New links, and old acquaintances

I'M pleased to have two more blogs to add to my listed links at the side of this page. One is Charlie Marks, whose name I'd heard before but I don't think we have met. I believe he was/is linked to the Socialist Workers Party, but known for his independent attitude. This other Charlie has contacted me to compliment me on the posting about London Underground and Overground troubles. When I looked up his name I found that he had his own blog, left-wing commentary with looks at issues I haven't tackled, and lots of links. Among them was one to Random Pottins, so I thought it was only right to reciprocate.

Then there's this message that came by e-mail the other day:

Dear friends,

I'm writing to announce my new blog, 'Greater Surbiton', which I hope you will all drop by from time to time.
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/
It will be devoted to political commentary and analysis, with a (far from exclusive) thematic focus on reinterpreting the meaning of progressive politics and (equally far from exclusive) geographic focus on South East Europe.
I don't plan to have public comments for the time being, but any private comments or criticisms would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,
Marko

I first met Marko Attla Hoare in Trafalgar Square about 14 years ago, at a rally about the war in Bosnia. I'd gone up there with a couple of my friends from the WRP/Workers Press, Dot Gibson and Geoff Pilling.

When the conflict in former Yugoslavia first broke out few of us knew much, or had any idea what to do about it. Trotskyists had supported Yugoslavia when it stood up to both Western and Soviet pressure, some even going out to work projects there. But we had not really followed or understood recent developments, and knew little about the national question there. I'd keenly read books about the partisans when I was young, and also knew about Ustashe crimes and the fact that the perpetrators remained active as emigres.

It was a Yugoslav comrade called Rade who helped us learn more, and urged us to action. He was one of a group of East Europeans who'd formed around the Hungarian Trotskyist Balasz Nagy in Paris, and who joined us in forming the Workers International (to reconstruct the Fourth International). When Rade came to London I asked him whether the situation was as bad as we read about in the newspapers. He replied: "What's happening is much worse than anything you've read in your newspapers".

It had not occurred to me till then to ask what variety of Yugoslav he was. I asked where he was from. Rade was a Serb, from near Belgrade. His brother had been called up to the Yugoslav People's Army, and decided though he disagreed with the regime that as a Marxist he must go with the masses. At a place called Vukovar he discovered that overnight his fellow-soldiers had removed the red star from their caps, replacing it with the Serb nationalist white eagle. It was at Vukovar that invading Serb troops dragged patients from their hospital beds to kill them. Rade's brother narrowly persuaded the men is his own unit not to participate in such actions.

We got Rade to speak at a meeting in London's Conway Hall. It was not well attended. Maybe some on the Left knew as much they wanted to, or thought they did. But a Greek person asked whether it was not bad to see Yugoslavia breaking up. It was, agreed Radi. "But if you want to save unity you don't do it by destroying a mixed, working class city like Vukovar, and you don't bombard the national library of Sarajevo with incendiary shells!"

What Rade had to tell us about responsibility fitted what I also heard from two people at a Jewish Socialist Group meeting, one being Dr.Donald Kenrick, best-known for his activity for Gypsy rights, but also long-acquainted with Yugoslavia and its peoples; and the other Ben Cohen, a young guy from an Iraqi-Sefardi family who had been visiting relatives in Sarajevo when it first came under siege.

It was Rade who advised us to try and get help to Tuzla, a mining town where something of working class unity survived between 'Muslim', Croat and Serb. We met some Bosnian refugees from the area, and heard how miners in Tuzla had raised funds for the British miners during the great strike. We also heard that some socialists who had been mainly involved in anti-fascist activity were planning to set up something called "Red Aid for Bosnian Refugees". It was together with them that we formed Workers Aid for Bosnia. But where and how to begin?

We set off for that rally in Trafalgar Square with our publications, and a petition calling on the TUC to support aid to Bosnian workers and refugees. It never did, but the names gave us a start. A young guy signed my petition and bought a copy of the 'International Trade Union Solidarity Bulletin' , a modest little monthly I edited at the time. Shortly afterwards I saw Dot and Geoff talking to a couple, and went over to offer them the Bulletin. "I see my son has just bought one," said the woman, who had already bought a Workers Press and signed the petition.

Looking at the signatures I saw the names of Branca Magas and her partner Quintin Hoare, and that the name on my board was Attila Hoare. I'd heard about Branca and Quintin breaking with the New Left review but this was the first time we'd met them or their son. Later, although they had their own activity, they helped Workers Aid, and Marko Attila Hoare wrote an article in Workers Press.

The reason I'm telling you these mundane details is because the WRP and Workers Aid for Bosnia came under attack at this time from, among others, a sect centred on Detroit and led by one Dave North who, before he broke with both Gerry Healy and Healy's opponents in the WRP had been co-author of a series of works called Security and the Fourth International, dealing with real and increasingly unreal agents and conspiracies. Now in similar vein, but more imaginatively, North and his British followers led by one Dave Hyland uncovered a fresh conspiracy hatched by Leeds academic Cliff Slaughter of the WRP. They insisted that preserving Yugoslav state unity was a principle, whatever the weak-kneed Tito had allowed for in the constitution. Ignoring the fact that Douglas Hurd and the Tory government were denying the Bosnian people's right to defend themselves, they said Workers Aid to Bosnia was smuggling arms to Bosnia on behalf of the imperialists. Why the imperialists whose troops in UN guise controlled Bosnia's roads and airfields should depend on a bunch of amateurs with second-hand lorries was never explained.

But the North group had informed readers that "Slaughter procured Attila Hoare from his privileged educational background" to write in Workers Press. And there was me thinking I'd just bumped into the lad in Trafalgar Square by chance. Just goes to show the difference between what we mere plebs think of as common sense about how things happen, and the higher levels of thought achieved by conspiracy theorists.

I hear that nowadays the North group's Australian offshoot printer is handling the Financial Times contract. Not bad for an international outfit that once denounced Workers Aid for having a contact in Tuzla who was "a banker with interests in Bosnia". He was indeed the manager of the state-owned Bank of Tuzla, who, since the place was sandbagged and the money wasn't much use in wartime, took time off to help on convoys. I stayed in his flat in a tower block on an ordinary estate there. Obviously a high-level financial conspiracy.

We don't see much of the Hyland Light Infantry these days, but I see the venom is still available from other, perhaps more traditional sources. Neil Clark, a Morning Star contributor who I gather doesn't like Trotskyists of any description and thought poor old Milosevic was innocent, accuses those who disagree of being "anti-Yugoslav" and informs readers of his blog that:

"Attila Hoare is a ex-Workers Revolutionary Party fanatic who is as far from an unbiased observer on Balkan affairs as it is to be. The comments on him by resistor on Harry's Place say it all. "

http://neilclark66.blogspot.com/2006/02/oliver-kamm-is-not-son-of-god-or-is-he.html

I've stayed away from Harry's Place so far, and see no reason to look up smears from anonymous habitues. I'll leave it to others to decide from their writings which is the "fanatic" , Marko Attila Hoare or Neil Clark.

My path and that of Marko parted ways during the Kosova war, when we took different attitudes to Western intervention. I think he has strayed into some company now that I'd not want to keep. But he continues to write well, and with real knowledge, particularly about Yugoslavia and its history. *

Regarding the "ex-WRP" tag, Marko has replied that he was never in the WRP, but if he had been in the WRP/Workers Press he would have been proud to say so, because of its principled record. And whatever differences we may now have, I am proud to add a link to Marko Attila Hoare's blog to my list.

* Books by Marko Attila Hoare: "I am the author of three books, The History of Bosnia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London, Saqi, 2007), Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943 (London, Oxford University Press, 2006) and How Bosnia Armed (London, Saqi, 2004). I am currently working on a history of modern Serbia".

Twenty Years Ago

 TWENTY years ago I was involved in Workers Aid for Bosnia, a left-wing initiative to support the Bosnian people against aggression and "ethnic cleansing" and to take material aid, particularly to the workers of Tuzla, a mining and industrial town in the north of the country, with a tradition of resistance to fascism.
 
Today, twenty years later, Tuzla has been at the centre of a storm of unrest against the privatisers and asset-strippers wrecking its economy. A new generation of young people are finding their voice as they fight for their future, and their movement has already burst the banks of the divisions brought by war and intervention. 

This article, written after I had been to Tuzla on a convoy, was commissioned by my late friend  Bernard Misrahi, and appeared in the November-December issue of 'Chartist'.  It was also included in the anthology 'Taking Sides' published later by Workers Aid for Bosnia.

Workers Aid, initiated by Trotskyists, and much inspired and informed by a Serb comrade, was a remarkable achievement, largely thanks to the support and involvment of "ordinary" people, from pensioners to youth, and trade unionists.  Of course it was only a fraction of what was needed, and what could have been done, had more people, and bigger organisations, put their mind to it.
 
But nevertheless, I like to think that in helping some of our brave Bosnian friends keep alive, we may also have helped keep alive the flame of resistance and hope that is alight again today.   

 

  Solidarity on wheels

"THEY want to divide up Bosnia. So what am I supposed to do?" demanded Adzic, "Divorce my
wife, split up my family? Where will my children go? My wife is a Serb. I am Muslim... ha! me a Muslim! I've not been in a mosque since I was a kid.

"But now, they put a label on you. And for people there it is different. You must go to the church, or go to the mosque, if you want to eat. I could never believe that this would happen in my country..."

