History has shown us that perhaps the most illegitimate defence is that “the other lot has done worse”. Unfortunately for the Labour movement, that argument has been deployed by some senior figures who clearly don’t know much about history.
We have most recently seen it deployed over the Russian and Syrian targeted bombing of aid convoys and civilian targets in Aleppo. Some on the left have said that US and UK atrocities have been ignored. However, when the nature of modern warfare leads to the slaughter of the innocents, London and Washington hold, at the very least, an inquiry. Moscow and Damascus don’t. And, in any case, how can one atrocity excuse another?
Then there is the row, gleefully pounced on by the Tory media, over alleged anti-Semitism within Labour and the report delivered by Shami Chakrabarti (just) before Jeremy Corbyn elevated her to the House of Lords. The defence is to dwell on atrocities committed by the Zionist state against Palestine. Much of that, of course, is justified, but the extent to which it is used to condone casual racism and religious bigotry is not.
And to accuse Israel of colonialism is to, perhaps wilfully, ignore history. The charge levied that Jewish capitalism contributed to the recent economic collapse is as poisonous now as it was in the 1920s and 1930s – but perhaps not laughable, as is any claim that Hitler was, deep down, a Zionist.
Trevor Phillips, one of Britain’s most experienced equality campaigner, but hated in certain narrow leftist circles because of his time as Labour chair in the early days of the Greater London Authority, has taken head-on some of the shibboleths.
He has written movingly about how, when his family moved from the Caribbean to North London in the early 1950s: “The Jews and the Irish were the only people in our neighbourhood who did not display open hostility towards us”. That was, in part, a legacy of the Battle of Cable Street (its 80th anniversary was marked on October 4), a defining moment in 20th century British working-class history about which some sections of the left show a worrying ignorance. Irish dockers and railway workers were among those who helped East London Jews build the barricades that repelled Oswald Mosley’s fascists. And it should not be forgotten that Tony Benn, a hero for many on the left, was in most part a fan of the US, despite all its historic domestic and foreign policy flaws.
Labour’s left, right and centre have, over the last century, excused wrong turns by saying that the Tories would have done worse. Hence the introduction, during Tony Blair’s administration, of student tuition fees, later tripled by the Tory-led coalition. The current Labour leader rightly rebelled against that but he cannot use the Tory defence to justify current twists and turns in official policy.
Then there’s Brexit and the negotiations which have led Remainers across the spectrum, including parts of the left, to argue for a retrial. Labour needs to clarify where it stands on Brexit – hard, soft or what, precisely?
Dan Hodges, the Blairite columnist and blogger, wrote: “At the moment people are staring across the Atlantic aghast at the spectacle of Donald Trump laying waste to the US democratic process. ‘Where does someone like Trump come from?’ they ask. This. This is where a Donald Trump comes from. When the people speak and their politicians stick their fingers in their ears and say: ‘We can’t hear you.’”
It sticks in the craw, but Hodges has a point. And a point which could also apply to what currently masquerades as political debate. Notwithstanding, the travails of UKIP, would be a huge mistake to assume that the equivalent of Donald Trump could never emerge in the Britain.