Kmflett's Blog

The ICJ ruling on Gaza. Is the West making an exception to its own rules based international order?

Perry Anderson’s The Standard of Civilisation (New Left Review Sept Oct 2023) is a very useful piece on the realities of international law. After the First World War came the League of Nations and after the Second, the United Nations. However behind this lay an ideological perspective that whatever European countries and the US do is in accordance with international law and what others do is not. Palestine in this context has no chance. Israel facing orders is exceptional. Anderson notes that Gramsci saw hegemony as the ‘successful representation of a particular interest as a universal value’

The issue is whether the US, UK and the EU will now make an exception for Israel after the ICJ ruling and in doing so undermine the concept of a rules based international order they have spent many decades promoting

Western governments backed the ICJ in similar rulings against Myanmar, Russia and Syria. It would do enormous damage to the “rules-based order” that Western governments claim to uphold if they were to make an exception for Israel.

Kenneth Roth, Guardian 27^th January

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/26/icj-ruling-israel-western-backers

The UK Foreign Office did not waste time in making clear that they are making an exception for Israel. The end of the West’s rules based order

An FCDO spokesperson said:

We respect the role and independence of the ICJ. However we have stated that we have considerable concerns about this case, which is not helpful in the goal of achieving a sustainable ceasefire.

Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas in line with IHL, as we have said from the outset. Our view is that Israel’s actions in Gaza cannot be described as a genocide, which is why we thought South Africa’s decision to bring the case was wrong and provocative.

We welcome the Court’s call for the immediate release of hostages and the need to get more aid into Gaza. We are clear that an immediate pause is necessary to get aid in and hostages out, and then we want to build towards a sustainable, permanent ceasefire, without a return to the fighting.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/statement-on-the-interim-icj-ruling-in-south-africa-vs-israel

Lord Greville Howard of Rising was in the news before Christmas(Times 1st Dec) because he resigned from a Norfolk Parish Council over a row about speed limits in the area(he opposes their reduction). Castle Rising is part of the Sandringham Estate and has been the Howard family home since the twelfth century.

Howard’s ancestor William d’Aubigny, 1st Earl of Arundel, built Castle Rising for his wife who was the widow of Henry 1st. By the 14th Century it was the residence of Queen Isabella widow and alleged murderess of Edward 11. English Heritage describes the Castle as having one of the best preserved and most lavishly decorated keeps.

Howard was educated at Eton and was a Tory Shadow Minister after being made a Life Peer in 2004.

Lord Howard’s London townhouse has been used as a campaign HQ by Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Between 1968 and 1970 he was Enoch Powell’s Private Secretary.

The discussion between Perry Anderson, Tom Nairn and E P Thompson on the nature of British capitalism applies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greville_Howard,_Baron_Howard_of_Rising

The ICJ, international law, and resistance

E P Thompson, the late socialist historian, was in a minority on the left in defending the importance of the rule of law. He did not of course think that the law was neutral or that it produced, in general, verdicts that supported working people. His point was that the law had to have an appearance of neutrality and allow for the possibility that the rich and powerful might occasionally lose cases.

This is a useful context for the ICJ interim verdict. South Africa bought a case that charged Israel with genocide in Gaza. The Court agreed that it had the power to hear the case and that there was a case to investigate. This will take some years. In the meantime the Court has imposed a series of orders on Israel which it has no power to enforce.

Those with familiar with the behaviour of Israel down the years will know that it will obfuscate, tell lies and generally avoid doing anything because of the judgement. Hence that attack on the UN and aid to Gaza based on unproven Israeli allegations

The far right and fascist elements of the Netanyahu Government will just step up their murderous activities.

Perry Anderson’s The Standard of Civilisation (New Left Review Sept Oct 2023) is a very useful piece on the realities of international law. After the First World War came the League of Nations and after the Second, the United Nations. However behind this lay an ideological perspective that whatever European countries and the US do is in accordance with international law and what others do is not. Palestine in this context has no chance. Israel facing orders is exceptional. Anderson notes that Gramsci saw hegemony as the ‘successful representation of a particular interest as a universal value’

So the ICJ judgement won’t stop Israel. But it places Netanyahu in a difficult place. Those like Lord Dave Cameron, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer who oppose doing anything meaningful to restrain Israel and sell it arms are also in a difficult place. Based on the ICJ judgement they are potentially facilitating genocide.

