What an utter waste of everybody's time. The Labour leadership election has resulted in another win for Jeremy Corbyn, who has slightly increased his lead, from 59% to 62%.
It's safe to say that Labour has had an utterly horrendous year. Electorally, it hasn't been great. Poor local election results in England, mediocre Welsh Assembly results, and a rout in the Scottish Parliament. And then over a quarter of a century of Labour foreign policy went up in smoke, as the British people voted to leave the EU.
This was the final straw for Labour MPs, who mounted a bid to oust Corbyn. First of all they no-confidenced him, which had... no effect. Next they tried to get him removed from the ballot in the leadership race... with similar results. And their final chance to get rid of him went wrong the moment they picked Owen Smith as their challenger. The internal debate has dragged on for months, with horrific abuse being hurled by both sides of the divide. For those of us who care about left wing politics, it has been like watching someone self-harm in public.
And all this pain and effort was for virtually nothing. Corbyn retained the leadership, by virtually the same margin as before. All that self-destruction was for nothing.
Despite all his cries of victory, things were not all plain sailing for Corbyn. He actually lost amongst the members who voted for him last year, by an impressive 63:37. His victory rested on the huge swell of new members he has brought into the party in the intervening twelve months. Owen Smith, for all he was a horrendous candidate, actually polled better than any of the leadership candidates last year, or indeed Ed Miliband in 2010.
But regardless of all that, this has to stop. Over the last year, the government has governed virtually unopposed. Labour's war with itself has not solved the problems in the party, it has only made them worse. And it has enabled the government to make the lives of millions of people worse. The Official Opposition has a job to do. It needs to start doing it.
It is now clear that, shy of a landslide defeat in a snap election, Jeremy Corbyn will remain as Labour leader until 2020. So, a truce is essential. The Labour MPs, the longer-term party members, and those towards the centre of the political spectrum, need to recognise that Jeremy Corbyn has tapped into a powerful reservoir of left wing support and enthusiasm. Fighting it has not worked. Indeed, much of their anger is justified, and should be what Labour is trying to address. Instead of trying to fight it, they need to find a way to work alongside it. It may offer a road back into government, no matter how remote that chance seems. Even if it doesn't, the centrists and moderates need to find a way to work alongside those people whose anger at the status quo is justified, and can be harnessed. Defections and splits may seem attractive, but they will make things worse, not better. When the SDP left Labour in the 1980s, they did not 'break the mould,' they let Mrs Thatcher back into government. Twice. Splitting the vote and letting the Tories back in will not help any Labour supporters, or Labour voters.
In return, the Corbynites need to accept that they are in control of the only left-wing political force in the United Kingdom that is in a position of assuming national power. This puts an enormous responsibility on them. Millions upon millions of people who need or want a left-wing government are relying on them to make it a reality. This means winning a general election. Everything they do must now be devoted to that aim. Preferring social movements and extra-parliamentary action is fine. But it is not what they are in control of. They are in control of a political party committed to the democratic road to power. True social progress is made not with the banner but with the ballot box. Those around Jeremy Corbyn are being tasked with delivering the next left-wing government. They must never forget that, nor act in a way that harms that.
Overall, the Labour party needs to accept it is a broad church. It contains a wide range of opinions and views. Ever since 1900, it has represented a coalition of interests. Indeed, it must be a broad based movement, to enable it to speak on behalf of all the people. So all the abuse, all the insults, threats, and derogatory remarks have to stop. Both sides have stooped to these levels in their struggle for control of the party. But the sexism, the racial slurs, the appalling anti-Semitism, the resurrection of political insults from different decades, the attacks on constituency surgeries, the threats of de-selection and sacking, have to stop. The people are watching. If you are seen as a repository for hate, they will not trust you with control of the country. And if you want to see where political hate can end up, the seat next door to mine is holding a by-election soon, to replace an MP shot dead in the streets.
If the two wings of the Labour party do not unite, then they will be destroyed at the next election. If they try to come together, there is just a small chance they will survive as a political force, and one day will operate the levers of power in the name of those who cannot speak up for themselves. Unite or die.
Saturday, 24 September 2016
Saturday, 17 September 2016
Why we are all still living in 1991
As a quick glance at this blog will confirm, I'm a big fan of historical anniversaries. This year, I've noticed that there have been a whole host of 25th anniversaries. More interestingly, many of the events of 1991 seem to have a direct relevance for us today.
L.P. Hartley told us that the past is a foreign country, and that they do things differently there. The recent past is a strangely alien place, at once almost familiar and yet so very different. But in 1991, they weren't doing things that differently to us after all.
Gulf War
It was billed as the first war of the New World Order- a rogue state was fought by a coalition, under a UN mandate, to ensure that international justice was maintained. The war was fought with smart weapons, helping to ensure that casualties were kept to a minimum. The war was fought to the letter of the UN's authorisation, and not a moment longer.
This is all a bit neat. In reality, the high-tech violence unleashed against Iraq by the US-led coalition in 1991 was utterly brutal. Civilians were killed. The Atlantic Alliance had spent the last half a century devising weapons designed to be used in a final struggle with the Eastern Bloc. When these weapons were finally used, they turned out to be devastating. There are accounts of bodies melting and pooling as fat in facilities hit by the bombing. The Iraqi army was so weakened that, when the invasion came, the land war lasted only 100 hours. There are serious questions as to whether or not such disproportionate use of force constituted a war crime.
The Gulf War of 1991 still stands as an excellent example of multilateralism. George Bush Senior put together a very impressive coalition of diverse countries, under a UN banner, to maintain international order. They did the job the UN had given them, and then they went home.
But, the longer term effects cast a much darker shadow. The Gulf War marked a transitional point. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been an ally of the West during the 1980s, a counterpoint against the Iranians. Now Saddam was an enemy. His actions were the concerns of the rest of the world. The road to 2003 was already open, even if it wasn't yet clear.
And, barely discernible at the time, it put the USA in serious danger. When Iraq first invaded Kuwait, the Saudi monarchy received an offer from a leader of the mujahideen, the Islamic-inspired rebels who had just fought the USSR in Afghanistan. He offered his men to defend the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, and expel Iraq from Kuwait. That way, no non-Muslims would set foot in the sacred lands of the Prophet. The Saudis, faced with this rabble or the world's sole remaining superpower, chose the USA. The mujahideen leader was outraged, and directed his anger at America. His name? Osama bin Laden.
Uprisings Against Saddam
If the Gulf War was an example of multilateralism at its finest, then the actions of the world in the aftermath of the war are less good. With his armed forces shattered, and his authority severely reduced, Saddam was gravely weakened by the Gulf War. For those inside Iraq who had suffered during his reign, they saw this as their best chance to overthrow the wretched dictator who had made their lives a misery. Egged on by the Voice of America radio broadcasts, a strange collection of Shia Arabs, Kurds, left-wing dissidents, and disillusioned soldiers, all rose in revolt against Saddam.
At first it seemed like they had succeeded. Within a few days, the Iraqi government controlled only four of Iraq's 18 regions. Millions of Iraqis had abandoned the regime; even Saddam's secret police fired their weapons in joy at his presumed overthrow.
Saddam may have been down, but he was not out. The deal with the UN forces that had ended the Gulf War enabled the Iraqis to continue using helicopters. Officially, this was to transport personnel around, given that the Allied air attacks had crippled Iraq's ground infrastructure. But Saddam used those same helicopters to suppress the rebellions. He unleashed his crack Republican Guard troops against the rebels, crushing first the Shia, then the Marsh Arabs, before finally turning on the Kurds.