We'd been collecting for Bosnia, on a cold winter afternoon, and were in a cafe in Leeds. Adzic had heard from his sister, after months of worrying whether she and her children were still alive. But her letter told of burned homes, friends taken away, 'ethnic cleansing'. I wondered what people on neighbouring tables were making of this.

What was I making of it? Could I continue with routine meetings, gossiping with old friends on demonstrations, going for a meal, contented I'd done my bit? Maybe somewhere at the back of my mind a picture of that Bosnian woman fleeing with her children resonated with something I'd heard as a kid, about a young girl fleeing a pogrom in Russia, carrying her baby brother, my grandfather.

Earlier this year, fed up with hearing why we could not, or should not, do anything, I told friends I was going to Bosnia. Workers Aid for Bosnia were sending a convoy to Tuzla, a mining town with a mixed population. Though I'm not a driver, they agreed I could go.

We assembled in Zagreb. Seventeen lorries with food from the miners' union of Slovenia. Six from Germany, driven by Bosnians who’d been working there, Jacques from Normandy,  with  a huge
long truck loaded with milling grain and seeds. Sue from New Zealand who had fetched a lorry load of medical supplies from Sweden; Paddy, from Glasgow, ex-soldier reading politics at Cambridge, putting his convov-driving experience to use. Lisa doing the same with her studies in nutrition. Young Andy from the Lake District, long-haired and scruffy, who proved ace at repairing lorries, and handling them on iced-up mountain roads.

 MAKING FRIENDS in central Bosnia, Sue from New Zealand

Paul, a young lorry driver from Leyland had heard about the convoy on local radio, and decided to take his annual holiday driving with us. "I'd seen Bosnia on the news, and it just seemed the right thing to do"'. Dot, a Marxist since her teens, had found the hardest bit telling her grandchildren she wouldn't be with them at Christmas, when she led the previous convoy.


The quickest way to Tuzla is straight down an all-weather highway via Zupanje. It's recommended in tour maps. But that was before the war. Now this northern route runs through a narrow neck of Serb- held territory, and UNPROFOR doesn't want to disturb them. So it's down the winding coast road to Split, where we're joined by the Spanish and Basque comrades with a coach stacked with food.

From here a zig-zag route leads over the mountains, via hairpin bends and makeshift tracks.

Fortunately, fighting between Bosnian and Croat forces had ceased. And with fine weather, we'll be facing dust clouds, instead of slithering on mud (the snow and ice came on our way back). But first there's a three-dav wait on a hot, dusty lorry-park outside Split, while papers are sorted out with UN and Croat officials, who poke about in our lorries, looking for anything that s not on the paperwork. The Bosnian drivers are impatient to leave, anxious to reach their homes, not knowing what they'll find.

At Kamenets, a cold wait at dawn, while armed border officials of the Croat: 'Hercog-Bosna' statelet look in the lorries, and half-seriously accuse Fazlovic, one of the Bosnians, of 'black-marketeering', after finding 200 cigarettes in his cab. They're just throwing their weight around. While we're waiting I scramble up the hillside to find a suitab1e bush, toilet roll in my pocket. Evidently I'm not the first, so I step gingerly. Though the border point has no toilets, a dutyfree shop is waiting to open - the enterprise culture has arrived.

We were lucky, moving off after a few hours. A smaller convoy the following month was kept waiting at the border for ten days. Friends who went out this Summer were thrown in a water-logged basement cell in Mostar by the Croat  HVO militia, and only freed after Labour MPs and trade unions, here and in Croatia protested about their disappearance.

Our trip had begun almost like a holiday ~ moonlit Adriatic coves, swimming near Split, wooded hills, blue lakes and snow- capped peaks under the sun. Then came the burnt-out houses, in increasing numbers A friend pointed out some marked with a white cross, left unscathed.

Bosnians had returned from working abroad to build these family homes. Now their life-work was in ruins. We pass hungry-eyed children, desperate for a few sweets thrown from the window. An old man gratefully accepts a cigarette. A young girl dashes across the road to slow down vehicles, so the little ones can get something.The Bosnians and Slovenes are better prepared, throwing out big bags of popcorn as they go by. At a turning, a young head-scarved mother holds a toddler to wave, and we find some chocolate and an orange to give her. 'Hwala', thanks, she smiles, brushing back a tear. My eyes need wiping too.

At Prozor, as dusk fell, drunken Croat militiamen stagger out of bars. One of them rammed a riflebutt through Jacques' windscreen. At Gorni Vakuf, a British officer told us we must wait till morning, but not step off the road as there were mines about. I'm told several people have been maimed or killed by small anti-personnel mines left at roadsides. We saw a lot of young people with legs missing. The British government exports such mines, but refused export licenses for mine detectors under the arms embargo on Bosnia.

Entering Bosnian-held territory, we pass through small towns with mixed Muslim and Croat population, and no burned out houses or other signs of ethnic cleansing. Workers cycling home from a power station wheel over to ask where we're going. "Tuzla? Very good. People hungry in Tuzla. Good luck!" Over the hills to Vares, with minaret and church spire intact amid neat suburbs. Past half-derelict rusting works that remind me of England.

On the steep hill out of Vares, a young lad in Bosnian army camouflage-fatigues comes over. "You are from England?" . Dirk, our driver, is from Germany, Genevieve's from Belgium, Edna's from Leeds,... 'So this is international workers' solidarity?'. 'That's right, chuck!' says Edna. 'Great!' he beams, and turns to explain to his mates .

We've a crooked rock-hewn tunnel to pass through, and more climbing. Jacques' lorry has to be diverted to Zenica, and its load decanted into smaller vehicles. We spend a night on windswept Mount Milenkovic, hearing Serb artillery. Next morning a man with a wheelbarrow and shovel is out mending holes in the road. We share tea and cigarettes with him. He s a Serb too, keeping the aid route open, unpaid.. "When this war is over, we must not forget people like him," says Farouk, our guide from Tuzla. Whenever I hear the BBC refer to Dr .Karadzic and his gangsters as "the Bosnian Serbs", I remember this decent man mending the road to Tuzla.

Tuzla reminded me almost of a northern town. Even the mosques are like little Nonconformist chapels with minarets. Our hosts, the Kreka miners' union, are proud of their tradition. Outside their centre stands a heroic statue of a miner with a rifle commemorating not just the partisans, as I thought, but a strike in 1921 when thev resisted the Serb royal regime's attempt to deport 'foreign' (eg Croat) miners. In 1984-5 Tuzla miners held regular collections for British miners.

Many of the buildings in Tuzla bear scars of shellfire. Food and fuel are in short supply and there were power cuts. Tihomir, with whom I was staying, told us by candlelight about running with his wife and child to reach a shelter, and seeing children blown to pieces. A mining engineer, he had spent some time in England, and showed me his souvenirs -NUM badges. Tihomir didn't think much of the government in Sarajevo, but was proud of the voung men in his army unit, who "always look after each other, whatever their background, and whatever the danger".

The big cream-painted Serb Orthodox church was restored after Serb shelling. At Easter, people collected food parcels there. Little notices pinned around the town, some with snapshots, announced latest deaths in action. Some had green crescents, others black crosses, and some
had red stars. Before the war, more than 20 per cent of Tuzla people were of mixed families, identified as 'Yugoslav'.

The town is full of Muslim refugees, country folk. I saw a man grazing goats outside the bank. There are crescents and stars scrawled with 'SDA' - Izetbegovic's Muslim-based party. But the mayor and council are proudly secular, non-nationalist, social democrat. Delivering aid to them and the miners helps them keep the town united.

A noisy Saturday night rock-concert must have been audible up in the hills. Another way of annoying the Serb nationalist chetniks by insisting everything stays 'normal'. Ninella, 19, taking part in a shooting competition next day, was asked whether she practised with pop-up Serbs as targets. "Not Serbs, chetniks!', she admonished. Her army friend said: 'All chetniks are Serbs, but not all Serbs are chetniks."

Back home in England, a Tower Hamlets Liberal tells the radio interviewer "It's not natural for different people to live together, look at Bosnia'; and an anti-racist friend can't understand why I "take sides". But 'ordinary' people whom he would deem 'non-political' understand.

The news is Tuzla has been shelled, and the road through Vares is threatened. Some idiot here accuses us of carrying guns to Bosnia. I think of Ninella and her friends, of Tihomir and his family, and of that lad whose eyes lit up at 'international workers solidarity"; and I wish we could.

TUZLA, Bosnia and Hercogovina

No, I won't be going to "Marxism 2006"

WORKERS AID CONVOY waiting for the off, south of Split. SWP didn't want to know about need for Bosnia solidarity, nor about Srebrenica massacre.

LARGE numbers of starry-eyed youngsters, older campaigners who ought to know better, and seasoned activists who do, are gathering in central London for what they call "Marxism 2006", " A festival of resistance", five days of talks, discussions, films, music and what not organised by the Socialist Workers Party(SWP).

Even the most dedicated of my local SWP acquaintances have given up trying to get me to go, though one did give me a programme the other day, more from habit than hope I think. As I told the young person who proffered me a leaflet during a demonstration last week, "Last time I went they wanted to throw me out".

It was an evening in July 1995. Friends had persuaded me to come to the University of London Union where as part of the SWP's "Marxism" event there was to be a session on Bosnia. As we joined the crowd going in the evening newspaper stands outside announced the first news of the massacre at Srebrenica. The news of the town's fall had been expected, but we did not yet realise the scale of the butchery.

