Why I still stand with Jeremy Corbyn

 

I still stand with Jeremy Corbyn because I believe that the U.K. can be a more equal society, that there is nothing inevitable or natural about inequality, child poverty, homelessness or racism. I believe, like Jeremy, that the majority of wars could be avoided by diplomacy and that all peoples have the right to a say in their own lives. I believe, with Jeremy, that a better future is possible and that a more compassionate, empathetic, and less febrile politics is possible if we concentrate on what is in the interests of the many not just on what serves the status quo. 

 

The first time Jeremy Corbyn crossed my radar was during the miners’ strike in 1985 where, if my memory serves, he shared a platform with Paul Foot and Peter Heathfield. At the time he was a relatively unknown backbench MP. The next time was in 2001 when he was a fierce and principled campaigner against the illegal war in Iraq. And then, I suspect like many others, I forgot about him. Until 2015.

 

I was not a member of the Labour Party in 2015, having left in 1985 following the miners strike and Kinnock’s disgraceful attack on Liverpool City Council which prompted veteran left-winger Eric Heffer to walk out of conference. I had only joined in 1983 spurred on by my utter hatred of Mrs Thatcher. 

 

Although I had many friends in the party leaving was not a problem as I had reached a conclusion that the Labour Party was the least political organisation I was involved in. I continued to be politically active chairing the miners support group, leading a tent city campaign against youth homelessness, campaigning on pension rights, against the poll tax and joining picket lines as and when I could. But, whilst always voting Labour I kept them at arms length and felt none the worse for it.

 

2015. The right-wing of Labour were determined to keep Jeremy Corbyn off the leadership ballot. Jeremy managed to scrape together the required number of MP nominees, many who nominated him safe in the knowledge that this would be a humiliating defeat for the left. Even before the ballot was held Blairite John McTernan said MPs who "lent" their nominations to Jeremy to "broaden the debate" were "morons". Margaret Becket admitted: "I am one of them." The really moronic act was to approve changes brought in by the previous leader Ed Miliband, which allowed people to become a supporter for £3 and get a vote for the party’s leader. I didn’t but many did.

 

I can remember the day the result was announced. We were travelling back from Liverpool where my son had been for a university open day. I confidently predicted that Corbyn would come fourth. I had not expected him to win, I certainly hadn’t expected him to win so convincingly. It is worth reminding ourselves of the result if only so we can gloat over the humiliation of Liz Kendall.

 

Corbyn won 251,417 votes (59.3%). His nearest rival was Andy Burnham who received 80,462 (19%). Ironically, given that she was later christened the real leader by The Guardian and various Blairites Yvette Cooper received 71,928 votes (17%). Whilst Liz Kendall managed a desultory 18,857 votes (4.5%). It was interesting, however, that Jeremy received a majority neither from MPs, the majority of whom were horrified by his victory or existing party members, of whom 49.6% voted for Jeremy. We probably never noticed at the time but there was a narrow majority in the constituencies who wanted a return to Blairism. What we also did not realise at the time was that whilst the left were celebrating, the right started organising to take the party back.

 

In my car travelling back to Wales I was shell shocked by the result but still not convinced I wanted to rejoin a party I had left vowing never to return. I was wrong. Again. Suddenly, the Labour Party was the only place to be if you were a socialist in the U.K. I was just a little slow reaching that conclusion. Not so others.

 

In his excellent book about Jeremy’s campaign The Candidate Alex Nunn describes the feeling as the result was announced:

“In front rooms around the country there was unbridled joy as Corbyn supporters watched the news break on live TV. Michelle (Chelley) Ryan, the party member who had initiated the petition demanding an anti-austerity candidate all the way back in May 2015, was waiting nervously with her family in Worthing: ‘We were all holding hands, all sat on the sofa. I couldn’t look at the tele. They announced the result and we were just screaming. Next door – I hope they’re into politics because we were literally screaming and crying. It was magical. I’m getting tearful talking about it, reliving it.’” (Alex Nunn, The Candidate, 2016, p.303)

 

Do you suppose anybody was crying tears of joy the day SirKeir was elected? No, me neither, though I did feel like crying.