The Kurds were terrified; it was only three years since Saddam had killed 5000 Kurds with chemical weapons, at Halabja. Pretty much the entire population of Kurdistan fled into the mountains, and the peshmerga prepared to make a final stand against the advancing Iraqi army.
It never came. The West belatedly realised what it had done, and, under pressure from the UK, created no fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. The Kurds were saved, and ultimately created a stable, prosperous and democratic autonomous region.
But for the rest of Iraq, the uprisings cost them dear. Thousands were killed as Saddam reimposed control, and the ancient way of life of the Marsh Arabs was ended forever, with the draining of the marshes.
The Iraqi people took a clear message; the rest of the world was not interested in helping to rescue them from Saddam. So when in 2003, the Americans and British rolled in yet again, the population was not grateful. They remembered how the West had abandoned them in their hour of need. We are still reaping the effects of failing to depose Saddam when the Iraqis wanted, rather than when George W Bush wanted.
Maastricht Treaty
In the winter of 1991, the leaders of the European Community went to the Dutch town of Maastricht. They were there to discuss fundamental changes to the institution that they belonged to. Since it's foundation in the 1950s, the EC had been focused primarily on economic integration. There were some political structures, such as the European Parliament. But it was primarily to do with trade. Not for nothing was it known in English as the Common Market.
At Maastricht, all that changed. The document which emerged from that meeting was the Treaty on European Union. It set out plans for the creation of a single European currency, and committed the signatories to work together to develop common approaches to law enforcement, foreign policy, criminal justice, and social policy. What emerged from Maastricht was the EU that, for better or for worse, we all know today.
Even at the time, there was a recognition by the UK government that this would not go down well with British voters. And so John Major, in an incredible bit of negotiating, was able to secure a UK opt-out from the single currency, and to make the social affairs part an entirely separate agreement, which the UK then refused to sign. But this was not enough. Getting the Treaty ratified in Parliament nearly destroyed the Conservative Party, and it looks years to recover in the eyes of the voters. But above all, Maastricht made the issue of Euroscepticism a mainstream, acceptable opinion in the UK. A host of groups emerged to oppose the Treaty. One, the Anti-Federalist League, later morphed into UKIP. Had the Conservative party not chosen to endorse the Treaty, maybe the young Nigel Farage would never have quit the party in favour of the AFL.
The EU as we know it was created in Maastricht in December 1991, but the seeds of Brexit were planted as well.
End of the USSR
I've already discussed this here, so I won't go into it too much. Anyway, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, that marked the real end of the Cold War, and which ushered in the era of American geopolitical dominance that we are still living in (debatable, see below). But for neatness sake, the end of the Soviet Union should probably get a look in.
Rodney King arrest
It must have seemed like any other crime committed that night. Late on the evening of March 3rd, 1991, the California Highway Patrol tried to stop a vehicle. When the car failed to stop, police gave chase, at speeds of up to 115mph. When the car was eventually stopped, the occupants were arrested.
What happened next shocked the United States. The last man out of the car was the driver, Rodney King. He was tasered, and repeatedly beaten by five LAPD officers, even after he had clearly ceased to be any kind of threat. The entire incident was captured on a camcorder. The officers claimed that they believed King to be on PCP, but no trace of it was ever detected, and his behaviour didn't fit this claim. Even amongst law enforcement officers, there was outrage at the behaviour of the police.
In April 1992, the police officers were acquitted on charges of assault. This was the cue for an outbreak of severe rioting in Los Angeles. Over five days and nights, a total of 55 people died, as rioting, looting, and fire fights engulfed Los Angeles. 2000 people were injured, and more than 11,000 were injured. In desperation, the California National Guard, and parts of the regular US Army, were deployed on the streets to restore law and order.
In terms of civil rights, we have come a long way. But the Rodney King beatings, and subsequent riots, show just as clearly as Ferguson and all the other tragedies that we still have a long way to go.
World Wide Web goes public
Tim Berners-Lee deserves that knighthood. In 1991, he transformed the world we lived in forever. Over the past decade, Berners-Lee, who worked at CERN, had been designing and building "a large hypertext database with typed links." By late 1990, he had built an internal version at CERN. And in January 1991, the first Web servers outside of CERN were switched on.
This was not the start of the internet; that had been in existence since the late 1960s. What Tim Berners-Lee was offering was a brand new interface for presenting, storing and accessing information on the internet. One of the early name proposals for the World Wide Web was The Information Mine. Which gives you a pretty good idea of what they were going for.
Pretty much every single way you interact with the internet is through the World Wide Web, from checking your bank account, checking Facebook, emails (often, I will give you this is the last major exception), checking the news, even reading this post.
In future, when historians look back at our age, I reckon they will focus on this moment as one of the major turning points in history. We cannot now go back to a Webless world. The world as it existed before January 1991 is gone forever, separated from us by the colossus of the World Wide Web.
Birmingham Six released
Terrorism is a horrific thing. It kills and maims indiscriminately. It brings fear and panic to the society that it seeks to undermine. It turns the state against its citizens, and people against each other.
On November 21st 1974, between 20:15 and 20:30, 21 people were murdered in Birmingham, when bombs detonated in two pubs in the city centre. 182 people were badly injured. In terms of fatalities, it was the worst attack on mainland Britain during the Troubles. The police had received a coded warning from the Provisional IRA, but it was far too vague, and far too late.
The police had an early breakthrough. Six men, all known to an IRA member who had died trying to plant a bomb in Coventry earlier in the year, were all arrested trying to leave Birmingham not long after the attacks. They were all Northern Irish, all Roman Catholic, and were actually travelling to the funeral of the man who had died in Coventry, a fact they did not mention to the police who questioned them in Morecambe. In 1975, they were all convicted on 21 counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The problem was, they were innocent. All six had been subject to threats, beatings, threatened with dogs, and in one case forced into a mock execution. Under these circumstances, some had signed statements which had been written for them. The forensic evidence that they had handled explosives was extremely shaky.
As soon as they were imprisoned, the Birmingham Six began a long fight to clear their names. Their first attempt to appeal was rejected. In 1985, ITV's World in Action broadcast a documentary which seriously challenged the case against the men; as World in Action's Chris Mullin, later a Labour MP, claimed to have spoken to the actual bombers, it hardly seemed likely that the right people were in prison. Amazingly, this was not enough for the Court of Appeal, and in 1988 the men's convictions were upheld.
But the cat was out of the bag, and over the next three years momentum built behind the campaign to free the men. Eventually, in 1991 the case went back to the Court of Appeal. The Crown made the unprecedented step of not opposing the appeal, as it realised the convictions were clearly unsafe. The judges ruled that the men were free to leave.
As a result of this, and similar appalling miscarriages of justice, a Royal Commission was setup, which recommended the creation the Criminal Cases Review Commission, to examine convictions and appeals. But that is why this is not a significant moment.
The enduring significance of this event, and those like it, is the realisation that terrorism is a challenge we cannot get wrong. Six men, whose only crime was to have known a person who had broken the law, had spent 16 years in prison. But that reasoning, I know people who should be in prison. Myself included. They had been failed by the police and the judiciary. As they languished in their cells, the IRA's West Midlands unit was free to continue its attacks. And the trust between citizens and the state, which is crucial to defeat terrorism, was undermined, at least for some.
Today, we face the same challenges. There have been calls to give more powers to the Security Services to intrude on our lives, to allow longer detention without trial, to allow evidence and even whole trials to be heard in secret, or without a jury. Will that really help make us safer? In 1991, the answer was clear for all to see.
Premier League is launched
Before 1991, if you'd used the words 'Premier League', people would have given you a strange look. Was it a type of beer?
