UK parliament sanctions Syria bombing as Labour right votes with government

It is not the Paris terror attacks, but Russian military intervention in Syria that has spurred a significant section of the British bourgeoisie to force a parliamentary vote despite significant misgivings. By joining military action, the UK government aims to solidarise itself with the US war drive against Russia. In doing so, it is dragging working people in Britain into the vortex of a potential Third World War involving nuclear powers.

By Julie Hyland of WSWS

The UK parliament voted in favour of bombing Syria late Wednesday night. The support provided by 66 Labour MPs, the Democratic Unionists and the Liberal Democrats meant that the government motion was carried by 397 to 223, a majority of 174.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn cleared the path for war when he capitulated to his right wing and agreed to a “free vote” on military action. This ensured that it was Labour that handed Prime Minister David Cameron the majority he sought, reversing the defeat he suffered two years before.

So complete has been Corbyn’s surrender to the pro-war lobby that a cross-party amendment opposing military action was tabled by the Scottish National Party, as Labour declared it had no official position on bombing. This was defeated by 390 votes to 211, a majority of 179.

The pro-war motion tabled by Cameron was modelled on that passed by the Labour Party conference in September. As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, Labour’s motion gave “carte blanche for the military carve-up of Syria.”

Just weeks after winning the Labour leadership on an anti-austerity, anti-war platform, Corbyn agreed at the party conference to abandon any discussion on Britain’s Trident nuclear programme in the face of trade union opposition to its scrapping. A debate on whether to support the bombing of Syria was allotted just 20 minutes, followed by a non-binding motion opposing UK bombing missions unless backed by the United Nations.

Now, under the pretext of the November 13 terror attacks in Paris, the imperialist powers, with UN support, are deepening their neo-colonial war campaign in the Middle East.

In August 2013, Cameron unsuccessfully sought parliament’s backing for military action aimed at deposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The motion carried yesterday makes no mention of this goal. It claims instead that the target of British air strikes is Islamic State (ISIS), and that the bombing is in support of the so-called Vienna “peace process” involving the United States and Russia.

It is not the Paris terror attacks, but Russian military intervention in Syria that has spurred a significant section of the British bourgeoisie to force a parliamentary vote despite significant misgivings. By joining military action, the UK government aims to solidarise itself with the US war drive against Russia. In doing so, it is dragging working people in Britain into the vortex of a potential Third World War involving nuclear powers.

The parliamentary debate was a carnival of reaction. Even before it began, Cameron described those opposing the bombing of Syria as “terrorist sympathisers.” He made this smear in remarks to a meeting of the 1922 Committee of Tory MPs, in which he urged them to vote with the government rather than walk “through the [voting] lobbies with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers.”

The Tory leader has repeatedly described Corbyn as a threat to national security and an apologist for terrorism. In the face of this abuse, Corbyn lamely referred to Cameron’s “unfortunate remark” and declared his hope that the prime minister would apologise so as to “improve the atmosphere of this debate.”

Cameron had no intention of doing any such thing and flatly rejected a retraction. In this, as in everything, he was supported by the Labour right wing. After Corbyn’s snivelling appeal to the prime minister to do the right thing, Labour MP John Mann rose to attack Corbyn and demanded that he withdraw his criticisms of those in his party who were voting with the government.

Before the debate, Corbyn had made a play of opposing the Labour right, warning there would be “no hiding place” after the vote for those who supported military action. The reality is that the war-mongers have a place. It is the Labour Party. And they have no need to hide since Corbyn has effectively thrown a cordon sanitaire around them.

In a survey of the party membership, 75 percent registered their opposition to the bombing of Syria. But this is of no consequence to Corbyn, who has repeatedly assured the right wing that they will not face disciplinary action or the possibility of deselection.

In his opening statement, Corbyn could only parrot the claim that IS represented an existential threat to the UK, while complaining that Cameron had failed to make the case for air strikes and had failed to achieve a “consensus” in parliament.

He glorified the Vienna “peace” talks, avoiding any reference to Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet, while holding out the fiction of a “negotiated political and diplomatic endeavour” that would bring peace to Syria.

While warning of the danger of “mission creep” and the “real possibility” that Western boots could be on the ground in the future, he made no mention of the US decision, only the day earlier, to deploy Special Forces in Syria.

In an unprecedented move, Corbyn had agreed to allow Hilary Benn, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary and a leading advocate of military intervention, to close the parliamentary debate for the party.

