Hilary Benn for PM

Amidst the factional infighting in the British Labour Party as to who will be next to lead the sinking ship, there is only one MP who has the prospect of at least minimising the scale of that inevitable electoral defeat. He misguidedly stood in 2007 for the deputy leadership of the Party, only to lose heavily to the day facto female quota, shoe-in candidate, Harriet Harman. Then of course, a decade later Hilary Benn notoriously cooked his goose by delivering a brilliant Foreign Secretary-style speech in the Commons with his party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, sat right next to him on the opposition front bench.

The speech in the style of a foreign secretary of the old school that was in diametric opposition to the official stance represented by the hapless Corbyn. That act of perceptible treachery, although to some in the party also a noble principled and powerful stance on the need to confront Islamic State, sealed for some the notion that the sins of the father had been visited upon the most impressive son. Tony Benn reserved his cynical manoeuvrings against his party leader until the devastating general election defeat of 1979. His son, Hillary, did it brazenly with the party leader right alongside him 

Despite all of this, if there is one person who could conceivably come from the centre of the party, and unify it on the basis of not being associated with any of the dirt of the current political scene, and of course having gravitas, intellect and rhetorical emotional heft in spades, then surely there is no one who can compare to Hillary. 

Of course, for his deep but principled pragmatism on Europe, economic management, and TransAtlantic relations to be properly utilised, Hilary Benn needs sufficient Parliamentary Labour Party nominations. I suspect that’s where the unimaginative average Labour backbencher, or indeed Cabinet member, will continue to fail to see the strength that’s bizarrely largely ignored by the media and the commentariat, hiding there in plain sight. Always out of camera shot, he’s the one sitting further along the front bench, the man with responsibility for the so-called nation of Northern Ireland.

I only pray that someone in the PLP will wake up and realise before it’s too late that Starmer’s lack of intellectual and intelligence curiosity, Ange’s Bet Lynch-routine, and the Pillsbury Dough Boy friend of Mandy, just can’t and won’t cut it. (Andy’s semi-permanently exiled to Manchester despite or because of his popular schtick). Pray too that Hilary will see the historic opportunity amidst the donkeys currently offering national leadership. If that isn’t enough of a hurdle, it would then of course  require sense to prevail amidst the anti-democratic, anti constitutional, power that the dwindling national party membership would wield in choosing the PM. I am probably wilfully deluded in thinking that a touch of the old school from a man of 70 plus would appeal to the great unwashed. Shame, because i have no doubt that, given the chance to serve his country in the ultimate way, that he would rise above the image of a now largely forgotten father, and convey both charisma and leadership. This is what the party, and more importantly, the country needs. Whether it wants it is another matter. Either way it would probably prove to be a relatively brief period of highly capable but inevitably doomed national leadership on a par with that of Gordon Brown’s premiership, and of course that of Hilary’s father’s post-election nemesis, Jim Callaghan.

Interring the state with the bones of its leader’s husband

I don't believe in disrespecting any public figures at the moment of their death. However I was appalled that Prince Philip, who held no constitutional status or constitutional role in the UK, was so absurdly and endlessly lauded on UK media. I have recently been reminded that very well-established protocols cover the state media's handling of such events, and no doubt it would, by established convention, have been required that there be a uniform and (for viewers at least) black-tied announcement across all BBC TV and radio platforms. In addition, the supposedly 'no fuss' duke may have been a party to some of the more recent media pre-planning. However it still came across as beyond excessive in an era of proliferating media platforms and a supposed lack of deference. This felt like the death of George VI redux, minus that monarch's constitutional status. 

For example, all BBC domestic radio platforms - including Radio 1 and BBC6 Music - were for three hours carrying an identical diet of semi-deification of a man who was no more no less than a hardworking consort of the head of state. He was a war hero and launched an impressive public service scheme. However Middle Eastern dictatorships, many of with which I'm familiar, would do a lot less in propagandist wall to wall coverage - in part admittedly because of modesty over what would be, by definition, a female 'consort'. Why though is the state media of our great British democracy engaging in serial broadcast hagiography of a figure who, by definition, represented no one - and, constitutionally speaking, did not even represent or deputise for the Queen.

