YESTERDAY saw General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the Chief of the Defence Staff openly entering politics and fighting for Tory Party policy, telling SKY TV that the UK is ‘letting down’ its allies because its parliament has refused to authorise air strikes on Syria.
Generally speaking, after the role that the revolutionary army under Oliver Cromwell played in the 1640s and 50s when it placed the bourgeoisie into power, beheading the King, abolishing the monarchy, the House of Lords, and declaring a Republic, the rule has been that the army must stay out of politics.
Only in extreme situations has the army broken that rule. One was when in 1912 the Officers mutinied at the Curragh, saying that if Home Rule was given to Ireland, they would rather fight for the Kaiser than the King.
Another was in the 1970s when the political general Kitson presided over Bloody Sunday in the north of Ireland, and also declared that if large numbers of people took to the streets in the UK, even with just grievances, at a certain stage the army would have to intervene to restore order, with full force.
Houghton is following in the footsteps of Kitson. He continued his Sunday campaign by telling the BBC’s Andrew Marr show that a bomb that may have brought down a Russian airliner in Egypt may prove to be a turning point in the West’s relationship with Russia and attitudes towards the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
‘There is an opportunity for political convergence between America, ourselves, the West and Putin,’ he said. The political general thought it possible to converge with Putin against Assad, but ruled out emphatically any convergence with Labour Party leader Corbyn.
Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to launch nuclear weapons would ‘undermine’ the UK’s ‘deterrent’ if he became PM, the chief of the defence staff warned. Asked about Corbyn’s refusal to use nuclear weapons, Sir Nicholas said: ‘It would worry me if that thought was translated into power as it were.’ He added: ‘The whole thing about deterrence rests on the credibility of its use.
‘When people say you’re never going to use the deterrent, what I say is you use the deterrent every second of every minute of every day and the purpose of the deterrent is that you don’t have to use it because you successfully deter.’ This is nonsense – after Hiroshima and Nagasaki everybody knows that the US and UK military are prepared to slaughter millions – they don’t have to convince anybody.
If a prime minister said they would never press the nuclear button ‘the deterrent is then completely undermined,’ Houghton added. ‘Most of the politicians I know understand that and I think that, dare I say, the responsibility of power is probably quite a sobering thing and you come to a realisation of “I understand how this thing works”.’
However if PM Corbyn refused to sober up, then of course an army with Houghton in command would have no alternative but to do an ‘Allende’ on Corbyn so that the world could see that those prepared to mass murder were still in charge. It is obvious what this same army officer corps would do if a socialist government determined to put an end to capitalism and its ruling class came to power by the ballot box. The officer corps would organise a coup.
In his BBC TV performance Houghton had the support of Labour shadow defence secretary, Maria Eagle. She told Andrew Marr she was leading an ‘open-minded’ review of the policy, adding: ‘I understand the point that he is making. It is the point that I made myself when Jeremy said what he said.’ She defended the right of Britain’s most senior military figure to speak out on such a politically sensitive issue.‘I don’t think there is anything wrong with him expressing himself in those terms,’ she said.
She indicated she could resign if there was any change to the party’s current position in favour of renewing the Trident submarine fleet. We have been warned. The disarming of British imperialism, and the overthrow of its ruling class can only be achieved by a socialist revolution that smashes the capitalist state and organises a workers state.
