New Times, June 1999
Paul Anderson talks to Pam Giddy, the new director of Charter 88
Pam Giddy is a girl who has gone back to her first love.
Nearly 10 years ago, straight out of university, she got a job with Charter 88, the constitutional reform pressure group, working as a dogsbody in its offices in Panther House near Holborn – one of the scuzziest low-rent blocks in London, notorious as a home for lost radical causes. She stuck it for four years, moving up the Charter hierarchy to run its publications and events [ch] as the organisation grew (and moved to more salubrious premises). In 1994 she split for the greener pastures of Cosmpolitan and then went to Newsnight, where she worked as a producer for four years.
Now, just 31, she is back with Charter 88 as its director, taking a big pay cut to run one of the biggest and best-organised pressure groups in Britain. 'It's really good to be here again,' she says. 'It's an exciting time.'
Charter 88 was set up in a different political era. Margaret Thatcher's Tory government was rampant, Labour appeared unelectable and constitutional reform was the last hope of a beleaguered centre-left intelligentsia. Today, Labour is in power, and much of the original Charter 88 agenda – a freedom of information act, devolution, proportional representation, Lords reform – is either on the statute book or promised.
So what's the point of Charter 88 any more? Giddy laughs. 'That's what they asked me at my interview. What I said then, and it's true, is that there's as much to do now as ever before. The point about Charter originally was that the rules of the political game needed to be changed. We now have a government now that is at least open to change. But the rules have not yet changed. New Labour's attitude to change is either begrudging or half-hearted.'
She praises the government's introduction of devolution, she is enthusiastic about the proposals of the Jenkins commission on electoral reform and she acknowledges the importance of new Labour's moves towards getting rid of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. But, she says, there is no sense of an overall settlement in the government's actions. 'It's simply not joined-up. We need to work out what sort of Britain we want. And at the moment the government is not being much help.'
She is particularly critical of Labour's decision to go for an appointed second chamber. 'A new second chamber has got to be wholly democratic -- in other words, it's got to be directly elected. It's almost as if the government is afraid of the people. I'm all in favour of the old-fashioned idea that, if people are making laws, we should be able to vote them in and vote them out. It's that simple.'
On the prospects for proportional representation for general elections, however, she is optimistic. She says that the proposals of the Jenkins commission for a mix of constituency MPs elected by the alternative vote and 'top-up' MPs elected by city or county is not perfect – but it is at least a 'clever piece of work' that could secure widespread support across the political spectrum. 'PR for local government is the key to unlocking PR for the Commons,' she says. 'There's a real mood in local government, particularly among Labour councils that have had no opposition, that PR could be a way of revitalising local democracy.'
Nevertheless, she goes on, supporters of PR need to get their act together to push their case. 'The media have not understood that PR is about a new type of politics: we saw the journalists talking about Labour "winning" the Scottish parliament elections, which is a ridiculous misunderstanding of what PR is all about.'
Giddy is scathing about the government's delay in implementing the introduction into British law of the European Convention on Human Rights. 'If too many of our laws are in contravention of the convention, let's deal with them at once,' she says. 'What's the excuse? The legislation is there to be implemented. Why not start a huge campaign of public education to make sure that people can take ownership of their rights?'
Charter 88 is in good shape. It now has 80,000 signatories. More important, there are some 6,000 to 7,000 activists out there pledged to put their efforts into democratic transformation of the British polity – and as new Labour has appeared to shy away from a radical constitutional agenda on PR and Lords reform, they have been stirring again. 'Our message is simple,' says Giddy. 'We need to put more power in more hands. We need to take power out of the hands of the executive and spread it around. Insofar as the government doesn't want to let that happen, we are the opposition. We're not going to be oppositionist, we're going to work constructively. But we've got to join it all up.'
Tuesday, 1 June 1999
Friday, 14 May 1999
NOW FOR PR ALL ROUND (IN MY DREAMS)
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 14 May 1999
There! It wasn't so bad really, was it? OK, I admit, Labour doesn't have a majority in either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. OK, Plaid Cymru did much better than anyone expected, winning in Rhondda, Islwyn and Llanelli. And OK, two wild leftists – Dennis Canavan and Tommy Sheridan – made it into the Scottish Parliament, along with a Green.
In truth, however, Great Britain's first elections using a system of proportional representation were nothing like the disaster that Labour supporters of first past the post thought they would be.
The voters in Scotland and Wales confounded everyone who had predicted that they would be too stupid to understand how the additional member system works. Most voters found it simple to pick a constituency candidate and then to vote for a party's regional list – and a significant minority decided to use their list votes to send a shot across the bows of the big party machines.
In Scotland, although Labour did not do as well as it would have done under first past the post– at least in terms of seats – the party proved itself well adapted to fighting a PR election and emerged with a haul of seats beyond the wildest dreams of party strategists even two months ago. The Scottish National Party was emphatically defeated. In Wales, a campaign designed more for damage-limitation than anything else came close to winning an overall Assembly majority. In neither country did the far-right win anything – and the success of the far Left in Scotland was token.
At the same time, it has done Labour no lasting harm to have its weaknesses exposed by the new electoral system. To put it in plain English, the Labour establishment in south Wales deserved a boot up the arse for its complacency, incompetence and nepotism – and it got it. The Millbank machine deserved the same for using union block votes to fix the party leadership in Wales for Alun Michael – and it got it. The effect can only be beneficial for Labour. It is clear that the party cannot remain a fiefdom of fat late-middle-aged male fixers if it is to retain its dominance of the country's politics. It has to reconnect with Welsh society, and urgently. In Scotland, the victory of Canavan is a timely reminder to the Labour machine that there is a price to be paid for barring dissidents and eccentrics from standing for public office.
