If the story and the image of the Holocaust lays claim to the most unimaginable suffering, then the story and the image can work precisely to demean any other suffering or to rename any other act of aggression an extension and reiteration of the Holocaust itself.Consider that the relatively simple claim by an Israeli that she or he would like to live in a secular state, one that did not discriminate on the basis of religion, ethnicity or race, is enough, in some quarters, to bring down the charge that such a person is plotting the “destruction” of the Israeli state. I do not say this to set up equivalents or to show that the non-equivalence is overwhelming, I say it only so that the picture might be widened to understand where and how the human suffering in that region occurs.
The plight of the Israelis evacuated from Gaza can deflect attention from the suffering and the political oppression of the 1,300,000 who exist there with radically restricted means of making a living. The evacuation of Gaza was quite telling, though: approximately 8,000 Israelis were compelled to leave their homes there, 1,719 Palestinians have been killed there since 2000, another 9,000 Palestinians have been injured there and 2,704 Palestinian homes razed there, in which dwelled some 20,000 people. This kind of analogy occurs quite often in Israeli politics and in politics that has Israel at its centre.
We were being asked to understand the evacuation of Gaza as the same as the train to Auschwitz, such that those who ordered or implemented the evacuation were effectively Nazis, and those who were evacuated interns of the SS. Sssh! Don’t tell Tony!SeddonZQ1 aol . When we heard in August of this year from Israeli settlers in Gaza that the evacuation was a train taking the Jewish people to their collective death, we were being rhetorically situated on the train to the concentration camp and asked whether we would go along with this murder of ourselves and the entirety of the Jewish people. Yet Labour, the party they have written off at various times, is still alive and kicking.For my part I leave happy, having just discovered that last time round, 60 per cent of Labour members in Sedgefield voted for me in the NEC elections.
Over the years, those columnists who used to scorn the unions, the scruffy delegates and the regional accents, have changed their tune. Now they have tired of the serried suits, the management-consultancy gobbledegook and the on-message acolytes. It is this “control freakery”, coupled with an obsession with the foibles of wherever the pollsters have located “Middle England” at any given time, that has shorn Labour of its membership. If our political parties are to be anything but shell operations, they need to allow a thousand flowers to bloom.And bloom they will. But then I think that if he had listened to some of us on occasion he might have avoided a few of the domestic own goals, not forgetting the disaster that is Iraq.Modern political parties are shaped by the media, increasingly dependent on big business, and hostage to the handful of marginal seats, with their few hundred thousand voters, that make the difference between winning and losing at election time. The media lives for “rows”; ergo “debate” becomes “division” – and Labour’s conference becomes a fixed rally.The nadir for me, some years ago, was to stumble across the “Speech Writing Unit”, a bunch of bright youngsters turning out identikit speeches of impenetrable doggerel for identikit delegates fresh from central casting. I’m sure he thinks he isn’t shown enough gratitude for presiding over three election wins, for the Northern Ireland peace process and the record spend on public services that began with a trickle and ended with a flood In that respect he is probably right.
John Prescott as Don Corleone? Never! He was winking at me!For the record, Tony Blair has always been courteous to those of us who took issue with him. Dennis Skinner advised me: “Never question the motives of your opponents.” This was at my first meeting of the NEC at the Imperial Hotel in Blackpool, where the leadership had assumed the chairs in front of the big, sash windows, the sun streaming in behind them, nearly blinding us on the other side of the table. Above all, I am still staggered at how the party of peace and internationalism became the party of war.What I have tried to avoid is the culture of malevolence, the cat calls of “betrayal” and all round glumness that seem to affect those who take things too seriously. This past decade has been remarkable both for the speed of change and the manner in which “new” Labour and the “new” Chinese Communists not only worship the “Third Way” but maintain a similar iron discipline over their followers.When I look back, I am still amazed at the apparent ease with which former left-wing standard bearers committed such staggering apostasy and became market fundamentalists, and how disciples of old Labour democrats and liberals, such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, turned on civil liberties, free higher education and much else. This was a new meritocratic establishment, impatient with the old Tories and determined to forge a new, technocratic, modern Britain without the political baggage of the past.What the Third Way-ers instinctively bought into was Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” revolution – and it is something they have in common with the Chinese “new” Communists.
