"Political prisoners under tyranny? Stuff 'em: I want a drink" - Lib Dem MPs

On Wednesday evening (today) at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton a 'Havana Club rum reception for Cuba' will be held at the Hilton Metropole hotel on the seafront. Those billed to speak include a representative of the Cuban embassy, one Oscar de los Reyes; a representative of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, which is the host for the reception, Stephen Wilkinson; and two Liberal Democrat MPs, Richard Allan and Alistair Carmichael.

The Cuba Solidarity Campaign has one animating philosophical premise. To the extent that it may be taken seriously at all as a statement of principle rather than as transparently self-serving propaganda, it is hokum:

We believe that the people of Cuba, like any other nation, must be free to decide their own internal affairs without outside interference.

So the people of South Africa were entitled to decide on their own system of constitutionally-mandated racial segregation for 40 years, were they? Saddam Hussein should have been left free to decide whether to deal with the Iraqi Kurds by quick butchery or enduring persecution? (Bad example, on reflection, because the Cuba Solidarity Campaign probably does believe that one.) General Pinochet was entitled to lock up his opponents and secure their 'disappearance'?

The notion that state sovereignty is an inviolable principle is reactionary and pernicious, for it fails to distinguish between constitutional governments that respect the rule of law and illegitimate regimes that flout it. Robert Mugabe is not a legitimate ruler but a thuggish kleptomaniac; there may be pragmatic reasons for not intervening in the affairs of his benighted and abused country, but there is no argument - at least not for those of us on the progressive wing of politics - against doing so in principle. The gangster Milosevic justified his brutal imperialism with reference to the supposed territorial integrity of Yugoslavia; he should have been stopped much earlier, much more decisively, for many people died terrible deaths owing to our inaction.

The sovereign integrity of independent states is, to a liberal, a compelling principle in the case of governments that respect the rights of their citizens. Cuba by contrast fits the description offered by Isaiah Berlin (in Notes on Prejudice):

[T]he first people totalitarians destroy or silence are men of ideas and free minds.

In July this year Amnesty International reported:

Marcelo López Bañobre, a human rights defender with no past convictions, was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison for, among other activities, "sending information to international organisations like Amnesty International". His conviction was part of a crackdown in mid-March by Cuban security forces who rounded up 75 dissidents over the space of a few days. Most of the leaders of Cuba's dissident movement, people who had been activists for a decade or more, were detained. The government claims that they were foreign agents whose activities endangered Cuban independence and security but the dissidents were not charged with recognizably criminal offences. They were given hasty and unfair trials, and, shortly after being taken into custody, were sentenced to harsh prison terms of up to 28 years. AI considers them all to be prisoners of conscience.

How does the Cuba Solidarity Campaign resolve the tension between state sovereignty and political decency? By siding with the oppressors and blackguarding the persecuted, of course. Here's what Stephen Wilkinson had to say on the matter in a letter to The Guardian:

Cuba's jailed dissidents were not at all "independent thinkers, writers or human rights activists" but rather in the pay of the US and carrying out activities against the Cuban government. They were not tried in a closed court - they all had counsel: 44 of them were defended by their own lawyers. They were convicted on the evidence of 12 of their number who were Cuban agents. They testified that the dissidents had plotted with the head of the US interest section, James Cason, who was given a brief by the Bush administration to create a "unified opposition" in Cuba.

After witnessing the inability of the left in the US and UK to stop a war of aggression that has killed thousands of innocent people in Iraq, Cuba knows that in the end it will have to defend itself.

There are many things that could be said about this disgusting apologetic, but the most fundamental is to note the anthropomorphic fallacy, from which all other horrors flow, of attributing cognitive qualities to an abstraction, viz. 'Cuba'. Cuba doesn't know anything: it's merely the name of a polity located in a certain geographical area. What Wilkinson is referring to is a regime - one that has never put itself forward in 40 years to a genuine popular election, and that is contemptuous of the rights of its subjects and international legal standards.

