We are doing this, first, because the last edition was published in our centenary year, 1993, which makes it rather dated, and secondly, because there is a growing interest in our history among political activists, Labour politicians and academics. So this seems like a good time to proceed.

To help with the process, we are publishing the whole of the original pamphlet on the website and we hope readers will take the opportunity to respond and comment on the material.

We aim to put the text online in six stages, starting below with the chapters which deal with the early years of the ILP and the birth of the Labour Party. Each of these instalments will be supplemented by a series of ‘side stories’, boxed out material from the original pamphlet which highlight some important aspects of the ILP’s journey.

It is then over to anyone who wishes to respond to do so. This will help us to enrich what we hope will be a moving account of how different generations of people have sought to build a better society.

Of course, if you wish to purchase the printed version of the pamphlet, complete with images and historical photographs, you can do so from our publications page – we still have a few copies left.

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The ILP: Past & Present

The ILP in the 30s

Despite its numerical decline, the ILP remained a significant political force throughout the thirties. In addition, it retained a small but vocal parliamentary presence until Jimmy Maxton’s death in 1946.

But, if disaffiliation appeared to resolved the ILP’s dilemma about its role as a left group within the Labour Party, it posed a new and equally crucial question. What was to be its role outside the party? Squeezed between the electorally cautious Labour Party linked wit the unions, and the manipulative Communist Party linked with the international communist movement, the ILP found it had little room for manoeuvre.

Influenced by a pro-communist group in the ILP, serious consideration was given to affiliating to the Communist International. But the terms were found to be too stiff, just as they had been two decades earlier when the ILP tried to set up a alternative international movement (known as the Two-and-Half International) to build a bridge between reformist and revolutionary socialists. In particular, the ILP was unwilling to subordinate itself to Moscow’s demands.

At the same time, the ILP’s relations with the British Communist Part worsened due to the latter’s subservience to the Soviet Union. Like its counterparts in the rest of the world, the Communist Party in Britain took its political line from the Soviet leadership. That often meant rapid political changes to conform to changes in Stalin’s foreign policy. This was usually accompanied by wholesale abuse of others on the Left who disagreed. The Moscow trials and execution of former Bolshevik leaders further widened the breach between the two main left parties in Britain.

In spite of the difficulties facing the ILP in its new role, it continued with its active propaganda, including the open air meetings for which it was famous. It also retained an energetic youth section where a great many political activists were schooled.

The major campaigns of the decade had a strong ILP presence. The Unity Campaign, organised jointly with the Communist Party and Socialist League, the Hunger Marches, and the anti-fascist activities are among the better known examples. The ILP played a leading role in mobilising mass opposition to thwart the march by Oswald Mosley’s fascist through London’s East End, the heart of the Jewish community.

After the rise of fascism, first in Italy and later in Germany, the ILP actively supported the work of socialists from those countries. There was also a fierce debate about how to respond to the fascist threat while not siding with the imperialist powers.

Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in1935 brought these matters to a head. Arguably, it led to one of the least honourable decisions taken by the ILP. At first, the ILP conference agreed to support independent working class action against Italy, to oppose its aggression, and to boycott the transport of arms and other supplies. Among the keenest supporters of this policy was a small Trotskyist group inside the ILP, led by the black writer, CLR James.

Jimmy Maxton and the parliamentary party strongly disagreed with the position. They argued that working class sanctions would be indistinguishable from other sanctions and would make war with Italy more likely. They made it clear that they felt unable to comply with the policy. As a result, the conference backed down and agreed to ballot the ILP membership.

As Fenner Brockway wrote: “I agreed at once without any illusions about the result. I knew it was inevitable that the vote would be influenced by the desire to retain Maxton and his colleagues than by the political issues.”

He was right. This led to a political attack on the ILP by the exiled Trotsky who until then, had seen it as a useful channel for his group’s activities. They then left the ILP, although CLR James continued to co-operate with the ILP in anti-colonial activities.

Spanish Civil War

In 1936, to the horror of socialists across the world, there was a fascist uprising in Spain against the elected republican government. Led by General Franco, the rebels were actively backed by Hitler and Mussolini and greatly assisted by the non-intervention of the British and French governments.