Inside, finding myself placed up in the balcony, I followed the procedure laid down by the organisers, handing in a speaker slip with my question: "How can workers in Britain help workers in Bosnia?"

As the evening wore on we listened to an SWP speaker assuring us that the sides in Bosnia were equally well-armed and equally to blame, that we should not get involved, and so on. Apart from routine calls on the Bosnian workers to unite (as though it were their fault, though this was unspoken), it was not much different from the line taken by Tory Foreign secretary Douglas Hurd who had said that lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia would only create a "a level killing field".

Of the real killing fields outside Srebrenica nothing was said.

Workers Aid for Bosnia was dismissed with a passing sneer, as a vain idea (It had by then sent 20 convoys of badly-needed aid to working class communities, mainly the mining area of Tuzla, but the SWP pretended it never existed).
A few people from the audience were allowed to express different ideas, before a succession of loyal SWP hacks got up and made prepeared contributions. It became obvious I would not be called, and Srebrenica was not going to be mentioned.

So as the main speaker resumed, I stood up and said as loudly and clearly as I could "Two thousand people killed and you don't want to talk about it!" Like I say, news of the scale of the massacre (over 8,000) had not yet reached us.

Two stewards came over and told me to sit down and shut up or I would be thrown out. One of them naievely told me I would get my chance to speak later, though this was plainly not to be. Not wanting to start a fight, particularly on a steep balcony, I did as I was told. The lads who had told me to be quiet were probably decent enough comrades just doing their job, as I might have done in their place.

What was more depressing, though, when I think about it, was what happened when the meeting ended. Rejoining my friends in the foyer as the crowd were filing out, I stood my ground while the stewards asked people to clear the passage, and my mates went off to the bar. As I waited I thought someone was bound to ask me why I had interrupted the speaker, and (since many people had probably not heard what I said), what I was shouting about. But the people all filed past, some averting their eyes, others glaring angrily at me - the man who had disturbed their peace.

Even in the bar when I joined my friends again, a few people came in who had been in the meeting, some may have glanced over, but none came over, neither to agree nor argue with me, nor even to ask me what the disturbance had been about. Not even curiosity, at what I had supposed to be an educational event.

The same lack of curiosity, well-trained, that kept SWP members away when they had the chance to hear first-hand from Bosnian trade unionists whom we managed to bring over, or later, the women from Srebrenica.

To be fair, my differences with the SWP go way back, to when we were in opposing factions in the Young Socialists. Still, I have worked with, and even learned to respect some of them, in campaigns and in the Socialist Alliance (before they decided to bury it). Maybe they can change. But no, I don't think I will be going to "Marxism 2006", nor "Marxism" (SWP-style) any other year in the foreseeable future.

Zivela Bosna! - and a bit of history

JAJCE, capital of old kingdom, birthplace of republic, and below, Partisans of the Second Proletarian Brigade and Third Dalmatian Division being reviewed somewhere in Bosnia, 1943.



YESTERDAY, November 25, was Bosnia's national day, Dan državnosti, or Republic Day, and Bosnians celebrating will have been pleased that it was recognised by US President Barack Obama.

"On behalf of the American people, I extend my best wishes to all those who are celebrating the National Day of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our Nation stands with Bosnia and Herzegovina as it continues its journey from a war-torn past to a peaceful and stable future. I especially offer my congratulations to those in America that can trace their origins back to Bosnia and Herzegovina".

Only a small paragraph from a busy president, but then sometimes, little things mean a lot.

We may not normally make a big deal over particular days, as witness the way I missed this one till it and Obama's message were brought to my attention by a proud Bosnian friend in the United States. 'National' is not a word we like when it is used to pretend common interest between us and the boss, or we see corrupt politicians and lumpen thugs wrap themselves in the national flag. It is another matter however if your nationality, including you and your family, has had to fight for very existence.

Then again, sympathies apart, the independent republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina is barely 18 years old, its sovereignty restricted by foreign troops and the Dayton agreement, as well as the chunk carved out as Republika Srpska, and even its flag designed by a UN committee. What's so special about one day, anyway?

Well, it is important to realise that the full title of the national day is November 25, 1943.

It was late in 1943 that Yugoslav partisans established themselves in Jajce, amid the mountains of central Bosnia, and here they set up the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, AVNOJ. Jajce had been the capital of the kingdom of Bosnia in the 14th century, but such sentimental considerations played less part than more pressing recent concerns in what the partisan leadership decided.

Bosnia and Hercegovina had been broken up into parts by the pre-war Yugoslav monarchy, and then mostly swallowed by the so-called independent Croatian state, NDH, set up by the Axis-backed Ustashe. These Croat fascists outdid the Nazis in savage murder of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, while in those parts of Bosnia where Serb Chetniks were active in 'ethnic cleansing', Muslims and Croats were massacred. The Nazis recruited a Muslim 'Handjar' division which also gained a reputation for atrocities. But in September 1942 there was a mutiny among Croat and Muslim soldiers whom the Wehrmacht had stationed in France. In Bosnia and Hercegovina people who wished neither to murder or be murdered by their neighbours were turning to the Communist partisans, as the one force that united different nationalities and did not engage in 'ethnic cleansing', concentrating, as Churchill noticed, on killing Nazis.

On November 25, 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, with Tito at its helm announced that Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be a republic, with equality for its nationalities within a federal Yugoslavia. Interestingly enough, the Muslims were not yet recognised as a nationality, of which there were deemed to be five in Yugoslavia- Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins and Macedonians (Kosovars were to be another problem!) - although there were Muslim partisan units. But Bosnia and Hercegovina was to be the sixth republic, shared equally. The conference's conclusions were later confirmed by the Yugoslavian constitution, and much later it became possible for Bosniacs to enter "Muslim" as their nationality if they so wished.

The Ustashe were outraged, declaring that Croatian territory was being taken from them by "Soviet imperialism"! Ironically, Stalin was not pleased either. He had warned the Yugoslav communists against turning AVNOJ into a government. The Soviet Union had raised and equipped a force of emigre Yugoslavs on its soil - and given them uniforms bearing the Royal Yugoslav crest! It was slower than the British to recognise and assist Tito's partisans.

But there it was, the logic of war had proved stronger than Stalinist bureaucracy in pushing the Yugoslav communists towards revolutionary actions for which they had not been theoretically prepared; and their effort to cope with the national conflicts led to them proclaiming Bosnia a state again, not to be fought over by its neighbours but shared by its peoples - in some ways a model for the future of Yugoslavia itself.

Alas as we know, with the fall of 'communism' , Bosnia was torn apart again, with the return of Ustashe and Chetniks, ethnic cleansing and genocide. We cannot pretend that the Bosnian government was blameless, let alone socialistic in its aims. But nor can we accept the attitude which ran from Tory Douglas Hurd through to the Socialist Workers Party, dismissing "all sides" in the Bosnian war as equally to blame. Hurd went from rejecting what he called an "equal killing field" , i.e. arms for Bosnia-Hercegovina, to doing business for NatWest Markets with Slobodan Milosevic. The SWP has gone from refusing to support Workers Aid for Bosnia('Muslims') to discovering something 'progressive' in political Islam. Still less can we forgive those who accepted the "socialism" of Slobodan Milosevic as reason to support Serb reactionaries, and pretended to honour the partisan tradition while collaborating with supporters of Radovan Karadzic and Vojtslav Seselj.

What did survive of the partisans' vision was in those Bosnians of whatever background who fought, like the Tuzla miners, or the Bosnian general Zivjak, an ethnic Serb, not for a Muslim Bosnia, let alone an Islamic state (which few Muslims would want) but for the multi-cultural Bosnia which they had known and in which they believed.

So what's in a day? Well, as we see in the discussion below, a week, or even four days, can be a long time in politics, especially if the events they commemorate were half a century, and two wars, apart.

"In the Federation (the Bosniak-Croat entity), 25 November is celebrated as Statehood Day. On this day in 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ZAVNOBiH) adopted a resolution declaring Bosnia and Herzegovina an equal community of Serbs, Muslims and Croats. The Serbs deny the historical importance of this event, instead choosing to celebrate 21 November, the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, when the Serbian entity, Republika Srpska, was established."
http://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/forskning/forskningsprosjekter/kor/rld/rld2009november.html

Zivela Bosna!

Farewell Bill Speirs

I'M sorry to hear today that Bill Speirs, former general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, had died, aged only 57, though he had been ill for some years.

I met Bill about fifteen years ago, when I was involved in Workers Aid for Bosnia. He must have been the most prominent figure in the trade union movement to give support to this campaign, which was a Trotskyist initiative, its support coming largely from ordinary working people and students rather than 'big names' or bureaucrats. After a meeting in union premises on Grays Inn Road a bunch of went over to the pub, and I realised that the man getting the beers in and enjoying his discussion with some young convoy drivers -also Scots as it happens -was the Scottish TUC leader.

Now that I think about it, I was not entirely surprised. Shortly before this, wearing one of my other hats - as a representative of the Jewish Socialists' Group - I'd rushed after work one evening, invited to press the flesh with the pres - Yasser Arafat, - on his first visit to London, at a reception held in the Egyptian embassy. Having joined the queue, and been introduced to the Palestinian leader, shaking hands and exchanging a few words, I made my way through the throng to the drinks table. There was not much left.

