Open Letter
An open letter to the Leader of the Labour Party from concerned Labour Party members, Momentum activists and socialists. To add your name, please email speakoutonsyria@gmail.com
Dear Jeremy,
We write as members of the Labour Party and Momentum, as socialist activists, or as other supporters of your leadership of the Labour Party. We agree wholeheartedly with your opposition to militarism and nuclear weapons, and your call for an end to British arms exports to countries such as Saudi Arabia. Yet we are concerned by your silence – thus far – on the ongoing slaughter of civilians by Russian and Assad-regime forces in Syria.
We share your scepticism about kneejerk military responses to the situation in Syria, such as the bombing campaign against ISIS proposed by David Cameron last autumn. We are not asking you to back Western interventions of this kind, but simply to say clearly and unequivocally that the actions of Assad and Russia in Syria are barbaric war crimes, and that you will seek to end them, and to hold their perpetrators to account.
We applaud your efforts, over decades, to end the crimes of brutal regimes supported by Western powers. But we do not believe that this exhausts the duties of anti-imperialists, socialists and peace activists in Western countries. The fact that Assad is supported not by the USA or Britain, but by Russia and Iran, does not make his crimes any less horrific, or the political future he represents for the people of Syria any less dismal. Nor does it mean that Western political leaders are powerless in acting to oppose these crimes.
We know only too well that there are those in the anti-war movement who will denounce any move critical of Russia, Iran, or Assad as tantamount to support for Western imperialist intervention. We also know that there are those on the right of British politics who will claim any such move as a concession to their policy of militaristic grandstanding. The debate on Syria has been polarised between these two positions – scrupulous “non-intervention” in the face of massive carnage enabled by Russian intervention, versus support for bombing campaigns as part of a Western “war on terror”. We have all been asked to take up a position in these terms. But the terms are false.
We appreciate your concern not to lend support to right-wing calls for fruitless bombing campaigns. But in the face of the horrors being perpetrated across Syria, with impunity, and above all by Russian and Assad-regime forces, we believe socialists and anti-war activists cannot simply look on in silence. We ask that you condemn, clearly and specifically, the actions of Assad and Russia in Syria, which have caused the overwhelming majority of civilian deaths and which present the biggest obstacle to any workable solution to the Syrian crisis.
We also urge you to lend your wholehearted support to practical measures to support civilians and pressure the regime to end its attacks, such as airdrops of aid to besieged civilians by British military forces. Guaranteeing delivery of humanitarian aid to civilians is not only a way to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people at risk of disease and starvation. It is also a non-violent and humanitarian way to pressure the regime into a negotiated political solution to the conflict, by undermining a key part of its strategy: the “kneel or starve” campaigns deployed against opposition areas since 2013. “Food not bombs” should be the rallying cry, not “Hands off Syria”, which only gives the Assad regime and Russia carte blanche to continue with their slaughter.
Failure to act on this issue now threatens to undermine practically and politically much of the work done over many years by the anti-war movement. The legacy of yourself and the anti-war movement over Syria must not be one of silence and inaction in the face of such momentous atrocities.
Yours fraternally,
Peter Hill, Oxford University UCU Hon. Secretary (personal capacity), Oxford and District Labour Party and Momentum
Mark Boothroyd, Unite Health National Industrial Sector Committee (personal capacity), Camberwell and Peckham CLP
James Nowlan, Labour Party and Momentum member
Luke Cooper, academic and campaigner
Andy Forse, Oxford Labour Party, Momentum National Committee
Roland Rance, Jews Against Zionism, founder member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Mike Rowley, Labour City Councillor for Barton, Sandhills and North-East Headington (Oxford)
Adam Ramsay, journalist
Chris Fox, Wimbledon CLP, Thee Faction member
Ben Towse, UCL Labour Campaigns Officer, Hornsey & Wood Green CLP
Sheila Ramsay, Chair, Chester CLP
Christopher Roche, Bath UCU Vice President (personal capacity), Bath Trades Union Council President (personal capacity), Bristol West CLP
Genevieve Murray-Dinsmore, Women’s Officer for Croydon North CLP
Becky Boumelha, Labour Campaign Against Prevent
Ashley Inglis, member of the Labour Party and Stop the War Coalition
Mark Price, Labour Party member, Momentum member (Welsh Labour Grassroots) and Community Councillor for Croesyceiliog
Chris Strafford, Communications Officer, University of Manchester UNISON
William R Rolfe, Labour and Momentum member, Branch Secretary PCS Revenue and Customs South East Valuation Branch
Catriona Bass
Carol Cody, UCU Committee Sec. City of Liverpool College, UCU NW Women’s Equality Rep.
