KEIR STARMER sent British troops join Donald Trump’s “multinational task force” in Israel, supposedly monitoring Gaza’s shaky peace.

But working with the US on Gaza can be risky, as documents released to me under Freedom of Information show:  the last time Britain worked closely with it on a Gaza initiative – the ultimately disastrous aid deliveries by a“floating pier” — officials knew the plan was a distraction but went along with it anyway.

Then foreign secretary David Cameron announced last April he would “boost aid support for Gaza by sea,” sending a Royal Navy ship and British troops to support then president Biden’s scheme to deliver aid from Cyprus to Gaza via a temporary floating pier.

Background documents show officials warning the plan was flawed. One email says “in all comms on this we should be clear that this is no way the best route to get aid in, the quickest and most effective way is on road and via Ashdod port. Plus Israel FM [Foreign Minister] has promised 500, trucks etc and that is what we need to see immediately.”

Another official worried the press office had “scored out” lines saying “land routes remain the most effective means to deliver aid to Gaza” and “land access remains crucial.”

Then prime minister Rishi Sunak was overriding Foreign Office (FO) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) worries about backing the plan. Another email says “both we [FO] and MoD policy have made the point to No 10 that the timing of this announcement is not ideal” as “it precedes the final detail we still require from the US on the pier itself.”

Officials also worried the pier scheme was a distraction, when the real aid problem was not just Israel closing the borders, but also the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) targeting and killing aid workers and civilians.

Charity World Central Kitchen (WCK) was delivering aid to Gaza via its own smaller pier at the time, but they stopped after Israeli drones attacked their convoy, killing seven WCK staff. Another internal FO email says: “We cannot let [the pier] distract from the extremely grave killing of seven WCK aid workers by Israel – we must see full transparency and accountability for the incident, major, concrete reform to the deconfliction system and ensure it is actually safe and protects aid workers and major change in the conduct of hostilities to protect civilians.”

But the government’s urge to be associated with the US and its pier meant these worries were downgraded: the FO, No 10 and the MoD launched a co-ordinated media campaign across press and television promoting the US pier.

Worries about land routes and attacks on aid workers were mentioned in their press releases, but as lesser issues rather than top lines.  The effort was not worthwhile, as the pier was a dismal failure, running for only 20 days before being swept aside by rough seas: the “pier” was a (quite likely deliberate) distraction which the Israeli government backed because it pulled attention away from its policy of blocking life-saving aid to Gaza, destroying food and water supplies and killing aid workers.

President Biden backed the distraction for his own political reasons, so Britain backed Biden and the pier and joined the distraction — even though FO officials knew this was wrong.

Covid comms
 

One of the key recommendations of phase 2 of the Covid inquiry is that in future health emergencies should involve “at a minimum” the “translation of key announcements into the most frequently spoken languages in the UK” as well as British Sign Language.

This reminds me how Boris Johnson’s government rejected translating key Covid health warnings and explanations into other languages, out of a lazy prejudice, even though this was disastrous for everybody’s health.

The inquiry report is shocked to note “key communications were not translated swiftly enough during the early stages of the pandemic,” hence its recommendation.

But the inquiry doesn’t delve into the political or structural reasons this happened. I can remember back in July 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, a charity called Doctors of the World desperately pushing the government to do more for Britons for whom English was not a first language.

They had, with their own small resources, translated some Covid advice and found they were being downloaded from their website thousands of times. They begged the government to do more.

But Boris Johnson’s government had little will to fix this: when I approached it, the Cabinet Press Office argued “the government remains committed to improving English language training and boosting integration across the country:” even in a pandemic, they said the problem was minorities needed to do more to “fit in.”

This was self-defeating, as viruses do not follow language barriers, and are not impressed with Tory snobbery and prejudice. If vulnerable groups with less command of English, like asylum-seekers helped by Doctors of the World, many of whom were at “high risk” and “living in overcrowded accommodation,” got Covid more frequently we all became more at risk.

There were also structural reasons, also unexamined by the Covid inquiry.  The Central Office of Information (COI) — you may remember them from their terrifying “public information films” about not playing on railway lines and so on — regularly advised government how to ensure “outreach” to “harder to reach” groups.

But the COI had been abolished in 2011 after being attacked by the Tory press for promoting the “nanny state.” Instead Covid Communications were done through contracts with advertising agencies like Mullen Lowe who did not have the expertise in social outreach.

So the Covid inquiry’s recommendation on language is very welcome. But without political and social changes – without a rejection of anti-migrant prejudice over language and without a return to the “nanny state” with public communications, with continual government reliance on commercial advertising firms, we stand a very good chance of repeating the same mistake, and not fully reaching all our communities by use of translation, outreach and social communication in the next pandemic.  

You can donate to Doctors of the World,who deserve our support, at their website https://www.doctorsoftheworld.org.uk/