The Barnsby Blog

Dear David,

You are the Tory toff who threatened to change everything when you suggested that in the event of a hung parliament you would join a coalition with Ming and his cohorts thus condemning the war in Iraq.

Alas for good intentions you end up supporting the war thus aligning yourself with Tony Blair, the war criminal, serial killer and barbarian who you vowed to oppose.

Jonathan Ross had sized you up perfectly on Saturday night when he told you that you should have opposed the war and all you could bleat about was the necessity to remove Saddam Hussein, whereon Ross suggested that it was not the job of Bush and Blair to do this.

Your fall from grace grieves me not least because you have been principled enough to reply to my emails whereas others, notably the Lords of the Press, Jeremy Paxman, Andrew Marr, Jon Snow and Kirsty Wark have taken the cowardly and unltimately self-defeating method in these days of BLOGS of refusing to reply to my accusations that they have not challenged Blair on the question of the war in Iraq.

Another reason for my regret is that you have betrayed the very many Tories who opposed the war from the beginning; remember that more Tories opposed the war than Labour supporters who supported it.

I mention two in particular, Henry Porter who was among the first to show that a vengeful Tony Blair was proposing to destroy all our civil liberties and reduce us to the condition of the US where any criticsm of the war policy is met with prosecution for supporting terrorists.

The second Tory is Geoffrey Wheatcroft who uncovered the roots of British imperial philosophy. This he traced back to the radical English historian of the 1930s, AJP Taylor who wrote, ‘Europeans instinctively believe that Europe has achieved the highest form of civilisation ever known’. With that, of course goes the corollary that they were entitled to take any means necessary to spread this ‘civilisation’.

Today brings news from America as well as Britain that Blair will never resign, cannot resign, because once he becomes an ordinary mortal he will be a legitimate target for patriots/terrorists and like the odious Dr.Kissinger of the former Bush Vietnam regime, he will become a virtual prisoner in his own country.

So this is the pickle you find yourself in for supporting the war in Iraq, Mr.Cameron. It is still not too late for you to return to the world of sanity. And please continue your civilised way of replying to my correspondence.

In praising Henry Porter as one of the few in the newscasting industry who will challenge Blair openly on his illegal war in Iraq I failed to mention Gary Younge.

Porter tells in detail how both Blair and Bush act constitutionally by allowing laws to be passed, but then cicumvent their intent by administrative action. Thus an Englishman’s home is his castle, but not to Blair who allows a newly formed Serious Crime Agency to serve a disclosure notice on anyone suspected or not suspected of any offence allowing forcible entry into premises if a response to that notice has not been received.

Gary Younge has been one of the few to publicly oppose the war in Iraq. He now has a daily short humorous piece in the Guardian each day during the World Cup (notoriously ‘non-political’) in which he relates the chances of teams playing with their government’s attitude to the war in Iraq. How about this one for Saturday: ‘England v Ecuador: Socialists should desire the defeat of their own side (Lenin) True he was talking about imperialist war not football. But we could learn a thing or two from the Ecuadorians. When they elected a leader promising progressive reforms and then hammered the poor and cosied up to the USA they took to the streets and kicked him out. The ethical choice is clear. Verdict, Yes its Ecuador!.

And Gary has been anti-Bush and Blair for many years. Was it he, or George Monbiot who first broke the story that the woman at Guantanamo who led naked Muslims on a lead was a poor white,  the class that did the dirty work so that middle class women could tell the world of their patriotism because they never went near the fighting. Nor of course did George Bush or Cheney in the Vietnam war.

I also remember Gary recommending Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a text for anti-racists when many blacks were deriding it as reactionary. Maybe so. But this novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe was essential education for me and is for all whites. It is recommended on my BLOG www.gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk

Blair should either be led off by Men in White Coats for supporting nuclear policy on an island floating on coal and surrounded by water, or arrested now for waging a war in Iraq which cannot possibly be won. And I am sure Gary will agree.

THIS EMAIL WAS SENT TO DAVID CAMERON. HE HAS NOT YET HAD TIME TO REPLY TO IT - GEORGE BARNSBY

Dear David

Once again I wish to thank you for replying to my correspondence. If only other would be as honest - journalists and newscasters providing intellectual cover for the war in Iraq for instance, or the racist Learning & Skills Council which refuses to answer my letters.

That said, however, it appears that you are now determined to support the war in Iraq and this brings to an end any chance you have of defeating that war criminal, serial killer and Barbarian, Tony Blair. This will be a huge disappointment to the majority of people in Britain who oppose the war, but also to the large and influential part of the Tory Party who oppose the war who outnumber the number of Labour Party members who support it.
I accept that there is no actual Alice Sheffield document, but it is a useful term for the paper she wrote on your behalf and set out clearly why you support the war in Iraq.

