'FREE AT LAST' THE MEMOIR OF ASIA BIBI

FREE AT LAST - ASIA BIBI

Asia Bibi was called the 'world's most persecuted woman'. A Roman Catholic Pakistani, she was sentenced to death for blasphemy after a dispute over a cup of water with Muslim villagers who were picking fruit with her. She spent eight years on death row waiting to be hung before the Supreme Court of Pakistan, quashed the case against her. Although some Pakistanis wanted to lynch her, some spoke out in support of her. A provincial governor in the Punjab, Salman Taseer, was murdered after speaking in support of her and for opposing Pakistan’s blasphemy law. Shahbaz Batti, Pakistan’s Christian minority’s minister was also shot dead for his opposition to the blasphemy law. Her defence lawyer, Saiful Mulook, fled to the Netherlands in fear of his life.

As a persecuted Christian, the family of Asia Bibi sought asylum from the UK Government, but this was refused by the Conservative Government led by Theresa May, the daughter of an English vicar. May refused the family asylum on the grounds that it might increase community tension in the UK and put the lives of British embassy staff working in Pakistan at risk. When Asia Bibi's husband and daughter came to London, they were told by the government's trade envoy for Pakistan, Rehman Chishti MP, that nobody representing the government was prepared to meet them. He resigned his position in protest.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Leader of the Labour Party, also seemed reluctant to speak up for Asia Bibi. Brian Bamford, a Unite member and the Secretary of Tameside Trades Union Council, wrote on two occasions to Jeremy Corbyn asking where Labour stood in respect of an asylum claim from the family of Asia Bibi, but he never received a reply to his emails.

At a meeting organised by the North West TUC, Bamford asked during a discussion about racism and Tommy Robinson, whether cases like Asia Bibi involving religious persecution of Christian's by the mob, played into the hands of the far right in England and made racism more likely.  The Asian speaker replied that this was a matter for Pakistan and that this country had no right to interfere in the affairs of another country.

Angela Rayner, the local MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, incorrectly told a local Labour Party member that Labour were keen to help Asia Bibi but her family had made no application for asylum. Yet, Jeremy Corbyn didn't hesitate to take up the cudgel for the so-called ISIS bride, Shamima Begum. The Trades Council concluded that the Labour Party were possibly afraid of alienating the Muslim Labour vote.

When I circulated details of the desperate plight of Asia Bibi to various people, including the Momentum member, Sheila Sheppard, the Secretary of Stalybridge Constituency Labour Party, she politely told me to piss off, questioning why I had included her and pointed out that I was not a member of Stalybridge CLP and that there was nothing they could do to help Asia Bibi. I was told not to send her any more communications.

Many feminists were also conspicuously silent about the case of Asia Bibi possibly because they feared  offending cultural sensibilities or because she was a Roman Catholic Pakistani peasant woman and not a famous actress who'd been sexually violated.

Fortunately, the Canadian Government had more guts than the British Conservative government that let the Pakistani mobs dictate British asylum policy, or the Labour Party that gave preference to Labour votes before compassion and humanitarianism.

Asia Bibi and her family are now settled in Canada, despite the death threats of Muslim fanatics. From her new home in Canada, she now campaigns on behalf of other persecuted Christian's in Pakistan. I hope to get a copy of her autobiography 'Enfin Libre', when it becomes available in English - its been written in French - and possibly review it. It should be a compelling and interesting read.

The Media We Deserve?

by Les May

I STARTED reading the Manchester Guardian in 1960 when I left school. I continued to read it until the early 2000s.  I gave up after it published an article with a title something like ‘How we took on the builders’.  It turned out to be an account of their experiences by two feminist academics who had worked on a building site for all of a fortnight.  It seemed to me a total fraud, not least because working for two weeks in the height of summer and then going back to a nice desk job, is not quite the same as spending your working lifetime at the job and enduring the rain, sleet and mud of British winters. 
 
Last Thursday I picked up and read a discarded copy. It seemed much improved so I bought a copy the next day and began to think of once again becoming a regular reader.

Then I read the following and understood why someone went to the trouble of coining the acronym GROLIIES* (pronounced ‘grolly’).

