Russian parlementariens in Georgia crisis: statement issued at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly autumn meeting

This statement was issued in English and French at the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly autumn meeting on 29th September.

Council of Europe Should Investigate Russian MPs Who Voted to Dismember Georgia

British MP Denis MacShane has urged fellow delegates to the Council of Europe to take action against Russian MPs who voted to dismember and annexe part of a UN and Council of Europe member state, Georgia. Speaking to MPs at the Council of Europe MacShane said:

“The Council of Europe is composed of 636 parliamentarians from 47 countries. Only the Russians MPs arrive having voted to cut up a member state of the Council of Europe, after the Duma and Council of the Federation (Senate) in Moscow responded to the conflict in Georgia by destroying the territorial integrity of Georgia.

“There have been many bitter human rights conflicts in different European states during the history of the Council of Europe. From French behaviour in Algeria in the 1950s to Russian behaviour in Chechnya more recently, many Council of Europe members have been accused – including Britain in Northern Ireland in the 1970s – of violations of the European Convention of Human Rights.

“I deplore what President Saakashivili did on 7/8 August. I deplore the disproportionate Russian response, with Russian tanks arriving in Georgia many kilometres from the contested area.

“But we have to go back to the Reichstag vote to dismember Czechoslovakia and recognise the Sudetenland as part of Gemany in 1939, to have an example of parliamentarians voting the partition or dismemberment of a European nation state.

“There is no comparison with Kosovo as the international jurists commission headed by Robert Badinter declared in 1992 that the Yugoslav Federation had been dissolved. This opened the way to giving Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and in due course Kosovo the right to form nations and small states.

“Today Russian parliamentarians have arrived in force at the Council of Europe to assert their right to dismember a sovereign republic and member state of the Council of Europe. It will be to the dishonour of the Council of Europe if no action is taken to make clear to Russian MPs that their vote in Moscow is unacceptable. I regret that British Conservative MPs have been meeting in the same group as Mr Putin’s deputies this morning. It says much for Tory leader David Cameron that he allows British Conservative MPs to act as fellow travellers of the Kremlin as Russian MPs assert their right to break up a member state of the Council of Europe.”

Le Conseil de l’Europe devrait lancer une offensive à l’encontre des députés russes qui ont voté le démembrement de la Géorgie

Le député britannique Denis MacShane a appelé ses collègues parlementaires délégués au Conseil de l’Europe à agir de concert à l’encontre des députés russes qui ont voté en faveur du démembrement et de l’annexion d’une partie d’un Etat membre des Nations Unies et du Conseil de l’Europe, la Géorgie. Dans son discours devant l’Assemblée parlementaire du Conseil de l’Europe, MacShane s’est exprimé en ces termes :

"Le Conseil de l’Europe est composé de 636 parlementaires représentant 47 pays. Des députés russes arrivent parmi nous, ayant voté à la Douma et au Conseil de la Fédération (Sénat) à Moscou le découpage d’un Etat membre du Conseil de l’Europe en réponse au conflit en Géorgie, approuvant ainsi la destruction de l’intégrité territoriale de la Géorgie.

"Il y a eu de nomreux conflits amers sur les droits de l’homme tout au long de l’histoire du Conseil de l’Europe. Depuis le comportement français en Algérie pendant les années 1950, jusqu’à l’attitude des Russes en Tchétchénie récemment, des membres du Conseil de l’Europe ont souvent été accusés – y compris le Royaume-Uni au sujet de l’Irlande du Nord dans les années 1970- de violations de la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme.

"Je déplore l’erreur commise par le Président Saakashvili les 7 et 8 aoûts derniers. Je déplore la réponse disproportionnée de la Russie, consistant à lancer des chars russes dans une zone s’étalant bien au-delà de la région contestée.

"Mais il nous faut remonter au vote du Reichstag démantelant la Tchécoslovaquie et reconnaissant le territoire des Sudètes comme faisant partie de l’Allemagne en 1939 pour retrouver un épisode historique de vote par des parlementaires pour partager ou démembrer un Etat nation sur le sol européen.