 

Copyright The Daily Express 

Part of the answer is the BBC's irresponsibility and institutional cowardice. This publicly-subsidised state broadcaster has a greater operational and political distance from the UK government than officially independent media in most Middle Eastern states or in, say, Russia or China. However state patronage wielded via a regressive flat tax (AKA 'the TV license'), that these days only the old-fashioned who watch terrestrial TV on quaint TV sets actually pay, has been under political threat from the Right ever since the 1980s. The BBC's coverage of Philip's death has exceeded the wildest dreams of even the most zealous monarchists (the PR sop of an online complaints page was soon snuffed out). The state broadcaster has sought to give itself domestic political cover at a time when an opaque hereditary institution that determines our head of state is deemed crucial to the establishment's rear-guard action to save the Kingdom. Intra-Windsor fighting has though long weakened the royals' ability to embody our imagined Union. And an out of touch terrestrial media won't breathe life into that old firm, any more than it can ol' Phil, by behaving as if its role is to serve the rulers of the state rather than to educate as well as entertain HM's subjects. Meanwhile the mullahs heading our state religious cabal were widely deployed across the BBC in an anachronistic and sacrilegious application of unction on a departed member of the royal institution that invented the Church of England. Incredibly, nearly a century after its last serious political opponent left No 10, Anglicanism still plays its dutiful part in a UK national project rooted in the holy trinity of Royalty, Church and State. 

The crass, belated, neo-nationalist pincer movement of the last few days may come to seem like a last hurrah for a Union about to collapse into far less than the sum of its non-consensually joined parts. The castration of the UK's international influence is the irreversible result of a prolonged period of strategic self-abuse. This first began, unwittingly, with Blair's politically unnecessary introduction of devolution, and was then deepened by both of the UK's leading unionist parties being unable to hold Scotland in the 200 year old monarchial bloc. Those unionists constituted in what the BBC these days absurdly refers to as the 'nation' of Northern Ireland were probably inevitably set to lose the numbers game, and, dangerously, in the process lose control of their angry and economically struggling community, in favour of Irish reunification.

Copyright The Daily Record

The grotesque UK ruling class folly of unthinkingly ramming through Scottish and Welsh self-rule was though avoidable. Its ineptness was revealed in Cameron granting, via the monarch, a Scottish independence referendum that he had no political clue how to win, and seemingly little real political concern about either way. The close-run survival of the state after that particular indigenous challenge could not withstand a further Cameron role in the inevitable destruction of the Union. Our international relevance, long a key part of the contemporary construct that is the UK, was then decimated thanks to Cameron providing an unnecessary and highly irresponsible referendum on Brexit, followed by Johnson's grossly inept, spatchcock, delivery of it. 

After the widely admired Elizabeth II will shortly come Charles III or perhaps an in-house monarchial putsch in favour of William V. More relevantly, the rulers of a rump England, with maybe the Welsh principality for company, will need for the first time in the sceptred isle's history to admit to 'their' people that the future can no longer be anything like the imagined past. 

Who rules, and how, can never be reduced to a binary referendum question. However there is a desperate need for some very complex questions to be asked and for their resolution to be widely debated. Post-Covid, this must, of necessity, mean mass and tactile engagement, not the bougeois liberal stage-managed 'debate' in so-called Citizens' Assemblies. The supposed 'citizens' need to wake up to the inherently pre-democratic way in which they, as monarchial subjects, are governed, and to the fact that their supposed sovereignty is in fact loaned to political administrators wielding pre-democratic monarchial powers rather than actively exercised by the 'citizenry'. This by no means necessitates embracing a solely Left-inclined agenda, or even necessarily becoming a republic. It does require awareness of how we are governed and how little authority we, the people, have (in or out of the EU). Otherwise the political mire of division and petty nationalism will continue in an England overseen by an almost natural Tory 'majority'. The propaganda machinations of the Windsors, the Anglican Church and the BBC, conjoined with a Covid era nationalist add-on tritely called 'our NHS', won't save an England that has never been able or even interested in defining itself distinctly from the UK. 

(This is an expanded and updated version of what I wrote on Facebook on the day that the death of HRH Prince Philip was announced)

DSEI: Arms not for hugging

The first thing that I noticed upon arriving at DSEI was a young mother and baby protesting one of the world’s biggest defence and security exhibitions, or ‘arms fairs’, depending on your point of view. The Excel Centre in London’s Docklands – Newham if you actually live there - played host this week to the biennial defence industry jamboree. The mother and a friend – there were surely many more at a safer distance – chanted ‘arms are for hugging,’ which made the policemen and security guards standing nearby smile.