To begin with, people fought off the fascists with great courage but they were ill-equipped and the republican side was politically divided. It was also dependent for arms and other material help on the Soviet Union – and Stalin had his own very different agenda. Anxious to forge an alliance with Britain and France against Nazi Germany, he did not wish to do anything that would greatly upset them.

Obviously, developments in Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona, were particularly disquieting for him. A social revolution was taking place and society was being completely reorganised. Influenced by anarchist and socialist ideas, workers were running the factories and the local administration and peasants were collectivising the farms and taking control of the countryside.

Stalin wanted to defeat the fascist but he did not want a revolution, fearful that if he was seen to support if he would fail to woo Britain and France into an alliance. So while he encouraged Communist-led International Brigades to fight, he was also at great pains to stifle the rest of the Left and bury the revolution.

A small ILP contingent went to fight in Catalonia. Among the ILP volunteers was the writer Eric Blair, who was later to find fame under the name of George Orwell. The ILP gave particular support to the non-Stalinist, revolutionary Marxist workers’ party (POUM) which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Communists. Foreign sympathises of the POUM were jailed. Among them was Bob Smillie, chair of the ILP Guild of Youth, who died a prisoner after being arrested at the border.

Stalin succeeded in suppressing the revolution but by 1939 the fascists had won the war. Spain was to endure four decades of Franco’s oppressive rule. Tens of thousands of Spaniards lost their lives in the fighting and even more were killed when the fascists took control.

Labour Relations

It would be a mistake to suppose that the ILP’s disaffiliation from the Labour Party had ended the relationship once and for all. Not so, several attempts were made to re-open the links in the 1930s.

The most promising attempt began in 1938 with an initiative by the Labour Party leader and former ILPer, Clement Attlee. Both Labour’s executive, with a clear majority, and the ILP’s administrative council, with a narrow one, agreed the general terms of re-entry.

In supporting re-affiliation, Fenner Brockway argued that the ILP had changed significantly. He claimed: “when the ILP was in the Labour Party it had no fundamental philosophy or policy and could not act with a united purpose; but during its period outside it had developed a revolutionary socialist basis and its personnel, although smaller in numbers, had vastly improved in dependable quality; the ILP of 1938 was very different from the mixture of reformism, sentiment, utopianism and awakening revolutionism which characterised the ILP of 1932. This being so, was there not a great deal to be said for entering the Labour Party as a disciplined unit, regarding it not as a socialist party with a policy that commanded our consent, but as the class party of the workers and therefore the right and most fruitful field of activity?”

The ILP convened a special conference to decide its future. The meeting never took place. The conference was called for September 1939, the month that Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.

The two parties differed in their attitude to the Second World War as they had done to the first. Opposing involvement, the ILP saw it mainly as a battle between rival imperial powers and once again its members were imprisoned for refusing military conscription. During the war the ILP played a role in what became a broad current of radical dissent against Churchill’s coalition government and there was a revival of interest in its publications.

Actively supporting the war, Labour participated in the war-time coalition. And it emerged from the hostilities stronger, with a reforming programme, winning its first overall majority in the Commons in 1945.

After the War

Post-war Britain left the ILP in continuing decline, with the return of many of its leading figures, like Fenner Brockway, to the Labour Party. The ILP continued with its anti-colonial work, opposed the post-war Labour government’s use of troops in the docks for strike breaking, and participated in a European campaign to build a united socialist Europe.

But as it shrank so its hostility to the Labour Party increased. Although a minority of its members actively supported Labour in their localities, the formal position of the ILP towards the Labour Party really was sectarian. This purism was reinforce by those who recounted stories of left-wingers who joined the Labour Party to transform it but who were themselves politically transformed.

While the ILP continued to support a host of progressive campaigns during these years – particularly in the peace movement – it was inclined to indulge in pious resolution-mongering. Its libertarian outlook attracted people who were unhappy about the lack of tolerance and democracy on much of the left, but otherwise its politics became diffuse.

While the ILP almost sank below the political horizon in these years, it survived by a fine thread. This was due to the resources it had accumulated in earlier years but, more importantly, thanks to the loyalty and commitment of ILPers with fond memories of the party in days gone by and wished to keep something of that alive. The ILP has always been more than a political party. It was a political movement which valued socialist fellowship and this made it possible for it to renew itself.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a small but significant influx of younger activists from the anti-nuclear movement, and some former members of the Communist Party who were disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Unhappy about the lack of radicalism and democracy in the Labour Party and wary of the politics and practices of the far left, the new generation were looking for some kind of alternative. Whatever its faults, the ILP provided them with space to rethink their politics.

