CONFUSION ruled in the British socialist movement in 1884. The leader of the marxist Social Democratic Federation, Henry Hyndman, had antagonised much of the membership in arguing for a British military mission to rescue General Gordon then besieged by the Sudanese in Khartoum.

Accustomed to his role in asserting British imperial authority over the Sudanese people, the hapless colonial overlord was an early practitioner of the tactics that have caused countless deaths – of colonial subjects and British soldiers alike – over the generations and, in this instance, his own.

This came about when, in defiance of his instructions, which were simply to evacuate, he instead fortified the city and began to treat with the the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad.

Much of British domestic opinion, reacting to the siege in an imperialist frenzy, demanded a relief force be sent and reluctantly, Gladstone’s ministry agreed. When British troops arrived in Khartoum Gordon was but a corpse fit only for a martyrdom.

In the ensuing split in British socialism the charlatan chauvinist Hyndman was left in charge of a rump while the principled socialist tendency joined with William Morris and  Eleanor Marx in the newly formed Socialist League.

In a series of public meetings throughout the spring of 1885 Morris argued forcefully that “the war in the Soudan was prompted by the capitalist class, with a view to the extension of their fields of exploitation.”

The Socialist League commenced its existence with the declaration that “the invasion of the Soudan was undertaken with the covert intention of exploiting that country for the purposes of commercial greed; and that, therefore the check inflicted on the British invaders should be hailed by all supporters of the cause of the people as a triumph of right over wrong, of righteous self-defence over ruffianly brigandage.”

The century has turned twice since and today Labour’s shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy has proved herself a dedicated disciple of Henry Hyndman and – in defending the decision by the then Blair Labour government to intervene militarily in Afghanistan as “absolutely right” – no less an advocate for imperialism.

There are obvious parallels between the turbaned Taliban of today and the “mad” Mahdi’s  followers of yesteryear. 

For one there is the religious form in which their ideas are expressed.  Muhammad Ahmad offered Gordon joint suzerainty over Sudan if but the former governor-general would join him in adhering to Islam.

For Gordon, whose imperialism was, as was conventional, garbed in Christian piety, this was no more acceptable than are the “Christian” values of those today who order drone strikes on Afghan village weddings or, as in recent days, hapless aid workers whose digitalised water buckets are identified as the equivalents of explosive devices.

The principal conceit of  liberal interventionists like Blair and Nandy is that the “democratic” values that clothe their imperial ambitions can be imposed on other people with bombs and missile strikes.

The principal lesson of this second Taliban takeover is that they cannot.

The casualties of empire, both of invaders and insurgents, are not the collateral damage of imperialism’s civilising mission but its inescapable consequences.

In every instance imperialism either underdevelops, or simply exploits, the territories and peoples it make its subjects. The resistance of these people – which always proceeds according to their customs and mores and over the terrain in which they live – is inevitably characterised as savage.

The best chance for a secular and peaceful Afghan civil society, full literacy, the emancipation of women and the integration of the rural population into the modern world lay with the government of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan building on the decades of partnership with the Soviet Union which preceded their Saur Revolution.

Today liberal opinion is outraged when all the reactionary prejudices, tribal conventions and religious dogma that imperialism encouraged, and funded, in its proxies when Afghanistan had a secular government today are reimposed after the collapse of their client regime.

For William Morris and the socialists who founded the Labour Party, and later the Communist Party, the ferocity and form which the Sudanese resistance took was secondary. Political principle placed him and his fellow socialists unreservedly on their side and against imperial power.

Today, in Labour’s leading circles the opposite is the case and even in the midst of a deep defeat for imperialism they cling to the mendacious mountain of myths which Blair and his liar-in-chief Alastair Campbell concocted.

Now we see the fortifications these latter-day imperialists are erecting against such insurgents who might besiege Labour’s annual conference.

The opening salvo last week was a midnight missive which suspended the chair of  Young Labour for “bringing the party into disrepute.”

Swiftly exposed and shamefacedly withdrawn, this maladroit manoeuvre was retaliation for Young Labour’s decision to submit a motion, echoing that endorsed this week by the TUC, which staked out solidarity with the Palestinian people. Added animus undoubtedly arose from Jessica Barnard’s frank description of the hostile treatment the party leadership has accorded Young Labour and her condemnation of this exercise in cancel culture Starmer-style.