The power that will shift things lies with protests in workplaces, colleges and on the streets. The ICJ judgement underlines that all those who have protested are right and those who haven’t are not and worse. Protest can work more quickly and effectively than the Courts, important though their role can be

After taking steps to enter administration and with rumours that private equity group Breal might step in (again) its good to see that Leeds based North Brewing have secured their future with financial backing from the owner of Kirkstall Brewery.

Whether this will work in the medium term against a backdrop of an economy heading for recession and continuing issues in hospitality remains to be seen. Let’s hope it does but even if ultimately it doesnt it still provides an alternative to the apparently relentless march of PE through troubled craft brewing

Jessica Mason has posted the full details:

Beard Liberation Front

26th January

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that Jurgen Klopp’s resignation as Liverpool manager is closely related to declining follicle power.

While Liverpool are currently top of the Premiership Klopp has frequently appeared exasperated in recent times despite changing his beard format on several occasions.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said,we expect Klopp will be back but for the moment is declining follicle issues suggest a back to the roots period is needed.

A majority of the Labour Ministers who took Office on 22nd January 1924 were temperance men.

The Chancellor Philip Snowden had published in 1908 Labour and the Drink Question and Labour’s 1923 Manifesto promised to bring the drink traffic under public control

The terminology is important-traffic not trade. Alcohol was seen as the same as hard drugs are now. The view was that drunkeness stopped workers from organising and changing the world- a bit.

There was substance in the point but another view might be that changing the world would reduce drunkeness.

Snowden was in a position to act in his April 1924 Budget. He didnt do much but what he did was firmly class based. He scrapped taxes on sweetened table waters- familiar to us today as flavoured water. He retained the tax on soda water taken to be used as a mixer with alcoholic drinks by the better off. A modest nod to the drinking habits of those amongst the working class who, like Snowden himself did not drink

Karl Marx’s grave and the contradictions of capitalism

When Engels died in 1895 his ashes were scattered off Beachy Head close to what had been one of his favourite seaside towns, Eastbourne.

Marx who died in 1883 had been buried in Highgate Cemetery in a modest grave but geographically appropriate for someone who had spent much of their life in North London.

A modest controversy has now arisen over plans to make more space for graves in the area around where Marx is buried.

Space for burials at Highgate Cemetery is very limited and the cost for burying someone there starts at several thousand pounds for a spot to mark a cremation and rises steeply for a gravestone.

The Daily Telegraph reported on 16^th January that Highgate Cemetery is looking to make profit by selling space for new graves near to where Karl Marx is now buried. Their ability to do this was cleared by legislation in 2022 although its worth keeping in mind that cemetery was originally designated specifically as a profitable enterprise.

The report notes that older graves where there are thought to be no living relatives and which are in unconsecrated may be cleared to allow for new burials but that the priority is to develop the space around Marx’s grave.

The current position and structure of Marx’s grave dates only to the mid-1950s when the then CPGB promoted a rather more prominent monument to the co-thinker of Engels than had previously existed.

Since then the grave has been the location of annual commemorations of Marx’s life and thought. To underline that its existence still annoys the political opponents of Marx 140 years after his death it has been the subject of several attacks by fascists in recent times.

Aside from the annual event the grave of course numbers visitors to the cemetery becoming something of a tourist attraction.

Not to be outdone by the Telegraph The Times on the 17^th January ran both a report and an Editorial on the issue. As might be expected this celebrated the idea of making money out of providing new burial space in proximity to Marx’s grave.

As often with Times Editorials in the Rupert Murdoch era it was short of important detail and wrong on others. For example in the pre-Covid era before 2020 the Cemetery attracted around 100,000 visitors a year, not a day as the Times thinks. Current visitor levels are recovering again even allowing for the reality that in a cost of living crisis an entry charge is payable

Highgate Cemetery was opened in 1839 by the London Cemetery Company specifically as a profit making venture. Even at that time its aim was to provide space for burials where existing graveyards were full.

This worked well enough but by the 1970s the Company was in financial trouble and no longer maintaining the Cemetery properly. A local group the Highgate Cemetery Trust stepped in to run it before the graves and vegetation which require considerable maintenance fell into further disrepair.

