Lives in passing: a Blair confessional

[peteryoung]

Way back in 1979, this politically naïve eighteen year-old was fed up with a stagnant United Kingdom, and I shamefully recall using my first vote to help usher in Margaret Thatcher to power. Well, it seemed liked a good idea at the time, but when later I looked around and realised what I had helped bring about I partly blamed myself for a Disunited Kingdom and all Britain's considerable woes for the next eighteen years, to the extent that it turned me into a die-hard socialist.

So now it can be told: in 1996 on a flight from Washington DC to London, given to my care in Business Class were Tony Blair MP and a rather taciturn and unapproachable Gordon Brown MP. They'd been to the White House, presumably to introduce themselves to their new Overlords. Once again, fed up with a fractious United Kingdom and fully intending to vote New Labour in the following year's election, on that flight I actually talked with Blair a little, liked him, and as he stepped off the plane I broke with professional protocol somewhat and told him "Good luck." He gave me that trademark big smile, shook my hand and said "Thank you!". Once again, there have been times over the last decade when I've regretted those two words, blaming myself for some, if not all, of the nation's ills.

The best days of New Labour were their first: I remember Friday 2 May 1997, the day after Blair's landslide victory, as being an impromptu national holiday. The nation breathed a huge sigh of relief, the weather was beautiful and half the country took the day off work. In the next six months New Labour set a furious pace, putting a huge number of White Papers before Parliament. A decade later the result has been a legacy peppered with some triumphs of which they can rightly be proud – consistently low unemployment, a stable economy, the minimum wage, peace in Northern Ireland. But this is nothing more than what we expect of our elected representatives, to get things right. Then back in late 2001, people began to detect a large and gathering storm cloud on the horizon when it was first rumoured that the US was seriously considering an invasion of Iraq. I had that rather shocked and uneasy feeling shared by many, hardly able to believe that Bush could possibly be planning on doing something so misguided and scary and stupid, but as America's many wars had already shown, it was in fact completely conceivable.

Well, it got worse, because Blair made sure we did it too, and my conscience is eased somewhat by two memorable anti-war marches through central London in the company of hundreds of thousands. Who would have thought in 1997 that a decade later there could be such a blot on the British political landscape, one that is still huge enough to overshadow all other achievements? As it stands today, Blair probably knew long before it happened that Bush's war was an inevitability that had to be dealt with somehow, so instead of being a proper European by standing up to Bush and saying "Non!" he chose to lie enormously to the country in order to drag us into this disaster too. Now he leaves office with no finite end to the war in sight, a war that he also started, and I wonder what his private feelings are on that.

There must be a full inquiry as to how we got pulled in, and soon, though with Gordon Brown we will never see it because he is implicated too. Wait another ten years.

For this reason I will not miss Blair at all. Lately I'm somewhat relieved that I didn't also talk to Brown that day, or shake his hand, so whatever disaster befalls this country next, my conscience will be in the clear.

Comments

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Aha - suddenly it all makes sense - points at you!

Well, actually it still doesn't. When the war started my only reasoning for the UK's involvement was that Blair & Co. thought they'd have a better chance of preventing the US making a complete pig's arse of it if they were part of it instead of on the sidelines.

Well that was the best reasoning I could attach to it, the only other being that the US had the UK by the short-and-curlies in some way.

So very sad...

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Much more the latter, I'd say. Your first scenario would have been far too difficult to sell to the military, let alone the Queen. Having extremists in the White House didn't help Blair when he took the default position of siding with the US as opposed to Europe, but Blair tried to extract things in return for the UK's involvement such as help in resolving the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This resulted in a whirlwind visit to NI by Bush who said the right things (intelligibly) and then just as quickly disappeared off the map. But I expect most of the recompense to Britain was promises of a financial or diplomatic nature, as in "we will make it worth your while". It was still the wrong thing to do.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Your first scenario would have been far too difficult to sell to the military, let alone the Queen.

Err - who is it you elect in the UK?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

We elect the government, but the military are loyal to the Head of State, not the government. This arrangement prevents a misuse of the armed forces.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

[Looks at what your armed forces have been used for of late.]

How so?

