Nobody can accuse New Labour of being half-hearted in their embrace of New Colonialism. But even given the dynamics of the rush for hydrocarbons, Gordon Brown’s commitment to embroil the British military in the troubles of the Niger Delta is appalling.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/britain-to-train-army-in-nigeria-to-combat-delta-rebels-865822.html

We have got so used to military adventure abroad that there has been almost no reaction – despite the fact that we are going to support the most corrupt regime in the world, in an area where the pollution, social deprivation and political repression spawned by the oil industry are legendary. I know the Niger Delta very well indeed, having served four years in the commercial section of the British High Commission in Lagos. I have seen the environmental degradation, and met with the thuggish local police and military commanders in the pockets of Shell. The execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa was one of the rare moments the World focused on the repression in the Niger Delta, but that was the tip of the iceberg of political violence against the local population.

The rebellion in the Niger Delta is not a spontaneous evil, a mindless outbreak of anarchic violence that must be met with still more violence. It is paused by the grinding poverty and economic ruination of one of the most economically productive regions on earth, with the profits channelled to billionaires in Nigeria and to big oil.

Of course, British military involvement in Nigeria is hardly new. The majority of Nigeria’s military dictators were Sandhurst trained (but not Abacha, contrary to popular belief. He attended lesser English military colleges).

African Union prevarication over Mugabe opens eyes to the continuing venality of much African government, but there is perhaps not enough understanding of how far that permeated through into the United Nations (where senior staff require de facto approval of their home governments for appointment). “Professor” Ibrahim Gambari is Under Secretary and Special Adviser on Africa to the UN Secretary General. Gambari was one of Abacha’s closest cronies. It was Gambari who said “Nigerians don’t need democracy because democracy is not food. It is not their priority now.” It was Gambari who told the United Nations that Ken Saro-Wiwa should be hung because he was “a mere common criminal”. It is therefore a certain sign of the bad faith of Nigeria’s negotiation that they pressed for Gambari to be appointed mediator with the rebels.

The only UK connection to this dispute is that the appalling practices of British oil companies have helped create the resentment that turned to rebellion. We should not get involved in more killing for oil.

New Labour hates independence of mind, and unsurprisingly therefore views Andrew Mackinlay as a threat. I doubt there is a more genuine and well-intentioned person in the House of Commons than Andrew. For years he has been devoted to the democratic development of Eastern Europe, and he is a mainstay of the all-party committees on the region. He is also an outspoken champion of the rights of Parliament against the Executive, and he asked the best ever question of Tony Blair at Prime Minister’s questions. After one toady New Labour MP after another had asked questions written in No 10 for Tony Blair to look good with a sharp answer, Andrew Mackinlay stood up and asked:

“Does the Prime Minister recall that, when we were in opposition, we used to groan at the fawning, obsequious, soft-ball, well-rehearsed and planted questions asked by Conservative members?”

The House roared with laughter at an embarassed Blair, who was lost for words as things went so badly off message. He eventually replied with a thinly veiled threat that he would make sure Mackinlay remained always a backbencher. As Andrew Mackinlay has absolutely no desire to do other than serve his constituents, and has a Trollopean respect for the House of Commons, that was no great threat.

Media sources tell me that New Labour are now whispering to everyone who will listen (only the Daily Mail has half bought it) that Andrew Mackinlay is a Russian spy and a tool of the oligarchs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030235/Labour-MP-pulled-chief-whip-inviting-Russian-spy-tea-Commons.html

An article saying so has turned up in a Bulgarian newspaper as evidence. Evidently MI6 are losing their touch – they might have at least got it published somewhere outside the EU. Maybe Russia would have been more convincing.

Andrew Mackinlay’s sharp and very well-informed interest in foreign policy has made him a mainstay of the Foreign Affairs Committee for over a decade, where he has frequently exposed and embarassed the government. I can give first hand testimony that the New Labour government and the security services absolutely hate him. They have also tried to discredit him before. In 16 April 2003 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continued its camapiagn of internal vilification against me with the shocking revelation that I had been to a jazz bar with my secretary. In the same letter, they made the claim that I had been in strip clubs in Warsaw with Andrew Mackinlay. http://www.blairwatch.co.uk/murray/Butt.pdf See Murder in Samarkand p252.

This claim is utterly untrue. I have never hidden the fact that while in Warsaw for four years I went to a strip club on two or three occasions. But I never saw Andrew Mackinlay in or near one, and to my knowledge he has never been in a strip club, in Warsaw or anywhere else The question is, why was the FCO in 2003 libelling Andrew Mackinlay in this way, particularly in the context of a letter about Uzbekistan? Andrew had no connection with Uzbekistan. I had known him in Poland on official business as chairman of the British-Polish parliamentary group, but in 2003 I had had no contact with him for five years, so why bring in a totally irrelevant libel? Were they hitting two Iraq war sceptics with one stone? When I did contact him in summer of 2004, our telephone conversation was definitely bugged, as explained in detail in Murder in Samarkand.

