Echoing Big Mick Bakunin, JOHN COOPER CLARK might say:
'Distruction is a Creative Urge
'Transgender is the way of the World!
'August is the silly season,
'So do away with the patriarchal penis,
'Cultivate a matriarchal cunny-become a Cool Dude!
'Distruction is a Creative Urge!
'So let's have a bit of a Purge!'
**************
CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL ON THE FREEDOM CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Trans-maniac Trauma Grips Friends of Freedom
by Brian Bamford
'Distruction is a Creative Urge
'Transgender is the way of the World!
'August is the silly season,
'So do away with the patriarchal penis,
'Cultivate a matriarchal cunny-become a Cool Dude!
'Distruction is a Creative Urge!
'So let's have a bit of a Purge!'
**************
CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL ON THE FREEDOM CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Trans-maniac Trauma Grips Friends of Freedom
by Brian Bamford
THE WEEKEND in the run-up to the Glorious Twelfth day of August, and the start of the shooting season for red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotica), was this year a busy and anxious time for the secretary of the Friends of Freedom Press Steve Sorba. On Friday the 9th, August Secrretary Sorba sent out a message to all of his fellow directors urging them all to give some thought to some facebook comments of one of their colleagues which he thought 'transphobic'.
Here Comes a Dynamic Duo: Batman & Robin
FREEDOM since the departure of the wayward, Andy Meinke last year, has been run as a kind of Sorba and Saunders' show, with seemingly Simon Saunders pulling the Director of the Friends of Freedom, Steve Sorba's strings. They could be likened to Batman and Robin staring in a matinee Comic Opera, the problem for the average commentator is deciding which is which.
'Hi Everyone,'
'I have received a message from Simon [Saunders] that we may well need to reflect on over the weekend. Sorry for the short notice.
'Apologies to David as I would have liked to speak to him in advance but there is no time now so I pass it on below.
'I don’t pick up work emails at the weekend but copy me in using my personal email above if you need to.
'I paraphrase:
'It
has been brought to my attention that Dave Douglas has made public
comments supporting a pamphlet which is fundamentally transphobic (and
in places homophobic as well). Describing trans people as "cocks in
frocks", and all just men with mental health issues
etc and describes their supporters as a "gang of ponces", which rather
than encouraging nuanced or sensitive debate, actively undermines it. (https://tinyurl.com/y3msflq6
)
'The Freedom Collective has a public pro-trans position and has committed to defending trans people against what has become increasingly a form of moral panic where even rights which have already stood for years without comment are being attacked. Having someone who agrees with that pamphlet's approach, which blames trans people for the sum of recent bookfair confrontations and finds transphobic bullying funny elected to the board would place us in an extremely difficult situation.
'Dave's post has been picked up by trans people and he's been accused of having a transphobic position. This means that if he's elected to a Freedom-related post there is every chance the Friends will come in for a lot of criticism and it will stir up yet another useless argument to no good end that I can see. This topic is an extremely febrile one in the movement at large, and essentially by appointing him we'd be causing enormous drama that we (and probably Dave too) really don't need right now.
'The Freedom Collective has a public pro-trans position and has committed to defending trans people against what has become increasingly a form of moral panic where even rights which have already stood for years without comment are being attacked. Having someone who agrees with that pamphlet's approach, which blames trans people for the sum of recent bookfair confrontations and finds transphobic bullying funny elected to the board would place us in an extremely difficult situation.
'Dave's post has been picked up by trans people and he's been accused of having a transphobic position. This means that if he's elected to a Freedom-related post there is every chance the Friends will come in for a lot of criticism and it will stir up yet another useless argument to no good end that I can see. This topic is an extremely febrile one in the movement at large, and essentially by appointing him we'd be causing enormous drama that we (and probably Dave too) really don't need right now.
'No doubt David would like to reply to these comments as I am sure that he is being misrepresented.
I suggest that we await this reply and discuss the matter further on Monday when we all meet
up.'
Readers must judge for themselves who is pulling the strings here?
********
Saddle Skedaddlers Squeeze Thoughtful Analysis
Ofcourse, Mr. Sorba is first and foremost a publisher, a businessman, and not an anarchist, his main relationship with Vernon Richards seems to have been that they both shared a passion for Italian opera. Sorba it turned out had the most to gain by the closure of Freedom as a hard copy publication and it is he who wants to keep the premises in Angel Alley as it fits better with his own business interests as a publisher
Posh boy Simon Saunders, who provoked the dismissal and no-platforming of Dave Douglass a retired miner from South Sheilds, has acted in a similar way to the recent pressure put on Hong Kong business community by China's ruling communist party in Beijing when on August 9th (the same day Sorba sent out his message) the Chinese aviation authority [CAAC] accused management at Cathay Pacific of not doing enough to discipline their employees who have been alleged to have been involved in the demos that have hit the territory over the last couple of months.
