Last week comrades in the Marxist Society and supporters of the Socialist Appeal newspaper proposed a motion to the Hyde Park and Woodhouse Labour Party ward in Leeds Central CLP (Hilary Benn’s constituency) strongly condemning the bombing of Syria. After being amended it passed with a strong majority and is now being circulated to the wider movement. Below is the motion as it was passed:
This branch acknowledges:
- That the rise of Daesh is a legacy of the criminal invasion of Iraq in 2003;
- That far from reducing the threat of terrorism this war threw the door wide open for violent Islamists by producing a vacuum upon the destruction of the Baathist state and by propping up the brutal, sectarian al-Maliki regime;
- That intervention in Syria by the West and its regional allies, particularly of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, ensured that the Syrian revolution in 2011 became transformed into a bloody proxy war;
- That Western allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia continue to support violent Islamist groups, directly and indirectly;
- That the Paris terror attacks were a product of domestic terrorism and that, far from reducing this threat, intervention in Syria will actually increase it;
- That the military intervention of the British state is without a clear strategy and can only have disastrous effects for the Syrian people;
- That polls of Labour Party members have revealed an overwhelming opposition to intervention on the part of the membership;
This branch believes:
- That a genuine solution to the Syrian crisis must be based on socialist internationalism and opposition to imperialist meddling;
- That those Labour MPs who joined the Tory Party in voting for war behaved in a manner which can at best be described as criminally irresponsible;
- That the shadow cabinet had a particular responsibility to respect the democratic will of the party and to vote against war.
This branch demands the removal of all shadow cabinet members who voted for war and their replacement by anti-war, socialist shadow ministers. This branch resolves to distribute this motion within the wider labour movement and calls upon all labour movement organisations in Leeds to add their voice to this protest