"Il n’y a pas de comparaison possible avec le Kosovo ; la commission de juristes internationaux dirigée par Robert Badinter avait déclaré dès 1992 que la Fédération yougoslave avait été dissoute. Cela a ouvert la voie à la reconnaissance du droit, pour la Macédoine, le Monténegro, la Bosnie, et à terme le Kosovo, de former une nation et de devenir des petits Etats.

"Aujourd’hui les parlementaires russes sont arrivés en force au Conseil de l’Europe pour affirmer leur droit de démanteler une république souveraine et un Etat membre du Conseil de l’Europe. Cela serait un déshonneur pour le Conseil que de ne pas agir pour faire comprendre aux délégués russes que leur vote n’est pas acceptable. Je regrette que les députés britanniques conservateurs aient siégé dans le même groupe que les députés de Monsieur Poutine ce matin. Cela en dit beaucoup du dirigeant de l’opposition David Cameron, qui permet aux représentants britanniques conservateurs d’agir comme des camarades de voyage avec le Kremlin, alors même que les députés russes affirment leur droit de casser l’intégrité territoriale d’un Etat membre du Conseil de l’Europe. »

Interview with Austrian journalist about the future of the democratic left

This interview done in Manchester during the Labour conference was published in Kurier, a mainstream Austrian newspaper, on 25 September 2008

Rot in Not: Groβritanniens ehemaliger EuropaministerMacShane über die Ursachen des Niedergangs der sozialdemokratischen Parteien

"Brauchen einen neuen Marx"

by Konrad Kramar in Manchester

Der britische Ex-Europaminister Denis MacShane hat unter dem Titel ?Die Krise der demokratischen Linken in Europa? kritische Thesen zur Sozialdemokratie verfasst.Der KURIER traf den Labour-Politiker in Manchester.

KURIER: Sichere Arbeitspl䴺e,Pensionen,Gesundheitssystem? die politische Debattewird von sozialdemokratischenAnliegen dominiert.Warumschw䣨eln dann dieParteien?
Denis MacShane: Jeder will den Sozialismus f?h, sichere Arbeitsverh䬴nisse mit guter Gesundheitsversorgung und garantierter Pension. F? Nachbarn aber lieber Kapitalismus mit schwerer
Arbeit unter Druck und ohne Sicherheiten. Sozialdemokratie beinhaltet auch den Willen jedes
Einzelnen, sich in seinen W?n zu beschr䮫en. Und das passt nicht in diese Kreditkarten-
Gesellschaft, die jedemvorgaukelt, alles gleich haben zu k?n. Warum kommen der Sozialdemokratie
dieW䨬er aus der Arbeiterschaft abhanden? Sie hat sich nicht an die neue Arbeitswelt angepasst, in der es kaum noch Industriearbeiter, daf?r immer mehr Selbstst䮤ige gibt, ohne festeBindung anArbeitgeber.
Die Gewerkschaften k䭰fen heutemeist nicht gegenUnternehmer, sondern gegen den Staat und ?ntliche
Einrichtungen wie die Bahn. Das Schrumpfen der Gewerkschaften bedingt, dass die Sozialdemokraten eine schlechtere
Verbindung zu breiten Bev?- rungsschichten haben.Das neue Proletariat sind Zuwanderer, Frauen mit Teilzeitjobs. Gewerkschaften sind aber immer noch Vereine von weiߥn M䮮ern, mit M䮮ern f?nner. Die sind nicht bei den Gastarbeitern, die umvierUhr Fr? schlichten , und teilen keine Flugzettel in deren Sprache aus.Wirm? die
Gewerkschaften dazu bringen, sich ganz neu aufzustellen Es fehlt uns an einer detaillierten Analyse des neuen Kapitalismus.
Es gibt diese moralisierende Weltsicht der 68er-Generation in der Sozialdemokratie. Da geht es vor allem um gr?kulturelle oder Frauenanliegen. Wertvoll, aber ein Projekt der 68er-Generation. Jetzt aberm?irdenmodernen Kapitalismus analysieren, anstatt ihn zu d䭯nisieren. Wirbraucheneinen neuen Marx, eine tief greifende Analyse des Systems.
Verstehen Sie die EU-Skepsis vieler Sozialdemokraten? Sie sollten nicht der Versuchung erliegen, die nationalistische, Europa-
skeptische Karte zu spielen wie die anti-europ䩳che Rechte. Das ist ? siehe Frankreich ? immer schief gegangen. Europamit all seinenSchw䣨enist f?Sozialdemokraten ein wichtiges Projekt. Es kann heute keine Sozialdemokratie in einem Land geben. Sie muss wieder international denken. Und international handeln? Es hieߠimmer: Denke global, handle lokal. Man sollte das heute umdrehen: Zuerst sich die Situation derMenschen vor Ort anschauen. Wie kann ich deren Leben verbessern?
Dann muss ich die Probleme international angehen, mit gest䲫ten internationalen Institutionenwie etwaGewerkschaften.