I recognised Ken Cameron of the Fire Brigades Union, shook hands with writer Chaim Bermant, and was introduced to a former lord provost of Glasgow. Then I overheard a couple talking to Ken Cameron, the lady - whom I later learned was big in War on Want, and who was with Bill Speirs - was telling Ken "We have just been speaking to these people from Workers Aid for Bosnia. It's a Trot thing of course, but we have got to support it".

What did surprise me though was that Bill Speirs did not just put his name to Workers Aid or offer to speak at meetings, he was not content with helping fundraising, but managed to go out and see for himself by taking a place on one of te convoys. As I can testify these were bumpy rides on mountain roads and tracks, not the safe and easy luxury ride one associates with general-secretaries.

I made another trip to Bosnia a year later when asked to attend a conference in Tuzla. We flew to Split, then boarded a coach which took us via the dramatic scenery of the Neretva river. scene of World War II partisan heroism, and crossed by us on a bailey bridge, through battered Mostar. I got to know Bill and his friend Margaret from War on Want on this trip, and they must have guessed I was short of cash because Bill insisted on paying every time we stopped for refreshments. Later I was proud to join them when we came out of the conference hall in Tuzla to go and meet the Kreka miners.

Bill was keen not just what they needed for immediate relief but how British unions could help them in their plans for post-war reconstruction. He went back to Tuzla a couple of years later for a miners' international conference they organised.

It was on that previous trip via Croatia that our returning bus was held up at the border for several hours while Croat police went through everybody's passports looking for people whom they wanted to detain. It was Bill Speirs, out of the various 'celebs' and communicators on board, who stepped down, and exercising his full authority as representative of millions of Scottish workers, soon persuaded the police that if they knew what was good for them and their government ...well, I don't know what he said, but we were soon on the move again!

I can't claim to have kept in touch with Bill Speirs when he returned to his 'normal' union duties, though I was pleased to see and hear him speak as Scottish TUC leader on anti-war platforms in London, and at meetings on Palestine. I also still have a letter he wrote after I contacted him about an issue I have personally tried to take up, demanding an investigation into the murder in Paris of Egyptian communist Henri Curiel, for which nobody has been brought to justice. Bill expressed his support and asked me to keep him informed if there was anything he could do about it.

Meanwhile he was also challenging the Blair government over its treatment of workers like the firefighters.

Bill Speirs may not have been the most outstanding person in the trade union movement, and I can't recall ever seeing him on TV or hearing his name mentioned often south of the Border. But he was a trade unionist who saw his duties to the working class internationally, took up causes without regard to whether they were fashionable or would endear him to the Establishment, and he was prepared to help in ways which were not all that glamourous. I'm glad I met him, and wish I'd got to know him better. It is a tragedy that ill-health curtailed his active work, and has deprived Scottish workers of such a man.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/bill-speirs-former-stuc-head-dies-1.921679

The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on

THAT'S a Middle Eastern saying, using caravan in its original sense, of course, not a trailer but a train of camels or vehicles, in other words a convoy - like those heeding for Gaza now, with badly-needed aid and a message of solidarity to people there from people here who have responded to the call.

This is much bigger than the Workers Aid to Bosnia convoys in which I was involved, and I pay tribute to the boldness and imagination shown by those whose idea it was -including George Galloway MP, of whom I am often critical, but who to his credit is leading the first convoy - as well as the determination of all those taking part. More than a hundred vehicles, including a fire engine donated by the Fire Brigades Union, left Lancashire last week, and this morning a second convoy is setting out from Glasgow.

One of the great things about this kind of effort, besides the practical solidarity it brings, is that it enables all kinds of people to participate and contribute in a way that is much more direct and personal than going on a march, listening to speakers at a rally or even putting money in a collecting tin (not that the last isn't part of it). I remember the comrade who was asleep in his Workers Aid lorry, parked in a Sheffield street after a day's collecting aid for Bosnia, and woken in the early hours by a little old lady who said "Oh there you are, I've been looking all over town for you!", and thrust a big catering-size tin of beans in his hands. Entrusted with responsibility like that he just had to get through to Tuzla!

The Viva Gaza convoys have been promised help along the way, and some Arab governments have agreed to ease border crossings, though the big confrontation could be if Egypt obstructs the Rafeah crossing. But before it even left Britain the Gaza convoy has met official harassment. Last week, as the first convoy was leaving Lancashire we had the news on TV that police had arrested nine people on the M65 motorway, and were raiding homes in Blackburn and Burnley under the Anti-Terrorism laws. This got more coverage than the convoy itself, which was barely mentioned in the news.

Had some would-be terrorists tried to use the convoy as a cover in some way? I hesitated to comment, waiting to see what came out. Well, the news now is that nothing was found against the men and they have all been released without charge. So why were they picked up in the first place, and what were the raids all about? After the row about the BBC refusing to screen a Gaza emergency aid appeal, was this another institution, the Lancashire police, demonstrating its "impartiality"?

Incidentally, we might also note the contrast between how this "anti-terrorist" damp squib operation was reported and the virtual news blackout when a former British National Party candidate in Lancashire was arrested, and later sentenced, for possession of a huge quantity of chemicals for making explosives. Not that I'm saying the media are biased, or anything.

Anyway, I'm glad to say George Galloway is not letting this go; and though normally he is far from my favourite politician, I hope George gets full backing on this:

George Galloway seeks inquiry into convoy arrests
Duncan Campbell The Guardian, Saturday 21 February 2009

The Respect MP George Galloway has called for an investigation after police stopped a convoy taking aid, toys and medical supplies to Gaza and arrested nine people under anti-terror laws.

All nine men arrested on the M65 near Preston last Friday have been released without charge, but the organisers of the Viva Palestina convoy, which is headed by Galloway, said that aid donations dropped by 80% after news of the arrests.

Police stopped three vehicles and arrested six men from Blackburn and three from Burnley under the Terrorism Act. The 100-vehicle convoy left without them and is now in Morocco.

"Nine innocent people were prevented by the police from joining our convoy," said Galloway. "The timing of the operation is seen locally as an attempt to smear and intimidate the Muslim community, and I must say they seem to be right. Photographs of the high-profile snatch were immediately fed to the press to maximise the newsworthiness of the smear."

Galloway said he was writing to the chief constable of Lancashire and the home secretary asking for an explanation.

Lancashire police said yesterday that they had helped the Blackburn men financially so that they could catch up with the convoy. In an open letter to the local community, the police said: "Investigations of this kind are very difficult and complex and we appreciate the sensitivities that surround them for all concerned."

Chris Chilvers, a convoy organiser, said yesterday that the men arrested had been questioned about the funding of the convoy as sums of cash had been found.

"There was cash around because none of the main banks would allow us to open an account," he said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

And now here is news of the latest addition to the aid force setting off, plus a message from supporters in my old neck of the woods:

Convoy leaves Glasgow loaded with aid for Gaza
Date: 21 February 2009

A CONVOY set off from Scotland yesterday on a 3,000-mile journey to take medical aid to Gaza. Seven vehicles loaded with supplies left Glasgow Central Mosque and will be joined by volunteers in Lancashire as they travel south.

They aim to link up with another convoy at the Rafah border crossing.

Scottish Medical Aid for Gaza has collected the aid from churches, mosques, hospitals and chemists across Scotland and England.

Its convoy, under the banner "Justice for Palestine", expects to reach Gaza in 14 to 18 days.

Volunteers attended Friday prayers at the mosque, and a rally in George Square, in the city before setting off.

Rizi Mohammed, Scottish Medical Aid to Gaza co-ordinator, said:

"We are truly indebted from the depths of our hearts, to the very caring people of Scotland."

Do you know someone on the VIVA PALESTINA Convoy? Send a message of love and support

All the drivers and volunteers have been a fantastic mix of people of all backgrounds and faiths and are people who have come together united in this cause. All volunteers have been working rock solid to get our people together in solidarity and arrange the convoy to go.

The situation in the Middle East is very uncertain, but we will do all we can to get into Gaza and our blessed drivers have left everything behind to take action against the injustice - and take the aid the people of Gaza need. Our prayers are with them and we hope for the best, God Willing.

The drivers are going through many ups and downs - from the amazing support received in many countries to the breaking down of trucks, which at times have had to be towed!

If anyone knows a driver or is related, or even an acquaintance to a driver; this message is for you.

In early March when the group of volunteers will fly to Cairo and meet with the Convoy, we thought it would be very special, and encouraging for us to deliver letters from their loved ones.

Please get out your pens and papers and hand write a letter to the one you know and care for, who has gone out in good faith and allow us to enstrengthen them with love and encouragement and something personal in the messages, at the moment they reach the end of the initial struggle of this long tiring journey.

If all members of the family or any friends, write something, individually, most certainly children too, it will be beautiful and wholesome for drivers to receive such a message. A thoughtful reminder of all their struggles was for countless reasons and that they are being remembered and missed but also that although they’re thousands of miles from us now, we’re still 100% behind them, with all love and support they need.

We are all going through a unique experience in our lives. The drivers are going through a unique time in their lives as are all of us here in the UK who are behind them and on the receiving end of watching a loved one leave in a sincere act of solidarity for the sake of peaceDo you know someone on the VIVA PALESTINA Convoy?
Send a message of love and support

All the drivers and volunteers have been a fantastic mix of people of all backgrounds and faiths and are people who have come together united in this cause. All volunteers have been working rock solid to get our people together in solidarity and arrange the convoy to go.

