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I get
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welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gatri
fresh from the AL jazer row over the
alleged political activities of the
Israeli Embassy in London it has emerged
that the embassy of Japan has been
paying a right-wing charity in London to
Dish the dirt on China in the British
satirical magazine private eye this week
it is revealed that the Henry Jackson
Society named after the 1970s cold
warrior Congressman in the US has been
paid 10,000 a month to place
unflattering stories about China in the
British media one of the strange fruits
of their labor was an article in the
Daily Telegraph by former Tater foreign
minister Sir Malcolm riffkin attacking
Chinese investment in Britain's power
industry even stranger is the fact that
Sir Malcolm and another cold warrior
didn't actually write the article it was
written according to private ey by the
Henry Jackson Society Sir Malcolm of
course knew nothing of the Japanese
subvention stranger still though is that
Sir Malcolm would go into print even if
somebody else wrote the article with an
anti-china piece as he was forced to
step down from Parliament after being
entrapped by a television camera
offering to work for a fictitious
Chinese company for £5,000 for a half
day while still an MP sir Malcolm's son
Hugo himself a satirist of note works
for the Times which is never tired of
trying to put RT off the air in London
to make some sense of this strange Sushi
diplomacy we welcome back our China
expert Keith Bennett apologies for the
sushi uh it's more a spaghetti Hoops
Affair this uh than uh Sushi let's start
with the obvious it's not very
diplomatic is it for one foreign Embassy
in London to pay a British charity money
a lot of money to Dish the dirt on
another country well it would seem to me
to be highly irregular and just to put
this into some kind of context one
wonders what the response would be and
what the relative level of publicity uh
that would be given to this would be if
the offending Embassy in question had
proven to be the Russian or the Chinese
embassies and of course uh it isn't one
of the things apart from the perhaps you
could say abuse of hospitality because
an embassy is supposed to deal primarily
with bilateral relations the abuse of uh
Hospitality in order to pursue some
other agenda of um of a particular
country uh is the fact that it's also
clearly corrupting of the of the
political process uh in in our country
if uh very prominent people are writing
articles and we don't know who what the
agenda is there who who is paying for it
and if if uh on the surface of it they
don't know uh themselves I think it's
also not just about abuse of the
Japanese Embassy if if this is true
which it I see no reason to believe that
it's not uh it's not only an abuse of
their position here in order to attack
China but it's also has a bilateral um
aspect to it obviously in that according
to the Sunday Times uh part of the
message that was going out uh was that
uh what the Japanese Embassy wanted to
do was to undermine the view of the UK
treasury primarily when George Osborne
was the chancellor uh which saw that
inward investment from China was
important to address Britain's
infrastructure uh deficit and and
problems and and to counter this the
Henry Jackson Society was claiming to
have um you know intimate contacts uh in
number 10 Downing Street so there was an
element of number 10 number 11 rivalry
going on here in which the Japanese
appear to be up up to their necks again
I would say if that was the um Chinese
or the Russian or the Iranian Embassy
some diplomats might have been on the
plane home now but clearly there's a
different rule for if you're represent
pres in Japan or Israel yeah because
this story in particular has had very
little coverage as did the alaz Israel
uh of course yeah I think uh yes the the
alaz case is another case in point I
think the the parallels are um are quite
uh striking not only in what the Israeli
Embassy was up to what the Japanese
Embassy was up to but also in in the
response if you recall uh when uh I
believe it was was Jeremy Corbin or
possibly Emily Thornbury who who quite
rightly said that this concerned a
matter of National Security in terms of
what the Israeli Embassy was up to we
were told that number 10 considered the
matter closed and one can um and on this
case they haven't even considered it at
all never mind opened it and then closed
it uh quickly so galvanized Am I by the
events of my life I hadn't actually
thought of that point that you have made
uh but xenoir the offic official Chinese
press
agency described as surprising that this
should happen in London to which I
responded it may well be despicable uh
but it's not surprising uh Britain's
history with China the Opium Wars to the
seizure of Hong Kong and and many other
things the yanki incident um there has
been a long history of uh London being
deeply involved in in anti-chinese
activities is it your point that this
briefly looked like it was turning and
some wished to sabotage it I think the
Chinese are very good diplomats and I
think that the word surprising here
might be translated as
unacceptable good
one but uh clearly there is I think
there are two aspects uh to this on on
the one hand there is a great deal of um
antipathy towards China in the British
establishment uh at the same time there
are people who've uh tried to pursue a
more pragmatic course and clearly uh
when George osor not only wanted to get
considerable Chinese investment into the
