Israel's blockade of Gaza is counterproductive

Before Israel's dirty disproportionate war on Gaza killed 1300 Palestinians, Israel imposed an economic blockade for a year and a half, refusing to allow fuel, medicines and other essential goods into Gaza. No fuel means no electricity. Food supplies were also affected.

It was in the context of the economic blockade that a minority of Palestinians upped their rocket attacks on Israel - it was an act of desperation.

In November aid agency Oxfam called on world leaders to break Israel's blockade of Gaza, fearing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel wished to destablise the elected Hamas government of Gaza. Israel accuses Hamas of launching rocket attacks on Israel.

Yet Israeli actions are only managing to entrench and strengthen the power of Hamas in Gaza. While the following article from the UK Telegraph attempts to play the facile Fatah good; Hamas bad game that appears to fascinate the Western media, it makes some interesting observations.

"In the two weeks since Israel withdrew its soldiers and tanks from the crowded strip of land, inhabited by 1.4 million people, Hamas is deploying a mixture of money, manpower and physical force to restore its kind of order....Hamas has also established almost complete control of private food distribution, using the scores of tunnels along the border with Egypt which have re-opened since the war, and which are now the only source of fresh produce in the markets."

"Thanks in part to an Israeli embargo on anyone moving cash from outside into Gaza, Hamas also has a near monopoly on the currency used in day-to-day transactions. The official banking system is desperately short of paper currency. But Hamas smuggles money through the tunnels from Egypt, distributing it to loyalists and to some of the thousands of supporters who lost their homes or relatives in the Israeli onslaught.

Late last week Ahmed al-Kurdi, the Hamas social affairs minister, personally delivered boxes of cheques totalling $2 million (£1.4 million) to a Hamas tent in the Jebaliya refugee camp. As his aides checked people's identity cards and logged their details on computers, Mr Kurdi handed out 6,000 pre-printed cheques, for different sums, to be cashed at money exchange shops also run by Hamas. With the banks forced to restrict the cash they can give out, the Hamas outlets are thriving - increasing the group's influence even further.

"There is a severe scarcity of cash you can carry in your hand in Gaza," said Mike Bailey, a spokesman for Oxfam. "If Hamas is dispensing cash it will probably make political overtures at the same time and the example of what that means for political power is there for all to see.". Like many aid workers, he is puzzled by the Israeli logic in going to war to crush Hamas, then apparently permitting Hamas to shore up its power by supplying all of Gaza's cash. "It makes the reason for all that destruction by the Israelis all the more perplexing," he said.

So much like the sanctions imposed by the US on Iraq during the 1990s, the economic blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel is not only responsible for great human misery and death, politically it is having the opposite effect to what was supposedly intended. Of course it could be just another facite of Israel's brutal policy of collective punishment - its answer to the decision of the Palestinian people to elect a Hamas government.

Whatever one may think of Hamas, I think it deserves more respect as the democratically elected government of Gaza. If the people of Gaza have functioning political institutions there will be less need to resort to rocket attacks. The Palestinians are not solely to blame - the world bears some responsibility for appeasing Israel and ignoring the rights of the Palestinian people under international law.

Palestinians have faced an illegal military occupation for over 30 years.

When Tony Blair suggests talking to Hamas - this only demonstrates how out of step Israel, the US and the rest of the wing nuts really are.

Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?

With all the recent talk about Iran resuming its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy.

I find it amazing the Press can have so many articles about this issue yet fail to address the obvious question - 'for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?'

As Simon Jenkins points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map.
"I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?"

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the BBC that the West is partly to blame for the Iran nuclear crisis for allowing Israel to develop a nuclear arsenal. He said nuclear weapons benefited no-one, and called for a nuclear-free zone in the Gulf. It would be good to see al-Faisal get some strong support for this idea, as a WMD free Middle East ought to be the goal of any sane policy. Better still, no Security Council Resolution would be required to put such a ban in place, as it is already provided for under existing resolutions.

In 2003 George Bush and Tony Blair attempted to use Security Council resolution 687 as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. While 687 provided no such authorisation, it did call for the elimination of Iraqi WMD and delivery systems as a step towards "the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all other missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons." (Article 14). So if 687 is really to be upheld, then pressure must be put on Israel to disarm.

