Contribution of Roger Nettleship to the Anti-War Candidate
Forum
This forum is the third in a series of Stop the War
Coalition Forums entitled "Block the plans for another pro-war
government" started in April 2009. These discussions have so informed the
work that today it is very inspiring to be one of those candidates in South
Shields who has been supported by their peers in the anti-war movement to take
on the cartel of pro-war parties alongside and in unity with other genuine
anti-war candidates. Whatever the outcome, I think this is very important for
the intervention and development of an anti-war bloc in the political life of
the country in the fight for an anti-war government. But it is very significant
in South Shields where we have David Miliband who is the Foreign Secretary and
one of the main players of the pro-war party system. I think too our unity as
genuine anti-war candidates again will benefit the working class and people in
their fight for a pro-social government and an economy that serves their needs.
It will uphold the rights of all both nationally and locally and put human
beings and the interests of human peoples at the centre of all change and
development.
The stop-the-war movement in Britain has well publicised
and documented the crimes of the big powers, particularly Britain, the US and
Israel, in war crimes against the people of the Middle East and Central Asia in
the invasions, occupations of their countries and the huge loss of life, the
massacres such as at Fallujah, and the destruction of the infrastructure, and
historic cities and buildings. It is only the stop-the-war movement that has
collated these facts that indict these pro-war governments as war criminals for
all to see.
From the mass exclamation of "Not in Our Name!"
in 2001 which was the people's response to 9/11 when the US and Britain first
attacked and occupied Afghanistan to the exclamation of all that another world
is possible with huge movements of the youth and all people against the wars in
Iraq, the attack by Israel on Lebanon and the Palestinian people in Gaza, the
people have made their voices heard.
Today, the vision that inspires us is that another world is
possible and necessary and it is up to us to create it. It is the spirit of the
people taking up the problems for political solution in their countries against
the pro-war governments that dominate their political systems. In other words,
the fight is on for an anti-war government.
In 2001 when I stood against the big party system, David
Miliband was brought in from Tony Blair’s New Labour think-tank. My
election leaflet declared that the need of the time is for workers to come
forward and directly intervene in politics and represent their own interests
and the interests of society as a whole. In voting for a programme of the
workers which was independent of the programme of David Miliband, of New
Labour, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrat candidates, the workers will be
voting for their own interests. This is what society needs to be able to
progress.
As we know, David Miliband was elected here and following
this election Bush and Blair gave rise to the world of 9//11 where in response
to this terrorist attack the actions of the big powers, particularly the US and
Britain, threw the world into deepest reaction by the launching of the
"war on terror".
David Miliband was promoted as "Prime Minister
material" and he soon was established as one of the main leaders of the
pro-war-on-terror New Labour government and also in the anti-social domestic
agenda with the introduction of big business competition into our public
services of education, health and local government to the detriment of those
services. South Tyneside Stop the War Coalition (STSWC) demanded that David
Miliband account for his lies to the people of South Shields and to the
stop-the-war movement that he would not support the illegal invasion of Iraq.
But he then voted and spoke in support of this aggression. STSWC’s
response was to intervene ourselves, and this gave rise to our own anti-war and
pro-social candidate in Nader Naderi during the 2005 general elections in this
town. Nader gave a very good account of himself and our movement in opposing
David Miliband as the representative of the big party system and their
"war on terror" agenda, as well as their attacks on civil liberties
and the rights and interests of the people of South Shields and of Britain as a
whole. I also stood as a worker politician alongside him in Jarrow and Hebburn
as a Safeguard the Future of the NHS candidate as part of the same stand for
the alternative.
Certainly, although Nader is unable to take this agenda
forward at the moment, he has left us with his contribution from that time,
which I am honoured to take up here and will strive to uphold in opposing the
war and opposing monopoly dictate and fighting for a better world as he did.
At the same time, nobody in the movement here expects this
campaign to be exactly the same as Nader’s. Our call is for the working
class and people to take up their own anti-war, pro-social programme and
constitute themselves through their own worker politicians, in alliance with
small parties, as the opposition in Parliament to the cartel system of big
parties. It is a call for an anti-war government.