Benn is openly being touted as a potential replacement for Corbyn in a future palace coup. He used his closing statement to make a pitch for that role, farcically claiming that in bombing Syria, the UK was carrying out a struggle against a “fascist” threat akin to Franco in Spain and Hitler in Germany.

While evoking party “unity” in his remarks, Benn had been tweeting against the Labour leader during the debate. When a spokesperson for the party leader sent a message that air strikes could increase the terror threat against Britain, Benn fired off a riposte rejecting the claim.

Having been given free rein by Corbyn, various Labour right-wingers were first up in the debate to pledge their fealty to the government and war. One after another, leading Blairites, who already have blood on their hands from the Iraq war, spoke in favour of military action.

Yvette Cooper, who came in third in the leadership contest, announced that she would vote with the government despite the fact that the prime minister had not “made the most effective case.” Declaring that he too would back the government, Alan Johnson said it was a “difficult” decision to make and went on to attack “the self-righteous certitude” of those opposed to war.

Other Labour MPs, such as John Woodcock, used the debate to complain of the “bullying tactics” they faced from constituents threatening to deselect them over their vote for war. He denounced a “sort of angry, intolerant pacifism” as he prepared to authorise the dropping of tonnes of bombs on Syria.

In a simultaneous debate taking place in the House of Lords on UK military intervention, Labour peer Jeffrey Rooker called on Labour to “get rid” of Corbyn. Stating that members of the Tory cabinet would make better prime ministers than his own party leader, Rooker identified ISIS’s “innate intolerance” for the “British way of life” with the “anti-British Trots in the Labour Party” who were “using our tolerance to try and get control” of the party.

Corbyn responded to the complaints from the right by posting a Facebook message during the debate opposing “bullying” and calling for “all of us in the Labour Party” to focus on building the party “in a comradely fashion.”

The bourgeoisie is acutely conscious of growing social and political tensions. Even the Times newspaper, which backed bombing, led its front page with polls showing that more than half the population is opposed to military action in Syria—despite the torrent of pro-war propaganda.

The assembled parliamentarians are well aware that their debate is a fraud, based on a tissue of lies. Only the day before, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee voted four to three in favour of a motion that Cameron “had not adequately addressed concerns” about military action. All the more reason that, notwithstanding Corbyn’s pleas and retreats, the bourgeoisie is determined to do all it can to silence opposition to war.

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Looks Like I'm A Terrorist Sympathiser

I'm half expecting Cameron's 'thought police' to be knocking on my door at any moment and carting me off to the Tower for being a 'terrorist sympathiser'. And for why? Because I'm one of those people who oppose the bombing of Syria. One of the majority.

But I'll be in good company because more than half the population of England will be squeezed into the Tower as well, if that's possible. Some three quarters of Scots will also be locked up in some dungeon north of the border.

Let's face it, we have a prime minister in the UK who has lost complete touch with reality.

The only terrorist sympathisers I know about are the three pictured below - Erdogan of Turkey who buys cheap ISIS oil, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia who supplies ISIS with weapons and Obama of the US who organises it all.

The big three terrorist sympathisers.

Smeared With ISIS Oil

The liar Erdogan smeared with ISIS oil

On Corbyn's Spinelessness

One of the first things Corbyn should have done after being elected leader was to root out all unreconstructed Blairites who have no support in the Labour party at large - not in Scotland, not in Wales and not in England. A simple process of deselection would have silenced them all by now. But spinelessness paved the way to war in Syria.

One of the few journalists I admire is Julie Hyland of the editorial board of WSWS and here is her take on Corbyn's abject failure to control the right wing of his party. 

Corbyn’s spinelessness is not simply a matter of personal inadequacy or misplaced party loyalty. The Labour leader and his supporters in the pseudo-left groups are acutely aware of how sharp class tensions are. Under conditions of deepening austerity and a sharp turn to militarism, they are determined to do all they can to contain and silence the voice of working people. It is this that accounts for the ability of the Tories to go on the offensive, despite the narrowness of the government’s majority.

The Strange Phenomenon Of Hilary Benn

Is Hilary Benn a 'chip off the old block'?

Certainly there is a bit of a resemblance to his father, but as soon as he starts his political pontificatiing you begin to suspect that he might have been sired by the milkman.

Or maybe his father wasn't all he was cracked up to be. Just maybe he was one of those aristocratic politicians whose job it was to disarm the working class and fool them into thinking that here was a man looking out for their interests. It's a common enough tactic.

Maybe then Hilary has just reverted to type.

Milkman or something more sinister?