I know of this meeting at the Liberal Democrat conference merely because I walk home every weekday evening from Brighton railway station and along the seafront, and caught sight of a notice advertising it outside the conference centre. Something is seriously amiss when this type of event - which is not a humanitarian or pragmatic call for an easing of the trade embargo, but an expression of 'solidarity' with a totalitarian state - is found unexceptionable and unremarkable by a party that falsely claims the mantle of liberal politics. The place of consistent liberals is with the political dissidents, not at a drinks party in a four-star hotel celebrating the regime that locked them up.

The MPs who disgrace themselves by their attendance at this event are admittedly hardly household names. Richard Allan is the party's spokesman on IT, and has his own blog. I count myself well-informed on the activities of the Liberal Democrats, yet I know nothing of Alistair Carmichael except that he sits for the northernmost constituency in the United Kingdom. His deepest thoughts on politics are currently confided on his web site. But these men represent a party that is already known - through its participation in the Stop the War Coalition, a front organisation for the Socialist Workers' Party - for its pragmatic alliances with totalitarian causes, and is hardly working assiduously to police the boundaries of democratic politics.

I am at least relieved to note that Allan is standing down as an MP at the next election. Whoever takes his place will have an easy act to follow.

Comments

[Richard Allan MP]

Ouch! Thought about not rising to the bait but then figured that the whole point of blogs is interactivity and debate.

For the record I do not dispute the human rights record of Castro's Cuba is appalling and had always intended to make that point tonight. It is absolutely right for liberals to criticise human rights abuses anywhere. Whether or not that is followed by military action against the country in question, either covert or overt, depends on your personal judgement and we have seen in the Iraq debate how people have decided either way on this.

Perhaps it needs spelling out that the fact that I can work with the Cuba Solidarity Campaign does not mean that I agree with all that they say. I had another fringe this week with the Country Landowners Association on rural broadband though we disagree on lots of other things. I share platforms with Labour and Tory politicians on issues without obviously signing up to their whole agenda. This point could go on.

So, why do anything with the Cuba group? This is a critical time for Cuba. Castro will die at some point. Then Cuba will have to find a new course. I think there is a positive independent Latin American course they could follow that will involve working well with EU countries including the UK. There is an alternative Cuban American agenda that would mean them effectively "reclaiming" the country and bringing it solidly within the US sphere.

I am sure that we would disagree on what Cuba's future should be. But we may agree that this is a relevant debate for discussion at a party conference between a group of political activists and people with an interest in Cuba.

Let the debate roll on...

[Peter Cuthbertson]

It is revealing that Richard Allan has a link on his page to the campaign site of Dennis Kucinich, seeker of the Democrat nomination and arguably more fringe even than the racebaiting candidates. Kucinich recently hit the headlines warning of the danger posed by mind control weapons from outer space, demanding action from Washington.

I know Tom Watson has something similar in mind, but it really may be worth collecting together some information available online to all voters about the various Lib Dem MPs and their records of extremism. Ie. Jenny Tonge saying any action to stop Mugabe's genocide was "colonialism", Richard Allan supporting Castro and Kucinich, Sarah Teather being supported by anti-semitic, militant Islamic groups, Charles Kennedy saying we should implement a system of regional assemblies that would call into question the idea of England itself, Simon Hughes saying jail should be reserved only for violent criminals.

[Peter Cuthbertson]

Fair is fair. In recognition of the comments made a few minutes before mine, I withdraw the claim that Richard Allan supports Fidel Castro, even if he has distinctly unsavoury choice in reception guests.

[PJF]

Interesting to compare what intellectuals and union leaders who have lived under communist dictatorships think should be done about Cuba, with these 'liberal' fantasists who haven't:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2003/09/18/dt1801.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/09/18/ixnewstop.html

These guys quite literally risked their lives to fight and overthrow dreadful regimes. The Lib Dems sit in a safe democracy with pictures of communist fantasy icons on their bedroom walls. Revolting.

