Top Jeremy Corbyn aide links Manchester Arena terror attack to UK foreign policy
2 min read
A top aide to Jeremy Corbyn has suggested the Manchester Arena terror attack which killed 22 people including children was motivated by UK foreign policy.
Andrew Murray said the Labour party condemned the attack "without reservation" but argued UK action abroad had "contributed to the environment in which these sorts of atrocities take place".
A total of 23 people died in the atrocity at an Ariana Grande concert in May last year, including suicide bomber Salman Ramadan Abedi.
Jeremy Corbyn himself was widely condemned in the wake of the attack when he said UK foreign policy "fuels terrorism".
But he got a boost a few days later when polling emerged showing 53% of the British public agreed with the Labour leader.
Mr Murray – who is chief of staff to Unite general secretary Len McCluskey as well as a part-time adviser to the Labour boss – echoed the sentiment at a Stop the War fringe event at the Labour conference in Liverpool.
He argued the polling proved the “political weather” in the UK when it came to British foreign policy and its effects around the world was changing “for good”.
“We saw it last year after the terrible terrorist atrocity in Manchester when Jeremy Corbyn said we condemn this without reservation, we condemn its perpetrator without reservation but we also say the foreign policy we have followed has failed," he said.
“It has contributed to the environment in which these sort of atrocities continue to take place.”
'DEEP STATE'
Earlier this month Mr Murray said a “deep state” may be working against Labour when it emerged Commons authorities had refused him a security pass into parliament.
Asked how a Labour government would prevent a ‘deep state’ fulfilling its foreign policy aims, Mr Murray told the event: “We would rely on the mobilisation of the mass of people as we did [ahead of the Iraq war] in 2003.”
He branded the Iraq war a “calamity for humanity,” adding: “The people that authored it are guilty in my view of the greatest crime of this century to date.”
Elsewhere at the event, Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon attacked fellow Labour MPs for their attitude to arms sales to authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.
“There are some Labour MPs who are intensely relaxed about the UK being a weapons supermarket for Saudi Arabia,” he said.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
PoliticsHome provides the most comprehensive coverage of UK politics anywhere on the web, offering high quality original reporting and analysis: Subscribe
