ANNOUNCEMENT
Well over a hundred Cafés have been held and they have provided an opportunity for people to attend and discuss topics, chosen by them, over a two hour period.
Over 20 have attended the meetings each time, a useful number to hear a diversity of views and for people to listen to others’ points of view.
In the last two months, for reasons a mystery to us, the numbers have dropped dramatically and yesterday’s meeting was thinly attended and we sat looking at a row of empty chairs.
It has been decided therefore that we will hold the November Café and if attendance is as poor as it has been, we will stop holding them at least for a while. Perhaps in the New Year we will think of a re-launch.
October Café
Despite the thin numbers, we had two interesting and topical debates. The 10th October was the World Day Against the Death Penalty and this prompted the question, following the announcement by Pete Hegseth, the US Defense Secretary, to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan, could there be any positive outcome?
One participant remembered attending a meeting held by Sidney Silverman at the time of Britain’s decision to end the penalty and how moving that was.
One obvious result was that the whole issue of the use of the penalty would be brought to the attention of the whole world. Another said America was always seen as some kind of ‘beacon of freedom’. Other countries were labelled ‘axes of evil’ but it was looking like the Us should be included in that list.
Answering the question put, could this act as a counterweight to the deterrent argument that Hegseth and others often claim. In the case of Hasan, the man was mentally unbalanced so any idea of deterrence was unlikely. Considerable research showed that the deterrent effect was unproven at best.
An interesting point was made that by livestreaming (if it goes ahead) it will bring the process to the attention of millions. Instead of it being something that just ‘happens’, it will be on everyone’s phone, PC and laptop. Few will have given the question of the death penalty much attention especially as we no longer use it in the UK. This will bring it centre stage. Could that have some kind of profound effect?
It might and the effect of the vivid images from the Vietnam war was noted and those did have an effect on the American public and helped end its involvement in the war.
By contrast, it was suggested Americans had polarised views. Those who supported the penalty may exult in the livestreaming whereas others would be repelled. But would there be much change between them?
Would it have an effect here in the UK? There were members of the Reform party who wanted a return of the death penalty and there was still a significant part of the populace who wanted it back especially after a child was murdered for example.
We cannot know what the effects of this livestreaming will be and JD Vance has said he will not watch it. There has been widespread international outrage at the proposal.
The second debate concerned the future of the Green party following the motion at their annual conference to define ‘Zionism as support for “an ethnonationalist Jewish State in historic Palestine to the exclusion and/or domination of the non-Jewish population”‘.
This resulted in a huge backlash and may have had an effect on the leader of the party, Jack Polanski, coming second in the Islington by-election taking place at the same time as the conference.
The BBC Today interview of Polanski by Nick Robinson on Friday morning was noted and it is worth listening to. [Close to being bullying, it pursued the well-worn anti-Semitism trope. Polanski, unusual for a politician, stuck to his ground.]
It was noted that the thousand or so who voted for the resolution were a small part of the 220,000 members of the party as a whole. The claim by Caroline Lucas, the former leader, on the BBC’s Any Questions programme on Friday evening, that there has been a high level of entryists into the Green party. These have left the Labour party and are it is suggested, trying to push their extreme views onto the Greens.
It was a bad decision someone thought. It was naïve and will not do the party any good. It should have selected those motions relevant to the party’s future not allow over 100 motions of which this was one.
It was argued that the whole matter showed how any discussion about Israel and Zionism was like walking on egg shells. It raised great tensions but often little light.
The question ‘was colonialism racist?’ was not discussed during this row. The various empires in history, including the British, involved displacing existing populations and often killing them in large numbers. Indigenous people were seen as ‘savages’ and primitive and the colonial enterprise was racist in essence. The establishment of Israel was a colonial enterprise and there was a vast displacement of Palestinians during the Nakba.
It was suggested Israel needed to display more humility. Their existence owed much to Western support and arms but this support was not reflected in their attitudes or statements.
The issue was extremely fresh and quite what will happen to the party is unclear. To an extent, it was a product of their recent success in being able to grow its membership and increase the number of MPs.
The next meeting – maybe our last – is on November 14th.
Peter Curbishley
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