In doing so, they became frustrated with the lack of direction of the ILP which by now was a very weak organisation. They challenged its lack of perspective and, as they developed their ideas, they sought to turn the ILP outwards and to reconsider the relationship of socialists to the Labour Party. Support for this rethink also came from longstanding members of the ILP.

In 1974, after several years of debate, the ILP re-adopted a socialist commitment of the Labour Party in its Outline Perspective. In 1975, it changed its constitution to become Independent Labour Publications. On both occasions there were members present who had attended the 1932 disaffiliation conference. Indeed, there were some whose experience went back to before the First World War.

A few months after the decision to change the ILP’s constitution, the national executive of the Labour Party agreed that members of the ILP could join the Labour Party and vice versa. Not only did this end four decades in which the ILP had gone its separate way from the Labour Party but it opened a new chapter in the ILP’s history.

Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
ILP History 3: Labour’s Rise and Disaffiliation
- Strongholds of the ILP

]]> http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/01/22/ilp-history-4-war-and-after/feed/ 0 http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2011/07/25/remembering-spains-volunteers/ http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2011/07/25/remembering-spains-volunteers/#comments Mon, 25 Jul 2011 21:16:46 +0000 Matthew Brown http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/?p=1848 On Saturday 16 July, the 75th anniversary of the first involvement of anti-fascist volunteers from north west England in the Spanish Civil War was commemorated at Manchester Town Hall. CHRIS HALL was there.

Over 100 people, including many young Spaniards, were present to hear about the contribution of the north west in the fight against fascism in Spain between 1936 and 1939. The commemorative plaques honouring the International Brigades and the ILP Contingent were side-by-side for the first time.

The Manchester Lord Mayor Harry Lyons opened the proceedings and was followed by speakers who recounted the experiences of the volunteers.

First, I stated that over 400 volunteers came from the north west to serve in Spain. Most were wounded and many were killed. Also, in light of the recent opening up of M15 records, it’s possible that maybe many more volunteers went to Spain from the north west than was first thought.

I went on to recall the views and experiences of two Liverpool volunteers – Bob Edwards, who commanded the ILP Contingent, and Jack Jones, the famous trade unionist, who served in the International Brigades.

Diane Bradbury then recounted the life story of Stalybridge’s Lillian Urmston who served in Spain as a nurse.

Finally, Dolores Long talked about her father Sam Wild from Manchester who was the last Commander of the British Battalion of the International Brigades in Spain. She followed this with a resounding rendition of ‘Pasionaria’s’ farewell speech to the International Brigades.

Songs were sung by Mike Wild, another offspring of Sam Wild, about why people volunteered to fight in Spain, and the commemorative event ended with the singing of the ‘Jarama Valley’ song and a minute’s silence.

Afterwards people mingled and took pictures of both plaques, and the Spanish in particular were interested in the ILP plaque, asking who the ILP volunteers were and what happened to them.

The event was totally non-partisan and finally, at last, the contribution of the ILP volunteers has been commemorated alongside those who served in the International Brigades.

Salud

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More information from the International Brigade Memorial Trust.

Organised by the International Brigade Memorial Trust, the event will mark the role of the north west volunteers in the Sculpture Hall at 11am before a walk round ‘radical manchester’ at 2pm.

The Trust exists to “educate the public in the history of the men and women who fought in the International Brigades and in the medical and other support services in the Spanish Civil War, in particular by preserving and cataloguing valuable historical material relating hereto, and by making such material available to the public.”

It also seeks to “foster good citizenship by remembering those who have fallen in the Spanish Civil War by preserving, maintaining and assisting in the construction of war memorials.”

More details here, or from the International Brigade Memorial Trust.
Email: secretary@international-brigades.org.uk

When faced with adversity we often find out who our real friends are. Despite being deserted by his own people, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak can for now put his trust in the police and the top-tier of the military. In the rest of the world he can count on his fellow autocrats from the alma mater of the Cold War and, until 31 January, could claim at least the nominal solidarity of the Socialist International, and therefore of our own Labour Party.

