Anti-Blair sentiment goes way beyond Iraq
What do you do when the person you despise the most does something noble?
If that person is Tony Blair, it seems you simply find new and increasingly irrational ways to hate him.
The former Prime Minsiter's decision to give away the proceeds of his memoir to the cause of rehabilitating wounded soldiers has been as revealing of his critics as it has of his own state of mind.
It's 'blood money', they say. He's trying to buy back his reputation. He's trying to distract us from the Chilcot inquiry. He's obviously feeling guilty ...
With their second-guessing of Blair's motives for the donation, the motives of his critics start to look pretty dubious.
You can be the most fervent opponent of the Iraq war and still know a charitable gesture when you see one.
But some of those who can't stand Blair find it impossible to accept that he could be capable of charity.
They are so used to thinking the worst of him that they can't see the good when it's staring them in the face.
Much of the mainstream media has taken this view, and on the fringes it is even more extreme, taking on an obsessively patricidal tone.
A collective of high-profile figures from the arts, claiming to speak for most people in Britain, have campaigned for Waterstones to cancel his book signings - and by implication, campaigning for fewer sales and therefore less money for the soldiers.
As you'd expect, some families of the bereaved have also been critical, although when I interviewed Peter Brierley (whose son, L Cpl Shaun Brierley was killed in Iraq) last week, his reaction was much more nuanced than you'd think from the way his name has been invoked in some quarters.
Admittedly, anyone wanting balance and a sense of proportion is best advised to steer clear of the Stop The War Coalition, but a glance at what its members say about Blair's donation is enlightening as an example of how anti-Blair feeling has taken on a life of its own quite independent from pacifist causes.
"No proportion of Tony Blair's massive and ill-gotten fortune can buy him innocence or forgiveness," says one.
Another paraphrases Shakespeare's Macbeth: "All Neptune's oceans could not wash the blood from Blair's hands."
A test of the anti-Blair brigade's real motives is to look at how they respond to violence other than that attributable to Blair.
If it's war crimes they object to, I look forward to their expressions of joy in the event of the former Liberian leader Charles Taylor being convicted.
But then, the crimes for which Taylor is allegedly responsible - sending crack-addled children into battle, cannibalism, the mass hacking off of limbs etc - were halted largely by the intervention of a certain Tony Blair.
So I'm not holding my breath.
* Members of the Stop The War Coalition and others will not be disappointed to learn that this is my last column - I begin teacher training next month and hope to be teaching English in a secondary school by next September.
So, for those of you who've read the column over the last ten years - I can't believe it's been so long - many thanks for your interest. Thanks also to those who've stopped me to chat in public or written in with their views. It's been a privilege and a very enjoyable one.
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Wednesday 08 February 2012
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