The warning from CAAC came shortly after John Slosar, Cathay's non executive chairman, said the airline 'wouldn't dream of telling [employees] what they have to think about something' as it reported profits of HK$1.35 billion ($172m) after two years of losses.
The latest reports from Hong Kong suggest that the pilot, 30-year old Liu Chung-yin, who was arrested with 16 others for allegedly having participated in a violent demo on the 28th, July, has now been detained.
The latest reports from Hong Kong suggest that the pilot, 30-year old Liu Chung-yin, who was arrested with 16 others for allegedly having participated in a violent demo on the 28th, July, has now been detained.
“If
you’re a boss, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God!’” said Carol Ng of the Hong
Kong Cabin Crew Federation, a union that represents airline workers.
“‘I just want to do business here. Now they’re screening my staff.’”
This
kind of fear could do real damage to Hong Kong’s economy, Ms. Ng said,
“much more than the protests or rallies themselves.”
The attentive reader will detect the parallels between the Freedom episode with Dave Douglass, a tough northern workingman living in South Shields being witch-hunted and no-platformed by a self righteous middle-class southerner, to the mind control now being applied by the Beijing communists bosses on the workers on Hong Kong. This may be giving Mr. Saunders at Freedom, a little too much credit, because he merely spends most of his time fiddling with his smart phone and going on Face book like some demented Internet Nosey Parker who is on record of creating a blacklist of veteran anarchists who he thinks should be declared persona-non-grata. Yet he has been quick to complain when others have described him as a paid Morning Star hack.
I use these terms advisably based both on my own observations of Simon Saunders' body language behaviour when he aided Andy Meinke in bungling me into Angel Alley outside the Anarchist HQ, while the Friends of Freedom sat on their butts upstairs, on reports of his general attitude of entitlement, and overall pushy demeanour in which he comes over as a bit of a boss, and also as a conversational analyst I'm curious about his form of language. But when considering the recent predilection at Freedom Press for appointing folk who to put bluntly are 'a slate short'. Readers here and in the USA, should consider the history of Freedom as presented by Chris Draper in his history of Freedom*: Toby Crowe took the editor's chair around 2000 when Charles Crute (apprenticed by Vernon Richards) was forced out, Mr Crute had looked to involve the Northern Anarchist Network in Freedom so as to broaden both the paper's geographical appeal or to as the anarchist Peter Neville said handing over part of Freedom to the writings and reports of 'Northern workingmen'. In the end Toby, who was for a time Secretary of the Marxist Socialist Party of Great Britain soon fell-out with the NAN and the solidly northern writers like Derek Pattison; Harold Sculthorpe (a Friend of Freedom); me (Brian Bamford) who was at the time the Northern Editor of Freedom, and quite separately with Chris Draper in North Wales. In truth Toby came over as a bit supercillious he'd been an infant school teacher giving stars to toddlers, and he eventually moved on and took to the cloth, perhaps the editors that followed Charles Crute felt a little insecure in the editor's chair because monomania seemed to become a feature of the these later editors. They seemed to be uncomfortable in their own skin Later when he realised that people in the Anarchist Federation like Gerry Spenser, a civil servant in Liverpool, couldn't deliver the reports or stories from the North he came back to me and begged me to send his stuff: as Harold Sculthorpe told me at the time: 'Toby wants to be friends, Brian'. Chris Draper had similar appeals from Toby Crowe to deliver him material. By that time we had lost confidence in him as an editor and Northern Voices was by then being produced by the anarchists up North.