Brainless Politicians

This morning as the vote about bombing Syria grows ever more imminent I wrote to my MP saying that I needed a politician with a few brain cells to explain to me what Cameron with his tin-pot little airforce hopes to achieve which the mighty Russian airforce can’t deliver?

By implication this politician was him, although let me reserve judgement on that matter for the time being.

Douglas Carswell of UKIP

Corbyn's Betrayal

Corbyn opens door to Labour backing for British bombing of Syria

By Chris Marsden of WSWS

The decision by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to allow a free vote on UK participation in bombing missions in Syria is a total capitulation to the right-wing, pro-war forces in his party.

Corbyn has done everything possible to ensure a “yes” vote on Wednesday, given that Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron did not have a majority without the support of Labour MPs and had said he would proceed to a vote only if there was a “consensus.” At least 15 Tory MPs are said to be opposed to the extension of bombing to Syria on the pretext of defeating Islamic State (ISIS).

Now, a supposed “consensus” has been handed on a plate to Cameron by Corbyn. If the Labour leader had imposed a party whip, those voting for bombing would have had to do so in defiance of their party. Instead, Corbyn has given the green light for more Labour MPs—free from censure—to back Cameron’s policy. The Tories are now boasting that up to 100 Labour MPs will vote with them.

In September, Corbyn was elected by a landslide to lead the party based on his declared anti-austerity, anti-war stance. A reported 300,000 people signed up to the party to support him. Yet at every major turn, Corbyn has betrayed his mandate in the name of maintaining unity with the militarist, pro-business, anti-working class cabal that dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party and its local government apparatus.

Of all the ignominious retreats he has made under fire, this is the most fundamental.

Millions of workers and young people oppose military action in Syria, and Labour’s annual conference ruled that the party would not back action in Syria without “clear and unambiguous” United Nations support.

Prior to Monday, Corbyn said that Cameron had not made the case that the UN supported air strikes, so he was opposed to a free vote that would allow MPs to contradict party policy. He went on television Sunday to declare that “the leader decides,” implying that he was considering a three-line whip instructing MPs to vote against bombing Syria.

He then organised a poll of over 100,000 party members and supporters that showed 75 percent opposed and just 13 percent in favour of air strikes. Corbyn was reported by the Guardian as telling his allies that he believed he had sufficient backing from MPs and his grassroots supporters to try and “stop the war.”

Len McCluskey, head of the Unite union, Labour’s biggest financial backer, came out to warn members of the Shadow Cabinet, “Any attempt to force Labour’s leader out through a Westminster Palace coup will be resisted all the way by Unite and, I believe, most party members and affiliated unions.”

This was all for show. Behind the scenes, Corbyn was already in secret discussions with Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, two of the overwhelming majority of his Shadow Cabinet in favour of air strikes. He agreed to a free vote in return for a non-binding, and therefore meaningless, statement that “party policy” was to oppose bombing.

Corbyn has rolled over before a bloodthirsty and politically discredited rump that enjoys little popular support outside the UK’s big business media. And he did so as he and his right-hand man, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, spoke of “democracy” and allowing MPs to vote “according to their conscience.” McDonnell said a free vote would mean that “people will hold together.”

“Democracy” now means the right to defy your party’s members, defy the wishes of the electorate, openly collude with the Tories, and threaten legal action to depose an elected leader. “Voting with your conscience” means not having one.

Yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting saw this venal layer in the ascendant, shouting at Corbyn that his position that party policy was to oppose bombing was “absurd.” The meeting of the entire Parliamentary Labour Party in the evening was little different.

Corbyn was left with nothing other than to write a letter to Cameron urging a two-day debate before a vote is taken. Cameron dismissed this demand within hours, saying instead that Wednesday’s debate would be extended by a few hours. Benn has been given the right to close the debate for Labour.

Once again, events have supplied a devastating rebuttal to the claims made by Corbyn that he and his supporters could refashion the Labour Party as an instrument for opposing austerity and war by giving voice to its members and insisting on a “new politics” of democratic debate. This, he claimed, could bring change without threatening Labour’s “broad church.”

Instead, Labour continues to be a party of austerity and war. Its support for Cameron means that the bombs that will rain down on Syria, like the hundreds dropped by the Royal Air Force in Iraq since September 2014, will be Labour’s bombs. Syria will be labour’s war just as was Iraq in 2003.

Labour’s political and class character can never be changed by installing a new leader. It is determined by the party’s pro-capitalist programme and a history stretching over a century of defending the fundamental interests of British imperialism—not only against foreign capitalist rivals, but against the threat from below posed by the working class.