A good start would be for the US and the UK to publicly recognise Israel's possession of nuclear weapons (as far as I know they have never officially recognised this) and ask Israel to agree to arms reduction talks. This would have the advantage of greatly increasing the diplomatic pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, as it would be much more difficult for Tehran to claim they need nukes for defensive purposes. Many Arab states feel threatened by Israel's nuclear status, especially as Israeli nuclear armed submarines have been known to patrol the coasts of Iran and Pakistan.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims Iran 'does not need nuclear arms' and that his country is only asserting its right to peaceful nuclear technology, as allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Unfortunately, countries such as Israel made similar denials in the mid-1960s when they were developing nuclear weapons, so any such denials ought to be taken with a grain of salt, unless said country is happy for the IAEA to make unhinded inspection visits.

In Iran's case, Ahmadinejad needs to be asked why it is so essential for Iran to gain nuclear power stations when the country is sitting on one of the most plentiful gas supplies in the world.

If Iran is successful in developing nuclear arms - this will be yet another dismal failure for the foreign policy of George W Bush. North Korea is named in the 'axis of evil' speech, continues its nuclear weapons programme and withdraws from the NPT. Iran is named in the 'axis of evil' speech, and is now 'breaking the seals' on its three nuclear facilities. It worried U.N chief inspector Hans Blix that in invading Iraq, Bush may have sent precisely the wrong message - the US only attacks countries that cannot defend themselves.

And like most policy questions - it all comes down to who we want to help. Simon Jenkins again.
"All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for western strategists is which of these people they want to help."
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Edit 14/9/09: Despite this post being over three years old it continues to generate quite a few hits. It is pleasing to know so many people are asking the same basic question that motivated my post. I turned this post into a longer article for Peace Researcher, where I also looked at some of the arguments related to nuclear power. This was published in December 2007.

Make Poverty History into a cheer squad for Tony and Gordon

ZNet carries an interesting article 'Inside the Murky World of the UK's Make Poverty History Campaign' (MPH). Stuart Hodkinson explains how conservative forces within MPH have sought to emphasise the role of celebrities and moderate MPHs anti-neoliberal policies to ensure its public face is indistinguishable from the policies of Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown. This has caused considerable tension within the MPH coalition.

"For the past six months, some of the UK's leading development and environmental NGOs have been increasingly vocal in their unease about a campaign high on celebrity octane but low on radical politics. One insider, active in a key MPH working group, argues there "has often been a complete divergence between the democratically agreed message of our public campaign and the actual spin that greets the outside world". He is angry: "Our real demands on trade, aid and debt, and criticisms of UK government policy in developing countries have been consistently swallowed up by white bands, celebrity luvvies and praise upon praise for Blair and Brown being ahead of other world leaders on these issues."
..
Critics argue that on paper at least, MPH's policy demands on the UK government are fairly radical, especially its calls for "trade justice not free trade", which would require G8 and EU countries, notably the UK, to stop forcing through free market policies on poor countries as part of aid, trade deals or debt relief....With additional calls for the regulation of multinationals and the democratisation of the IMF and World Bank, John Hilary, Campaigns Director of UK development NGO, War on Want, has a point when he asserts that MPH's policies "strike at the very heart of the neo-liberal agenda."

But when these policies are relayed to a public audience they become virtually indistinguishable from those of the UK Government. This is due, according to Hodkinson, to the conservative role played within the MPH coalition by Oxfam, the Trade Union Federation and Comic Relief co-founder Richard Curtis.

A recent cover story of the New Statesman 'Why Oxfam is failing Africa' warned that Oxfam's relationship, both in terms of people and policy was "far too cosy" to New Labour. It also pointed to the key role in MPH played by Oxfam's Sarah Kline, a former World Bank official who champions the organisation's 'constructive dialogue' approach with the IMF and World Bank.

In my previous post I argued that despite its political aims, the commentary of Live 8 was not political enough. Despite noble aims, Live 8 could only be a 'sticking plaster' if it continued to ignore the underlying power issues that lead to humanitarian disasters. Apparently Richard Curtis is to blame here (much as I love his comedy writing).

[T]he most destructive aspect of [Richard] Curtis's involvement, critics argue, has been his personal intervention in the public communications of MPH to ensure that the politics are routinely buried by the personality as part of his own personal and completely unaccountable strategy to change G8 policy: "Richard's philosophy has become painfully obvious to everyone in MPH," one critic argues. "He believes that we should support the efforts of the UK government to bring other G8 countries into its line on aid and debt, and is adamant that Brown and Blair should not be criticised."

