Lessons From History: A Cautionary Tale Of Cant, Hypocrisy & Shame

 

If the group Palestine Action and/or its members have broken the law then they should and must be punished but the comments by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, the government and the Met have thrown the net wider to include anyone who has an opinion on the matter. Worse still is the fact that Cooper and the Met's defence of the proscription of Palestine Action and the promised/threatened arrest of anyone showing any support for the group is one we have heard before over the years - namely that anyone who protests or is at a protest is, by definition and association a criminal or intent on criminal action; in short an enemy of the state. It all has the same tired and deceitful ring about it as Margaret Thatcher's 1980s verdict on Nelson Mandela and his political associates. Thatcher told us then that Mandela was a terrorist and so was his party, the ANC for fighting against the injustices of apartheid. Supporters of Mandela in this country and those critical of South Africa's apartheid regime were dismissed, vilified and arrested too, in the same vein as Ms Cooper now plans but by Thatcher and her Tory party. Until, that is, Nelson Mandela wasn't a terrorist. He was released from 25 years incraceration and became an international hero, a superstar, a President of South Africa who politicians from across the planet, including Margaret Thatcher, came to worship, almost prostrating themselves to be seen in his company. Cant and hypocrisy in shedloads.

One would have hoped that by the 21st century (and a Labour government to boot) the Home Secretary, the government and the police would have moved on from the tired and sadly predictable logic and justifications put forward in the past as excuses for unwarranted state violence against protestors - who, just as in Margaret Thatcher's time, are now being potentially criminalised for having an opinion. If we have learned anything from this sorry and outrageous mess it must be that in Britain in the summer of 2025 one can hold any opinion one desires - as long as it is the opinion of Home Secretary.

It all makes the great words of the German priest Martin Luther, one of the founders of the Protestant Church seem hollow. He would have got short shrift from Yvette Cooper and the Met as in 1517 he nailed his ninety five theses criticising the Catholic church on the church door and when later challenged refused to change his mind saying "Here I stand, I can do no other" - and in doing so changed the history of the world. The history of the world is filled with stories of people who have lived and often died for their opinions and the right to hold them: Rosa Parkes, Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Emily Pankhurst to name but four - and the vast majority are, as the wheel of history turns, vindicated and become national and international heroes, their once outrageous and/or illegal opinions becoming mainstream. In short today's "terrorists" as I often become tomorrow's "freedom fighters". That well established lesson is clearly lost on Ms Cooper and the present Labour government - she and they should be careful for I fear history might not judge them kindly.

Which brings me to the Peterloo Massacre in Manchester in 1819 when 60,000 peaceful protestors seeking parliamentary reform - to give us the democratic rights that we enjoy today - were attacked by the military leading to 18 deaths. It is a cautionary tale that should never have been repeated. This tragic event not only was instrumental in greater parliamentary reform and voting rights being granted to a wider group of people but indirectly led to the establishment of one of the world's great newspapers The Guardian established in 1821 and originally called The Manchester Guardian - my companion of seventy years - and whose guiding principle is the phrase used by its great editor CP Scott: "The facts are sacred, opinion is free". Yvette Cooper and the Met would do well to heed Scott's words. The events of this summer and of the past prove that we have not learned from past events nor, it seems, does our Home Secretary subscribe to Scott's wisdom; for Ms Cooper, it seems, opinion is not free - it is what she says it is. A century after Peterloo, in 1919 the British Army in India fired on a peaceful gathering of people in Jallianwala Bagh, a quiet garden in Amritsar leading to over 300 deaths. The echoes of that day still ring through history and blight our relationship with that vast country. When we visited that beautiful garden some years ago the atmosphere of injustice and sorrow still pervaded the scented air of Jallianwala Bagh a century after the murder by the British army. And, finally, few of my generation will forget what became known as the Battle of Orgreave in 1984 when police, under instruction from Margaret Thatcher's government, charged striking coal miners. Many of the police brought into Nottinghamshire from forces throughout the land during the miners' strike were billeted in my village and I still vividly remember their gung-ho conversations, night after night in the village pubs - how they were going to give the miners what they deserved, no questions asked - then or now. The truth and responsibilities for Orgreave have never been fully disclosed - and probably never will for that is the nature of coercive governments everywhere, they keep their secrets close to their chests lest their actions bring retribution; think Putin's Russia for one example of many.

The government, military and police justifications for each of these events was like that now being used against the supporters of Palestine Action: namely, the protestors are not simply ordinary people expressing their opinion but "terrorists", plotting to "overthrow the police and the court system". Peaceful protestors are increasingly represented as enemies of the state in what it suits the government and police to increasingly frame as a war. And in war, the normal rules and niceties no longer apply, so a government has carte blanche to do as it will; no questions asked, now or in the future. It is straight out of the Peterloo, the Jallianwala Bagh, and the Orgreave playbooks. Yvette Cooper, the Labour government and the Met should learn from their and our history and then hang their heads in shame - they are seeking to justify the unjustifiable, the “gross abuse of state power”.

Ill Considered, Undemocratic and Coercive: Labour Should Be Ashamed.

 

I have just finished reading the splendid autobiography of ex-German Chancellor Angel Merkel – a woman who, whatever faults many thought she had, strode the world’s political stage like a colossus. She was a serious, grown up politician and although many might have disagreed with her on a raft of things her integrity was never questioned or in doubt nor was her undoubted desire to improve the lot of her own people and the those of the wider world; she was respected by all.

I have been thinking about Mrs Merkel in recent days as the Gaza situation continues to deteriorate. I don’t know what her political position would be on that dreadful story but I would guess that the plight of Palestinians would be high in her mindset. And for her it would, I guess be a profoundly difficult situation to negotiate for as a German the dark shadow of the Holocaust and accusations of anti-Semitism are never far from the national consciousness; Germany, understandably, has to tread a very delicate path.

As I read Merkel’s autobiography, I was struck by a comment that she made to the German people when Germany, like the rest of the world, was fighting COVID. As her government strove to balance the fight against COVID with the introduction of severe measures such as lockdowns to stop the spread of the disease she said “We are a democracy. We live not by coercion, but by shared knowledge and collaboration.” In other words, harsh measures would only be instituted with the consent of the German electorate. The sentiments and beliefs inherent in those few words put, in a nutshell, the core of democratic government – and something that is increasingly under threat across the world as many countries turn to more right wing, populist, totalitarian regimes; Trump’s America, Netanyahu’s Israel, Putin’s Russia, Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy…………in countries across the world the sound of jackboots are increasingly whispering in the wind.