UK uh under Osborne Britain was the
first member of the G7 to sign up for
the Chinese initiated Asian
infrastructure Investment Bank this
clearly was not welcomed not only by a
lot of people in Britain but also by
Washington
and Sir Malcolm riffkin of course once
apparently was in favor of that because
he was more than willing to work for
what turned out to be a fictitious
Chinese company uh who wanted to pay him
£5,000 for a half day's work uh in in
order to facilitate Chinese trade and
investment uh and business with
Britain well that's one of the the uh
the ironies of of of the situation is
that um it would seem that
somal is prepared to um be paid to
publish articles in his name which he
hasn't written attacking China but he
would also be prepared to uh receive
money to Advocate the the interests of
of a Chinese company a Chinese company
which actually of course didn't exist at
all it makes you wonder if these people
have ever heard of Google when when the
check is on the table uh
but and in that uh uh what he in that
approach from the supposed Chinese
company he uh offered to go and speak to
any Ambassador in London to to uh
Advance their interests um I wonder if
that included the Japanese ironically uh
the the sting on sealcon was carried out
by The Daily Telegraph which is the very
P newspaper in which he published his
article why Japan
Japan is fully entitled to have its uh
views about China or about Chinese
policy and so on and on a bilateral
basis they're they're they can get out a
megaphone and shout it across the the
streets uh but why would they choose
London to to get involved in what
frankly if anyone else were doing it
would be described as a dirty tricks
operation yeah and using a charity to
get you know involved in politics that
the other element of course well the
Char itable status of the Henry Jackson
Society is um is to promote um an
interventionist and militaristic foreign
policy in the name of of uh of democracy
and human rights a kind of you know
Unholy you know a sort of liberal
interventionist in in the service of new
former head William shoss is now the
head of the charity commission so their
charitable status might well be secure
go on but um
the what one of the issues that the
shinoa news agency of China has raised
is that if this is what the Japanese
Embassy is up to in London uh who knows
what activities uh the Japanese
embassies in other countries are
carrying out so it's not
necessarily uh confined uh to London but
clearly in the United Kingdom because of
some of the his some of our history of
relations with China which you've
already referred to the they perhaps
expected to find a a ready audience uh
but as you say there are numerous
bilateral and historical issues between
Japan and China however it's interesting
that one of the things uh that they that
that Henry Jackson Society uh took on
was the question of seeking to undermine
the idea uh that uh Britain's
infrastructure modernization would
benefit from Chinese inward investment
and I would submit that that's actually
got nothing to do with ch with Japan at
all no it's none of Japan's business
whether China is able to get a stake in
Britain's power industry in the Malcolm
riffkin article which he didn't write
and didn't know that the people who did
write it were being paid by Japan to
write it I told you it was a spaghetti
hoop uh he said that the Chinese might
switch off our lights if they were
allowed to take a stake in Britain's
power generation uh uh business
is that kind of propaganda having any
any traction well I think it's I think
it's very hyperbolic uh to say the least
uh for a start actually if this H if
hinley point doesn't go ahead it's more
like the the more pertinent question is
how will we keep our lights on uh
secondly with regard to hinley point the
only Chinese role in it is financing and
the company that's actually doing it is
the French state-owned company so if
anybody would have the ability to turn
the lights off in Britain if it goes
ahead is actually the French ah cue to
throwing up of hands in horror at the
Daily Telegraph oh my goodness so we've
gone from Sushi to a spaghetti hoop to a
a French Ragu Keith Bennett thanks very
much for coming on board this pleasure
coming up next the liberalization of the
left don't miss
it welcome back back to Sputnik it has
long been my contention that the
liberalization of the left which I date
to the rise of so-called eurocommunism
in the early 1980s began a long retreat
into impotance and irrelevance the rise
of the far right in France in the US and
indeed in Britain is a direct
consequence of that Retreat of the left
a new book explores this thesis which is
gaining considerable traction the book
is the rise of of the right English
nationalism and the transformation of
workingclass politics and one of its
co-authors joins us now here is
Professor Steve Hall of the University
of tside and he's most welcome on board
the Sputnik thanks as my thesis and your
thesis uh has a lot of overlap we can
kind of uh park it and encourage people
to buy and read the book I want to ask
if you if you like a theoretical
question first uh this descent Retreat
call it what you will into liberalism by
the left it's a result isn't it of a
collapse of confidence in the idea of an
alternative system to the capitalist
system under which we live I think
that's a that's a good basis um I think
there it's a think of it as a river with
many tributaries think of the middle
class liberal take takeover of the left
at various points in British history
