Euston launch - 4 comments

Apologies to anyone expecting a prompt appraisal of Thursday evening's Euston Manifesto Launch from this particular pen. Norm has a collection of many of the responses. There are plenty of photos of the event, but Tim Sewell's are magnificent.

Met some rather nice people too (in order, and as I recall): the aforementioned Tim, Clive Furness, Dan, Dúnadan, Richard and Neil from Little Atoms, Nick himself, and the guys from Fisking Central. It seems I managed to miss a number of other bloggers entirely, including Scribbles, which just goes to show how busy it was.

So, lots of people came, some excellent speeches were made - Alan Johnson's (from Democratiya) was particularly good - lots of money was raised, and mobile phones were collected for the trade unionists of Iraq. Questions were asked by the audience, and answered by the panellists on behalf of an organisation that puts its principles first, and which is happy to discuss and engage with people as to the best way to put these into practice.

Meanwhile, the number of signers continues to rise - 1674 at the moment.

Which is why it's a shame that some critics - who've turned down the opportunity to ask constructive questions, or to attend the public meeting - insist on dismissing the Euston Manifesto as "dull" or "anodyne", as if they had gone to the trouble to either challenge the principles behind it, offered a more exciting alternative, or accepted those principles and offered to help shape the movement.

Take this piece, which tackles the Manifesto as follows:

We stand for an internationalist politics and the reform of international law – in the interests of global democratization and global development. Humanitarian intervention, when necessary, is not a matter of disregarding sovereignty, but of lodging this properly within the "common life" of all peoples. If in some minimal sense a state protects the common life of its people (if it does not torture, murder and slaughter its own civilians, and meets their most basic needs of life), then its sovereignty is to be respected. But if the state itself violates this common life in appalling ways, its claim to sovereignty is forfeited and there is a duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue. Once a threshold of inhumanity has been crossed, there is a "responsibility to protect".

Which is precisely and totally the wrong way round. First we should seek to put in place a legitimate system of international law. We could start with insisting that the hegemon agree to bind itself and its citizens under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. No action ought ever to be encouraged that breaches this general case, barring exceptional circumstances. The duty upon the international community of intervention and rescue, if it is to be valid, ought to be embedded in and conditional upon that. Egg first, then chicken. To seek to grant that permission in advance, to hand out carte blanche for unilateral political violence without any knowledge of the hypotheticals or counterfactuals, is the real lunacy of the Euston Manifesters.

Lunacy? A legitimate system of international law would be a wonderful thing. For me, such a system would prompt condemnations of mass murder, genocide, and breaches of human rights as they happened, not when they're politically expedient, and action would not be delayed by concerns over upcoming elections, trade, alliances, or those ideologies that paint some participants as beyond the pail. Such a system would reflect liberal, universal moral imperatives, or it would be useless - mere bureaucracy. As Norm puts it:

But if this ideal doesn't exist and isn't brought into being by institutional reform, and if the UN therefore fails to intervene effectively in 'conscience-shocking situations', then 'concerned states may not rule out other means to meet the gravity and urgency' of these situations - as the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty concluded in 2001. Is there a third way? Yes. Genocide or mass slaughter just goes ahead, and the words 'never again' remain an empty phrase. One shouldn't pretend there's an easy way of escaping these options.

Eustonistas want this legitimate system of international law - help us achieve it. In the meantime, if the (or, indeed, any) legal mechanism is a travesty of morality, let us put the latter first, and ask for participants' actions to be severely judged on that basis. I don't see how any alternative could be worth entertaining.

You may, of course, take the view that "humanitarian intervention" is a "thoroughly insidious euphemism that can be used to justify any act of imperialism". In which case, you might as well sit the rest of your life out in a hole and not distract others with your cynicism.

People miss the point - Euston isn't a party label, and it's not about "capturing" people to its own side, just as agreeing with the Manifesto doesn't represent uncritical, hypocritical acceptance of any abuse carried out in or by the UK, USA, etc. Its success can be judged by the number of people who surrender the use of anti-Americanism, anti-Westernism, or "liberal decadence" as the basis for their personal politics, for one thing, and the number who reject the idea that equality and freedom of speech are insensitive, inappropriate, racist, or conspiracies by powerful "enemy groups".

Final point: I remember inflicting upon at least two people my theory that the Union Chapel (where the Euston Manifesto was launched) was the venue for the scene from the edifying and educational 1982 film Who Dares Wins ("one of the most right-wing films ever"), where one of those stereotypical left-wing, CND-supporting, "hip" vicars arranges an anti-nuclear rock concert in his church, only for right-wing thugs to interrupt his sermon to the teenagers, and the whole thing to turn into a riot.

So, am I right? Any information gladly received. Don't bother looking through IMDB, though, I've already done that. And please don't watch the film.