The situation in the Middle East is very uncertain, but we will do all we can to get into Gaza and our blessed drivers have left everything behind to take action against the injustice - and take the aid the people of Gaza need. Our prayers are with them and we hope for the best, God Willing.

The drivers are going through many ups and downs - from the amazing support received in many countries to the breaking down of trucks, which at times have had to be towed!

If anyone knows a driver or is related, or even an acquaintance to a driver; this message is for you.

In early March when the group of volunteers will fly to Cairo and meet with the Convoy, we thought it would be very special, and encouraging for us to deliver letters from their loved ones.

Please get out your pens and papers and hand write a letter to the one you know and care for, who has gone out in good faith and allow us to enstrengthen them with love and encouragement and something personal in the messages, at the moment they reach the end of the initial struggle of this long tiring journey.

If all members of the family or any friends, write something, individually, most certainly children too, it will be beautiful and wholesome for drivers to receive such a message. A thoughtful reminder of all their struggles was for countless reasons and that they are being remembered and missed but also that although they’re thousands of miles from us now, we’re still 100% behind them, with all love and support they need.

We are all going through a unique experience in our lives. The drivers are going through a unique time in their lives as are all of us here in the UK who are behind them and on the receiving end of watching a loved one leave in a sincere act of solidarity for the sake of peace and justice. Whatever the outcome of this event, we are all collectively making history.

Please write your notes and letters and post by the 1st March as follows,

1. Write your letters or notes and place them in a sealed envelope.
2. Place on the first line “FOR THE CONVOY DRIVER,” followed by full name, and “PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL” so no one will open this letter accept the addressee.
3. Follow this by the driver’s city, town or village, NOT full address. Add the convoy team number if you know it.
4. Lastly write Saffron Restaurant address, as follows, and post;


c/o Saffron Restaurant
107 Cheetham Hill Road,
Cheetham Hill
Manchester
M8 8PY

We will then organize and deliver, when we meet with drivers in Egypt, God willing.

Tanya
Manchester Viva Palestina team
===============================

http://www.vivapalestina.org/

Marek Edelman - lifelong fighter for everyone's freedom

Marek Edelman, whose death was reported on Saturday, was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto revolt. Throughout his life he fought, as the Jewish resisters manifesto proclaimed in 1943 "for your freedom and for ours '.

There is some uncertainty exactly where and when Edelman was born, in 1919 in Homel (now part of Belarus), or 1922 in Warsaw. But there is no doubt as to his background history and where it would take him. Marek's mother, Cecylia Edelman (died 1934), was an active member of the Jewish workers' Bund, the mass socialist movement that arose in the western regions of the old Russian empire in the 19th century, preceding the general Social Democratic Labour Party, and remained an important political party in pre-war Poland. His fatherNatan Feliks(died 1924) was a trudovik (Labourist) activist, one of a group that broke from the Socialist Revolutionists. Pre-war Poland had the world's biggest Jewish population, and they formed a big part of the country's urban working-class.

As a child, Marek was a member of the Socjalistiszer Kinder-Farband, Socialist Children's Association, then in 1939 he joined Bund's youth organisation, Tzukunft (Future). That year the Germans - and the Soviet Russians -invaded Poland. After heavy bombing, and fierce resistance, Warsaw fell to the Nazis, who then began setting up the infamous ghetto, to which they confined the city's Jewish population. Later they forced many Jews from elsewhere into the Warsaw ghetto, while reducing its area.

Food was short in the ghetto, and people died from hunger and cold. But while the Nazis relied on a stooge Judenrat and police to keep order, underground political and cultural activity thrived under their nose. When the Nazis prepared to deport Jews from the ghetto to camps like Treblinka, the Jewish underground managed d with the help of Polish railway workers to find out just what happened there, and to report.

They decided to resist. A Jewish Fighting Organisation was est up, the ZOB. Mordechai Anielewicz, of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement was commander in chief, Marek Edelman of the Bund one his three sub-commanders. They tried to obtain arms from the Polish underground, and manufactured home-made bombs in the ghetto. Bunkers and underground tunnels were dug. The first action took place in January 1943 when a Nazi unit rounding up Jews for deportation was surprised by a group of them producing concealed weapons. Then in the Passover period, April-May 1943, the Nazis began their planned "liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto". The Bund had smuggled some children out to shelter with families on the "Aryan side". But the Jewish fighters who resisted building by building knew they had little chance of saving themselves or the rest of those remaining in the ghetto. They were determined to make the enemy pay a heavy price.

By the time the ghetto fighting was finished the Germans had found it necessary to employ artillery and aircraft, and the ghetto fighters had waged the longest resistance battle in Europe, at least outside Yugoslavia that is..After Mordechai Anielewicz was killed, Marek Edelman succeeded him as commander, going on to fight in the August 1944 Warsaw Uprising as a member of the Communist-led Armia Ludowa (People's Army).

After the War, Edelman studied medicine at Lodz, going on to become a cardiologist. But he had not abandoned his political awareness. Remaining in Poland despite repressive moves and antisemitism such as met the 1968 unrest, he joined Workers Defence Committee(KOR) formed in 1976, and later supported Solidarnosc. During 1981 when martial law was imposed he was interned. Then in 1983 the authorities asked him to join a committee to commemorate the Warsaw ghetto revolt. Edelman refused. He left it to Israel's representatives, their own government blooded by the Lebanon war and Sabra and Shatila massacres, to join General Jaruzelski on the official platform, while he walked with friends to Mila 18, where Mordechai Anielewicz' resistance bunker had been.

In 1990 the little book which Marek Edelman had written about his wartime experiences, The Ghetto Fights, was republished in English by Bookmarks, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) publisher, with an introduction by John Rose, a Jewish academic and SWP member who had been to see Edelman in Poland. The book was well-received as a contribution to anti-fascist writing and Jewish history, except by some Zionist hacks who, having themselves tried to write both Edelman and the Bund out of the ghetto story, could not.make their mind up now which of his offences was worse, writing the book, or giving the anti-Zionist SWP the right to publish it.

Not that Edelman shared the outlook of the SWP or much of the Left on things. Some in Poland considered him naive about Solidarnosc's leaders and Western 'democracy'. But what really stands out is his speech on the 50th anniversary of the ghetto revolt, when upbraiding those content with repeating "Never Again", the Jewish veteran said: "It is happening again, but to the Moslems of Bosnia. And Europe is behaving as it did to the Jews of the Ghetto". Edelman urged that something be done at least to bring aid to Bosnia's beleagured civilians. That call, which some did their best to meet through initiatives like Workers Aid to Bosnia, was ignored by the SWP which, if not actually siding -as some did - with the Serb nationalists responsible for massacres, was nevertheless opposed to Workers Aid and anyone who tried to help the victims.

What really outraged Israel's Zionist Establishment and its agents however was the letter which Marek Edelman addressed in 2002 "To all the leaders of Palestinian military, paramilitary and guerilla
organizations, To all the soldiers of Palestinian militant groups:..." In this the former ghetto fighters' leader drew a distinction between his comrades' battles with the Nazi military, and attacks which targeted civilians. He urged those fighting for Palestinian liberation to play their part in securing a just peace for both peoples. Edelman had probably met Palestinians in Poland, in the course of his professional work if not his political activity. But while his letter was clearly critical of some Palestinian actions, and admonishing them to his standards, what enraged the hacks was that he was addressing the Palestinians as "soldiers", and speaking as a former commander, implying that their struggle had anything in common with the one he had led. How the fire of Israeli condemnation rained down on the "Zionist-hating Marek Edelman"!

It will be interesting to read the various obituaries and encomiums that appear for Marek Edelman, and see who leaves out which bits that do not fit their attempts to appropriate, or dismiss, the man. But though I never met him, and might not have agreed with him on some things, one thing is clear. Marek Edelman was a mensch, a hero, and a man we can not only admire but learn from.

Did we have a Mitty on the Committee?

Or was Keith's name really "Bond - Basildon Bond"?


IT must be over a dozen years ago that I met Keith Standring, taking part in a march, I think it was in south London, though I forget exactly where or what it was about. He was with the Workers' Revolutionary Party (Workers Press) contingent, at a time when it was good to see a new face.

But Keith was obviously not some youth coming fresh to radical campaigning and ideas, nor was he the kind of trade union or community activist who had spent some time working with us before deciding to join. Nor do I recall him having any story to tell of bitter struggle in the Communist Party or other corner of the left before deciding to throw in his lot with the Trotskyists.

He was introduced to me as a member of the General Municipal and Boilermakers (GMB) trade union, and it turned out he was a full-time official, who before that had served in the Grenadier Guards. The military background did not bother me. It might prove handy in some situations, but that aside, I'd known good comrades who were ex-soldiers, even guardsmen, such as Dave Longley and Fred Green, both alas no longer around. One of the best and nicest people I'd known in the movement was an ex-marine commando with a soft Edinburgh accent called Bill Dow, who didn't let threats and beatings from Rachmanite thugs and corrupt coppers deter him from fighting for west London tenants, till he was finally laid low by a dose of malaria he'd picked up in wartime Burma.

But recruiting someone who had moved up in the trade union bureaucracy was unusual. We are more used to seeing people move the opposite way, from left to right, as their careers take off in the movement. Still, that was no reason to be suspicious.

Anyway, Keith seemed affable enough, willing to help, and generous. He had held responsibility for the chemical industry in the GMB union. It seems he had approached Cliff Slaughter, a leading WRP member and Yorkshire academic who remembered him from the Young Communist League, for political discussion. As a result Cliff introduced him to the late Geoff Pilling, who was editing Workers Press, and Dot Gibson, who among other things was responsible for much of the international trade union connexions.