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2020/jan/20/id-never-heard-of-laurence-fox-until-he-started-lecturing-us-about-racism
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2020/jan/23/want-to-know-what-racism-feels-like-ask-laurence-fox
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/26/laurence-fox-actor-fantasy-film-gor-stewart-lee

Now remember this is supposed to be a newspaper catering for the more thoughtful, more astute, more liberal minded reader. Really?

So if you want a more liberal, more nuanced view where do you turn? Surprisingly it is to an article in The Sun newspaper by Katharine Birbalsingh who had a Jamaican mother and an Indo-Guyanese father.

‘Laurence Fox was rude that night on Question Time. But he was not racist. I would have put him in detention for sighing and dropping his head on the table. But I would have been interested in what he had to say.
'Sadly, Rachel Boyle, the black woman he was arguing with, attempted to shut down the argument by suggesting Fox’s opinion was worthless because of his white privilege. White people are tired of being told they are privileged or racist. And I get it.  The same goes for calling the country racist.
'I say this as someone who believes there is racism in Britain, that racism is not a blunt instrument, and I believe it exists on both the Right and the Left. But to say that Britain is racist as a country in 2020 is too crude. Are our laws and institutions racist? Is the media racist?
'Sure, there will be elements of racism here and there, but to make such a generalised, un-nuanced statement seems to me to ignore the great journey of tolerance Britain has made over the past 60 years. I believe this journey makes Britain one of the least racist countries in the world. It is one of the reasons I feel proud to call myself British. I can be both black and British and few would take issue with my identity.
'Some would say that Harry and Meghan’s experiences show how racist the country is. It is assumed that criticism of Rachel or Meghan is an example of racism. But surely we black people should be open to criticism?
'If all criticism of black people is an example of racism, it becomes impossible to hold any of us to account for our behaviour. In many ways, this patronising assessment is in itself racist because it does not allow black people to be treated as equals with whites: Whites can behave badly but blacks cannot.
'Didn’t get the job? Got excluded from school? Failed a test? It must be racism. But what if you just did not revise?
'In this debate, one side thinks all negative commentary of the royal couple confirms how racist we all are. The other side thinks that racism no longer exists. Either you are with Meghan or against her.  But the truth is somewhere in between.
'Of course Meghan will have suffered racism in her very high-profile position. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. That photo of the baby chimpanzee outside the hospital is just one example of such racism.
Rachel, too, has received racist abuse since her argument with Fox on Question Time. But does that mean these women are beyond criticism?
'Laurence Fox is not a racist. He is just a white guy who wants some respect. Funnily enough, that is just what black people want, too.
Sadly, the woke have little respect for all of us, whatever our colour.’

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10821066/laurence-fox-question-time-not-racist/

If you see yourself as being ‘of the left’ it is easy to dismiss Birbalsingh because she was invited to the Tory conference by Michael Gove. But if you ask yourself who you would prefer as a neighbour, Rachel Boyle, the black woman who could not bear to be contradicted in her view that media coverage of the doings of Meghan Markle has been racist or the more open minded Birbalsingh, what would your answer be?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katharine_Birbalsingh#Conservative_Party_conference
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/feb/27/katharine-birbalsingh-interview

Note in the link below how The Guardian makes Fox look like a gormless Guppy. We don’t make the news, the media does.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/jan/18/question-time-clash-lecturer-tells-of-hate-mail

* Guardian Reader Of Limited Intelligence In Ethnic Skirt.

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What’s in a Name?

by Les May

BIRCHFIELD independent girls school in the Aston area of Birmingham is about to mount a legal challenge against Ofsted.  The school was rated ‘inadequate’ after the inspectors found a 1994 leaflet relating to an Islamic conference in the library.  According to the inspectors the leaflet read ‘Today we find that the sons and daughters of Islam are under continuous attack by the forces of non-Islam’.  It also promoted the khaleefah which the inspectors seemed to believe is defined as ‘the total rulership of Muslims over the world’.