1905 the labor party taken over by
fabians who wrote the script for the
labor party the workingclass voice was
basically suffocated from that point
onwards the working class tend to be
rather socially conservative so they
were a fun you know fundamental Target
of the liberalization another Point
Stuart Hall's introduction to the the
new Left review in 1960 we can't have
state politics we can't have class
politics look out to culture youth
subculture and just look for little bits
of resistance where we can find and
hopefully this rainbow Alliance will
magically appear in the future well it
didn't here we are uh with work in class
without had no confidence no voice and
no proper representation uh Euro
communism again um which grew out of the
was influenced by the American
counterculture the American
counterculture was never a leftwing
movement it was a Libertarian movement
it was personal Liberation yeah yes you
know smoke as much weed as you possibly
can and and free it was an easy it was
easy rider I suppose was the was the
icon of the counter had nothing to do
with the left so so gradually the left
was eaten Away by various liberal forces
and turned into a branch of liberalism
the
Californication uh of the left I used to
call it but this
Californication uh has led to an
obsessive concentration on issues of
gender sexuality orientation the transse
sectional nature of some of these things
you get my drift and we end up a left
that's obsessed with safe spaces and uh
and uh kicking people off University
platforms uh none of which does much to
attract support amongst the working
class no of course the the great
political road to Freedom the gend the
gender neutral toilet I mean you know
which which I'm sure someone will have
you know whole course people having
babies no longer being allowed
to mothers whatever yes there's none of
this interested the work in class the
the class are interested in in jobs
they're interested in security and
stability they were slightly socially
conservative and okay they were there
were residues of sexism racism
homophobia in the working class but that
was something to work on these were
cultural issues had nothing to do with
politics cultural and politics became
intertwined French there as Jean Boda
called this transp partition were going
from one thing to another and just
melding them together all of a sudden
politics be became culture culture
became politics and then nobody knew
what was going on so uh the working
class completely lost confidence they
look in sort of consternation at this
sort of thing I remember being on a
democracy day watching in was 1984 or
five on Ken Livingston was as Greatland
Council was was about to um to to go
down the Swan and remember going past a
bunch of MIM artists and they were very
clever it was very nice and a bunch of
firemen walking past the mine arst and
thinking that's very nice but what is it
what are they going on about art it's
art yes and we all need art and and you
know we all need ways of communicating
but this had nothing to do then the
cleavage between the middle class
liberal left and and the workingclass
left so hit me in the face that days
what the the Coalition that was the
broadly described as the left let's call
it the labor party the labor movement it
did uh survive uh until the 80s I I knew
both Harold Wilson and James cigan very
well both of them were socially
conservative people but who knew uh
especially Wilson that you needed to as
it were add bits on to the working class
you had to add on uh friendly
intellectuals friendly upper class
people uh friendly single issue people
and so on to make a coalition that could
win power Mr cigan was much more
socially conservative than Mr Wilson yes
but he still had a conception that the
labor movement needed to be based on and
centered with the working class that
without the working class the trade
unions all the rest was just a tray of
sand blowing in the in the wind it died
didn't it with the rise of eurocommunism
Marxism today their influence on Neil
kinnick and for me it's kind of all been
downhill since and even Jeremy Corbin my
old friend hasn't really arrested that
uh drift yet at least
no no he hasn't Jeremy's a nice chat and
I rejoined the labor party to vote for
him I left in in 83 when kin came on the
scene um I was very keen on on Tony Ben
and and others at the time um but I
think what happened was that this
strange Beast that uh the American
political uh philosopher Nancy Fraser
call neoliberal progressivism happened
well all of these cultural issues were
taken up by people who were essentially
neoliberals they were thatcherites the
rites and they were just as good at
presenting these cultural issues as the
left why not because these people who
are gay people who are women are have
all sorts of political Shades you know
they they're not all left Wingers so the
whole thing was upended you know it was
raced off on a tangent and it became a
cultural movement Euro communism
certainly helped but I think the most
powerful force in in at that time what
was what Vasa calls neoliberal
progressivism and you now have the um
the women's March in in um the USA the
other day which was a fantastic display
of of of of of protest but really look
at who we got Madonna and and Ashley Jud
and these people they not the left they
have nothing to do with the working
class and and it's all of a sudden it's
it's been hijacked by the the working
class voted for Trump because he
promised them he might not uh deliver of
course probably won't deliver but he
promis them their jobs back oh jobs