Glyn Harries, Hackney South CLP member, Hackney Momentum Officer (personal capacity), Joint Sec. Hackney Trades Union Council (personal capacity)
Bill MacKeith, member of Labour Party, Momentum, National Union of Journalists
Liz Peretz, Labour Party and Momentum member, Oxford
Lisa Dempster, Unison Knowsley branch and National disabled members committee, Momentum member
Patrick Murphy, NUT Executive member for West Yorkshire
Gerard Colgan, Leeds West CLP, Leeds Momentum Steering Committee (personal capacity), BAFWU
Merlin Gable, Monmouth CLP
Andy Wilson, Hackney CLP
Steven Ellis, Streatham CLP
Alison Lord, Walthamstow CLP
Tony Aldis, Labour Party and Momentum member
Kris Stewart, Socialist activist
Neil Rogall, member of rs21 and UCU
Brian Parkin, member of rs21 and UCU, University of Leeds
Tom Cutterham, Labour Party, Momentum and UCU member, University of Birmingham
Miriyam Aouragh, University of Westminster, rs21, Oxford Solidarity for Syria
Bethan Jones, Labour Party and Momentum member
Max Leak, Labour and Momentum member
Gary Budgen, Walthamstow CLP
Tom Travers, Labour Party member
Sam Doherty, Manchester Momentum
Kat Burdon-Manley, rs21 member, Unison
Emily McDonagh, Unite
Ed McNally
Barnaby Raine
Christopher Ford, Walthamstow Constituency Labour Party
Edd Mustill, Liverpool Riverside CLP and Momentum member
Tom Harris, Lewisham West and Penge CLP, Lewisham Young Labour
Christian Hill, Socialist Activist
Jaskiran Kaur Chohan, Labour Party and Momentum Member
Lynton North, Torridge & West Devon CLP / Momentum
Hannah Fox, Labour Party member
Omar Raii, Hornsey & Wood Green CLP
Tom Dale, Labour Party member, Hackney South & Shoreditch
Pete Radcliff, Broxtowe Momentum
Nathan Roberts, Lambeth Momentum
Sue Shaw, Labour and Momentum member, Henley CLP
Susan Pashkoff
Daniel Nichols, Romford CLP
Nick Hostettler, Streatham CLP, Lambeth Momentum
Phil Vellender, Hackney Labour Party, UCU HE member, Senior Lecturer
Tom Davies, Walthamstow CLP, NUJ member and LRC member
Les Hearn, Holborn & St Pancras CLP, NUT member
Gabriel Pogrund
David Moynihan, Hackney Labour Party
Pete Firmin, Hampstead & Kilburn CLP and Momentum member
Jane Connor, Walthamstow West Labour Party
Sheen Gleeson, Hackney
Vivien Green
Mags Gainsborough
Tony Benson
Stephen Wood, Hayes & Harlington CLP, Hillingdon LG Unison
Nicholas Sebley, Labour Party member and Corbyn voter
Hannah Davies, Labour supporter
Mark Coulter, Hull, East Yorkshire
Damian Walenta
Andrew Spink, Labour Party member, West Yorkshire
Andy Morgan, Worcester
Javaad Alipoor, Theatre maker and activist
Joey Ayoub, member of the Labour Party, SOAS Syrian Society and SOAS Palestine Society, MENA editor at Global Voices and blogger at Hummus For Thought
Lily Marchant, Labour Party Member
Bob Wood, Leeds Central CLP
Dan Jeffery, Lambeth Labour, Momentum, UNISON
Iti Teder
Janice Chalmers
Natalie Sedacca, human rights lawyer
Valerie Leyland, Broxtowe CLP
Catriona Bass
Diana Neslen
Robert Tollemache
Juliette Harkin, Labour member and Doctoral Researcher, University of East Anglia
Ian Brownlie, Labour Party member & socialist
Mary Holmes, Labour Party member, Twickenham
Geoff Ryan, Brynaman, Carmarthenshire
