobia, and increasingly anti-immigration. It is also that he is not really anti-war.

I share Galloway’s opposition to the murderous Israeli attacks on Gaza and to the nuclear-armed expansionist alliance that is NATO. Unike Galloway, I also oppose other warmongers, including Vladimir Putin and Hamas.

When Ukraine was invaded, I was working as Campaigns Manager of the Peace Pledge Union (PPU), Britain’s leading pacifist organisation. We condemned Putin’s invasion and kept in touch with our comrades in the Russian Movement of Conscientious Objectors, as well as other Russian peace activists and the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement. We also criticised the UK and US governments’ cynical use of the invasion to expand NATO power, and their resistance to peace talks.

Despite this, we received abusive messages from angry militarists accusing us of being Putin apologists. Meanwhile, actual Putin apologists were sending us angry messages accusing us of supporting NATO. People who think that war solves problems often seem unable to understand that anyone might oppose all militarism and not support any armed forces on any side.

While this is the PPU’s usual approach, we were pleased that the Stop the War Coalition also clearly and repeatedly condemned Putin’s invasion as well as NATO. While we would expect Galloway to disagree with the PPU, he also seems to have fallen out with the Stop the War Coalition.

Galloway has not issued a word of condemnation for Putin’s aggression. Shortly after Galloway’s election in Rochdale this morning, his deputy party leader Chris Williamson refused in an interview to condemn the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians on 7th October.

Galloway and Williamson are not anti-war. They are pro-war – it’s just they’re on a different side to the one that the British establishment expect us all to support.

I think the people of Rochdale were right to vote for an apparently anti-war MP. Hopefully they will replace him with an actual anti-war MP at the next election.

Sunak says democracy is under threat – but it’s people like him who are threatening it

Posted on by symonhill

Rishi Sunak thinks that democracy is under threat in the UK. I agree with him. The difference is that I think it’s under threat from people such as Rishi Sunak and he seems to think it’s under threat from people like me. 

In the last few years, successive UK governments have eroded fundamental civil liberties and human rights, imposing greater restrictions on peaceful protest than have been seen in Britain since the Second World War.

The police have been allowed to exceed even these powers with virtually no consequences. My personal experience of this reality came with my unlawful arrest by Thames Valley Police when I objected to the proclamation of Charles Windsor as king in September 2022. Many others have faced far worse consequences. 

But now, Sunak and his allies in the right-wing media want to restrict the right to protest even further. They are justifying this assault on democracy by claiming that they are doing it to protect democracy. 

Sunak claims that there is a “growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule”.

I find it difficult to believe that such a claim could be taken seriously by many people at all, let alone that there is a “consensus” about it. Sunak’s assertion makes about as much sense as Suella Braverman’s fantasy statement that “the Islamists, the extremists and the anti-Semites are in charge now” (I’m pretty sure the Tories are still in charge, though of course some of them are indeed extremists and anti-Semites).

According to Sunak, the threat of mob rule comes from left-wing protests. In recent days, a number of ministers have attacked the overwhelmingly peaceful anti-war marches that have been regularly taking place against the Israeli forces’ murderous assaults on the people of Gaza. Home Secretary James Cleverley says that protests should stop because protesters have “made their point“. He has not suggested that Israeli forces could stop killing children because they have made their point. I would much rather not be spending time protesting against the slaughter of innocent people. The need to do so will end only when the slaughter ends. 

Parts of the media are whipping up talk of the fear and threats faced by MPs. I strongly oppose death threats to anyone. Having received quite a few of them myself over the years, I sympathise with MPs who receive a lot more and who genuinely fear for their safety. But banning protests will not make them any safer.

Six MPs have been killed in the UK in the last century – a much lower number than in some countries, but still outrageous.

The first four were killed by Irish Republicans. Of the most recent two, David Amess was killed by an Islamic fundamentalist and Jo Cox by a far-right white supremacist. Both these murders were horrific and any humane person rightly condemns them. Neither Cox nor Amess would have been saved by restricting rights to protest.

Some papers have focused on the very small number of protests that have taken place outside MPs’ homes. I agree that protesting at people’s homes is generally wrong – especially if there are children there, as they may be frightened and are not to blame for their parents’ actions. The reality is that demonstrations at politicians’ homes are relatively rare and usually small-scale.

I suspect that most of the commentators calling for a crackdown on protests know this. But talking them up diverts attention from the reality of peaceful and diverse groups of people who are marching every week against violence. 

We already have laws to deal with the vile instances of antisemitism that have increased since October. Such outrages are in no way representative of the anti-war marches that have brought together Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists and many others to oppose the Israeli government’s military aggression. The vast majority of them also oppose Hamas’ aggression. 

The only major violent demonstration in central London in recent months was not an anti-war protest but was in effect a pro-war protest. Far-right activists fought with the police near the Cenotaph, which they claimed they had come to “protect” from people protesting against the war in Gaza on Armstice Day. Their fury had effectively been whipped up by the likes of Sunak, Braverman and Tom Tugendhat, who all must have known that in reality the anti-war march was going nowhere near the Cenotaph.

Democracy is not simply about walking into a polling station every five years and then shutting up until you’re allowed to vote again. Sunak apparently sees no irony in talking of democracy despite having been elected as Prime Minister only by the Conservative Party, and appointed to the post by a monarch elected by nobody at all. Under First-Past-the-Post, a winning party never receives more than half the votes, but is declared to have been elected democratically. 

Nonetheless, we are lucky to have more elements of democracy in the UK than can be found in much of the world. The democracy we have – however limited – is something to celebrate.

