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This past March, a group of intellectuals, scholars, and journalists in London posted a statement on the Internet calling for a “new political alignment” among those ranging from the democratic left to “egalitarian liberals.” A month ago a group of us wrote “American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto” and were able to post it on the Euston Manifesto website. Today we are pleased to announce the launch of a new website, NewAmericanLiberalism.Org that continues this effort.

"The Euston Manifesto", named for the London underground station near the café where its key points were discussed and debated can be read at the group’s website. The statement was a defense of liberal democracy and human rights as well as a rejection of anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. Its authors supported a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We regard the Euston Manifesto was an important turning point in contemporary intellectual and political debates. As of today, 2,574 people, mostly in Britain but also in this country and many others around the world, have signed the statement.

In late summer, the Euston Manifesto group in London helped to put the American signers of the statement in touch with one another via e-mail. I wrote a draft of an American liberal’s response. Following several weeks of discussion with Russell Berman (Stanford), Thomas Cushman (Wellesley), Richard Just (The New Republic), Andrei Markovits (University of Michigan), Robert Lieber (Georgetown), and Fred Siegel (Cooper Union), we agreed on the revised text of “American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto.” We then sought support from prominent intellectuals and scholars. The Euston Manifesto group agreed to post it on its website. The statement and the list of signers was posted on September 12, 2006, and is available here) or by clicking on the "International" icon at the Euston Manifesto website).

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TODAY’S POLITICAL scene is not a friendly place for people who don’t see the world in stark black-and-white categories — people who, for instance, strongly condemn human rights abuses toward detained terror suspects in United States custody, but just as strongly reject the mentality that views the United States as the chief perpetrator of human rights abuses in the world today. Now, some of the politically homeless are building a home of their own, known as the Euston Manifesto.

The manifesto, which can be found at eustonmanifesto.org, was authored last March by a group of British academics, journalists, and activists headed by Norman Geras, emeritus professor of politics at Manchester University. In September, a group of American supporters of the manifesto issued their own statement, “American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto.”

The signatories are truly a varied group. A few, such as American Enterprise Institute scholar Michael Ledeen, could be described as conservative. Some, notably Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of The New Republic, are noted “liberal hawks” with the reputation of right-wing Democrats. Many others are liberals: emeritus Harvard professor sociologist Daniel Bell; Progressive Policy Institute president Will Marshall, the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council; noted psychiatrist Walter Reich; feminist legal scholar and City University of New York professor Cynthia Fuchs Epstein.

The signatories of the Euston Manifesto, American and international, stress that there is no consensus among them on some key policy issues, including the military intervention in Iraq. What brings them together is a commitment to liberal values in the broadest sense of the word — and an understanding that these values must be defended from the grave threat of radical Islamist terrorism.

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Our views in foreign policy are rooted in the traditions of Franklin Roosevelt as well as Harry Truman, who battled dictatorships of the right as well as the left respectively. For their generation, the key questions of international politics concerned totalitarianism in Europe and Asia. They led the country in war to defeat fascism, Nazism, and Imperial Japan and then founded the institutions that led to the peaceful victory in the Cold War over Communism. The key moral and political challenge in foreign affairs in our time stems from radical Islamism and the jihadist terrorism it has unleashed. We favor a liberalism that is as passionate about the struggle against Islamic extremism as it has been about its political, social, economic and cultural agenda at home. We reject the now ossified and unproductive political polarization of American politics rooted as it is in the conflicts of the 1960s, not the first decade of this century. We are frustrated in the choice between conservative governance that thwarts much needed reforms at home, on the one hand, and a liberalism which has great difficulty accepting the projection of American power abroad, on the other. The long era of Republican ascendancy may very well be coming to an end. If and when it does, we seek a renewed and reinvigorated American liberalism, one that is up to the task of fighting and winning the struggle of free and democratic societies against Islamic extremism and the terror it produces.

