As a million Britons marched through London in 2003 against war with Iraq, William Rees-Mogg gazed on from outside the Athenaeum Club in Pall Mall. In the Times, he sniffed at the protesters’ outfits (“they dressed as they might for a football match”) and scowled at their arguments. However well-intentioned, their very presence helped “maintain the torture chambers of Baghdad”. They were, he said, “Saddam’s useful idiots”.
Those protesters were as British as the former Times editor, but that didn’t matter. The country was at war against an “axis of evil”. It was us versus them, and those who objected or worried or wanted more evidence were little more than traitors.
Journalism’s finest minds agreed. It may have been Britain’s biggest ever march, but the copy merchants could confect even larger generalisations. So the Sun’s Richard Littlejohn huffed that protesters were all “stuck in a students’ union timewarp”, while Barbara Amiel claimed in the Telegraph that their “real purpose was to attack Israel, America and free enterprise”. The Times warned that “the presence of many Muslim groups and masked anti-globalisation activists could provide cover for terrorists”.
Two decades on, and Iraq stands as a gigantic, elite-manufactured debacle. However scruffy, the “CND veterans, hard-left agitators, Muslim activists” (as a Telegraph editorial described them) were proved right – and their highly paid, heavily lunched detractors in the press completely wrong. Yet as the world lurches towards a worsening conflagration in Gaza, the fourth estate has, in Talleyrand’s old phrase, learned nothing and forgotten nothing.
This week, the UN secretary general was plastered over front pages for what the Telegraph called a “defence of Hamas” and the Mail deemed an “attack” on Israel. This followed a short speech in which António Guterres began by condemning “unequivocally the horrifying and unprecedented acts of terror by Hamas” and calling for the immediate release of Israeli hostages before setting the atrocities of 7 October in a longer history.
Before that, the i paper depicted a huge march against war in Gaza as “actively championing a proscribed terrorist organisation”. (After an outcry, the offensiveness was toned down.) When a separate, small gathering by Hizb ut-Tahrir chanted for “jihad”, it was leapt upon by Suella Braverman as hate speech – an area of expertise for the home secretary, since she produces so much of it.
The Telegraph dutifully provided a rant about “imported” extremists holed up in “Londonistan” in order “to plot Britain’s destruction”. Any more dog whistling and the whole newsroom could have moved to Crufts.
And so the British media and political class is again preparing for the vicarious thrill of war. As our prime minister told Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv: “We want you to win.” Something similar is happening elsewhere in Europe. France has tried to ban pro-Palestinian rallies. In Germany, the leader of the CDU – the party of Angela Merkel and Helmut Kohl – has called for all immigrants to pledge their commitment to Israel’s security.
In the UK, anyone not willing to join the cheerleaders should prepare to have their motives questioned. No matter that 6,500 Palestinians have already been slaughtered these past three weeks, to sling on the pile of 1,400 Israelis murdered by Hamas. No matter that more children have died in Gaza this October than all the people killed on 9/11. No matter that war is hardly the right noun for conflict between one of the most militarised states on Earth – Israel has 10 times more tanks than the British army – and Gaza, which has no planes, no Iron Dome (all-weather air defence system), barely any money. It is a daily pulverising.
The organisers of last weekend’s rally for Palestine estimate that about 350,000 people trudged through the pelting rain in central London. That is nearly four Wembley stadiums. In any gatherings of that size, there will inevitably be some ugliness. Stupid slogans, cruel sentiments and every so often, some fools doing a street corner re-enactment of Four Lions. But it is wrong to take that as representative of any such mass movement, just as one guy with a flare up his arse isn’t an ambassador for all football fans.
If we want to gauge public mood, we could look at the polling that shows three out of four Britons want an “immediate ceasefire” – an overwhelming majority that neither of the two main parties cares to represent. Nor are any of Westminster’s supposed Serious People talking about how to rebuild homes, schools, hospitals that have been razed to the ground or where a million displaced Palestinians are meant to go.
But why think about such hard questions when you can posture? This brings us naturally enough to Keir Starmer. The former human rights lawyer began by pledging his support for Israel, even as it broke international human rights law. As his own party began to protest, Starmer’s team dismissed it as grumbling from a few Muslim malcontents and continuity Corbynistas. Posters went up in Luton and Birmingham, naming Labour councillors who had acquiesced in their leader’s views and advising local people not to vote for them any more.
Last week, council leaders held a virtual meeting with the Labour leadership team, where, I’m told, the greatest discontent came not from the party’s metropolitan elite but from towns and cities outside London, including many stretches of the “red wall” with large Muslim electorates. In response to the discontent, Starmer went to a mosque in south Wales, where he tweeted a demand for the return of hostages. Then the mosque issued a statement repudiating his views on Gaza. By Wednesday evening, Starmer had made his third U-turn (after an ITV interview, where he denied supporting Israel’s right to cut off water and food; then an open letter to councillors stressing how much he felt the plight of Palestinians), to call for a “humanitarian pause” in bombing, which Sunak had already demanded some hours earlier.
The Labour leadership had no grasp of their own grassroots’ feelings, just as the press has shown no curiosity about the hundreds of thousands of people – often strikingly young – taking to the streets. The commentators would rather vilify those protesting at the slaughter of Palestinian babies than find out who they are and what’s driving them. It is the same strategy adopted with the protesters against Iraq, enthusiasts for Scottish independence, voters for Brexit, or supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. Ignore, stereotype, then demonise.
Yet if a liberal democracy is to live, it cannot keep marginalising those it believes hold the wrong views. Rather than exclude voters or offer up token identity politics, mainstream politics has to be able to engage with them. Otherwise the likes of Starmer and Sunak merely dismiss an ever-increasing number of Britons as “extremists” – and then send them off to the political extremes.
• This article was amended on 26 October 2023 because an earlier version referred to coverage of a march against war in Gaza in the Independent. That should have referred to the i newspaper. This has been corrected.
Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist
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