Corbyn’s mealy-mouthed reformist rhetoric never offered a political alternative to the party’s control by the right wing. Rather, his role has been to prevent the hostility to austerity, militarism and war that brought him to office from assuming the form of a political rebellion against Labour’s despised leadership. Indeed, without his defence of their position in the party, even including them in his Shadow Cabinet, many would have already been deselected by their local parties.

The exposure of Corbyn is at the same time a devastating indictment of Britain’s pseudo-left groups, all of which proclaimed his leadership to be a fundamental turning point in Labour’s fortunes. A week ago, Left Unity, the party formed just two years ago as a supposed alternative to Labour, declared at its conference it would no longer stand candidates against the party led by Jeremy Corbyn. On Saturday, the Stop the War Coalition held a protest against bombing Syria at which the central message from the organisation’s chair, Andrew Murray, was to urge Labour MPs to “stand behind Jeremy Corbyn.”

All these tendencies are guilty of disarming the working class and paving the way for war.

The struggle against war cannot proceed through the Labour Party and under the leadership of Corbyn. He will not move against the right wing of his party because he shares their pro-capitalist programme. He calls for a change in policy on austerity and war from the ruling class when both are the inevitable products of the capitalist system at this time of acute crisis.

The bourgeoisie needs austerity because maintaining its obscene wealth is dependent on ramping up the exploitation of the working class and destroying the social provisions on which millions depend. War is the product of the drive by the imperialist powers to seize control of oil and other valuable and essential resources on behalf of the super-rich.

What is required is the building of a new mass anti-war movement that seeks to mobilise the working class in Britain and internationally against the capitalist system and for socialism. That requires the building of the Socialist Equality Party to lead this struggle.

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Jeremy Corbyn Bottles It And Allows Blairite Warmongers To Vote With The Tories

Showing scant leadership qualities Jeremy Corbyn has betrayed all his principles by giving the go ahead for the Blairite warmongers in his party to vote with the Tories for the bombing of Syria - as if Britain could make any real contribution to defeating the terrorists the Obama outfit has been using to destabilise that country in order to oust Assad.

Maybe he thinks he is somehow saving the Labour party from a split but in reality he has capitulated to the ring-wing and betrayed all those members who voted for him in the recent leadership contest.

I haven't voted for Labour since the liar Blair came to power. In fact I've voted for non-one at all since that time and never will again by the looks of things. I am now effectively disenfranchised as are millions of others who trusted Labour and Corbyn to deliver something better.

Bourgeois democracy stinks!

US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia Suppling ISIS

An interesting video above showing a Turkish government arms shipment to ISIS. Erdogan's outfit in Ankara is deliberately helping the ISIS terrorists to bring down the Assad government, all at the instigation of the US. Saudi Arabia, the medieval dictatorship well known for cutting peoples heads off in the street is also up to these nefarious tricks.

Tory Drivel

British PM sets out plans for Syrian partition and moves against Russia

By Julie Hyland of WSWS

Prime Minister David Cameron’s statement to parliament in support of the British bombing of Syria was an exercise in imperialist chicanery.

Cameron is attempting to reverse the humiliating defeat he suffered in August 2013 when parliament vetoed his plan to join US-led military action against Syria. Widespread public opposition, combined with differences within the ruling elite over the likely prospects of the intervention, saw 30 Conservative backbenchers join with Labour to oppose British military involvement.

The prime minister has said that if he can secure enough agreement he intends to hold a vote authorising British military action next week.

The UK is already heavily involved in military operations—including bombing—in Iraq, and its forces participate in covert operations in Syria. In August, Cameron authorised the extra-judicial killings of British citizens in Syria, with barely a protest. At the same time, he made clear that he hoped to exploit divisions within Labour over military involvement to be able to win a second vote.

His efforts appeared to have been stymied by a report by parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee highly critical of British involvement, issued at the beginning of this month. The committee described the situation in Syria as a “proxy war as much as an internal conflict”—a “multi-layered conflict,” involving Russia and Iran on the one side and the US, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar on the other.

While it was silent on the lead role played by the US and Britain in facilitating the growth of ISIL as part of their goal of regime change in Syria, the report expressed concern at the potential for a broader military conflagration. There was a “genuine issue” as to the potential of Russian and US aircraft “becoming involved in hostilities” as “multiple air forces are now pursuing different agendas in Syria,” it warned.

