With the announcement of his imminent stepping down from the post of Prime Minister, Britain’s Tony Blair has proven that politicians, even the most gifted, are not immune to public opinion. Blair’s gifts of gab and quick thinking are almost legendary. His 10 years at the helm of rambunctious British politics in the postwar years, is only exceeded by conservative Margaret Thatcher, who held power for 11 years. When he arrived on the scene as a Labour Party MP, he described himself as a socialist, according to BBC tapes of the period. But his political gifts were squandered on the bloody altar of Iraq.
Beholden to U.S. President George W. Bush, he played the role of eager junior partner until events on the ground, both in Iraq and in Britain, forced a U-turn. To give his party a fighting shot in future elections, Blair recently announced the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Time will tell if this is enough. A left critic of Blair’s New Labour, Connor Lynch, wrote in a recent edition of Labour and Trade Union Review of his tendency to sell out. They led groups of people who, given their head, had all the instincts of the British ruling class. That class has always done well in incorporating people from all classes and trends. This instinct in Labour’s politicians came home to me when I first began to get to know Germany in the late 1970s.
German towns and cities were well run and made pleasant places by politicians who believed that it was their vocation to do this. In Britain, the leaders in local government felt that bin collections, or trash collections, house repairs, pretty parks and gardens, or street cleaning, were beneath them. They wanted to be changing the whole world with their nuclear free zones and the like. Look at them today, starting a new war every two or three years. Tony Blair gave Bush an articulate, persuasive leg up when he needed it most. Those days are gone. Time will tell if Labour is gone as well. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
