Mick Hartley

Nick Cohen, "from a forthcoming anthology of the best writing of the late and much missed Norman Geras", looks at the Euston Manifesto ten years on:

The Euston Manifesto appears a noble failure. It was clear in 2006 that the attempt to revive left-wing support for internationalism, democracy and universal human rights did not have a strong chance of success. Looking back a decade on, it seems doomed from the start. The tyrannical habits of mind it condemned were breaking out across the left in 2006. They are everywhere now. They define the Labour Party and most of what passes for intellectual left-wing life in the 21^st century…

I accept that if you insist on ignoring the evidence of your senses you might believe that the manifesto’s hopes for a principled anti-racism have been half-realised. Norman Geras, Alan Johnson and all the other bloggers and academics who produced the manifesto wanted a universal commitment to oppose ‘the anti-immigrant racism of the far Right; racism against people from Muslim countries, and the resurgence of, anti-Semitism.’ Left-wing and Muslim anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and hatreds were hardly novel a decade ago. They are now so commonplace, they shock but no longer surprise me. But you might argue, that a decade on, the left’s commitment to opposing anti-Muslim bigotry remains solid. Don’t believe it. Let a liberal Muslim or ex-Muslim start arguing against Islamist reaction and leftists will turn on him or her. The white left is all for defending Muslims, but only if they are the right sort of Muslim.

At the same time as Norman Geras and his comrades were writing the Euston Manifesto, I was writing What’s Left,  a history of how western left-wingers found themselves excusing movements of the religious and secular far right . I drew careful distinctions, as Norman did. You could not generalise, we said. There were many lefts. We ourselves were leftists, who flattered ourselves that we were upholding the best traditions of the left against the totalitarian sympathisers in our midst.

I cannot say the same now. Of course, many left-wingers reject the politics of Jeremy Corbyn.  But the majority of those who call themselves left-wing do not. You can puff that the clowns who go along with inquisitorial, misogynist, racist and homophobic Islamists are not ‘true leftists’, but the fellow travellers of modern fascism. And you would be correct. But Lyndon Johnson had it right when he said ‘the first lesson of politics is to be able to count’.  Numbers matter. Majorities define a movement. If the majority of people who call themselves left-wing reject the principles of the Euston Manifesto, it is tedious and pointless to argue that those principles are somehow the ideals of ‘the real left’ or the ‘true left’ or whatever else you want to call it. Left-wing politics are what left-wing people do….

The manifesto, meanwhile, continues to be read. I take a particular pleasure in seeing liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims reaching for its arguments as they struggle to understand what has gone wrong with a left they naively assumed would encourage and defend them.

As for the left-liberal mainstream, now without a hope of power in Westminster, and led by men who daily shame themselves and all who associate with them, they have a choice they have postponed making for a decade. They could try to find moral arguments that would allow a social democratic movement to flourish in the 21^st century. History may be written by the victors but it can be used by the defeated, if the defeated are prepared to see their own faults. If the centre-left understands why it found itself naked before its enemies, if it is prepared to engage in overdue self-criticism, then it may find that the Euston Manifesto is still of some use to it.

But if, those who ignored or condemned the Euston Manifesto refuse to learn from their mistakes…Who cares? Others will take up its causes. Indeed, they already have.