Given Angela Merkel’s commitment to democracy and her record as a politician (and especially as someone who grew up in a totalitarian state – East Germany) I am almost certain that she would never, as our own political leadership have done, brought into German law the proscription of a group supporting Palestine, labelling them terrorists because that group committed minor infringement of the law.

The proscription of the protest group Palestine Action by British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is ill considered as a political action and a disgrace in terms of its morality. Under the law introduced by Cooper I can now be jailed for up to 14 years for mentioning the name of the group in this paragraph. I read today that the police, the prison service and ultimately the Home Secretary are currently “clearing space in prisons” to provide space for the many who are going to be arrested for supporting Palestine Action in planned demonstrations over the coming days. That fact in itself should tell Yvette Cooper that she is in a hole; the question is will she keep digging until we can’t see her head!

I am not saying that Palestine Action should not be punished if they break the law – as they clearly recently did when some of its members broke into a military base and damaged aircraft. But to proscribe an organisation and effectively hang a sword of Damocles over the heads of the whole population of the UK for showing support for this group or even uttering their name is nothing short of coercion. It brings into sharp focus with a dreadful irony the famous poem by the imprisoned Nazi opponent, German Padre Martin Niemöller:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Under Cooper’s ill-considered and undemocratic ruling a whole population is being forbidden under penalty of imprisonment to “speak out” when they disapprove of a government policy. That is, by anyone’s yardstick, coercion.

I hold no candle for Palestine Action. I am horrified at the Gaza situation and at Israel’s role – the world must stop it. But so far as Palestine Action is concerned my gripe is pure and simple – it is a bad law wrong at every level and unbecoming of a British government, especially a Labour one. It is short sighted, unsustainable, undemocratic, immoral, naïve and above all coercive; it not only makes the law look an ass, it turns the law into a monster intent upon gobbling up all in its path.

I have voted Labour all my life. Through the harshness of the Thatcher years and more recently in the navel gazing dishonesty of the Tory Party debacles of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Brexit, George Osborne’s “austerity” and all the other Tory car crashes I have “kept the faith”. Throughout my voting life – and I’m 80 now - I have always believed, known even, that although I will often disagree profoundly with some of the things a Labour government might do – or have to do – their “heart would be in the right place”, to govern wisely striving for the benefit of all. Their actions might not improve my lot but, I naively believed, it would improve the lot of someone somewhere – be it in this country or abroad.

I have come to the conclusion in recent months, however, that my beliefs are no longer quite so certain or valid. I don’t doubt the good intentions and sincerity of Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Lisa Nandy, Yvette Cooper or the rest of the Labour movers and shakers; nor do I doubt the integrity and passion of Jeremy Corbyn and many of his followers. But the reality is that having been in power now for a year they have shown a profound inability to govern wisely – put quite simply, they are not good enough. They have shown a worrying lack of intellectual capacity, political nous and organisational competence; the political shambles over winter fuel payments, various welfare policies, and several economic climb downs all suggest that if they were footballers they would be the third team not the Premier League side, they would have been substituted or transferred long since! This present ill considered proscription policy, however, is not just a chaotic bit of ill thought out legislation, it is far darker and infinitely more troubling about the health and well being of our democracy for it suggests that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's comment in The Gulag Archipelago that "Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty" . We should all be deeply afraid, the democratic balance is tipping away from Angela Merkel's consent model to one of totalitarian coercion. If today it is supporters of Palestine Action who lose their liberties, who comes next? - we are on the slippery pathway to make Martin Niemöller's poem our new reality.

Yes, Labour has given us a sense of calm after the Tory maelstrom and brought some semblance of sensible government back. But their decisions and actions have too often been naïve and ill thought out – as is this proscription of Palestine Action. Perhaps Ms Cooper might find it helpful to read Angela Merkel’s autobiography and and use it as an instruction manual - The Numpties Guide to Being a Politician - even underline in red Mrs Merkel’s comment “We are a democracy. We live not by coercion, but by shared knowledge and collaboration.” Maybe she should take a step back, think things through, understand the very delicate foundations upon which democracy rests upon; in short insert a bit of wisdom into her utterances rather than strutting her stuff, waving the populist flag and polishing her jack boots.

I shall await the knock on my door from MI5 or Special Branch or my local Bobby ready to arrest me for writing the words “Palestine Action” in this post. In that event - "When they come for me" to paraphrase Martin Niemöller's dreaded and fateful words - perhaps someone who reads this will bake me a cake with a file in it and send it to me “Care of Wormwood Scrubs”!

Leading global scholars sign letter urging UK to end Palestine Action ban | Israel-Gaza war | The Guardian

Dehumanised, Humiliated & Worthless; Feelings that Injure Our Very Soul - And All For A Loaf of Bread.

 

A quote attributed to, among others, the American poet and author Maya Angelou goes something like this: “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, but they will remember how you made them feel.” I don’t know whether this is true or false but having got to 80 years of age and looking back on my life I’m tempted to agree with the late Ms Angelou; how we feel is all about our emotions: our loves, our fears, our hates, our desires, our despair, our joys, the thrill of our achievements and the sorrow of our losses – in short the things that make us humans and not just a bag of moving skin and bones; it is about the very core of us - injure or harm that core and it is not easily forgotten.

I have thought about that quote much in recent months, weeks and especially the last few days as we have witnessed the deteriorating horror of Gaza; when we think it can’t get any worse, it does, in multiples of ten. The physical devastation of a landscape flattened to dirt and rubble, the wanton destruction of a people and a culture, the enforced migration of hundreds of thousands if not millions, and now increasingly the starvation of a population is unjustified carnage and a morally bankrupt action on the part of Israel which cannot, and must not, be allowed to go unquestioned and unpunished by the rest of the world.

It is a damning verdict on the rest of the world, that our governments have allowed this to continue unchecked for so long and it is an awful indictment upon us, the electorate of Britain, that we have allowed our government to be so wilfully ignorant and tardy about taking action. Our Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary tell us that they are “appalled” and are doing what they can in this “difficult and complicated situation”; they wring their hands and say the words but do nothing. I am reminded of the quote by Albert Einstein about those who would make war: “He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice” – in the case of our government’s responses to the Gaza situation one might happily suggest that our politicians need to grow a spinal cord and stand up to be counted; to do the right thing. Our Home Secretary covers her eyes to the Gaza situation and proscribes pro-Palestinian organisations that offend her sensibilities; she is wrong and should be ashamed. The only “difficult and complicated situation” in this horror story is a strong pro-Israel lobby combined with the fear by our politicians of being branded anti-Semitic; it seems that our government prefers offend whole swathes of the British electorate by not to offending Israel. In short, preferring instead to put their ministerial heads in the sand and take the easy way out, seeing no evil, hearing no evil and speaking no evil allow genocide to take place rather than taking the hard decision and acting ethically and bravely.