As for the supposedly inevitable horrors of coalition politics, well, they now seem little more than chimerical. In both Scotland and Wales, it is apparent that the smaller parties on which Labour will have to rely for support when push comes to shove – the Lib Dems and, in Wales, Plaid Cymru – are not interested in extracting maximum short-term advantage out of their position. Rather they want to establish themselves as dependable, if on occasion critical, partners with Labour. Labour will not be held to ransom, even if it will have to take into account other points of view, for example on tuition fees.
Other things being equal, then, the experience of the Scottish and Welsh elections should strengthen the case for using PR to elect the Commons. The problem is that other things are not equal. Strangely enough, given the scale of its first-term constitutional programme, new Labour has never been more than a reluctant convert to the cause of constitutional reform. All the measures promised in its 1997 manifesto – devolution to Scotland and Wales, abolition of hereditary peers, PR for Europe, a referendum on electoral reform for Commons elections, incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights – were inherited from the Labour Party of Neil Kinnock and John Smith. And now that they are largely in place (with the exception of Lords reform), all the signs are that the government has no enthusiasm for taking things further.
The Jenkins Commission's recommendations for changing the electoral system are gathering dust, and the promised referendum on them is unlikely to take place before the next general election. The prospects for elected regional assemblies in England and an elected second chamber are even more distant, if they can be said to exist at all.
Which is not to knock what the government has done so far. Britain's creaking constitution needed a radical overhaul, and New Labour has made a start on it. The problem is that the job is only half-finished – and looks likely to stay that way. What a wasted opportunity.
There! It wasn't so bad really, was it? OK, I admit, Labour doesn't have a majority in either the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. OK, Plaid Cymru did much better than anyone expected, winning in Rhondda, Islwyn and Llanelli. And OK, two wild leftists – Dennis Canavan and Tommy Sheridan – made it into the Scottish Parliament, along with a Green.
In truth, however, Great Britain's first elections using a system of proportional representation were nothing like the disaster that Labour supporters of first past the post thought they would be.
The voters in Scotland and Wales confounded everyone who had predicted that they would be too stupid to understand how the additional member system works. Most voters found it simple to pick a constituency candidate and then to vote for a party's regional list – and a significant minority decided to use their list votes to send a shot across the bows of the big party machines.
In Scotland, although Labour did not do as well as it would have done under first past the post– at least in terms of seats – the party proved itself well adapted to fighting a PR election and emerged with a haul of seats beyond the wildest dreams of party strategists even two months ago. The Scottish National Party was emphatically defeated. In Wales, a campaign designed more for damage-limitation than anything else came close to winning an overall Assembly majority. In neither country did the far-right win anything – and the success of the far Left in Scotland was token.
At the same time, it has done Labour no lasting harm to have its weaknesses exposed by the new electoral system. To put it in plain English, the Labour establishment in south Wales deserved a boot up the arse for its complacency, incompetence and nepotism – and it got it. The Millbank machine deserved the same for using union block votes to fix the party leadership in Wales for Alun Michael – and it got it. The effect can only be beneficial for Labour. It is clear that the party cannot remain a fiefdom of fat late-middle-aged male fixers if it is to retain its dominance of the country's politics. It has to reconnect with Welsh society, and urgently. In Scotland, the victory of Canavan is a timely reminder to the Labour machine that there is a price to be paid for barring dissidents and eccentrics from standing for public office.
As for the supposedly inevitable horrors of coalition politics, well, they now seem little more than chimerical. In both Scotland and Wales, it is apparent that the smaller parties on which Labour will have to rely for support when push comes to shove – the Lib Dems and, in Wales, Plaid Cymru – are not interested in extracting maximum short-term advantage out of their position. Rather they want to establish themselves as dependable, if on occasion critical, partners with Labour. Labour will not be held to ransom, even if it will have to take into account other points of view, for example on tuition fees.
Other things being equal, then, the experience of the Scottish and Welsh elections should strengthen the case for using PR to elect the Commons. The problem is that other things are not equal. Strangely enough, given the scale of its first-term constitutional programme, new Labour has never been more than a reluctant convert to the cause of constitutional reform. All the measures promised in its 1997 manifesto – devolution to Scotland and Wales, abolition of hereditary peers, PR for Europe, a referendum on electoral reform for Commons elections, incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights – were inherited from the Labour Party of Neil Kinnock and John Smith. And now that they are largely in place (with the exception of Lords reform), all the signs are that the government has no enthusiasm for taking things further.
The Jenkins Commission's recommendations for changing the electoral system are gathering dust, and the promised referendum on them is unlikely to take place before the next general election. The prospects for elected regional assemblies in England and an elected second chamber are even more distant, if they can be said to exist at all.
Which is not to knock what the government has done so far. Britain's creaking constitution needed a radical overhaul, and New Labour has made a start on it. The problem is that the job is only half-finished – and looks likely to stay that way. What a wasted opportunity.
Saturday, 1 May 1999
LEFT COALITION TO FIGHT EURO-ELECTIONS
Red Pepper, May 1999
A coalition of radical left groups and parties has been formed to fight next month's European elections in England.
