Woolwich: Is 'The Left' Responsible?

The recent barbaric murder of a British soldier on the streets of Woolwich by Islamic extremists has been met with universal condemnation. And rightly so: yes, a great deal many more British soldiers have been killed oversees and yes, fatal knife attacks on the streets of the capital are sadly not rare either. However, the medieval nature of the attack on Lee Rigby, combined with the killers’ ‘political’ ranting and complete disinterest in being observed by the public set this particular crime apart.

The three main party leaders, along with Boris Johnston, all reacted admirably (and it’s not often you will see Boris referred to in a positive light on this blog). Cameron, in particular, has been careful to avoid stirring up anti-Islamic sentiment, describing the attack as a ‘betrayal of Islam’. With depressing predictability, the usual suspects of the EDL and the remnants of the BNP tried to exploit the events to further their own anti-immigrant, anti-multiculturalism agenda. But overall, the world of politics has remained impressively calm at the news. Awful as the attack was, the reaction to it was refreshingly measured and uncontroversial. In fact, the only reason I’m writing about it on here is to respond to one troubling point mentioned in passing on the BBC’s live news feed by one commentator about the implication for ‘the left’.

Usama Hasan, a researcher at anti-extremism think-tank the Quillim Foundation, was reported as saying: "The real problem here is the decisive hatred preached by a very small minority of clerics in this country in a small number of our mosques and universities. They know who they are and there are Muslim groups and other groups - left wing groups may I say - who defend that kind of grievance and victimhood mentality. That's what must change and has to stop.”

Ah yes, that old chestnut, ‘the left’. I’m not exactly sure which left-wing groups Hasan is referring to here, nor why a ‘victimhood mentality’ should automatically lead to violent killings, but I find any idea that the left is somehow partially responsible for this murder or Islamic extremism in general completely abhorrent. For a start, the notion that the left does, or even can, have one unified opinion about Islam makes little sense.

Admittedly, the relationship between the broad left and Islam is of course a complicated and confusing one. After 9/11, Islam drew excessive negative attention in the press, and the Left were the strongest critics of this. On the other hand, the Left has always criticised the socially conservative aspects of any religion. Trying to defend Muslims from prejudice can lead the left, some would argue, into justification of extremist violence, especially when combined with a dislike of Western cultural hegenomy and militarism. Hasan’s implication is that the left finds it difficult to condemn outright Islamic extremism because of Islam’s association in the UK with racist prejudice against Muslims.

Some, such as author Nick Cohen, have tried to coin the term ‘Islamic fascism’ to make it more comfortable for left wingers to criticise Islamic extremism whilst maintaining a distance from right-wing anti-Muslim rhetoric. In his (mostly awful) book, What’s Left, Cohen argues against the left’s opposition to the Iraq War, claiming it had been hoodwinked into supporting repressive regimes as a result of cultural relativism. The left, he argues, should look past its distrust of US military might, and see Muslim fundamentalism for what it really is: a form of fascism.

I disagree with both Hasan and Cohen. The Left has condemned the Woolwich attack as vociferously as anyone else: Billy Bragg, as close to an emissary of the Left as I could imagine, took to Facebook to describe it as “...shocking. What he did for a living cannot be used to justify what happened to him.” Not exactly the words of someone who is afraid of stepping on anyone’s sensitive toes. And anyway, the left does not see Islam as immune from criticism any more than it sees Christianity as immune from criticism. It’s a thorny issue, certainly, because left wingers also want to be seen to respect other peoples’ cultures and values. But, on issues including ranging from the position of women in strict Islamic communities, to the lack of willingness to integrate into a healthy multicultural society in some areas, the left have a strong track record of raising concerns.

As for Cohen’s ‘Islamic Fascism’ idea, I reject this as a way of framing the debate, purely because the right-wing, political fascism of the EDL variety is an ideology based on hatred and prejudice, regardless of whether this leads to actual violence or not.  Islam is not. There is no inevitable link between ‘Islam’, ‘Fascism’, and the events of Woolwich. To suggest otherwise would be to say that there is something inherent in the Islamic faith which can lead to these sorts of attacks, which theologians and others insist there isn’t.