English football was in a bit of a nadir in the early 1990s. The 1980s had seen the game blighted by hooliganism, falling attendances, static revenues. Many top players were moving abroad. What was even worse, in the eyes of the best clubs at least, was that the money acquired for the television broadcasts of the First Division was split evenly across the Football League.
As the 1991 season drew to a close, the five top clubs in the First Division (Arsenal, Manchester United, Spurs, Liverpool, and Everton) pounced. They signed an agreement that, after one more season of the Football League, they would break away and create a 'Premier League.' This was billed as an attempt to improve the quality of football, both in the top flight, and for the national team. The clubs in this Premier League would be able to keep all of the money from TV to themselves, instead of having to share it with clubs that no one had ever heard of.
In some respects, the Premier League succeeded spectacularly. The amount of money in football has increased dramatically, with clubs regularly trading players for hundreds of millions of pounds. Fit, young adults are now paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. People who had been stars beforehand were transformed into superstars, celebrities, whose actions off the pitch were as closely followed as those on it. At the same time, football was becoming more acceptable again. A game which had been associated with the working classes, and with violence, was being gentrified. Attendances rose, and so did ticket prices. Foreign investors became attracted at the sponsorship and ownership possibilities of English clubs. Soon, even previously minor English clubs had followers across the world, all supporting their favourite local Manchester United.
But, the much vaunted improvement in national football never followed. The English team continues to be the source of many jokes. Neither did it do much good for the teams that resigned en masse from the First Division; only nine of them are still in the Premier League (at the time of writing), and four of them have sunk to the third tier of English football.
Without the Premier League, most of this would doubtless have happened. But the cult of elite football was cemented by that decision.
US Presidential Longshot Bid Announced
Finally, it was in the autumn of 1991 that speculation began in earnest for the US presidential election in 1992. For the Republicans, their candidate was easy. George Bush had sky-high approval ratings over his handling of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War.
This had an effect on the Democrats too. With Bush seemingly a shoo in for a second term, many high profile Democrats chose to bide their time. By 1996, the Republicans would have controlled the White House for 15 years. Whoever emerged as Bush's successor would be much easier to defeat. This meant that big names such as Mario Cuomo and Al Gore decided to sit the race out. But some decided to give it a shot in 1992. They were generally perceived as second rate candidates, people no one had heard of, who were entering to give the appearance of a contest.
One such man announced his bid in October 1991. There was little in his favour. He was the governor of a tiny Southern state, which hadn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. He'd been in office there since 1979, with two years out; he was actually the Southern governor mentioned in Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. He'd given the keynote address to the 1988 Democratic convention. It had been long, rambling, and bored many delegates. When he finally said 'In conclusion,' he got a round of cheers. The governor was going to have been a candidate himself in 1988. However, at the last minute, he withdrew. Rumours swirled that his personal life contained past affairs and mistresses that would sink his candidacy.
But in 1991, Bill Clinton threw himself into the race many said he would never win. One of his biggest supporters, and best advisers, was his wife. Back in 2016, she is now a stone's throw away from sitting in the Oval Office herself. Truly, we are still living in 1991.
L.P. Hartley told us that the past is a foreign country, and that they do things differently there. The recent past is a strangely alien place, at once almost familiar and yet so very different. But in 1991, they weren't doing things that differently to us after all.
Gulf War
It was billed as the first war of the New World Order- a rogue state was fought by a coalition, under a UN mandate, to ensure that international justice was maintained. The war was fought with smart weapons, helping to ensure that casualties were kept to a minimum. The war was fought to the letter of the UN's authorisation, and not a moment longer.
This is all a bit neat. In reality, the high-tech violence unleashed against Iraq by the US-led coalition in 1991 was utterly brutal. Civilians were killed. The Atlantic Alliance had spent the last half a century devising weapons designed to be used in a final struggle with the Eastern Bloc. When these weapons were finally used, they turned out to be devastating. There are accounts of bodies melting and pooling as fat in facilities hit by the bombing. The Iraqi army was so weakened that, when the invasion came, the land war lasted only 100 hours. There are serious questions as to whether or not such disproportionate use of force constituted a war crime.
The Gulf War of 1991 still stands as an excellent example of multilateralism. George Bush Senior put together a very impressive coalition of diverse countries, under a UN banner, to maintain international order. They did the job the UN had given them, and then they went home.
But, the longer term effects cast a much darker shadow. The Gulf War marked a transitional point. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had been an ally of the West during the 1980s, a counterpoint against the Iranians. Now Saddam was an enemy. His actions were the concerns of the rest of the world. The road to 2003 was already open, even if it wasn't yet clear.
And, barely discernible at the time, it put the USA in serious danger. When Iraq first invaded Kuwait, the Saudi monarchy received an offer from a leader of the mujahideen, the Islamic-inspired rebels who had just fought the USSR in Afghanistan. He offered his men to defend the holy sites in Saudi Arabia, and expel Iraq from Kuwait. That way, no non-Muslims would set foot in the sacred lands of the Prophet. The Saudis, faced with this rabble or the world's sole remaining superpower, chose the USA. The mujahideen leader was outraged, and directed his anger at America. His name? Osama bin Laden.
Iraqi vehicles destroyed along the Highway of Death by Allied airstrikes
Uprisings Against Saddam
If the Gulf War was an example of multilateralism at its finest, then the actions of the world in the aftermath of the war are less good. With his armed forces shattered, and his authority severely reduced, Saddam was gravely weakened by the Gulf War. For those inside Iraq who had suffered during his reign, they saw this as their best chance to overthrow the wretched dictator who had made their lives a misery. Egged on by the Voice of America radio broadcasts, a strange collection of Shia Arabs, Kurds, left-wing dissidents, and disillusioned soldiers, all rose in revolt against Saddam.
At first it seemed like they had succeeded. Within a few days, the Iraqi government controlled only four of Iraq's 18 regions. Millions of Iraqis had abandoned the regime; even Saddam's secret police fired their weapons in joy at his presumed overthrow.
Saddam may have been down, but he was not out. The deal with the UN forces that had ended the Gulf War enabled the Iraqis to continue using helicopters. Officially, this was to transport personnel around, given that the Allied air attacks had crippled Iraq's ground infrastructure. But Saddam used those same helicopters to suppress the rebellions. He unleashed his crack Republican Guard troops against the rebels, crushing first the Shia, then the Marsh Arabs, before finally turning on the Kurds.
The Kurds were terrified; it was only three years since Saddam had killed 5000 Kurds with chemical weapons, at Halabja. Pretty much the entire population of Kurdistan fled into the mountains, and the peshmerga prepared to make a final stand against the advancing Iraqi army.
It never came. The West belatedly realised what it had done, and, under pressure from the UK, created no fly zones in northern and southern Iraq. The Kurds were saved, and ultimately created a stable, prosperous and democratic autonomous region.
But for the rest of Iraq, the uprisings cost them dear. Thousands were killed as Saddam reimposed control, and the ancient way of life of the Marsh Arabs was ended forever, with the draining of the marshes.
The Iraqi people took a clear message; the rest of the world was not interested in helping to rescue them from Saddam. So when in 2003, the Americans and British rolled in yet again, the population was not grateful. They remembered how the West had abandoned them in their hour of need. We are still reaping the effects of failing to depose Saddam when the Iraqis wanted, rather than when George W Bush wanted.
Iraqi Kurds fleeing into the mountains
Maastricht Treaty
In the winter of 1991, the leaders of the European Community went to the Dutch town of Maastricht. They were there to discuss fundamental changes to the institution that they belonged to. Since it's foundation in the 1950s, the EC had been focused primarily on economic integration. There were some political structures, such as the European Parliament. But it was primarily to do with trade. Not for nothing was it known in English as the Common Market.