[peteyoung.livejournal.com]

Quite. It's a system suitably designed to prevent a dictatorship at home, though whatever else the forces are used for overseas can only be done with the Queen's consent.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

Our system of checks and balances has the same weakness as America's: nobody with a stake in the system cares enough what happens abroad to make it a wedge between head of state and legislature, or between legislature and electorate.

Hence relative liberty at home, combined with appalling barbarity in foreign affairs.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

We elect the government

Well, we elect parliament, from which is formed a government.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

I half believe the US did have the UK by the short and curlies. One day I hope to have the time and energy to see if I can trace out some connections between Harold Wilson's refusal to commit British troops to the Vietnam war when LBJ asked, and the unfortunate series of events that "occurred" to Britain over the following decade.

I have a suspicion that the Winter of Discontent, the disarray of The Concorde programme, Britain's humiliating World Bank loan, and other debacles, with the resulting discrediting of the post-war welfare state in favour of US-friendly Thatcherism, can be traced back at least partly to American punishment of a vassal that was seen as being insufficiently supportive.

If my half-formed suspicion is correct, and actual politicians in power were aware of it on a level that we are not, it would partly explain Blair's otherwise incomprehensible decision. He would fear that if he said no, a vengeful Bush administration would plunge Blair's Britain into a seventies-style economic tailspin, crippling his longed-for "legacy".

[the-gardener.livejournal.com]

I half believe the US did have the UK by the short and curlies. One day I hope to have the time and energy to see if I can trace out some connections between Harold Wilson's refusal to commit British troops to the Vietnam war when LBJ asked, and the unfortunate series of events that "occurred" to Britain over the following decade.

The Uk didn't have to wait for the 1970s to start experiencing the US's revenge -- the refusal to commit troops to Vietnam prompted a US refusal to continue propping up sterling with dollar loans, leading directly to the devaluation of the pound in 1968.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Which isn't the first time the US has used financial pressure on Britain, the Suez Crisis being another example - though in that case it was actually to end a war. Times they have changed...

[pigeonhed.livejournal.com]

In no way do I defend Blair on this matter, but his critics (and Dubya's) too often neglect the first invasion of Iraq, by Bush sr and Thatcher/Major era Tories (backed by the Lib Dems IIRC) and the continued airstrikes on Iraq and Afghanistan under Clinton and co. Without them 9/11 would not have happened.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

This really is a key point. The US had been at war with Iraq for over ten years, and the sanctions and no-fly zones kept the country a basket case (and thus no threat to Kuwait or Saudi Arabia). The real options on the strategic table seemed to be continued "containment" (with sanctions being felt by all the Iraqi people, not just the Baathists) or invasion (and ensuing civil war). Eventually the invasion factions in our government won out, but if they hadn't, it would still have been the slow regime change of sanctions and containment. That would have been better than what we have now, at least in the short run, but it still wouldn't have been anywhere close to good for the Iraqis suffering under the sanctions and still could have led to civil war once Saddam's dictatorship collapsed.

It's worth noting, too, that while the Clinton administration resisted the neocon calls for invasion, they played along with the charade that Iraq still had weapons of mass destruction.

[stillcarl.livejournal.com]

Without them 9/11 would not have happened.

al-Qaeda's first attempt on the World Trade Center was in early 93...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_bombing

and while you might be able to say that attack was in response to the 1991 Gulf War, it seems doubtful and Bin Laden claims the idea came to him as a result of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon by Israel. See...

http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/1964.cfm

The Middle East has been on the receiving end of Western bombs for a very long time, for which the West has got off very lightly. Umm, for example, Churchill and the RAF in the 20s...

http://www.ccmep.org/2003_articles/Iraq/041903_our_last_occupation_gas.htm

[cobrabay.livejournal.com]

The 1979 election was the first time I voted too, as an 18 year old student in what was then the Manchester Ardwick constituency. Not that long after the election I started wearing one of the first of the "Don't blame me, I didn't vote Tory" badges which were originally produced by the Morning Star (my Grandfather was a lifelong subscriber) though much copied by others.
In 1997 I was enthused by the possibility that after years of Tory MPs we might be able to vote in famed rat-fancier and CAMRA member Jane Griffiths for Labour, another hero with feet of clay.