TROOPS OUT CALL AT LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE

One for Brighton delegates to watch........


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/06/gordon-brown-afghanistan-pullout-motion

RE: JOYCE

Some years ago, I think it was Brighton 2004, I met Major Eric Joyce late one night in the Grand Hotel at the Labour Party Confererence. Unlike many of the Blairite coterie, he was an affable sort of bloke and I recall myself and a comrade from CLPD having a heated debate with him over Iraq.
Joyce, you may recall, was the one they used to drag on to Newsnight to defend Tony Blair's foreign policy when no-one else could stomach it. On the TV, he was "loyal" to the point of embarrassing sycophancy. In person, and after a couple of single malts, he was prepared to admit the left of the Party and the MPs who had opposed the war were possibly right.
Five years on I was, however, still rather gobsmacked to see he had resigned as a Parliamentary aide to the execrable Minister Ainsworth.
It says something when a man with a long track-record in the Army, one who has consistently defended the Government line for years and years, says it's time for a re-think. Isn't it time Gordon Brown started to have a re-think too.

HENRY ALLINGHAM.....

Last year I had to fight back tears as I watched Henry Allingham struggle heroically to place a wreath on the Cenotaph at the annual Rememberance Day parade.It was clear the old chap knew it was probably the last time he would be there - and he wanted to do his best for his fallen comrades. He died a couple of days ago and the news programmes have been full of tributes to his courage as someone who made it his job in latter years to tell others of the horrors of war.

When Henry went to war, in the "war to end all wars" he was just 18. The same age as the youngest soldier killed in Afghanistan. As Gordon Brown heads off to the Lake District for his summer break, he should maybe ponder how our descendants in 90 years time, when we're all long gone, will view our eight-year sojourn there and the hundreds of deaths incurred as a result. As poet Wilfred Owen said many decades ago "Do not tell me the old lie, dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori."

A TERRIBLE TOLL

It is not Bob Ainsworth's fault that the speaking clock is probably capable of emoting more distress than he is able to in the wake of the news that the death toll in Afghanistan hasnow reached the same total as Iraq.But never was a man less suited to the role of conveying public sorrow at private grief. He talks like an automaton.
That's no doubt why one of the bereaved relatives today accused him of being uncaring about the deaths of so many soldiers in so few days. I am sure that is not really the case.
However, it is surely time for the Government to consider bringing the troops home and ending the carnage.