With media attention focused on GE 2024, you’d be forgiven for having overlooked news that the Labour Party has finally abandoned its longstanding legal action against five former members of Jeremy Corbyn’s office team during his leadership, including his Director of Communications Seumas Milne. The five were accused of ‘conspiring’ against Keir Starmer’s leadership by leaking a controversial report soon after he was elected leader in 2020. They ‘strenuously deny’ any involvement or complicity in the leak.
The 860-page leaked document which ostensibly examined the handling of antisemitism complaints during the Corbyn period, included unredacted emails and WhatsApp messages from critics of his leadership, which exposed factionalism and derogatory comments about Corbyn, his staff and MPs who supported him. The Forde report found, for example: ‘the criticisms of Diane Abbott are not simply a harsh response to perceived poor performance – they are expressions of visceral disgust.’
The legal suit is estimated to have cost the Labour Party millions of pounds. Documents presented in open court in late 2023 showed Labour had spent £1.5m on its action at that time, and estimated it would spend nearly £900,000 more. The figures do not reflect the full cost of the litigation. It remains unclear whether or not the party will meet the costs of the five.
A BBC report includes the view of one unnamed former shadow cabinet member that ‘this is a huge embarrassment for the party, which has wasted eye-watering sums which could have made the difference in key seats in this election’. Martin Forde KC, the lawyer who carried out the wide-ranging report into Labour Party culture told the BBC: ‘It is a great shame that money has been spent on legal fees that could have been spent on the general election.’
As Israel’s Rafah operation takes shape, and concern over Britain’s role in supplying arms to Israel grows, over 100 leading UK artists have added their names to a letter calling on Keir Starmer to take a stand against the atrocities and commit to stopping arms sales to Israel if he becomes prime minister on 4 July. The letter urges Starmer, as a former human rights lawyer, to lead the way in ‘ending UK complicity in war crimes in Gaza’.
Signatories include filmmakers, poets, musicians, actors, broadcasters, writers, and journalists. There are some familiar CND-supporting figures among them, including Juliet Stevenson, Kamila Shamsie, Maxine Peake, Michael Rosen, Peter Kennard, and Victoria Brittain. Visit Artists for Palestine for the full text and a list of a;l signatories.
Above: Khan Younis bombing during the early phase of Israel’s operation in Rafah provence
In a guest blog which appeared on CND’s website, CAROL TURNER explains why Britain is complicit in what’s happening to Palestinians across the Occupied Territories right now. Instead of promising to stop this, Labour is echoing the misdirection of David Cameron and Grant Shapps who argue UK arms exports to Israel are derisory.
If anything can convince the British government, out-going or in-coming, that the UK must halt arms exports to Israel, the Rafah offensive should. Day by day, hour by hour, the toll of Palestinian dead and injured slowly mounts. As far back as December President Netanyahu made clear that military operations would go on throughout 2024. In the midst of the Rafah carnage, and despite the international outcry, he recently reiterated this.
David Cameron has dismissed the idea of halting arms sales as gesture politics. Britain, he claims, supplies ‘less than 1% of Israel’s arms’.[i] Grant Shapps recently told parliament ‘defence exports to Israel are relatively small—just £42 million last year’.[ii] This deliberate misdirection is echoed by Labour.
The UK is among the world’s biggest arms exporters, the seventh largest in 2023.[iii] Arms manufacturers in Britain need a government license to export military goods, software and technology overseas.[iv] Applications are evaluated against criteria which include Britain’s obligations under international law and the risk that exported items might be used in the violation of human rights.
No arms export license should be granted if there’s a clear risk the items:[v]
might be used to ‘commit or facilitate’ internal repression or a serious violation of international humanitarian law; or
would undermine internal, regional, or international peace and security.
Existing licences can be revoked if they don’t match the criteria. But the government has resisted the introduction of post-shipment verification or end-use monitoring of military exports from the UK.[vi]
BAE Systems is a British company and leading supplier of parts for American F35 fighter bombers that the US supplies to Israel, They are being used against Gaza. Campaign Against Arms and others point out that 15% of every US F35 supplied to Israel is built in the UK.[vii]
This means Britain is complicit in what’s happening to Palestinians across the Occupied Territories right now.