Taking the fight to DSEI (note also the baby's t-shirt)

I entered DSEI in record time, thanks to a very efficient media registration operation, and soon settled in to my usual people and kit-watching mode. It wasn’t long before I wondered what the hell I was doing at this almost absurd spectacle. This was my fourth time of attending; I’ve also been to IDEX in Abu Dhabi and similar events. At the latter, some 20 years ago, I was however speaking at an associated Gulf security conference. At DSEI I was, as ever, unsure of what my role was.

The Excel Centre - care of ADNEC, a UAE exhibitions company

I typically wander around either trying to hook up with existing contacts or just talking to stall-holders about their wares. However there were some undoubted sights to marvel at too. Whether the classic British Centurion tank (see below) or a chance for the boys (me included) to play with some guns (see below), there was much spectacle.

Rear-end of a Centurion tank replete with cacti

Admiring the hardware

I noted that past in-theatre deployments of Russian ultra-babes had been forsaken for more conventional ways of promoting the goods. I gawped at the sheer scale of the UK’s state of the art ‘Tempest’ aircraft (see picture below), which had a steady queue of both men and women wishing to clamber aboard. I stepped outside and admired the huge naval ships in the former London canal-way and the small aircraft or unmanned drones taking to the skies above Docklands. Across the way two huge abandoned warehouses stood as stark reminders of what the area used to be.

Dockland dereliction

'Team Tempest'

Ship's inspection

Having a Gulf interest, I scoured in vain the DSEI guide for any sign that the Saudis’ much-vaunted planned expansion of their limited defence production capacity was reflected at DSEI. The DSEI website did have a brief about SAMI: the ‘Saudi Arabian Military Industries’ company set up as part of the Kingdom’s ambitious Saudi Vision 2030 (SV2030). But there was no DSEI stall number. SAMI, in partnership with GAMI, the overarching ‘General Authority’ for Saudi military industries is tasked with ensuring that 50% of all new Saudi arms are produced in-country within 11 years and that SAMI becomes a significant arms exporter.

More prosaically, earlier this year a former UK official told me that SAMI was making progress because it was producing small and, he admitted, basic engineering components. ‘Widgets’ was the word that came to my mind. Either way, this is seemingly not enough to warrant hiring a DSEI stand.

The contrast with the UAE was striking. Perhaps having a ‘UAE Pavilion’ wasn’t that surprising as the Emiratis own the Excel Centre in which DSEI is held. However the UAE seems more serious than the Saudis about developing a domestic defence industry. This effort essentially revolves around Tawazun, the state-founded company that since the early 1990s has been promoting in-country defence industry capacity. EDIC, the ‘Emirates Defence Industry Company’, was founded more recently as the country’s overall defence industry platform, but Tawazun has the majority stake in it. Someone on the Tawazun Economic Council (TEC) stall told me that TEC’s focus since 2017 has been on using ‘offsets’ (a de facto Gulf tax on western defence companies who commit to developing local know-how as part of an arms deal) to assist defence and non-defence industry development. TEC is also using its remit to develop local capacity in order to shepherd ostensibly private Emirati companies such as Halcon (part of the Al-Yas Group), who were right next door in the Pavilion. In February 2019 Halcon got a large TEC soft loan as part of the TEC policy to either fund or co-opt local defence businesses[i]. I was told that Halcon employs about 150 people, over half of whom are Emirati and are typically engineers who come to the UK for a post-graduate education. About 30-40% of the components in Halcon’s missile guidance and control systems are imported apparently. This is the all-important electronics component; the rest is done in-country. 

On the other side of Halcon’s stand was one belonging to ‘Al-Hamra’, whose smart promo publication boasted of them “Addressing Tomorrow’s Threats, Today”. Their emphasis it seems is on assisting private and public organisations with counter-terrorism and ‘intelligence’ work, something they do across the Middle East and Africa according to their glossy brochure. Sadly there was no one on the Al-Hamra stall to comment further. In fact this was a depressingly familiar experience from past such encounters of mine. It belies the UAE's go-ahead attitude that seeks to match its regional and extra-regional military ambitions with a greatly expanded supply of domestically produced kit that by definition isn't beholden to western political sensitivities or technology embargoes. I spoke to the former Tawazun press spokesman who told me that his successor, Mohammed Ahmed, was the only one who could make any comment to me, whether on or off the record. However Mohammed Ahmed had been called away from DSEI on business and would, I was assured, contact me when he returned. He didn’t.

