The Euston Manifesto (pron. "yoosten", IPA /ˈjuːstən/) is a declaration of principles by a group on the democratic left. The statement is a reaction to what are asserted to be widespread violations of left-wing principles by other left-wingers. The manifesto states that "the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between forces on the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values."
These alleged violations mainly concern the Middle East; for example the Iraq war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the war on terror. Broadly speaking, the group asserts that the left as a whole is overly critical of the actions of Western governments, such as the military presence in Iraq, and correspondingly is overly supportive of forces opposing Western governments, such as anti-Western Iraqi forces. As the document puts it, "we must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic 'anti-imperialism' and/or hostility to the current US administration."
The manifesto began as a conversation between friends, a gathering of (mainly British) academics, journalists, and activists. At their first meeting in London, they decided to write a "minimal manifesto", a short document summarising their core values. The original intention of its proposer was that the manifesto would provide a rallying point for a number of left-leaning blogs, to be collected by an aggregator, and the basis for a book collecting some of the best writing about related political questions. The group met more formally after the document's first drafting, at a branch of the O'Neill's Irish-themed pub chain on London's Euston Road — just across the road from the British Library — where the manifesto was named, and its content voted on. It was first published in the New Statesman on April 7, 2006.
The manifesto proposes a "fresh political alignment," which involves "making common cause with genuine democrats, whether socialist or not," in which the left stands for democracy, freedom, equality, internationalism, the open-source movement, and historical truth, while condemning all forms of tyranny, terrorism, anti-Americanism, racism, anti-SemitismJewish people behind the formula of "anti-Zionism". The signatories say they "reject fear of modernity, fear of freedom, irrationalism, the subordination of women," and "reaffirm the ideas that inspired the great rallying calls of the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century: liberty, equality and solidarity; human rights; the pursuit of happiness ... But we are not zealots. For we embrace also the values of free enquiry, open dialogue and creative doubt, of care in judgement and a sense of the intractabilities of the world. We stand against all claims to a total — unquestionable or unquestioning — truth."