We should, for both moral and political reasons, be making clear to Israel that they are out of order on every front; for any democratic and humane government not to do this is an abdication of its moral, humanitarian and political responsibilities and imperatives. We should, too, be spelling out in words loud and clear, that Israel has not only lost any moral high ground it previously held but has also, in the minds of millions forfeited any moral rights based however loosely on memories of the Holocaust. They can no longer be considered exceptional, an untouchable "special case", absolved of all criticism and sanction, playing the Zionist, the Balfour Declaration, the arrant and arrogant nonsense that is the self-proclaiming "we are God's chosen people” occupying the land that God gave us, and the antisemitic cards whenever it suits them. They are not “God’s chosen people” nor do they have a God given right to the land they occupy – they are, like the rest of us, and importantly the Palestinian people, a grubby little race trying to live a life on a few thousand square metres of this little rock that we call Earth; no more no less.

But to return to Maya Angelou. As I have read the newspaper reports, watched the TV streams and seen the horrific pictures from Gaza of the shooting, the destruction, the starvation and all the rest, something else has worried me. These thoughts coalesced in my mind as I watched and listened to a Palestinian man speaking to a reporter while, in the background, his neighbours, sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers and children desperately scrambled, screaming, holding out their tin bowls to the aid workers. The man's words were simple but overpoweringly poignant and cutting "This is not aid" he quietly said, "This is humiliation for a loaf of bread."  He was not wrong; it was and is a carefully planned evilly intended ritual humiliation and belittling of Palestinians  by Israel. Anyone who has read Primo Levi's "If this is a man",  his powerful, moving and dreadful testimonial of his time in Auschwitz will know it is the same policy  used by the Nazis to belittle and humiliate the Jews, that is now being used by Israel in Gaza; its sole intent, as with the Nazis, to break not only bodies but minds and souls. The Palestinian man spoke, clinging to his simple dignity in the face of the profound persecution that we were witnessing in the background to the report and I was reminded that Levi's told of on the one hand overwhelming and harrowing suffering and yet on the other of inspiring and humbling dignity as those being persecuted sought to cling to their very humanity - for that was all they had left. And it became manifest to me that what I was watching  was Israel rehearsing the lessons of Hitler's Final Solution, but now in Gaza in 2025. The lessons learned in the Holocaust  by Jewish fathers and grandfathers are now meted out by Israeli sons and grandsons upon Palestinians. The abused have become the abusers. 

Once the war is over, once Gaza is rebuilt, once the dead are buried, and some kind of peace is brokered, and flowers grow again where now there is rubble and death, then what then? Maybe, over time physical wounds will heal – that's the easy bit. Maybe Palestinian children will play happily with Israeli children - but I won't hold my breath on that one. Maybe Benjamin Netanyahu will languish in some cell convicted of war crimes. Maybe there will be a two state solution. Maybe, maybe , maybe……. Yes, treaties might be signed, Gaza might be rebuilt, children might again thrive in Palestine a solution to the Israeli/Palestinian problem might be found. But I fear that there is more, that cannot be solved by treaties, money or time.

We have watched the TV films and seen the pictures in the newspapers, we have seen the thousands of pleading faces, holding out their begging bowls to men and women aid workers who dole out measures of basic food - feeding the hungry, giving a small chance of life to the weak and the vulnerable – and we have looked at the faces and I have increasingly and sorrowfully wondered what it must feel like to be in that position. To have nothing but a battered bowl to hold out as you scream and howl for food to feed your family. To not have the very basic requirements to live, to not know if you or your children will be alive tomorrow. I have wondered about the women, the wives and mothers unable to give their child what it needs – even in the smallest measure. And I have wondered, too, about the men – like beggars, completely dependent upon the goodwill of someone else and a system that they have no part in. Like the women, unable to feel pride and maternal satisfaction in bringing up a healthy happy child, the men losing all pride and dignity, unable to be what I might call “the bread winner” – redundant, lost, dehumanised, tossed around like flotsam in the maelstrom that is Palestine. These are feelings that injure our very core, our soul.

And, I wonder, as Maya Angelou's poem suggests, is this going to be the terrible and lasting legacy of the situation? The hurt, the destroyed feelings are the injuries that cannot be repaired with a bandage or a full belly or a roof over one’s head. Is this what they will remember. Is this what Palestinians will, understandably, carry deep within them – and if so what will it mean? I cannot begin to conceive what it must be like to beg for food as Palestinians are forced to do. I cannot comprehend what it must feel like as a parent to know that you cannot provide a meal, shelter and safety for your family. But I do know that it would make me angry and fill me with rage and hate for those who had allowed this to happen – whoever they might be. Would I feel grateful to the aid workers who pour the flour into my battered bowl? Of course I would – but simmering beneath that shallow gratitude would be resentment and, I think, feelings of revenge. As Maya Angelou said “At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, but they will remember how you made them feel.”

In Shakespeare’s great play “The Merchant of Venice” Shylock, the Jew, demands that the Judge find in his favour – give him his “pound of flesh” – against Antonio who has defaulted on his debt of 3000 ducats. Shylock is a deeply oppressed man, angry, vengeful, corrupted by the discrimination he has faced all his life as a Jew. All the injustice he has been subjected to has culminated in this climactic moment: he has been ostracised, lost his daughter and now offended by Antonio reneging on his debt. Shylock is resentful, his pride and dignity in tatters; he doesn't just want his 3000 ducats, he wants revenge for all the hurt he believes he has suffered and he challenges the court if he is not entitled to it because, he suggests, are not all humans created equal:

“…..If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies, and what’s his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.”

It is a terrible and dreadful irony that these few words are spoken by a Jew who, like the rest of his people, has suffered greatly. Jewish people, surely, know more than anyone else what it is to be vilified, murdered in huge quantities by a State, demeaned, humiliated, shamed in the eyes of the world and in being so must understand its impact upon others - their Palestinian neighbours - when they too are shamed and demeaned and humiliated and murdered.