Individual MPs have spoken up. Leyla Moran, a British Palestinian and a LibDem MP broke the parliamentary consensus by speaking on national media about what was happening to her family there. Labour MPs Richard Burgon and Imran Hussain recently delivered a dossier of evidence on Israeli war crimes in Gaza to the International Criminal Court, evidence compiled from a series of panels they organised in parliament.
In April this year, UK opinion polls[viii] showed a majority in favour of banning arms sales after aid workers were killed, including three UK citizens. Plaid Cymru wanted parliament reconvened. Green Party spokespeople have called for the cancelling of all arms export licences, and the LibDems and SNP want suspension.
Last October, Labour MP Zarah Sultana introduced a Private Members Bill calling for a halt to exports to countries ‘where it cannot be demonstrated that arms sold will not be used in violation of international law’ and led a Westminster Hall debate in December. At the end of March, recognising Israel would disregard the UN ceasefire resolution, she coordinated an open letter to Cameron, condemning the government’s failure to act, and calling again for a suspension of arms sales. It was signed by 134 parliamentarians from across the parties, including a Tory peer.
Under pressure from the solidarity movement which, week after week, has taken to the streets in cities and towns across the country, both Conservative and Labour have slowly been forced to increase criticism of Israel. To date, actions have not followed words. Not a single step towards halting British arms exports has been taken by the government, nor has any demand they do so come from the official opposition.
CND takes this issue very seriously indeed. Israel is one of only nine nuclear armed states in the world, and the only one that doesn’t admit to having them. Israel has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty designed to limit their spread and secure nuclear disarmament.
The nuclear risks involved in the war on Gaza may not be as remote as they seem. Since the October attack by Hamas, a few Israeli politicians have floated the prospect of using nuclear weapons against Iran or Lebanon. Most of the drones and missiles Iran launched against Israel in April were taken out before they reached their targets. One missile was not. It successfully reached its target, Nevatim in southern Israel, near the Dimona nuclear facility.
Far from being gesture politics, the unwillingness of the US, UK, and other governments to halt arms sales has emboldened Israel which is pressing ahead with its attack on the Palestinian people in defiance of international law and international outrage.
The next 5 weeks of general election campaigning is an opportunity to make our voice heard by every candidate in every constituency across the country. CND members should act, and act now.
Within days of the general election being announced, Keir Starmer committed Labour to a ‘triple lock’ on Trident, an attempt to demonstrate nuclear weapons are safe in Labour’s hands. He also reaffirmed Labour’s commitment to match Sunak’s 2.5% increase in military spending which NATO is demanding.
Labour will build four new Dreadnought class submarines to deliver Britain’s nuclear warheads, he said, with at least one submarine at sea 24/7. Starmer also reaffirmed Labour’s decision to match the Tory government pledge to raise military spending by 2.5% of gross domestic product as soon as possible.
This is a dangerous waste, which mirrors the approach of the Tory government. It signals more war, more military spending, and more nuclear weapons, as CND General Secretary Kate Hudson has pointed out. CND has estimated the cost of upgrading and maintaining Trident at £205 billion. The Conservative commitment to raise military spending to 2.5% by 2030, part of the Spring budget, will amount to an additional £87 billion a year.
CND Chair Tom Unterrainer commented that Starmer had offered no justification of how nuclear weapons might protect Britain’s security. ‘For a man who claims to care about international law,’ said Unterrainer, ‘there is no mention of how expanding and modernising Britain’s nuclear arsenal goes against these norms. We need a bold vision for what real security means: one that puts climate, food security, and people at its heart, not more militarism and conflict.’
There was plenty to do and say during the bank holiday weekend. Labour CND responded to the horrific scenes of a burning encampment in what the Israeli government had called a ‘safe’ haven for Gazans, drawing attention to what a Labour government’s ethical policy should be.
and we were quick off the mark too in response to Rishi Sunak’s announcement about national service. Quoting ex-military responses in the Guardian and a pertinent comment from Andrew Marr in New Statesman, we said:
and
Visit @LabourCND and www.labourcnd.org.uk for regular updates
CND is off to a strong start with advice, information and tools for supporters to play an active part in the 6-week General Election 2024 campaign.
You’ll find some of what you need on a special CND webpage, which includes a campaign guide, some information from the polls, a digital lobby tool, and a bit of info on what the parties policies are.
