World Morning Star
Burnham blocks Corbyn’s demand for public inquiry into Britain’s role in Gaza
Labour yet again ignores the calls to investigate Britain’s hand in the ongoing Gaza genocide
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Labour yet again ignores the calls to investigate Britain’s hand in the ongoing Gaza genocide
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Campaigners immediately asked what the government was trying to hide.
The demand for an inquiry has been pushed by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, now parliamentary leader of Your Party.
His own Gaza Tribunal held in London last year had highlighted the extent of British state involvement in support of Israel’s war crimes.
Mr Corbyn said today: “The government has officially blocked my call for a public inquiry into Britain’s role in Gaza.
“Andy Burnham rightly said that the last Labour government ‘got it wrong’ over Gaza. However, his words will mean very little if he doesn’t break with the last government’s shameful record of complicity, secrecy and evasion.
“In the aftermath of Iraq, the government of the day spent many years resisting attempts to uncover the truth. In the end, they could not prevent the inevitable. Just like Iraq, we will remember those who obstructed the path to justice.
“Delaying scrutiny will not make questions about British complicity in genocide disappear.
“The public deserve to know the full extent of Britain’s military, economic and political co-operation with Israel, including arms supplies, surveillance flights and the use of RAF bases.
“It’s not complicated: if the government has nothing to hide, then why block our efforts to expose the truth?
“Britain is still supplying arms to Israel. Britain is still supplying intelligence. Britain is still facilitating acts of genocide.
“We are not giving up. We are not relenting. We are not retreating. We will expose the full scale of Britain’s complicity — and we will bring about justice for the Palestinian people.”
Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty claimed that the government’s policy and actions relating to the conflict in Gaza have been subject of extensive parliamentary scrutiny through ministerial statements, debates, select committee scrutiny, and oral and written parliamentary questions.
“Given the extensive mechanisms already available for parliamentary accountability and oversight, the government does not believe that the proposed inquiry is necessary,” he said.
A spokesperson for the Stop the War Coalition commented: “So much for Burnham’s ‘we got it wrong on Gaza,’ and Miliband’s ‘we hear you, you were right’ to the Palestine movement.”
“Blocking this call is continuity Starmer, but we know that to make real change happen the movement will have to keep on coming back and demanding it.
“So Jeremy is absolutely right to say there will be no retreat in the determination to expose the full extent of Britain’s complicity in the genocide.”
And Your Party reiterated that “if the government had nothing to hide, it wouldn’t need to block our efforts to expose the truth.”
Mr Corbyn set up his own Gaza Tribunal last year to hear evidence on Britain’s role in the genocide, in the absence of any official inquiry.
It heard from doctors, aid workers and journalists describing the horrors they had seen.
The tribunal was presented with evidence of deep British complicity in Israel’s actions, including weapons shipments and spy overflights operating from the RAF base in Cyprus.
It concluded in its report that the British government had failed in its legal obligation to prevent genocide, and called for an immediate end to all military co-operation with Israel.
Undoubtedly, the government would find a public inquiry an embarrassment. It would be particularly challenging for the two foreign secretaries who served under Sir Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper, the latter of whom is still in the Cabinet as health secretary.