Press release: Warnings about the BNP

MP warns That Indifference to Europe Will Let BNP Win a parliamentary Seat

Denis MacShane has warned that the failure of Britain’s mainstream parties to make the case for Europe was opening the door to the arrival of a far-right MEP to enter the European Parliament next year.

Speaking in Rotherham on Saturday 13 September 2008, MacShane said:

"The BNP belongs to the antisemitic, racist right in Europe which hides its antisemitism and racism behind a mask of hostility to the European Union which it knows appeals to many voters.
"The BNP has already won a seat on the London Assembly, as it faced two candidates like Boris Johnson who called young black children "picannannies" and Ken Livingstone who compared a Jewish journalist doing his job to a Nazi and refused to apologise.
"In Rotherham we have two BNP councillors. The BNP was 32,000 votes short of winning an MEP seat in the 2004 election and since then we have a barrage of anti-foreigner propaganda in the media from mainstream politicians and the press.
"The latest is the report from Migration Watch calling for the expulsion of foreign workers after four years which would mean 300,000 Americans being booted out of Britain. There are 27,000 foreign companies providing jobs in Britain and at a major conference of 1200 Polish and Ukrainian business leaders in Poland this week, I urged them to invest in Britain and South Yorkshire.
"But efforts to get foreign investment into the UK are hampered by the xenophobic and intolerant language against foreign workers, whether it is George Osborne last year proposing a special tax on foreign workers not domiciled here or MPs and peers signing a report published last week produced by Migration Watch calling for a cap on people coming to work in the UK and their repatriation after four years which would devastate the Rotherham economy.
"I believe the Prime Minister was wrong to call for British jobs for British workers last year, which figured in BNP election literature in the recent Wickersley by-election. That election was won by Labour thanks to hard work knocking on doors and exposing BNP lies and hate.
"We want decent, fair-pay jobs for all workers in Britain and we want British workers in Europe and elsewhere in the world to have the same rights as other employees.
"There are few Jews living in Rotherham and I doubt if 1 BNP voter in 10,000 knows the deep antisemitism which the leaders of the BNP publicly support.
"But the Tory party with its endless ranting against Europe helps create an atmosphere of distrust and contempt for the EU. Why should voters support the Tory line against the EU when they go for the real thing in the BNP?
"Other European countries have to live with the Jew-hating far-right like the National Front in France. It would be sad day for Britain if a representative of an antisemitic party like the BNP won a seat in the European Parliament. Each MEP has access to allowances and expenses. These are audited for Labour MEPs and we have seen the scandal of Tory and other MEPs using this money for party political purposes.
"If a BNP MEP is elected, then hundreds of thousands of pounds will flow into their accounts to promote Jew-hate and other racist divisive policies.
"But the BNP can win if the mainstream parties can never find anything positive to say about Europe and if some mainstream politicians use the same language as the BNP about the EU and about the need for Britain to distance itself from our European partners, cut links with mainstream European political parties and even consider moving to the exit door of Europe."