At Maastricht, all that changed. The document which emerged from that meeting was the Treaty on European Union. It set out plans for the creation of a single European currency, and committed the signatories to work together to develop common approaches to law enforcement, foreign policy, criminal justice, and social policy. What emerged from Maastricht was the EU that, for better or for worse, we all know today.
Even at the time, there was a recognition by the UK government that this would not go down well with British voters. And so John Major, in an incredible bit of negotiating, was able to secure a UK opt-out from the single currency, and to make the social affairs part an entirely separate agreement, which the UK then refused to sign. But this was not enough. Getting the Treaty ratified in Parliament nearly destroyed the Conservative Party, and it looks years to recover in the eyes of the voters. But above all, Maastricht made the issue of Euroscepticism a mainstream, acceptable opinion in the UK. A host of groups emerged to oppose the Treaty. One, the Anti-Federalist League, later morphed into UKIP. Had the Conservative party not chosen to endorse the Treaty, maybe the young Nigel Farage would never have quit the party in favour of the AFL.
The EU as we know it was created in Maastricht in December 1991, but the seeds of Brexit were planted as well.
BBC News, during the Maastricht summit, Dec 1991
End of the USSR
I've already discussed this here, so I won't go into it too much. Anyway, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, that marked the real end of the Cold War, and which ushered in the era of American geopolitical dominance that we are still living in (debatable, see below). But for neatness sake, the end of the Soviet Union should probably get a look in.
Rodney King arrest
It must have seemed like any other crime committed that night. Late on the evening of March 3rd, 1991, the California Highway Patrol tried to stop a vehicle. When the car failed to stop, police gave chase, at speeds of up to 115mph. When the car was eventually stopped, the occupants were arrested.
What happened next shocked the United States. The last man out of the car was the driver, Rodney King. He was tasered, and repeatedly beaten by five LAPD officers, even after he had clearly ceased to be any kind of threat. The entire incident was captured on a camcorder. The officers claimed that they believed King to be on PCP, but no trace of it was ever detected, and his behaviour didn't fit this claim. Even amongst law enforcement officers, there was outrage at the behaviour of the police.
In April 1992, the police officers were acquitted on charges of assault. This was the cue for an outbreak of severe rioting in Los Angeles. Over five days and nights, a total of 55 people died, as rioting, looting, and fire fights engulfed Los Angeles. 2000 people were injured, and more than 11,000 were injured. In desperation, the California National Guard, and parts of the regular US Army, were deployed on the streets to restore law and order.
In terms of civil rights, we have come a long way. But the Rodney King beatings, and subsequent riots, show just as clearly as Ferguson and all the other tragedies that we still have a long way to go.
Footage from the arrest of Rodney King
World Wide Web goes public
Tim Berners-Lee deserves that knighthood. In 1991, he transformed the world we lived in forever. Over the past decade, Berners-Lee, who worked at CERN, had been designing and building "a large hypertext database with typed links." By late 1990, he had built an internal version at CERN. And in January 1991, the first Web servers outside of CERN were switched on.
This was not the start of the internet; that had been in existence since the late 1960s. What Tim Berners-Lee was offering was a brand new interface for presenting, storing and accessing information on the internet. One of the early name proposals for the World Wide Web was The Information Mine. Which gives you a pretty good idea of what they were going for.
Pretty much every single way you interact with the internet is through the World Wide Web, from checking your bank account, checking Facebook, emails (often, I will give you this is the last major exception), checking the news, even reading this post.
In future, when historians look back at our age, I reckon they will focus on this moment as one of the major turning points in history. We cannot now go back to a Webless world. The world as it existed before January 1991 is gone forever, separated from us by the colossus of the World Wide Web.
First ever web server, located at CERN
Birmingham Six released
Terrorism is a horrific thing. It kills and maims indiscriminately. It brings fear and panic to the society that it seeks to undermine. It turns the state against its citizens, and people against each other.
On November 21st 1974, between 20:15 and 20:30, 21 people were murdered in Birmingham, when bombs detonated in two pubs in the city centre. 182 people were badly injured. In terms of fatalities, it was the worst attack on mainland Britain during the Troubles. The police had received a coded warning from the Provisional IRA, but it was far too vague, and far too late.
The police had an early breakthrough. Six men, all known to an IRA member who had died trying to plant a bomb in Coventry earlier in the year, were all arrested trying to leave Birmingham not long after the attacks. They were all Northern Irish, all Roman Catholic, and were actually travelling to the funeral of the man who had died in Coventry, a fact they did not mention to the police who questioned them in Morecambe. In 1975, they were all convicted on 21 counts of murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The problem was, they were innocent. All six had been subject to threats, beatings, threatened with dogs, and in one case forced into a mock execution. Under these circumstances, some had signed statements which had been written for them. The forensic evidence that they had handled explosives was extremely shaky.
As soon as they were imprisoned, the Birmingham Six began a long fight to clear their names. Their first attempt to appeal was rejected. In 1985, ITV's World in Action broadcast a documentary which seriously challenged the case against the men; as World in Action's Chris Mullin, later a Labour MP, claimed to have spoken to the actual bombers, it hardly seemed likely that the right people were in prison. Amazingly, this was not enough for the Court of Appeal, and in 1988 the men's convictions were upheld.
But the cat was out of the bag, and over the next three years momentum built behind the campaign to free the men. Eventually, in 1991 the case went back to the Court of Appeal. The Crown made the unprecedented step of not opposing the appeal, as it realised the convictions were clearly unsafe. The judges ruled that the men were free to leave.
As a result of this, and similar appalling miscarriages of justice, a Royal Commission was setup, which recommended the creation the Criminal Cases Review Commission, to examine convictions and appeals. But that is why this is not a significant moment.
The enduring significance of this event, and those like it, is the realisation that terrorism is a challenge we cannot get wrong. Six men, whose only crime was to have known a person who had broken the law, had spent 16 years in prison. But that reasoning, I know people who should be in prison. Myself included. They had been failed by the police and the judiciary. As they languished in their cells, the IRA's West Midlands unit was free to continue its attacks. And the trust between citizens and the state, which is crucial to defeat terrorism, was undermined, at least for some.
Today, we face the same challenges. There have been calls to give more powers to the Security Services to intrude on our lives, to allow longer detention without trial, to allow evidence and even whole trials to be heard in secret, or without a jury. Will that really help make us safer? In 1991, the answer was clear for all to see.
The Birmingham Six, along with MP Chris Mullin, outside the Court of Appeal after their convictions were overturned
Premier League is launched
Before 1991, if you'd used the words 'Premier League', people would have given you a strange look. Was it a type of beer?
English football was in a bit of a nadir in the early 1990s. The 1980s had seen the game blighted by hooliganism, falling attendances, static revenues. Many top players were moving abroad. What was even worse, in the eyes of the best clubs at least, was that the money acquired for the television broadcasts of the First Division was split evenly across the Football League.
As the 1991 season drew to a close, the five top clubs in the First Division (Arsenal, Manchester United, Spurs, Liverpool, and Everton) pounced. They signed an agreement that, after one more season of the Football League, they would break away and create a 'Premier League.' This was billed as an attempt to improve the quality of football, both in the top flight, and for the national team. The clubs in this Premier League would be able to keep all of the money from TV to themselves, instead of having to share it with clubs that no one had ever heard of.