Labour CND will be focussing on pertinent issues in Labour’s campaign, as well as taking Sunak and his team to task! You’ll find more details on the web posts which follow
On Monday 13 May Labour CND hosted a nuclear power webinar with Sam Mason, principle author of Labour CND’s pamphlet Labour, Climate Change, and Nuclear power – Not Cheap, Not Safe, Not Peaceful. We also had contributions from Linda Clarke on the construction side of the industry and Dr Phil Johnstone on the links between civilian and defence nuclear projects.
You can catch up with a recording of the webinar below.
Labour’s successes at the local elections are to be celebrated, but Professor John Curtice also reported that ‘Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza has cost his party support’. He noted that Labour particularly lost support in many wards with large Muslim populations, costing the party control of Oldham. Nearly 70,000 people in the West Midlands voted for an independent candidate who campaigned on Gaza – this nearly cost Labour its much-trumpeted mayoral victory.
In 58 council wards where more than one in five residents identify as Muslim, Labour’s vote share was 21% down on 2021, whereas nationally its vote share was down one point on last year.[1]
Wider lessons
Foreign policy can really matter to Labour voters, even in local elections. This has been seen over Iraq, over opposition to Trident in Scotland, and now with Gaza. Some of those upset over Gaza remember two decades ago voting for a Labour party promising an ethical foreign policy – and how Iraq was invaded and opposition ignored. Starmer is ignoring about 70% of Labour voters who want the UK to sign the Nuclear Weapons Ban and scrap Trident.[2] Labour leaders are taking a serious electoral risk by pursuing unethical foreign policies and ignoring their own voters – especially since there are alternatives like SNP, independents and the Greens to vote for.
Meeting voter concerns
The Labour leadership has admitted that votes have been lost over Gaza, with Starmer saying, ‘Where we have not been able to persuade people who might otherwise have voted Labour it is important for me to acknowledge that: to say I have heard, I’ve listened and I am determined to meet the concerns they have.’ But will he do this?
The leadership is suggesting that it can be fixed by better communication. Ellie Reeves MP said Labour needs to do ‘a lot of listening’ and make sure voters ‘understand our position’.[3] However, Labour’s position to call for an immediate ceasefire was adopted very late and is not strong enough, given the warning of plausible genocide from the International Court of Justice.
Voters who’ve lost trust in Starmer need him to take bold action.[4] As a start he must support the legal opinion written by over 1,000 UK lawyers including four former Supreme Court Judges, who have advised the Government that under international law it is obliged to take certain measures.[5]
Starmer must tell the Prime Minister to take these measures, which include:
stop arming Israel – as have Italy, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. The US has paused a shipment of arms in opposition to Israel’s new attack on Rafah.[6]
consider ending trade with Israel, as has Turkey.
This is how to start meeting the concerns of voters. Labour cannot afford its current foreign policy. Nor can Gaza.
The local election results indicate Labour’s poor stance on Gaza had an impact on voting. Labour CND committee member Rae Street offers some comments on results in the North West, where the influence of Gaza was particularly noticeable.
It is worth noting that in both the mayoral elections and more so in the council elections, the question of Gaza has played a significant part. It has also been interesting to see how George Galloway’s Workers Party has fared with their strong emphasis on Gaza.
In Rochdale, where Galloway had said they were going to ‘wipe’ away the Labour Party, in fact they only took two wards in inner Rochdale. Overall Labour has a firm grip on the Council with 44 seats out of 60.
In Manchester city one seat (Longsight), that of one of the Deputy Council leaders, was gained by the Workers Party, but a local party member said that was an area where George Galloway ‘had been out at full blast’ and reported shouting matches with canvassers. The Manchester Council leader reported it was a good night for Labour, which holds 86 out of 96 seats on the Council, being therefore the largest Labour group in the country.
In Oldham, Labour lost overall control and lost several seats to Independents where a local commentator thought Gaza had been ‘a potentially decisive factor’.
In Bolton, a local commentator, Paul Salveson, wrote about the council elections there, in his newsletter Salvo:
‘In Bolton, Labour could have done better and Gaza was clearly a factor in shifting votes way from Labour towards other parties. Where those votes went was interesting. The most surprising result was in Hallfold ward which has a large Asian [background] community and traditionally has been a solid Labour seat. Yet it was won by Harif Alli, the Green Party candidate.
‘This is the first time the Greens have won a Bolton Council seat, despite the perseverance of Alan Johnson in Dunhill which was won by an Asian Independent. The Greens also did well in Little Lever which has a large Asian population. However, Gaza was not the only factor in people shying away from voting Labour. The “hyper-local” parties all did very well.
