Jeremy Corbyn

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A golden opportunity

JEREMY CORBYN on why the situation in Iran is all too familiar.
The slow drip of news about Iran and its nuclear facilities looks more and more like the unravelling of a great distortion.
We have been here before in Iraq.
Then, after months of painstaking research, the UN weapons inspectors began to assert that their view was that there was no such thing left. They were promptly recalled and were kept away at the behest of Britain and the US.
From then on, free rein was given to the most ludicrous speculation and downright misinformation. The invasion took place less than three months after the truth-seekers were removed from the scene.
By the mid summer of 2003 the US administration was comforting itself that it had successfully dealt with Iraq and Afghanistan and began turning its attention to Iran. Ever since, there has been a steady promotion of information from the US that Iran is an ever-present threat to the whole region.
Iran, on the other hand, is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and remains so. It has not acceded to the voluntary supplementary protocol, but is still bound by the terms of the 1970 treaty.
Iran has unfortunately decided that it wishes to develop nuclear power stations, which, in law, it is entitled to do, and claims that all its fuel research is to that end. Its facilities have been fully inspected on numerous occasions.
After much pressure and the first ever vote at the UN International Atomic Energy Authority, Iran was reported to the UN security council, which eventually imposed limited sanctions against the country.
Since then, there have been further inspections, after which the IAEA reported greater levels of co-operation. Under threats of Russian and Chinese veto, the UN security council has not revisited the issue.
On Tuesday morning, news broke in the US that the National Intelligence Estimate is that Iran has no current nuclear weapons programme and that it stopped the last one in 2003.
Amid horror at the report from the hawks in Washington, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak asserted that Iran "has probably renewed" the arms programme. Not to be outdone, Bush's national security adviser rubbished a document from within itself, asserting that the US president was "right to be worried."
Throughout this debate, relations with Iran seem to have been forced into second place.
Within Iran itself and among the huge diaspora, there is a remarkable degree of unity against the intentions of the US and its Israeli ally. Nobody wants an invasion or bombing and none sees their salvation in being fired at by US and Western guns and rockets.
There are huge and legitimate disagreements with the record of the Tehran government on human rights, trade unions and treatment of dissent, just as there were about the record of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq.
However, the US has shown scant regard for human rights issues, except in countries it wishes to oppose.
On this set of values, Saudi Arabia escapes any real censure as it has huge quantities of usable and available oil and a royal family quite prepared to spend its revenues on Western weaponry.
Last weekend's excellent Stop the War international conference had a momentous closing session with speakers from the US, Iran, Egypt and former UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday.
They all showed a way forward on peace and justice without compromising principles.
Since Gordon Brown is in such a hole in so many areas right now, perhaps a real break with Washington would show that Sunday's TV programme The Blair Years was really dealing with the past.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
True aim is the end of a working-class voice
THE mostly Tory press is having a feeding frenzy. Undeclared donations through third parties to Labour funds have been uncovered.
This breach of rules, etiquette and common sense has resulted in the return of the money. Subsequent breaches of disclosure by Harriet Harman and Peter Hain have been uncovered and the frenzy goes on.
There are two very important lessons here.
Labour supporters should cast our minds back to 1993, when Blair and new Labour took over.
Desperate to distance themselves from union participation in the party and evidently in need of money to combat the wealth of the Tories, they started to charm the high rollers and the super-rich.
Money rolled in and, in 1997 and 2001, the Labour spending was not dwarfed by the Tories.
Four years later, with anger and disillusionment about Iraq dominating, Blair and friends stretched the rules on funding and borrowed £14 million secretly.
This cavalier approach to openness and honesty resulted in a police investigation and enormous damage to Blair and to politics. No wonder he said on The Blair Years that he regretted the 1996 campaign against sleaze in politics.
However, new Labour has always wanted to break the union link and this has resulted in fewer affiliations and less role for the unions in the party that they founded.
Hayden Phillips, the man appointed by Blair to look into party funding, wants either a cap on donations or state funding.
Curiously, the position of Blair and Brown is that any new law should be preceeded by an informal agreement between all the main political parties. Why?
The Tories represent huge personal wealth. Lord Ashcroft, who is not a UK resident, provides enormous funds to bankroll local Tory campaigns in key marginals.
The Liberal Democrats, as former ultra new Labourite Derek Draper quite correctly pointed out, never had returned their dubious money, are just as much in it.
This nettle needs to be grasped.
Trade unions are not private companies or private organisations and, if they wish to affiliate to the Labour Party and provide funds to it, that is their democratic right.
There is a Labour majority in Parliament for such a law to be passed.
However, the real agenda of Phillips and the remains of new Labour is to break the union link altogether and close down the potential for a working-class voice in the Labour Party.
Bush and co take note
Last Saturday, over 500 people gathered at an inspirational conference to hear of the social progress in Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia and the rising hopes all over the continent.
Bush and his neocons should not be so hasty in welcoming Hugo Chavez's referendum defeat at the weekend but should instead note that it was actually held, that the margin was less than 2 per cent on a low turnout and that the issues have not gone away.
They should also note that Chavez generously accepted the result.
Hopefully, the economic and social aspects of the proposals will be revisited, as the needs of the poor will not go away.
A social process that involves, consults and adapts is something that Bush and the neocons should continue to fear.