Well, now they are trying to label him a Russian spy or stooge. Contempt for civil liberties has grown so strong in this country that the media has failed to focus on the truly appalling aspect of this case: when Chief Whip Geoff Hoon called Andrew Mackinlay in to dress him down for meeting with a Soviet diplomat, he knew the detail of their conversation. An MP had been bugged by MI5 inside parliament. Just ten years ago that would, quite rightly, have caused a scandal and ministerial resignations. Now it appears nobody cares.

One of the reasons the security services have targeted Andrew Mackinlay for years is that he has been a leading opponent in parliament of their exponentially increasing powers to bug citizens at will. http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmhansrd/vo030703/debtext/30703-27.htm

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/01/331667.html

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article3295393.ece

As for the odious Geoff Hoon, Chief Whip from Minister of Defence? It seems the hopelessly impotent Hoon is given increasingly unimportant jobs until they find one he can actually do – a reverse Peter principle I hereby christen the Geoff principle. Personally I suggest they put him in charge of a sub-Post Office, and then close it.

Andrew Mackinlay is worth ten thousand of Geoff Hoon. Anyone who doubts that for a minute should read the speech he made in the House of Commons on this subject.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080522/debtext/80522-0009.htm

He is one of the very few independent spirits remaining in the Houses of Parliament. How the Establishment hate him – as I say, I can give eye witness evidence of that from many years on the inside.

I am no fan of the Putin-led Mafia/KGB hybrid that still rules Russia. But Russia and Eastern Europe are huge factors in future world development. We are sinking to the depths of cold war paranoia, that one of the most interested and informed MPs is smeared by the security services for having Russian contacts. Andrew Mackinlay is no Russian stooge and in nobody’s pocket – and that goes for New Labour too.

1. Tim Ireland is a terribly nice man who has pioneered political blogging.

2. Paul Staines is a vindictive muck-raker and a bit of a wanker.

3. Err…that’s it. But I think that’s enough.

Another sell-out for “The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer” last night took us past our 1,000th person to experience it. We are one week away from moving into the Arts Theatre in the West End and hopefully welcoming that many people every couple of days – a scary thought. Baroness Sarah Ludford, LibDem MEP and (relevantly) Vice Chair of the European Parliament Committee on Extraordinary Rendition was in the audience last night. So far I’ve seen three ex-British Ambassadors – and they’re only the ones I’ve noticed.

More good news – Marks and Spencers have joined Tesco in the boycott of Uzbek cotton, and instituted audit trails to check there isn’t any in their products. This really is amazing.

I know some of my friends will find this hard to accept, but this commercial boycott has come about because, faced with incontrovertible proof of the mass exploitation of children and slave workers, these major British companies have acted out of their own desire to behave ethically, not out of consumer, governmental or judicial pressure, because there hasn’t been any. Discuss.

Yesterday was Australia Day which meant I had to hurdle prone bodies to get around Shepherds Bush. I have been trying to get my Rectorial Address into the right format to publish it as a booklet on Lulu, but it’s technically beyond me. Any volunteers?

The ever formidable Brian Barder had posted a fascinated observation on the growing weirdness of US political culture. Here is an excerpt:

It’s sad because it’s another example of the steadily widening gulf between the political culture in the US and that in the rest of the west, exemplified by the Iraq war (leaving aside, if possible, the UK’s culpable complicity in it), the so-called “war on terror” and its implications for civil liberties, extraordinary rendition and Guantanamo Bay, the role of religion, attitudes to capital punishment and the treatment of prisoners, demonstrative patriotism, and now the role of the US sub-prime market in bringing about the impending recession which will engulf the rest of us as well as the United States. Alas, it’s no longer the case that the rest of the civilised world looks to the US as its moral and political leader. And I fear that the causes of this ever-widening gulf go much deeper than just the consequences of the catastrophic presidency of G W Bush: whoever succeeds him will not be able to build a durable bridge across it. Many of us small-L liberals used to feel that we had more in common with our American cousins than with our historical enemies just across the English Channel, the French and the Germans, and even our slightly more distant historical friends, the Scandinavians and the Dutch. I don’t think that’s true any more.

http://www.barder.com/ephems/754

The whole is well worth reading. Barack Obama leaves me stone cold too. I think we underestimate how different and dangerous the US now is. Last year I delivered a talk on Central Asia at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. As I sat preparing my lecture, I had the television on low in my hotel room because I don’t like complete silence. Gradually I found myself listening intently to an evangelical preacher, telling his TV congregation that they should not worry about casualties in Iraq because the Bible showed us that there had to be a great and bloody conflict in the Middle East before the Second Coming of Christ. So the more people who died in these wars, the closer we are to Jesus.