According to the Ethical Charter of the Socialist International, the member parties affirm their “total commitment to the values of equality, freedom, justice and solidarity which are the foundation of democratic socialism”. Fine words. Words that chime with the Labour Party’s contemporary clause 4 and to which the Party can proudly subscribe, but words not so fine as to be taken all that seriously by many of the parties signed up to it.

In the letter of expulsion addressed to the nameless ‘general secretary’ of Egypt’s National Democratic Party (NDP), the Socialist International cites concerns at “the lack of developments in relation to democracy”. Aside from the evasive and slightly euphemistic language that describes a lack of democracy as if it were a vitamin deficiency in an otherwise healthy body, this letter fails to address those areas where the NDP is also lacking.

From the start of Mubarak’s rule the NDP has stood for the democratic socialism of the truncheon and the private swimming pool. The gross disparities of wealth and the lack of opportunities in Egypt prove there has been a lack of development in relation to socialism. The cartelised state industries that have ensured the economic domination of the political elite for decades are the classic symptom of a hypocritical racket.

That it should take all this and a popular revolt to get a corrupt party ostracised, and that the fine words of a country’s official left should ever be taken on face value, is unsettling. But worse still, it helps justify old slanders against the left that accuse it of being complicit with tyranny and fundamentally undemocratic.

When the Conservative Party threw its lot in with the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament it was rightly criticised for so easily breaking bread with the unreformed right in eastern Europe, but we should take care that the obvious double standard does not go unnoticed.

Do these affiliations mean anything, or are they merely the comforting vestiges of more optimistic days? More importantly, who in Egypt can claim the mantle of the democratic left and make something of that Ethical Charter?

Roma Marquez Santo born in Barcelona on 6 November 1916 into a political family who owned a variety of books including some by Russian authors. One of six children, he began work at a garage and became a member of the socialist trade union, the UGT.

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936 he received a rifle from a loyal artillery regiment and, together with two brothers, went on to to join the militia of the POUM. His youngest brother, aged 14, ended up fighting in the defence of Madrid in November 1936 while Roma became part of the POUM Lenin column (29^th Division) and joined the POUM political party. One of his sisters took part in the failed attack on Majorca by Catalan militias in 1936.

The three brothers volunteered to man four 50mm mortars, and during an engagement in September 1936 Roma was wounded in the leg and evacuated to Barcelona. There he witnessed the funeral of the anarchist militant Durutti on 23 November before returning to the Aragon front in late December 1936.

Roma remembered two incidents in partiuclar from his time in the Lenin Column: one was seeing a very fat George Kopp riding a white horse plastered in mud; the other was when he helped evacuate his section commander’s family from their farmhouse as it came under fire. Roma carried a rather large and hysterical 14-year-old girl across a river, and later met up with this same girl in 2009 more than 70 years later. (Read more)

In August 1937 Roma and one of his brothers joined an anarchist unit, after the POUM had been declared an illegal political party and the Lenin column forcibly disbanded.

They both attended officer training school and became lieutenants in the republican army. Roma was assigned to the 147^th Mixed Brigade based in Andalucia, and when the war ended he was trapped in the south of Spain before being imprisoned as a “dangerous Marxist”.

Roma spent over three and a half years in prison before being released in the winter of 1943. On returning to Barcelona he became a builder and had to report often to the local police. He never married.

In later life he visited the UK and Ireland and met British International Brigaders to talk about his experiences of the civil war. In May 2009 he came to Salford and unveiled a plaque honouring the contribution of ILP volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.

Roma died from cancer in Barcelona on 29 December 2010. He will be sadly missed by all who met him.

Chris Hall is author of ‘Not Just Orwell’: The Independent Labour Party Volunteers and the Spanish Civil War, published by Warren and Pell, May 2009.

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A Tribute to Roma

On 30 May 2009 Roma came to the Working Class Movement Library in Salford to unveil the first ever public commemoration of ILPers who fought in Spain. Read more

Land and Freedom, written by Barry Winter, is the ILP’s account of the of the Spanish Civil War, using the often-silenced voices of Spanish activists.

HARRY OWEN pays tribute to the man who fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s yet could still hold audiences charmed and spellbound with tales of his experiences more than 70 years later.

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On 30 May 2009, Roma was at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford to unveil the first ever public commemoration of ILPers who fought in Spain. Read more

Alan Warren’s obituary to Roma is on the Poumista site, here.