But they'll 'win'.

[Anticipatory Retaliation]

Sorry about the crummy editing - I posted instead of previewing.

[Anticipatory Retaliation]

This brings up the argument presented in Philipe Delmas' book The Rosy Future of War, in which he makes the point that that several mechanisms for promoting international cooperation both erode national soveriegnty and have a poor track record of preventing war (particularly insurgency). These trends seem to be driving towards a future of wide-spread, low-intensity warfare since the traditional mechanisms of suppressing insurgency have become increasingly unpopular, while the smaller break-away states are almost uniformly quite weak and lack the ability to exercise soveriegnty effectively.

The tie-in to this post is that members of Party A will cry for intervention when Regime X cracks down on rebellion or internal dissent - thereby weakening the soveriegnty of Regime X, but will then strongly oppose intervention in Country Y on the basis that it would be imperialistic. A member of Party B might support intervention in Y, but not X. The net result is that there is almost always a pressure (albeit weak on occasion) for intervention. So the inclination of some parties to support intervention in Rwanda, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo and Liberia, while opposing intervention in Iraq, Zimbabwe and Cuba is matched by opposite reponses on the other side of the aisle lead to a situation in which intervention becomes a matter of course and results in the total weaking of state soveriegnty across the board.

This, in and of itself, may not be that bad - but the international and/or non-governmental strucutures which have, in part, subsumed some of the functions of soveriegn states, in general, do a rather poor job, simply because their very nature requires them to be rather circumspect in the name of fairness and internationalism. This in turn, ties into the failure of peacekeeping as discussed in Edward Luttwak's , which touches on the inherent failure of peacekeeping operations and the ways in which such operations can (and often do) prolong warfare and strife, simply because of the basic constraints peculiar to international humanitarian missions.

All being said and done, opponents of American influence in a post-Castro Cuba might not be doing themselves or the Cubans anymore failures. While Cuban independence itself might be an admirable goal, failure to understand the problem on a number of different levels may not increase Cuban sovereignty at all, but rather remove positive external influence, thus leading to a Cuban state with weak soveriegnty, rather than a strong, independent Cuba.

[Squander Two]

Mr Allan,

>> "I had another fringe this week with the Country Landowners Association on rural broadband though we disagree on lots of other things. I share platforms with Labour and Tory politicians on issues without obviously signing up to their whole agenda."

You appear to be implying here some sort of equivalence between groups who support visciously oppressive totalitarian dictatorships and groups who merely disagree with you on relatively minor political matters within the parameters of civilised democracy. I put it to you that there are some groups that one should not work with, as they should not be given any veneer of decency by association. I find it sad that an MP might not know this.

[Franklin]

> So, why do anything with the Cuba group?
> This is a critical time for Cuba. Castro will die at some point.
> Then Cuba will have to find a new course.

The Hon. Allen is badly informed on the way succession works in Third World dictatorships. Castro will die at some point. No new course would have to be found and certainly not by Cubans. The country will have a new dictator, groomed for the job by his predecessor.

[Daniel Calto]

As with Iraq, so with Cuba. Apologists for tyrannical regimes often concentrate on Western (read Bush and Blair) missteps and errors, while resolutely ignoring the reality of Iraq under Saddam or Cuba under Castro. Even worse, such apologists blame those select few brave enough to speak out. Specifically, those who dare to dissent against such repressive regimes are dismissed by armchair revolutionaries as "pawns" of the American hegemon. Blair is Bush's "poodle," while Chirac is a real "freedom fighter"

Members of the Varela Group, who have no right to free speech and whose freedom has been ripped away from them for daring to speak and write in opposition to the Cuban government, are slandered by armchair revolutionaries whose affluence and freedom of speech is highly secure. Shameful.

As to Allan's laughably illogical assertion that just because he works with the group doesn't mean he agrees with all of what they do, the Varela group didn't agree with the Cuban government on all of what the government has done and they were put in prison for 20 year terms because of their temerity. Castro will die soon? He's grooming Raul, just as Saddam groomed his sons, for succession.