The Socialist Alliance was set up at the end of March at a meeting in Birmingham attended by members of a variety of national and local socialist groups, the largest of them the Socialist Party, formerly the Militant Tendency. The Alliance will run candidates in most English regions. Similar socialist groupings announced last year that they would be running candidates in Scotland and Wales.
The elections are taking place for the first time using a regional list system of proportional representation: to win a seat it will be necessary to win between 8 per cent and 20 per cent of the vote depending on region.
Alliance candidates are confident of their chances. Mike Davies, who heads the Alliance list in Yorkshire and Humberside, said: 'It's not just a matter of fighting valiantly and building a socialist campaign. I don't see why we shouldn't win a seat.' Davies said that the Euro-election campaign would be given momentum by the local election campaign, especially in Hull, where 20 Left Alliance candidates are running for the council. Just over 11 per cent of the vote in the region will guarantee a seat.
The Alliance's best chances are probably in the West Midlands and East Midlands. In the West Midlands, where just over 11 per cent of vote will guarantee a seat, there are strong independent left networks in Walsall and Coventry. In the East Midlands, where just over 14 per cent will guarantee a seat, the high-profile former Labour MEP Ken Coates heads the Alliance list.
The Alliance is short of cash, and it has little time to organise an effective campaign. But its main problem is that it has not managed to persuade either the Green Party or Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party to join it or to refrain from running competing candidates — which means that the left-of-Labour vote will be split. The Greens made it clear last year when Coates and fellow rebel MEP Hugh Kerr were expelled from Labour that they had no interest in an electoral arrangement with anyone, and Scargill has ensured that the SLP has rebuffed all advances from other socialists.
The problem is particularly apparent in London, where a coalition of left groups has been meeting for more than a year and, other things being equal, the Alliance might have expected to do well. Scargill himself heads the SLP list in the capital and the media-friendly Jean Lambert is top of the Greens' list.
The Alliance is not standing in the two regions where the Greens have their greatest hopes of winning seats, the South East and the South West.
A coalition of radical left groups and parties has been formed to fight next month's European elections in England.
The Socialist Alliance was set up at the end of March at a meeting in Birmingham attended by members of a variety of national and local socialist groups, the largest of them the Socialist Party, formerly the Militant Tendency. The Alliance will run candidates in most English regions. Similar socialist groupings announced last year that they would be running candidates in Scotland and Wales.
The elections are taking place for the first time using a regional list system of proportional representation: to win a seat it will be necessary to win between 8 per cent and 20 per cent of the vote depending on region.
Alliance candidates are confident of their chances. Mike Davies, who heads the Alliance list in Yorkshire and Humberside, said: 'It's not just a matter of fighting valiantly and building a socialist campaign. I don't see why we shouldn't win a seat.' Davies said that the Euro-election campaign would be given momentum by the local election campaign, especially in Hull, where 20 Left Alliance candidates are running for the council. Just over 11 per cent of the vote in the region will guarantee a seat.
The Alliance's best chances are probably in the West Midlands and East Midlands. In the West Midlands, where just over 11 per cent of vote will guarantee a seat, there are strong independent left networks in Walsall and Coventry. In the East Midlands, where just over 14 per cent will guarantee a seat, the high-profile former Labour MEP Ken Coates heads the Alliance list.
The Alliance is short of cash, and it has little time to organise an effective campaign. But its main problem is that it has not managed to persuade either the Green Party or Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party to join it or to refrain from running competing candidates — which means that the left-of-Labour vote will be split. The Greens made it clear last year when Coates and fellow rebel MEP Hugh Kerr were expelled from Labour that they had no interest in an electoral arrangement with anyone, and Scargill has ensured that the SLP has rebuffed all advances from other socialists.
The problem is particularly apparent in London, where a coalition of left groups has been meeting for more than a year and, other things being equal, the Alliance might have expected to do well. Scargill himself heads the SLP list in the capital and the media-friendly Jean Lambert is top of the Greens' list.
The Alliance is not standing in the two regions where the Greens have their greatest hopes of winning seats, the South East and the South West.
UP AGAINST IT
New Times, May 1999
Paul Anderson reports from the American left’s annual bean feast in New York
As talking-shops go, it's difficult to beat the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. It is the American left's big East Coast gathering, held every easter or thereabouts for the past 17 years.
This year, nearly 2,000 people came along to Manhattan Community College on the Lower West Side between 9 and 11 April to listen to the big-name speakers – Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Staughton Lynd, Manning Marable, the Reverend Al Sharpton – and to take their pick among more than 100 panel discussions spread through the weekend.
All of American left-wing life was there: members of Democratic Socialists of America (the more radical of two US affiliates to the Socialist International and the core of the Democratic Party's left wing), environmentalists, feminists, black activists, trade unionists, writers and editors from the Nation, Dissent, Monthly Review and Mother Jones, radical broadcasters, a smattering of Trotskyist and Maoist sectarians.
If that sounds chaotic, it was – but not completely. Anyone who can pay $100 can run a panel, and some of the things people decide to discuss are obscure or eccentric, to say the least. I could have spent Saturday afternoon immersed in 'A left defence of Heidegger' or 'Marxist-Leninist ideology is alive and well'.
Such exotica are very much on the fringe, however. The core of the conference programme is put together by DSA and its friends and is anything but crazy. I went to excellent sessions on the next US presidential election, on the state of non-corporate media and on European social democracy – and I was told I missed some of the best discussions.
Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest talking points was Kosovo – on which there is no more of a consensus on the US left than there is on the European left.
The argument goes right to the heart of DSA, with one of its co-chairs, the political scientist Bogdan Denitch, giving forceful backing to deployment of Nato ground troops against Slobodan Milosevic and another, the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, coming out strongly against the Nato bombing. My sense was that Denitch's position had greater support – but that might just be because I agree with him.
Kosovo apart, the great obsession of the conference was a hardy perennial: the marginalisation of the American left and how to overcome it.
That the left is up against it there can be no doubt. DSA, the biggest organisation on the left and the nearest thing there is to a European social democratic party, has only 10,000 members, and although it has considerable influence in the leadership of the trade union movement, in the Democratic Party its position (and more generally the position of the left) is weaker than for many years.
The Democrats' progressive caucus in Congress has more than 70 members, making it the second biggest organised body of opinion in Congress after the Republicans' conservative caucus. But since funding was withdrawn from the caucuses in the wake of the 1994 Republican Congressional landslide, they have been far less powerful than they used to be. Left-leaning Democrats in Congress have been unable to force any significant concessions from Bill Clinton since his administration took a sharp turn to the right in 1994. And no one I talked to thought there was any hope of the Democrats choosing a presidential candidate next year who came from anywhere but the far right of the party.
Clinton has been such a disaster in the eyes of most DSAers that they cannot understand why Tony Blair has been so keen to emulate his political strategy and to draw him into discussions of the 'Third Way'. DSA's 'project' has since its inception in the 1960s been completion of the American welfare state along European social democratic lines. DSA members cannot fathom how a European social democratic leader could want to get into bed with a president who has done more to dismantle social protection than the Republicans that preceded him.
Yet for all this, there is a vibrancy about the American left that is extraordinarily refreshing. American left publishing is in a far healthier state than left publishing over here. There's a culture of local organisation and agitation as healthy as any in Britain. And Socialist Scholars was – as in previous years – bigger, more inclusive and more exciting than any event the British left has put on in living memory. There's plenty we can learn from the other side of the pond even if we decide we want to keep our welfare state.
Paul Anderson reports from the American left’s annual bean feast in New York
As talking-shops go, it's difficult to beat the Socialist Scholars Conference in New York. It is the American left's big East Coast gathering, held every easter or thereabouts for the past 17 years.
This year, nearly 2,000 people came along to Manhattan Community College on the Lower West Side between 9 and 11 April to listen to the big-name speakers – Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Staughton Lynd, Manning Marable, the Reverend Al Sharpton – and to take their pick among more than 100 panel discussions spread through the weekend.
All of American left-wing life was there: members of Democratic Socialists of America (the more radical of two US affiliates to the Socialist International and the core of the Democratic Party's left wing), environmentalists, feminists, black activists, trade unionists, writers and editors from the Nation, Dissent, Monthly Review and Mother Jones, radical broadcasters, a smattering of Trotskyist and Maoist sectarians.
If that sounds chaotic, it was – but not completely. Anyone who can pay $100 can run a panel, and some of the things people decide to discuss are obscure or eccentric, to say the least. I could have spent Saturday afternoon immersed in 'A left defence of Heidegger' or 'Marxist-Leninist ideology is alive and well'.
Such exotica are very much on the fringe, however. The core of the conference programme is put together by DSA and its friends and is anything but crazy. I went to excellent sessions on the next US presidential election, on the state of non-corporate media and on European social democracy – and I was told I missed some of the best discussions.
Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest talking points was Kosovo – on which there is no more of a consensus on the US left than there is on the European left.
The argument goes right to the heart of DSA, with one of its co-chairs, the political scientist Bogdan Denitch, giving forceful backing to deployment of Nato ground troops against Slobodan Milosevic and another, the journalist Barbara Ehrenreich, coming out strongly against the Nato bombing. My sense was that Denitch's position had greater support – but that might just be because I agree with him.
Kosovo apart, the great obsession of the conference was a hardy perennial: the marginalisation of the American left and how to overcome it.
That the left is up against it there can be no doubt. DSA, the biggest organisation on the left and the nearest thing there is to a European social democratic party, has only 10,000 members, and although it has considerable influence in the leadership of the trade union movement, in the Democratic Party its position (and more generally the position of the left) is weaker than for many years.
The Democrats' progressive caucus in Congress has more than 70 members, making it the second biggest organised body of opinion in Congress after the Republicans' conservative caucus. But since funding was withdrawn from the caucuses in the wake of the 1994 Republican Congressional landslide, they have been far less powerful than they used to be. Left-leaning Democrats in Congress have been unable to force any significant concessions from Bill Clinton since his administration took a sharp turn to the right in 1994. And no one I talked to thought there was any hope of the Democrats choosing a presidential candidate next year who came from anywhere but the far right of the party.
Clinton has been such a disaster in the eyes of most DSAers that they cannot understand why Tony Blair has been so keen to emulate his political strategy and to draw him into discussions of the 'Third Way'. DSA's 'project' has since its inception in the 1960s been completion of the American welfare state along European social democratic lines. DSA members cannot fathom how a European social democratic leader could want to get into bed with a president who has done more to dismantle social protection than the Republicans that preceded him.