Our programme is for the people of our countries and
communities of Scotland, Wales and England to make the decisions on all the
important things that affect their lives. Where democracy is taken forward so
it is the people who select the candidates and not the big parties. Where the
people have control over foreign policy to withdraw Britain from the aggressive
military alliances with the US, NATO, Israel and others. Where our foreign
policy is an extension of our domestic policy to resolve conflicts through
peaceful means giving prominence to finding political solutions and according
to international law based on resolving conflicts thought peaceful means. And
just as with most countries in the world, this would mean that we would have no
troops on foreign soil. We would start by disempowering the generals and war
industry lobby and bring the troops home from foreign soil everywhere.
For example, as we speak, Brown, Miliband and the
government are in danger of further adding to their criminal wars with their
provocation over the Malvinas seized by Britain twice in 1833 and in 1982 from
Argentina. It is illegal under UN norms for one side to drill for oil in
disputed waters. These waters in fact are 60km north of the Malvinas. This also
follows Britain’s military exercises in December last year prior to the
drilling. The dispute regarding the sovereignty of the Malvinas Islands should
have been resolved by Britain long ago. Instead, since 1982 Britain has been
preparing for a conflict, and has militarised the Islands. It uses the
self-determination of the Islanders in a fraudulent way, all the more
fraudulent in that it does not respect this for the people Iraq and
Afghanistan. The interests of the Islanders could be taken care of within the
context of Argentinean sovereignty through negotiation. Instead, preparation
for another war is the solution of the pro-war government, and the Islanders
are used as pawns in Britain’s interests in Antarctica.
Our stand against war is to give a future to our youth. It
is against recruitment of our youth for aggressive foreign wars. Instead the
youth want to build a bright future for themselves right here in Britain.
An anti-war government would not militarise the economy,
not commission Trident, or any other nuclear weapons and genuinely would work
for the scrapping of all nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in
Britain and throughout the world. Defence would mean just that: defence and not
a ministry for war disguised as a Ministry of Defence.
We take a stand against the racism of the British state and
its media, its inhuman treatment of migrants under the big lie that immigration
and immigrants are the problem.
In this context the mass media does not talk about the fact
that the half a million people that emigrated from Britain last year could be a
"problem" for other countries, or the millions that have emigrated
from Britain over the years – that would be very inconvenient to their
whole propaganda that Britain is a soft touch for immigrants – again a big
lie. Nobody talks about Britain’s war on Iraq meaning that there were 2-4
million refugees who fled mostly to Syria whilst this country has taken very
few when Britain is culpable in causing these people to become refugees. There
is only contempt for Syria from David Miliband’s Foreign Office, and over
the years there have been threats to attack that country as well, alongside the
threats issued against many other countries.
Nobody talks about the racism of the British state, its
cartel big party system that presents itself as centre ground but supports this
immigration racism. Nobody condemns the political system that allows openly
racist parties to be registered. Nobody talks about the fact that British
colonialism created racism in the modern world with the modern slavery of the
17th and 18th and 19th centuries, that this inhuman and criminal legacy of
racism created by the British state for its own colonial profits, and on which
their wealth was created, has to be completely eradicated and has no place in
the modern world.
We take a stand against the racism of the British state and
its party system that promotes racism and racist parties as tools of all
elected dictatorships to deflect the fact that they serve the rich by trying to
divide the peoples on racist grounds.
We take a stand in defence of the rights of all the people
of all nationalities, cultures and religions to have the same rights of all in
the polity and retain the right to their national, cultural, language,
religious and other traditions which the state should facilitate and protect.
Far from allowing the pro-war parties to declare human
beings illegal and to give them less rights than cats and dogs, we declare that
no-one is illegal and that the brutal targeting of Muslims in the "war on
terror" must be ended immediately, that this immigration racism, this
proxy racism we have called it, must be ended immediately and the rights of all
upheld simply because they are human beings.