Gordon Brown's Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Manchester

This article about Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour Party conference appeared in the Guardian’s Comment web-site and there was a small extract in the paper dated 24 September 2008. It should be read in the context of other articles on Brown.

Brown's speech: Powerful stuff

23 September 2008

Gordon Brown issued a powerful plea for the importance of government in his conference speech. It marked an end to the long era in which government was marked down, politicians were embarrassed to speak about it and behaved as if holding office was just an interim pastime before making serious money in memoirs, speeches or directorships.
In contrast to the millionaires' row shadow cabinet front bench – the biggest collection of wealthy people outside Mayfair hedge funds – Brown invited Labour to remake the case for government. In contrast to the isolationist Tory philosophy with its visceral hostility to Europe, he delivered a speech in which the words global and international appeared more than in any prime minister's speech in years.
Tony Blair loftily sailed above the opposition as the Tories provided little or none of it. Brown does not have that luxury – not just because the Conservatives are now a serious opposition, but because the PM's policies, from tax to public sector pay, have taken daily criticism from some trade union leaders, as well as a 1980s left grouped around Compass and its affiliated MPs.
Brown therefore sought to take the battle to the Conservatives. Did George Osborne really say that in the midst of a financial crisis "it's a function of financial markets that people make loads of money out of the misery of others"? Brown quoted the shadow chancellor, and a prime minister has to be hyper-accurate in what he says, so this extraordinary quote from Osborne should be more widely known. Indeed, some media investigation into top Tories and their links to speculators and the bonus-greed that has wreaked havoc is long overdue.
Since the end of July Labour has turned in on itself, beginning with the venom against David Miliband after his appeal for Labour to attack the Conservatives in his Guardian article. It got worse at the TUC when union leaders attacked a Labour government and Brown's policies with a venom that was never brought into play against Cameron.
It is 35 years since I first came to a Labour conference as a young delegate. The conference is a bubble moment disconnected from reality. But Brown's speech had a sharper political edge. He was right to mention the threat of the BNP, who may win seats to the European parliament next June on the back of the steady anti-EU culture developed by the Tories and the anti-EU press. As chilly economic winds blow through the labour market, as credit and orders dry up and firms shed jobs to balance their books, it may not be enough to invoke Labour's proud job creation record. Instead we need a thorough analysis of the new immaterial capitalism and what rules are needed to guard it from its self-destructive tendencies. There are specific proposals coming from socialists and Labour MEPs in the European parliament, which Britain should support. Brown could embarrass the Tories by being a leader in Europe: so often Whitehall has led the way in resisting progressive European cooperation.
There were name checks for nearly every cabinet and some junior ministers, which suggests the idea of a team working together. But Labour and Brown have to work against a European wide turn-off from centre left and social democratic politics. The long era of relatively benign capitalism is over. Hard working families and hard working individuals – with a third of Britain in single households, it is odd that they never get a mention – feel their purchasing power is under threat as never before. To suggest higher taxes, which would further reduce the purchasing power of households, is a one-way ticket to oblivion for Labour.
Brown was right to stress Labour's NHS record and the pledge of free check-ups for all over-40s. That should start with MPs going to local hospitals in front of the media to encourage everyone to understand the importance of taking responsibility for their own health.
Brown insisted that Labour remained pro-business, and he was right to praise the one million firms that generate our national wealth. If Labour shrinks to its comfort zone as defined by Brown's left critics we will please ourselves with our own rhetoric but leave 75% of the electorate unmoved.
Next week we shall see a Tory party of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. The week after, parliament returns from recess and normal politics will resume. If Labour can concentrate our fire on the Tories instead of attacking each other, things might start to get better. They cannot get much worse.

Party Leadership: A Lesson from Germany

The European democratic left is in serious crisis. The growing debate over the leadership of the Labour Party and the future of Prime Minister Gordon Brown is part of a deeper set of problems facing the European Democratic Left. My Progress pamphlet examined some of these questions and this week I spoke at a fascinating Policy Network conference in London which brought together major thinkers from Europe’s democratic left parties and linked organisations. www.policy-network.net . On Saturday 27th October I will be in Bulgaria to speak at a conference called "The Fourth Way" organised by Ivan Krastev, one of the most original analysts and thinkers about new progressive democratic politics. Last week I was at the 18th Economic Conference in Krynica on the Polish-Slovak border. I was struck there at how social democratic politics is almost completely absent in the new EU member states.

