[The following is the text of Alan's talk at last Thursday's Euston Manifesto launch.]
The train has left the station, but where is it going? I would like to offer some tentative answers in my 15 minutes.
Of course, some have advised us to just get off the train. Writing in The Times Danny Finkelstein praised the Manifesto and its authors but concluded it was 'a gigantic waste of time and energy'. Why? Well, the ideas are good but the effort to 'save the Left from itself' is 'wasted on people who do not agree and never will'. He thinks the left is finished - there has been an end but there cannot be a new beginning.
I would be persuaded by Danny if two things were the case, but I do not think either are. First, if George Galloway really was - as his book has it - 'not the only one'. If Galloway's kind of left was the wave of the future, then that future would indeed be bleak. Second, if the Euston Manifesto could not point to real-world campaigns inspired by its principles that prove a different kind of left is possible - anti-totalitarian, democratic, liberal, egalitarian and internationalist - then, yes, Danny would have a case. Let me take each in turn.
Take Galloway (I wish somebody would). He says he is 'not the only one'. You know what? He bloody well is the only one. Galloway is the only one who has stood in front of the tyrannized Syrian people and told them, on state TV, 'All dignified people... are very proud of the speech made by President Bashar Al-Assad... the last Arab ruler... the fortress of the remaining dignity of the Arabs...' Galloway is the only one who talks about 'the newspapers and news media' being 'controlled by Zionism'.
Take Euston. We can point to real-world campaigns inspired by our principles. In good part, Euston emerged out of just such campaigns. This has not been well reported. Present company excepted, some journalists seem to me rather narcissistic. Many have stared into the pool of Euston and seen reflected back... other journalists. But Euston was not only the creation of Nick Cohen, Francis Wheen and John Lloyd - valued and esteemed comrades all. It is important that people understand how Euston came about, for that tells us where it might be going.
The Euston Manifesto emerged in part from campaigning activity of a new sort, developed by networks of a new sort - networks that bridge together cyberspace, the blogosphere and the 'real world' of parliament, trade unions and civil society, and which might help to renew social democracy. For those willing to dig – at normblog, Harry's Place, Little Atoms; LabourStart, Labour Friends of Iraq and Engage; Unite Against Terror and Democratiya - that's where the real story is. These campaigns and networks are modest affairs. But they are growing by the day, they punch well above their weight and they signpost a future. They show us how we can take the radical democratic principles of the manifesto off the page and make them a force in politics.
David Clark has worried in The New Statesman that the Euston authors are not really interested in the radical democratic principles they set out in the Manifesto. He should not worry. The campaigns underpinning Euston embody those principles.
When we sat in O'Neill's, discussing the Manifesto principles of 'Equality' and 'Development for freedom', Eric Lee of LabourStart was at the table (in a personal capacity). LabourStart organizes global online campaigns in defence of workers' rights, as well as LabourStart TV and Radio LabourStart. I could talk to Eric about a LabourStart campaign - global, networked, wireless, but also with 'boots on the ground', if you like - for the workers at a palm plantation and processing plant in Sumatra: sacked for forming an independent union, forcibly evicted from their plantation housing, their children expelled from school, their leaders jailed. LabourStart is mobilizing its global army, tens of thousands strong. You know the truth? It's Eric Lee who is 'not the only one'.
When we sat in O'Neill's discussing the manifesto principles of 'No apology for tyranny', 'Human rights for all' and 'For a two-state solution', I could talk to Jane Ashworth, Jon Pike, Dave Hirsh and Alexandra Simenon of Engage. Engage is another global network. I listened as they talked about fighting the new anti-Semitism. I listened as they talked about reversing the academic boycott of Israel. I listened as they talked about the Engage delegation to Israel and the West Bank - meeting progressive Palestinian academics and progressive Israeli and European academics, and organizing a democratic engagement. Jane Ashworth, Jon Pike, Dave Hirsh and Alex Simenon are not the only ones.
When we sat in O'Neill's and discussed the manifesto principles of opposition to terrorism and a new internationalism, I could talk to Simon Pottinger, and David T of Harry's Place, and Kitty Wake, and Adrian Cohen. After 7/7 these comrades helped to create a statement and a website and a network - Unite Against Terror. The statement was translated rapidly into 13 languages and was signed by several thousand people from over 40 countries. They now form a global cyber-community that has the potential - if not the funding, sadly - to mobilize in the 'real world' to fight terrorism and the causes of terrorism, from Netanya to New York, Baghdad to London, Amman to Madrid. OpenDemocracy now co-sponsors Unite Against Terror. Simon Pottinger, David T, Kitty Wake and Adrian Cohen are not the only ones.
When we sat in O'Neill's and discussed the principle of democracy (and of democratiya) I could listen to Gary Kent of Labour Friends of Iraq. Gary is just back from a delegation he helped to organize to Iraq, and I hope he will address us all later.
> Labour Friends of Iraq did not just criticize President Bush and call for the absolute prohibition on torture in Iraq. It also worked with USDAW to produce a 'Toolkit for Solidarity with Grassroots Iraq'.
> Labour Friends of Iraq did not just pressurize Government Ministers and the Prime Minister in the House of Commons for commitments and action on the defence of trade union rights in the new Iraq, and on the treatment of detainees. It also organized a solidarity campaign in the global labour movement in defence of Nozad Ismail, an Iraqi Kurd union leader facing death threats from the so-called 'resistance'.