It is a charitable trust and receives no public funding, although it has received a £100,000 grant from the National Lottery Fund. The plans to exploit the area around Marx’s grave are hence designed not to make a profit but specifically aimed at being not for profit.

Needless to say this point was not the focus for the Times which was too busy celebrating the idea, wrongly, that Marx’s grave would promote private profit.

It will be interesting to see in due course what graves do appear close to that of Marx. We can only hope that they will be broadly appropriate to his life and work and not of those who spent their lives trying to undermine it.

Sidney Webb, who was the President of the Board of Trade in the 1924 Labour Government was the only member with a full beard. Several other members had moustaches a familiar radical facial template even before Stalin.

Other well known Labour Cabinet members such as Arthur Henderson and Philip Snowden were determinedly clean shaven.

Webb was largely responsible for the 1918 Labour Party Constitution and the suspicion remains that a secret clause limited future Labour Governments to a beard and moustache quota for Ministers

So, Farewell then: A year of  Tory Deputy Chair, Lee Anderson

Lee Anderson resigned as a Deputy Chair of the Tories after a year in post. He opposed Sunak’s Rwanda Bill because it’s not racist enough. But instead of voting against it he abstained because Labour MPs were sniggering at him.

It suggests that he doesnt have the moral fibre to be part of a far right grouping associated with Braverman and Jenrick and now Anderson says he wants his Deputy job back and quite likes Rishi really

Rishi Sunak had a minor reshuffle in early February 2023, or as many saw it, re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Someone who did have that you view- as he had recently made the comment on WhatsApp- was Ashfield MP Lee Anderson.

‘Red Wall’ MP Anderson who sits for Ashfield will almost certainly lose his seat at the next Election but in the meantime he has had almost a year as Tory Deputy Chair.

Anderson who was a Labour member until 2018 is a hard to far right Tory MP who has  frequently made comments many would see as racist about asylum seekers, is transphobic and was warned not to use the Anti-Semitic phrase ‘cultural Marxism’.

For the current period however is views on food banks are relevant. He is on record as saying that they are an ‘industry’, that they are used by people who don’t know how to cook and that a budget of 30p a day is enough to buy food.

The last comment related to the cost of food for an individual in a mass collective cooking project which sounds a bit socialist for Anderson.

Sunak who is the richest MP in Parliament probably doesn’t fully grasp the Anderson, food bank, cost of living issue. Many others will have so it’s no surprise the deckchairs on the Titanic need further re-arrangement.

After his appointment Anderson lost no time in shooting his mouth off in his new role by calling for the return of the death penalty because it is deterrent. Like other Anderson sayings this is of course evidence free. It is not currently Tory policy

The contradictions of Anderson were laid out in an Editorial in the Murdoch Times on 10th February 2023. Headed ‘Loose Cannon’ it noted the last thing Sunak needs ‘is another personality focused distraction’.

Anderson leads a group of hard right Tory MPs the Blue Collar Conservatives who claim to represent working class voters. Don’t expect to see them supporting strikes or opposing anti-union legislation though.

He has returned to back bench obscurity for the moment and if current polling is reliable he will soon be losing his seat as well. After which one suspects his GB News show will disappear as well. Perhaps he will accept cash reportedly on offer from Reform UK and depart even farther rightwards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson_(British_politician)

Beard Liberation Front

24th January

Contact Keith Flett 07803 167266

Campaigners call on Humza Yousaf to officially recognise that Burns had a beard

The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has called on First Minister Humza Yousaf to use Burns Night as an occasion to both celebrate the poet’s work and acknowledge that the traditional image of him as clean shaven was manufactured by those who wanted to promote his work to a London elite.

The campaigners say that while Burns had employment for some years as an Exciseman and was likely to have been clean shaven at times in reality he probably shaved at best two or three times a week and wore a beard for the remainder of the time.

It is thought that images and paintings of Burns which show him as clean shaven date to a period when the London based political and culture Establishment was determined to claim Burns as what it saw as a ‘cultured Scot’, a supporter of the Union, rather than the hirsute anti-Establishment rebel he clearly was.

BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, it’s time for Humza Yousaf to rectify an historic wrong and recognise that the real Rabbie Burns had a beard. It would be a significant step in reclaiming genuine Scottish culture from the clean shaven focus of Tory Westminster.