In some respects, the Premier League succeeded spectacularly. The amount of money in football has increased dramatically, with clubs regularly trading players for hundreds of millions of pounds. Fit, young adults are now paid hundreds of thousands of pounds a week. People who had been stars beforehand were transformed into superstars, celebrities, whose actions off the pitch were as closely followed as those on it. At the same time, football was becoming more acceptable again. A game which had been associated with the working classes, and with violence, was being gentrified. Attendances rose, and so did ticket prices. Foreign investors became attracted at the sponsorship and ownership possibilities of English clubs. Soon, even previously minor English clubs had followers across the world, all supporting their favourite local Manchester United.
But, the much vaunted improvement in national football never followed. The English team continues to be the source of many jokes. Neither did it do much good for the teams that resigned en masse from the First Division; only nine of them are still in the Premier League (at the time of writing), and four of them have sunk to the third tier of English football.
Without the Premier League, most of this would doubtless have happened. But the cult of elite football was cemented by that decision.
The 1992-93 Premier League teams
US Presidential Longshot Bid Announced
Finally, it was in the autumn of 1991 that speculation began in earnest for the US presidential election in 1992. For the Republicans, their candidate was easy. George Bush had sky-high approval ratings over his handling of the Gulf War and the end of the Cold War.
This had an effect on the Democrats too. With Bush seemingly a shoo in for a second term, many high profile Democrats chose to bide their time. By 1996, the Republicans would have controlled the White House for 15 years. Whoever emerged as Bush's successor would be much easier to defeat. This meant that big names such as Mario Cuomo and Al Gore decided to sit the race out. But some decided to give it a shot in 1992. They were generally perceived as second rate candidates, people no one had heard of, who were entering to give the appearance of a contest.
One such man announced his bid in October 1991. There was little in his favour. He was the governor of a tiny Southern state, which hadn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976. He'd been in office there since 1979, with two years out; he was actually the Southern governor mentioned in Jimmy Carter's malaise speech. He'd given the keynote address to the 1988 Democratic convention. It had been long, rambling, and bored many delegates. When he finally said 'In conclusion,' he got a round of cheers. The governor was going to have been a candidate himself in 1988. However, at the last minute, he withdrew. Rumours swirled that his personal life contained past affairs and mistresses that would sink his candidacy.
But in 1991, Bill Clinton threw himself into the race many said he would never win. One of his biggest supporters, and best advisers, was his wife. Back in 2016, she is now a stone's throw away from sitting in the Oval Office herself. Truly, we are still living in 1991.
Hillary, Chelsea and Bill Clinton, as he announced his bid for the White House, October 1991
Sunday, 11 September 2016
Fifteen Years On From September 11th
For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal
John F Kennedy, June 1963
It is a decade and a half since barbarity struck on September 11th 2001. Hijacked aeroplanes were used as weapons, striking at the symbols of American power in the early 21st century. The twin skyscrapers of the World Trade Centre, the centre of American economic might, were brought to the ground. The Pentagon, the ultimate symbol of the military supremacy of the Pax Americana, was left with a gaping hole. A fourth airliner came down in a field in the countryside, as the hostages and crew fought a last ditch battle to regain control of the aircraft. Nearly three thousand people were killed.
I was 11. I'd been at school all day. My mum had come to pick me up, halfway home, as per usual. The person that told me was my brother. When we got home, we put the TV on. I can't remember much after that. It's hard to separate what you saw from what you later knew had happened. But even at the age of eleven, you know these things are major. I remember the numb shock. The stunned shock at the appalling violence, at the slaughter of countless people. If I felt that at 11, Lord knows what people felt as adults.
What I didn't realise at the time was the unanimity of this reaction. In the fifteen years since, it is nearly impossible to recall or imagine the range of nations and groups that rallied around the people of the United States of America. The response of America's allies, the democracies of the Western world, was one of grief, shock, and offerings of support. More telling were the public shows of solidarity. In Belgium, a chain of people held hands around the Belgian World Trade Centre. In the UK, the guards outside Buckingham Palace played the American national anthem, and for the only time ever, the BBC's Last Night of the Proms did not close with God Save the Queen, instead fading out to The Star-Spangled Banner. Everywhere, there was public mourning, rallies and moments of silence. I remember our school holding a minute's silence.
More surprising was the outpouring of support from elsewhere in the world. Countries which have spent years pitted against America were offering comfort and support. Russia and China, America's old and new foes, were shocked, and there were scenes of genuine grief on the streets. Cuba, which languished for 50 years under American sanctions, offered medical facilities to help treat the injured. In Iran, a country which still describes America as the Great Satan, the president and the Ayatollah condemned the violence. The next international football match was marked by a two minute silence, there was a candlelit vigil in Tehran. North Korea sent its condolences. Colonel Gaddafi, whose Libyan intelligence agencies had carried out terrorist attacks against American targets in the 1980s, condemned the attacks. Even the Taliban government of Afghanistan sent their condolences, and they were sheltering the culprit. In fact, only one country broke this show of unity, and that was Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Candlelit vigil in Tehran, September 18th, 2001
But it wasn't just countries. The UN Security Council pledged to do all it could to uphold the United Nations Charter in the aftermath of the carnage. Religious leaders of every faith denounced the shedding of innocent blood in their sermons. Groups which are classified by the West as terrorist organisations lined up to denounce the attack, such as Hezbollah, the PLO, and Hamas.
I can't think of anything, before or since, that has united such a diverse range of interests and groups, who were often at each other's throats. Unfortunately, the years since have not seen this alliance maintained. George W Bush, for whatever reason, decided to attack Iraq in 2003, destabilising the Middle East, wrecking the country, and squandering nearly all of that goodwill. But, however briefly, we saw how the world could be different, and that, deep down, there is a way to unite us all.
Today we should remember the 2996 people who died on that awful September morning, fifteen years ago. The best way we can honour their memory is to strive to recreate the world that existed as the sun set on September 11th, 2001, when the world spoke with almost one voice, to show their shock and their anger, and to pledge support for people they had never met.
I think the last words go to Jon Stewart.
Sunday, 4 September 2016
The Wit and Wisdom of... Jo Grimond
In bygone days, commanders were taught that when in doubt, they should march their troops towards the sound of gunfire. I intend to march my troops towards the sound of gunfire.
Jo Grimond, Liberal Party leader, addressing the Liberal Party Assembly, 16th September 1963
Wednesday, 31 August 2016
The X-Files: Series 1, First Half
One of the advantages of being a teacher is that you do have a fair amount of time in the summer. One of the things I've done (along with walk a 100km long distance trail, visit Ireland, read a lot, and belatedly do some work) is begun watching the X-Files.
I actually remember watching the pilot episode. I can only have been five or six; BBC Two must have been repeating it. I distinctly remember watching Mulder standing in the pouring rain, pointing excitedly at a patch of road where he had felt time skip. I also remember hiding behind a pillow, despite my Dad assuring me it wasn't scary. I can only presume he chased me to bed before the end of the episode then. I also saw the 2008 film I Want to Believe. I can honestly say I remember *nothing* about it. There may have been snow in it, but beyond that, I have no idea.
I've heard only good things, so I borrowed the first series off my brother on DVD. Halfway through sending him the 19th text about it, I decided to put down my musings. Here are the results.
Pilot
Deep Throat
Squeeze
Conduit
Jersey Devil
Shadows
Ghost in the Machine
Ice
Space
Fallen Angel
Eve
Fire
Overall Observations
I actually remember watching the pilot episode. I can only have been five or six; BBC Two must have been repeating it. I distinctly remember watching Mulder standing in the pouring rain, pointing excitedly at a patch of road where he had felt time skip. I also remember hiding behind a pillow, despite my Dad assuring me it wasn't scary. I can only presume he chased me to bed before the end of the episode then. I also saw the 2008 film I Want to Believe. I can honestly say I remember *nothing* about it. There may have been snow in it, but beyond that, I have no idea.
