Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called on Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to establish “a Chilcot-style inquiry into the UK’s involvement in Israel’s assault on Gaza”.
Corbyn’s letter to Starmer on March 3, (published on his X account), cites the human cost of Israel’s military onslaught, including an estimated 61,000 Palestinians dead, pointing out that “top Israeli officials are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
He wrote to Starmer: “Britain has played a highly influential role in Israel’s military operations”, citing the use of RAF bases in Cyprus and the supply of weapons and intelligence.
Corbyn’s letter draws a direct connection between Britain’s role in Gaza and its support in 2003 for the illegal invasion of Iraq, both carried out in defiance of mass popular opposition:
“In the aftermath of the Iraq War, several attempts were made to establish an inquiry surrounding the conduct of British military operations. The then government resisted these attempts, but could not prevent the publication of a wide-ranging report led by Sir John Chilcot. Published in 2016, the report found serious failings within the British government, which ignored the warnings of millions of ordinary people over its disastrous decision to go to war. History is repeating itself.”
He concludes: “Our concerns have routinely been met with evasion and silence. We need a full, public, independent inquiry with the legal power to establish the truth.”
Corbyn is acting, as he did in relation to the Iraq War, to conceal every fundamental lesson that must be drawn by the working class from British imperialism’s naked support for genocide, collective punishment, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. In both instances he has sought to protect the Labour Party by offering a political safety valve.
His cowardly letter refrains from naming Tony Blair’s Labour government (referring only to “the then government”) that co-authored the illegal invasion of Iraq alongside the United States and then stonewalled demands for an inquiry for six years.
Corbyn has stepped forward with his proposal for a Chilcot-style inquiry at a critical juncture, marked by a new stage of genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Gaza, enforced through a total blockade of food, water, fuel and electricity, and escalating military bombardment of the West Bank.
This barbaric denouement, backed by the Starmer Labour government, has underscored the abject failure of the political strategy insisted on by Corbyn and the leadership of the Stop the War Coalition: that mass protests can pressure Labour to oppose Israel’s military onslaught.
While Corbyn holds out a Chilcot-style inquiry as a political beacon, what are its lessons? What would a repeat of the Chilcot Inquiry mean for the struggle against genocide, militarism and war?
The Chilcot Inquiry was finally agreed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2009. Seven years later, long after the fall of Brown’s government to the Tories, its findings exposed that UK government officials led by Prime Minister Blair manufactured claims about Iraq’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction” (WMD) to make the case for war.
Blair’s lies—described euphemistically by Chilcot as “flawed intelligence”—were used to stampede Britain behind a US-led invasion that led to the deaths of one million Iraqis, six million displaced, and the virtual destruction of Iraqi society.
But Chilcot’s inquiry was engineered to protect the guilty. It had no legal powers, gave amnesty to those testifying, and its terms of reference precluded any findings on the legality of the invasion. Documents later obtained under Freedom of Information and analysed by the World Socialist Web Site showed how the inquiry was the tame offspring of the very state agencies which plotted Britain’s illegal war.
Sir John Chilcot’s appointment to head the inquiry spoke for itself. He was a trusted civil servant who served as Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Northern Ireland Office (1990-1997). He later worked as staff counsellor to MI5 and MI6 and was appointed to the Privy Council in 2004. He had served on the Butler Review into the use of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War, which exonerated MI5 and MI6 of any wrongdoing.
Documents obtained under FOI showed that Sir John Scarlett, chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) from 2004 to 2009, was involved in setting up Chilcot’s inquiry. Scarlett was the nominal author of a September 16, 2002 dossier alleging Iraq’s possession and imminent use of WMD.
This is the reality behind the “Chilcot-style public inquiry” now advocated by Corbyn.
Those such as Corbyn who promoted Chilcot’s seven-year “impartial inquiry” gave the British state ample time to plot and execute new wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen. Britain’s military aggression against Russia was expanded, helping trigger Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the latter serving as NATO’s proxy. The only people charged over US-British war crimes in Iraq were those like WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange who fought to expose them.
Corbyn knows this. But he is happy in his allotted role as patron saint for lost causes and political defeats. His pious demeanour conceals a ruthless determination to block any challenge by the working class to British capitalism and its chief political prop, the Labour Party.
His letter to Starmer calls for “the publication of legal advice behind the government’s (currently unknown) definition of genocide”, complaining that “our requests have been met with evasion, obstruction and silence, leaving the public in the dark over the ways in which the responsibilities of government have been discharged.”
Who is Corbyn kidding? In October 2023, Starmer, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, and Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry each received notice from the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians of its intent to prosecute them for supporting war crimes. Starmer and Thornberry—both former lawyers—had publicly defended Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
In air-brushing Labour’s support for genocide (he does not use the word once in relation to Israel’s or Britain’s actions) Corbyn is blinding workers and young people to the grave dangers they confront, and the lessons which must be acted on.
Starmer’s announcement last week of a new “Coalition of the Willing”, led this time by the UK against Russia, including “boots on the ground and planes in the air”, risks a head-on military confrontation with a nuclear-armed state sparking World War III. Corbyn’s response in the House of Commons debate on March 3 was to ask whether Starmer would give MPs the right to vote on the deployment of troops. This same request by Corbyn in 2003 was granted by Blair, with Britain’s parliament voting by 412 to 149 to approve the invasion of Iraq.
Two decades later, any vote by MPs on sending troops to Ukraine or the Middle East will produce a pro-war stampede, led by a Labour government groomed for office through a ruthless purge of any party member expressing support for the Palestinian people or opposition to militarism and war.
The claim promoted by Corbyn and his supporters that Labour could be reformed or even transformed into a vehicle for “21st century socialism” reached its highwater mark when he became party leader. But between 2015 and 2020, he refused to mobilise his supporters to break the grip of the right-wing, insisting that the party must remain a “broad church”.
Labour’s right-wing extended no similar mercies toward their left-wing opponents, and Corbyn offered no resistance as he and his supporters were framed-up as “antisemites” and witch-hunted from the party.
Corbyn’s letter to Starmer is silent on all that has followed, including Labour’s crackdown on democratic rights, mass arrests and raids against peaceful protesters, and a fascistic campaign targeting asylum seekers. Even in the face of its support for genocide, Corbyn is resolutely opposed to the formation of a mass socialist party to challenge Labour.
It is high time that workers and young people draw political lessons from Corbyn’s role. The fight against war cannot proceed without a complete political break from the Labour Party and the mobilisation of the working class against the economic and social order that produces war, oppression and genocide: the capitalist system.