Fred Leplat, Socialist Resistance
Joe Baxter, Labour Party member
Lee Berry, Labour Party, Momentum & Unite member, Corbyn voter & activist
Ian Land, Hastings and Rye Labour CLP
Charles Brown, Labour Party, UCU
Steve Eason, rs21, NUJ
Adam Di Chiara, rs21, NUJ
Mary Dinan
John Riches, Labour Party and Momentum member, Brighton
Sam Richardson, Labour Party member, Lewisham West and Penge
David Paterson, Loughborough Labour Party member
Aditya Sarkar, Labour Party and Momentum member; Warwick University UCU member
Sarah Martin, Jeremy Corbyn and Labour supporter
Alison Down, Writer, Activist, Labour Party member
Laura Schwartz, Warwick university UCU, Leamington and Warwick Labour Party
Andrew Scott-Bolton, Labour Party member & Corbyn supporter
Russell Inglis, Labour Party member
Vanda Buxton, Labour Member, Bury South CLP
Beverley Buxton, Labour Party member and Momentum member
Keith Price
Gregory Schwartz, member of the Labour Party
Jo Morales, writer and activist
Alan F. Fogelquist
Jim Denham, member of Selly Oak, Birmingham CLP and Unite
Dr. Steffan Wyn-Jones, academic and member of the Labour Party
Robert Williams, Labour Party member, Aberystwyth
Rime Hadri
Graham Askey, Labour Party member
Sarah Khatun-Miah
Chris Pepler
Sadiq Miah
Shafla Khatun
Liza Begum
Anthony Pall
Aryaan Miah
Niki Dean, member of the Labour Party
Richard Kuper, Camden CLP and Momentum member
Francis McDonagh, Hackney North and Stoke Newington CLP
Janine Booth, Hackney Momentum
Winmarie Greenland, NUT and Barnet Momentum
John Milne, Labour Party Member
Alex MacDonald, journalist
Dominique Villaret
Margaret Green, human rights activist
Mattia Indi Gerin
Tanner Akif
Tamara Al-Om, PhD student, Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St Andrews
Hana El-Sbahi
Duncan Chapel
Rima Majed
Zack Murrell-Dowson, Bristol North-West CLP
Maha Rahwanji
Joseph Daher, Swiss/Syrian socialist activist and blogger, Lausanne
David Waddilove
Liam J Liburd, Sheffield Hallam CLP and Momentum Sheffield
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9 Comments
I think Gregory Koenderman has misunderstood the criticism of this post. It is not Jeremy Corbyn who is the warmonger but the signatories of this letter and anybody giving it public exposure. The ‘biggest obstacle to any workable solution to the Syrian crisis’ is not Russia or the Syrian government. Indeed they offer the only workable solution. Do your homework Momentum (all 30 of you who signed up) and Znet.
And the intended audience of this letter is not Jeremy Corbyn. There are two intended audiences: 1) Corbyn supporters for whom this is yet another attempt to undermine both Corbyn and his position on Syria; 2) the global public at large who need to be constantly drip-fed propaganda of any nature demonizing the West’s official enemies.
Shame on Znet. Shilling for Clinton is bad enough. Now it is helping to undermine both Jeremy Corbyn and the alliance which constitutes the only genuine hope of ridding the Syrian people of their Western-backed aggressors.
The site that John Pilger once cited as one of the few reliable sources of independent news and analysis has clearly moved on.