We regard anti-Americanism as a low and debased prejudice, not the mark of political sophistication or wisdom. We reject all forms of racism, including antisemitism, and also invoke the leaders of the American civil rights movement who won great political victories because they understood that hatred and terror would produce only more of the same. In the face of the retrograde attitudes about women and homosexuals emerging from the Islamic fundamentalists, and as advocates of the universality of human rights, we support equality for women and gays. Though most of us oppose much of the Bush administration’s domestic policies and have many criticisms of how it has conducted its foreign policy, we believe that some facts about international politics are not a matter of left and right. It is true that the knowledge about how to develop and deploy chemical, biological and most importantly nuclear weapons has [been], is and will be spreading around the globe and thus potentially into the hands of rogue states and terrorists deeply hostile to liberal democracy and respect for human rights. Indeed, the experience of fascism and Nazism showed us that it was possible for Germany, Italy and Japan to embrace modern technology yet at the same time reject liberal democracy and embrace policies of racism, chauvinism, aggression and mass murder. In our time, this paradoxical embrace of technological and scientific modernity that goes hand in hand with rejection of liberal democracy and human rights is taking place among radical Islamists, including those in the government of Iran, supported as well by non-Islamic states such as North Korea.

Even though we may differ on the proper response, we view the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran with alarm. Such a state with these weapons would be a grave danger for the Middle East, Europe and the United States. It would increase the danger that such weapons might wind up in the hands of radical Islamist terrorist groups immune to the calculations of nuclear deterrence. In contrast to the Communists during the Cold War, who wanted to change, not depart from this world, the cult of death and martyrdom of the terrorists inspired by Islamic fundamentalism raises deeply troubling questions about the prospects for peace and security in the future. We take very seriously and find utterly repugnant the threats of Iran’s political leaders to "wipe out" the state of Israel. We will not remain silent in the face of these genocidal threats to implement what would amount to a second Holocaust. We note as well that the vast majority of victims of the jihadist fanaticism have been other Muslims. Yet the passions of too many liberals here and abroad, even in the aftermath of terrorist attacks all over the world, remain more focused on the misdeeds and errors of our own government in Iraq than on the terrorist outrages by Islamic extremists. Anger at the Bush administration, however justified, should not trump opposition to all aspects of jihadism.

We stress that the efforts of liberal and free societies to defeat the radical Islamists is not a clash of civilizations, just as the war against Nazism, Italian Fascism and Imperial Japan was not a war against the totality of the cultures and history of Germany, Italy and Japan. Each of these societies had multiple traditions other than those of dictatorship and aggression. Fundamentalist Islamists do not speak for Muslims as a whole. Yet we soberly observe that, as Arab liberals and Muslim moderates have pointed out, democratic values and critical reflection on religious belief that have long been part of Western modernity remain comparatively weak in the Arab and Muslim world. Moreover, some Arab states have used wealth from petrodollars to finance religious fundamentalism, rather than to fully enter into the modern world. We agree with and lend our support to those Arab and Muslim liberals and modernists who argue that the internal modernization and liberalization of the Arab and Islamic societies are essential. But we do them no favor by moderating our criticism of the extremists in their midst who threaten and attack them.

In both World War II and the Cold War, liberals, centrists and conservatives found moments of commonality. Indeed, if those efforts had been borne exclusively by the left or the right they very well might have failed. For us, part of the Euston Manifesto’s importance lies precisely in bringing this insight to bear on our current dilemma and in recalling the traditions of American liberal anti-fascism and anti-totalitarianism that remain important today. In the United States, the struggle against Islamic extremists should not be the preoccupation for conservatives alone nor can it be waged successfully by liberals alone. The challenge we face from Islamic extremism is one to values and institutions that Americans across a broad political spectrum hold dear. Unfortunately, President Bush did not seize the moment after 9/11 to bridge the political divide. Rather than govern from the center, he has governed from the right in the realms of taxation, energy policy, global warming, social security, the role of religion and culture war issues.

In light of the tragedies of the war in Iraq and the ineptitude in the Bush administration that helped to produce them, the partisan divide has deepened even more. We know that in the preparation for the war in Iraq the Administration did not listen to many of its own diplomats and military officers who called for a larger invasion force and anticipated the problems and disasters that have enveloped Iraq after the initial phases of the war in 2003. We recognize that in the management of the war, the Bush administration has erred egregiously in ways — at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere — that undermine the very values for which this war must be fought and won. Tolerance for torture or ambiguity about the application of the Geneva conventions is both wrong and self-defeating. We agree with the implications of decisions by the United States Supreme Court, former high ranking military officials and many members of Congress that the Geneva conventions concerning treatment of prisoners of war should apply wherever the United States is holding prisoners captured in the effort to contain, thwart and defeat the terrorism inspired by Islamic extremism. We support higher mileage per gallon requirements for cars and a national gasoline tax (with relief for low income drivers) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the amount of petrodollars now fueling Islamist radicalism and to contribute to slowing and reversing global warming.