I am ambiguous about missiles. However one that caught my eye was QinetiQ’s ‘Banshee’, which is actually an aerial practice target. Perhaps it was the name that appealed to me, making me think of Siouxsie Sioux’s band, or perhaps it was its attractively bright red colour-scheme (see below) and the free key ring.

A Banshee minus Siouxsie

Oxford space miniaturists

I wandered into a talk by a representative of Oxford Space Systems who addressed punters on her company's contribution to the 'miniaturisation' of space communication (see above). She mentioned that her company had a UK Ministry of Defence contract for aspects of this work. On my way out I noted that the use of canines in war zones was taking on a very hi-tech dimension (see below).

A dog of war

Oman was out in force at DSEI, commanded by Sheikh Badr bin Saud Al-Busaidi, officially known as ‘the minister responsible for defence affairs’. When I spotted him and his large retinue of uniformed Sultanate officers, they were surrounded by UK military and defence industry people. He went on after DSEI to meet with the UK’s new defence secretary Ben Wallace, and to visit Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre.

Oman hosts a new UK naval base and, separately, an army training base. The former, located on the Arabian Sea, is designed to accommodate the UK’s one and only aircraft carrier which is still undergoing operational trials before being scheduled to form a ‘carrier group’, with a still to be trialled second carrier, sometime in 2021[ii]. This intimate British role in Oman’s security was arguably unaffected by our ‘pull-out’ East of Suez in 1971. However its stepping up in recent years has made the UK even more central to the Sultanate’s security, including the highly tense Gulf littoral [i].

Before leaving DSEI, I met with an ex-British military friend. He told me that coming in to DSEI on the DLR that morning he had felt disconcerted by a  man who sat right next to him. The man in question started wheezing before my friend asked if he was ok. He noted that the man was wearing a ‘Veterans for Peace’ t-shirt and was obviously about to join a protest outside DSEI. An understanding passed between them. ‘Have a peaceful day,’ my friend said at their parting.

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[i] February 19 2019, Dania Saadi, https://www.thenational.ae/business/tawazun-to-invest-up-to-dh193m-in-uae-defence-company-halcon-1.827609
[ii] ‘UK carrier begins ‘Westlant 19’ operational trials’, Richard Scott, Jane’s Defence Weekly, September 4, 2019.
[i] See my article for the University of Kingston's History Department blog contrasting Harold Wilson’s decision to end the UK’s formal defence presence in the Gulf and commitment to defend the Gulf rulers, with the so-called return ‘East of Suez’ under PMs Cameron and May 

England doesn't deserve to win

For those who insist that sportspeople just want to practise a profession that has nothing to do with politics, and that politics should be kept entirely separate from sport, consider this. As “England”, the football team, exited the World Cup last night, one of the many overpaid football gobshites who substitute verbal diarrhoea for clarity of speech, told 37 million ITV viewers that, despite losing, they had done “the nation” proud and that “the nation” will honour their achievement etc etc. Be in no doubt that the main match commentator, Clive Tyldesley, was being archly political in his propagandist nonsense, whether he quite realised it or not.

There is no nation called England. The nation that he was mixing it up with was one that rejoices under the internationally recognised, legal, title of the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”. That’s the UK, for short, not Britain and most certainly not England. Only the spatch-cock nation that is the UK could concoct a situation where it doesn’t have a national football team. Instead three constituent countries and one “province” (Northern Ireland) compete against each other on the international football stage as if they are nations.

Of course nations are subjective things, some exist only in the fact that some people feel an affinity to them, whether a “nation” has national independence, statehood, or not e.g. Palestine, Kurdistan etc. In the same sense Scotland is arguably a nation: there are enough Scots who profess to be Scottish (whether they actually want their country to leave the UK or not). The Welsh ditto, most of whom most definitely do not want to leave the bosom of the UK family. Northern Ireland is most definitely not a nation, nor can you give the term 'country' to an artificially concocted place that nearly a century ago was carved out of Ireland to appease a then overwhelming majority who wanted to continue to politically identify with the British state against the wishes of a minority who identified with a nation called Ireland.

That leaves us with the “nation” that the ITV football commentator may have thought he was referring to:  England. England has no political or governmental status, within the UK or internationally. Unlike Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, it has no government, no formal national apparatus. There are laws that apply only to the territory of England, and there is definitely a legal corpus known as English law. But that’s it.

