23.07.2015

Part of the ‘lunatic wing’ - like Jack Straw

Smearing Jeremy Corbyn as a friend of Islamist extremists is disingenuous, hypocritical and incorrect, writes Yassamine Mather

Some of the coverage we have seen from the rightwing media can only be described as hysterical reaction to what is the consequence of a perfectly legitimate democratic process. A leftwing candidate for the Labour leadership contest, whose odds were 100-1 when nominations closed, is winning support from Constituency Labour Parties and the odds are now on Corbyn getting more votes than the other candidates in the first round.

Shock, horror! It turns out that some Labour members, including trade unionists, are opposed to austerity, are voicing frustration with the party’s constant tendency to move to the right, want to put a distance between themselves and the image of that money-grabbing warmonger, Tony Blair, and are unhappy with Labour’s business-friendly image.

No wonder there have been newspaper headlines aiming to scare us: “Jeremy Corbyn, friend to Hamas, Iran and extremists”¹; “Jeremy Corbyn proves the lunatic wing of the Labour Party is still calling the shots”²…

The Hamas/Iran story is interesting. Of course, in the complicated world of the Middle East, Hamas and Iran are not allies, and lumping them together in the same headline does not make sense. Nevertheless, on July 19, when The Sunday Telegraph used the first headline above, Salman bin Abdulaziz, a close friend of British royalty and the British government, was making history by becoming the first Saudi head of state to meet Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Mecca. Hamas is now a key Saudi ally in the region, having supported the kingdom’s stance in Yemen.

While most of the British press ignored that meeting (apparently it included saying prayers together), the reality is that Palestinians have voted for a Hamas administration in Gaza and, as much as many of us dislike the group’s historic association with rightwing forces, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is just as ‘legitimate’ as the reactionary Saudi regime. No politician, MP or party leader concerned with the issue of peace in the Middle East can therefore ignore Hamas.

Last week when during an interview with Channel 4 news, Corbyn was repeatedly interrupted by a rude, ignorant Krishnan Guru Murthy (an incident that created a major backlash against the pompous interviewer on social media), Corbyn was very clear:

Does it mean I agree with Hamas and what it does? No. Does it mean I agree with Hezbollah and what they do? No. What it means is that I think, to bring about a peace process, you have to talk to people with whom you may profoundly disagree. There is not going to be a peace process unless there are talks involving Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas and I think everyone knows that.³

Jeremy Corbyn has never tried to hide his position on Palestine-Israel. The following quote amongst many similar ones make his stance very clear:

There are two points. First, Israel fails to say what its final borders are. Secondly, Israel did deal with Hamas in the ceasefire negotiations in Egypt. There is a basis on which talks can take place. It has already happened.

In order to prove that Corbyn is a friend of all terrorists, the online version of The Sunday Telegraph has a picture of Jeremy Corbyn standing next to Gerry Adams. An ironic choice, now that there are so many photos of Prince Charles and the Sinn Féin leader from a recent trip by the heir to the British throne to the Irish Republic - or, for that matter, numerous photos of the queen with Martin McGuinness. Yesterday’s terrorists are today’s respectable politicians and no amount of negative spin from the rightwing media will change this. To his credit, Corbyn understood the desirability of talking to Sinn Féin well before establishment politicians thought it might be useful. The Sunday Telegraph photo does serve only one purpose, though: to expose the establishment’s hypocrisy.

Iran

Then we have all the stories about Corbyn and Iran - some true; most speculation.

In the late 1980s, in the last years of the Iran-Iraq war, I visited London to seek support for Iranian workers and activists opposed to the Islamic regime. At the time many on the Stalinist and Trotskyist left hailed theocratic Shia Iran as an anti-imperialist stronghold and only two principled leftwingers were brave enough to meet with me in my capacity as representative of the international committee of the Fedayeen (Minority): Paul Foot, who subsequently wrote some useful articles in the Daily Mirror, explaining the plight of the left in Iran; and Jeremy Corbyn, whom I met in the houses of parliament. This was towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war, when the British government and British companies were selling arms to both sides. It was the time of the Matrix Churchill scandal and arming Iraq, meanwhile other British firms were selling military equipment to Iran’s Islamic Republic. Subsequent revelations showed that Alan Clark, a minister in Thatcher’s government, was involved in all sorts of dodgy deals with the Ba’athist regime

When I met Jeremy Corbyn in Westminster, he listened to my description of the plight of political prisoners in Iran, of the execution of left activists, of workers suppressed by the Islamic Regime, and promised to table a parliamentary question on the subject. True to his word, he did so - as he did on a number of other occasions afterwards.

On August 2 1990, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait sparked what became known as the first Gulf war. We now know from Wikileaks documents that the then US ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, had given Saddam, until then a close ally, the green light for this occupation. Irrespective of whether this was deliberate incitement to provoke an ‘illegal invasion’ and allow the US to punish Saddam or it was a mistake, the consequences were disastrous.

The US and its allies, including the United Kingdom, used aerial and naval bombardments against Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait and this was followed by a ground assault to drive Saddam’s troops out. Punitive sanctions aimed at overthrowing Saddam Hussein were imposed.

