"A cycle of violence.” The
moving letter from Sue Rhodes, which we are proud to publish on page 12, demonstrates how
violence and hatred provoke more violence and hatred in terms that every child in Egremont
can understand. How difficult it must be to make peace when those who confront
stone-throwers with machine guns, have no more sense than to use their power to suppress,
oppress and humiliate! The Old Testament should teach Israeli leaders wiser lessons. Why
do they cast themselves in the role of Goliath? Their own legendary hero, Samson, was
moved to pull the temple at Gaza down on the heads of his enemy and his own when he was
blinded and humiliated. The first suicide bomber, perhaps.
In our own lives we all know how one malicious action provokes another.
How do we break these terrible cycles?
Nelson Mandela, who led armed resistance to Apartheid, was imprisoned
as a terrorist. When his people were oppressed and humiliated for being black, the choice
he saw lay between submitting to a terrible injustice and resisting with force. His
greatness, however, lies in the fact that he bore many years of imprisonment without
resentment and that he could emerge with the moral authority to teach his people to stop
the cycle of violence and accept the responsibility of power without seeking vengeance.
Mandela inspired the Labour Party Conference in September 2000 by finding common cause in
“our values of solidarity with the poor and the vulnerable sections of society.”
His prayer that the century may be one where “the poor and marginalised in society
come into their own” defines our reason for trying to change the world through
political action. He found in the history of the Labour Party “testimony to the
resilience of the spirit that continues to believe the world can be made a better place
for all.” Everyone present senses the warmth of personal regard between him and Tony
Blair, who was and remains engaged in the daunting task of breaking the cycle of violence
in Northern Ireland. How mortifying it is, now, to hear him describe Tony Blair, our
Labour Prime Minister, as “President Bush’s Foreign Secretary”!
We understand why Nelson Mandela believes that Tony, for all his
passionate sincerity, has somewhere lost the plot of making the world a better place for
all. We know Tony Blair passionately cares for a just settlement in Palestine, but cannot
understand why he does not at least make it a condition of his support for America’s
war aims that George Bush bring pressure on Israel, as well as Iraq, to submit to UN
resolutions. We have specifically praised him for urging George Bush to seek UN authority
before going to war, but the two leaders show scant regard for that authority when they
tell the UN: “Authorise war or we go it alone.” We have admired his hard-headed
realism when he warns people not to expect “quick fixes” and would only ask him
whether he really believes that all the problems which drive desperate people to commit
suicide in order to hurt their overwhelmingly powerful enemies are really going to be
solved by the quick fix of a spectacular bombardment of Iraq by the overwhelmingly
powerful US airforce.
To understand what war will really mean to the people of Iraq, take a
few minutes to read another letter we received by email. Rabia, whose Letter from Iraq, is
published on page 13, brings home to us with poignant simplicity what it is like to be
preparing for death. “Will you destroy so much for the oil? Do Americans know what a
catastrophe this will be?” Those who believe that the Iraqi people are longing to be
liberated by US and British forces should read this simple account by someone who is
there.
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