The signers of this statement include supporters of the decision to go to war in Iraq and others who opposed this decision from the beginning. Despite our agreement about many things in this manifesto, our differences on this issue remain. Our group includes signatories who view the war as a failure and a diversion from the struggle against radical Islamists. They therefore advocate an American withdrawal at the earliest possible time, especially in light of Sunni-Shia sectarian violence enveloping that country. However others amongst us point to the fragile beginnings of democracy after dictatorship and think success there is still possible and essential. In their view an American exit before stability and security are established would be a disaster for international and national security and would be seen in many parts of the world as a victory for radical islamists and unreconstructed Baathists.

We realize that the path to a new and reinvigorated liberalism in foreign policy will be difficult. The political habits of the post-Vietnam era are hard to break. Yet we think that the terror unleashed by the radical Islamists has begun to refocus some liberal minds. We have authored this statement and urge other like-minded citizens to join us in the hopes that this rethinking will become clearer and more vigorous as a result of debate and discussion we hope to stimulate. We believe liberals have important contributions to make in the struggle against the Islamic extremists. Indeed, we believe that this struggle’s successful outcome depends in part on our engagement on the basis of deeply held values and traditions.

Authors

Jeffrey Herf, History, University of Maryland, College Park
Russell Berman, Stanford University, Editor, Telos
Thomas Cushman, Wellesley College, Editor, Journal of Human Rights
Richard Just, Deputy Editor, The New Republic
Robert Lieber, Georgetown University
Andrei Markovits, Political Science and German Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Fred Siegel, Cooper Union College

Signatories

"American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto" has also been published at the website of the journal Telos.

Ramin Ahmadi, Co-Founder, Iran Human Rights Documentation Project, New Haven

Fred Alford, Government, University of Maryland, College Park
Ronald Asmus, Executive Director, Transatlantic Center of the German Marshall Fund of the United States
Daniel Bell, Sociology, Emeritus, Harvard University
David Bell, History, Johns Hopkins University
Sheri Berman, Political Science, Barnard College, Columbia University
Gabriel Noah Brahm Jr., Bilkent University, Ankara, and University of California, Santa Cruz
William M. Chace, President Emeritus and Professor of English, Emory University
Dan Chirot, Henry Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle
Stanley Corngold, German, Princeton University
Evan Daniel, Archivist, Tamiment Archives, New York University
Marion Deshmukh, History, George Mason University
Arthur M. Eckstein, History, University of Maryland, College Park
Gerald Feldman, History, University of California, Berkeley
Saul Friedlander, History, UCLA
Peter B. Golden, Rutgers University, Newark
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Harvard University
David Goodman, East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Liah Greenfeld, University Professors Program, Boston University
Alonzo Hamby, History, Ohio University, Athens
K.C. Johnson, History, Brooklyn College
Anatoly Khazanov, Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Jeffrey Kopstein, Political Science, University of Toronto
Mark Kramer, Director, Cold War Studies, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Jens Kruse, German, Wellesley College
Walter Laqueur, Historian, Author and Co-founder of The Journal of Contemporary History
Andrew Lees, History, Rutgers University, Camden
Robert Leiken, Washington, DC
Hugh Lifson, Art, Emeritus, Cornell College
Charles Lipson, Political Science, University of Chicago
Joan Lowenstein, Ann Arbor City Council
Will Marshall, Progressive Policy Institute
Steven Miner, History, Ohio University, Athens
James Olds, Neuroscience, George Mason University
Keith Olson, History, University of Maryland, College Park
Stanley Payne, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joseph K. Perloff, Medicine and Pediatrics, UCLA
Marjorie Perloff, English, Stanford University
Martin Peretz, Editor-in-Chief, The New Republic
Ronald Radosh, History, Emeritus, CUNY Graduate Center
Walter Reich, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University
Steven Remy, History, Brooklyn College
Jeremiah Riemer, Political Scientist and Translator
Thomas Schwartz, History, Vanderbilt University
Steven B. Smith, Political Science, Yale University
Clifford L. Staples, Sociology, University of North Dakota
Alan Steinweis, History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Vladimir Tismaneanu, Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park
Jonathan Trobe, Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Gerhard Weinberg, History, Emeritus, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic
Jeff Weintraub, Sociology and Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
James E. Young, Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

