Impeachment at Oxford City Council

There is now an online petition for people to sign to support the impeachment of Blair,
available at www.impeachblair.org

Cheers,

Matt

Things are now looking very hopeful for this motion - the Oxford Labour Party have just passed their own motion
to ask Tony Blair to resign...not quite support for impeachment, but getting there. It may well be that some of them
vote with this motion, or at least abstain.

Looks like we could pass this - hopefully the first of many local authorities to do so.

Matt

P.S. In the interest of bipartisanship, even tho its something I don't often say - well done to grassroots Labour
members this week - good on you!

If you look at what this motion actually involves, it is about the Lords sitting in judgement and deciding on whether an elected leader should be imprisoned or not. As a socialist, I couldn't possibly support giving powers to the Lords which they had in the middle ages. I also saw that the overwhelming majority of MPs who supported the 'Impeach Blair' campaign were Tories, which I suppose isn't that big a surprise given that Tories have always believed that our betters in the Lords should have the right to tell us all what is and isn't alright.

Given all the problems that the peace movement has had in terms of splits and trying to keep all the people who marched for peace before the war involved, I cannot understand the point of putting forward a deliberately divisive motion which lots of anti-war activists could not possibly support and which would do precisely sod all to help people in Iraq. If only the time spent on collecting signatures to bring back feudalism had been spent on raising money for Iraqi trade unionists who are currently trying to build democracy and the labour movement and who are under attack from the Americans on one side and fascist elements in the resistance on the other, then some good would have been achieved.

I was one of two councillors on the last anti-war march, and it must be a priority to make sure that more people come on demos like that, and I don't think that this motion would have done anything to help that.

Any questions, just post here...

Take care

Dan xxx

Paskins suggests that he opposed impeachment because the unelected House of Lords would have to judge the Prime Minister. This is feeble sophistry. Cllr. Paskins is surely aware that criminals in this country are generally judged by unelected officials. Why should the Prime Minister be any different? Does the scale of the crime somehow mean he should not be prosecuted? Last week the local labour party passed a resolution calling for Blair's resignation. On Monday they voted as loyal party dupes to back their leader. Paskins and others who are trying to cover up for Blair's crimes should realise that the death toll has been too large to be forgotten. 100,000 deaths will be around Blair's neck long after his political career is ended.

The 'Impeach Blair' campaign specifically states that its aim is to revive powers which the Lords have not had since long before parliamentary democracy, so to compare this to an ordinary criminal trial is misleading. I thought that those of us who are socialists tended to oppose massive extensions of power to unelected officials and Lords, and to see the vitriol which is directed against people who opposed the war but happen not to agree with a Tory-backed campaign which will do nothing to help people in Iraq (a point which Martin did not contest) surprises me.

I supported calls within the Labour Party for Blair to resign, and I've participated actively in anti-war campaigning and solidarity work with the Iraqi labour movement. So have a number of the councillors who voted against the impeachment motion, the difference being that these were and are effective and worthwhile things to do which don't involve abandoning socialist principles against the extension of power to Lords.

Now it might be that you believe that we are really all apologists and dupes, but you might at least ask yourself why it is that Boris Johnson and his pro-war Tory mates support the campaign for impeachment and loads of people from different political parties who actually opposed and continue to oppose the war didn't support the campaign.

Take care

Dan xxx

Dan,

I thought better of you than to expect this kind of bizarre Labour Party doublethink. For you to say that you voted against this motion because you are a socialist is to twist the meaning of the word beyond all recognition. New Labour will be proud.

You know as well as I do that the likelihood of the hundreds of spineless Labour MPs
in Parliament actually allowing the impeachment of Blair is next to nil. THAT was not
the point of this motion - the point was to garner valuable national media coverage, to
add in some small way to the pressure on Blair, to keep the issue in peoples' mind -
and most importantly, to speak out against what is going on in Iraq at the moment. As
I said in my speech, 'a time comes when silence is betrayal'. That time is now. By
chosing to say nothing about Blair's lies and blatant manipulation is to betray the people of Iraq and the people of the UK.

Of course this motion is not the only way in which people should oppose the disgrace of
what is going on in Iraq at the moment...but it is ONE way. Different methods of
resistance are not mutually exclusive - we put an opportunity to register your opinion
of Blair in front of you...and you spurned it. If you didn't believe in the use of the House of Lords, why didn't you abstain? Oh, yes, thats right...you were obeying orders from above.

Keep fighting the power, Dan.