I really don’t understand this position. The letter goes to great lengths to make clear that they are against further military intervention, and also to anticipate, and I think adequately dispel this type of criticism.
I concede it was not accurate to say Corbyn alone was the audience, but if the letter is intended to shame and demonize Corbyn,, then it has been very poorly written, considering the respect shown for most of his positions.
The letter appears to me aimed at the like-minded – by that, I include Corbyn, and exclude promoters of war.
There is a lot to be said about the letter and a lot of good that it says about the state of the left whether you agree with the content or not. To paraphrase Chance the Gardener, a tree is healthy when its branches start to spread.
Then again, maybe I’m just shilling for Zmag.
This letter is written from a pro-Corbyn position and the criticism needs to be contextualized accordingly. The writers also clearly disavow pro-west propaganda. The appeal to Corbyn is exactly that – an appeal to a figure whom the writers respect. It is not an attempt to discredit him or promote warmongering.
I was happily surprised to find this letter posted though I must admit my general impression is the west has more blood on its hands than Russia and Assad. There is a tendency to reduce all world conflicts to a cartoonish good-guys v bad-guys. Most or all of the time, the actions of the powerful are motivated by self-interest usually at others expense. The fact that one side is on the whole more powerful than the other, does not mean the other is not using what power it has for self-interest, also at the expense of others. In this case of course, my talking of only 2 sides is a huge simplification.
If I take an example of the coverage of Venezuela. I have read so many articles in zmag and elsewhere championing The Bolivarian revolution, that I found it hard to reconcile the murmurs of corruption in their ranks. For good reason, these articles don’t dwell on the corruption – they are focusing on the bigger picture. But the corruption is very real, and is felt in that or any country that endures it. And it is vital to realize that in order to understand the forces that oppose what one might believe to ultimately be a noble cause, or the forces that provide an entry-point for external interference.
Yes, one can argue that in such a charged environment, any such argument is as good as propaganda, and sometimes could be worse than blatant propaganda. But I don’t think this is such a case, since the intended audience is Corbyn, and there is no attempt at a public dressing-down. Again, context.
Presenting a view that has some superficial similarities to a MSM view does not ipso facto make you a propagandist. Surely the honest approach would be to say you believe the position to be ill-informed, but concede that it is not propagandistic which is, after all, an intentional misrepresentation motivated by hidden agendas? Entirely different with entirely different consequences.
Rubbish. Don’t listen to them jeremy.
When I see hypocrisy like this I contemplate on stop supporting a site.
just one post (form guardian even):
“According to former French foreign minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business”, he told French television:
“I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.””
Bunch of hypocrites.
http://journal-neo.org/2016/10/10/silence-of-the-lambs-refugees-eu-and-syrian-energy-wars/
Even if you are 100% confident that your understanding is clearer and more accurate than all the signers, and for that matter, even if you were correct in thinking that, the idea that a site should be criticized for running this widely signed statement reflecting the views of critically important sectors of the British left says that alternative media ought not only have positions and priorities some times even unique to each media outlet – as we do on many issues – but also ought to only publish and make visible that which quite closely corresponds to their positions, even when a contrary view is very widely supported and that very fact is important to know.
More, calling all the signers of this statement a bunch of hypocrits basically says if you disagree with me about something i consider important, and consequential, then I shouldn’t communicate with you, I should right you off and dismiss you…
Do you really believe that?
It is incredible but true that much of the left seems to believe it, but I hope you don’t.
Even in much less complex and controversial situations on the left, we would be much better off if we could hear views we don’t like, and dialog with them. And when the views are widely held, and by people who have long evidenced their seriousness and care, even more so.
This is only one example of this kind of thing – it is by no means confined to this comment, clearly. The ease with which many people have discarded civility in addressing the likes of Chomsky, or Shalom, or Sanders for that matter, or recently Angela Davis, or myself, say, due to disagreeing about how to relate to the U.S. election is another obvious case.