"An internationalized social democracy" that "counterbalances the power of international corporations". An end to the concentration of wealth "in the hands of a small corporate elite". "A creative redefinition of a progressive social egalitarian agenda". Shalom Lappin’s goals for the "Renewal of Social Democracy" are highly admirable but, due to three key misjudgements, his plan is unconvincing. First of all, he misunderstands the political solutions to economic inequality. Secondly, he dismisses the Blairite Third Way as "neoliberal". Lastly, and as a result of this error, he risks alienating many potential Eustonians.

Lappin argues that the "failure of the secular nationalist groups that secured independence from colonial rule to deliver either prosperity or democracy" sparked the Islamist movement into life. Lappin’s materialist explanation — that Islamists are motivated by poverty — is at first sight compelling; however the biographies of known Islamists discredit it (not least that of Osama bin Laden, whose family’s links with the Bush family were famously, if crudely, documented by Michael Moore). Globalisation might have caused "wrenching social and economic dislocations" in developing countries, but many of the 9/11 terrorists, educated in Europe and America, felt very at home in the globalising world.

Lappin’s programme intends to exploit global capital for the good of the world’s poor; only incidentally is it a weapon against Islamofascism. Yet his take on this phenomenon is emblematic of the rest of his analysis. The transformative power of economic change is paramount: other factors are secondary. Tellingly, Lappin’s second explanation for Islamism — that it resulted from a lack of democratisation in erstwhile colonies — represents one of the few mentions of democracy in his article.

In advocating global trade unions, Lappin describes another materialist teleology, though this time with a positive outcome. He claims that collective bargaining in emergent industries will raise developing countries’ living standards, facilitate their convergence with Western standards, and contribute to the democratisation of those countries. Crucially, however, he neglects to outline how unions in non-democratic polities will ever gain the requisite political power to achieve this. Leftists in the West should offer their strongest support to their most besieged comrades, but can we justifiably found a whole economic programme on such uncertain ground? The tabescence of the labour movement in Iraq under Saddam’s reign of terror, and the recent suppression of the Tehran bus workers’ strike, are discouraging portents.

Lappin is correct to state in the Euston Manifesto’s "Platform Fifteen" that "democratic trade unions are the bedrock organizations for the defence of workers’ interests". He is also correct in his assessment that "[l]abour rights are human rights". Yet if labour organisations are the bedrock for the defence of workers’ interests, human rights are the mantle. Freedom from summary execution and torture precedes the right to organise unions. Freedom from religious or political persecution precedes the right to collective bargaining. The legal protection we take for granted as members of pluralist, democratic polities comes next, for practical as well as moral reasons.

Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has shown how laws can be made to work for the people of developing countries at the expense of established plutocrats. Unchained from the corruption and arbitrary taxation that characterise so many of the world’s bureaucracies, poor men and women readily grasp the opportunity to make a living for themselves.

Thus, before economic change can happen, citizens of developing countries must first be given a stake in the legal and political structures that so often condemn them to a life of poverty. In a sense, advocates of the Third Way have similar aims. While acknowledging the past harm done by corporations, their philosophy concedes that such firms have a greater capacity for wealth and job creation than the state. New Labour favours business-friendly fiscal measures not as a result of its "resigned embrace" of neoliberal corporate interests, but out of a considered conviction that liberalisation will encourage inward investment for the good of all social classes.

It is therefore unsurprising that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were the link between last year’s Make Poverty History campaign and the G8 summit. Theirs is an expansive vision that gives as much weight to the eradication of poverty abroad as it does inequality at home. Like Lappin, they believe that globalisation need not be the scourge of the developing world: if managed correctly, it can become its lifeblood. Yet where they differ from Lappin is in their approach to capital. Underlying Lappin’s rhetoric is a sense that businesses should be constrained not guided; that the market should be harnessed, not ridden.