Matt

I've put my case, and even if you don't agree, at least I've tried to explain why I voted the way that I did. For what it's worth, I think that if the objective was not actually to get the Lords to judge Blair but to get media coverage, then a better motion would be one raising awareness about the Iraqi labour movement and offering our solidarity (and, yes, I'd happily support/draft a motion to that effect). The media cover Blair's lies incessantly, and I find it a bit odd to be slagged off for remaining silent on this in the very week of having voted, and been part of a local Labour party which voted, that he should resign. The coverage of the ways that both the American and allied military and the Iraqi fascists try to smash the trade unionists, by contrast, gets hardly any coverage and real, tangible benefits in both the UK and Iraq would come from raising awareness about this.

I'll shut up on this subject now, but have one final question. Why are there no Labour MPs listed as supporters of the 'Impeach Blair' campaign? Even if you don't like most Labour MPs, some of the Campaign Group like Jeremy Corbyn or Alan Simpson are usually up for anything which will do down Tony Blair and publicise opposition to the war on Iraq. Are they cowardly apologists for New Labour too?

David Amess, a Tory from Basildon whose recent votes in Parliament have been to vote to keep Section 28 and fox hunting, is a supporter of the 'Impeach Blair' campaign. Ditto Roger Gale, who rebelled against the Tory whip to register his opposition to civil partnerships. Ditto pro-war Boris Johnson. Why could this campaign find very right-wing Tory public supporters, but not a single Labour MP or trade unionist? Surely keeping the pressure up on Blair and on the situation in Iraq doesn't have to mean joining up with the hard right of the Tory Party to try to give powers to the Lords which I think we can all agree it would be bad for them to have? Or is the most important thing really to do anything to attack Blair even if it means splitting the anti-war movement and going against our principles?

Take care

Dan xxx

Why are there no Labour MPs? For exactly the same reason that the entire Labour Group on the City Council voted the same way on Monday - they are whipped into submission. People like Corbyn and Simpson are well aware that if they call for the impeachment of Tony Blair, they won't just be tutted at - they will lose their membership of the Labour Party, a la George Galloway. They aren't willing to go that far...because, like you, they believe that staying in the Labour Party is more effective than leaving it and being able to speak out against injustice. I think that they are misguided as well.

Your straw man argument that this is supported by Tory MPs and therefore cannnot be supported by socialists is also totally ridiculous. For one thing, the Tories
have forced their front bench MPs not to sign it - precisely because they don't want to set a precedent of a Prime Minister being held accountable for his actions. Some
Tory MPs have individually signed the motion - but so have Plaid Cymru, RESPECT, the
SNP, and the only Independent member of the House.

I agree that it is a sad fact that this is one of the only avenues left to us in our
'accountable democracy' - but that is due to the utterly spineless submission of the
Labour Party. I'm willing to take whatever route is necessary to see that lying,
warmongering, manipulating, smug bastard out of office - including impeachment.

I'd have a lot more respect if you would just admit that the Labour Group was whipped
into voting exactly the same way on this, and that your belief is that you are doing
more good staying in the Labour Party than if you had followed your conscience on
this particular one. Your Group *never* votes exactly the same way on anything...so
the coercion on this one was painfully obvious. Your self-justification for it is even
more painful.

I look forward to that motion on Iraqi trade union rights. Seems to me that a number
of your Labour colleagues would think that such trivial matters aren't important
enough for us to discuss, though, after their dismissive speeches on MOnday.

Matt

P.S. You might want to ask most of the anti-war activists in Oxford what they think
of your vote. I think you would get an eye-opening answer...or didn't you hear the
cries of 'shame' from the public gallery on Monday?

I'm a little disturbed by some of the arguments being deployed here. Dan Paskins' position boils down to the following contentions:

(i) that impeachment is a process that in the United Kingdom has its origins in the power of the aristocracy over ordinary working people;

(ii) that the House of Lords, unlike (say) the US Senate, is not an elected & democratic authority;

(iii) that impeachment is a way of making a political decision (change the PM) through non-democratic means and therefore a bad thing;

(iv) that impeachment achieves "precisely sod all" for the people of Iraq;

(v) that the impeachment motion is divisive of the anti-war movement;

(vi) that media attention would be better drawn to the suffering and trials of trade unionists and other activists we might wish to support in Iraq, than to divisions within the anti-war movement in the UK.