A key Comic Relief official reported that Curtis "found it difficult" to turn against the government because of his personal friendship with Gordon Brown.

"Frustration would not perhaps be so intense if there was real pluralism and democracy in MPH's organising practices. But as the G8 draws near, MPH apparatchiks have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that come the 2 July rally in Edinburgh, only the branded, monolithic message and speakers of MPH are seen and heard. The MPH Coordinating Team, which includes Oxfam, Comic Relief and the TUC, has also twice unanimously vetoed the Stop the War Coalition's (STWC) application to join MPH on the Orwellian grounds that the issues of economic justice and development are separate from that of war, and STWC's participation in Edinburgh on 2 July would confuse the message. It will be interesting, then, to see if Oxfam bans itself - it is currently leading a global campaign for an international arms treaty on the basis that "uncontrolled arms fuels poverty and suffering". STWC has since been banned from even having a stall at the MPH rally.

While a focus on debt, aid and trade does offer opportunities to the global justice movement, Hodkinson warns the direction of the MPH campaign also threatens to actively derail the movement at the same time.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of MPH's blending of its message with that of the government's, and its exclusion of critics North and South, is that it enables the state and media to draw a sharp line in the sand between the 'good protester' attending the 2 July Edinburgh rally, and the 'bad protester' - anyone who is contemplating engaging in civil disobedience against what is, after all, an illegitimate institution and set of governments responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent people each year.

Those UK development NGOs unhappy with MPH's direction know this only too well, but refuse to publicly walk away from a campaign that is actively derailing the global justice movement. Although it may sound cynical, the reason is simple: MPHistory is a money-spinner. "Although we hate the message and the corporate branding, some NGOs are making thousands of pounds through the wristbands," one arch critic admitted. "We have loads of new people on our database interested in our campaigns, and because the issues of trade, debt and aid are now suddenly sexy again, we have new funding bodies approaching us to do projects and research. MPH is paying for my job for the next 3 years."

Categories: UK, Politics, Live 8

Blair's re-election under FPP and some NZ comparisions

On Friday I watched BBC World for almost 7 hours straight. Home from work with a flu, I wasn't capable of doing much else. Luckily there was an election to watch. Overall I thought the BBC coverage of the UK election was excellent, my only gripe being the almost complete lack of coverage for the smaller parties (listing number of seats won as 'others' does not tell you much)

With thousands of the British left deserting Tony Blair for the Liberal Democrats over issues such as the Iraq war and 'top-up' fees, there was a danger the perverse electoral system known as First Past the Post (FPP) would split the anti-tory vote.

Through 7 hours there were many panellists commenting on the results as they came in. I found one recurring theme very interesting - the faults of the UK FPP electoral system. Both the presenters and 'commentators' felt the need to explain the vacancies of FPP to 'international viewers', remarking on how unusual it was for a European country like the UK not to have a form of proportional representation, where parties like the Liberal Democrats would gain a share of seats that reflected their level of popular support. I felt a great sense of deja vu - it reminded me of similar discussions in New Zealand on election night 1993, our last FPP election.

One BBC commentator pointed out that while many of the British people did not regard George Bush as a legitimate president in 2000 on the basis he did not win the popular vote, they did not seem to realise a similarly undemocratic result could also occur in their own backyard. This is exactly what happened in FPP elections in New Zealand in 1978 and 1981, where a National government was re-elected with a majority of seats, despite the fact the Labour party actually gained more votes.

Tony Blair has been re-elected with the lowest popular support (35.2%) of any government in UK history, yet Labour has gained 55.1% of the total seats. Over 64% of British voters wanted somebody else, with 32.3% supporting the Conservatives, 22% the Lib Dems and 10.4% supporting other parties.

In 1993 National kept the NZ government benches despite only gaining the support of 35.1% of New Zealand voters (gained 50 seats), a record low for NZ. The left vote was split between Labour (34.7%, 45 seats) and the Alliance (18.2%, two seats), a legacy of the forth Labour government's far right economic policy, including large scale privatisation and introduction of tuition fees. In 1993 NZ Labour was still led by a right winger (Mike Moore) and included right-wing MPs in its caucus (Prebble). Likewise, the split of the UK left vote in 2005 can be squarely blamed on the Blairites. Invading Iraq, removing civil liberties, allowing universities to set tuition fees and privatisation of public services ought to have undermined UK Labour's traditional support. Thankfully for democracy, it did.

