David Aaronovitch - Times Online - WBLG

A blast from the Callaghanite past. A reader writes......

This was sent to me by an old comrade, name of Charlie Wood..................

"Hi Dave, we last met at the CP students caucus at the NUS conference in 1979. I recollect you sat cross legged on the table half asleep whilst Sally Hibbin went through the amendments in her role as student organiser, it seems like another world does'nt it??. I would be delighted if you would permit your many readers to read my blog 'An Unrepentant Communist'
http://unrepentantcommunist.blogspot.com/ which shows that at least one of us in that room has not altered their views as much as you have, (which of course is no claim to being right !!). Nevetheless I still would like to keep an old fashioned CP -type flag flying in the blogosphere and perhaps a post on your blog may help.."

And here it is.

Anti-Zionists should grow up (Jewish Chronicle)

It has long been one of the perverse talents of British middle-class activists to be able to devise campaigns which, instead of drawing attention to real grievances, divert attention away from them. I spent a lot of my early adulthood in observation of this phenomenon and recognise the inevitable moment when the movement stops being about the thing it says it was about and becomes about itself.

So it is with the boycott. Today the question in Britain is no longer what should be done about the Middle East, but how to spread or defeat the boycott. For almost everyone involved, the debate is — if the truth is admitted — hugely enjoyable. This isn’t really surprising, because it is all a fabulous diversion from the extraordinarily painful business of making or soliciting peace.

This is only one way in which the boycott movement is entirely counter-productive. It has emphasised the gulf between activists and memberships in all the unions where it has been debated (does anyone seriously believe that most Unison members want to boycott Israel?). And as Jonathan Freedland has pointed out, it has also forced an unhelpful solidarity upon those who are normally enemies, making it more, not less difficult for a hegemonic Israeli peace faction to arise.

All this should be bleeding obvious, yet somehow it is not. That’s why I believe there is something deeply irrational about the boycott movement. This “something”, I think, rests not in a genuine sense of injustice concerning the Palestinians, but in a negative ideology that calls itself anti-Zionism.

Tony Blair's Speech

I'm sitting in the Midland Hotel Manchester after listening to what I think is the best leader's speech I've heard in 25 years of attending or watching party conferences. Back in 1994 TB was regarded as an average platform speaker, using too many slogans and all those verbless phrases. This was the opposite. The statement of record was simple, the statement of the challenges ahead was far-sighted and - at times - courageous. He was funny, affectionate, devastating when he had to be, and poignant without being sentimental. I compared notes with Trevor Phillips of the CRE who - like me - was brought up on speeches, and we agreed that there was not a word out of place.

I don't have time, and it's an ignoble thought, but I would love to see written down all those bits of punditry from the last month predicting rough rides here for the PM. Written down and fed back to them. Sometimes the conceits of my profession become almost too embarrassing.

Jews for Justice for Being Myself (Jewish Chronicle)

If “kerfuffle” isn’t a Yiddish word, it ought to be. It certainly describes rather well recent arguments concerning that estimable organisation, Jews for Justice for Palestinians. Following JfJfP’s denunciations of Israel’s behaviour in the Lebanon, and the appearance of its spokespersons on various platforms also inhabited by the “We Are All Hizbollah” brigade, several signatories removed their names from the founding statement.

As Professor Norman Geras put it, “Your deep concern for Jewish principles of justice and compassion do not lead you to step forward as Jews in order to condemn the genocide in Darfur, the blood-letting in the Congo, the massacres in Chechnya or any other cases of massive human-rights violation far surpassing the brutality of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians.”

Some time ago, a colleague of my late father’s — an intelligent, courageous person, more skilled in ex-pression than in listening — asked me if I would like to append my own name to JfJfP’s aims. And I changed the subject. Partly because I could see where all this was headed, but mostly because the whole idea of the organisation struck me as a bit weird.