At the start of the match you could hear the Russian stadium commentator, whose serial verbosity periodically interrupted every live World Cup game, say “and now the English national anthem”. The England football team almost sung along as they once again appropriated the UK’s turgid national paen to political quiescence and anti-democratic sentiment. There is no English national anthem. How could there be? ‘English nation’ is an oxymoron. Despite the proliferating born-again Cross of St George enthusiasts, whose empty-headed embrace of the ultimate imagined nation has boomed since England’s second greatest World Cup performance (1990), and a little thing called Brexit (2019?), there aren’t many English men and women who have a clear idea of what their nation actually is. There was no national ambiguity in Zagreb last night though among the fans going ape-shit in a nation of 4m born out of sectarian horror just two and a half decades ago.

If you cannot unavowedly name your nation, then it doesn’t exist (yes, it’s true, a tree falling in a forest doesn’t make a sound if nobody is there to hear it). If, like Tyldesley, your nation is a confusion of England, Britain and, I suspect, some half-cocked rewriting of wartime history, and the role of a few German royals and a half-American half English toff called Churchill in it, then maybe this doesn’t matter. But the reason why people get killed in your name without anybody you elect having any constitutional authority over it, and why the tiresome parade of unelected aristocrats propping up the head of state and her church, continues is because the “English” can’t tell their national arse from Rice Krispies. God Save Us indeed.

Labour's forgotten the 100th anniversary of working class men getting the vote

The Labour Party has forgotten that it's also the 100th anniversary of working class men getting the vote, all of them. In 2018 Labour is saying that the fight for women's equality still goes on, but has a problem saying that the fight for class equality must continue too. 

Yet ironically today's Labour Party, under a pro-Brexit, left-wing leadership, has no problem getting liberal middle class support. It's the (white) working class (who are often pro-Brexit) that Labour is still struggling to reconnect with. Without them Labour won't win the next General Election. 

Unless Labour can somehow rediscover its class credentials throughout Britain without alienating the metropolitan middle class, the Tories will win again. This requires being progressive on tax and social justice, tough on getting British workers into employment and reducing immigration, and asserting a UK identity that’s inclusive in terms of class as well as gender, sexuality and ethnicity. 

Building a broad class base is good democratic politics. For most of its history Labour has understood that this, rather than narrow sectarian interests, are what brings it power. It can’t, and shouldn’t be expected to, propose class war. However Labour didn’t lose elections because it talked about and tackled class inequality. 

Addressing this subject now could bring back some of the badly needed white working class voters who didn’t back Labour at the 2017 General Election, despite Jeremy Corbyn having long been a Brexiteer.

The UK should not increase its military role in fighting ISIS

For what it is worth, this was my contribution to the tens of thousands no doubt unread submissions to Jeremy Corbyn's consultation on what stance he/Labour should take on Syria/ISIS etc:

“Extending the UK's role in the air war against ISIS has no clear legal basis nor is it likely to make the streets of the UK safer. Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq today have a significant Al-Qaida and/or ISIS presence despite (or partly because of) the UK's active role in western military intervention in these countries. The 7/7 attack on London was facilitated but not determined by training acquired in the territory of a functioning state, the UK/western ally Pakistan. There is no strategy for countering ISIS in Syria and Iraq that has a realistic prospect of convincing Sunni Arabs that these countries can be stitched back together with political and security guarantees for their community that lessen the appeal of violence as a tactical weapon. The (western allied) Sunni Arab-led Gulf states have not the will, capacity or political interest in putting themselves in the service of this community's ambitions in these countries - they are focused on obliterating perceptible Iranian allies in Yemen. Iran, Russia and even France to a degree are prioritising a Shia interest in Iraq and in Syria - as a strategic asset in the Iranian and even Russian case, and a lesser evil than ISIS in the eyes of France. There is no UN Security Council Resolution or No 10 plan that can overcome such deep-seated differences of interest on the ground or among the regional and international players in the conflict. Make sure that the UK does not increase its role in essentially sectarian territorial struggles of local actors egged on by comparably narrow regional interests, all in the misguided belief that the particular "evil" of ISIS somehow makes this war, this time, different and that our tools of choice will somehow, this time, have a different impact.”

The Destruction of the UK State: Betrayed by Ignorance and Miscalculation

The seeds were sown in 1978 when the SNP and Welsh Nats blackmailed Jim Callaghan and his minority Labour government to hold a referendum on devolution. Those in favour couldn't muster 40% of registered voters in Scotland, so it fell by the wayside. Devolution was clearly rejected in Wales. The SNP's representation collapsed in the May 1979 UK General Election, but the idea of home rule for Scotland was there.