Even before Jeremy had completed his victory speech the right were planning to overturn his triumph. Jamie Reed, an otherwise forgettable MP declared that he would not be part of a Shadow Cabinet. Others also refused posts they had never been offered. They included:Tristram Hunt, Chris Leslie, Rachel Reeves, Emma Reynolds and John Woodcock. At Labour HQ in what was to signify a coordinated attempt to undermine Jeremy’s leadership staff wore black in mourning at the loss of their party. We now know thanks to the leaked report that this was the start of a coordinated campaign by Labour staff to prevent the election of a Labour Government.

 

As Craig Murray concludes after having read the report:

“Labour HQ was staffed by right wingers so vehemently anti-Corbyn that they actively wanted the Conservatives to win elections. I think it is important to understand just how right wing they really are. Senior members of staff were messaging each other opposing any increase in corporation tax and opposing re-nationalisation of the railways as “Trot” policies.”

 

But it wasn’t just embittered MPs or recalcitrant Labour staffers that began a blitzkreig of negativity against Jeremy. The so-called left-leaning Guardian wasted no time in undermining him. As the always excellent Media Lens point out in a recent briefing:

“In an article titled, ‘Leather jackets, flat caps and tracksuits: how to dress if you’re a leftwing politician’, Hadley Freeman wrote in the Guardian in 2016:

‘Now, personally, some of us think that Corbyn could consider updating his ideas as much as his wardrobe… He must spend veritable hours cultivating that look, unless there’s a store on Holloway Road that I’ve missed called 1970s Polytechnic Lecturer 4 U. Honestly, where can you even buy tracksuits like the ones he sports?’ 

This wasn’t racism, but it was classism. Much of the focus on Corbyn being insufficiently ‘prime ministerial’ was establishment prejudice targeting a working class threat. Corbyn didn’t dress like the elite he was challenging – he wore ‘embarrassing’ sandals rather than ‘statesmanlike’ black leather shoes; an ’embarrassing’ jacket rather than the traditional long, black ‘presidential’ overcoat – just as (Russell) Brand didn’t know the ‘correct’ way to say ‘hegemony’. Corbyn was second-rate, Polytechnic material; not first-class, Oxford material, like Freeman.”

I rejoined the party in time for the Owen Smith leadership attempt. This followed the absolute refusal of the majority of the PLP to allow a little thing like democracy get in the way of their anti-left prejudice. By 26^thJune 2016, just 2 months into his leadership The Guardian was reporting:

“More than half of the Labour shadow cabinet is expected to stand down on Sunday in a major coup against Jeremy Corbyn, triggered by the result of the EU referendum and the leader’s decision to sack Hilary Benn.”

I’ve been active politically since the 1980’s and was under no illusions how perfidious Labour’s right were, but even I was shocked by this. Essentially, the PLP having been roundly defeated in a democratic election declared themselves all-knowing and all-powerful. ‘Forget democracy,’ they said ‘we know better than 250,000 members. Give us exactly what we want or we’ll paralyse the party.’ The sheer arrogance of these people was astounding, but it was always based on a series of lies which they concocted. 

It was the lie that Jeremy was responsible for the Euro referendum result, that Jeremy could not lead, that Jeremy was unelectable, and most pernicious of all that Jeremy, a life long anti-racist campaigner who had been arrested outside Africa House demonstrating against apartheid was an anti-Semite. In truth, what they hated about Jeremy, and still do was his honesty, his integrity, his compassion, his ability to galvanise thousands of people, especially young people, who finally had a leader and policies they could actually believe in. The very qualities that attracted an additional 300,000 members were the same qualities that the professional politicians of the PLP neither respected nor understood. It was those qualities that made old lefties like me see Jeremy as the real deal and those qualities that ensured that I, and thousands like me, stood with Jeremy and refused to believe the lies that were being spread by his enemies.