Yet for all this, there is a vibrancy about the American left that is extraordinarily refreshing. American left publishing is in a far healthier state than left publishing over here. There's a culture of local organisation and agitation as healthy as any in Britain. And Socialist Scholars was – as in previous years – bigger, more inclusive and more exciting than any event the British left has put on in living memory. There's plenty we can learn from the other side of the pond even if we decide we want to keep our welfare state.
ONLY CONNECT
New Times, May 1999
Paul Anderson talks to Peter Hain about Welsh devolution and his plea for the left to engage with the Blair government
'A friend said to me the other day: "You've worked your guts out on the referendum campaign and ever since to do yourself out of a job,"' says Peter Hain in his room in the Welsh Office in Whitehall. 'And he was right. The powers that go with my job as a Welsh Office minister will transfer as from 1 July to the new Welsh assembly.'
The MP for Neath is in London only briefly. His main job until 6 May, when Wales votes for the 60-member assembly, is as co-ordinator of Labour's election campaign in Wales, and it's a job that does not allow him much time in Westminster.
After the controversy surrounding the choice of Labour's leader in Wales – Alun Michael, favoured by Tony Blair, beat Rhodri Morgan for the position, but only because several unions backed him with their block votes without balloting their members – Labour's commanding lead in the opinion polls has slipped alarmingly.
The party is still almost certain to emerge as the biggest party in the assembly, but there is a strong possibility that it will not win an overall majority. The election is using the additional member system of proportional representation, and the latest polls suggest that Plaid Cymru will do better than anyone expected, particularly in the 'top-up' seats elected on a regional basis to make the overall result more accurately reflect parties' shares of the vote.
Hain is sceptical about some of the more extravagant interpretations of the poll data that have appeared in the press. 'Some of the people being polled think they're being asked what their second choice is,' he says. 'There's a lot of confusion.' He dismisses the idea that Michael might fail to win a top-up seat in the Mid and West Wales electoral.
But he is candid about Labour's task. 'The party's gone through a really rough time over the past year. And I think the government has failed to get its message across to its core supporters.'
With this in mind, Labour is concentrating its focus on bread-and-butter issues. ' We have to connect the devolution of power with better decisions on schools and jobs and so on.'
Labour's campaign in Wales has a distinctly more left-wing feel to it than the 1997 general election campaign – which is hardly surprising as Hain has a reputation as one of the most left-wing members of the government.
It is nearly 30 years since he first came to public attention as a South African Young Liberal advocate of direct action against apartheid and more than 20 since he first established himself as a spokesman of the Labour left. But even as recently as 1995, his book Ayes to the Left laid out a 'libertarian socialist' strategy for Labour that in many of its key elements – Keynesian expansionism in economics at United Kingdom and European level, interventionism in industrial policy, radical civil libertarianism – was implicitly critical of Tony Blair's conception of 'modernisation'.
His latest pamphlet, A Welsh Third Way?, recently published by Tribune, holds back on criticising the government of which he is part. Indeed, it buzzes with enthusiasm, arguing that new Labour is the true inheritor of the libertarian socialist tradition.
Hain dismisses the notion that he wrote it because he had been put under pressure from on high. 'I simply thought that the Third Way debate needed some positioning in terms of socialist traditions. You can't write a pamphlet unless it's been cleared. But it was my idea and I wrote it myself.'
Too many on the left seem unwilling to recognise just how much the Blair government has achieved, he says. 'On the economy, what's very striking is that we've done what no Labour government has done before: we haven't blown it in the first two years after hitting an enormous crisis. We've enjoyed the confidence of the markets and the City. And yet we are injecting record amounts of spending into health and education and other public service priorities in the next three years.
'The pitch of the government has been to middle England and to the Daily Mail rather than the Daily Mirror. Yet there is a huge amount of redistribution. The minimum wage, the working families tax credit, the increases in child benefit and the 10p starting rate of income tax, all have attacked poverty and boosted low incomes. I wouldn't call Gordon Brown a traditional Keynesian chancellor – and he wouldn't want to accept that label – but people on the left should at least acknowledge that it's significant that a government of the left has managed to implement some radical economic policies while not being under furious attack in traditional fashion.'
Not that success is confined to the economy. 'The constitutional agenda – I mean, here we have a supposedly right-wing Labour leader and government about to roll over the House of Lords – fairness at work, the right to roam, they're considerable achievements.' The pamphlet, he says, is a plea to the rest of the left to engage. 'Engaging doesn't mean sacrificing principles. It means getting into the Realpolitik of the Labour Party and engaging with it. The Labour government is the only show in town. If the left doesn't get involved, it will have sold the pass. But, with the exception of a few small groups, I don't feel there's any serious engagement from the left at all.’
Paul Anderson talks to Peter Hain about Welsh devolution and his plea for the left to engage with the Blair government
'A friend said to me the other day: "You've worked your guts out on the referendum campaign and ever since to do yourself out of a job,"' says Peter Hain in his room in the Welsh Office in Whitehall. 'And he was right. The powers that go with my job as a Welsh Office minister will transfer as from 1 July to the new Welsh assembly.'
The MP for Neath is in London only briefly. His main job until 6 May, when Wales votes for the 60-member assembly, is as co-ordinator of Labour's election campaign in Wales, and it's a job that does not allow him much time in Westminster.
After the controversy surrounding the choice of Labour's leader in Wales – Alun Michael, favoured by Tony Blair, beat Rhodri Morgan for the position, but only because several unions backed him with their block votes without balloting their members – Labour's commanding lead in the opinion polls has slipped alarmingly.