Shylock’s words for me have such resonance when I think of the Palestinian people and what they must be feeling - and, almost certainly like Shylock, be seeking revenge. Hath not a Palestinian eyes, do Palestinians not suffer the same diseases, bleed when pricked, laugh when tickled, die when poisoned……….the Palestinian father or mother or teenage son might reasonably ask. I do not believe that if peace comes to Palestine everyone will forgive and forget. To use the analogy of Shakespeare’s play, the stage has been set.

Our government might, if the population of Palestine are lucky, decide to do something about this “difficult and complicated situation”. Our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and the rest might grow backbones and say to Benjamin Netanyahu, the pro-Israel lobby, the Zionists, the “God's chosen people” believers and those that play the antisemitic card “You are dreadfully and terribly in the wrong. This shall not be”. But that will not, I fear, be the end of it and we will not all be able to go back to our slumbers and live happily every after.

A terrible and difficult situation has now been manufactured with inevitable and dire consequences for us all. Do we expect those holding out the begging bowls, those burying their children in the rubble, those who have lost everything and more, those who have been made to feel worthless, less than human, of little consequence, flotsam, with no pride or dignity, just inconvenient blots on the Israeli horizon to simply smile and forget it, like a holiday where unfortunately it rained every day? Do we expect them to shrug their shoulders and say, "Oh, it is what it is, just part of life's rich tapestry"? The answer to that has to be a resounding “No”. The Palestinian men and women and children have not just suffered physical injuries that with time. money, goodwill and care can perhaps be rectified. They have been demeaned, humiliated and shamed. What they have been subjected to and made to feel will not be neatly tucked away in some drawer to gather dust and be forgotten about; these will be the things that they remember, every day, every week, every year, and be passed down to the next generation; the things that will gnaw at their very souls. We, and our political class, have let them down and ourselves down and created a situation where long-standing hatred and revenge will be high on the agenda. Israel will not be forgiven easily, nor will we who have allowed it to happen; we will have to learn to live with the consequences, and they may well be painful. For as Shylock told the court revenge is the result of disgrace, of being hindered and of being mocked, of being demeaned, considered worthless, shamed and humiliated - and whether we like it or not revenge will feature in the hearts and minds of the next generations of Palestinians - it cannot fail to be so.

"I Was Not Angry Since..........."; Gaza's Anguish & Israel's Depravity

The whole of humanity can be found in Shakespeare – there is no aspect of the human condition that is not covered in his writings: love, hatred, madness, treachery, war, peace, greed, envy, friendship, ecstasy, despair, truth, lies………..It is because of this that he has retained his popularity. Read or watch Shakespeare and you see life in all its glory and its horror – and we can all relate to it because what Shakespeare writes about is something that we have all seen or can see or will see.

In Henry V, the tale of King Henry’s war in France, much of the action is focused on the Battle of Agincourt – a defining conflict of the Hundred Years’ War - and during the battle the French commit what we would call today a war crime – they attack “the boys and the luggage”. In Mediaeval times when an army was on a campaign there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians who travelled with them – blacksmiths, carpenters, brewers, cooks, tradesmen of all kinds, prostitutes, luggage carriers (usually boys)…..the list is endless – there role, formal or informal to keep the army fed and watered and supply all the other needs of the fighting men; they were called the “luggage” And when a battle commenced it was a rule of war that these followers, the luggage, were exempt from the killing.

As the Battle of Agincourt raged around him one of Henry’s knights arrives and tells the King that the French have attacked the followers – the boys and the luggage, the civilian followers of the army - saying:

“Tis certain there’s not a boy left alive, and

the cowardly rascals that ran from the battle ha’

done this slaughter. Besides, they have burned

and carried away all that was in the King’s tent….”

On hearing this the King flies into a rage and says:

“….I was not angry since I came to France

Until this instant. Take a trumpet, herald.

Ride thou unto the horsemen on yond hill.

If they will fight with us, bid them come down,

Or void the field. They do offend our sight.

If they’ll do neither, we will come to them

And make them skirr away as swift as stones

Enforcèd from the old Assyrian slings.

Besides, we’ll cut the throats of those we have,

And not a man of them that we shall take

Shall taste our mercy. Go and tell them so

Kill the boys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly

against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of

knavery, mark you now, as can be offert, in your

conscience now, is it not……”

In other words, the rules of war, based upon knightly honour and common agreement to limit the suffering and death of innocents have been broken and Henry will have his revenge…….throats will be slit, prisoners of war will be executed, no prisoners will be taken alive, all will be put to death, French civilians considered fair game…..the whole thing is spiralling out of control, the gloves are off, anything goes…………

War never goes to plan – ever. It always turns out worse than imagined. When my Grandfather marched off to the trenches in 1914 he did so believing that “It will be over by Christmas” – for that is what was being reported – four years later and millions of deaths proved that belief wrong. When Putin began his “special operation” to annex part of Ukraine it was supposed to be over in a couple of weeks – well, we all know how that has gone. The Second World War rapidly morphed from armies, navies and air forces fighting each other on the battlefield to the blitz, the carpet bombing of cities, the atomic bomb destroying vast areas of Japan and in the process all of this terrifying and killing millions of innocent non-combatants and forcing millions to leave their homes and their lands as refugees. This is war – a dog that when it’s not on a very strong leash becomes untameable, unstoppable in its depravity and horror.

Shakespeare knew this and so should we, and so should Israel – the world has had thousands of years to learn about and understand the consequences of war but sadly humanity doesn’t learn. Of course, Israel will claim that it was Palestine that brought this upon themselves by the Hammas terrorist attack of October 2023 – this view has to be taken into the equation but it is limited in its veracity; that attack did not just happen it was a response to previous Israeli actions over many years and in itself this proves the point that, just as Shakespeare described in Henry V war always escalates and becomes uncontrollable, more vicious, more deadly, a rapidly accelerating spiral of man’s inhumanity to man.

“Kill the boys and the luggage! ’Tis expressly against the law of arms. ’Tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now” so said Henry on the Agincourt field and now, more than six centuries later, the state of Israel under orders from Benjamin Netanyahu is bombing innocents, starving children, destroying property, attacking civilian institutions such as hospitals. To date there has been over 59000 deaths in Gaza through direct Israeli military action and thousands more injured, starving, homeless and likely to die in the coming months and years; an “arrant piece of knavery” doesn’t go anywhere near describing it.