Mr P and the BBC, part three

No apologies for this. It may be a media affair, but it matters. First to the commenter who suggested that my concern was as a toadying New Labour lickspittle anxious to get my man off - I would have written the same things had the interviewee been Georgie Osborne or Ming. Second to 'kingfighter' who complains that I am trying to divert attention from the gloriously speculative hoo-ha about millionaires, casinos and the Dome, isn't my point partly that Today itself created a massive diversion from that story (and others) in order to ask the sex questions?

Here is the second e.mail I sent the Today editor:

"Re Prescott, given the decision to ask him (and press him) about affairs based on internet rumours, I was wondering what you considered the right to privacy to consist of? Would it be justified now for another BBC presenter to ask, say, John Humphrys, whether he had had affairs, based on rumours circulating about him? He is, after all, paid for by enforced public impost and is a public figure - furthermore one who has now attempted to delve into the private lives of others. Would you be prepared to allow me to come onto your programme and ask him? Where is the line to be drawn? Or has the line, somewhere between 1995 when I left the BBC, and now, disappeared? Again, Ceri, for the record.

David"

Anyway, Ceri Thomas - apologising for the brevity of his response - replied to my previous e-mail, as follows.

Mr H and Mr P and BBC standards

In his interview with John Prescott on the Today programme this morning John Humphrys asked the following question - "There are now reports, and they are circulating on the internet, that you have had other affairs. Is that true?"  The question was then repeated another four times. When Prescott challenged Humphrys as to why he was taking this track, Humphrys replied, "Because I wanted to give you the opportunity to clear it up."  And they say politicians are evasive.

Heroes

I was thinking about the living people I most admire, and how they weren't necessarily those who I most agreed with or even those I liked most. My heroes, some of who I list below, have an awkward quality in common. One which I think I usually lack. Tenacity. The ability to keep going - like Bunyan's Pilgrim - despite discouragement. So, in no particular order, I salute...........

Archive hour. Interview with Nick Griffin, May 2002. Published in the Independent

I drive towards my rendez-vous through the Sturm und Drang of a spring downpour. In a jam on the M1 the novelist George Macdonald Fraser, is talking about his memoirs on Radio 4's Start The Week with Paxman. In a comforting, boozy old voice Macdonald Fraser gives the nation the benefit of his thoughts on everything he hates, from political correctness to feminism, via race. He is, he admits lightly, a racist, "in the sense that…. race is just an extension of family". It is "natural" to prefer your own. That is the view, he says, of 90% of the British population.

Three hours later I find Nick Griffin, leader of the British National party, sheltering from the rain under the awning of the old station at Welshpool. He is on the phone, telling some local journalist how - if he came to power - he wouldn't actually deport this or that group, provided they behaved themselves. Next to him is a tall young man in catastrophic clothes, who gives me a nod. Doc is, with his terrible haircut, more Hess than Heydrich, but they are both - leader and minder - having the time of their lives. And my visit is only making them happier.

Greg and Hugo

A thought. I am rather confused about Comrade Chavez, and have a queasy liking for some of his doings and a big worry about others. But after watching tonight's Newsnight I have a different question: just how far up Chavez's backside was fearless reporter Greg Palast?

Please, no malice in Sunderland (article for the Jewish Chronicle)

This newspaper is really very good; you should read it more often. Last week, between the report on the Israeli elections, the report on the latest Ken Livingstone eruptions and the report of Lionel and Bobbie Acton’s diamond wedding, was a sad piece headlined, “End of the road for Sunderland.” Even as I write this, the community, down to 30 from a pre-war high of maybe 2,000, was beginning to dispose of the last Torah scrolls.

One of the few remaining Jews in Sunderland spoke of an “element of resentment” towards those who had left the city and might want to return for a ceremony to mark the synagogue’s final closure. The writer of the piece, Jenni Frazer, noted that, “the finger of blame for Sunderland’s demise is being pointed at a vast diaspora of ex-Sunderlanders who left for bigger communities such as Manchester and London.” In other words, what has happened is to be regretted, and there is someone — many someones — responsible.