Hopefully for democracy the emergence of genuine three party politics in the UK will demonstrate the need for electoral reform, as greater support for 'third' parties did in NZ from 1978 onwards. Once FPP may have looked like an innovation in democracy, now it's just a dinosaur.

Blair's Attorney General warned war was illegal

Ever since the leadup to the Iraq war in 2003 there have been persistent rumors the UK Attorney General first advised Tony Blair such a war would be illegal under international law. While a 'summary' of AG Lord Goldsmith's legal opinion was made public and appeared to give the war a green light, the Blair government have consistently refused to release the full 13-page document given to Cabinet ministers on the 7th of March. It is now clear why.

According to the Mail on Sunday, Goldsmith's original advice included six grounds in which the proposed war with Iraq could be challenged under international law. These caveats were excised from the summary when it was published 10 days later.

• In law, there was a strong argument that it was the job of the United Nations - not Mr Blair - to rule whether Iraq had defied the UN's order to disarm;
• Goldsmith stated UN resolution 1441 ("serious consequences") might not be enough to justify war because it did not include the phrase "all necessary", the UN's usual wording for war;
• It would be much 'safer' and desirable to go to war armed with a second specific UN resolution.
• He warned Mr Blair it could be difficult to revive UN Resolution 678 to justify war, as this resolution focused on removing Saddam from Kuwait and did not permit an invasion of Iraq itself.
• Goldsmith drew attention to the continuing work of UN weapons inspector Hans Blix and his team. On the same day the advice was written Blix said Iraq was being more helpful generally and no weapons of mass destruction had been found.
• The Attorney General explained that US President George Bush faced fewer legal constraints, as Congress had voted Bush special war-making powers. The US government's opinion on the legality of the war did not apply to Britain.
  

When Blair claimed that the advice was identical to the 'summary' which declared the war legal it is now clear he was not telling the truth. The AG changed his views, a suggestion given further credence by the uncensored resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurt, who resigned her post as deputy chief legal adviser at the Foreign Office over the Iraq war. US National Security Council legal chief John Bellinger even went as far as to boast "We had a problem with your Attorney General who was telling us it was legally doubtful under international law. We straightened him out."

Demonstrating the folly of attempting to keep such potentially explosive advice under wraps, serving only fuel speculation of its contents, it has now come out a mere 11 days before a general election. Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy is right when he says the issue will "not go away" until Lord Goldsmith's legal advice is published in full. At the very least, this would allow an accurate assessment of Goldsmith's concerns over legality in their proper context of the entire 13-page opinion.

In response, Tony Blair is warning that attempts to "send me a message" at the ballot box may cause Labour to lose marginal constituencies and lead to a Tory Government by the back door. Perhaps Blair should have thought of that before he adopted a Thatcherite economic policy, involved Britain in a war of dubious legality, and then told porkies to cover his tracks. While I regard the Liberal Democrats as a right wing party with some left wing policies (such as on education), their presence in a balance of power type arrangement could be a positive influence on Labour in the next term.

PS: I attempted to post this yesterday, only to have blogger clear the post before I could upload it :(

Wilmshurt letter on Iraq war further evidence of increasing politicisation of British civil service

The UK Guardian has obtained the uncensored resignation letter of Elizabeth Wilmshurt, deputy chief legal adviser at the foreign Office until she resigned over the Iraq war. In her resignation letter Wilmshurst dammed the invasion as a "crime of aggression" and "so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

When the Blair Government first released the letter under the new Freedom of Information Act, they left out a key passage, a passage suggesting that the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, believed war against Iraq was illegal - a view he expressed less than two weeks before the Tommies went to Uncle Sam's aid. Wilmshurst says the Foreign Office gave consistent advice that a war would be illegal, before and after UN security council resolution 1441.

She says that was also Lord Goldsmith's view until March 7, when he sent a 13-page written legal opinion to Tony Blair. Ms Wilmshurst does not reveal the content of this advice. However, reports that the attorney warned Mr Blair that British participation in the invasion could be ruled unlawful by an international court have not been denied by the government.

The failure of Blair to obtain a second UN resolution caused both Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Goldsmith to change their view again. How can legality be so elastic...

In the censored passage of her letter, Ms Wilmshurst points out that the attorney's view changed yet again into a new "official line". That is a reference to a parliamentary answer released by Lord Goldsmith on March 17, the eve of a crucial Commons vote on military action. In this, the attorney said - on the basis of advice from Mr Blair - that it was "plain" Iraq was in breach of its disarmament obligations.