Still another case, for example, would be if I refused to publish anyone who doesn’t agree with me, about, say, participatory economics and the ills of, say, what is more usually called market socialism or centrally planned socialism, much less if I called them all names….
This is not politics, Michael, where one can have an opinion as to who is the lesser evil between Clinton and Trump, for example. This is verifiable reality where one can probe into what is and what is not happening if one cares to lift up the carpet of propaganda fed to us by the mainstream media. There was a time when Znet was one of the few sources of information that allowed the less credulous propaganda victim to lift up the corner of that carpet. It is a sad day that Znet has become yet another vehicle for the spreading of blatant propaganda. If only those behind Znet, themselves, did a little research by roaming beyond the mainstream media (sites like Mint Press News, Global Research and – dare I say – RT come to mind) then they would not be suckered into reposting consent-manufacturing propaganda such as this.
Speakoutonsyria would appear to have existed for all of one week. This smacks of the ‘grass root’ groups that were always mushrooming up to denounce the ‘global warming hoax’ that was allegedly being perpetrated on the public by climate scientists. As soon the links between one such group and the fossil-fuel industry was established it would disappear and another one would pop up to replace it. So now that groups like WithSyria and White Helmets have been exposed as CIA propaganda front groups, we get Speakoutonsyria.
The signatories to the open letter to Jeremy Corbyn may not be hypocrites, but they are clearly highly propagandized and have been totally misinformed by the mainstream news media as to the dynamics of the war in Syria.
Facts – not opinion: the “Assad-regime forces” are the Syrian Arab army – sunni and shia muslim soldiers alike – who have borne the brunt of the casualties in this war. Though their ranks are much diminished they fight on, and were doing so even before Russia’s (legal) intervention and against overwhelming odds due to the West’s massive backing of the ‘rebel’ forces. Were Assad truly the tyrant the West claims him to be, the Syrian army would have deserted him long ago. They are fighting for their friends, loved ones and their own futures. If the Syrian government should fall, can anybody have any illusions that Syria would not descend into the kind of chaos that the West has imposed on Libya? Anybody?
Dear Albert,
I need to elaborate on my comment, because I did not write much yesterday. I could have used a word such as “disingenuous”, like Tom Johnson did in his comment but I opted not to.
Whatever is happening in Syria for the last five years and at this very moment is actually an execution of a plan prepared years ago. It is an aggression against a sovereign country that British (and other governments) participate in. So maybe an open letter should reflect on criminal enterprises our government engage in. This is first hypocrisy that is see.
Secondly, civilians are always the biggest victims of wars and in Syria they have been dying for many years but writers of the letter only now figured out that war crimes could be committed there. This letter’s timing coincides with the accusations of the biggest war criminal / terrorist entity – US govt. / NATO – about those barbarian “others” that are committing war crimes. Its never us, we just make mistakes and cause some collateral damage. If we admit it at all. That’s another hypocrisy.
Thirdly, by only acknowledging the victims of “others'” potential crimes we divide them into worthy victims (killed by “barbarians”) and unworthy (those we kill). Thats third hypocrisy.
What “left” needs is honesty. Our governments are war criminals who treat people as cannon fodder, but we are culturally conditioned not to see it.
I am so sick of these double standards and hypocrisy that I am packing my belongings and moving to the “barbarian” regions of the world.
Despite the names and organizations listed here, it is disingenuous. To place the burden of guilt for the decades-long violence in Syria on the Russians and Assad dictatorship without a mention of Western imperialism from the beginning is a total distortion of reality and history.
Therefore the proposed solution: “Food not Bombs…” is vacuous. How exactly do Western imperialist nations provide humanitarian aid to nations that they are trying destroy and regimes that they want to change?
Even though this letter comes from the British left, it wreaks of liberalism and racism. The West has neither the right, nor the power, to determine anything for the world it colonizes.
In any case, even by the standards of colonization, Western global capitalists have proved incapable of controlling much of anything in terms of nations and peoples, even as they control the global economy and destroy everything they can’t control.
Capitalism is the ideology of chaos and not much else.