✱✱✱✱✱✱✱✱

In this article from this week’s New Stateman magazine former barrister, Supreme Court Judge, historian and author Jonathan Sumption (Lord Sumption), one of the nation’s most senior and experienced legal minds, explores the legality or otherwise of Israel’s actions in Gaza. It is eloquent, informative and gives the lie to much that Israel is saying to justify their actions in Gaza:.................

Operation “Gideon’s Chariots”, Israel’s latest assault on Gaza, began on the night of 16 May 2025. Sometimes the names of military operations carry a message. Gideon was the biblical liberator of Israel from its oppressors, who led a small force of 300 men to defeat the mighty host of the Midianites. “Gideon’s Chariots” expresses the traditional narrative that Israel is the underdog fighting for survival.

It is a myth. Israel is one of the most highly militarised and technically advanced states in the world. In terms of GDP per head it is also one of the richest. It is an undeclared nuclear power. At $37bn, its defence budget is by far the biggest in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia’s. Its security is implicitly guaranteed by the United States, which contributes over $3bn a year to its defence. By comparison, Gaza was one of the world’s poorest territories even before the destruction recently visited upon it. It has no armed forces apart from Hamas terrorists and a handful of other local militias. It is virtually defenceless against tanks and aircraft. Israel is in a position to do whatever it likes to Gaza, and it does. Hamas’s professed ambition may be to eliminate the state of Israel, but it has no more chance of achieving it than a gnat has of killing an elephant.

Israel once enjoyed a great deal of moral capital. The Holocaust and the long Jewish experience of persecution aroused sympathy across the West. The idealism surrounding the foundation of the Israeli state and the remarkable social, intellectual and economic achievements of Israel since then were rightly admired. This soft power was politically valuable to Israel. It masked the historic injustice inflicted on the indigenous population of Palestine at the foundation of Israel, when they were cleared out in order to make way for a Jewish state.

That moral capital has now been largely dissipated. International hostility to Israel is particularly strong among the world’s young, who will dominate its international outlook in the next generation. Anti-Semitism exists, but it is not the main reason for this significant shift of opinion. It has happened because of the way in which Israel has chosen to deploy its overwhelming strength against the vulnerable population of Gaza. This has already provoked the issue of arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and the former defence minister Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court, which is a serious and impartial court whatever the US government may say. Serious criticisms have been made of Israel’s conduct in Gaza by the United Nations, and countries such as Britain, France, South Africa, Australia and Canada. Many countries have imposed total or partial arms embargoes.

There is a strong case that Israel is guilty of war crimes. As a matter of international law, Israel has a right to defend itself, but the methods which it uses are circumscribed by treaty. Israel has signed up to the Geneva Conventions of 1949. The Fourth Convention contains extensive protections for civilian populations caught in a war zone. It forbids attacks on hospitals in any circumstances, unless the hospitals are themselves being used to commit acts of war (articles 18 and 19). It forbids the destruction of private property except where this is “rendered absolutely necessary by military operations” (article 53). As an occupying power in relation to most of Gaza, Israel is bound to ensure that food and medical supplies are provided to the population (article 55). The permanent displacement of the population is strictly forbidden (article 49).

These provisions have been supplemented by a substantial body of binding customary law. International humanitarian law, the generic name given to this body of law, has been codified by the International Committee of the Red Cross in a way that is generally regarded as impartial and authoritative. Military operations must not be directed against civilian targets. This includes towns, cities and villages, residential areas and specific installations such as hospitals, water processing facilities, power plants and other facilities essential to the survival of the civilian population. Indiscriminate attacks are forbidden, including area bombardment and the use of weapons whose effects are uncontrollable. Starvation is specifically banned as a method of warfare. All forms of ethnic cleansing are ruled out.

Of all the rules of international humanitarian law the most important is the rule which requires proportionality in warfare. The International Committee of the Red Cross expresses it as follows:

“Launching an attack which may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, which would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, is prohibited.”

This means that some military operations are unacceptable although they may have an important military purpose and bring real military advantages, because the civilian casualties would simply be too high.

It is easy to dismiss these principles as the dreams of unworldly professors and the misplaced idealism of lawyers. But that would be a serious mistake. They are included in the military manuals of most civilised states, including Israel’s. They are based on a realistic assessment that war is unavoidable but can be at least partly humanised. This is a major achievement of our world and marks a significant advance in the regulation of warfare, drawing on the catastrophic experiences of the Second World War. We cannot really want to return to the barbarism of the area bombing of cities, the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, the deliberate mass starvation of populations and the vast forced population transfers which characterised that conflict. We cannot without hypocrisy criticise the wholesale violation of civilised standards by Russia in Ukraine, and tacitly endorse them when practised by Israel in Gaza.

At the outset, the declared object of Israeli military operations in Gaza was to destroy Hamas. The problem with this has always been that although much of the leadership of Hamas and some of its installations are identifiable, Hamas is not an organised and disciplined combatant force like a uniformed army. It is a paramilitary movement dispersed among the civilian population like needles in a haystack. It can be destroyed, if at all, only by burning the entire haystack. Yet every sprig of straw in the haystack is a human life. The destruction of Hamas is probably unachievable by any amount of violence, but it is certainly unachievable without a grossly disproportionate effect on human life.

Hamas’s attacks on 7 October 2023 killed 1,195 people. According to the Gaza health authorities (part of the Hamas administration) 57,645 Palestinians have so far been killed in Israeli military operations. In addition, over 180 journalists are reported to have died and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, 179 of them employees of the United Nations’ relief organisation UNWRA, which Israel will no longer allow to operate in Gaza. These figures do not include indirect casualties from preventable disease and malnutrition caused by war. Most of the victims have been identified by name. A proportion of them are no doubt Hamas fighters. Assessments are necessarily conjectural, but plausible estimates suggest that Hamas may account for 20 per cent of the casualties. United Nations agencies estimate that about 70 per cent have been women and children. The casualties include those caused by grotesque acts of violence such as the bombing of hospitals full of patients, many of whom cannot be moved, because there are said to be Hamas command centres underneath them; or the destruction by bombing of entire apartment blocks whose residents are said to include some Hamas operatives. As of January 2025, more than nine-tenths of residential buildings in Gaza had been destroyed or badly damaged. These figures may be criticised at the margins, but they have been verified by reputable academic studies and responsible agencies of the United Nations. They are not just propaganda or figments of anti-Semitic imaginations.

The total blockade of Gaza announced by Netanyahu on 2 March 2025 began to cause famine within a fortnight. It was thought likely to lead ultimately to the most extreme case of man-made famine since the Second World War. The defence minister, Israel Katz, explained in April 2025:

“Israel’s policy is clear: no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population.”

