Hours to go before the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party possibly overturns the basis on which it was elected only yesterday, and prohibits criticism of the apartheid state.
The Conservative Party and the Labour Right supported the last apartheid state, with opposition to it in Britain confined to the churches, a few extremely liberal upper-class Tories, the Liberal Party, the Labour Left, the Communist Party, and the Far Left, all of which were politically marginal at the time.
But the opposition to the apartheid state of our own age has as its focal point, perhaps in the world, the Leader of what is by far the largest political party in Britain, which already has 40 per cent of the vote. And that is what scares the life out of the apartheid state's supporters.
Norman Tebbit did eventually recant everything he'd said about Nelson Mandela in the Thatcher years, but yes I remember the people now running the Tory Party in their Hang Mandela T-shirts. Wasn't it you who said David Cameron should have been made to wear his to Mandela's funeral?
ReplyDeleteWell done on calling out the Labour Right. The Labour governments of the 60s and 70s were as pro-Pretoria as the Tory governments of the 70s and 80s and the Opposition front bench in the 80s was not much better. You had to be Jeremy Corbyn to demonstrate outside South Africa House, you would never have seen Neil Kinnock there.
But now Corbyn is the Leader of the Labour Party and set fair to become the next Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu can expect a much rougher ride from Britain than P.W. Botha ever got.
Indeed.
DeleteYes, I did say that Cameron ought to have been made to wear his Hang Mandela T-shirt to Mandela's funeral. I bet he still has it.
And yes, the Labour Right does claim a credit for this struggle, incomplete though the struggle still is, that it does not deserve. Opposition to apartheid fell under the catchall label of "Loony Left" at the time.