The Freedom of Information Act forced the release of the censored piece of the letter, even though the Foreign Office claimed it was not in the "public interest" - yeah right - on reading the previously deleted passage its pretty clear it is not the interests of the public that are being protected.

My views accord with the advice that has been given consistently in this office before and after the adoption of SCR [UN security council resolution] 1441, and with what the attorney general gave us to understand was his view prior to his letter of 7 March.

Whether or not it could be said that a certain dossier was 'sexed up', the Wilmshurst letter makes it pretty clear heavy political pressure was applied on the public service to provide the conclusions Blair wanted.

It is unfortunate that the debate within the civil service over the Iraq war will encourage greater politicisation of the service. The tradition of British public servants providing 'free and frank' advice is under threat, as is the notion of a professional career service. Such principles have guided the British civil service since the mid 19th century (following the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms), and were the basis for the reform of New Zealand's public service in 1912. The cost of Tony's arrogance over the Iraq war could be a public service littered with cronies (or mini Tonys).

Nevertheless, I should congratulate the UK Labour Government for passing the Freedom of Information Act, even if it was long overdue.

Distorted media coverage of kidnappings in Iraq will only lead to more deaths.

Many aspects of the media coverage of the latest kidnapping in Iraq trouble me. I believe the case of Margaret Hassan especially highlights the biases of western media, not to mention the self-interested reactions of western politicians.

As news of the kidnapping broke, reactions in the media were full of surprise and dismay that a British person who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, is married to an Iraqi and considers herself to be an Iraqi could be the victim of the kidnap gangs. This is only a surprise if one assumes it is unusual for an Iraqi to be kidnapped. In fact, many more Iraqis than westerners have lost family members to the kidnap gangs, money often being the primary motive, as ransoms become a barbarous form of 'gangster capitalism'. Consider the following from a "girl blog from Iraq" Baghdad Burning, posted on the 3rd of October.

I'm very relieved the Italian hostages have been set free... and I hope the other innocent people are also freed. Thousands of Iraqis are being abducted and some are killed, while others are returned... but it is distressing to see so many foreigners being abducted. It's like having a guest attacked in your own home by the neighbor's pit bull- you feel a sense of responsibility even though you know there was no way you could have prevented it.

I wasn't very sympathetic though, when that Islamic group came down from London to negotiate releasing Kenneth Bigley. I do hope he is returned alive, but where are all these Islamic groups while Falluja, Samarra, Sadir City and other places are being bombed? Why are they so concerned with a single British citizen when hundreds of Iraqis are dying by the month? Why is it 'terrorism' when foreigners set off bombs in London or Washington or New York and it's a 'liberation' or 'operation' when foreigners bomb whole cities in Iraq? Are we that much less important?

Tony Blair said his government would do everything it could to secure Ms Hassan's release. "This is someone who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, someone who is immensely respected, someone who is doing her level best to help the country," he said. "It shows you the type of people we are up against, that they are prepared to kidnap somebody like this.". This is all he said on the issue, see Downing Street statement. By turning the issue into a simple US vs THEM dichotomy, Mr Blair does little to explain the possible reasons behind the kidnapping, and thus does not appear to be engaging in the key task of assisting Ms Hassan's release. To some, his comments could appear to be a politically motivated attempt to remind the anti-war faction of his party that they are 'terrorist' targets too.

Felicity Arbuthnot, an Irish freelance journalist and long-time friend of Ms Hassan appears to have given Blair a clear rebuke when she said she hoped that Blair would step back and allow the Irish government to lead efforts to secure her release. In contrast to Blair, Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, said his thoughts were with the Hassans: "I stand ready to contribute in any way we can to help secure her release." (Guardian)

Blair's US vs THEM language go right to the heart of my second key concern regarding the media coverage, in which the kidnappers are described as terrorists, insurgents, or militants, often with a suggestion of a possible connection to Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In fact, such descriptions tell us very little. They also give the erroneous impression that the 'kidnap gangs' are a uniform group with a common goal. Consider the kidnapping of John Martinkus, as reported by his journalist friend Christopher Allbritton on the 18th October (click this link - its an amazing story).

We're not sure what all happened during [John's] captivity, but he was able to persuade his captors that he was an Australian and a friend to the resistance and not to the Americans. It appears, by the kidnappers' statements and questions, that they were nationalists and not jihadis, lucky for John. Also, he was lucky for not being American, because the kidnappers said if he had been, they'd have killed him quickly....