The International Trade Union Solidarity Campaign(ITUSC), set up following the same Budapest conference that launched the Workers International for Reconstruction of the Fourth International (WIRFI) (as difficult a concept as it was a mouthful), had three pillars; trade union independence of the state and employers; democracy inside the unions; workers internationalism. But despite this simple broad approach, ITUSC was in the doldrums. Having trades unionists think it was a great idea was not the same as them providing it with leadership, nor vice versa. WRP members argued whether it should be a campaign, or just a committee, assuming they would decide, even if they did not know what to do with it. Enthusiastic letters from sisters and brothers abroad brought with them the embarrassing thought that we could not mobilise anything like the kind of solidarity they were looking for. Some of them, with scant resources beyond their determination, were leading many thousands of workers in struggles such as few of us had experienced. Our own comrades in southern Africa were also attracting support, and with it, facing big responsibilities and sometimes physical dangers, while we in Britain had been through retreats and splits, and strayed into the confusing babble of the sects and talking-shops.

Once Keith Standring had been introduced it was easy to see him as the confident, experienced trade unionist whose drive and organising ability could get ITUSC moving again. With the ITUSC's lack of independence from the WRP it was not hard to simply replace the comrade who was ITUSC secretary, a Ford worker whose initials were also, incidentally KS. Keith Standring was even willing to take early retirement from his union job so that he could become full-time, unpaid, secretary of ITUSC. So dedicated, he later claimed that he had invested his own money in a computer and stationery so that he could work from home, in Surrey.

In those days you must understand, home PCs were not that common, nor was e-mail, let alone left-wing websites and blogs. What's more the ITUSC as yet had no resources of its own, as I found when asked to edit its Bulletin. We brought out a few issues, with a small committee anxiously vetting content, and Dot Gibson seeing to the technical side. Then I needed to produce an issue before an important conference on Bosnia in Manchester. Dot was in Bosnia where she had been leading an aid convoy, the small committee was not to be found, the photocopier in the office was not working, and when I asked about using facilities at "our" printers the cold, imperious reply was "whose paying for this?" I'd already laid out money for layout but I had not realised when agreeing to take responsibility for the ITUSC Bulletin that it would thenceforth be treated by some "comrades" as my affair, if not meshugas. Thus privatisation, the Thatcherite environment, had seeped into our comradely relations.

This was a couple of years before Keith Standring arrived on the scene, and was by the way. What has stirred the other KS, and he has brought it to my attention, is where Brother Standring is now -Councillor Standring (Conservative), Rother District Council, East Sussex. Keith Standring was a regular soldier in the Grenadier Guards before working for over thirty years in British Intelligence. He is a member of the Conservative Party, The Freedom Association and a supporter of The Bruges Group.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/keith_standring/index.html

So Cllr.Standring, according to his own Tory CV was working for the Intelligence services during his time in the WRP and before that in the GMB union. He presumably continued working for them in the ITUSC after the WRP had disbanded itself to reform as the "Movement for Socialism". Just what he might have achieved for them is hard to say. It seems the Standring story came to attention back at the beginning of this year, and was commented upon in Tribune and by people who knew him in the union, though they recalled how he had seemed to swing from one belief to another, political or religious, with equal enthusiasm, and wondered whether he was a serious agent or Walter Mitty.

Either way, I'm sorry I missed the story when it first came out. In fact when I first saw the name Keith Standring in my informant's subject line I'd forgotten who it was until reading his message brought it back to me. Even then I've had to consult other comrades, and comb through my old diaries in the hope of finding something significant, without much success.

I remember now a story Keith told me when we were on an embassy picket with Iranian comrades, about how as a trade union negotiator dealing with a firm in East Anglia he had taken advantage of the knowledge that Israeli and Egyptian buyers were in nearby hotels to persuade management that the sooner it settled the dispute with its workers the quicker it could proceed with its business, selling military equipment to both sides in the Middle East conflict. I retold the story to a magazine journalist, but what if it was not true?

When ITUSC did find a useful role it was as a meeting place for people like the Iranian exiles, African militants, Turkish trade unionists and others here, some of whom also joined us in the support group for Liverpool dockers. But as the WRP moved towards trying to rebrand and re-invent itself as a broader movement, tensions between members were becoming disproportionately fierce. At one ITUSC meeting the chairman would not let me contribute to a discussion involving Nigerians and Iranians, telling me that people were participating as representatives of organisations. I was flummoxed. Having only intended to make some conciliatory remarks about the question of religion and secularism that had arisen, I could not truthfully say that my trades council had mandated me to take a "line" on the issue. Fortunately nowadays when I meet the African and Iranian comrades we can talk without benefit of clergy or that kind of bureaucratic chair.

What was being brought in to the ITUSC was not workers democracy or international Trotskyism but the manoeuvres and control freakery we know all too well from the union bureaucracy. Where Keith Standring was in this I cannot honestly remember, except my diary includes a comment about him and that chairman I've mentioned as lining up "like Pinky and Perky", and later at another event says "Pinky and Perky were on top table". Not the most scientific Marxist characterisation, but it would seem to indicate we were no longer exactly friends.

To be honest, any personal animosity I experienced or reciprocated at this time was incidental to a more important conflict of aims. When someone had asked at a conference whether dissolving the WRP would mean breaking up the Workers International of which we were part, I argued that no, this was a change of approach in Britain and not to be imposed worldwide. Bob Archer took a similar view. Cliff Slaughter kept his cards close to his chest, saying nothing. But after the MFS was set up, Geoff Pilling was bitterly condemned for producing a Workers International publication, and Dot Gibson denounced because she had dared to proclaim herself a Trotskyist, a member of the Workers International to Reconstruct the Fourth International, when speaking at an international conference organised by the Tuzla miners. Indeed, judging from some people's writings, the WIRFI was not only no longer to be, but treated as though it had never been. (See how it has been erased from history in the otherwise excellent book on Workers Aid for Bosnia, Taking Sides).

One issue confronting the Bosnian and Kosovar miners, as other workers in eastern Europe and Russia, and now being firmly resisted by Iraqi oil workers, is privatisation. It is a struggle in which workers East and West can learn from and strengthen each other. Some of us wanted to make defence of public ownership and services the fourth pillar of the ITUSC stand, but others felt we should not add to what had been agreed at Budapest. I cannot remember or do justice to the arguments here, nor can I say that factions were neatly aligned either side. But if the arguments about the International seem abstract, I think real issues stood behind them.

Quite independently of the union sources, Dot Gibson came up with the name "Walter Mitty" when asked about Keith Standring's role. Having worked closely with him drafting statements and letters to make sure they accorded with the policies, she did not think he had much idea, though he presented them as his own. Later he became more independent, unpredictable and then hostile, before dropping out. But Cliff Slaughter had put Keith Standring on to the Executive committee of the WIRFI. Like liquidators taking over a company to wind up its affairs, Slaughter and his aides used the Executive to discipline those who were trying to keep the International going, and though Keith Standring had ceased attending meetings, he was brought back by Cliff Slaughter just long enough to help outvote Dot. It was to be the laat time they all met.

From the Movement for Socialism, Keith Standring has moved on to feature on a site called "Make socialism history". And such, scant as it is, is the history of Keith Standring. Now, amid dull Tory company, he shines quite brightly writing on civil liberties, the European Union, Labour and ID cards. So was he an Intelligence agent, or Walter Mitty? Or did the two roles go hand in hand? I too have moved on, though not in the same direction, from the little battles of a past decade, and my memory has been otherwise occupied. But I felt it my duty to say something, and perhaps others will have more to add.


For another, earlier, angle on Keith Standring see:
http://www.labourhome.org/story/2007/2/1/1585/23084

Is Your Vote Going to the Henry Jackson Society?

THERE's more to politics than party leaders appearing on television and supporters canvassing for your vote.  Amid all the messages I'm seeing on Facebook concerned with the May 7 general election, and what politicians said or did, comes this posted by an old friend:

Brendan Simms, president of the Henry Jackson Society, will be speaking alongside UKIP's Patrick O'Flynn in favour of Britain leaving the EU, at the New Statesman and Cambridge Literary Festival.

And he provides a link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/03/new-statesman-and-cambridge-literary-festival

I first met Marko Attila Hoare at a Bosnia rally in Trafalgar Square, and got to know him in Workers Aid for Bosnia, which sent aid convoys chiefly to the mining town of Tuzla. Marko also wrote for our paper Workers Press (alas now gone), and now he is the author of several books on Bosnia and its history, particularly during World War II.


Brendan Simms is Cambridge professor of the History of International Relations. I knew his name as the author of Unfinest Hour, which sharply criticised Britain's role in Bosnia, the appeasement of Serb aggression by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, and the British army's reluctance to carry out its UN mandate protecting humanitarian aid routes or defending civilians from ethnic cleansing and massacre.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/04/politicalnews.politics


Simms' revulsion from what he called "conservative pessimism" was shared by others, and undoubtedly influenced the formation of the Henry Jackson Society. Taking its name from a US Democrat Senator who believed in asserting US power to promote his ideas of freedom, the Society sought to combine an activist foreign policy and support for democratic values. For some this might seem to echo Robin Cook's call for foreign policy to have a "moral dimension" (Described succinctly as "bollocks" by an anonymous FCO civil servant).

