5th April 2002

When Parliament was recalled on Wednesday for tributes to the Queen Mother no provision was made for a statement on the growing crisis in the middle east caused by Israel's determination to destroy any prospect of a Palestinian state being set up on the West Bank a course of action which could well trigger off a major war that could even spread and become a global conflict.

Israel was to be a home for the Jews after the Holocaust but under Sharon it has become a very dangerous and oppressive state complete with weapons of mass destruction including a nuclear capacity and a readiness to use them all, made possible by the full economic and military support of the American government which has used its Veto at the UN Security Council no less than 87 times to defend it.

Nor did the prime minister think it necessary to say anything about his forthcoming for talks with president Bush which could commit this country to yet another war, and, by refusing to do so he indicated, like some medieval monarch, his total disregard for parliament by denying it any role in policy making..

This weekend he goes to stay with the president, as his personal guest, at his ranch in Texas and the decisions taken there could have the most profound implications for world peace, and for the politics of Britain.

If the press briefings from the White House are to be believed the United States is planning, in the not too distant future, a major military attack on Iraq to change the regime there and replace it with one that is acceptable to the American government, thus giving it control of the second largest oilfield in the world.

Blair will be told quite bluntly that he is expected to give full support to this war and to provide a large force of British troops to occupy Iraq, after the bombing is over, to reduce the risk that US forces might be locked in to a conflict that could cost many lives.

Such an operation would be in direct breach of the Charter of the United Nations to which Britain and America are both committed as signatories to that Charter, and to break those solemn obligations would be to commit an act of aggression, and render those who authorized liable to be tried as war criminals, were an international war crimes tribunal to be set up.

But Bush has made it clear that he regards any treaty which might limit his freedom of action in pursuing the interests of the USA as a mere scrap of paper that he can tear up when it suits him, just as he has torn up the Kyoto treaty on global warming, the ABM treaty to allow him to launch his Star Wars project and has continued with his chemical weapons programme and has even threatened sanctions against any country that attempted to prosecute a US citizen before an international court were one set up.

Given the massive and overwhelming military power at the president's disposal, which he has recently reinforced with an extra $48 billion for the arms budget, and his capacity to deploy it anywhere in the world, there is nothing that the prime minister can actually do to prevent the Iraq war from being launched.

But he does has the power, and the duty, to warn Bush against this course of action and to make clear that if such a war is launched Britain will not only not support it but will use all its influence to construct an international alliance to prevent it, using its position in the Security Council, the Commonwealth and the European Union for this purpose.

Yet we know that none of this will happen and that in Texas Mr Blair will take his orders and come home determined to mobilize British opinion in support of this war and any other policy that Bush decides to adopt.

And the reason came clearly out of the recent article by Robert Cooper who was appointed by the prime minister as an adviser on Foreign Policy, and who argues that what we need now a new form of post modern Imperialism to justify a return to the world of the past when great powers imposed their will on the rest of the world in pursuit of their own national interests.

Indeed, from this line of thought it could well be argued that post modernist slavery is now acceptable again, in that millions who work in the third world on poverty wages are the wage slaves of the multinational corporations that perform the same role as did the great landlords when feudalism was the order of the day.

The tributes paid to the Queen Mother in parliament apart from the perfectly proper and affectionate personal recollections, also provided a unique opportunity to understand the continuity of tradition which underpins the thinking of the British establishment which has never come to terms with the demands of democracy and still dreams of the days of monarchy and empire when the ruling class really ruled.

And the way that the tributes have been reported in the media has been like a mirror reflecting back to us the way in which we have all been trained to bow and scrape before our betters and show deference to those who have never been elected.

Every country contains people who believe that they are superior to everyone else but Britain is one of the very few where children are taught from birth to believe that they are inferior and should defer to their betters and that is what we have to change.

5/4/02