The following article was published in New Statesman
11 September 2008

Across Europe, parties of the left are replacing their leaders in a desperate attempt to regain lost ground. Denis MacShane on what Labour should learn
In a fit of despair at its slumping popularity, the main centre-left party in government decided to replace its burly party leader, whose poll ratings hovered around 25 per cent. A cerebral member of cabinet - best known as a staffer for the previous leader, a proven election-winner - was chosen in his place. The party in question is Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose leader, Kurt Beck, has just been replaced by the foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
German papers are hailing the "re-Schröderisation" of the SPD: Steinmeier was a close aide of Gerhard Schröder as regional prime minister of Hanover in the 1990s and then as chief of staff between 1998 and 2005, when Schröder was chancellor. If he beats Angela Merkel in the September 2009 elections, it will be the first time that Steinmeier has been elected into office by German voters.
The Austrian Socialists did something similar in the summer. They narrowly won an election last November but their new chancellor, Alfred Gusenbauer, failed to inspire, so the party replaced him and called early elections, due to be held on 28 September. But the Socialists cannot get above 30 per cent of voting intentions despite changing their leader. The Austrian parliamentary left is in no better shape than the German Social Democrats.
The Sturm und Drang of Labour's sister parties in Germany and Austria reflect the wider mal aise of the democratic left in Europe: a sapping of will, an absence of ideology, and a lack of flair, style and risk-taking. The 20th-century European left is dying and a 21st-century democratic left cannot be born. Morbid symptoms are more in evidence than the confidence to show that progressive reformist politics can renew itself in the face of global dislocations.
German social democracy has many simila rities to Labour's. It has always compromised with market economics, summed up by Willy Brandt's phrase: "As much market as possible, as much regulation as necessary." It has also been strongly Atlanticist - Brandt was shouted down by the London left as a running dog of American imperialism when he tried to speak at Friends Meeting House in the early 1960s.
But that was the 20th century. Over the past decade, trade union membership in Germany has declined more than in Britain, and its unions seem incapable of reinventing themselves and organising the new proletariat - non-Germans, female part-timers and the self-employed. The SPD's membership fell this summer below that of the conservative CDU for the first time since 1950. Germany has politicians prepared to preach eloquently against George W Bush or in favour of a federal Europe, but the SPD has failed to find the language and ideas to inspire, leaving Europe without its social-democratic ballast.
Personality contests
The French left is unlikely to take up the reins: it has given up thinking and replaced politics with personality contests. At their November congress in Rheims, where French kings were once crowned, the Socialists must choose a new leader. Mitterrand-era men and women in their late fifties are proclaiming, "Moi, moi, moi," as they seek support from the dwindling group of activ ists who elect the party leaders.
Personality is important. Steinmeier is popular in Germany. But delivering Germany's cautious foreign policy, with its semi-neutralist moralising tone, is not the same as making tough decisions on nuclear power or cutting tax breaks for commuters, and thereby hitting entrenched vested interests. Perhaps the yet-to-be-elected Steinmeier will take risks and tell the truth to the power-holders in his party and the unions, but continuing immobilism is more likely.
Are there lessons for Labour to learn from the turmoil on the European democratic left? One common strand appears to be the cost of giving up political education as part of the centre left's work. Political leaders who cannot explain the world to their own followers do not create followers who can then explain the world to voters. Britain's Electoral Commission has an annual bonanza of £27m of taxpayers' money, yet there is not a single MP or councillor who knows what this money is spent on. Giving that cash to political parties for policy education would be a start, but after 11 years in power Labour has still not understood that democracy has to be paid for by the democracy, not by outside funders.
As it has de-ideologised itself, the European left has fallen victim to the politics of Heat and Hello! - an obsession with the who rather than the what and why of power. In replacing their leader, the German Social Democrats have shown a ruthlessness about wanting to win next year. But unless Steinmeier takes risks and challenges them to become something different, the future of central European social democracy remains bleak.

