Columns

There is an English saying that charity begins at home. So should, if one were impartial and balanced, look into one’s own history and actions before pointing accusing fingers at others.

Unfortunately it seems that the leaders of the UK Labour Party such as Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell have not learnt such basic qualities as fairness, detachment and objectivity. There is a yawning gap in their education which it would be too late to fill now.

In such circumstances it would be best they do not expose their political frailties and partisanship just to try and further their political careers on the backs of others.

Every time I read their comments on, and criticisms of, Sri Lanka dished out annually on what is called “Tamil Heroes Day” or any other occasion which offers them an opportunity to engage in their diatribes, I wonder whether they are talking of a country on the planet.

While those concerned with climate change point to multiple reasons for what might well turn calamitous in decades to come, somehow they appear to have missed out on one important reason.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn practices in the studio before the start of the Channel 4 News' General Election climate debate at ITN Studios in Holborn, central London. Reuters

That is the hot air exuded into the atmosphere by politicians such as Corbyn and McDonnell, not to mention another hot-air specialist called Boris Johnson whose repetitive refrain is getting Brexit done.

Had I but space enough and time I would have dealt ‘in extenso’ with the sanctimonious humbug that Labour leaders spew time and again, especially when elections are near or an occasion arises when they excrete their bovine rubbish.

So, what one could respond to and how much of it, is circumscribed. Still this kind of pretentious ‘intellectualism’ needs to be exposed so that the less informed are not misled by hallucinating politicians.

The constant refrain of Corbyn and others is about Sri Lankan military committing war crimes and human rights abuses and the government engaging in ‘genocide’ of the Tamil people during the last days of the anti-LTTE war and after.

Let us start with the alleged war crimes. If the Labour leaders are genuinely interested in demanding the prosecution of those thought guilty of such violations of international law, then they should show equal interest in ensuring that all soldiers from wherever believed responsible of such atrocities are prosecuted. It should be so, especially if they are soldiers of your own country.

But while the Labour leaders freely castigate the Sri Lankan armed forces for alleged crimes, they do not pursue the call for the prosecution of British soldiers. The call for justice, unlike charity, does not begin at home.

Just recently BBC Panorama and the Sunday Times published a joint investigation in which they said they spoke to 11 detectives who had found credible evidence of war crimes committed by British soldiers.

It said ‘insiders’ had told BBC that these soldiers should have been prosecuted. But troops who are accused of murder and torture in Afghanistan and Iraq have not been brought to justice because the British Government has been involved in a cover-up.

This scandal has resulted in calls for an independent judge-led inquiry to investigate who was responsible for covering up the abuse by British soldiers- responsible for individual or collective abuse.

Naturally the British Government has denied the allegations. But the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said that it is seriously considering the evidence placed before it.

There are several other incidents of killings, torture and abuses involving British troops that have been widely reported but which the British Government or military authorities have ignored or covered –up.

Corbyn and Labour cannot be ignorant of them. If their lachrymose tear shedding on behalf of victims of Sri Lanka’s alleged war crimes and human rights abuses were less like those of crocodiles and more genuine they would be demanding that those who suffered the brutality of British soldiers also find justice.

Lord Naseby’s persistence extracted some of the information that the British authorities received from their wartime Defence Attache’ Col. Anton Gash who served at the British High Commission in Colombo during the concluding month of the war.

Though heavily redacted the information obtained under the freedom of information law from Gash’s reports provided sufficient evidence to dismiss as fictitious allegations that at least 40,000 civilians were killed by troops apparently intent on genocide.

Did the Labour leaders call for more of the Gash reports to London be released in order to be better and more correctly informed? Of course not! That would be committing hara kiri.

Maybe John McDonnell has problems of comprehension. If it is acknowledged by independent witnesses and observers that some 290,000 Tamil civilians were rescued from the clutches of the LTTE by the Sri Lankan military and even today some 14 per cent of the population are Tamil with many living among other ethnic communities this must surely be the most curious genocide in living memory or one that was badly botched.

Perhaps McDonnell should improve his grasp of international affairs by studying developments at the UN and its subsidiary agencies. He might acquaint himself with the world body’s codification of the word genocide and that it has certainly not been applied in relation to Sri Lanka.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate if he employed it in relation to the Chagossian people who were evicted from their homes by the Labour government under Prime Minister Harold Wilson which leased out the Diego Garcia to the US for a naval base.

Or perhaps to the Iraqi people and particularly the millions of children who died when they were starved of essential medicines. Again it was the Labour government under Tony Blair that illegally invaded Iraq where Iraqi citizens were brutally treated. These horrendous illegalities were perpetrated by Labour governments in modern times.

Diego Garcia was leased to the US fraudulently after the British lied to the UN, its own parliament and doctored documents to legitimize its actions.

The Labour election manifesto says that its government “would launch an investigation into British colonialism and the legacy today”. It seems that Labour will stop at nothing to garner some minority votes seeing its electoral prospects rather dim. If it cares to devote time and energy to historical grave- digging then it might dig into genuine genocide by the British when it adopted a scorched-earth policy, beheaded and shot people of Lanka’s Uva-Wellassa region killing the heads of families and Buddhist monks by the thousands in 1818.

That, Mr McDonnell, is genocide if you care to know, at which British colonialism is adept even today.

Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party is accused of not acting expeditiously and impartially over allegations of anti-semitism in his party. Many long standing and prominent Jewish Labour members have resigned or refused to support the party. Last week the chief rabbi in a stinging attack on Corbyn said that he is not fit to be leader and accused him of “mendacious fiction”.

Last May the Equality and Human Rights Commission said it had placed Labour under formal investigation into whether Labour unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimized people because they were Jewish.

Well-known political TV presenter Andrew Neil last week interviewing party leaders trashed Corbyn who came out of it looking like a groggy boxer at the end of a fight.

The truth is that having antagonized the Jewish community, Labour is even more dependent on the minorities such as the Tamils, particularly to win marginal seats. So the Labour-Tamil relationship is a symbiotic existence. Because the party needs the minority vote it will like the ventriloquist’s dummy utter any lie and fabricated half-truth ‘sold’ to it. Labour is its master’s voice and truth does not stand in the way of its utterances.

Jeremy Corbyn is no leader as the rabbi said. He is still bent on uttering Marxist shibboleths and living in the mid-20th century. Corbyn would sit with greater assurance in a political dust bin.