Perhaps the reason certain people are blaming ‘the Left’ is because some lefties seek to link events like the Woolwich murder with US and UK foreign policy. To be clear, in my opinion, the idea that illegal, unjustified military invasions such as the Iraq war would throw petrol onto the fire of extremism was self evident: in fact, the Blair government was warned of this at the time, and ignored it. But I must emphasize: seeking to explain the motivation behind Islamic extremist violence is NOT the same as justifying the violence. The Left seek macro explanations, in contrast to the reaction of the far right who prefer to just demonise all Muslims. Perhaps it is this nuance that the knee-jerk- reaction loving, easy-answer-seeking elements of the right-wing media fail to grasp about the relationship between the Left and Islam.

So blame the individual attackers, obviously. Nothing can absolve them from that responsibility. Or blame the radical clerics if you like. Or blame the idiotic wars that have made Britain a target for terrorism. Or blame the EDL nutters and extremist Islamic groups, who both provide each other the fuel they need. But the Left? Honestly, I don’t think so.

How fair is fair-trade?

Ethical consumption is at an all time high. Never before in the history of the world have people been so unaware of how their goods reached them, but also curious to know, hence ethical consumption. In the past, we would know who had made our clothes and where the wool had come from. In the more recent past, we would not have known, but also we would not have cared. Now we want to know and we want to care.

Fair trade and other forms of ethical consumption are ever present in today's markets. Once the preserve of specialist shops, they are stocked by supermarkets alongside goods made in sweatshops without a hint of irony. The fact that even Nestle, that old boycotter’s favourite, now sticks the fair-trade label on some of its confectionary hints that fair-trade is part of the mainstream. It scratches an itch some people have about their spending habits. However, there are people who knowingly consume unethical goods or are aware of a dubious moral track record of certain brands but continue to purchase them anyway.

Why does this happen? There is a degree to which unethical consumption is a reaction to pressure to consume ethically. Some feel a knee jerk reaction to what is perceived as left-wing pressure, political correctness or interference in their daily lives. These individuals continue to consume unethically in order to resist social pressure to consume ethically. This attitude is selfish and a result of culture which emphasises individual gratification above collective good. There is a degree to which advocates of ethical consumption are their own enemies as applying pressure to change consumer habits can drive people in the opposite direction. We can see a similar phenomenon with advertising; many people avoid the Go Compare website simply because their adverts are so annoying.

Worse than callous disregard for the suffering that unethical consumption causes are those who believe that unethical consumption is good for the world’s poor. There are those who generally believe that sweatshops and exploitative labour improve the circumstances of people in poorer countries. For some this is simply a desire to justify their spending habits and a way of intellectualising rigid brand loyalty. For others it is somewhere between blind faith that capitalism will solve the world’s problems or genuine belief in the libertarian free market, a point of view which can only come from a position of privilege. Just as capitalism’s greatest defenders are those who have lucked out and currently sit on top of the heap, unethical consumption is defended by those who value cheap produce above all else and cannot see beyond the end of their garden. Only someone who has never stitched T-shirts continuously for twelve hours for only a few cents could ever suggest it was a route out of poverty.

Just because someone consumes ethically does not necessarily remove the impact of their consumption on others. It’s not that buying a Fairtrade T-shirt or jar of coffee isn’t preferable to a non-Fairtrade version. It’s just to say that these consumers aren’t just paying for a product alone. Ethical consumption is just another level of service. People who have more than their fair share feel guilty and want to know what effect their excess income has on the world. Purchasing Fairtrade products is a way of assuaging this guilt, whilst essentially maintaining the present system by those it benefits, albeit whilst also acknowledging its obvious flaws. If you are rich, you are hardly likely to seriously challenge the economic model that made you rich. It is however difficult to deny the problems caused by inequality on a global scale so a certain section of the wealthy have come up with ethical consumption as a means to relieve their guilt without having to threaten their position within the established economic system.

There are those who question the rights of ethical consumers to have a larger income than average and believe that this inequality is part and parcel of the system which lead to ethical consumption differentiating itself from unethical consumption. In short there will always be unethical products until we radically reconsider how the market place is constructed. Only substantial change to every aspect of our economy will remove unethical products.

Leaving this complex issue up to anything as simple as consumer choice will never resolve the problems caused by unethical consumption. Offering ethical alternatives from the same companies which created the problem in the first place alongside their unethical counterparts is not a solution and will never be. If you worried about unethical produce then ethnical consumption will not resolve the problem. Only radical change to the economy will suffice. However, in the absence of a strong movement for radical change, ethical consumption is preferable to ignoring the problems consumption creates, or choosing to believe that exploitation will rid capitalism of its contradictions.