In Lappin’s conception, global capital represents a necessary evil. He responds to its challenges in two ways. The first is revealed in his reply to David Grant, where he highlights the self-serving political decisions behind neoliberalism, and calls for a concerted political reaction from the labour movement to assuage neoliberalism’s pernicious effects. But is it right to pin all our hopes on organised labour? Can we legitimately foster social change through industrial trade unions when the vast majority of the world’s poor work for themselves, in subsistence agriculture or the black economy?

The history of those social models that have habitually promoted their industrial sector makes for gloomy reading. Most notably, events of the past year laid bare the hypocrisies of the French system. State protection has elevated the employees of traditional French industries to a labour aristocracy, condemning the very poorest citizens to unemployment and social alienation, and creating the same "sharp rise in social inequality and a significant reduction in economic mobility for the poor" that Lappin lays at the door of neoliberalism. Far better, then, to promote the structural and intellectual buttresses of a modern market economy — for instance entrepreneurship, education, and new technologies [PDF]. Such an approach understands that flexibility, based on a broad enough skill set to cope with a shift away from traditional industries, is the key to survival in the globalised economy.

Lappin’s second response is to advocate "fair labour laws, equitable taxation on profits and stringent environmental constraints" on global businesses. This is all pretty uncontroversial; at issue, however, are the precise meanings of the terms "fair", "equitable" and "stringent". As with domestic policy, the Third Way prioritises inward investment in developing countries. It favours full employment as the best safety net for those cast aside by the globalising labour market, trusting that a flourishing economy will soon re-employ the jobless. It knows that the most effective way to achieve this is to maintain the faith of global capital. It therefore recognises, like Celso Rocha, that overly stringent constraints cause businesses to stray towards low-wage economies, depressing wage rates in the developing world even further.

In "Platform Fifteen", Shalom Lappin warns us that "retreating to the tired slogans of past ideological struggles will in no way advance this cause". He would do well to follow his own advice — after all, what worse obloquy is there for those who spent years opposing Thatcher than to be labelled neoliberal? Conscious of their left-wing heritage, Third Way advocates like to claim the social democratic creed for themselves. John Prescott called last year for the liberalisation of the EU’s social model because, "for socialists, the [European vision] must include full employment".

They make natural Eustonians, too. Within and without Parliament there are Labour members who broadly agree with the Manifesto’s principles, who self-define as progressives, but who, after Lappin’s philippic, will think twice about signing up. If the Eustonians are to avoid the sectarian squabbles that have condemned the left in the past, they would be wise to debate the Third Way, not dismiss it ex ante. It’s a good time to start. Gordon Brown looks likely be the next Prime Minister: we’ll have to put up with a few more years of "neoliberalism" yet.

Tristan Stubbs is the Henry Jackson Society’s Environment / Economy Section Director

El fin se ha empezado a oír la voz de gente de la izquierda política -es decir que está en favor de la igualdad, la democracia, y el respeto a los derechos humanos- intentando combatir la enfermedad que aqueja a grandes sectores internacionales de quienes se definen también como de “izquierda”, pero que en los hechos han dejado de serlo. Se trata de un agrupación surgida en Inglaterra la cual ha elegido el internet como medio de contacto y comunicación para tratar de formar un frente de verdadera izquierda. Este grupo, ha producido un documento base, el Manifiesto de Euston, en el que se detallan los principios básicos de su postura, la cual ha comenzado a recibir miles de adhesiones de personas que se identifican plenamente con dichas ideas.

El mencionado Manifiesto, con traducciones a varios idiomas -el español, entre ellos- puede leerse íntegro en euromanifesto.org y constituye un documento inspirador en la medida en que señala con claridad hasta qué grado una gran parte de quienes se ubican dentro de la izquierda internacional han desviado su camino para caer en posturas que le hacen el juego a las corrientes más reaccionarias y retrógradas del escenario mundial. Entre sus principios destacan los siguientes: oposición a justificar o manifestar “comprensión” hacia los regímenes autoritarios enemigos de la democracia y opresores de sus propios pueblos; condena a las violaciones de derechos humanos con independencia de quiénes sean responsables y cuál sea su contexto cultural, sin tolerancia hacia las nociones de relativismo cultural sobre las que se apoya la idea de que el respeto a los derechos humanos no es aplicable en determinadas naciones o pueblos; igualdad social y económica, igualdad entre sexos, etnias, religiones y orientaciones sexuales.

