A couple of months ago, an old friend, Dan Plesch, asked me to use any influence that I had among politicians to support the campaign to impeach Tony Blair. (This is the campaign, initiated by Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price and supported by his own party, the Greens, the SNP and 20 individual MPs.) As I don't really have any influence among politicians I was at a bit of a loss what to do. But, I do remember Alan Simpson from years back, so wrote to him. After all, of all the Nottingham MPs you would think that Alan would be the one that might do something. In the background Alan had worked with Glen Rangwala, the academic who, with Dan, was supporting the MPs with integrity in the lead up to the Iraq war. Alan more than anyone else, was aware from information that Glen Rangwala gathered together, that there never was any real evidence that Saddam had WMD. Alan knew what was going on....
So I wrote him the e mails below and recently got a reply that he is not supporting impeachment because he wasn't planning to "resign" from the Labour Party. In these e mail messages I explain why he is taking the wrong decision.
Original Two e mails:
Dear Alan,
Dan Plesch asked me to try to use whatever influence I have to get support for his Impeach Blair Campaign. All I can really think of is e mailing you - as I haven't got any influence at all in official political circles. (Who f***ng cares? Why should I want to influence the donkeys when all they are interested in is which way is the trough?)
But you've got to admit that Dan and his colleagues have a case. Blair is a war criminal and in politics you simply tell the truth, I reckon, as best you know it. Mandelson and others were forced to resign because of misleading the public over trivia compared to misleading people in a process that has led to such a catastrophe and the deaths of tens of thousands of people....
I know that you will say: "But I would be forced out of the Labour Party". No you wouldn't - you'd resign from the f*** Labour Party because its a party for people compromised by war crime - and you'd resign from the Mother of All Gasworks (the donkeys certainly seem to ventilate a lot of wind there). You've been muzzled there for ages - you'd have just as much influence by doing a few freelance articles when you're no longer muzzled.
If you stay where you are now without doing anything you'll regret it the rest of your life - you'll be a permanent hostage to an idea that reached its use by date when the Anglo-American group successfully took it over with money from the Pew Foundation. Alan you're a dickhead if you allow that to happen to you - the only power that you've got is to rally the troops for the last stand and then take them out - sort of like Connelly's Easter Rising - but with a programme for the energy, economic, social and, quite possibly, public health crisis to come. Such a rebellion would have a tremendous impact - and will position you to deal with some real problems.
Your old friend
Brian
Dear Alan,
At the risk of saying the blindingly obvious the principles are as follows:
Forget cost benefit analysis on this decision - the political price versus the likely gains. This is a matter of the greatest political principle there is - you're political and personal integrity is at stake on a matter of war crimes perpetrated by the British state.
Resignation from the Labour Party comes at the point where it becomes clear that no impachment will be endorsed by it.
Resignation from Parliament becomes a matter of principle when Parliament is unable, either by blocking procedures, or by a loss of the vote on the issue, to hold the military machine and the cabinet to account.
Your biggest danger is an unfinite set of delaying tactics through procedures which will exhaust you and your allies in this - so that you simply end up by giving up on an anticlimax. That is your worse outcome.
Of course, if you win the vote - help form the next government!
In the meantime campaign in the country and Nottingham around the entire complex of issues that gave rise to this war - including the impending energy crisis - this will help you form your alternative political -economic programme around energy saving, public health, transformation of agriculture/food, energy rationing and energy based money system, sort of eco-Roosevelt with ideas to transform the international money system and relate to the changing world balance of power away from the US and towards China etc. etc.
But I'm telling you how to suck eggs here, so perhaps I'm out of line.....
Brian
After sending these e mails Alan replied that he was not leaving the Labour Party and sent me two articles he had written, one of which, from the magazine Resurgence says:
" Of late, almost every meeting I have spoken at some point demands either the impeachment of the Prime Minister or a challenge to his leadership. I usually ask which other cabinet minister they would want to replace Tony Blair, since all of them voted for the war that is being denounced. 'None,' is the usual answer. 'Then who?' I ask. 'You' someone will shout. And a general clamour of endorsement usually follows.
It is a moment of slap-stick self-delusion. The shallowness of the situation is easy to reveal. I ask how many would vote for me if I stood. An overwhelming show of hands is raised. But then I ask how many of them 'could' vote for me. After all you have to be a Labour Party member to vote for a Labour Party leader. It is a minor but important part of the democratic process. If I am lucky there may be 5 current members of the party there at the rally; a touching gesture, but hardly a mass movement."
To which my response (slightly rewritten for this review) is:
What this shows is that the deluded person is you. It shows that you have a big constituency of support but it is not in the Labour Party - it is outside and you need to join it. But you've got that "last fight" to face first in order to galvanise people on the points of principle and law. Then if and when, you fail, you lead your small number of principled people outside the Labour Party and, possibly outside of Parliament itself and become the leader, or more realistically, one of the leaders of a new movement.
When you do it is my person hope that you'll promoting some more tangible policies than I see at the moment. In your writings I don't see a comprehensive policy overview just a very long Alan Simpson complaint - if I was going to be very rude indeed,and why not as we've known each other long enough, I'd say that you are an incredibly articulate and well informed whiner - others get on with formulating projects and policies that you come along and pick up from them - fair enough, you can't know everything, but on the key issues of the day - global warming, the dollar overhang, the resurgence of China etc what are you doing? Perhaps the reason that the demonstrators support you is that many of them are (unrealistic) whiners and complainers too - the left usually are. A more realistic leader, despite his failure re the war, would be Meacher, as he has experience and weight rather than Galloway as he is too much of a egotistical showman. (Anyone who needs the nictotine stimulus of cigars in the early morning to focus and retain his cool on a legal case, would crack on anything bigger. A true leader would barely need a cup of coffee in a crisis. But he might well be an ally later...)
So 'comrade', get on and make that "rally", and face up to that 'last fight' you're always singing about at the end of your clubby Labour conferences..otherwise we'll see your cosy Labour nostalgia in your ancient pile of Westminster stones for what it is - humbug - parasiting on, and betraying, the real struggles of people who did have to fight to build a movement against huge opposition and pressure - and allowing the British state and Prime Minister to get away with mass murder.
Brian Davey
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