Martin Juckes complains that point (iii) is a sophistry as plenty of decisions are made by unelected officials. I agree that this is true. I don't know about Martin but I believe that by and large that's a bad thing. I'd rather that wherever possible and practical, decisions should be made democratically by everyone. I certainly don't want MORE decisions, and very important decisions, taken by an undemocratic authority like a bunch of elderly Tory peers whose great grandmother slept with a long-forgotten King. Martin then goes on to say that it is hypocritical for Labour Party members to want to get rid of the PM but not vote for this motion.

Only if Labour Party members recognize no other issues as being of importance, and have no sense of proportion, is it hypocritical. For a Labour Party member, presumably such as Dan, who cares deeply about the horrendous direction the UK's foreign policy has been taken by the current PM, that concern can still be knocked into second place by an overwhelming concern that political decisions be taken by democratic means. Personally I agree with Dan. I'd like to see Blair go, but not by asserting the right of the aristocracy against him. many of us who were against the war believed that regime change in Iraq would be no bad thing (I don't know about Martin & Matt, I presume they didn't like Saddam any more than I did), but that the price in Iraqi blood and misery that we were being offered it at was unacceptable. Regime change, but not at any price. I don't see why those of us who'd like regime change within the Labour Party are expected to sign up to the demolition of democratic sovereignty in this country in order to achieve that.

Matt says that the motion was ultimately pointless because it wouldn't have been allowed by the Parliamentary Labour Party. There are two responses to this. The first is that this answers none of Dan's points at all, although Matt can't avoid a somewhat graceless dig at "bizarre Labour Party doublethink", and indeed begs Dan's points (iv) & (v) as above. The second is that calling for something which you know won't happen is at two different levels the worst kind of political irresponsibility. First of all, there are any number of things Labour activists could call for they might like which won't happen (I'd like to see agricultural land nationalization, for example), and there has to be a better way of justifying a stupid action than "someone with more sense will stop me". The other is that politicians operate and derive their prestige from a mandate from the people to represent them, and particularly, for those like Matt with a belief in social justice, to improve their lot. There are better ways of improving the lot of the people of Oxford, in terms of media attention, than attempting to assert the power of the aristocracy. See, for example,  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/4040031.stm


Finally Matt suggests that the way Labour councillors all voted the way they did is because they were whipped to do so. I'm not and have never been a member of the Labour Group on the city council, but I do knoew many of the councillors, and I know many of them - Dan, Rick, Bob & John would be obvious examples - have extremely strong views on the situation in Iraq, are extremely strong-minded, and if they felt strongly that they agreed with you, would have no hesitation at all in voting against a whip.

What's more, there's a certain and rather sad intellectual bankruptcy in being unable to defeat someone in argument about how they behaved, and then telling them that they only did it because they were told to. None of Dan's central contentions have been challenged and shown faulty, so instead resort is made to the line that Dan voted how he did because he was under orders. If you can't even show that those orders were wrong, let alone that they existed, I have to say that's a bit feeble. When Matt goes on to say he wants to see any method used to get Blair out of office I am saddened further. Military coup? French invasion? Is nothing more important?

I also think the political hypocrisy is a little sad. Matt & Martin have been only too keen to read disingenuity, the perfidy of Labour, into Dan's position. Dan has at no point said that Matt (a Green Party councillor) and Martin (a Green Party agent) are acting under orders from the Green Party in espousing their rather odd position, nor that their behaviour is motivated not by individual conscience but by political calculation. It seems unfortunate that they were unable to extend the same courtesy to Dan.

Thanks,

Tim Waters
(I should declare, I know and like both Dan & Matt)

"By choosing to say nothing about Blair's lies and blatant manipulation is to betray the people of Iraq and the people of the UK."

Much as I like and respect Matt, as he is one of the best activists in Oxford in many causes I agree with, I'm getting a bit fed up of this. Have you read the Oxford Mail recently? Is it not the case that Dan and his comrades have been saying quite a lot about Blair's lies recently? Is it not also possible that disagreeing that we have to abrogate the democratic freedoms it has taken us hundreds of years to win just to get rid of one dodgy Prime Minister, is a legitimate point of view?

It is no secret that Oxford Labour Party doesn't like Tony Blair very much and is doing its best to get rid of him - by democratic means. Why this obsession with impeaching Blair? Were that to be consistently applied nearly every Prime Minister since Walpole would have had a good case brought against them. The government of this country would be determined by unelected judges and by money, even more than it is now. Some of the anti-war campaign seem to have decided that democracy doesn't work. I think that not only is it the best chance we've got, if a movement based on democracy choosess to pursue other means it betrays itself and makes its task more difficult.