Saturday 7 August, 2pm
People’s History Museum
Left Bank
Spinningfields
Manchester M3 3ER

FREE ENTRY

Historian Dr. Richard Baxell lectures on the day-to-day experiences of the British and Irish volunteers in The Spanish Civil War, during the early part of 1937.

The lecture will include audio and video clips from some of the interviews with Brigaders and will cover the formation of the battalion, its baptism of fire at Jarama and its subsequent recovery and rebuilding before returning to action at the Battle of Brunete in July 1937.

As Baxell says: ‘The period of training – let alone combat – must have been an immense culture shock to the members of the battalion, almost all of whom spoke no Spanish and had rarely travelled, even within Britain. Factor in an unfamiliar diet, woefully insufficient and often sub-standard weaponry and a general lack of appropriate military experience and you begin to understand the scale of the appalling task facing the British Battalion in their first experience of combat.’

Richard Baxell, with Jim Jump and Angela Jackson, compiled the ANTIFASCISTAS exhibition for the International Brigade Memorial Trust (see below). He is also the author of British Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, the history of the British Battalion in the International Brigades.

More details of Richard’s work can be found at www.richardbaxell.info

In addition, Civil War songs will be performed by Manchester group The Maddonnas.

For more details of the event contact: Dolores Long: 0161 226 2013 or Hilary Jones: 0161 224 1747

To book a place, please telephone the People’s History Museum on 0161 838 9190 or email: info@phm.org.uk

ANTIFACISTAS

Antifascistas is the exhibition commissoned by the International Brigade Memorial Trust (IBMT) on the British and Irish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War and will be at the People’s History Museum from 6-31st August.

For more information on the work of the International Brigade Memorial Trust
email: secretary@international-brigades.org.uk
tel: 020 8555 6674
web: www.international-brigades.org.uk

The Kurdistan region of Iraq enjoyed a head start over the rest of the country. Its 1991 uprising ousted Saddam’s genocidal forces which had murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds at Halabja and elsewhere. Its leaders started to build universities and lay down democratic foundations but it also endured a bloody civil war whose divisions are now healing.

Security is tight although there have ‘only’ been about 120 terrorist killings since 2003, 100 of these in early 2004, and overseas business people and diplomats rarely take special measures. Crime is very low.

There’s also been a development boom with homes and big infrastructure projects built in recent years. Workers don’t pay tax and work six hours a day. Unions are social partners and back the call for full union rights in the rest of Iraq, where they are restricted.

Iraq has the world’s third largest oil reserves but is only the 11th biggest producer. Kurdistan has plentiful supplies. Oil and gas provide virtually all Iraq’s revenues and diversification is vital. Agriculture was born in Kurdistan but liquidated by Saddam who razed thousands of villages and herded people into cities. Kurds have lost farming skills and its young people are not accustomed to rural life. Most food is imported although Kurdistan could become self-sufficient by modernising its methods through foreign investment. Tourism is another growth area.

Kurdish leaders seek UK investment and trade and are mystified that there has been no official ministerial trade mission while other European countries are making a beeline to the region. Britain is losing business opportunities. Direct flights to the UK and a wider visa scheme would boost commerce.

Kurdistan is wrongly overlooked in case UK engagement upsets Arab Iraq. This is not, however, a zero sum game. Kurdistan is open to business which is currently less feasible elsewhere. Kurdistan could become the gateway to the whole country and companies could expand as security permits.

Kurdistan’s leaders are open to international best practice. They don’t want to reinvent every wheel and have contracted British institutions to help them tackle corruption and administrative inexperience.

Secular opposition

Their Speaker asked us to outline the British political system and more than half their 111 MPs enthusiastically participated in two lively sessions. They were keen to understand our Official Opposition system. They now have one – Gorran (the Change). This breakaway from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) took 25% of the seats in last year’s elections. The split is very bitter and Gorran has yet to find its feet. The emergence of a secular opposition is an important example for the Middle East.

Iraq has become a cold house for Christians but many have fled to Kurdistan and senior Christian leaders praised the government for building churches and protecting Christian villages.