I've heard only good things, so I borrowed the first series off my brother on DVD. Halfway through sending him the 19th text about it, I decided to put down my musings. Here are the results.
Pilot
- Why on Earth did they visit that crime scene at night?!
- I am never going to Oregon.
- Was the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark full by 1993?
Deep Throat
- The 90s called, they want their credit sequence back.
- The entire Western USA must be entirely full of hippies, cultists, millenarians, and aliens...
Squeeze
- WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS IN THAT SEWER??
- What would happen if Mr Fantastic was a force for evil.
- WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?!
Conduit
- Nice picture of Bill Clinton on the walls of the FBI offices.
- Seriously, why visit the creepy woods *AT NIGHT*?!?
- Add hell's angels to the people that are running amock in rural USA.
Jersey Devil
- Add New Jersey to the list of places to *NEVER* visit...
- Is there any police department that Mulder hasn't wound up yet?
- The sheer awkwardness when Scully told Mulder she has a date only confirms she has made the wrong choice...
- Scully has a pager...
Shadows
- Whoever these people are, they clearly don't know Mulder very well to think they can drag him in in the small hours, shown him a corpse with a mysterious cause of death, and not expect him to go chasing after this...
- Someone has nicked the incidental music from The Fugitive.
- A sinister Matilda.
- Scully never seems to see the spooky sinister stuff. How convenient...
Ghost in the Machine
- A computers story from 1993. What can possibly go wrong? (N.B. There was a dialling tone at one stage, and a floppy disk. And that's without mentioning Mulder's laptop...).
- The Will Smith I, Robot film, but done properly.
- Steve Jobs could easily have sued for libel...
- I'd love to meet a techno-anarchist...
- The smart home, two decades before it became a reality.
Ice
- A cold Blair Witch Project opening.
- Icy Cape, was Sinister Snows taken?
- That bloke from 24 and Apollo 13, he gets everywhere!
- Scully looks like a cold Princess Leia.
- For once, I'm with Scully; incinerate that Godforsaken thing...
- Nice Walkman.
- Oh yeah, throw the bullets in the snow...
- I don't think I breathed through most of that, it was that good.
Space
- Nice bit of 70s throwback at the start.
- The Martian face always creeped me out, glad it isn't just me.
- This episode is my childhood in a nutshell. 90s NASA, the shuttle and space probes!
- Mulder is me, great big giddy kid with the space programme.
- The line "I need access to your records!" has never been uttered during a space emergency before or since
- Unlike Apollo 13, I didn't know the ending; again, very little breathing...
Fallen Angel
- Great, now Wisconsin is on the list...
- Wow, that NORAD bloke was sinister...
- This is high end government conspiracy stuff- Evolution meets Predator
- You know it's good when Scully's first appearance is getting Mulder out of a cell...
- Like Alan Partridge, Mulder has a Number 1 fan...
- Gillian Anderson should have got an Emmy for the look on her face when she found out that Mulder writes into UFO magazines under a poor pseudonym.
- Oh dear, maybe Mr Helpful isn't as helpful as he appears...
Eve
- Well that's a terrifying start...
- Scully's mobile is excellent, I had a friend who had a tribute one...
- I love they have to explain what IVF is...
- Who *IS* Mr Helpful?!
- Excellent, more high end conspiracy stuff.
- This is even more impressive when you think it was four years before Dolly the Sheep.
- First gunshot discharged? I like the lack of reliance on firearms.
- Oh good grief, super-intelligent child murderer clones- not the best thing to watch before going back to school...
Fire
- Oh good, 90s rural England, as imagined by Americans.
- Yeah, Scully gave Mulder's ex the look she deserves.
- Mulder had to spell out what the IRA was.
- The FBI's arson expert needs to get out more.
- Hang on, did they just show the answer a mere 15mins in?!
- Oh good, at least there's some character development.
- Mulder, you're much better off with Scully, rather than this lunatic...
- I have never seen anyone look less comfortable in a tuxedo than Mulder.
- See, who sits with you when you're ill?!
Overall Observations
This is very much a series of its time. The culture of distrusting the government, and its expression in out of the way places in the rural United States, comes through very clearly. It isn't a huge jump to believe 'weird goings on in Nowheresville, Idaho' when the memories of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Ruby Ridge and the Waco Siege were still fresh in the national psyche.
By my rough count, it took until episode 11 for anyone to shoot at them. Modern American dramas involving law enforcement officers often don't last 11 minutes without a character discharging their weapons. I like it this way, makes it less of a shoot 'em up and more about the quality of the storylines.
It has stood the test of time remarkably well. 1993 is now a very long time ago, and yet you don't seem to notice the technological gulf which separates us from them. The clothing may be hilarious (Mulder appears to have raided M&S' '90s Man' range), the technology may be laughable, but yet you see straight through it.
Scully's facial expressions should have won Gillian Anderson an award. The relationship between the two of them makes for compelling viewing. And dear God it was scary in places. There were episodes I didn't breathe, or hid behind the sofa.
Overall, a very impressive start. I am definitely hooked. As Mulder's office wall declares, I Want to Believe.
By my rough count, it took until episode 11 for anyone to shoot at them. Modern American dramas involving law enforcement officers often don't last 11 minutes without a character discharging their weapons. I like it this way, makes it less of a shoot 'em up and more about the quality of the storylines.
It has stood the test of time remarkably well. 1993 is now a very long time ago, and yet you don't seem to notice the technological gulf which separates us from them. The clothing may be hilarious (Mulder appears to have raided M&S' '90s Man' range), the technology may be laughable, but yet you see straight through it.
Scully's facial expressions should have won Gillian Anderson an award. The relationship between the two of them makes for compelling viewing. And dear God it was scary in places. There were episodes I didn't breathe, or hid behind the sofa.
Overall, a very impressive start. I am definitely hooked. As Mulder's office wall declares, I Want to Believe.
Tuesday, 30 August 2016
Syria: The Benefit of Hindsight?
Three years ago today, I posted this beautiful quotation from Robin Cook to this blog.
It was extremely fitting. The British Parliament had voted down David Cameron's plans to launch airstrikes against President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. In the days before the vote, the world had been inching closer to war. Presidents and prime ministers in the West were preparing to lead their airman towards the sounds of gunfire. The two year old Syrian conflict was about to get a lot messier.
All of that came crashing to a halt when British MPs went against the pleading of their own Prime Minister. Their decision to prevent British involvement brought the entire march to war to a shuddering halt, as leaders fell over themselves to check with their own legislatures, or paused to gauge support. It wasn't there. And so the crisis passed, and nothing happened.
At the time, I was jubilant. The elected representatives of the British people, by putting a check on the actions of their own prime minister, had helped to prevent another war between the West and a Middle Eastern dictator. MPs had made up for the catastrophic error of judgement they had made a decade earlier, and restored some moral authority to the Mother of Parliaments.
Three years on, I am not so sure. The decision to spare the Syrian government may have been the worst foreign policy decision we have made about Syria.
Earlier in August, reports began to emerge from Syria of a fresh horror. A suburb of Damascus had been attacked from the air. It wasn't long before hospitals were crowded with people who had clearly been poisoned. Chemical warfare had returned.
There had already been accusations that chemical weapons had been used in the Syrian conflict. But this was evident. One of the clear lines of international relations, that states that use weapons of mass destruction must be held accountable, had been crossed. The War Crimes Tribunals from Yugoslavia had ruled the use of chemical weapons was one of the highest breaches of international law. Britain and America had attacked and destroyed Iraq over the merest hint of a chemical weapons programme. Would Syria be allowed to get away with this appalling slaughter?
