“Being anti-war doesn’t mean being pro-Putin. Yet the peace movement has been demonised in the wake of the Ukraine crisis” says the Guardian columnist Andy Beckett.
Andy Beckett / Guardian
It’s a strange time to be a pacifist in Britain. Everywhere there are calls for an end to the war in Ukraine: from politicians to Premier League footballers to hand-painted pleas for peace in people’s front windows. The illegitimacy and brutality of the Russian invasion make it very easy to condemn.
Yet at the same time, some of Britain’s most longstanding peace activists are being attacked and threatened. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has accused the Stop the War coalition, which has opposed conflicts for more than 20 years, of being “at best … naive” and “at worst … showing solidarity with the aggressor”.
Eleven Labour MPs who signed a Stop the War statement about Ukraine, including veterans such as John McDonnell and recently elected leftwingers such as Zarah Sultana, were told that they could be expelled from their parliamentary party if they did not remove their names. All the MPs complied. From what was until recently quite a loosely managed political party, it was a strikingly aggressive disciplinary action.
The statement in dispute does not seem outrageous. Published before the invasion, it “opposes any war over Ukraine”, calls for “a diplomatic settlement”, and criticises the British government for “aggressive posturing” and Nato for its “eastward expansion”. There is less criticism of Russia than its own, much more violent, expansionism merits; but little sign of the alleged “solidarity with the aggressor”. “We do not endorse the nature or conduct of either the Russian or Ukrainian regimes,” the statement says. “The crisis should be settled on a basis which recognises the right of the Ukrainian people to self-determination and addresses Russia’s security concerns.”
Such even-handedness may seem horribly inappropriate now. But the interests of both sides may have to be satisfied if this crisis is ever going to end.
That Stop the War’s stance has provoked what its convenor, Lindsey German, described at a rally last weekend as “a serious backlash” – including a death threat against Sultana – suggests that the space in British politics for pacifism, or even for scepticism about military institutions such as Nato, is dramatically shrinking. Only two years ago, Labour was led by a peace campaigner and Nato critic, Jeremy Corbyn. Now his successor hails helping to found Nato as one of Labour’s “great achievements”, on a par with creating the NHS. The vaguely defined “security” that Starmer has been offering voters, without much success, is suddenly coming into focus as a militaristic project.
You may welcome this as Labour getting real again. The party has a tradition of supporting military action against extremists and aggressors, from the second world war to the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq. For a party often characterised regardless as unpatriotic, unrealistic and weak, supporting wars and increasing defence spending can be an appealing tactic. Recent research by the British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG) showed British military interventions most strongly supported by older, white, leave-voting men outside London: exactly the voters that Starmer has prioritised winning back.
The more moral left-of-centre case for militarism was summed up in 1942 by George Orwell. “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist,” he wrote, as it effectively helped the Nazis. The idea that you could live “aloof” from the war was an “illusion”: the war affected everyone’s lives. Sometimes, a lack of perspective undermines pacifism in general. Anti-war activists don’t always acknowledge how common violence is in peacetime – in coercive modern capitalism, for example.
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