In 2016 Hilary Benn’s treachery was, supposedly, a result of the EU referendum for which the “Bitterites” (as his detractors in the Labour establishment were labelled), completely without foundation, blamed Jeremy. This lie was repeated for four years. In order to show his ‘principled’ and serious credentials for leadership, Benn voted against the party whip to support British bombing of war-torn Syria. Cheered by the Conservatives, Benn took pleasure in justifying the murder of unarmed women and children with one aim: to embarrass his own leader. No leader, even one as conciliatory as Jeremy Corbyn could have done anything other than sack him from the Shadow Cabinet. This sacking prompted the pre-arranged mass resignation from the Shadow Cabinet, the eventual vote of no confidence from a PLP who were always clear that the political leadership of the party was a personal matter, and then the ill-fated leadership challenge from Owen Smith.

But, let’s not forget what Benn and his band of seemingly pre-pubescent anti-democrats were voting for. These are the words of Times correspondent Marie Colvin:

“They call it the widows’ basement. Crammed amid makeshift beds and scattered belongings are frightened women and children trapped in the horror of Homs, the Syrian city shaken by two weeks of relentless bombardment.

Among the 300 huddling in this wood factory cellar in the besieged district of Baba Amr is 20-year-old Noor, who lost her husband and her home to the shells and rockets.

“Our house was hit by a rocket so 17 of us were staying in one room,” she recalls as Mimi, her three-year-old daughter, and Mohamed, her five-year-old son, cling to her abaya.”

This was written in 2012, four years before Benn’s blood-soaked rebellion and believe me things had got no better by then, or since despite British bombing. It is one thing to oppose a leader of a party on factional grounds quite another to use women and children as collateral damage. It is worth reminding ourselves who were the architects of this “embarrassment”. They include 17 current Shadow Cabinet members (including Alison McGovern, Stephen Doughty, Peter Kyle, Lucy Powell and Liz Kendall), 8 defectors,  11 who have retired from parliament, 12 who lost their seats in 2019 and a handful still on the back benches who were opposed to Jeremy throughout his leadership including Margaret Hodge, Angela Eagle, Maria Eagle, Chris Bryant, Dan Jarvis, John Spellar and Yvette Cooper. Each one should hang their heads in shame, and anybody calling themselves a socialist who steps foot on a single doorstep to support them should join them in that shame. 

Lest we forget what exactly they were supporting. Craig Jones, a lecturer in political geography at the University of Newcastle pointed out a couple of years ago:

“Operation Inherent Resolve consists of more than 60 coalition partners, including all NATO members and many local forces on the ground and in the region. Thirteen of these coalition members are bombing in Syria, as are the air forces of Russia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and the Assad government. The UK plays a key role in the coalition and is second only to the US in terms of the number of airstrikes it has conducted in Iraq and Syria.

“As of August 9 2017, Operation Inherent Resolve had conducted 13,331 strikes in Iraq and 11,235 strikes in Syria. According to the US Air Force, the coalition has fired well over 100,000 weapons as part of the operation. 

“Airwars found that between August 8 2014 and March 31 2018, 6,259 to 9,604 civilians are “likely to have died in coalition actions”.

The bombing of Syria has not stopped the loss of life or made any humanitarian impact at all. It has helped increase the profits of arms manufacturers. Those 60 Labour MPs who voted not with their conscience (they never had one), or for the benefit of the people of Syria. They voted out of pure spite. We often see the internal politicking in the party as just about politics, power and control. As the Syria vote shows it is about much more. It is, literally, about people’s lives. The fact is that as a representative of the Labour Party you either care about preserving life or you don’t. On every occasion when it has mattered, including in 2016, Jeremy Corbyn (and a handful of other, all left, MP’s) have been on the right side of history. That is a major reason why I continue to stand with Jeremy.

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