It would be hard to imagine a clearer statement that starvation was being used as a weapon of war. In May, Israel qualified the policy by setting up a system of food distribution from militarised “hubs” organised by its own tame organisation, the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. That system has largely broken down and was never capable of feeding more than part of the population. Meanwhile, the United Nations Human Rights Agency has recorded nearly 800 Palestinians killed while gathering at distribution hubs, hoping for food. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz recently reported, on the basis of interviews with soldiers, that this has been done on the express orders of senior officers of the Israel Defence Forces.

I have no ideological position on this conflict. I approach it simply as lawyer and a historian. But I sometimes wonder what Israel’s defenders would regard as unacceptable, if the current level of Israeli violence in Gaza is not enough. It is impossible for any decent person to be unmoved by the scale of arbitrarily imposed human suffering, or the spectacle of a powerful army brutally assaulting a population already on its knees. This is not self-defence. It is not even the kind of collateral damage which can be unavoidable in war. It is collective punishment, in other words revenge, visited not just on Hamas but on an entire population. It is, in short, a war crime.

Is it also genocide? That is a more difficult question. Genocide is defined by the Genocide Convention of 1951 (to which Israel is party) as acting with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, by killing its members, causing them serious bodily or mental harm or deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part. Because genocide depends on intent, there will always be room for argument about whether it is happening.

Recently, a new war aim has emerged alongside the original plan to destroy Hamas. This is nothing less than the wholesale displacement of the population of Gaza to third countries. The Israeli minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, is a long-standing advocate of ethnic cleansing. The finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, is another. He announced at a public press conference on 6 May 2025, shortly after the decision to launch Operation Gideon’s Chariots, that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.” He went on to explain that Palestinians would be herded into a Hamas-free zone, and from there would leave “in great numbers” to third countries.

These two men were recently sanctioned by Britain and four other countries “in their personal capacity”. But they were not speaking in their personal capacity, and cannot so easily be distinguished from the rest of the Israeli government. Both of them are leaders of minor far-right parties in the Knesset belonging to Netanyahu’s coalition. They have the rest of the cabinet over a barrel, because Netanyahu’s coalition government has a small majority, and without their support it will fall. So the government cannot afford to depart too far from their policy positions. A week after Smotrich’s remarks, Netanyahu, giving evidence to a Knesset committee, reported that Israel was destroying more and more housing so that the population would have nowhere to return to and would have to leave Gaza. More recently, on 7 July, the defence minister, Israel Katz, briefed Israeli media that it was proposed to incarcerate Palestinians in a vast camp to be built on the ruins of Rafah, pending their departure for other countries.

Statements like these from the prime minister and senior ministers in his cabinet have to be considered together with the sheer scale of the human casualties and the indiscriminate physical destruction inflicted on their orders. The most plausible explanation of current Israeli policy is that its object is to induce Palestinians as an ethnic group to leave the Gaza Strip for other countries by bombing, shooting and starving them if they remain.

A court would be likely to regard that as genocide. One of the main barriers to clear thinking about Gaza is the fact that debate is muffled by two dangerous falsehoods. One is the idea that this story began with the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023; the other is that any attack on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic. A fortnight after the attack, António Guterres, the secretary-general of the United Nations, pointed out in the Security Council that it “did not happen in a vacuum”. It followed 56 years in which the Palestinians in Gaza had suffered “suffocating occupation… their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence, their economy stifled, their people displaced and their homes demolished.” He was expressing the self-evident truth that if you persistently treat people like that, hatred, violence and terrorism will eventually be the response. The Israeli ambassador objected to his attempt to “understand” terrorism and demanded his resignation on the ground that his words were an anti-Semitic blood libel. This neatly encapsulated both falsehoods.

The tragedy is that what Israel is doing in Gaza is not even in its own interest, although it may be in the personal interest of Netanyahu if it helps him to stay in power. Hamas is, among other things, an idea. It is an idea which will not disappear, and which Israel will have to live with, for it will never have peace until it learns to recognise and accommodate the natural attachment of Palestinians as well as Israelis to their land. That will involve considerable concessions by Israel, but the alternative will be worse.

The Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was unforgivable, and it is sometimes said that to understand it is tantamount to justifying it. “Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner,” says Princess Bolkonsky in War and Peace. I would put it the other way round. That which we cannot forgive, we have a duty to understand. Otherwise we will get more of it.

"The hour is great; and the honourable Gentlemen are small”

“…….I was in London in the blitz in 1940, living in the Millbank tower, where I was born. Some different ideas have come in since. And every night, I went down to the shelter in Thames house. Every morning, I saw dockland burning. Five hundred people were killed in Westminster one night by a land mine. It was terrifying. Aren't Arabs terrified? Aren't Iraqis terrified? Don't Arab and Iraqi women weep when their children die? Does bombing strengthen their determination? What fools we are to live in a generation for which war is a computer game for our children and just an interesting little Channel Four news item…….” So warned Tony Benn in his impassioned and compassionate speech to Parliament in 1998 prior to the decision to bomb Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. (Click on video to hear and witness Benn's passion and compassion).

I didn't always agree with Tony Benn but cannot deny he was the consummate politician committed to his cause, a man of total integrity and a thoroughly decent member of the human race. On this occasion, however, as I watched this video and listened to him I found myself nodding in agreement and becoming increasingly angry as I reflected that nothing has changed at all about man's inhumanity to man and the wilful inability of politicians to do the right thing; in 1998 the big geo-political/moral question to be confronted was “Shall we bomb Iraq” today, in 2025 it is “Should we stop Israel destroying Gaza and the Palestinian people?”. What’s the right thing to do? Benn made this speech in 1998 before the proposed bombing of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq but what it speaks of, and the moral issues it raises, are just as applicable, if not more so, today as we bear witness to Gaza's anguish and Israel's many and heinous war crimes which have been allowed to become more egregious, unacceptable and immoral through every passing hour.

We have allowed pain and suffering, immoral and unlawful action and the wholesale destruction of lives and families to become normalised, to become “alright”. We watch the images on our TV screens and are no longer horrified and distressed or even embarrassed at what we see; "It is what it is" we mumble shamelessly, trying to remove ourselves from any culpability as our own politicians sit on the fence anxious not to cause offence lest they be accused of antisemitism. "Nothing to see here....move on....get over it", says Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, and our government is only too pleased to concur, to be "got off the hook" of moral responsibility or action, and all the while Gaza lies in rubble, Palestinians die and children starve - and Netanyahu celebrates.