At one point, one man disappeared, saying he would check out John's story. He came back after about 15 minutes, John said, convinced John was who he said he was. We suspect they Googled John, because they referenced previous stories he had covered.
....
John was lucky -- very lucky. He was picked up by nationalists who, we hear, are getting out of the kidnapping and beheading business. He wasn't an American. He had a pedigree of lefty, anti-war reporter. And he fell in with a (more or less) kind-hearted bunch who were just doing their job as national resistance fighters. (He said they expressed concern that he wasn't married and that his living arrangements in the Hamra weren't safe. Bizarrely, they offered to let him stay with them the next time he came to Iraq -- I'm sure.)

Not sure I would go as far as to call them a "kind hearted bunch", but it does give some hope the violence will diminish when Iraqis are given back their country free of foreign armies. It might be unlikely that the group holding Ms Hassan are such a "kind hearted bunch", one can only hold on to the slim hope her captors also know how to google. Margaret Hassan strongly campaigned against the cruel sanctions regime, enforced by the US following the Gulf War of 1991. "In the build-up to the war last year, she warned MPs of the humanitarian catastrophe another conflict would bring. In January 2003, she travelled to New York and spent a week briefing the members of the UN security council and UN agencies on the dire consequences of military action" (Guardian, ibid).

If we are unable or unwilling to accurately ascertain the identity, motives and demands of those doing the kidnapping, more lives will be lost.

Ironic twist to Blair 'victory' at UK Labour conference

This afternoon the UK Labour conference voted down a motion calling for an early withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Many are calling it a lucky escape for Tony Blair. (Guardian report)

While at first glance the result looks like a sound victory for Blair, with 86% of the conference voting against the 'rebel' amendment (14% for), Blair only avoided defeat by gaining the support of the 'big four' unions at the eleventh hour, after days of tense negotiations.

The 'rebel amendment' was a moderate one, calling for Blair to set a date for the early withdrawal of British troops. Given that it is at last becoming widely recognised that a key driver of the insurgency is the presence of the foreign troops, sending a clear signal that Britain does not intend to have a permanent military presence in Iraq may help to calm the situation. A date would have been a clear signal, even if events transpired whereby the forces were there for a short time after the designated date.

Jack Straw attempted to claim that the US, UK troops in Iraq were not an army of occupation, but were there at the request of the interim government and with the support of the United Nations Security Council. But the credibility of Jack's justification is seriously strained by actions of its 'coalition partner', especially as the US appointed the government that made the 'request' and the clear US plans to have a network of permanent military bases in Iraq long after an elected government takes power. The military occupation of Iraq will last decades, not months or years.

When it is taken into account that the 'big four' control 40% of the Labour party conference votes it can easily be seen that the vote was far closer than it first appears - had the unions voted in consistency with their previous clear anti-war views - Blair would have lost (14% supported the motion today and 14% plus 40% is 54%).

There is a deep irony when today's vote is compared to the debate over rail renationalisation at the same conference a few short days ago (Guardian).

On Tuesday the conference overwhelming voted in support of renationalising the railways, despite the protests of the Labour leadership, including Chancellor Gordon Brown and Transport Secretary Alistar Darling. 64% of the conference voted to bring the private rail operating companies back into public ownership, with 36% voting against. Gordon Brown attempted to scaremonger, claiming that renationalising rail would cost £22 billion, seemingly ignoring the obvious option of buying up the long term contracts and phasing out the rest as they come up for renewal. Although the conference motion is meant to be binding, the leadership has already dismissed the possibility of rail renationalisation being included in the Labour manifesto.

BBC news reported that Labour's high command blamed the block voting of the 'big four' unions for the loss, with the Blairites rather pitifully claiming a 'moral victory' because a majority of electorate committees failed to support the renationalisation motion. While a majority of electorate committees voted against the withdrawal amendment today (70%*), Blair got 80% of the union votes - in the twisted Blairite logic does this make it a 'moral defeat'??

Today the British Labour party had a chance to save itself from the poor judgement of its leadership, under the glare of generous television coverage. Ultimately by defeating a moderate motion that called on Blair to set a date for the withdrawal of British troops, it may not escape being branded with Blair's mistake. With this is mind, the left may be best to organise elsewhere.

* these figures flashed up briefly on the BBC