Sinna Mani was born in Sri Lanka. After working as a Communist Party organiser in Bombay, he moved to England where he was active in the Labour Party, serving as Labour Mayor of the London borough of Lewisham in 1993-94. He spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly about his decision to quit Tony Blair's party, and the need for self- determination in the Middle East I'm basically a working class lad. I didn't go to university until very late in life. I was self-taught, I left school at 10. The Labour Party was a major influence in my life. I joined it when I was 22 or 23, and plodded along with them till I was about 64. All my friends, family and everyone were in the Labour Party. So it was a very difficult decision to leave. During the Suez period, the Labour Party was a progressive party: they stood up and mobilised world opinion, not just in this country, but everywhere, against the war. Not only have they betrayed that heritage, but Blair shows a level of political ignorance and lack of empathy with ex-colonial people that is staggering -- that really beggars belief. In Johannesburg he tells them, "I've a passion for Africa". That may play well with a European audience, but to an African who is even vaguely aware of his own history, it must be considered a threat. As if he was threatening to reconquer Africa! Think of the inhumanity that was visited on these people, by the Belgian Congo for example, where millions died. It was a genocide on the same scale as the Holocaust. And for Blair to come along and say, I'm the white guy, I'm going to bring you peace and prosperity?! It must be the biggest Trojan Horse ever invented! The Labour Party used to be a working class party. In the past, there was an element of internationalism: solidarity with working class struggles elsewhere. All that has gone overboard now, with the decline in the political influence of the working class. The New Labour ideology is a form of cultural imperialism: they don't even bother to disguise the fact. The socialist movement is dead. Buried under its own dead weight. It's unable to catch the imagination of the ordinary people. It's no use talking to people unless they are actually listening. And socialists are not making an impact, because nobody is listening. Whereas people are willing to listen to us. And we must respond to their needs. We must share their experiences. So now we are in a situation where the West wants to get rid of Saddam Hussein. That's fine. The majority of people in Iraq are not going to shed any tears for him. But how will the US and the UK go about it? First of all, they will bomb arbitrarily: that will mean enormous destruction of human lives and property. They will destabilise the whole region. And there is no guarantee that they will win. The Arab people have a right to ask: why this particular affection for the Iraqi people, when for 50 years the Palestinians have been suffering conditions unimaginable anywhere else in the world since the collapse of the white regime in South Africa? Why this particular affection all of a sudden for Iraq? And they will come up with the explanation, that since the West's friends in Saudi Arabia are now perceived as being 'shaky', they are looking for another oil pipeline. This is a new colonial war, even if it's dignified with liberal speech-making about human rights and democracy. The West is not going the right way about securing its oil supplies. The traditional partnerships have broken down, and they are looking for new partners to exploit these areas. In the process, they are totally neglecting the interests of the local people. One day those people are going to rise in revolt. All political movements look for some kind of cohesive ideology that can unite people. Going back to Islam is a way of resisting colonial intrusions into their society. It may not in the long run solve their problems; but they are human beings, they are looking for some form of defence. This is not peculiar to Muslims: if you look at the nationalist movement in India, Ghandi didn't advocate violence, but he did reject the idea of the Enlightenment, and called for a return to a village economy. These are ancient civilisations, and they had some self- pride. They simply want to reestablish their own self-worth, against the arrogance and outlandish claims of the West. Yet we have foreclosed any option for them to borrow the gains of the Enlightenment, because the Enlightenment has come to the Middle East in two forms: the extreme brutality of Stalinism, on the one hand; and the sheer bloody exploitation of whatever is available, on the other, and all the corruption that goes along with that. What can we do? We must have confidence in the people of the Middle East to solve their own problems. We have made such a mess, we have caused such suffering in the last two centuries, they have a right to expect us to leave them alone. So therefore there should be no war, however objectionable Hussein may be: it is for the people of that region to overthrow him, the people of Iraq. From Boston to Babylon Buying up the world