The party is still almost certain to emerge as the biggest party in the assembly, but there is a strong possibility that it will not win an overall majority. The election is using the additional member system of proportional representation, and the latest polls suggest that Plaid Cymru will do better than anyone expected, particularly in the 'top-up' seats elected on a regional basis to make the overall result more accurately reflect parties' shares of the vote.
Hain is sceptical about some of the more extravagant interpretations of the poll data that have appeared in the press. 'Some of the people being polled think they're being asked what their second choice is,' he says. 'There's a lot of confusion.' He dismisses the idea that Michael might fail to win a top-up seat in the Mid and West Wales electoral.
But he is candid about Labour's task. 'The party's gone through a really rough time over the past year. And I think the government has failed to get its message across to its core supporters.'
With this in mind, Labour is concentrating its focus on bread-and-butter issues. ' We have to connect the devolution of power with better decisions on schools and jobs and so on.'
Labour's campaign in Wales has a distinctly more left-wing feel to it than the 1997 general election campaign – which is hardly surprising as Hain has a reputation as one of the most left-wing members of the government.
It is nearly 30 years since he first came to public attention as a South African Young Liberal advocate of direct action against apartheid and more than 20 since he first established himself as a spokesman of the Labour left. But even as recently as 1995, his book Ayes to the Left laid out a 'libertarian socialist' strategy for Labour that in many of its key elements – Keynesian expansionism in economics at United Kingdom and European level, interventionism in industrial policy, radical civil libertarianism – was implicitly critical of Tony Blair's conception of 'modernisation'.
His latest pamphlet, A Welsh Third Way?, recently published by Tribune, holds back on criticising the government of which he is part. Indeed, it buzzes with enthusiasm, arguing that new Labour is the true inheritor of the libertarian socialist tradition.
Hain dismisses the notion that he wrote it because he had been put under pressure from on high. 'I simply thought that the Third Way debate needed some positioning in terms of socialist traditions. You can't write a pamphlet unless it's been cleared. But it was my idea and I wrote it myself.'
Too many on the left seem unwilling to recognise just how much the Blair government has achieved, he says. 'On the economy, what's very striking is that we've done what no Labour government has done before: we haven't blown it in the first two years after hitting an enormous crisis. We've enjoyed the confidence of the markets and the City. And yet we are injecting record amounts of spending into health and education and other public service priorities in the next three years.
'The pitch of the government has been to middle England and to the Daily Mail rather than the Daily Mirror. Yet there is a huge amount of redistribution. The minimum wage, the working families tax credit, the increases in child benefit and the 10p starting rate of income tax, all have attacked poverty and boosted low incomes. I wouldn't call Gordon Brown a traditional Keynesian chancellor – and he wouldn't want to accept that label – but people on the left should at least acknowledge that it's significant that a government of the left has managed to implement some radical economic policies while not being under furious attack in traditional fashion.'
Not that success is confined to the economy. 'The constitutional agenda – I mean, here we have a supposedly right-wing Labour leader and government about to roll over the House of Lords – fairness at work, the right to roam, they're considerable achievements.' The pamphlet, he says, is a plea to the rest of the left to engage. 'Engaging doesn't mean sacrificing principles. It means getting into the Realpolitik of the Labour Party and engaging with it. The Labour government is the only show in town. If the left doesn't get involved, it will have sold the pass. But, with the exception of a few small groups, I don't feel there's any serious engagement from the left at all.’
Friday, 30 April 1999
KOSOVO NEEDS WESTERN GROUND TROOPS
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 30 April 1999
There can be no doubt now that the political leaders of NATO miscalculated badly when they launched their aerial bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia more than five weeks ago.
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair et al decided to rely on bombing raids alone to make Slobodan Milosevic stop his military assault on the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and accept a NATO-led "implementation force" in the province. So sure were they of the efficacy of air strikes – and so afraid of domestic public opinion if the body bags started coming home – that they even announced that there would be no need to send in ground troops to force Milosevic to concede.
Milosevic, however, having seen NATO's hand, upped the stakes. Instead of pulling back his forces from Kosovo, he unleashed a ferocious pogrom against the Albanian population of the province. Within a week of the air raids starting, more than half the 1.9 million Albanians in Kosovo had been forced from their homes. What little there was of opposition to Milosevic in Serbia rallied to his side.
In response, NATO increased the scope of its aerial bombardment – and as a result started to kill civilians, including Kosovo Albanians, in significant numbers. The bombardment has now gone on more than 30 days. A substantial part of Serbia's military capacity and much of its communications infrastructure have been "degraded". Even the presidential palace has been hit.
Yet still Milosevic has not yielded. His support at home — insofar as it is possible to measure it — has apparently remained solid. Ethnic cleansing has continued unabated in Kosovo. The number of refugees has risen inexorably. Ethnic tensions in the main countries the refugees have fled to, particularly Macedonia and Greece, are at crisis point. Russia, which was from the start opposed to the NATO action, is now so antipathetic that serious commentators are talking about the danger of a new Cold War. Although it is still just about possible to argue that, given a little more time, the air strikes will force Milosevic to back down, it is looking increasingly as if they will not.
So what should happen next? Some on the Left argue that the bombing campaign has been so counter-productive that it should be stopped at once, with the cessation of hostilities to be followed by diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.