‘The places Labour performed best were in quite middle class wards which have traditionally voted Tory. Reform UK with Bolton for Change made no gains and performed quite poorly but undoubtedly took some votes from the Tories and, possibly, Labour. The Workers Party of George Galloway stood a few candidates, but made little headway, despite the Gaza factor.
‘You can’t draw too many overall conclusions from what happened in Bolton and Oldham, but what strikes me is that: a} Gaza is a big issue among Asian voters and Labour can no longer rely on their loyalty andb) that the white working class vote is vulnerable to hyper-local parties and also Reform around the margins. In more middle class wards, Labour is popular helped by many Tory voters not bothering to vote. ‘
Another timely piece from Sam Mason explains why you should join the Labour CND webinar on 13 May on how to fight the dangerous push to nuclear power.
Not only was 2023 confirmed as the hottest on record, it was also a record year for energy-related CO2 emissions. What UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres has called “a mere preview of the catastrophic future that awaits if we don’t act now” is the reality for those in East Africa or South Asia in the grip of devastating floods and heatwaves.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) data clearly shows we are not acting fast enough, and we are now close to breaching the 1.5 degrees of warming threshold enshrined in the 2015 Paris agreement.
Despite knowing that we have to end the production and use of fossil fuels, our governments are retreating on commitments. There perhaps can be no more cynical undermining of the need to transition to renewable energy than the news that Rishi Sunak is intending to issue oil and gas exploration licences at sites intended for offshore wind.
But the other alternative to fossil fuels enjoying a renaissance as a ‘renewable’ fuel is nuclear power, renamed in the so-call taxonomy of green energy as environmentally sustainable. This is to support an ambitious programme of nuclear power expansion outlined in the Government’s Civil Nuclear Road map to 2050 which aims to reach 25% of our energy needs through nuclear power production – the biggest programme in 70 years. This is also part of an initiative announced at the COP28 in Dubai to triple nuclear energy globally by 2050.
So, what is driving this new dash for nuclear? That’s a good question, given how long it takes to build nuclear power plants and their environmental impacts – not least those linked to uranium extraction, storage, and decommissioning issues, to name a few. Is it really just to “fill-in” for the days when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine?
It’s over seventy years since the Attlee government passed the Atomic Energy Act, setting in train Britain’s nuclear programme following the end of wartime collaboration with the US, in the form of the Manhattan Project. The UK nuclear weapons programme was the forerunner to Britain’s development of nuclear power, which began in 1953, with the first commercial reactor later coming online at Calder Hall in 1956. A Magnox reactor, it combined power generation with plutonium production for military purposes.
Since the heyday of nuclear power in the UK in the 1970s and 80s, the UK’s nuclear power industry has been in decline. Indeed, during Labour’s last period of office, the Party moved away from supporting new nuclear on the basis of the cost and environmental impacts. The Sustainable Development Commission (SDC) established in 2000 by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not support a new programme. Their 2006 position paper, entitled ‘The Role of Nuclear Power in a Low Carbon Economy’, voiced all the concerns we continue to have today, such as technology lock-in; distraction from investment in renewables and energy efficiency measures; costs; intergenerational legacy; waste; safety; increased risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
Unlike the IEA, we do not agree there can there be a “vision of a nuclear for peace and prosperity” that supports the action we need on climate change.
In October last year, we set out our arguments against nuclear power in a new pamphlet: ‘Labour, Climate Change, and Nuclear power – Not Cheap, Not Safe, Not Peaceful’. It covers the history of Labour’s support for nuclear power and why the labour movement needs to oppose this technology – whether old or new nuclear.
On Monday 13th May, we will be hosting a webinar to look at the points made in the pamphlet and explore the renewed drive to more nuclear power. It will lead off with an overview of Labour CND’s pamphlet and follow with contributions from Linda Clarke who will look at the construction side of the industry, and Dr Phil Johnstone who will discuss the links between civilian and defence nuclear projects.
Given the shrinking window for action on climate, Labour CND believes the debate over nuclear and its role in tackling climate change and energy security is no longer a debate Labour – or Britain – can afford to keep having.
Please join us at the webinar to help build confidence in our arguments fighting this dangerous push to a nuclear future. Register now
* This article first appeared in Labour Outlook, 6 May 2024