yes the the Tweet of the year was sent
to me the other day by someone who said
uh I'm an Iraqi and it's reassuring to
know that those who destroyed my country
were completely against sexism and
racism exactly and that's where we end
nice to know Hillary's bombs are
feminist bombs Hillary Clinton the
bomber Barack Obama the bomber they were
really cool on issues of race and
sexuality uh except for the people of
all Sexes race and orientations that
they were killing with their they're
over there I often wondered what why the
the streets weren't full of protesters
when Hillary Clinton I don't if you saw
this was filmed celebrating the death of
GFI who's a human being you know
whatever anyone thinks of him and he was
brutely murdered and what was it we came
said we came saw we saw he died and how
she laughed it was quite horrific it is
uh an extraordinary business where does
it all end Professor um is the left
gone for good are we looking at a future
of lens and
ukps and Builders and Builders and uh
the afd in Germany and so on is it
possible for the left in your view from
your phenomenal amount of research
that's gone into this book for the left
to be reconstructed rebuilt people
accuse us of being ble we've been
writing about this for 20 years this is
the first trade Publications getting in
the public eye selling very well There's
Hope um and I voted for Corbin uh it
it's like you know what I like about you
is your girlfriend what I like with
Corin cor Corin is McDonald and his
National Investment Bank and Regional
investment Banks if we can start talking
sense again if we can start talking
about investment because don't forget
that this problem is a problem of
globalization free finance Capital can
invest wherever he wants it doesn't have
to invest in the north of England or in
the rust Bel in America that's the
that's the basis of the whole problem
what yanar farus called the the reversal
of the global flows of trade Capital
once we made over here and sold over
there now it's now it's the other way
around and we borrow the money from them
to buy the stuff they're making it's
crazy and then this you know it's nuts
it's unsustainable if we can invest in
places if we can start speaking of the
working class like we care about them
and if this can be manifested in in in
real jobs in in Hope for the future
workingclass Hall was run on hope that's
for the children will the children do
better than me my dad was a in a mining
industry he fixed steam engines and he
was made redundant I got steel works for
half the wages but he thought I wonder
if I'm going to do better or just at
least just as well but that's now not
happening it's you know the the worried
about the Next Generation our children
and by the grace of God I have a lot of
young children yeah they are by no means
guaranteed a life as good as mine uh
maybe because they're mine they'll do a
little bit better but if I were an
industrial worker as my father was yeah
uh it was an axom that I was going to do
better than he did it's no longer the
case absolutely we we we need to get
back to a program of mass Council house
building at least social housing jobs at
Fair wages and Trade union
representation for everybodys but what
sort of jobs George what the neoliberals
said in the 80s was all sudden we're
going to take these Mass industrial
workers and they're all going to become
computer programmers or they're all
going to sell hair ice yeah whatever it
didn't work it was nuts how could anyone
think for one minute that a service
economy is going to replace all of those
steady secure industrial jobs especially
up north where I came from come on
Parson from my point of view brexit whil
it's necessary it's not sufficient but
it is necessary allows the possibility
of rebuilding our manufacturing industry
in a way that the EU simply would have
forbidden would have been illegal and
possibly supported by a universal BAS
basic income as a temporary stop Gap to
to lift people out of this poverty and
despair because some of the places up in
the old County Durham Coffield where I
was born you know they've been falling
into bids for 30 years so if we can do
that if they're serious about this the
national Investment Bank the regional
investment Banks um then we might just
be able to do some because there we're
not as Bleak as everyone says we are we
do do have a little bit of hope I'm not
holding your breath um and I'll leave
the labor party as soon as it doesn't
happen professor all it's a a real
pleasure talking to you and everyone
should buy that
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book and now it's your turn to tell us
what you think through the portals of
social media what's ratling gy first off
the sushi SL
spaghetti diplomacy in London raymon
delone says Sir Malcolm Rifkin was chair
of intelligence committee when the money
helped Inspire errors of judgment it is
reassuring uh that the man looking after
our intelligence Services was so easily
duped by a camera up the jumper and so
ready to work for the Chinese ready
anytime and then about the
liberalization of the left Sean Richie
says forget left right or Center Jeremy
Corbin will prosper because of honesty
integrity and good principles well
that's one way of looking at it I
personally very much hope so that's all
the TW we have for today which alas
means that's the end of the show but you
can stay in touch with us on Twitter and
Instagram rtor Sputnik or Facebook
Sputnik on Russia today it's goodbye
from me gri and for me George Galloway
it's been marvelous
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