If the U.K. were overtaken by an oppressive tyranny that denied Mr. Allan's right to speak, I doubt the arrogant reply that he could wait a few years until the tyrant oppressing him died of natural causes, and that until then foreign friends would "work with" the tyrant, would be satisfactory to him. Even Cubans, Iraqis, and North Koreans deserve liberty, and could do without the "help" of apologists for the regimes that grind them into dust.

[Solomon]

"So, why do anything with the Cuba group? This is a critical time for Cuba. Castro will die at some point. Then Cuba will have to find a new course. I think there is a positive independent Latin American course they could follow that will involve working well with EU countries including the UK. There is an alternative Cuban American agenda that would mean them effectively "reclaiming" the country and bringing it solidly within the US sphere."

I'm sorry...is this an admission? Is the translation here that, by coddling the regime, the EU may be able to lay the seeds of goodwill for the future (the subsequent despot, whoever he may be), and thus haul Cuba into a closer relationship with the EU (and Britain) for the purpose of keeping them away from the EU's foe - the United States? After all, we'd better get in there, or we'll lose out to those shifty Cuban-Americans (what do they know about life in Cuba, anyway?). I thought the concern for human rights was supposed to have gone up in priority since the end of the Cold War, but as if the Cold War simply moved West, now it's EU v. USA with the Cuban people continuing to be stuck in between. This is a continuation of the "Cuba as hero for standing up to the bullying United States" meme.

Why, Mr. Allan, if I didn't know any better, I might suspect you of being French...or should I say, Monsieur?

[Andrew]

I am pretty sure that Cuba is a blind spot for all sorts of people, but there are fora, beyond blogs, aware of the repression that is ongoing in Cuba. The Socialist International - the international organising body for social democrats around the world - put out a press release in April which can be found here:

http://www.socialistinternational.org/9Press%20Releases/Cuba/April03-e.html

Ironically, I understand that quite recently the SI's landlord (the RMT) hosted a Cuba Solidarity Campaign next door to the SI's offices.

[Richard Allan MP]

Have found the comments interesting and will of course mull them over some more. For now, a report back from the meeting may be of interest in closing this conference chapter.

The meeting was the most heated fringe I addressed this year. Subjects raised included political prisoners, the death penalty, Cuban troops in Angola, the persecution of homosexuals, the lack of any democratic elections, and the prohibition of opposition parties.

The overall message was that our political objective as Lib Dems is to see Cuba become a liberal democracy in which we would support a fellow liberal party. There are some, including many contributors here, who would no doubt see this as most likely coming about from US action. This was, unsurprisingly, not the view of most Lib Dems at the meeting. The call was for "constructive engagement" with Cuba whilst being critical on human rights. This is consistent I guess with the way in which view divide on the rightness or otherwise intervention more generally (will follow up the interesting piece by Anticipatory Revelation above).

Fringe meetings are all about debate. For what it's worth, I've enjoyed the fact that this has spread onto the net.

[Jackie D]

For what it's worth, Mr Allan, enjoyment is the last thing you should be getting out of this.

If "constructive engagement" means throwing drinks receptions for totalitarian régimes at four star hotels, "constructive engagement" leaves a lot to be desired. There is a wide gulf between the solutions of military intervention and Havana Club rum receptions, and I would suggest that a dose of shame is in order for happily taking part in the latter. Unless the Liberal Democrat plan is to drink the Cuban régime to death, in which case your party may be particularly suited to the job.

[bartelson]

Richard Allan - what an empty can......

[Simon]

I wish some of the people on this blog (its author included) were not SO intent on scoring cheap political points. Richard Allan decides to confront some of the 'solidarity with Cuba' people and all of a sudden he is an apologist. I would say that it is easier for Oliver Kamm to sit on his nice sofa and write partisan invective rather than confront the people who he disagrees with. The fact is, that I don't have enough info to make sucha comment, and neither did Oliver to sully MPs' reputations. I think that an apology is in order.