The short answer was yes. Although Russia and the USA negotiated a deal to remove and destroy the weapons, the message was clear. The international community did not care enough about the use of chemical weapons to punish Bashar al-Assad and his government. Assad saw that the rest of the world was divided, and so continued his savage fight for survival, safe in the knowledge that not even using poisons against his own people was enough to bring down the wrath of the international community. He has used them again. As have the rebels. The Western world had apparently decided that the use of chemical weapons was not so bad it demanded punishment. That is a staggering message to have sent the rest of the world, to every state considering using these vile weapons in a future conflict. We essentially declared that this wasn't a big deal, providing they tried to make amends afterwards.
And what did the Syrian rebels make of this U-turn by the rest of the world? They had hoped that the rest of the world would be shocked into action by Assad's barbarity. Instead, the world had shown them that it did not care how many Syrian civilians died, or in what manner they died. Instead, many Syrian rebels turned to the groups that promised to take the fight to Assad, no matter what. During late 2013, a group that had existed in the shadows since the suppression of the Iraqi Insurgency announced it was taking control of several Syrian Islamist rebel groups. In honour of this new venture, it called itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
I'm not saying had we unleashed cruise missiles against Assad's chemical weapons plants that ISIS would never have come into being. But the message it pushed was that jihad would provide the path to ousting Assad. Given the timidity of the rest of the world, you can understand why many Syrian rebels chose ISIS.
When David Cameron took his proposed airstrikes to the House of Commons in August 2013, the example cited was the Iraq War of 2003. That is not right. Iraq was an illegal war, which destroyed the Iraqi state on false pretexts and inflicted misery on millions. That is not what MPs were being asked to endorse. Were it, they should have shot it down in an instant.
No, the better template seems to me to be the end of the Yugoslav Wars in 1995. There, the genocide of Srebrenica hammered home the reality of the conflict. There was outrage, and the UN asked NATO to respond. Under the hammer blows of NATO airstrikes, the Serbs were forced to the conference table. Within a few months, the Dayton Accords had imposed peace on the region, a peace which has now lasted two decades.
I'm not saying we should be trigger happy, or that bombing Syria would not have been difficult, and led to bloodshed, and possibly have made things worse. I have not suddenly become a Chicago-esque, liberal interventionist.
All I'm saying is, three years on, I am not so sure we made the right call.
It was extremely fitting. The British Parliament had voted down David Cameron's plans to launch airstrikes against President Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria. In the days before the vote, the world had been inching closer to war. Presidents and prime ministers in the West were preparing to lead their airman towards the sounds of gunfire. The two year old Syrian conflict was about to get a lot messier.
All of that came crashing to a halt when British MPs went against the pleading of their own Prime Minister. Their decision to prevent British involvement brought the entire march to war to a shuddering halt, as leaders fell over themselves to check with their own legislatures, or paused to gauge support. It wasn't there. And so the crisis passed, and nothing happened.
At the time, I was jubilant. The elected representatives of the British people, by putting a check on the actions of their own prime minister, had helped to prevent another war between the West and a Middle Eastern dictator. MPs had made up for the catastrophic error of judgement they had made a decade earlier, and restored some moral authority to the Mother of Parliaments.
Three years on, I am not so sure. The decision to spare the Syrian government may have been the worst foreign policy decision we have made about Syria.
Earlier in August, reports began to emerge from Syria of a fresh horror. A suburb of Damascus had been attacked from the air. It wasn't long before hospitals were crowded with people who had clearly been poisoned. Chemical warfare had returned.
There had already been accusations that chemical weapons had been used in the Syrian conflict. But this was evident. One of the clear lines of international relations, that states that use weapons of mass destruction must be held accountable, had been crossed. The War Crimes Tribunals from Yugoslavia had ruled the use of chemical weapons was one of the highest breaches of international law. Britain and America had attacked and destroyed Iraq over the merest hint of a chemical weapons programme. Would Syria be allowed to get away with this appalling slaughter?
The short answer was yes. Although Russia and the USA negotiated a deal to remove and destroy the weapons, the message was clear. The international community did not care enough about the use of chemical weapons to punish Bashar al-Assad and his government. Assad saw that the rest of the world was divided, and so continued his savage fight for survival, safe in the knowledge that not even using poisons against his own people was enough to bring down the wrath of the international community. He has used them again. As have the rebels. The Western world had apparently decided that the use of chemical weapons was not so bad it demanded punishment. That is a staggering message to have sent the rest of the world, to every state considering using these vile weapons in a future conflict. We essentially declared that this wasn't a big deal, providing they tried to make amends afterwards.
And what did the Syrian rebels make of this U-turn by the rest of the world? They had hoped that the rest of the world would be shocked into action by Assad's barbarity. Instead, the world had shown them that it did not care how many Syrian civilians died, or in what manner they died. Instead, many Syrian rebels turned to the groups that promised to take the fight to Assad, no matter what. During late 2013, a group that had existed in the shadows since the suppression of the Iraqi Insurgency announced it was taking control of several Syrian Islamist rebel groups. In honour of this new venture, it called itself the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
I'm not saying had we unleashed cruise missiles against Assad's chemical weapons plants that ISIS would never have come into being. But the message it pushed was that jihad would provide the path to ousting Assad. Given the timidity of the rest of the world, you can understand why many Syrian rebels chose ISIS.
When David Cameron took his proposed airstrikes to the House of Commons in August 2013, the example cited was the Iraq War of 2003. That is not right. Iraq was an illegal war, which destroyed the Iraqi state on false pretexts and inflicted misery on millions. That is not what MPs were being asked to endorse. Were it, they should have shot it down in an instant.
No, the better template seems to me to be the end of the Yugoslav Wars in 1995. There, the genocide of Srebrenica hammered home the reality of the conflict. There was outrage, and the UN asked NATO to respond. Under the hammer blows of NATO airstrikes, the Serbs were forced to the conference table. Within a few months, the Dayton Accords had imposed peace on the region, a peace which has now lasted two decades.
I'm not saying we should be trigger happy, or that bombing Syria would not have been difficult, and led to bloodshed, and possibly have made things worse. I have not suddenly become a Chicago-esque, liberal interventionist.
All I'm saying is, three years on, I am not so sure we made the right call.
Friday, 19 August 2016
Lessons from 1991- The Soviet Coup
In the summer of 1991, the world's second strongest country was in turmoil. The USSR was enveloped in a series of crises. The economy was in freefall, with major shortages of goods leading to hours of queuing for even the basic essentials. Nationalists were gaining momentum across the country, threatening to tear the multi-ethnic Soviet Union apart. In January 1991, the Soviet Army had killed 14 people in Lithuania during independence demonstrations. The newly elected Russian president was trying to make Soviet law unenforceable in Russia. Although in March the Soviet people had endorsed a new, looser, federation in a referendum, there was real uncertainty over what came next.
For many hardliners in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), they knew who was to blame for this crisis. Mikhail Gorbachev. Since coming to power in 1985, the Soviet leader had pursued policies called perestroika and glasnost. These aimed to reduce the role of the state in the economy, and make the USSR less repressive and more democratic. The results, seen by the hardliners, had been the collapse of the USSR's communist alliance in Eastern Europe. Now their own country was coming apart at the seams.
So, on August 19th 1991, the coup began. Gorbachev was at his summer retreat in Crimea. He was due to return to Moscow to sign the treaty which would loosen the bonds between the republics of the USSR. The hardliners had to act now. Tanks and soldiers rolled into Moscow. All independent newspapers, TV channels and radio stations were suddenly taken off the air. Gorbachev was placed under house arrest. A state of emergency was declared across the USSR, and the 'Gang of Eight' assumed power. The Soviet Vice-President told the world that Gorbachev was ill, and so he was assuming power.
