Polls show Hutton 'whitewash' of Blair just too
blatant
Anti-war movement steps up March 20 mobilization
By John Catalinotto
On Jan. 28 British Prime Minister Tony Blair
looked like a clear winner in his conflict with the media. The
inquiry Lord Hutton presided over had just put all the blame on
the BBC for its reporting of how Blair misled the country with
the weapons-of-mass-destruction charge against Iraq. Plus
Hutton called the suspicious death of arms expert David Kelly,
who exposed government misuse of intelligence reports, a simple
suicide.
Gavyn Davies, chairperson of the BBC board of governors,
resigned on Jan. 28. Andrew Gillian, the investigative reporter
who broke the story that Blair had "sexed up" the charges
against Saddam Hussein, resigned on Jan. 30. BBC Director
General Greg Dyke resigned on Jan. 29.
It looked for a while as if Blair was coming out not only on
top but unscathed.
Workers World called the Stop the War Coalition in London on
Feb. 1 to see how the anti-war movement was reacting to the
latest events. Despite Blair's apparent victory, members of
that group were in an upbeat mood. They think the Hutton report
will boomerang.
"Before the Hutton report was released," said StWC organizer
Chris Nineham, "we had planned to hold some regional
demonstrations for March 20--the international action day
against the occupation of Iraq. Now we plan a national
demonstration in London and we think plenty of people will want
to come and protest again." The group drew hundreds of
thousands in November to protest a visit by President George W.
Bush.
On Jan. 31, with only 48 hours' notice and in terrible
weather, the StWC managed to pull out hundreds of demonstrators
before Number 10 Downing Street, Blair's residence, to protest
the Hutton report.
"The Hutton report was just too blatant a lie for the people
to swallow," said Nineham. "Even the BBC employees were
demonstrating in protest that the BBC director and some others
were forced to resign. The conflict inside the British
establishment will help us to mobilize."
Opinion polls back Nineham. They show that most a majority
of the considered the Hutton report a "whitewash."
On Feb. 1, The Mail on Sunday reported that 61 percent, and
The Sunday Times reported that 54 percent, were demanding an
investigation into all the contradictory claims by the
government, British intelligence, the media--and into the
obvious fact that no such weapons have been found.
Who is Hutton?
While Hutton's biased conclusions contributed to the
suspicions surrounding the entire report, his own history
should also raise doubts.
A scion of wealthy landholders in British-occupied Ireland,
Lord Hutton's early claim to fame in the court system was
representing British soldiers who had fired on and killed Irish
civil-rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in 1972. He was
involved in a judicial cover-up at the time called the Widgery
Inquiry, which let off British troops on murder charges.
In 1978 he represented the British government before the
European Court of Human Rights, defending it against a ruling
that it abused detainees from the struggle in occupied Ireland.
By 1988 he was appointed to be Lord Chief Justice of Northern
Ireland.
In 1999, when former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet
was being held in England for possible extradition to Spain for
criminal human-rights violations, Hutton led an attack on the
judge who had voted to arrest and extradite Pinochet.
In other words, Hutton's legal history has been focused on
protecting the most reactionary elements of society, and
especially protecting the repressive apparatus of the British
state. Putting Hutton in charge of this inquiry of the British
regime is as convincing as having reactionary Dick Cheney pal
Justice John Scalia investigate Vice President Dick Cheney's
questionable connections with the oil monopolies. That is, it
convinces no one.
What is the BBC?
The BBC is itself an important element in the British
ruling-class establishment. The British rulers agree that they
should get part of the control of Iraq. But if a conflict
between the establishment media and the government has broken
out, it indicates that within the ruling class there are
tactical divisions about how the Iraq invasion and occupation
are being handled.
Blair has an additional problem. His government has said it
would not authorize another inquiry into "intelligence
failures." At the same time, his erstwhile ally George W. Bush
has talked of forming a new commission to investigate similar
supposed failures in the United States. This puts additional
pressure on Blair.
Anyone paying attention to the developments leading up to
the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq knows that these
contradictions had nothing to do with failures in intelligence.
The Bush administration had planned to invade and occupy Iraq
since it took office, according to Bush's former Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill. Right after Sept. 11, 2001, Bush began
frantically trying different excuses to justify this blatant
aggression.
Blair was in a scurrilous alliance with this plan. Bush may
still leave this ally twisting in the wind.
The contradictions arose because the Iraqi people are
refusing to accept a newly imposed colonial status. They are
fighting back. The Iraqi resistance causes disagreements within
both the United States and British ruling classes about
tactics. Will the anti-war and other progressive movements be
able to use these disagreements to awaken and mobilize mass
struggle against the occupation?
Reprinted from the Feb. 12, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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