[Oliver Kamm]

Simon - But Richard Allan (whose willingness to argue his case on this blog I certainly appreciate) didn't confront the Cuba Solidarity Campaign: he spoke on their platform. That's not the same thing at all. If you read his comment above you'll see that he considers that action to have been analogous to sharing a platform with a Labour or Tory politician. I find that extraordinary: the Labour and Conservative parties believe in constitutional democracy; the Cuba Solidarity Campaign believes that political dissidents locked up by a totalitarian regime had it coming to them. I also find it extraordinary that Richard Allan explains his participation with reference to his interest in Latin America. Well, Peter Hain has a well-known interest in Southern Africa, but I don't catch him speaking at anti-Mugabe rallies organised by the British National Party. Why should I apologise for pointing out what can only politely be considered a gross error of judgement by Liberal Democrat MPs (whom you will note I accuse at no point of supporting totalitarianism themselves) in the company they keep?

I have to ask: what makes you think I recline on a sofa when blogging?

[Simon Radford]

Oliver,
sofa? Just a general impression that you enjoy this far too much and that you must consider it relaxing or therapeutic in some way!

Again, Oliver, I see your point- it is valid and well-made (a start for a lot of bloggers)- but again surely there is another point of view. How do you convince types who are sympathetic to the BNP/Cuba unless you go and engage with these people? There is a massive argument raging in Cambridge about a 'no platform' policy to ban speakers to protect students' welfare (as if they can't make a decision themselves). See the varsity newspaper website for more on it, but you have to admit that it isn't as clear cut as 'closet commie!'?!

[Richard Allan MP]

Drawn away from my comfy sofa to respond (where I could blog wirelessly if so inclined he says geekily) I note the following:

1. Thanks to Simon for chipping in.
2. This blog has made me think harder about my decision to work with the Cuban campaign than I had done before.
3. There is a deep political divide in how the Cuban regime is viewed and this is why reactions are so visceral (who said left-right politics is dead).
4. I was challenged initially to the effect that by taking part in this meeting I must support all the views of the Cuban Solidarity Campaign and sought to counter that by reference to other shared platforms.
5. However, I do accept that there are limits to this and would not personally share a platform with all sorts of people (including Mugabe apologists).
6. We each have "never share a platform with these people" lists which reflect our political preferences.
7. Some groups are universally excluded from polite and political company in the UK such as apologists for the Zimbabwe and Myanmar regimes as well as domestic far right parties such as the BNP in many cases (including my own).
8. There are a range of other undemocratic countries with very poor human rights records such as Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Syria etc. to which could have been added Chile, South Africa and Eastern European states before their transitions to democracy that some people choose to engage with and others to exclude. (We note that the principal betes noires of the left have gone whilst the right's axis of evil has proved stubbornly resistant).
9. It is right that those who choose to engage are challenged over this as there are real questions about such regimes.
10. However, this leads to a dead end if each side simply says "I am absolutely right this regime is a) perfect in every respect, or b) so unspeakably evil that you should never talk to them (delete where politically applicable)" and will not listen to the other's case.
11. Having listened to the other's case we do of course reserve the right to climb back into our respective trenches to recommence the slinging of (hopefully slightly better targetted as more informed) mud at each other...

[Jackie D]

I guess what I have a problem with isn't necessarily you talking to these people -- as you put it, Richard -- but with the whole idea of a Havana Club rum reception as the forum for such talks. If these were serious discussions that just happened to be taking place in a four star hotel with a cheesy little theme for the night, rather than a self-congratulatory schmoozefest, I might be a bit less surprised and disgusted by the nonchalant insensitivity of the format.

[Matthew]

Jackie,

From your earlier comment, can I take it as read that you would have been less outraged if it had been held in a 2-star hotel? The Quality Inn on the seafront, for example?

Matthew