Discussion in landlocked Kurdistan always turns to the neighbours. The good news is that frosty relations with Turkey have thawed massively in the last year, partly driven by extensive trading. However, Turkey and Iran are manipulating water supplies and one leading politician told us directly that Iran is not a neighbour but controls Shia Iraq.

The bad news is that relations between Iraqi Kurds and some Arabs have worsened considerably. This dangerous gap involves cultural and ethnic differences, resentment and fear and has come close to a shooting war. The Kurds suffered genocide directed from Baghdad but now embrace a federal and democratic Iraq. An independent Kurdistan including parts of Turkey, Iran and Syria is a popular dream but would almost certainly cause conflagration and is not on the agenda.

Kurds fear that Baghdad is building a centralised rather than federal state and it constantly delays implementing agreed constitutional provisions to solve problems. These include making Kirkuk and other disputed territories part of the Region, and establishing a reliable regime for oil production and sharing revenues.

Neutral statistics should underpin political representation and planning but they are not available in Kurdistan because the last census was in 1957. The Prime Minister, a Labour supporter-in-exile, Cardiff Barham Salih, told us they need UK technical assistance.

Improving Kurdish-Arab relations depends on the Iraqi parliamentary elections in March which could bring a new Iraqi PM with Kurdish support and reshaped cross-community alliances.

Iraqi Kurdistan has come a long way quickly but governance and human rights need improving. Its leaders and people most clearly desire deeper and wider political and commercial engagement by the UK, and others. It is in everyone’s interests that Kurdistan achieves its full potential within and for Iraq. The whole country would then stand a much better chance of working for its long-suffering people.

–

Gary Kent’s sixth fact-finding visit to Iraq, his fourth to Kurdistan since 2006, was with Meg Munn MP for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Kurdistan. They were guests of the Kurdistan parliament. In five days they met the President, Speaker, Prime Minister, Interior Minister, other ministers, unions, women activists, Gorran, Christian leaders, plus British and Kurdish business leaders.

Labour Friends of Iraq

That’s the starting point for a Europe-wide online debate on the future of social democracy hosted by the Soundings and Social Europe websites.

“European social democracy needs a fresh start,” assert Jon Cruddas and Andrea Nahles in their introduction to the ‘Good Society debate’. “In the wake of the most severe economic crisis in decades it has become clear that social democrats have not paid enough attention to the development of a real political alternative to the dominant free market orthodoxy. When the demand for an alternative politics was there social democrats had very little to say.”

Cruddas, the Labour MP, and Nahles, a member of Germany’s SPD, published a paper in June called Building the Good Society to kickstart discussions across the continent. “This was meant to be the first point of reference in the debate that is needed to stimulate the development of a new social democratic identity,” they explain. “The ‘Good Society’ as the guiding principle for a new politics needs to be filled with life by a broad discourse that is truly pan-European in scope.

Supported by Compass and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the project will run for the next six weeks when some 70 thinkers, politicians and activists from across Europe will publish papers on the Social Europe Journal’s website inviting comments and responses. Some of these are already online, including contributions from Neal Lawson of Compass, Labour’s Dennis MacShane and the sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman.

The aim is to find what Cruddas and Nahles call “a new political narrative” combining “sharp analysis of the shortcomings of the economies and societies we live in with an authentic and convincing vision for the future”.

To read their introduction to the discussion go to:
www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/social_europe/discussion.html

For articles and opportunities to comment go to: http://www.goodsociety.social-europe.eu

Click here for a critical report of Jon Cruddas’s Compass lecture given at the London School of Economics in September.

The vitriolic healthcare debate in the US and ongoing economic problems may dominate President Obama’s current agenda but the first nine months of this administration have also put into sharp focus an exceptionally difficult range of US foreign policy problems.

The inauguration of Barack Obama signalled for many in America and around the world a sharp break with the Bush administration. For the left of centre, the Bush years seemed at times almost a caricature of the ugly American bogeyman. Yet even for more mainstream politicians among America’s traditional allies the Bush policies on Iraq, torture, climate change and human rights seemed designed to test old allegiances to the limit.

The ecstatic crowds that greeted Obama in Berlin in during the 2008 election campaign, and more recently in Prague (and to a lesser extent in Britain) in 2009, signalled a hope at least that America could once again be if not an out and out multilateralist, then at least a more benign hegemon.