But there was more than anger in my thinking. As I listened to Benn's words I realised what a huge intellectual hinterland, wealth of worldly and political knowledge and experience this man had. It's only when you have that hinterland and breadth of experience and understanding that you can make powerful speeches like this. And I thought of our politicians today. I can think of none of any party remotely capable of the breadth of this man's vision and soaring oratory; think Truss, Starmer, Raynor, Badenoch, Patel, Sunak, Johnson, Farage, Raab, Anderson, ,.......and the rest of our elected representatives - bumbling, monosyllabic visionless, uninspiring, wannabes who might have clever Oxford degrees but have no wisdom or courage and too often are incapable of stringing two joined up ideas together to make a coherent whole; and unlike Benn would not know integrity or a moral action if it ran over them in the street. I don't doubt that the present incumbents of Westminster and Downing Street are well intentioned and believe in what they are doing but in the end they are at best inadequate, lacking the wisdom and understanding required to be effective, competent and respected, unwilling to take the hard decisions for fear of the latest opinion poll; in short unfit for the purpose that we have put them there. To paraphrase Scottish historian and philosopher Thomas Carlyle’s biting commentary of the elected leaders of his time: “The hour is great; and the honourable Gentlemen, I must say, are small”.

If, as we are led to believe, modern politicians are held in very low regard by the electorate the reason is simple - because, compared to politicians of the past they are third or fourth rate nobodies with nothing moving or powerful to say. If as an elected leader (which all politicians are) you cannot move and convince people of the rightness of your cause, then you are a waste of space. Where have the Benns, the Churchills, the Bevans, the Macmillans, the Attlees, the Healeys, the Thatcher’s the Foots and the rest of the great political minds and speakers gone; the people who spoke to our hearts as well as our minds and in doing so forged our current nation. We might not have agreed with them, indeed we might have hated them for the policies they espoused, but we respected them because they did not dodge the bullets, they addressed the issues that had to be addressed head on, and in doing so, forced us to address them too; in short they were leaders: wise and unafraid to court unpopularity for what they believed in.

We live in a politically impoverished age, an age where being an illiterate numpty is qualification enough to get you elected to Parliament - or even to become President of America - an age where the ordinary and everyday is lauded as "awesome" or "fantastic"; and an age where the views and opinions of the wilfully ignorant and unthinking are given credence. We live in an age where rightness of belief and political action on behalf of government and big business is increasingly an economic question, where money talks – where the question is asked “What will we get out of doing this or that?” rather than “What is the right or just or morally acceptable or decent thing to do?” - and when money talks no one checks the grammar (think the selling of arms to Israel so that Zionists can rain more death and destruction on children and a starving people, and justified by the impoverished reasoning that “If we don’t do it someone else will!”). Too often the answer to the question “What should we do?” is “What does it cost and what benefit do we get out of it?” So preoccupied with whether or not they could, politicians all parties don't stop to think if they should. Tony Benn answered this cost/benefit problem well when he said: “If we can find the money to kill people, then we can find the money to help people.”

In a world such as this integrity and doing the right thing has lost all meaning. Tony Benn, were he alive today, would weep. In such a world as this we all increasingly suffer for when we lose our integrity anything goes and anything can be justified; wrong becomes right, words lose their meaning, and systems, institutions and the old accepted standards begin to fail (think the Trump inspired riots at America's Capital, think Hitler's Germany and its “final solution” to the problem of the Jews, think Putin’s “special operation”- a terrifying euphemism for making war on Ukraine). And we allow this at our peril, for integrity, honesty and truth matter: they bring justice and decency and ultimately compassion. Once these basic values are eroded or side-lined, as we are seeing today, then in places like Gaza pain, anguish and wilful destruction become normalised, we avert our eyes to great wrongs, we deny truth, and become wilfully ignorant. And in Gaza and other places across the planet thousands die.

Over two thousand years ago Athenian General and historian, Thucydides, the father of military history and strategy, told us in his magnum opus “The History of the Peloponnesian War” – a work still required study in military academies across the world - that the great truth of war is that "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"; the people of Gaza (and the citizens of Kiev) are witness to this today, they know it well, while our politicians and we wring our hands and weep crocodile tears but do nothing. No one in our political/leadership class is willing to act with integrity, decency, strength and compassion to end the bloodshed. No one is prepared to say to Benjamin Netanyahu “This shall not be”.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer reminded us that compassion is the basis of morality. Given this self evident truth and the unwillingness of our politicians to take the hard decisions, to sit on the fence rather than act it seems to me that the Good Samaritan would today get short shrift in the corridors of power in western governments. If Jesus was retelling his parable today he might include a fourth traveller on the road to Jericho. In addition to the Samaritan who took care of the injured victim of robbers Christ might have included, with the Priest and the Levite who passed on the other side of the road without helping, a Politician who sat on the roadside fence, watching as the robbers beat the man almost to death and then looked doleful, wringing his hands, weeping crocodile tears, doing nothing afraid that the robbers might accuse him of being antisemitic, whilst checking his mobile phone for the latest opinion polls. And all the while, the injured man, like Gaza, lay bleeding in the dirt. The passion and compassion inherent in the parable of the Good Samaritan and shown by Tony Benn in this video is not a high priority on the cost/benefit policy balance sheets of today’s Westminster.

In that 1998 speech Tony Benn said “…..Every Member of Parliament tonight who votes for the Government motion will be consciously and deliberately accepting responsibility for the deaths of innocent people if the war begins,…..”. That comment is just as true today – if Parliament, the government, and we the people are not prepared to say “This shall not be” and take whatever action is necessary to bring about an end to Netanyahu and Israel’s destruction of a people then we “will be consciously and deliberately accepting responsibility for the deaths of innocent people”

Tony Benn told us all this almost three decades ago and today we should be ashamed for not heeding his message, his truth his passion and his compassion.

Tom Hanks repairs some of the damage done by Donald Trump

I'm not really a film buff and certainly not into most of the drivel that comes out of 21st century Hollywood which is, it seems to me, at best banal and mostly poorly done. It's too often filled with unnecessary expletives and gratuitous violence combined with a tissue paper thin story line hyped up by technological wizardry to cover its obvious short comings; all this when combined with often incoherent diction and a mind numbing plot it seems to me to be a metaphor for Trump’s contemporary America.