The British state has over recent months been exposed as
being complicit in torture. If it has not been exposed as being fully involved
in torture in Iraq and Afghanistan then this is only a matter of time. The
Foreign Office diplomat and Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has said
that for somebody as himself to expose Britain’s complicit actions in
accepting information and publishing that as fact when they know it to be
extracted by torture cannot be considered brave. He says, how would any person
accept torture in the modern world without utterly condemning it whoever they
are. This is how criminal and reactionary those that have risen to positions of
power in the British state are. And the people of South Shields are being asked
to vote for a Foreign Secretary who has been in charge of these medieval
values.
It is an important part of our pro-social programme that
upholds the dignity of labour and recognises that it is the working class and
people who are the producers of all wealth and services in society and it is
they that should be empowered to decide the direction of the economy and
society along with those that are deprived of a proper livelihood.
Our programme is to end monopoly right, the right of big
business to dictate over society, and uphold public right over monopoly right.
In this town, because of the destruction of the manufacturing base over decades
by the Conservatives and New Labour, the local authority and the health
services are left as the largest employers in the town.
Our fight is to re-establish with public investment an
all-round self-reliant economy in the region and over the country that ends the
reliance on inward and outward investment of the big multinationals and ends
their dictate over the economy and over the political system.
It is the big parties that directly represent the interests
of finance and big business which are wrecking the national and local economy
and wrecking our public services. These parties use "nationalisation"
as a weapon in the hands of big business that steals the added value of present
and future generations of the people to pay the massive losses of banks and
other companies so as to continue to fund the massive profits and lucrative
life-styles of financiers and bankers. We have to take a stand to restrict this
monopoly right and put public right, the claims of the people, first as an
initial step to building a social economy.
It is the people of South Tyneside as elsewhere who need to
be involved in a discussion on how to bring this about and how to revitalise,
for example, the massive reserves of coal as both an important human resource
for production of other products and as a resource for energy through carbon
capture as well as the revitalisation of the major engineering and shipbuilding
skills for projects that can be used to build a modern humanised and developed
economy and human environment fit for the people here to live and work in.
There are of course different views on this, but what I am
suggesting is that the people of the area should be involved here, as with the
working class and people all over the country, in deciding the direction of the
economy for the new society, to emerge with its anti-war pro-social government.
With our anti-war and pro-social agenda, we can unite
together against the cartel of the big parties and show the people of the area
that there is an alternative.
Just to talk about some questions about my candidacy: I
have lived in the borough of South Tyneside for 30 years, being active in the
working-class movement throughout. In the 1980s, I helped form a union to fight
for the rights of the unemployed. I became a hospital porter at Palmer
Community Hospital in Jarrow when it opened in 1986, and I am also a union
officer in the South Tyneside district. I have been involved with the anti-war
movement since the 1980s and I was one of the founders of the South Tyneside
Stop the War Coalition and am presently the convenor of the Tyneside Stop the
War Coalition. I have taken up with others the campaign to safeguard the future
of the NHS under the banner that these are our hospitals, our workplaces and
our NHS, over many years. In the 2001 and 2005 elections, I also stood as a
health worker politician.
I am also a member of RCPB(ML), a modern communist party,
and because the electoral law at present is geared to authorising only parties
to select candidates and describe on the ballot paper what they wish to stand
for my party is authorising me to stand as a candidate on behalf of my peers
with the name we wish to use, "for an anti-war government", which is
a call of the national stop-the-war movement. If it helps to understand this
better, one could say that the electoral stand of our Party is for the
collectives of the working class and people, not political parties, to select
candidates. The aim is that there should be no election without selection,
whereby the whole of the polity is involved in selecting the best candidates to
represent them.
At the present time, over a long process, those active in
the stop-the-war movement in South Tyneside took the decision to stand a
candidate against Miliband that represented its anti-war stand. At the same
time, because of electoral law STSWC cannot officially select a candidate
unless we constitute STSWC as a political party, which is not desirable because
we are a coalition of all political views. So it was not our wish either to
support my candidacy in exclusion to any other genuine anti-war candidate that
may stand in the borough.
Finally, I would like to say that this general election is
important for all the reasons that have been discussed here tonight. The fight
for an anti-war government has started. We call on you all to co-operate
together and make preparations to block the plans to elect another pro-war
government. We can make a difference if we do all we can to block such a thing
in South Tyneside.
Bring the Troops Home!
Fight for an Anti-War Government!