What they had not reckoned on was Boris Yeltsin. During the 1980s, Yeltsin had been the CPSU boss in Moscow, appointed by Gorbachev. A populist reformer, he had become popular with Muscovites for not tolerating the rampant corruption in the political system. He was appointed to the Politburo, the highest platform of state power. Yeltsin was clearly going somewhere.
And then in 1987 it all changed. Yeltsin became the the first person in history to voluntarily resign from the Politburo, blasting Gorbachev in his final meeting for the slow pace of reforms. From then on, he was a thorn in Gorbachev's side. As the USSR began to open up it's elections, Yeltsin constantly won positions, racking up enormous majorities, until in June 1991 he was elected President of Russia, with 59% of the vote. As he was fond of pointing out, that was more people than had ever voted for the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The coup plotters had not taken the opportunity to delay Yeltsin in Kazakhstan, where he was until two days before their coup. Neither did they arrest him in Moscow. Instead, Yeltsin headed straight for the Russian parliament, which was besieged by the army. There, he mounted a tank, and addressed his supporters. He denounced the coup, and called for a general strike, as well as for Gorbachev to address the people on TV. Thousands flocked onto the streets, surrounding the Russian parliament. In Leningrad and other cities, wildcat strikes began.
The plotters spent the next day preparing to attack the parliament buildings. When it became obvious that they would not succeed without appalling bloodshed, they withdrew the army from Moscow on the morning of August 21st. Gorbachev was able to restore communications and denounce the coup.
Why is this significant? Two reasons. Had the coup not collapsed quickly, there was a real chance of political conflict inside the Soviet Union. In 1991, no nuclear weapons state had ever seen a coup d'etat. An already fractious situation had been made even worse by lobbing an armed takeover into the mix. Coupled with the fact that, despite cuts to the arsenal, the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over, this was a scary moment. The situation could have been extremely bloody, and no one knows how it would have panned out. As it was, the nightmare scenario was avoided.
The other significance is that this was the death knell for the USSR. Had the delegates from the republics met in Moscow on August 20th and signed the New Union Treaty, as they were due to, it is entirely possible that the USSR may have scraped through in some form or another. Instead, this showed that the power rested with the republics, not the Union. Estonia and Latvia used the crisis to declare themselves independent. During the autumn of 1991, this disintegration accelerated, until on Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev appeared on TV to inform the world that the Soviet Union was over. On Boxing Day, it passed out of history. Not, as many had predicted and feared, in the fires of a nuclear exchange, but because it was what the people wanted.
Russia's post-Soviet experience has not been a happy one. The enormous economic shock of switching suddenly from a command economy to a free market one caused misery through the 1990s. The war in Chechnya was brutal. It is easy to see why Yeltsin was elbowed out in favour of Putin. The post-Soviet world has also been challenging for the republics. Many have languished economically, or switched one dictatorship for the next. And the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea is a reminder that the problems of the USSR are still with us today. There is a certain nostalgia for the USSR in the successor states, as a time when things were better.
But the August coup, and its defeat, shows that the nostalgics are wrong. The Soviet people wanted the USSR to end. This attempt to reimpose it was defeated, not by bloodshed, but by people standing up for what they wanted. And that is what we deserve to remember.
For many hardliners in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), they knew who was to blame for this crisis. Mikhail Gorbachev. Since coming to power in 1985, the Soviet leader had pursued policies called perestroika and glasnost. These aimed to reduce the role of the state in the economy, and make the USSR less repressive and more democratic. The results, seen by the hardliners, had been the collapse of the USSR's communist alliance in Eastern Europe. Now their own country was coming apart at the seams.
So, on August 19th 1991, the coup began. Gorbachev was at his summer retreat in Crimea. He was due to return to Moscow to sign the treaty which would loosen the bonds between the republics of the USSR. The hardliners had to act now. Tanks and soldiers rolled into Moscow. All independent newspapers, TV channels and radio stations were suddenly taken off the air. Gorbachev was placed under house arrest. A state of emergency was declared across the USSR, and the 'Gang of Eight' assumed power. The Soviet Vice-President told the world that Gorbachev was ill, and so he was assuming power.
What they had not reckoned on was Boris Yeltsin. During the 1980s, Yeltsin had been the CPSU boss in Moscow, appointed by Gorbachev. A populist reformer, he had become popular with Muscovites for not tolerating the rampant corruption in the political system. He was appointed to the Politburo, the highest platform of state power. Yeltsin was clearly going somewhere.
And then in 1987 it all changed. Yeltsin became the the first person in history to voluntarily resign from the Politburo, blasting Gorbachev in his final meeting for the slow pace of reforms. From then on, he was a thorn in Gorbachev's side. As the USSR began to open up it's elections, Yeltsin constantly won positions, racking up enormous majorities, until in June 1991 he was elected President of Russia, with 59% of the vote. As he was fond of pointing out, that was more people than had ever voted for the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The coup plotters had not taken the opportunity to delay Yeltsin in Kazakhstan, where he was until two days before their coup. Neither did they arrest him in Moscow. Instead, Yeltsin headed straight for the Russian parliament, which was besieged by the army. There, he mounted a tank, and addressed his supporters. He denounced the coup, and called for a general strike, as well as for Gorbachev to address the people on TV. Thousands flocked onto the streets, surrounding the Russian parliament. In Leningrad and other cities, wildcat strikes began.
The plotters spent the next day preparing to attack the parliament buildings. When it became obvious that they would not succeed without appalling bloodshed, they withdrew the army from Moscow on the morning of August 21st. Gorbachev was able to restore communications and denounce the coup.
Why is this significant? Two reasons. Had the coup not collapsed quickly, there was a real chance of political conflict inside the Soviet Union. In 1991, no nuclear weapons state had ever seen a coup d'etat. An already fractious situation had been made even worse by lobbing an armed takeover into the mix. Coupled with the fact that, despite cuts to the arsenal, the Soviet Union had enough nuclear weapons to destroy the planet several times over, this was a scary moment. The situation could have been extremely bloody, and no one knows how it would have panned out. As it was, the nightmare scenario was avoided.
The other significance is that this was the death knell for the USSR. Had the delegates from the republics met in Moscow on August 20th and signed the New Union Treaty, as they were due to, it is entirely possible that the USSR may have scraped through in some form or another. Instead, this showed that the power rested with the republics, not the Union. Estonia and Latvia used the crisis to declare themselves independent. During the autumn of 1991, this disintegration accelerated, until on Christmas Day 1991, Gorbachev appeared on TV to inform the world that the Soviet Union was over. On Boxing Day, it passed out of history. Not, as many had predicted and feared, in the fires of a nuclear exchange, but because it was what the people wanted.
Russia's post-Soviet experience has not been a happy one. The enormous economic shock of switching suddenly from a command economy to a free market one caused misery through the 1990s. The war in Chechnya was brutal. It is easy to see why Yeltsin was elbowed out in favour of Putin. The post-Soviet world has also been challenging for the republics. Many have languished economically, or switched one dictatorship for the next. And the crisis in Ukraine and Crimea is a reminder that the problems of the USSR are still with us today. There is a certain nostalgia for the USSR in the successor states, as a time when things were better.
But the August coup, and its defeat, shows that the nostalgics are wrong. The Soviet people wanted the USSR to end. This attempt to reimpose it was defeated, not by bloodshed, but by people standing up for what they wanted. And that is what we deserve to remember.
Boris Yeltsin mounts a tank outside the Russian parliament, 19th August 1991
P.S. The Washington Post and New York Times put the consequences, and contemporary relevance, of it all much better than I ever could:
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