What followed the departure of Toby Crowe has been generally agreed to be a poor editorial effort. So what began with Toby Crowe ended up with Charlotte Dingle as editor, who at one time boasted that she had 'a border-line personality disorder'. One of the current Freedom Friends who knew her told me a little while ago that Charlotte was indeed really being modest in describing her condition as 'border-line'. When recently I described Simon Saunders as having 'a totalitarian mind set' the historian, Dave Goodway, another Freedom Friend director, said: 'many anarchists have totalitarian mind sets'. Simon too with the aid of his mum has used his somewhat disoriented condition to advance his career. First at the Ipswich Star and later at the communist Morning Star.*
During the Spanish Civil War the Spanish communists accused the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist CNT of admitting anyone into their organisation including Fascist sympathisers. Well, after 2000 Freedom under the influence of Donald Rooum began an open doors policy which quickly led to its decline as a serious publication. Vernon Richards who had retired to Suffolk told the anarchist carpenter Peter Turner that he was impressed by Toby owing to his IT skills. These events have been well documented on the NV Blog by Chris Draper.**
All this reminds me of what Malcolm Muggeridge had said about people like Kim Philby, the Russian spy, when he helped him get a job on The Observer in the 1950s. Of this the journalist Clive Irving wrote:
'Malcolm Muggeridge, a highly entertaining political commentator in print and on television, who had worked with Philby at MI6 during the war. Muggeridge advised Philby to contact the editor of The Observer, a left-leaning Sunday paper that, Muggeridge told Philby, “is that Salvation Army for the ideological drunks and bums of our time”.'
Has Freedom Press in the end become a kind of rest home for 'the ideological drunks and bums of our time'? Andy Meinke memorably described Freedom as a 'hangout' declaring boastfully that 'Kropotkin started it (Freedom), but we fucking finished it!'
None-the-less it is understood that a new Director Nick Heath failed to turn-up at the crucial Freedom Friends meeting dealing with Dave Douglass on the Glorious Twelfth, and it is understood that he stayed away because he resents how he was previously hounded-out as leader of the Anarchist Federation by his Trans community critics only last year.***
Furthermore it seems that three other Friends had concluded before the meeting the the whole complaint about Dave Douglass Facebook comment was 'a storm in a teacup'. Yet the prime movers on this occasion challenging Dave Douglass was Simon Saunders and his Trans mates, and Steve Sorba wants to keep-in with Simon so what we had here in trade union terms is a case of 'Constructive Dismissal' in which Dave Douglass was elbowed out by Secretary Sorba who told Dave that he had 'Embarassed the Committee (Friends) by his "transphobic remarks".'
Dave in response said that he refuted the claim that he was not 'transphobic', but said that as he didn't want to embarrass the committee of anyone. Hence he agreed to stand down.
***
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2018/01 › anarchist-federation-splits
I use these terms advisably based both on my own observations of Simon Saunders' body language behaviour when he aided Andy Meinke in bungling me into Angel Alley outside the Anarchist HQ, while the Friends of Freedom sat on their butts upstairs, on reports of his general attitude of entitlement, and overall pushy demeanour in which he comes over as a bit of a boss, and also as a conversational analyst I'm curious about his form of language. But when considering the recent predilection at Freedom Press for appointing folk who to put bluntly are 'a slate short'. Readers here and in the USA, should consider the history of Freedom as presented by Chris Draper in his history of Freedom*: Toby Crowe took the editor's chair around 2000 when Charles Crute (apprenticed by Vernon Richards) was forced out, Mr Crute had looked to involve the Northern Anarchist Network in Freedom so as to broaden both the paper's geographical appeal or to as the anarchist Peter Neville said handing over part of Freedom to the writings and reports of 'Northern workingmen'. In the end Toby, who was for a time Secretary of the Marxist Socialist Party of Great Britain soon fell-out with the NAN and the solidly northern writers like Derek Pattison; Harold Sculthorpe (a Friend of Freedom); me (Brian Bamford) who was at the time the Northern Editor of Freedom, and quite separately with Chris Draper in North Wales. In truth Toby came over as a bit supercillious he'd been an infant school teacher giving stars to toddlers, and he eventually moved on and took to the cloth, perhaps the editors that followed Charles Crute felt a little insecure in the editor's chair because monomania seemed to become a feature of the these later editors. They seemed to be uncomfortable in their own skin Later when he realised that people in the Anarchist Federation like Gerry Spenser, a civil servant in Liverpool, couldn't deliver the reports or stories from the North he came back to me and begged me to send his stuff: as Harold Sculthorpe told me at the time: 'Toby wants to be friends, Brian'. Chris Draper had similar appeals from Toby Crowe to deliver him material. By that time we had lost confidence in him as an editor and Northern Voices was by then being produced by the anarchists up North.
