The Euston Manifesto

The Euston Manifesto strikes me as an attempt by the many decent people who support or have supported broadly leftist ideals to retake their movement from those who aim to steal it, or at least to squat on the name. As someone who was once of the left but is no longer - largely for economic reasons, of which more later - I applaud those behind it.

The need for such a statement - itself uncontroversial, hit the link for details - was brought home to me during one of the many anti-Iraq war protests held at uni while I studied law. Apart from the usual behaviour one expects at demos/protests/sit-ins (flag-burning, cat-calling, sloganeering etc), I saw an international student spat upon when he ordered a coffee at the beverage stall outside the refectory. The student in question was American, and the spit landed upside his ear once he opened his mouth - thereby revealing his accent.

At that moment - a few years back now - I knew that a large segment of the anti-Iraq war movement had simply departed reality. I wondered, too, how much of a correlation there was (and is) between those protesters and 'the left' more broadly. The Euston Manifesto - its very existence - suggests more than a little. I know quite a few people who still consider themselves dyed in the wool lefties; they maintain that they haven't changed - the movement has. Inevitably, we disagree on economic issues. However, like me they refuse to cut Muslims any slack, regardless of how offended those Muslims may be by certain cartoons. They refuse to engage in immoral equivalency. They deny a pass to third world barbarity on the grounds that 'it's just their culture' or 'our colonialism made them do it'. Inexplicably, they find themsleves on the right.

I'm tempted to sign the manifesto myself - it explicitly reaches out 'beyond socialism and socialists' - in part because I think it is possible to combine a social conscience with libertarian economic principles. People I respect - like rocket scientist Zoe Brain - have signed up, putting paid to their often shallow categorization (by others) as 'rightist'. For the moment, I'm pleased to see one section of the community stating clearly and proudly that religious zealotry is just as unacceptable when articulated by the world's poor as by George W Bush's white heartland, that the United States is a beacon of hope for many, and that Islamic fundamentalism should receive no free pass. What is good for the goose, is good for the gander.