The proposal has a certain superficial appeal. Diplomacy is generally a better means of pursuing foreign policy than war. If doing something has the opposite effect of that intended, it usually makes sense to stop doing it.
Yet stopping the air offensive and opening talks would amount to conceding victory to Milosevic – and that is unthinkable, not because NATO's honour is at stake but because a victory for Milosevic would be a victory for ethnic cleansing. Milosevic now has effective control of a depopulated Kosovo, and there is nothing to suggest that he could be talked into giving it up if NATO calls off its bombardment. Indeed, everything suggests that he will not give it up unless he faces the prospect of imminent military defeat. If NATO is serious about standing up to ethnic cleansing, it must prepare to inflict such a defeat.
As has been clear since long before the air offensive began, this means planning to deploy ground troops, if necessary in a combat role. Yet NATO continues to insist that a forcible intervention with ground troops is not an option. Of course, that might just be a sophisticated bluff – but all the indications are that it is not, and that although Tony Blair is now convinced that ground troops might be necessary, Bill Clinton, backed by the German and Italian governments, is unpersuaded.
My hunch is that, eventually, public outrage at the nightly television pictures showing the desperate plight of the Kosovo Albanian refugees will push Clinton into accepting the argument for ground troops. That would hardly be a cause for celebration: ground troops should have been a central part of NATO's plans since military intervention in Kosovo was first mooted. But for the sake of Kosovo's Albanians, I hope that he changes his mind sooner rather than later.
There can be no doubt now that the political leaders of NATO miscalculated badly when they launched their aerial bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia more than five weeks ago.
Bill Clinton, Tony Blair et al decided to rely on bombing raids alone to make Slobodan Milosevic stop his military assault on the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo and accept a NATO-led "implementation force" in the province. So sure were they of the efficacy of air strikes – and so afraid of domestic public opinion if the body bags started coming home – that they even announced that there would be no need to send in ground troops to force Milosevic to concede.
Milosevic, however, having seen NATO's hand, upped the stakes. Instead of pulling back his forces from Kosovo, he unleashed a ferocious pogrom against the Albanian population of the province. Within a week of the air raids starting, more than half the 1.9 million Albanians in Kosovo had been forced from their homes. What little there was of opposition to Milosevic in Serbia rallied to his side.
In response, NATO increased the scope of its aerial bombardment – and as a result started to kill civilians, including Kosovo Albanians, in significant numbers. The bombardment has now gone on more than 30 days. A substantial part of Serbia's military capacity and much of its communications infrastructure have been "degraded". Even the presidential palace has been hit.
Yet still Milosevic has not yielded. His support at home — insofar as it is possible to measure it — has apparently remained solid. Ethnic cleansing has continued unabated in Kosovo. The number of refugees has risen inexorably. Ethnic tensions in the main countries the refugees have fled to, particularly Macedonia and Greece, are at crisis point. Russia, which was from the start opposed to the NATO action, is now so antipathetic that serious commentators are talking about the danger of a new Cold War. Although it is still just about possible to argue that, given a little more time, the air strikes will force Milosevic to back down, it is looking increasingly as if they will not.
So what should happen next? Some on the Left argue that the bombing campaign has been so counter-productive that it should be stopped at once, with the cessation of hostilities to be followed by diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.
The proposal has a certain superficial appeal. Diplomacy is generally a better means of pursuing foreign policy than war. If doing something has the opposite effect of that intended, it usually makes sense to stop doing it.
Yet stopping the air offensive and opening talks would amount to conceding victory to Milosevic – and that is unthinkable, not because NATO's honour is at stake but because a victory for Milosevic would be a victory for ethnic cleansing. Milosevic now has effective control of a depopulated Kosovo, and there is nothing to suggest that he could be talked into giving it up if NATO calls off its bombardment. Indeed, everything suggests that he will not give it up unless he faces the prospect of imminent military defeat. If NATO is serious about standing up to ethnic cleansing, it must prepare to inflict such a defeat.
As has been clear since long before the air offensive began, this means planning to deploy ground troops, if necessary in a combat role. Yet NATO continues to insist that a forcible intervention with ground troops is not an option. Of course, that might just be a sophisticated bluff – but all the indications are that it is not, and that although Tony Blair is now convinced that ground troops might be necessary, Bill Clinton, backed by the German and Italian governments, is unpersuaded.
My hunch is that, eventually, public outrage at the nightly television pictures showing the desperate plight of the Kosovo Albanian refugees will push Clinton into accepting the argument for ground troops. That would hardly be a cause for celebration: ground troops should have been a central part of NATO's plans since military intervention in Kosovo was first mooted. But for the sake of Kosovo's Albanians, I hope that he changes his mind sooner rather than later.
Friday, 2 April 1999
BOMBING ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH
Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 2 April 1999
The crucial question in Kosovo is not whether western military intervention is justified but what sort of military intervention could possibly stop Serb pogroms there.
It is becoming increasingly clear that bombing alone will not suffice – indeed, that bombing alone will make matters worse. The NATO bombardment of Serbian military bases has given Serbian terror squads the excuse they wanted to go on the rampage, expelling Kosovars from their homes and killing anyone who resists or gives the impression of being capable of mounting resistance. More bombs will not stop them. Only a massive and immediate deployment of ground troops, which would never get Serb approval, could possibly halt the carnage.
Yet that is precisely what the United States and Britain, the only two powers capable of such a deployment, have ruled out.
