”Trust”, which Blair is deemed to lack, is defined almost wholly in terms of going to war in Iraq. If the Kurds see it as a war of liberation, the majority of Britons reportedly view it as a disgrace. But in the aftermath of their trip, the trade union delegation is determined to take a pragmatic approach. A report, drafted by Nick Crook, will recommend that the TUC and its affiliates help Iraqi unions through the IFTU with training in organisational skills, leadership and English, and give money for offices and equipment. It will recommend that unions should not work with the GFITU, because of its Ba’athist links.

There is a strong precedent for this sort of action. After the second world war, the British union movement helped rebuild the German unions - giving them (as many Labour politicians have ruefully reflected since) a structure much more rational and coherent than British unions have today. It was a parallel that occurred to several members of the delegation in Iraq, though all were born after the war. Through the decades, some deep imperative of solidarity seems to have asserted itself.

 Kurdistan blogger. Blogging about life in Kurdistan:

http://kurdo.blogspot.com/

" The life and views of an Iraqi living in exile, hoping that the people inside Iraq one day attain the chances and opportunities that I have been lucky enough to enjoy":

http://iraqithoughts.blogspot.com/2005/03/name-change_18.html

I just read some of the arguements with bpors and if he is still reading this website I woukld suggest to him that reading the Iraqi blogs would make him not so sure that Iraq is like Vietnam.   Probably  the US is there for itself and oil might be part of it but its not just a puppet government situation, there's too much Iraqi debate and energy . Maybe the americans din't want that but they got it anyway.  It could be 'draining the swamps' or maybe they couldn't stop it. with Saddam being gone, democracy had to happen?

travis     

 You people might have some fun with this article !!!   (i put it below).  And you might be interested in what they said about it on Labour Friends of Iraq http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000473.html

"In an important sense it cant really be thought of as a political left anymore. It is an incoherent anti-American protest left. The sixties left has biodegraded. Excluded from power so completely it can't think politically ('troops out now!), in hock to a romanticism that was understandable back then (I guess, I was playing with my Johnny Seven at the time) but has run rancid now ('victory to the resistance!'), the Ali-Pilger-Gott left has biodegraded. And as Norman Geras points out this is a debacle, we have yet to take the full measure of. We better had do, and quick, for that left dominates the airwaves, the radio waves, and the commentariat and we need to reclaim them. (AJ) "

travis

The prime minister is a war criminal

Like Chamberlain in the 30s, Blair is an appeaser of a dangerous global power. He should be in prison, not standing for election

Richard Gott
Tuesday April 26, 2005
The Guardian

Tony Blair has been the worst prime minister since Neville Chamberlain, a figure with whom he shares a number of significant characteristics. Chamberlain was a supremely confident and arrogant politician, an excellent speaker and a deeply religious man with a hotline to God. He had an unassailable majority in parliament, was popular in the country and presided over a cabinet stuffed with nonentities.

Unfamiliar with the outside world, he conducted his own disastrous foreign policy with the help of backroom advisers as ignorant as himself. By seeking to appease the German government, the principal threat to world peace at the time, he onlysucceeded in encouraging that country's appetite for aggression and expansionism. His egregious errors played a not insignificant role in the outbreak of the second world war, the principal tragedy of the 20th century.

Blair has followed in his footsteps, and is destined for the same place in history's hall of infamy. Like Chamberlain, he is an arrogant and God-fuelled appeaser, the unseemly ally of an unbridled country that presents a global threat similar to Germany in the 1930s.

Instead of seeking a grand alliance to confront this new danger - "a coalition of the unwilling" that would include the Europeans, the Russians and the Chinese - Blair has sided with the evil empire. He has taken up a role as its principal cheerleader, obliging Britain to become a participant in its wars of aggression. Today's Labour party has been a supine collaborator in this policy of appeasement, just like the Tory party in the 1930s. Blair's war party must be defeated at the polls.

The most popular slogan at the moment is "Blair must go". This simple message echoes across the political spectrum from the Conservative party to Respect, and even into the ranks of Labour itself. It clearly has majority support in the country. Blair is a war criminal who should be locked up behind bars without a vote, not standing for election. Yet Labour party supporters who dislike Blair have a bitter pill to swallow. The entire party shares in the war guilt of its leader and his silently complicit government.

New Labour may be self-destructing, but old Labour is in no better shape. It was already in a terminal state of collapse in the 1970s, as the recent obituaries of Jim Callaghan have recalled. The idea that a lively party exists that might rally behind Gordon Brown is a forlorn hope. The Labour party is a shadow of its former self, as damaged and decimated as the trade union movement, and it will have no further role to play in the 21st century. Given its recent record, that is an outcome to be welcomed.

The Tories, of course, are in no better shape. They too are led by war criminals, caught up in supporting a war of aggression that their traditional Arabist loyalties might perhaps have led them to greet with less enthusiasm had they been in power at the time. Their passivity over the war has occurred against a background of wider collapse, for the Tory party, like the monarchy, the Church of England and the BBC, is in terminal decline. There will be no return to the automatic Tory majorities of the 20th century. A freak Tory victory would hardly last a twelvemonth.

At the last election I chose the Abstention party, and it romped home to a spectacular victory. Many may feel disposed to support it again, since the choices on offer are so singularly unattractive. The degeneration of British politics and the inability of a pusillanimous generation of MPs to prevent the slide to war continue to make abstention an attractive option. Yet the background mood to this election, not necessarily reflected in the opinion polls, remains this deep sense of anger and resentment against the Blair government, even of disgust, and this may yet drive people to vote rather than abstain, and lead to an unusual result.

This year, because of the serious and lasting disaffection of a large slice of the electorate that traditionally sees it as its duty to vote, there is a slim but realistic chance of a change. Votes cast thoughtfully rather than tribally could bring about a breakthrough that would not only destroy the Blair government but create a new political framework. Each individual voter must use the vote to secure an anti-war majority in parliament, and to this end it will be necessary to vote in most cases, for the Liberal Democrats and occasionally for Respect or the Greens. Yet no one should be ashamed of voting for Tories who voted in parliament against the war. Ancient animosities must be set aside, as they were in the Commons vote that brought down Chamberlain.

The ideal outcome would be that the vagaries of the existing electoral system, which requires the selection of a local MP rather than a party leader, throws up a result in which the three main parties would each have approximately 30% of the MPs in the new House of Commons. The resulting hung parliament would bring home the troops from Iraq, just as the Spanish electorate was able to do. It would also have a further benefit, producing fresh electoral arrangements and the possible revival of interest in politics within the parliamentary arena. That might be unlikely, but is the most optimistic scenario that might emerge from the current contest.

· Richard Gott is the author, with Martin Gilbert, of The Appeasers, republished by the Phoenix Press