For others, like the signatories of the 'Euston Manifesto', it could mean endorsing US or Israeli wars and denouncing opponents as supporters of dictators like Saddam Hussein or reactionary Islam. The Society's statement of aims stresses the importance of maintaining the military strength of the United States, and Britain in Europe. Asserting that Western liberal democracies are the model for the world to follow, it says that international organisations which include undemocratic regimes have no right to pronounce on human rights issues. (So much for the UN!)

The Henry Jackson Society says it is "A cross-partisan, British-based think tank with a strong British and European commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, ...".  http://henryjacksonsociety.org/

Others, including former members, don't hesitate to call it neo-conservative or simply right-wing, even 'hard-right'.

 Marko Attila Hoare was Greater Europe Co-Director, then European Neighbourhood Section Director of the Henry Jackson Society from 2005 until 2012. Nowadays strongly critical, he remarks on Brendan Simm's appearence alongside a UKIP MEP to show how much the HJS leadership has moved from its commitment to British leadership in Europe to calling for British exit.  Indeed, Brendan Simms is co-chair of the Brexit-euroexit project and author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy.

But it goes further. Raheem Kassam, who was variously described as "Director of Marketing" or "Campaigns Director" for the Henry Jackson Society, is now a senior advisor to UKIP's Nigel Farage.

We have met Mr.Kassam before. He was linked with a story which the BBC and the Jewish Chronicle ran about people at a conference in London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) drowning out a Jewish audience speaker with antisemitic chants. The supposed victim was Zionist Federation chairman Jonathan Hoffman. The BBC eventually withdraw the story after other Jewish people who had been at the conference said it wasn't true, and a recording of the conference contained no antisemitic chants. The Jewish Chronicle took longer to withdraw, but did so after Jewish people involved in the conference went to the Press Complaints Commission over it.

Kassam has been a busy man. Besides being a spokesman for Student Rights, which seems to be a Henry Jackson Society project with not many actual students, he found time to run a Climate Change skeptic campaign called 'Greencease' (geddit?)  More recently with the 'Jihadi John' excitement he was introduced on TV as a "former student" and "expert" on how the ISIS killer's "radicalisation" might have started at the University of Westminster.

Before joining Nigel Farage's entourage, Raheem Kassam was managing director of the London end of Breitbart, a conservative American news agency website noted for its unconservative, creative news stories.  Not even other conservatives are immune from attack.

The Fictitious "Friends of Hamas"

On February 7, 2013,  Breitbart.com in the United States ran a story by Ben Shapiro claiming former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a nominee for Secretary of Defense, might have been paid to speak at an event sponsored by a group called "Friends of Hamas"  Breitbart.com said that the story was based on "exclusive" information by "Senate sources". The story was repeated by websites, and commented upon by Senator Rand Paul.

But other reporters could not find any evidence that "Friends of Hamas" even existed. On February 19, New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman said that the story had originated from a sarcastic comment he made to a Congressional staffer.  "Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the 'Junior League of Hezbollah, in France'? And: What about 'Friends of Hamas'?".  But Breitbart continued to claim its story was from reliable sources, and Friedman was denounced as a hack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29


"Democracy"?  But not at home!

In 2012, Marko Attila Hoare, who had known Brendan Simms at Cambridge, and been a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society, decided he'd had enough.
  

"Earlier this year, I resigned from the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and requested that my name be removed from its website. The HJS is a UK think-tank frequently described as ‘neoconservative’. It includes among its Trustees Michael Gove, the current Secretary of State for Education, and it is alleged to have influenced the foreign policy of David Cameron and William Hague. It currently serves as a secretariat, at the House of Commons, to the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Transatlantic and International Security and for Homeland Security. I had held a senior post within this organisation for seven years, first as Greater Europe Co-Director, then as European Neighbourhood Section Director. However, I reluctantly had to face the fact that the HJS has degenerated to the point where it is a mere caricature of its former self. No longer is it a centrist, bipartisan think-tank seeking to promote democratic geopolitics through providing sober, objective and informed analysis to policy-makers. Instead, it has become an abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge, churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership of extreme Europhobic British Tories, hardline US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks. The story of the HJS’s degeneration provides an insight into the obscure backstage world of Conservative politics.

There are three factors that define this degeneration. The first is that almost all the people who founded and established the HJS have either left or been edged out of the organisation. ...

The second factor is that there is absolutely no internal democracy in the HJS, nor any transparency or rules of procedure. Absolutely none whatsoever. Less than in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Probably less than in the Syrian Arab Republic. As someone with an early background in far-left politics, I grew up with groups like the Socialist Workers Party, in which total power is held by one or two leaders, but the totalitarianism is disguised by window-dressing consisting of branch meetings, annual conferences, meetings of the Politburo and the like. Well, the HJS is like that, but without the window-dressing: there isn’t even the pretence of democracy or consultation. Instead, the organisation operates on the basis of cronyism and intrigue. Sole power is held by one individual – Executive Director Alan Mendoza. He was not elected to the post and is not subject even to formal or technical restraints, nor to performance review and renewal of contract.

The third factor is that, although the HJS was intended to be a centrist, bi-partisan organisation, its leadership has now moved far to the right, and abandoned any pretence of being bi-partisan or pro-European (its Associate Director, Douglas Murray, is on record as having stated that ‘the EU is a monstrosity – no good can come of it… The best thing could just simply be for it to be razed to the ground and don’t start again [sic]’).

Alan Mendoza is an ambitious young professional politician of the Conservative Party and a former Tory local councillor in the London Borough of Brent. ... Once he took over the running of the HJS from Rogers and Simms, Mendoza had his hands on all the levers of power within the organisation, of which the most important was control of the website. Mendoza set about converting the HJS into his personal fiefdom, packing its staff with his own apparatchiks recruited via his personal network.

The practice of regular staff meetings was now ended, and staff members were no longer consulted or even informed about major policy or organisational decisions. In practice, Mendoza just did whatever he wanted to, adding or removing staff to and from the website and inventing or erasing their virtual job-titles as and when he felt like it.

 Praise from 'Mad Mel' to Audience with AIPAC

Marko describes how HJS members who differed from the changing line on Europe were sidelined or sat upon.  But he also noted another aspect of Mendoza's takeover.

The people who replaced the HJS founders at the head of the organisation were staff members of another think-tank: the Israel-advocacy organisation ‘Just Journalism’, of which Mendoza was a member of the Advisory Board and which shared the HJS’s London office. At the time of Just Journalism’s launch in March 2008, the Spectator columnist Melanie Phillips wrote of it that ‘A very welcome and desperately-needed initiative has just been launched to monitor distortions, bias and prejudice in British media coverage of the Middle East.’

Neo-con former Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips acquired a name for linking her support to Israel with Islamophobia.  Her book "Londonistan", claiming Britain was harbouring a "terror" state within was a hit with the far Right, while she became known as "Mad Mel" to many Jewish people, even Zionists.

We can't blame Alan Mendoza for that, but we can for the line he took adressing members of the main Israeli lobby organisation in Washington, AIPAC:

“Immigration is also a reason for rising anti-Israel feelings [in Europe]. In 1998, 3.2 percent of Spain was foreign-born. In 2007, that percent had jumped to 13.4 percent, Mendoza said. In cities such as London, Paris and Copenhagen, 10 percent of residents are Muslim.”
“The European Muslim population has doubled in the past 30 years and is predicted to double again by 2040.
“For all the benefits that immigration has brought, it has been difficult for European countries to absorb immigrants into their society given their failure to integrate newcomers. Regardless of their political views, Muslims in Europe will likely speak out against Israel whenever any Middle Eastern news breaks, just as they will against India in the Kashmir dispute. Their voices are heard well above the average Europeans, who tend not to speak out Mendoza said, adding that the Muslim immigrants do this with full knowledge that they would not be allowed to speak out like that in many Middle Eastern countries.’

This line that European criticism of Israeli actions is solely motivated by fear of Moslems has been widely repeated in US, particularly Murdoch-owned media, which has followed up with stories about parts of British cities becoming entirely Muslim, no-go areas for non-Muslims.

 The HJS website is currently running a piece by Douglas Murray, originally published on March 18 in the Spectator, in defence of Benyamin Netanyahu against criticism. Murray, Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society, also founded the Centre for Social Cohesion. If that sounds harmless enough, this is what it means, in Douglas Murray's words:

‘Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don’t have a mosque to go to, then they’ll just have to realise that they aren’t owed one. Grievances become ever-more pronounced the more they are flattered and the more they are paid attention to. So don’t flatter them.’


If that sounds like a slightly more articulate version of the lumpen who follow the English Defence League, it should be no surprise that Murray has described the EDL as acceptable, and spoken favourably of Robert Spencer, a leading Islamophobe in the United States who denies the Srebenica massacre.  That's coming full circle from 'Unfinest Hour'.

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/alan-mendozas-putsch-in-the-henry-jackson-society/

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/alan-mendozas-henry-jackson-society-and-william-shawcrosss-charity-commission/

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/5440-the-henry-jackson-society-and-scaremongering-with-aipac 

http://leftfootforward.org/2013/05/labours-links-with-the-anti-immigration-right/

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/06/05/exclusive-top-libdem-resigns-from-controversial-think-tank-henry-jackson-society/

Alan Mendoza is now the Tory candidate for Brent Central. I trust his views will be made known to voters, even if not by him.