Now that message would be acceptable to very few people in the UK – just Tony Blair and his immediate friends, really. I related this astonishing thing I had heard to some American lecturers over lunch. They told me that at least a third of their students would believe this stuff. And this was Ann Arbor, not the Deep South. It is essential that we all wake up now to the fact that the US is a deeply disturbed and psychotic society, and by far the biggest danger to world peace.

I can’t get past Typekey to post comments and dialogue, and I gather others are having the same problem. Hopefully we’ll get it fixed, but meantime if anyone wants their comment published, email me at [email protected], and I’ll post them up as a weblog entry.

The New Statesman published this article by me:

Drink, dictators and belly dancers

Craig Murray

Published 10 January 2008

I confess that, for me, the festive season passes in a kind of benign blur. As I have never driven, this has limited capacity to hurt anyone else. A friend just suggested to me that, as a good Scot, I shall still be hungover from Hogmanay when people are reading this. Actually, as a good Scot, I shall still be drinking when you are reading this.

I am thoroughly fed up with the anti-alcohol propaganda on every broadcast news programme at this time of year. Look at George W Bush. As a wealthy alcoholic, he was a relatively harmless parasite on society. Then he sobered up, found God, and killed millions. Leave alcohol alone – it does much less harm than religion.

A troubled conscience

I am sitting typing this in Accra, where I have been helping out with an emergency power generation project. One little-remarked consequence of climate change has been unpredictable rainfall patterns, which have adversely affected hydroelectric schemes. The consequences for Ghana, which until the recent problems got most of its electricity from hydro, have been dire. Last year power shortages caused an estimated 30 per cent drop in industrial production.

A large part of the long-term solution must lie in windfarms along the Atlantic coastline, but Ghana desperately needs power now, so we are looking to get additional gas-turbine generation up and running by next summer. Obviously this troubles my environmental conscience, but I prioritise the urgent needs of a society that has struggled successfully for poverty alleviation and genuine democracy. Both sets of gains could be threatened if the power crisis is sustained. Do I worry I am wrong? Yes.

In December 2008 the respected president, John Kufuor, will step down and I am delighted by the selection of my good friend Nana Akufo-Addo as the ruling party’s presidential candidate. Nana Addo is a great freedom fighter who struggled at great personal cost against military dictators from Acheampong to Rawlings. We are rightly quick to acknowledge as heroes those who struggled against colonial and white rule, but seldom recognise those who make the often much lonelier struggle against Africa’s own dictators.

Meantime in Uzbekistan, my old adversary President Karimov is re-elected with 88 per cent of the vote on a 90 per cent turnout. The opposition parties in Uzbekistan are all banned, and the four other “candidates” had all declared their support for Karimov. The fact that Russia praised the election is more evidence that you don’t have to be a right-wing hawk to worry about Putin. But against that must be set the way no amount of googling turns up a word of condemnation from the British government.

Our earlier support for Karimov as part of the “war on terror” is well documented, not least by me. The same philosophy in Pakistan has left our policy in a disastrous mess following the appalling assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Hearing the UK and US drone on about the need for democracy, after enthusiastically backing the military dictator Pervez Musharraf for years, makes me sick. I am least of all impressed by Washington’s sartorial test of democracy. Islam Karimov has never worn a uniform but is still a dictator. Musharraf has never been elected and remains a dictator, even if he dons a tutu.

Romantic progress

My partner, Nadira, joined me in Ghana for Christmas and we spent most of our time rehearsing for her one-woman show, The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer, playing at the Arcola Theatre in London throughout January. The show is autobiographical, and Nadira’s is a remarkable story of the degradation we have inflicted on Uzbekistan, and the ability of the spirit to rise above it. Less profoundly, in the second half it casts an entirely different light on some of the events I describe in Murder in Samarkand, as Nadira moves from romantic interest to protagonist. Nadira is searingly honest, and I don’t always look well in this new light. But the play addresses bigger issues than my vanity, and should be a tremendous theatrical experience.

Craig Murray was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from 2002-2004. His book “Murder in Samarkand” is published by Mainstream (£7.99)

http://www.newstatesman.com/200801100008

As usual my copy was slightly edited for length, but I feel the choice of this sentence to cut was interesting: “Benazir Bhutto inherited all her family’s qualities of physical courage, personal charisma and rapacious veniality”. I am extremely sorry she was assassinated, but a candidate for sainthood she is not. Worth remembering, especially given the new prominence of her horrible husband.