Otros puntos destacables tienen que ver con el desarrollo económico dentro del marco de la globalización, por lo que se proponen reformas radicales a instituciones como la OIC, el FMI y el Banco Mundial, con objeto de impulsar una justa distribución de los beneficios del desarrollo.

Es importante también en el Manifiesto la oposición al antiamericanismo a ultranza que infecta una parte importante del pensamiento de izquierda y, también, del conservador, lo cual ha generado un prejuicio generalizado contra Estados Unidos y su pueblo, sin matices y sin atenuantes. En el mismo tenor, se condena el racismo de todo tipo, ya sea antiinmigrantes, interétnico, tribal y el surgido contra poblaciones musulmanas, dentro del contexto de lucha contra el terrorismo. Igualmente, hay un pronunciamiento contra el antisemitismo tan virulento hoy en las izquierdas que, explotando los legítimos agravios del pueblo palestino, han dado rienda suelta a una postura “antisionista” que enmascara a un viejo antisemitismo, al cuestionar el derecho a la existencia del Estado de Israel, haciéndole el juego a regímenes totalitarios que gravitan sin tapujos alrededor de ideas de esa índole.

Sin duda, otro punto importante reside en la defensa de las democracias pluralistas y liberales contra quienes ignoran las diferencias entre ellas y los totalitarismos y regímenes tiránicos. Se establece, por ende, que sólo los Estados que protegen mínimamente la vida de sus gentes (porque no torturan, asesinan o masacran a sus propios civiles y cubren responsablemente sus necesidades básicas) merecen que su soberanía sea respetada. Al mismo tiempo se alude a la desastrosa experiencia de las justificaciones de los crímenes del estalinismo y el maoísmo avaladas por la izquierda, para hacer un paralelismo con las justificaciones también inaceptables del terrorismo suicida. En síntesis, el Manifiesto de Euston es un documento clave para definir los contornos de una izquierda digna y coherente a la que valga la pena pertenecer.

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Have you heard the latest out of England? A commitment to the institutions of democracy. No excuses or apologies for tyranny. A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. An affirmation that the United States is a great country and nation.

These notions may seem common sense, bordering on banal. Yet they have caused quite the ruckus within the British and North American left. They are key tenets of the “Euston Manifesto,” a statement of broadly left-liberal principles cooked up last spring by a collection of London-based journalists, activists and academics. First published in the New Statesman in early April, the manifesto was officially launched on May 25 (and is available online at eustonmanifesto.org).

The purpose of the Euston Manifesto is, essentially, to save the left from itself. It is an attempt to draw a clear line between the social-democratic liberal left and the anti-war left, the latter of which has, since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, made common cause with tyrants, excused terrorists, and — in some cases — sold out the rights of women to reactionary theologians, all in the service of a single-minded opposition to the United States. Enough, write the authors of the Euston Manifesto: “We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic ‘anti-imperialism’ and/or hostility to the current US administration.”

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For many decades, and more noticeably in the aftermath of 9/11 and the launching of the “war on terror,” there has been a vacuum on the political spectrum. It has been harder for the so-called democratic or non-communist left, (or American Democrats in the Kennedy, Humphrey and Johnson tradition) to find an intellectual and political home.

People who sought to combine a progressive domestic agenda — strong support for the liberal welfare state, free trade unions, gender and racial equality, free speech, fair trade — with a robust, proactive and pro-democratic foreign agenda, had nowhere to turn. One or the other would have to be sacrificed.

So this past spring a group of British intellectuals and academics, led by Norman Geras, an emeritus professor of politics at Manchester University, drafted and publicized the Euston Manifesto.

The purpose of the document, a statement of 15 broad socio-political principles, was to create a coherent vehicle to rally left-liberals and other progressives who were disillusioned by some of the anti-democratic, neo-isolationist and reflexively anti-American tendencies of the contemporary left.

[link to full text of article]

Join us for a drink and a chat at Beluga, 2 Mount Street, Manchester on Wednesday 27 September from 7:00pm onwards. In the bar will be Nick Cohen, Gisela Stuart, Greg Pope, Lord Soley, Norman Geras, Eve Garrard, Alan Johnson, and Jane Ashworth.