We have it not because the rich and powerful generously handed it down to us. The only reason we have any democracy at all is that our ancestors went out onto the streets and campaigned for it. Chartists, Levellers, women’s suffrage campaigners and others struggled and in some cases died for the elements of democracy that we now enjoy. It is not Sunak and the Daily Mail, but people marching against war in Gaza, who stand in the tradition of such people. 

In a country in which the super-rich have vastly disproportionate power, wealthy individuals such as Rishi Sunak are the last people likely to support taking democracy further. We can expect no help from them in working towards real democracy, in which we would have democratic control of local communities and democratic control of workplaces. 

Sunak’s government sells arms to Israel and Saudi Arabia and suppresses peaceful protest. Anti-war demonstrators are exercising their rights to resist war with active nonviolence. One side in this argument is anti-violence and pro-democracy. And Sunak is on the other side. 

Calls for conscription follow years of rising militarism in the UK

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote the following article for the Morning Star, who published it in today’s issue.

The last week has seen a flood of headlines about a possible war with Russia — and the chances of military conscription in Britain.

Twenty years ago, calls to “bring back national service” seemed to be confined to right-wing pub bores and retired colonels writing angry letters to the Telegraph. So what has changed?

Well, relations between the British and Russian governments have got worse. But that cannot explain it. In the last two decades, British governments have subserviently followed the US in sending troops to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria without calls to introduce conscription.

Nor would war with Russia necessarily involve lots of troops. Indeed, given that it would be a war between nuclear-armed powers, the whole thing might be over in a matter of days — or hours.

No, what has changed is the place of militarism in everyday life in Britain.

In 2003, Tony Blair sent troops to help the US to invade Iraq without the support of the majority of the British population. In 2006, British troop numbers in Afghanistan were increased — and support for their presence declined. In September 2006, British public support for keeping British troops in Afghanistan reached a low of 31 per cent in a BBC/ICM poll.

That same year, the then chief of the general staff (head of the army), Richard Dannatt, wrote to a defence minister about the “single biggest danger” facing British troops.

What was this danger? The Taliban? The Afghan population? The unpredictability of Blair’s US allies?

It was none of these. Dannatt wrote, “Losing popular support at home is the single biggest danger to our chances of success in our current operations.”

So according to the head of the army, the biggest threat to the British army was the British people. So much for the idea that the armed forces protect the British public.

Dannatt and his allies launched what amounted to a public campaign to drive up support for armed force. In October 2006, Dannatt gave an interview to the Daily Mail arguing that the “military covenant” between the armed forces and the public had broken down.

The term “military covenant” was soon commonplace, with militarist commentators demanding that the public should “honour” it. Some maintained that the military covenant dated back 200 years.

In reality, the first recorded use of the term “military covenant” was in an army document published in the year 2000. Even Dannatt later admitted that the concept was “the brainchild of a handful of officers.”

Dannatt broke the longstanding convention that British military leaders should not comment publicly on government policy. There followed a “militarisation offensive” — to use the term employed by Paul Dixon of Birkbeck College, University of London.

The following years saw the introduction of Armed Forces Day and local councils signing the “armed forces covenant.” The Cameron-Clegg government stepped things up with multimillion pound funding for new military cadet units even as other youth services faced swingeing cuts. Arms company BAE Systems began running science and technology roadshows in schools with the RAF.

The Peace Pledge Union describes this situation as “everyday militarism”.

This is the context in which the current Chief of the General Staff, Patrick Sanders, said on 24th January that the UK government should “mobilise the nation” for a possible war with Russia.

Sanders suggested a “citizens’ army.” Despite the headlines, he did not explicitly call for conscription. He seems to have some idea of civilian volunteers ready to leap into action if war breaks out with Russia. It is difficult not to think of Dad’s Army. Whether they would have time to leap into action before much of the world is obliterated with nuclear weapons is not a question that Sanders raised.

Assorted politicians, commentators, armchair generals and actual generals have piled into the debate. It reached its most absurd moment when Boris Johnson declared his willingness to be conscripted. He is 59 and way over any likely conscription age. Johnson’s offer is therefore as unlikely to be fulfilled as most of his other promises.

Conscription in Britain still seems unlikely in the immediate future. Nonetheless, I think we should be worried — for three reasons.

Firstly, ministers and generals are openly talking up war with Russia with ever-increasing enthusiasm. Imagine the head of the Russian army urging Vladimir Putin to “mobilise the nation” for war with Britain. Sanders’s words do not sound too different.

There is relatively little ideological difference between Putin and most Nato governments. As before the first world war, we have capitalist governments ramping up military tension, with both sides claiming to be acting defensively and demanding their populations follow them.

Secondly, we have given up any pretence that military leaders cannot comment on policy. Their influence is on public display and is at odds with democracy. Such influence has contributed to a situation in which the British government has the fourth-highest military expenditure in the world.

Thirdly, the last week has made clear where everyday militarism leads. Armed Forces Day, “military covenants,” multiple increases in cadet forces — it has all been leading in this direction.

A society in which generals make policy speeches on TV, politicians consider a “citizens’ army” and we are told to be ready to go and fight other working-class people because their government has a quarrel with ours. And at the same time, new draconian anti-protest laws make it all harder to resist. It is a militarist’s dream.

Many of us would be conscientious objectors if conscription were introduced. Let’s not wait until then. Let’s conscientiously object to plans for war and to wars already going on. Let’s conscientiously object to military spending and arms sales.

Let’s conscientiously object to everyday militarism, and to the dangerous lie that British troops fight for the British people. And let’s stand in solidarity with conscientious objectors in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and everywhere else.

We don’t need a “citizens’ army.” We need citizens’ resistance to war and militarism — in Britain, in Russia and around the world.