Euston Manifesto - Legacy

Legacy

Australian journalist Guy Rundle argued that the Euston Manifesto's attempt to create a "progressive realignment" in support of democracy in the Middle East has failed as evidenced by the failure of Euston signatories to take a consistent stand supporting Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War over which Rundle states Euston Manifesto signatories "have overwhelmingly divided along pre-existing political lines." Rundle argues that "any attempt to use the collective power of the manifesto to make an impact would reveal that it has no collective power. Its attempt to build a broad virtual coalition has left it as a statement of liberal universalisms with no character, and allowed it to be defined by what it opposes, the mainstream anti-war movement...the EM group merely reproduces the confusion and atomisation of the Blogosphere in a new form."

Looking back at the manifesto in April 2008, Daniel Davies, a contributor to The Guardian newspaper's online Comment Is Free forum, noted that the group had become largely inactive and claimed that one of its leading members, Alan Johnson, had abandoned Euston's key principle of "human rights for all" by advocating Britain's withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights. Davies argued that the group's flaw was "the relentless refusal to actually bring anything down to brass tacks" and that they would demand action on various issues without following through on implementation. According to Davies, "it was this refusal to step down from Mount Olympus that finally did for the Euston Manifesto group. In the early days, it allowed them to assemble a broad coalition, uniting war supporters and opponents under a vague banner of 'that Galloway chappie has gone a bit too far'. But almost as soon as the manifesto was published, it ran into its first big real-world test as Israel invaded Lebanon, and the strains began to show between those Eustonauts like Norman Geras, who had taken seriously the universalist stuff about human rights, and the Atlanticist element who had always assumed that they were joining a movement that would be happy to set all that stuff aside in the name of getting the bad guys."

The Website continues to be updated from time to time, but the Euston Manifesto Group seems to be moribund, having not held any public meetings for years (December 2009).