These campaigns persuade me that it is far from 'a gigantic waste of time and energy' to hope to renew progressive politics. The global reaction to the manifesto has confirmed me in that hope.
> An Austrian NGO worker contacts me. She has been working for years to support women's organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan. 'Dear Alan! Yesterday I came back from another amazing trip. We discussed the Euston Manifesto. Talking to colleagues, I could organize translations into Kurdish (Sorani), Farsi, Hebrew, German, French, Polish and Spanish'. She is not the only one.
> Iranian university students contacted me in great excitement. They are translating the manifesto into Persian, organizing a discussion circle in Iran to debate the manifesto and, best of all, they want to suggest amendments. They are not the only ones.
Today, many people feel politically homeless. They feel they have not left the democratic left, but the democratic left has left them.
> After all, what the hell were you supposed to do when Seamus Milne opened the Guardian Comment pages to apologists for terrorism and to apologists for authoritarianism and to members of the Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosovic?
> What the hell were you supposed to do when Ken Livingstone embraced the anti-gay, misogynist, anti-Semitic cleric Qaradawi?
>What the hell were you supposed to do when Michael Moore said the fascistic Iraqi resistance were the reincarnation of the 18th century American revolutionaries, and he bid them on to victory?
> What the hell were you supposed to do when Alex Callinicos, a Stop the War and Socialist Workers Party leader, sneered at the global labour movement outcry against the torture and murder of the Iraqi union leader, Hadi Saleh, by the fascists of the so-called resistance, as a 'hullabaloo' about a collaborator?
> And what the hell are you supposed to do when Martin Jacques poo-poohs the idea that freedom and democracy are universal values?
Every generation, it seems, has to rediscover anti-totalitarianism for itself.
Does Euston have a final destination?
I would prefer to say we travel towards what the American poet Walt Whitman called 'democratic vistas'. I think we have had enough of glorious final destinations, haven't we? Ours should be a chastened humanism, a humanism of bad news. Ours should be a solidarity of the shaken, shaken by the last century and its enormities. Enormities like those continuing today in Darfur.
But we must also be positive and creative, principled and ethical, practical and reforming. We have a rich heritage to draw on. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the murder of the Italian anti-facist and liberal-socialist Carlo Rosselli. He was assassinated, along with his brother Nello, by Mussolini. Their grave stone reads simply: 'Carlo and Nello Rosselli / Justice and Liberty / For this They Died / For this They Live'.
Justice and Liberty for all. Surely, that is the name of the Euston Manifesto's desire, and yours too? Of course, we must add, with Carlo Rosselli, that 'liberty without emancipation from the grip of pressing material necessity does not exist for the individual: it is a mere phantasm'. So we must speak of social justice. Of no one left behind. No one. That is the global (social-)democratic vista.
Is Euston the only train going that way?
No. The democratic left organizations and individuals outside Euston dwarf Euston. Thank goodness. But perhaps Euston can act – as Will Hutton speculated in The Observer - as a 'catalyst'. Perhaps we can embolden people hitherto curiously silent about their own core values, and curiously accommodating of the new reactionary left, to stand up and speak out.
Euston has the ability to reach people who are not attracted by the older organizations. Tonight is proof of that. What we do next is up to you. Please get aboard - and bring your energies, skills and ideas.
How will we travel?
A modern left democratic politics should rest on two pillars. First, a vision of the good society. Second, an interest and faith in, and a determination to empower, so-called 'ordinary people'. We will need both. Without a clear sense of the good society we lack direction. But we will not journey far without: an ethics of responsibility, of kindness among strangers, of fraternity; strong cultures of mutual aid; faith in the capacities of our fellows.
That's why we make the case in the Euston Manifesto for: free democratic trade unions and other collective forms of popular organization; a public-service ethic as well as top-quality public services; the democratization of everyday life; the republican virtues; a new 'global covenant' - a globalization that underpins economic development-as-freedom.
Yes, we have not set out a range of detailed policies. That's true. But the first task was always to draw some sharp lines of political sensibility or, if you like, political morality. We plan to debate policies as we move ahead.
Will Euston succeed?
That question contains the old dangerous yearning for a guarantee from History, or the Party, or God. Rather than offer that guarantee I will tell you a comic tale written by Sholom Aleichem, the story of the man who waited for the Messiah.
Once in Chelm, the mythical village of the East European Jews, a man was appointed to sit at the village gate and wait for the coming of the Messiah. He complained to the village elders that his pay was too low. 'You are right,' they said to him, 'the pay is low. But consider: the work is steady.'
Ours is steady work too. Maybe the steadiest work. But, unlike Sholom Aleichem's villager, I think we can do more than sit and wait for the Messiah, don't you? Like LabourStart, campaigning for the evicted and jailed oil palm workers in Sumartra, we can do more than just sit and wait. Like Engage, fighting anti-Semitism, bringing West Bank academics and Israeli academics together, we can do more than just sit and wait. Like Labour Friends of Iraq, defending Iraqi trade unionists who face death threats from fascists, we can do more than just sit and wait.
So. Come on. Let's get to work. (Alan Johnson)