This was the beginning of a process that eventually led to Saddam’s downfall. Margaret Thatcher led the conservative party into an alliance with George Bush senior and after her downfall in November 1990 John Major continued British involvement in this war supported by the majority of the Labour Party. Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn were the exception. I spoke at a fringe meeting on the subject during the Labour Party conference in 1990 with Jeremy Corbyn and Tony Benn. Neither of them papered over the criminal record of the Iraqi president. Neither of them tried to excuse the Iraqi dictator. They were not apologists for Saddam. On the contrary they both stood on fairly reasonable principled positions of opposing the US and UK involvement. A position they continued to hold during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Tehran visit

In 2007, when US neoconservatives used Iran’s open and secret nuclear programmes as an excuse to impose severe sanctions against the Islamic regime in Tehran, Jeremy Corbyn rightly pointed out that these sanctions were an act of war aimed at regime change from above, and that ordinary Iranians would suffer from these measures. Those of us who knew Jeremy Corbyn as a principled MP were hoping he would join us in campaigning not just against sanctions and the threat of war, but also against the Islamic Republic’s anti-working class repression inside Iran. We were to be disappointed - Corbyn adhered to the official Stop the War Coalition line - unlike his fellow Labour MP and close political ally, John McDonnell.

Having said that, his position was far better than those on the British left like the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, which echoed the utterances of sections of the Zionist movement, with its talk of ‘Iranian imperialism’. The international left must expose third-world dictatorial regimes, such as Iran’s Islamic Republic - even when they are threatened by imperialism. However, exaggerating their position in the world order is either a result of ignorance of political economy and the dependence of such regimes on the world economic order or a deliberate repetition of Zionist or Saudi propaganda - exaggerations that can only benefit the rulers of the Islamic Republic. Corbyn to his credit has never fallen into that category.

Needless to say, The Sunday Telegraph’s claim that Corbyn is an apologist for the Islamic Republic is disingenuous, hypocritical and incorrect. The paper implies he benefited personally from a trip to Iran, when he visited the country as part of parliamentary delegation in January 2014. Yet the paper fails to mention that the delegation included the hapless former Conservative treasurer, Norman Lamont, chairman of the British Iranian Chamber of Commerce (BICC), which wanted to end sanctions, for the sole purpose of helping British capitalist investments in Iran.

The Sunday Telegraph should have done a little more research about the parliamentary visit to Tehran. Had it done so, it would have come across Lamont’s stance on Iran on the BICC website:

In 2013 UK exports fell to the lowest point in recent history, as sanctions bit harder. In 2014 and thereafter, and with a continuation of nuclear negotiations to a successful conclusion, we can anticipate a turn-round. British exporters over a range of sectors are reopening their Iran files and re-establishing links in Iran’s business community to take advantage of the time when the repeal of sanctions allows business to flourish again.

I hope we will not go on isolating a country of 70 million people with a hugely important market and economy, which has so much to contribute to the Middle East. So we welcome the Joint Action Plan agreement and we hope for a speedy resolution of the dispute. In the meantime, we continue to play the vital role of maintaining a network of business people in both countries who wish to foster better relations between the UK and Iran.⁴

The Telegraph also avoided referring to another member of the delegation: Jack Straw, foreign minister under Tony Blair and, like Lamont, a business consultant. In April 2011, Straw was appointed as consultant to ED & F Man Holdings Ltd, a British company based in London specialising in the production and trading of commodities and financial services.⁵ In February 2015, he took a job with a firm which won a £75 million government contract after he lobbied a minister on its behalf.⁶

Corbyn, on the other hand, holds no directorships or business consultancies. He has no financial interest in the matter: he was concerned about the effects of sanctions on ordinary Iranians. In his ‘report-back’ to his constituents in the Islington Gazette, he said:

The embassy needs to be re-opened to allow those living in the UK to travel to see family members without having to go through Turkey. I hear all the time from the Iranian diaspora living in Islington - often students who are struggling to get funds from the bank or those who wish to visit very ill relatives in Iran.

He explained: “Over the course of the four days, human rights issues surrounding the use of the death penalty in the country were discussed, as well as nuclear weaponry.”⁷

Obviously then, Corbyn is a “friend to Hamas, Iran and extremists” - very much part of the “lunatic wing of the Labour Party”.

Notes

1. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11749043/Andrew-Gilligan-Jeremy-Corbyn-friend-to-Hamas-Iran-and-extremists.html.

2. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/politics-blog/11675756/The-lunatic-wing-of-the-Labour-Party-is-still-calling-the-shots.html.

3. www.channel4.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-i-wanted-hamas-to-be-part-of-the-debate.

4. www.bicc.org.uk/ab-chairman.html.

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Straw.

6. www.telegraph.co.uk/news/investigations/11430777/Jack-Straw-to-take-job-for-firm-he-lobbied-for-in-Commons.html.

7. www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/politics/islington_mp_jeremy_corbyn_reports_back_on_parliamentary_visit_to_iran_1_3214524.