Not to mention that most of the listed supporters of impeachblair.org would have bombed Iraq anyway...

Fight the gremlins comrades.

Mike :-)

Let's get a little perspective on this discussion. The call for impeachment is necessary only because the official political system - and the Labour Party in particular - has lamentably failed to call Mr Blair to account over his illegal and vicious war in Iraq.
The parliamentary opposition has failed because the Tories are even more compromised than Labour in their support for the war, while the Lib Dems have once again played it both ways: straight after the vote for war in March 2003, Charles Kennedy promised his "genuine support" for the invasion, and was true to his word.
However, I salute the political courage shown by the 139 Labour MPs who voted against the war. If Tony Blair had shown the degree of integrity displayed by Neville Chamberlain in 1940, he would have resigned there and then, because you can't take your country into a war when even your own party isn't solidly behind you. Chamberlain resigned because just 33 Tory MPs voted against him in a censure motion.
But since that vote, those 139 Labour MPs have not followed through. Even the Tories did better than them after Suez, forcing Anthony Eden out of office within three months.
What Mr Blair is guilty of in Iraq is surely the greatest abuse of power by a British politician in the last 100 years, with his lies, the carnage, the secret agreements with President Bush, the complete lack of remorse and so on. In similar circumstances in the US 30 years ago, when President Nixon ducked and weaved in just the same way rather than accept his responsibility for Watergate, impeachment was revived as the only way to get him out. The same applies to Mr Blair now: resolutions calling on him to resign 20 months after the event are hardly up to the task.
Since Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems have all failed to call Mr Blair to account, it is a Plaid Cymru MP, Adam Price, who decided to go for impeachment. Read "A Case to Answer," the brilliant report he commissioned, on www.impeachblair.net, for details. Other Plaid and SNP MPs, as well as the only independent in the Commons, support him. So did Peter Kilfoyle, a former Labour defence minister, but his name has curiously disappeared. No doubt some more bullying by the Labour whips.
If Tory MPs also wish to sign up, that is up to them. I personally cannot make sense of Boris Johnson doing so when he voted for the war. But I also do not see why a Green councillor like Matt Sellwood should be expected to answer for the actions of Tory MPs.
An impeachment trial would take place in the House of Lords for the simple reason that it is the highest court in the land and so the only place appropriate for such a trial. I have no more sympathy for that house than the Labour people who've contributed to this discussion, but in a judicial process we have to use the judicial institutions which exist. The trial would presumably be conducted by the law lords, i.e. the country's most senior judges, rather than any other members of that house.
And yes, I applaud anyone who builds links with Iraqi trade unionists and others at this time - just as I applauded Caroline Lucas MEP when she helped to break the sanctions on Iraq four years ago, long before it was a fashionable issue.
But this country bears a huge amount of responsibility for the atrocities in Iraq, and Tony Blair does in particular as it is his personal campaign. On this record he should not be able to remain in office for one day longer. Since the official political system has so miserably failed to bring him to account, the only remedy left is the ancient one of impeachment.

Thanks to Mike for banging the point home. And what do I now find? That grassroots anti-war activists like Mike & I, not councillors or agents for anyone, albeit members of the Labour Party, are not actually being argued against by people of differing views, but by the Green Party, playing the dangerous game of throwing away centuries of democratic advance and calling in the aristocracy because they don't like the Prime Minister.

Matt Sellwood, Green Councillor (and, as Mike rightly says, a good & committed activist). Martin Juckes, Green agent, if I recall correctly, in the 2004 local elections. And riding to their defence when their political motivations for the destruction of democracy are all too clear is none other than the Green Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford West & Abingdon.

Tell me, you lot, is there anyone out there who believes that this country should be governed by aristocrats who isn't either:

(a) an aristocrat; or
(b) a politically active member of the Green Party?

Thanks,

Tim.

...the over 250 people who signed a petition supporting the impeachment motion, presented
by an independent peace activist to Full Council. Or are they just dupes for the
aristocracy too?

I'll imitate the wise Councillor Paskins at this point and retire from the discussion -
mainly because Tim is right about something. This dialogue has evolved into a spat
between Labour party activists and Green Party activists...we're clearly not going to
convince each other. I'll continue to think, along with hundreds of people who signed
that petition, that the impeachment motion should have been supported. You can continue
to think the opposite. People can make up their own minds about whether the revivification
of such a procedure would lead to a triumph of the aristocracy over democracy. I doubt
it myself.

Matt