In the ‘document’ you state that you supported the war because Saddam Hussein was in breach of 17 UN Security Council Resolutions. Even if this is true it gave Britain no right to join with Bush in invadng Iraq. In fact Blair pushed the attorney-general into providing this fig leaf of a reason to support the war when France and Russia do not support the war and any attempt to get UN authorisation for the war would have led to their use of he veto in the security council.

You go on to say that the British and American governments failed to plan adequately for the aftermath. This can be disputed. US neocons new exactly what they wanted to do - to destroy resistance in Iraq within a few days, to rebuild it largely with US building corporations, all to be paid for with Iraqi oil and pass immediately to the rolling invasions of the so-called ‘axis of evil’ whether Iran, N.Korea or whoever. Fortunately for the world this plan was stymied from the beginning by the valiant resistance of the Iraqi people.

You next state that our troops are now in Iraq at the request of the democratically elected Iraqi government. You might say that, but others would say of a Quisling collaborationist government, whose writ does not run further than the centre of Baghdad.

Finally you say that it would be irresponsible to set a fixed timetable for troop withdrawal. On the contrary it is now clear that for every Iraqi killed two will join the resistance and there is no alternative now to bringing the troops home.

Please return to you previous policy of opposition to Blair and in the event of a hung parliament at the next general election coalition with the Lib.Dems. who have opposed the war from the beginning.

No better chronicler of the life and times of NATFHE could be found than Francis Beckett (Goodbye to all that, Education Guardian May 30 2006) for a stroll down memory lane of the Union we both have belonged to for more years than we care to remember.

Francis and I first became mates in the mid 1990s when I was writing my book Socialism in Birmingham and the Black Country 1850-1939 and he was also researching. The bond was the early post-first world war militant ex-services organisations which culminated in the revolutionary NUX
(National Union of Ex-Servicemen). Francis’ father (John?) was a leading member of NUX, but in 1931 after Ramsay MacDonald formed his ‘National’
govertment and Oswald Mosley broke away from the Labour Party to form the British Union of Fascists, Beckett Snr. renaged and becam the second most important leader after Mosley. Francis, however, did not follow the views of his father and became a fellow progressive.

Francis discusses in Goodbye to all that, the problems of NATFHE under Mrs. Thatcher when she decreed that all FE institutions should become
independent, compete with each other, the weakest to go to the wall, ‘failed’ Colleges to be closed and national finances to be entirely relieved
of any expenditure by Colleges charging their ‘customers’ for their ’services’.

But Francis does not mention the only College that was ever closed, Bilston Community College (BCC), which was the first multi-cultural, open access College in Britain.

Francis will remember that I wrote to him at the time suggesting that if he wanted a story that would run and run he ought to take up the case of Bilston Community College. This he declined to do, but today with the Friends of Bilston Community College appeal under the Freedom of Information Act heard by the DfES Governance and Organisation team refusing to release the information they have gleaned on the grounds of cost, it is clear that Bilston Community College was improperly closed.

BCC was a Socialist College set up by the local authority of Wolverhampton, and for the racists and reactionaries it was seen  as a College to be closed by fair means or foul and so the blatant illegalities of David Blunkett the Minister, David Melville director of the Further Education Funding Council, later endorsed by the equally racist Learning and Skills Council.

And this, after the blatant illegalities of the local people without whom the College could not have been closed;  of the former Vice-Chancellor of
Wolverhampton University who threatened me, the Spokesman of the Friends of Bilston Community College, with legal proceedings unless I desisted from opposing the closure of of the College.

Other improprieties have been Tony Blair’s support for so-called super-head Geoffrey Hampton who was later knighted; the protection by the Ministry for Education and Skills of Jane Williams, former head of the College that replaced BCC, from charges of racism against her which have still not been
heard; the denial to the Friends of two of the three main education journals, namely Education Guardian and NATFHE’s organ The Lecturer space to
argue their case; Sir Geoffrey Hampton’s (now Dean of Education at Wolverhampton University) insistence that Jane Williams should be given an honorary degree this year, and her presumption in turning up to accept it, all these things suggest that the Friends take their criticism a stage further.

This stage must be prosecution of those who have denied the poor and ethnic minorities of educational opportunities for all these years and seeking large sums in damages for reputaions destroyed and careers blighted. These damages to be devoted not to personal gain, but to further funding a
restored Bilston Community College.

Francis essays something of a history of NATFHE from the time he met Paula Lanning in the 1970s and stresses the important role of Paul Mackney in negotiating the merger with the AUT. I agree with this and sympathise with Paul suffering from a stroke and his firmness in his opposition to Tony
Blair’s war in Iraq. May the new University and College Union flourish in its fight for peace and an educational system controlled by local people.