What followed the departure of Toby Crowe has been generally agreed to be a poor editorial effort. So what began with Toby Crowe ended up with Charlotte Dingle as editor, who at one time boasted that she had 'a border-line personality disorder'. One of the current Freedom Friends who knew her told me a little while ago that Charlotte was indeed really being modest in describing her condition as 'border-line'. When recently I described Simon Saunders as having 'a totalitarian mind set' the historian, Dave Goodway, another Freedom Friend director, said: 'many anarchists have totalitarian mind sets'. Simon too with the aid of his mum has used his somewhat disoriented condition to advance his career. First at the Ipswich Star and later at the communist Morning Star.*
During the Spanish Civil War the Spanish communists accused the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist CNT of admitting anyone into their organisation including Fascist sympathisers. Well, after 2000 Freedom under the influence of Donald Rooum began an open doors policy which quickly led to its decline as a serious publication. Vernon Richards who had retired to Suffolk told the anarchist carpenter Peter Turner that he was impressed by Toby owing to his IT skills. These events have been well documented on the NV Blog by Chris Draper.**
All this reminds me of what Malcolm Muggeridge had said about people like Kim Philby, the Russian spy, when he helped him get a job on The Observer in the 1950s. Of this the journalist Clive Irving wrote:
'Malcolm Muggeridge, a highly entertaining political commentator in print and on television, who had worked with Philby at MI6 during the war. Muggeridge advised Philby to contact the editor of The Observer, a left-leaning Sunday paper that, Muggeridge told Philby, “is that Salvation Army for the ideological drunks and bums of our time”.'
Has Freedom Press in the end become a kind of rest home for 'the ideological drunks and bums of our time'? Andy Meinke memorably described Freedom as a 'hangout' declaring boastfully that 'Kropotkin started it (Freedom), but we fucking finished it!'
Why is Secretary Sorba so enslaved by Posh Simon?
Why did he make such a fuss over 'a storm in a teacup'?
SECRETARY Sorba desperately wants to hang onto the Freedom property at 84A, Angel Alley because he wants an address in central London that he can use to promote own business interests in publishing. Some would regard this as conflict of interest. But unless one of the other Directors question this he is safe in his key position at the top. Thus the Freedom show will stay on the road because there is no sign of any challenge from the rather subservient Directors.None-the-less it is understood that a new Director Nick Heath failed to turn-up at the crucial Freedom Friends meeting dealing with Dave Douglass on the Glorious Twelfth, and it is understood that he stayed away because he resents how he was previously hounded-out as leader of the Anarchist Federation by his Trans community critics only last year.***
Furthermore it seems that three other Friends had concluded before the meeting the the whole complaint about Dave Douglass Facebook comment was 'a storm in a teacup'. Yet the prime movers on this occasion challenging Dave Douglass was Simon Saunders and his Trans mates, and Steve Sorba wants to keep-in with Simon so what we had here in trade union terms is a case of 'Constructive Dismissal' in which Dave Douglass was elbowed out by Secretary Sorba who told Dave that he had 'Embarassed the Committee (Friends) by his "transphobic remarks".'
Dave in response said that he refuted the claim that he was not 'transphobic', but said that as he didn't want to embarrass the committee of anyone. Hence he agreed to stand down.
*************
* ***
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2018/01 › anarchist-federation-splits
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Posts
1 comment:
I support the Labour party, so this is not my quarrel. As a result I am a bit disconcerted that something I have written has drawn me into someone else’s quarrel. A review by me of a booklet was put on Facebook and some people who have let a bit of power go to their head took exception to what either I said, or what the poster said, or both.
Now I must make it clear that I could not give a ‘tinker’s cuss’ about being called ‘transphobic’. Words like that are thrown around by people who do not want to engage in rational debate because their minds are closed to the idea of having their beliefs challenged. It is the intellectual equivalent of children calling each other names in the playground and I have no intention of indulging in it myself. I am unimpressed by the people who do.
Changes to the 2004 Gender Recognition Act will affect the whole of society and everyone who makes up that society has a right to express their point of view. I would draw an analogy with abortion and assisted suicide. Does anyone seriously believe that all the decisions on abortion, e.g. age of foetus, should be taken only by the woman who is pregnant, or decisions about assisted suicide only by the ‘helper’? (Remember, only the person who assists can be prosecuted.)
These are contentious issues. They don’t have simple answers and it is no use pretending that they do. We all have a right to hold and express an opinion on them. If you too believe this then you will find more at;
http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/ask-about-wedding-tackle.html
http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2018/10/on-listening-to-womans-hour.html
http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2019/07/trivial-pursuits.html
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