Stop the War has been right every time

Your editorial “Pacifism redefined” (11 December) is a good example of the incoherence of the muddled middle. You might ask yourself why it is that Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to attend the Stop the War Coalition’s dinner should attract such criticism, when MPs being wined and dined by the corrupt arms lobby merits no attention.

For all its faults, the Stop the War Coalition has been consistently right in its opposition to Britain clinging to the US military’s coat tails. There has been nothing positive in our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and now Syria. Stop the War has consistently got it right and those who supported war have been consistently wrong.

We would not need to even be debating the merits of bombing Isis if there had been no invasion of Iraq. We were lied to when it was claimed that Saddam Hussein was sponsoring terrorism. It became however a self-fulfilling prophecy and what is now Isis came directly from that war.

Today we are in alliance with the main sponsor of jihadist groups, Saudi Arabia. The concern of Turkey is not Isis, for whom it acts as a rear supply base and oil trader, but the secular Kurds whose PKK we have obligingly declared as “terrorists”.

You have even got it wrong when you talk about Stop the War’s alleged pacifism. It is an anti- imperialist not a pacifist group. Tony Greenstein Brighton Thousands of members walked away from the Labour Party disappointed, dismayed and disgusted by the domestic and foreign policies pursued by New Labour.

With the Party’s machinery firmly in the hands of Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Benn and Balls potential Labour councillors and potential MPs were blocked if they did not subscribe to the leadership’s neo-liberalism and lickspittle adherence to US foreign policy. Thus the Labour Party underwent a process of ruthless political cleansing.

Now that their hegemony is under challenge the old guard squeal accusations of extremism and entryism at every criticism, no matter what the source, be it Corbyn, rank-and-file party members or supporters of the Stop the War Coalition. Colin Yardley Chislehurst, Kent Your most spirited and entertaining political commentator has emerged as a valiant follower of Emerson, the great American moralist who noted that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”.

Matthew Norman, who one day before the Oldham results came out, regretted “the lack of a viable opposition” and dismissed Labour under Corbyn’s leadership as good only for an “infinite supply of cheap belly laughs”, on 7 December wrote an incisive article in which he makes it very clear that Corbyn is now up against “his own Tea Party”. I rejoiced to read it; all is forgiven! Carla M Wartenberg London NW3 When we opposed the Iraq war, Blair labelled us “misguided”. In opposing the current intervention Cameron has now branded us “terrorist sympathisers”. Only time will tell whether Cameron’s 70,000 Syrian moderates are as illusory as Blair’s weapons of mass destruction. Patrick Lavender Kilkhampton, Cornwall

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