Trump has informed us for years that he is going to “Make America Great Again”. Mmmm!? But, as I have frequently argued, since America is the biggest player on the world's playground he will never make his country great again by being the playground bully which, as the last few months have shown, is Trump's and through him America's preferred modus operandi. When the biggest boy on the school playground thoughtlessly knocks over smaller children or uses his size to threaten and instil fear he is not respected and thought well of - he is feared and disliked in equal measure. With size and power comes responsibility and Trump will make America great and respected again only by making it good again – only in that way will America and Donald Trump earn the respect he craves rather than the fear and loathing that he and his country are currently subject to.

All of which brings me back to films. Last night we sat and thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful film – “A Man Called Otto” – starring that doyen of Hollywood stars Tom Hanks. This was Hollywood, Hanks, and America at its best. Anyone watching that film must come away with a positive view of the best of America. OK, it was pure fiction, a feel good movie, some might call it cheesy but it was beautifully acted, a strong story line, believable characters and with a strong message about people and the different worlds in which we all live. Tom Hanks, in my view, has never made a bad film, but I believe too, that he is so much more than a great American actor. In contemporary terms he possibly does more for America in terms of “soft power” - positively influencing people about America - than probably any other single person; I’m absolutely sure that anyone, anywhere in the world, watching any of the great Hanks’ films over the years – Apollo 13, Saving Private Ryan, Forrest Gump, Sleepless in Seattle, The Green Mile……….and many others – could not be positively influenced about Hanks and America; they are about decency and doing the right thing; never gratuitous, but ultimately filled with optimism and goodness. I may be wrong but I have never heard of any “darker side” to Hanks – and although he’s getting on now he is, I suppose, one of those people who one might say every mother would like for a son and every father a son in law!

“A Man Called Otto” is another Tom Hanks winner and an absolute delight – anyone who doesn’t enjoy this and feel the better for seeing it has a problem – they’ve been born without empathy and humanity genes. Gentle, in places humorous, and beautifully observed throughout, it is both profound and poignant. As we watched we recognised so many of the light hearted but searingly touching little cameos and events as Otto struggled to cope with life after the death of his beloved Sonya and his own retirement from work. We laughed at Otto as he became increasingly frustrated with people, we empathised with him as he withdrew from everyday life and became resentful towards his workmates and neighbours and then, we cried for him as we slowly learned more about his life and understood why he no longer wanted to go on. But we smiled too, and silently cheered as his neighbours drew him back and made life again meaningful for grumpy Otto. And Hanks carried it off to perfection as, I would suggest, few if any other Hollywood star could do.

Watching the film I was reminded of that wonderful and yet profound little verse "Outwitted" by American poet and author Edwin Markham. The verse beautifully describes how we can draw people back into the fold when they have become isolated and bereft; just like Otto in the film:

"He drew a circle that shut me out-

Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him In!"

It was a film I’ll remember for a very long time; a gentle, touching film and one to make you feel good about the human race – and, surely, we need a shed load of that at the moment.

We watched it on Channel 4 – so if you haven’t seen it, it may be worth looking there.

"After Virtue", Trump's America & The Descent Into Barbarism

Last week one of the world's great moral philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre, passed away. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/may/25/alasdair-macintyre-obituary He was an intellectual giant and his great work "After Virtue" is one of my "Bibles". In many ways, he was a rebel - unfashionable in today's political and philosophical worlds, but uncompromising in his beliefs. It was this rebellious nature and his challenging of the moral landscape's status quo, however, that ensured his importance and relevance; you might agree with him or not, love him or hate him, but you cannot ignore or dismiss him or his views for they asked questions that cannot be ignored abut the nature of man, of goodness and of rightness of action.

The word "virtue" in the title of his seminal magnum opus seems today old fashioned, twee, but to MacIntyre, and indeed to me, a world without virtue is a barren and bleak place; it would be a world where dishonesty, lack of empathy, lack of honour, lack of doing the "right thing", lack of decency or justice prevailed. We are already seeing this in our everyday worlds; it is the defining culture of Trump's Presidency in America, it is the edge of barbarism. If we have no virtue - goodness, a willingness to do "the right thing", to live our lives striving to act morally - then what are we and what will the world become? To be virtuous does not mean to simply obey society's rules or be fearful of the consequences of our actions but to strive throughout our lives to develop qualities such as honesty, courage, empathy, sympathy and to do these things with no thought of reward or punishment. As MacIntyre says so powerfully in After Virtue: “Virtues are dispositions not only to act in particular ways, but also to feel in particular ways. To act virtuously is to act from inclination formed by the cultivation of the virtues”; as humans we must strive daily to develop virtuous qualities. In short, it is to fulfil the requirements set out in St Paul's Letter to the Philippians:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true,

Whatsoever things are honest,

Whatsoever things are just,

Whatsoever things are pure,

Whatsoever things are lovely,

Whatsoever things are of good report;

If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things...."

After Virtue sits by my side, within touching distance on my office shelf with other great philosophical works or the western civilization: Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, Karl Popper's The Open Society & Its Enemies, Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, Iris Murdoch's Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, Sartre's Being & Nothingness, Ayre's Truth & Logic, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Descartes' Meditations, Pascal's Pensées, John Rawls' Theory of Justice, Michael Sandel's Justice, Isaiah Berlin's The Crooked Timber of Humanity, Derek Parfit's Reasons & Persons, John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding......and many, many more.

My life would be quite unthinkable without these great works to dip into, to help me make sense of our world and my place in it; and in these worrying times to provide some consolation and understanding as I ponder the dangerous paths that modern mankind is travelling. These works, some of them thousands of years old, are not dusty old fashioned tracts with no relevance for us today. They are timeless, about today and for today; they are the wisdom of thousands of years by the greatest intellects of those centuries and as such, teach us and show us the way forward.

In 1981 (almost 50years ago!) when After Virtue was first published Alasdair MacIntyre wrote in his book: “What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without ground for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.”

Fifty years ago MacIntyre wrote that but, given the state of the world in 2025, it is so prescient today. He was not wrong; in Trump's America, Putin's Russia, Netanyahu's Israel, many parts of Europe and here in the UK the barbarians are indeed governing us or at least at the gates, the dark ages are returning. It may be too late, but we owe it to ourselves, to past generations and to future generations to understand the wisdom of MacIntyre and these other great thinkers and ensure that "civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained".

RIP Alasdair MacIntyre - a brilliant mind, a rebel, a man unafraid to stand up for what he believed in and most importantly a good and virtuous man.