If the Labour Gov't ('74-'79) had given two fingers to the petit tribalists of the British Isles (including trying to please both Ulster Unionist and SDLP MPs at the same time) and gone to the country in 1978, they would have won with a workable majority. We all know what happened next. Perhaps the decline of the post war UK political, economic and social order, and specifically of subsidised Scottish steel mills and coal mines, was inevitable, and would have fed deep frustrations north of the border. However the personality and ideology of Margaret Thatcher, and limited Scottish support for the Conservatives under her, helped bolster the SNP. Then comes wise Mr Blair and devolution for Scotland and Wales, arrogantly thinking that a semi- federal arrangement eternally steered by Labour politicians on the ground, buoyed by grateful celtic clients, would keep the UK settlement intact.

In 24 hours a bunch of kids and some older political illiterates will probably break up the UK state. A tribal war has been successfully waged, as if Westminster was the headquarters of the English Colonial Administration. Westminster is so loathed - by all quarters of the UK - that the fact that its MPs were elected by us, including Scottish residents, seems somehow to not be understood. A "democratic deficit" is one of Salmond's rallying cries, yet every UK subject determines who forms the UK Government. Unless they can't be arsed. 

The trouble is that if there is a narrow "No" vote tomorrow then a belated attempt to fire up enthusiasm for the political process in all parts of the UK will see devolution across its countries and regions. Scotland's nationalists may not be satisfied. The English rejected regional governments in the late 1990s (except in London). If they're offered their own national parliament then they will probably secede from the Union themselves, after the UK (possibly minus Scottish votes) comes out of the EU in 2017. We're doomed...

Mandela is dead and so is debate

Nelson Mandela is dead. I feel relieved for him and his family. Nauseated at the often absurd coverage of the event in the UK media. Sad at yet another confirmation that the era of great men has given way to the almost universal reign of the indifferent, the ordinary, the petty-minded administrators of tax revenue.

He was to come to prominence in a very different age. His cause, long before it was made fashionable by pop stars and simple-minded sloganisers, obliged both Conservative and Labour governments in Britain to look to what they thought was a higher national interest than majoritarian politics in Africa. The 1980s version of this debate was used by the left of centre Channel 4 News in Britain to settle party political scores with those, mostly dead or irrelevant, in the Conservative Party who did not worship at the shrine of Mandela. Smug, self-righteous, sanctimoniousness abounds, a chance for people to feel good about what records they bought, what stickers they wore, what demos they went on thirty years ago.

The sin of having equated him with terrorism is once again ritually trotted out, as if it is only a term of abuse and not ever a tactic of politics and of war. To target or threaten civilians or civilian life, to seek to wreck or undermine public stability in order to realise a political objective, this is the stuff of armed struggle. It is what the Royal Air Force did against German cities during World War Two and it is what the armed wing of the ANC began to undertake under Mr Mandela’s command before he was incarcerated. It may well be the action of freedom fighters too. The French Resistance killed not just for revenge but to achieve political goals by spreading fear. That is what terrorists do.

Nelson did not agree with the targeting of civilians. He was arrested before the shedding of civilian blood became more acceptable in ANC circles and before he would either have had to resign or accept responsibility for it. I have heard no debate in the last 24 hours about these issues nor any serious assessment of the wisdom of Mr Mandela in going as far as he did in reassuring business and, effectively, white interests that in office neither he or the ANC would rock the boat that much. The legacy of that “pact” continues to this day.

It is ironic perhaps that people all over the world are so ready to deify Nelson as a secular saint when in their own country they bemoan the fact that democracy is “merely” about one person one vote every 4 to 5 years. Twenty two years after his release South Africa struggles to be even that, given the lawlessness and violence that is the stuff of daily life in some cities and the treatment that can be meted out to striking trade unionists.

If Nelson has one simple and yet rare political legacy to be applauded it is his promotion of inclusion and reconciliation. This from a man who could so easily have pursued narrow, sectional and vindictive interests. He is still revered by regimes and militant groups who have every interest in the slogans of liberation but who usually fail to understand that inclusion is not achieved by the denial of the humanity of the other. Just as he did not dress his cause in a racial colour, so Mandela had no sympathy with the communal politics of many of his sympathisers in the Middle East. These are attributes worth remembering and worth revering.