Georgia crisis: "Europe at War" - letter in response to an article by Sir Christopher Meyer

This letter was published in response to an article by Sir Christopher Meyer, former UK ambassador to America and John Major’s press supremo. It argues that instead of challenging Russia after its aggression in Georgia, Britain should be inspired by the Congress of Vienna and the Treaty between the victorious powers at the end of the Napoleonic wars. Sir C Meyer argued that the Congress of Vienna delivered a 19th century free of major war. Byron had a different view. He thought the Congress represented “states to be curbed and spirits to be confined.” Shelly wrote of Lord Catlereagh, the Tory Foreign Secretary, who insisted on the restoration of reactionary monarchies at the Congress, “I met murder on the way. It wore the mask of Castlereagh.’ Today we are more polite about Foreign Secretaries.

The Times
3 September 2008

Europe at War

Sir Christopher Meyer argues that the Congress of Vienna in 1815 ensured a war-free Europe in the 19th century (The Times, Opinion, Sep 2). That would have come as news to Byron who died in the Greek War of Independence shortly afterwards. It will certainly come as a surprise to the French who remember part of their territory being annexed by Germany after the invasion of 1870.
That memory, and the arrival of tanks in France in 1940, may explain why French papers have carried far fewer apologists for the Kremlin’s invasion and annexation of part of Georgia than the London press.
From Crimea to the Balkan wars, to Polish uprisings against Russian rule, it is hard to find a single decade in the 19th-century Europe free of war. Vienna in 1815 and Yalta in 1945 are symptomatic of big states thinking they can dictate to the rest of Europe.
Far from creating peace, big power bullying stores up new hates and divisions. One can only hope the Foreign Secretary is getting better historical advice than that on offer from most retired ambassadors who have opined on the present crisis.

Intelligence Square Public debate on 25th September 2008: "Georgia and Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO"

Denis MacShane MP will debate the Russia-Georgia crisis at an Intelligence Squared debate on Thursday 25th September at the Royal Geographical Society

details below and tickets from www.intelligencesquared.com

September 25, 2008

£25.00 / Ticket

This debate will take place at The Royal Geographical Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London, SW7. Doors open 6pm. Debate starts 6.45pm and finishes at 8.30pm

Speakers for the motion:

David Darchiashvili MP Chairman of the Committee on European Integration in the Georgian Parliament. He is a member of the ruling Unified National Movement party and recently said "Russia's recognition of independence in Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a challenge to other democratic countries."
Denis MacShane MP Minister of State for Europe at the Foreign Office from 2002 to 2005 where his responsibilities included the Balkans and some former Soviet republics, including Georgia and Ukraine. He remains on the Council of Europe and is a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
Oleg Rybachuk Mr Rybachuk was head of the Presidential Secretariat and Chief of Staff to Victor Yushchencko, President of Ukraine. He recently resigned to become Chairman of the Souspilnist Foundation, which encourages civil society and promotes democracy and is director of the Euro-Atlantic University. He has also served as Vice-Prime Minister for European Integration.

Speakers against the motion:

Alexey Pushkov Anchor of the most popular Russian TV programme "Post Scriptum" which has considerable influence on Russian public perception of international events. He is also Professor at the Moscow State Institute of International relations and Member of the Board of the influential Council of Foreign and Defence Policy.
Lord Skidelsky Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and the author of The World after Communism. He is also Chairman of the Centre for Global Studies.
Sir Christopher Meyer Sir Christopher was a senior British diplomat in Moscow during the height of the Cold War. During his posting he spent time in the Caucuses, especially Azerbaijan and Geogia. He went on to become one of the most senior diplomats at the Foreign Office, serving as Ambassador in Germany and Washington DC. Sir Christopher was also the Press Secretary to Prime Minister John Major. He is currently Chairman of the Press complaints Commission.