 A top Lib Dem resigned from the Henry Jackson Society.

But several Labour MPs remain members, including the Labour Party leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, who is on the Society's Political Council. .  If he has resigned from it, I will be happy to apologise and record that.

The murderer our leaders encouraged

AFTER 13 years, Dr.Radovan Karadzic has finally been captured to face trial at the Hague as a war criminal. It was Karadzic and his military partner General Mladic (still at large) who stand accused for the massacre of up to 8,000 Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica, probably the worst atrocity since World War II in Europe.

There was more than a suspicion over the past decade that Western forces in former Yugoslavia were reluctant to pursue Karadzic, whether because he had protection or because powerful people had an interest in not seeing him in the dock, because he knew too much.
Milosevic died while at the Hague, Arkan the notorious criminal warlord was gunned down in Belgrade when he threatened to go there.

We must hope that Karadzic's trial helps people remember how his "Bosnian Serb republic" was carved out, and educates a younger generation. There is no shortage of witnesses who can testify.
Here is HM, a student from Hranca, a village near Bratunac, tht was surrounded by Serb territorials on May 3, 1992

"Troop carriers were placed on the road connecting the village of Konkevic Polje with Bratunac.Soon after the nearby houses were fired upon, and the locals driven from their homes. I escaped into the woods. While I was hiding, my father and Hamid Ali, a hodza (Muslim mullah, or priest) stayed in the house.Later when I met my father, he told me that the Serbs had found them. The Serb territorials drenched the house with petrol in order to burn it. When my father gave them his cheque book and 50,000 dinars, as well as his pistol, they gave up the idea. The Serbs drove my father and the hadji out and opened fire on them.
Then they began to rob and burn our village. My neighbour who was hidden in the nearby woods, and in a brook, watched all of it."

HM then gives names of forty people whose homes were burned. He tells how some local people, including a five year old child were killed. Then on May 9 the Chetniks came back and surrounded the village again, and burned the remaining 55 houses. "The ethnic cleansing operation on my village was completed on 11 May 1992".

Though HM and his friends hid out in the woods they were found, and taken captive to Bratunac.

"When we arrived, some Chetniks who called themselves the White Eagles ordered us to form two rows and to sing Chetnik songs. While we were lining up they beat us with whips.

"Before they drove us to the school in Bratunac four men were taken aside (he gives their names); It is not known what happened to them".

At Bratunac, having been deprived of their watches, ID papers and whatever money they had, HM and his friends were beaten several times. They witnessed men being taken outside and killed. The school was visited by men in masks who read out lists of names. Those whose names were called were taken away to be tortured and killed. This continued till May 13.

HM also witnessed something else:
"It was a dreadful sight when the Chetniks brought Milutin Vuksic, a Serb, into the room. He was arrested for trying to hide his Muslim neighbours. They took him to the locker room and we could hear him scream, since it all took place near the school. He was tortured and then we couldn't hear him any more."

That day HM was among prisoners taken to Pale, the Bosnian Chetnik 'capital', where Radovan Karadzic had his headquarters. There were more beatings, but HM was among the lucky ones, handed over in a prisoner exchange on May 17, thus surviving to tell.

Another survivor was GB, just 15 when the Chetniks came to her village on May 9, 1992. They took her and her father and other family members and neighbours away, beating and killing some of the males. GB and her cousin H were separated from the rest and taken to the woods.

H was raped first. "The man who was raping her had a knife in his hand and was threatening her with it. The other three masked Chetniks took me near H. One of them shouted at me:'Take off your clothes," cursing my mother and Alia Izetbegovic. to me.

"When I refused the other one drew a knife and threatened to kill me. ..They raped me while holding a knife to my throat, saying "If you utter a sound you will be killed'.
After the rape they took me back to the road.
After all this I was taken to Kladanj together with the other girls, and then to Tuzla where we were examined by the gynaecologist at the Public Health Centre, Dr.Musatafa Mujbegovic and my statement has been confirmed".

These are two extracts from Rivers of Blood, a collection of eye-witness accounts published by the Bosnia Solidarity Campaign in 2001, taken from reports originally compiled by the State Commission for the Collection of Evidence on War Crimes, based in Tuzla.

Rape, torture and atrocities were not incidental to Karadzic's Bosnian war. They were part of the policy of ethnic cleansing and assertion of racial supremacy. As Kemal Pervanic*, himself a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, explains in the foreword to Rivers of Blood:
"According to this plan it is not enough to conquer and rule. Their prime task is to remove, displace or eliminate the local population through a reign of terror that ensures survivors never want to return".

Those here who tried to excuse or deny such policies, and rubbish reports of atrocities, didn't want us to listen to eye-witnesses and survivors. Like the neo-Nazi Holocaust revisionists who want to play games with statistics, the smart crowd at Living Marxism only wanted to discuss camera angles and whether some emaciated looking prisoner was really behind the barbed-wire. Affecting tight-lipped smiles at our credulity for images, they seemed to want us to accept that Omarska was some kind of holiday camp. But as Ed Vulliamy reminds us, the reality was what the cameras were not invited to see.

"Scenes of routine sadism such as that described by survivor Halid Mujkanovic, concerning a prisoner forced to perform fellatio on a fellow inmate, then ordered to bite off his testicles while a live pigeon was stuffed down his throat to stifle his screams as he died. The victim was Fikret Harambasic and the man was forced to castrate him in order to save the lives of his roommates, threatened with execution if there were no 'volunteers'. The crowd of guards who oversaw this entertainment 'looked as though they were attending a sports match, supporting a team', said Mujkanovic".

The Edge of Madness, by Ed Vulliamy, Guardian g2, 23.07.08.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/23/radovankaradzic.warcrimes


It was the poet and psychiatrist Dr.Karadzic who unleashed such scenes from hell, but it was the great power statesmen with their plans for partition who encouraged and abetted the warlords, Croat as well as Serb, who set out to carve up Bosnia.

Although Bosnia had existed before as a country, it was the partisan revolution during World War II which relaunched a republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, after it had first been broken up by the pre-war Yugoslav(Serb) monarchy and then largely annexed by the wartime Croat Ustashe state. Tito's policy was to recreat a buffer between aggressive Serb and Croat nationalisms, but also to let it develop as a mixed population symbolising the aims of "unity and brotherhood". Not only were communities interspersed, but in cities like Sarajevo and Tuzla at least a quarter of the people had intermarried, and were of mixed descent.

"They want to partition Bosnia? What am I supposed to do, divorce my wife? Partition our children?", said Adzic, a Muslim who had not been in a mosque since he was a kid, married to a Serb. "I never thought I would see such things in my country".

Bosnians told me they had wanted to be part of the federal Yugoslavia -"Where I could travel from Istria to Macedonia without needing a passport" - but "Not to be part of Greater Serbia". Karadzic's secession, with its inevitable ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs, was encouraged by Serb leaders like Milosevic and the fascist Seselj, and assisted by the Yugoslav People's Army. But not by them alone.

As Ed Vuliamy reminds us again:
"The governments of Britain and France especially - as well as the United Nations leadership - saw in Karadzic not the war criminal they call him today, but a fellow politician with whom to do business. Karadzic dealt - directly or indirectly - with Lord Peter Carrington, Malcolm Rifkind, Lord David Owen, Cyrus Vance, Douglas Hurd and Dame Pauline Neville-Jones as an equal deserving full diplomatic protocol. A recent book by the lawyer Carole Hodge finds Karadzic, in return, praising Britain's "refined diplomacy". To the private hilarity of the Serbs, western diplomats accepted Karadzic's endless, empty guarantees and his posturing and fleeting "ceasefires". They agreed to turn back aid to the desperate "safe areas" declared but betrayed by the UN. They connived in maps and "peace plans" that gave Karadzic everything he had won by violence and tolerated the siege of Sarajevo, which he is accused of personally overseeing".

It was a Serb, Rade, a Trotskyist, who did most to open my eyes to what was happening in ex-Yugoslavia, and who encouraged some of us to form Workers Aid for Bosnia. I remember the way he answered doubters at a meeting in Conway Hall, though sadly few of those who kidded themselves that Milosevic was defending socialism risked exposing their illusions to such voices of reality, Then when we wanted to invite Rade to speak in London a second time he was barred from entering the country because of government sanctions against Serbia - at the same time as Karadzic was enjoying lavish hospitality in Whitehall.

Amid all the bitterness and suffering they endured at the hands of Serb nationalists and murderers, Bosnians repeatedly referred to them as "Chetniks" - the wartime term for armed Royalist bands - rather than merely saying "the Serbs". "All Chetniks are Serbs, but not all Serbs are Chetniks", they kept reminding themselves. The pursuit and arrest of war criminals like Karadzic, whatever the circumstances (such as Serbia's wish to be accepted by the EU), questions about the trial, or truisms about the hypocrisy of the West, is one in the eye for the nationalists, and one up for those who want reconciliation - and not least all those decent Serbs.

Just remember next time you hear some ignoramus like Terry Wogan wingeing because people in former Yugoslav republics are voting for each other's Eurovision song entries, it might be an indication that for all the "age-old hatreds" our media kept evoking, people have much in common, and despite the real crimes and barbarities conjured into being by a perverted intellectual like Dr.Karadzic, the decent, civilised people can be,when given the chance, a majority.

* Kemal Pervanic has written about his experiences at Omarska in
The Killing Days: my journey through the Bosnian war,
available from Amazon.