In mourning the death of Yasser Arafat, let me quote extracts from an article by Jonathan Steele in the Guardian Weekly in which he gets the historical context exactly right, in explaining Arafat's greatness: "In the days when Britain was being forced to give up one colony after another, the phrase "father of the nation" was much in vogue. Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Archbishop Makarios in Cyprus, and Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia were among the many who won this informal title, not just from journalists in search of a label but, more importantly, from their own people. As teachers, clerics or trade unionists who became political leaders, they were seen as the chief architects of the struggle for independence. "Forty years on from the age of decolonisation, Yasser Arafat...can claim that status. In many ways his title is even more deserved. He had to win recognition of the fact that there was such a thing as a Palestinian nation at all. For decades the Arab state...
Left wing commentary from the heart and the head