If you mention fascism to people of my age, many will think about to Churchill and World War Two. Whilst that’s a natural reaction and we should never forget the sacrifices made by all those who fought in that struggle, I’m proud that my party has always taken a strong anti-fascist stance. Had it not been for the likes of Herbert Morrison and won the peace.
Trace the line back just a little further and you reach the horrid Oswald Mosley morphing into a Fascist having tried almost all the parties for size. The subsequent battles against his British Union of Fascists, particularly at Cable Street, and the principled opposition of many leftists, both Labour supporters and Communists, meant that at a time when this most abhorrent of ideologies had permeated Spanish, Italian and German society it failed to gain a foothold on those shores. For that, we are all grateful.
Fascism might have been beaten in World War Two, but its totalitarian instincts remained in Eastern Europe after it. Communism, when stripped down to its Marxist principles, might have had plenty to recommend it but if speak to the people of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – all brutally oppressed under Stalin – they could tell of the hardship they faced. One of the most satisfying things about Labour’s move from Militancy to left-wing respectability under Neil Kinnock was the removal of that particular blot on our copybook.
The horrors of Communism and its aftermath raged bitterly in Eastern and Central Europe, however. The crises in the former Yugoslavia were ignored by the Conservatives as Douglas Hurd sat on his comfortable office sofa and John Major contented himself watching cricket. It was with great pride that I watched Tony Blair take a brave stand to protect the people of Kosovo, with their livelihoods and families under real threat from the odious Slobodan Milosevic, when the British people were still to be persuaded of the virtues of humanitarian intervention.
It is said that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed the world. They may well have done. But in my humble opinion, they were a graphic demonstration of the way in which terrorism, just like disease and poverty, doesn’t respect sovereignty. The crazed suicide bomber or kamikaze pilot doesn’t care on whose land they blow themselves up just like they don’t scour the passenger manifests of the flights they board to check who they might be flying to their death. The onset of globalisation has brought destructive weapons closer to dangerous people and, even without our former standing as a Great Power, Britain should react to that.
Whilst the Stoppers and the more vocal opponents of the Coalition’s mission in Afghanistan and Iraq concentrate on the moral bankruptcy of Blair’s decisions, I ask you just to do a single thing. Think of the people in Kabul and Baghdad struggling to live a life under dictatorships with little chance of a proper education, the freedom to express themselves or associate with their friends. Think of the people living those lives and tell them that the war was illegal.
Because, having heard Geoffrey Goodman and John Shepherd as well as members of the audience talk about the Spanish Civil War with the Labour History Group the other night, the one thing I came away thinking was that the modern left should eschew the idea that we should simply protect the national interest. Internationalism and solidarity should mean we do everything we can to ensure that we support freedom from tyranny for all.
