The Son Was David Miliband's Father
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THE STORY OF HOW David Miliband The son was David Miliband’s father, to ensure their survival. At war’s end, ascended to these heights is a tale of who soon changed his name to Ralph. Marion also made her way to Britain, historical forces that shaped Jewish life He briefly attended the London School where she met Ralph Miliband, who by in Europe. Like many Jews, his paternal of Economics (LSE), then served for then had resumed his studies in politics grandfather, Samuel, a leather worker, the rest of World War II in the Royal at the LSE and had become a committed left Poland after World War I, eventually Navy, patrolling the Mediterranean Marxist. It was the 1960s and Marion settling in Brussels. But on May 10,1940, and translating intercepted German shared his passion for left-wing politics. the Nazis overran Belgium. Samuel and communications. They married and, rather late in life, his 16-year-old son Adolphe walked for Meanwhile, Miliband’s mother, started a family. David was their first two days to the port of Ostend, where Marion Kozak, and her family were born, followed by his brother Ed. they boarded the last boat for Britain. Left trapped in Nazi-occupied Czestochowa Ralph became one of the most behind were Samuel’s wife and daughter, in southern Poland. Marion and her prominent left-wing intellectuals in who fled to a village in the countryside, mother found shelter in the home of a Britain and a leading figure of the “New successfully hiding from the Gestapo. local Polish family who took great risks Left,” a movement sparked by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary and given impetus by the Vietnam War. Britain was the epicenter of global cultural changes SO THERE IT IS that marked the ’60s and Labour was So there it is: the siren. It’s 10 am. The three of us in power. Although it was in theory a stand up around the table in the small dinette- socialist party, Ralph viewed Labour as for some reason we all face the window completely cut off from the working and the birds are chirping their heads off. masses who founded it and argued that In my mind are my father’s losses: sister, big brother, it had become a servant of the existing his wife, his two sons-and the story my mother told me just last year very carefully, shaking off for a moment power structure. the slowly rising flood of confusion and timelessness Ralph Miliband’s world view was that more and more is her life these days: shaped by big ideas but also by his painful that when they visited Yad Vashem in ’77, family history. Israel’s swift victory in the one month before his final stroke, my father had fainted, Six-Day War of 1967 created fissures having discerned his brother among the open sea of faces there. And in my mind it’s yitgadal v’yitkadash within the New Left that still have not for Motek and Rina and the wife and sons healed. Harsh critics, including many whose names I don’t know (and for my father, too) and of the movement’s Jewish intellectuals, the next thing I know it’s my first accused Israel of waging a war of colonial Yom Ha-Shoah in Israel nine years back aggression against the Palestinians. In on a highway in the middle of the Negev at 10 am, contrast, Ralph Miliband supported the few cars to be seen in the wide and flat terrain pulled over to the side under a big sky, and by each of them Israel’s actions. one or two figures standing silent and now, As the son of a professor, David’s now, breaking into and penetrating the drone of the siren growing years were peripatetic. At first, is a silly musical phrase calliope-like the family lived in Primrose Hill, a leafy they use instead of a bell to mark the end of each class area just north of London’s Regent’s Park, in the school across the way and one minute has elapsed and before I know it famous today as home to movie stars and the siren is rising in pitch and the two minutes are gone models, but then a colony of left-leaning and there is silence for a beat, professors and writers. They moved when Ralph left LSE to teach in the northern and for that second minute, I realize, English city of Leeds and later at Boston’s there were neither birds nor inner words nor memory nor breath, for one entire minute, all there was Brandeis University, returning to Britain was the sound of the siren and that was all there was. for David’s high school years. As a result, the future foreign secretary became a fan —Bernard Horn of both the British soccer team Arsenal and of a certain American baseball team. As Miliband once put it, “If you lived 28 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 P. 3 <' ::: - r a -T" r If anyone objects to the union of these two people, here, or on Facebook or on Twitter, speak, post, or tweet now, or forever hold your peace." in Boston, you, of course, support the Thatcher-Reagan era. “Our purpose,” Boston Red Sox.” wrote Miliband, “is to show that the THE OTHER MILIBAND economic justification for current DAVID’S CHILDHOOD was steeped levels of inequality is spurious.” The in values of equality and justice and book was notable for what it was not: his father’s frustration with Britain’s It was not a shrieking, rhetorical screed political system. As a young man, his against the widening gap between rich commitment to those values led to a and poor in Conservative Britain but break with his father’s world view and rather a measured and sober analysis toward an embrace of Labour Party of the economic cost of that gap to David Miliband may be cruising toward politics. After a first class degree from British society. Miliband called for the Labour leadership, but one person who Oxford in politics, philosophy and redistribution of wealth not because he might get in his way is his brother Ed. economics followed by a master’s at MIT wanted a revolution, but bccause it would Four years younger, Ed, 40, has risen faster in Boston, Miliband gained notice as a tap the economic potential of those who than his wunderkind older brother. Having policy analyst at the Institute for Public had been excluded and reduce costs in served as an advisor (and confidant) to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and as a Policy Research, a think-tank with close the long run. cabinet minister, he was appointed secretary ties to Labour. It was the early 1990s The book, published before Miliband of state at the newly created Department of and the party had just lost its fourth turned 30, had a major impact on the new Energy and Climate Change in 2008. Ed election in a row to the Conservatives. team that headed the Labour Party. He has received high marks for his leadership Every speck of policy and ideology was became particularly close to Tony Blair, working on climate change abroad and at home. There is some amusement the newly elected party leader. Blair was up for re-examination. among Labourites about the party’s “band In 1994, Miliband co-edited a not a Marxist; he was barely a Socialist; of brothers”: At its 2005 conference volume of essays called Paying fo r Ralph Miliband reportedly despised the delegates wore “My favourite Miliband” Inequality: The Economic Cost o f Social young Labour Party leader, considering badges, with pictures of either David or Injustice. With enough charts and him a closet Tory. But his son and the Ed. His affable and easy-going manner is statistics to beat the most ardent free- soon-to-be prime minister saw the world causing politicians, cabinet members and journalists alike to suggest that he, too, marketer into submission, the book differently. They believed that Labour has the making of a future prime minister. took on the economic orthodoxy of the had to embrace a new kind of progressive C ontinued on page 59 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 / MOMENT 29 politics to meet Britain’s current needs. BECOMING FOREIGN SECRETARY wasn’t Michigan professor who specializes in In the post-industrial society, the what Miliband had in mind. Chris Anglo-Jewish history. Miliband has faced working “masses” were property owners. Brown, professor of international criticism for his closeness to Blair, and as To be elected, Labour had to speak a relations at LSE, says David Miliband foreign secretary has spent considerable new language. Borrowing from Ralph hoped that Prime Minister Brown energy extricating British foreign policy Miliband’s idea of a “New Left,” the party would put him in charge of a big-budget from the compromises and possible rebranded itself “New Labour.” domestic department, like the Home illegalities associated with the war on David Miliband is credited with Office, which oversees immigration terror. He has managed to get British writing much of the 1997 Labour Party policy, counter-terrorism and science. citizens out of Guantanamo, yet at the election manifesto—its party platform. But after a smooth rise to the upper same time has fought what looks like a There wasn’t much naked socialism echelons of the Labour Party, Miliband losing battle against keeping secret the in it. But there was a lot of emphasis had slammed into the wall that has interrogation methods (torture) used on something his father, who passed prevented Labour from fulfilling the on some of those citizens.