Such fears were realised when, last weekend, Turkish F-16 fighters shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber along the Syria-Turkey border. This blatant act of aggression could only have been authorised at the highest level of the Turkish state and with Washington’s approval.

Turkey’s provocation was directed against French attempts, in the wake of the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, to build a coalition involving Moscow and Washington against Islamist terror groups in Syria. This is opposed by the US and Turkey, who rely on the Islamist militias targeted by Russia as proxy forces on the ground against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Extraordinarily, Cameron made no mention of the downing of the Russian jet in either his statement to parliament or his 36-page reply to the select committee report. Instead, the prime minister extolled the virtues of the so-called Vienna Process—talks involving Russia and the US for a “transitional” government of national unity—even as it was being blown out the skies.

This is not merely an attempt to avoid certain uncomfortable truths. It is a conscious and wilful deception of the British public as to the advanced dangers of a new world war being prepared by imperialist intrigue.

The prime minister’s oral and written presentation heaped one lie upon another. He claimed that the terror attacks in Paris provided a “moral case” for British military action. “If we cannot act now, when France has been attacked, when would we act?”

The United Nations resolution passed in its aftermath, that member states can use “all necessary measures” against ISIL, legally sanctioned UK involvement in bombing, he claimed.

As to questions over the specific military contribution that Britain could make, Cameron claimed that the UK has “unique precision missile capabilities, which allow for accurate air strikes with low collateral damage.”

The biggest lies of all, however, are those claims that UK intervention will help preserve Syria’s territorial integrity and create an “inclusive” and “democratic” transition government to secure peace in the region.

Even while insisting the target of British involvement is not regime change, the prime minister stated that it is wrong to consider Assad as the “lesser of two evils.” He declared, “Syria has not been, and should not be, reduced to a choice between Assad or ISIL.”

“Our Syria strategy aims to enable a ceasefire to be established between the regime and the opposition,” Cameron stated. Military action is aimed at “relieving the pressure on the moderate opposition, whose survival is crucial for a successful transition to a more inclusive Syrian government.”

How is this “pressure” on the “moderate opposition” to be alleviated? “Alongside efforts to secure a political transition, together with our allies we are putting diplomatic pressure on Russia to end its attacks on moderate Syrian forces and instead coordinate its military efforts with the Coalition against ISIL.” [emphasis added.]

British military involvement, then, is part of pressing Russia to give up support for Assad. How is Moscow to be persuaded? Cameron doesn’t say. Given the British government’s defence of Turkey’s attack on the Russian jet—Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond denounced those critical of the attack as “apologists for Russia”—the silence is deafening.

Nor did Cameron directly name the “moderate Syrian forces” Russia should be pressured to back. And for good reason, as this would mean identifying Islamist militias, including the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front with which Washington is currently allied.

The real objectives of British imperialism become clearer in the prime minister’s scenario for “transition.”

Earlier in the week, former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague let the cat out the bag when he said, “The borders of Syria and Iraq were largely drawn by two British and French diplomats in 1916. They should not be considered immutable. If the leaders of either country cannot construct a state where all communities can live together, it will be right to consider international support for their partition.”

Cameron’s 36-page reply to the select committee amounts to planning for such a partition.

“The Syrian Kurds have successfully defended Kurdish areas in Northern Syria from sustained ISIL attack and retaken territory from ISIL, such as around the city of Kobane,” he argues. “The Kurds will also play an important role in a political settlement for Syria which respects Syria’s territorial integrity.”

Of the Turkish bourgeoisie’s attitude to such a prospect—it has been working with ISIL against the Kurds—nothing is said.

However, he added that, “only moderate Sunni Arabs can retake traditionally Sunni Arab areas such as Raqqa,” while “in Southern Syria, the Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army has consolidated its control over significant areas...”

The Southern Front of the Free Syrian Army includes al-Nusra. As for the “moderate Sunni Arabs” to be involved in taking Raqqa, this seems to be a reference to US initiatives centred on the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces.

US special operation troops are currently working with this loose coalition of Kurdish and Arab fighters, despite their “capabilities and conflicting loyalties” being “hard for Washington to assess,” the Financial Times reported.

Washington’s alliance with the group is directly occasioned by moves against Russia. The Financial Times states that it follows a “major rethink” of US strategy in Syria, “after Russian air strikes that began in late September coincided with the collapse of its programme to train Syrian rebels.”

“Obama has to be seen to be more active in response to the Russians. We have to back diplomacy with the threat of force,” the FT quoted a former senior US administration official.

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