The half-respectable reason is military logistics. Kosovo is a mountainous place. The few roads into it go through passes that are easily defended by the JNA, the Yugoslav People's Army, from the surrounding heights. It would be difficult to invade by land under any circumstances – let alone with thousands of refugees streaming across its borders in the opposite direction. The JNA, so the argument goes, is a potent force that cannot be messed with lightly. In any case NATO does not have tanks suited to the terrain. What's more, plans do not exist for any deployment of ground troops. The idea was looked at and dismissed as impractical last autumn.
But the more important reason for the rejection of deployment of ground troops is political. The truth is that the logistics are difficult but not impossible. The mountains and narrow roads are as much of an obstacle to the JNA as they are to NATO. The JNA is big, but it is poorly equipped and its morale is low. With its overwhelming air superiority, NATO could, if only the will were there, launch an occupation of Kosovo with airborne troops playing the key role.
That, however, might be a bloody business. It might mean body bags coming home to Detroit, Dagenham and Dusseldorf – and that is why Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have so emphatically ruled it out.
Of course, it is hardly novel for states to attempt to maximise their military clout at the same time as minimising the vulnerability of their combatants. That is the story of military technology over the centuries. But it is remarkable, since the movement against the war in Vietnam, how exclusively the US has adopted a policy of wielding the biggest possible high-tech stick while making its top priority the avoidance of US casualties – a policy that other western states have followed.
Now that the Cold War is over, using the high-tech stick is much more of an option in foreign policy than it was. But it can be used only if the danger to western combatants is minimal, perhaps even eliminated. Bombing is fine; risking the lives of our servicemen is not.
If this is better in some ways than the First World War generals' casual disregard for the poor bloody infantry, it is also profoundly debilitating. Slobodan Milosevic knows that, if he can survive the bombing, there is not much else up NATO's sleeve.
As things stand, it appears that Milosevic and his war criminal cronies could cling to power for a very long time. It is possible that "moderate" elements in the JNA will stage a coup against him, but otherwise the prospects of his being overthrown by his compatriots are slim. Serbian civil society has all but ceased to exist: the opposition is in tatters.
All of which makes the rhetoric of Blair and Clinton about finishing off this dreadful dictator look thin at best. I'd like to see the back of Milosevic as much as anyone, and like Blair and Clinton I think that the only way to get rid of him now is to inflict a comprehensive military defeat. But to will the end you have to will the means – and without ground troops the means are not there.
The crucial question in Kosovo is not whether western military intervention is justified but what sort of military intervention could possibly stop Serb pogroms there.
It is becoming increasingly clear that bombing alone will not suffice – indeed, that bombing alone will make matters worse. The NATO bombardment of Serbian military bases has given Serbian terror squads the excuse they wanted to go on the rampage, expelling Kosovars from their homes and killing anyone who resists or gives the impression of being capable of mounting resistance. More bombs will not stop them. Only a massive and immediate deployment of ground troops, which would never get Serb approval, could possibly halt the carnage.
Yet that is precisely what the United States and Britain, the only two powers capable of such a deployment, have ruled out.
The half-respectable reason is military logistics. Kosovo is a mountainous place. The few roads into it go through passes that are easily defended by the JNA, the Yugoslav People's Army, from the surrounding heights. It would be difficult to invade by land under any circumstances – let alone with thousands of refugees streaming across its borders in the opposite direction. The JNA, so the argument goes, is a potent force that cannot be messed with lightly. In any case NATO does not have tanks suited to the terrain. What's more, plans do not exist for any deployment of ground troops. The idea was looked at and dismissed as impractical last autumn.
But the more important reason for the rejection of deployment of ground troops is political. The truth is that the logistics are difficult but not impossible. The mountains and narrow roads are as much of an obstacle to the JNA as they are to NATO. The JNA is big, but it is poorly equipped and its morale is low. With its overwhelming air superiority, NATO could, if only the will were there, launch an occupation of Kosovo with airborne troops playing the key role.
That, however, might be a bloody business. It might mean body bags coming home to Detroit, Dagenham and Dusseldorf – and that is why Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have so emphatically ruled it out.
Of course, it is hardly novel for states to attempt to maximise their military clout at the same time as minimising the vulnerability of their combatants. That is the story of military technology over the centuries. But it is remarkable, since the movement against the war in Vietnam, how exclusively the US has adopted a policy of wielding the biggest possible high-tech stick while making its top priority the avoidance of US casualties – a policy that other western states have followed.
Now that the Cold War is over, using the high-tech stick is much more of an option in foreign policy than it was. But it can be used only if the danger to western combatants is minimal, perhaps even eliminated. Bombing is fine; risking the lives of our servicemen is not.
If this is better in some ways than the First World War generals' casual disregard for the poor bloody infantry, it is also profoundly debilitating. Slobodan Milosevic knows that, if he can survive the bombing, there is not much else up NATO's sleeve.
As things stand, it appears that Milosevic and his war criminal cronies could cling to power for a very long time. It is possible that "moderate" elements in the JNA will stage a coup against him, but otherwise the prospects of his being overthrown by his compatriots are slim. Serbian civil society has all but ceased to exist: the opposition is in tatters.
All of which makes the rhetoric of Blair and Clinton about finishing off this dreadful dictator look thin at best. I'd like to see the back of Milosevic as much as anyone, and like Blair and Clinton I think that the only way to get rid of him now is to inflict a comprehensive military defeat. But to will the end you have to will the means – and without ground troops the means are not there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)