The organisational triumph of the Labour right wing has gone a very long way in dissipating the progressive momentum that led to Jeremy Corbyn’s election as Labour leader and which produced the Labour surge.

While US voters are six to four in favour of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan only one in five Labour supporters agree. Confusion reigns in Labour with more than 50 per cent of Labour supporters in favour of  Nato troops remaining. That ship has sailed but the ideological morass that accompanies liberal interventionism remains. 

The deep defeat suffered by the combined forces of Nato in Afghanistan is both a reflection of the deep divisions within imperialism, and in each imperialist state, and a product of those divisions.

The US retreat, conceived by Obama, negotiated at Doha by Trump and implemented by Biden, cannot be dressed up as any thing but a setback.

The divisions are deep. Biden himself was a long-time sceptic about the Afghanistan mission and as vice-president opposed Obama’s troop surge.

This is not to say that the US and, in some disarray, its allies do not retain a powerful capacity to intervene in the region. At the very least the patronage of the Taliban by Pakistan’s intelligence organisation gives the US some leverage.

There is a tendency among some sections of the left to see imperialism as all powerful. This can easily drift into conspiracy theories which see every development, progressive or perverse, as the emanations of this omnipotent power.

There is a confusing crossover between this kind of thinking and the liberal notion, embedded in some sections of the Labour Party and drawing inspiration from Cold War US Trotskyism, that socialists should stand aside from many of the conflicts taking place unless the protagonists meet the elevated standards set by the metropolitan vanguard. 

At its most crude, imperialism’s little helpers insist that socialists should support neither side in the many conflicts with imperialism, or instead fight for a “third camp” that exist exclusively in  their imagination.

Of course, the question is not whether or not support should be offered to the likes of the Taliban – who neither seek nor are likely to welcome the endorsement of unbelievers – but what we should do about the active imperialism of our own states?

Britain, the US and Nato have come unstuck in Afghanistan and it is heightening the tensions within the alliance.

We can find elements of a blame game in the divisions between the US State Department and Pentagon; between the British government and the US; between Trump and Biden; within the military caste in Britain and between these people and the political establishment.  And there are echoes of this within Westminster Labour.

Take note of Starmer’s dispiriting speech last week when he name-checked each MP who had soldiered in Afghanistan as if they were serving the people of this country rather than a failed imperial project.

This was an adventure into which Blair dragged us but over which, as it turns out, Britain had no agency whatsoever, except to allow its soldiers to die or be maimed in Helmand province.

And this under the command of a  US officer corps that today questions the value of the whole enterprise and the competence of their successive commanders-in chief.

One clear line emerging from the US military is that the original operation to take out Osama Bin Laden’s outfit in the mountains of Afghanistan can be justified in its own terms but that the subsequent occupation was either bound to fail or could only have succeeded militarily with more resources.

Against the dubious notion that after this withdrawal the US can be confident that a renewed Taliban government might facilitate its broader regional strategy of confrontation with China and Russia a question must be answered. Why thus did the US prolong the occupation beyond the point at which, by common consent, Afghanistan no longer offered a safe haven for the terrorists, mostly Saudi Arabians, who 20 years ago took out the Twin Towers?

This is the question which underpins Kissinger’s gloomy analysis.

Strategically, the left lost the opportunity to directly shape events in this part of the world when Soviet socialism was dismantled. The economic rise of China in more recent years is not accompanied by any active political intervention that might give the scattered and mostly subterranean parties of the left any decisive help.

Of course, economic development, driven by industrial and infrastructure investment by China – which is welcomed by many in the region as a counterweight to Western pressure – may help create new social forces that could aid a challenge for power. But this is not yet very evident even though, with the US and Nato on the back foot, prospects are brighter for all who seek national independence and sovereignty.

Parse his Commons speech for inner meaning and Starmer remains mired in imperial nostalgia and evident grief at the loss of “our primary source of leverage in political discussions” while “everything that we have achieved in the last 20 years is now under threat.”

In this the Labour leader echoes the anguished words of Tory MP Tom Tugendhat whose parliamentary assault on his party and its leader was driven by the recognition – particularly galling for this extravagantly Atlanticist chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee – that the US no more considered consulting its Nato ally Britain than it did its client regime in Kabul.

Nick Wright blogs at 21centurymanifesto.