Bankers! Bankers! Bankers! Out! Out! Out!

The death of Thatcher has opened up a lot of old wounds and a lot of old debates. The news narrative was dominated by North Korea and IDS claiming he could live on £53 a week, then all of a sudden we were dragged back to the 1980s to debate the miners’ strike and the poll tax riots. Again and again, I have heard the same justification for Thatcher's actions: that the unions controlled the country in the 1970s, and that they used collective bargaining to bring the country to a standstill.

Clearly there was public outrage following the Winter of Discontent, which Thatcher effectively harnessed to pursue her own political agenda. Even many of those who disagreed with her cure for the problem agreed that ‘something had to be done’. Most politicians are opportunists and this was a once in a generation chance to change the agenda. Thatcher's success leads me to ask: why are we so bad at this on the left? Could we not use the banking crisis in the same way to achieve our aims?

Anti-banker sentiment is at an all high. Bankers are derided across nation, from cartoons in broadsheet newspapers to Carling commercials. Their popularity is located on the scale somewhere below politicians and above benefit claimants - firmly near the bottom. However no-one is making a strong attempt use this anger to effect any change, unlike the Thatcher government was able to in the early ‘eighties when it capitalised on anti-strike sentiments.

Essentially, the main reason for this is the entire political establishment is broadly in favour of letting the banks off the hook. Neither side wishes to be publicly viewed as in the banker's pockets, but the general consensus in Westminster is that we need the elitist, tax dodging money swallowing black hole that is the City of London more than it need us. This is of course not true, and will remain untrue until the Square Mile takes off and flies above us in a disgusting parody of a Douglas Adams novel. Britain isn’t the Isle of Man. We have an economy that exists outside the Square Mile and anyone who works in chemical engineering, software development, games & high tech arts, aerospace or any of the other industries in which Britain is a world leader should be greatly offended by the idea that we dependent on the bankers.

It doesn’t have to be this way. ‘Bashing the bankers’ is just tabloid stuff – in and of itself, rhetoric doesn’t achieve much. What it could do, however, is provide the ground work for creating a broad consensus for more intelligent regulation, and above all an end to the morally redundant idea that rampant inequality is somehow good for everyone. Anti-banker sentiment could be a starting point for a debate challenging the assumptions of our pro-greed, anti-collectivist consensus, just like Thatcher challenged the political consensus of the post war era. It’s a debate we badly need to have, but neither the Labour Party nor anyone else in mainstream politics seems willing to have it.

Thatcher, for all her innumerate faults, stood for a clearly defined ideology. She had a vision for what society should be liked and set about making it so, manipulating anti-union sentiment and patriotic feelings over the Falklands war whenever public confidence in her plan faltered. Thatcher genuinely believed that the whole country would be better off if labour markets were less regulated and the unions were less powerful. At the time most of the country did not believe this as strongly as she did (although now it is now an almost universally held political opinion) but popular anti-union sentiment allowed her to pursue her ideological objectives. The reason the same thing is not happening to the bankers today is that it is no longer consider appropriate for politicians to have strong ideological view points. Instead both sides tend towards varying degrees of acceptance of the neo-liberal hegemony.

The Conservative Party under Thatcher’s leadership were not united in their support for her policies and she had to fight off a few leadership challenges before eventually be ousted in 1990. Still to most people she stood as a strong unifying figure bringing together a diverse movement around a single set of goals. This is something the left sorely lacks. After the banking crisis the left is more divided than ever. This is especially true when discussing how we respond to the problems presented by this new era of capitalism. The left has always been fractious and divided but there is no consensus on how to best use the popular dislike of bankers to achieve any political goals.

Thatcher was an astute politician who used the public’s anti-union sentiment to great advantage in order to accomplish her political goals. The Left could learn a lot from her in how to respond to the banking crisis and in finding a way to snap out of this ideological paralysis we find ourselves trapped in. The public hates the banks almost as much as they hate benefit claimants. This is because most people who work hard resent people who they feel have got something for nothing. The Right is expertly using this feeling to roll back the welfare state. The left should be thinking the same if they want to make a dent in the power of international banking conglomerates.