Declaring ‘America is ready to lead once more’ Obama’s inauguration, like his election, was recognition that the country’s position in the international system was in question like never before in recent history. A series of policies, whether enacted or signalled, were designed to chart a different path from his predecessor.

Yet a careful consideration of some of the most obvious foreign policy challenges facing America, reveals enormous limitations on Obama’s ability to reshape America’s position in the world and its relationships with other major powers.

Western Europe
Even among the countries where the USA’s international ties are the strongest, Obama has not had an easy ride. Certainly the change of direction has done much to reassure western leaders that the Bush administration’s unilateralism has passed.

However, the fact that the financial crisis was ‘made in America’ has severely weakened the USA’s ability (at least in the short term) to claim its economic model is the dominant one. Elements of regulation agreed at the G20 summit in April, and the creation of additional international credit through the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights, both signal an attempt by some in western Europe to push for changes in capitalist regulation at America’s moment of weakness. Divisions within the G20 over the extent and methods of financial regulation may continue to be a source of tension.

This is not limited to the economic sphere. The unwillingness of NATO allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan continues to frustrate US attempts to make progress on that front. Disagreements about the use of force outside of NATO’s area of operations have been a persistent source of tensions and the Obama Presidency won’t resolve these easily.

Iraq
Obama’s timetable for withdrawal from Iraq modestly reinforces a policy direction already adopted, if very reluctantly, in the later Bush years. Yet even with the best of intentions, a pull-out is conditional on some level of political stability in the country and that may well become more difficult the closer to the end game we get. Recent increases in violence indicate that the Iraqi terrorists and the Al-Qaeda threat may still pose severe problems.

The Afghan-Pakistan problem
US policy has increasingly  come to a belated recognition of the intertwined nature of the problems that surround US attempts to secure political stability in, and ultimately some kind of exit from Afghanistan.

If routing the Taliban in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks was initially successful, the subsequent operations have been anything but. The re-established ‘warlord’ economies based around poppy production and rampant corruption in government have only partially been offset by the creation of a nascent Afghan army. Extensive election fraud, low turnout and mounting casualties all pose increasingly difficult questions about what an acceptable solution in Afghanistan might be.

Yet the unwillingness or inability to commit more ground troops (particularly by NATO allies and in no small part because of Iraq) and the lack of development, have been compounded by gathering instability across the border. Not only has Pakistan become a source of support for the Taliban in Afghanistan, but the Taliban is also posing a growing threat to Pakistan’s fragile government. The threat of an ‘Iran-style’ revolution is now firmly on the American policy agenda and the potential for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to fall into Islamist hands is far from an idle worry.

Iran, Russia and proliferation
An increasingly hostile relationship developed with both Iran and Russia during the second Bush term. Obama’s early policy indicates an attempt to repair relations with Russia in an effort to strengthen the USA’s hand in dealing with Iran.

The basic objection to Iran’s nuclear ambitions have remained in place and are likely to do so – the prospect of an nuclear armed state on the Persian Gulf oil supply lines, and within striking distance of Israel, is the stuff of US strategic nightmares. Tougher UN Security Council action against Iran has long been hampered by Russian and Chinese objections.

Conciliatory moves towards Russia (questions over the future of the controversial eastern Europe missile defence shield, renewal of strategic arms limitation talks) are intended to entice greater co-operation. The prospect of more direct negotiations with Iran also are an attempt to open the door to a non-military solution.

However, ‘tough-minded diplomacy’ – claimed to be the touchstone of the new administration – requires others to be diplomatic in return. The tough stance by the Iranian regime after testing domestic opposition doesn’t bode well. The sense of US weakness on this issue, and the very real obstacles in the way of military action against Iran, limit America’s diplomatic hand as well. As if to reinforce the point, on the very day Obama held aloft the goal of a nuclear-free world, North Korea tested the latest version of its missile technology and ramped up its nuclear testing programme.

Such signs of US weakness may be a welcome change from the early Bush years even if, at the time of the Iraq invasion, many on the left as well as the neocon right severely over-estimated the extent of the USA’s ability to alter the world in its own interests (as opposed to its ability just to do harm). But a world shaped by the interests of current Russian or Chinese governments, much less an Iranian one, will be hardly more palatable than one bestrode by an American colossus.

It is ironic that just when the US gets a president seemingly intent on fashioning more progressive international outcomes, America is less able to achieve them.