This definition is rather strange and does no correspond with my understanding of its meaning, which I take to be leader of the Caliphate.  Used in this way it seems to me purely descriptive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalifa

https://quranicnames.com/khaleefa/

However in the not too distant past a related word was used as the title of a pernicious monthly magazine ‘Khilafah’ which itself seems to mean ‘Caliphate’. For a couple of years around 2001-2002 I bought it regularly in a local ‘asian’ supermarket in Rochdale and I still have some copies. I describe it as pernicious because of its content.  What has always puzzled me is why if magazines like this were busy promoting an alienation of Muslims from institutions like democracy, the attacks in September 2001 seemed to come as a surprise to everyone. Hidden in plain sight perhaps?

http://www.khilafah.com/what-is-the-khilafah-caliphate/

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Liz Willis: An obituary and appreciation

Liz Willis (21.10.47-10.11.19)

Liz Willis (born Elizabeth Ann Smith) has died in hospital in London with family around her, age 72, following diagnosis of pancreatic cancer last year.

Liz was born in Stornoway, daughter of Margaret (Peggy Flett) and Calum ‘Safety’ Smith, joined four years later by sister Alison. Her early childhood is recollected as a time of street games and unsupervised freedom on long summer days and it was this vision of Stornoway that stayed with her in later years. Her parents, large extended family, the wild landscape and stifling social mores of the island provided an ongoing source of inspiration and rebellion. An outstanding and prize-winning student, she developed a facility for languages and history in particular.  The family moved to Dingwall in 1959, where younger sister Marjory arrived just as Liz was preparing to go to Aberdeen University to study history in 1964 at age 16.

It was in Aberdeen that her interest in politics crystallised, as she became an active member of Youth CND and left-wing societies, attending regular meetings and hops. She developed her lifelong internationalist, libertarian socialist outlook, joining Faslane protests, a peace march to Paris, and hitch-hiking across Europe to an anarchist camp in Italy in the summer of 1967. After attaining her MA in History, she chose Belfast to pursue a course in library studies, because it "seemed like an interesting place to be in 1968" and found herself on her second day in the province helping Bernadette Devlin up during a civil rights march. It was in this heady atmosphere that she met her future husband, Roy Willis.  They married in 1969 and Janetta was born in 1970.

As the political situation deteriorated, the young family moved to London, where Mark was born in 1972.  Roy’s social work course took them to Muirhouse housing scheme in Edinburgh, where Liz found time to get involved with tenants’ rights and demos in support of the miners and other causes.  Returning to London in 1974, they settled in the borough of Ealing, where she spent the majority of her life. She found her political home in the shape of Solidarity for Workers’ Power, remaining an active member until its demise in 1992. Amongst her many contributions was the pamphlet ‘Women in the Spanish Revolution’, which remains a key text on the subject.

While looking after young children she stacked shelves in Sainsbury’s before finding a position at the Medical Research Council library at Hammersmith Hospital. Some of her most treasured memories were family holidays in Europe, allowing her to practice her proficiency in several languages and absorb her interest in the history and culture of places that she could still recollect clearly 40 years later. Her thirst for knowledge continued as she collected four diplomas and her activism was undimmed as she took on new causes such as the Polish Solidarnosc movement and provided support to an Iranian refugee friend. In the 90s, divorce and grown-up children allowed her more time to concentrate on her writing, research and book reviews, joining Medact’s Medicine, Conflict and Survival journal editorial board in 1991, which she served on until her final year, and for which she wrote well over 100 items. She also participated in the London Socialist historians’ group,   Anarchist Research Group and other radical history forums.  As grandchildren appeared in the new century, she proved to be a devoted grandmother, from knitting baby clothes to excavating archive materials to help them in their studies.

She started the ‘Smothpubs’ blogspot in 2011, (so named after a mix-up when helping police with their enquiries), with articles on a range of subjects including local and family history and including a mine of material on conscientious objectors.

When diagnosed with cancer last year, she carried on through chemotherapy and a clinical trial, taking it as an opportunity to learn about the latest medical research and the state of the NHS, for which she was always committed but for most of her life never had much cause to use. She was appreciative of the NHS staff’s efforts to treat and support her in this time. Over the past year living in Walthamstow, she showed little sign of slowing down, continuing her trips to the British Library, Housmans bookshop and local libraries. She continued to collect material for her blog and the Radical History Network blogspot, and even found time to do translation work for an anarchist research project and take part in the E17 Art Trail. She managed regular trips to Scotland, including a flying visit to Stornoway to see her uncle Donald Smith’s retrospective exhibition and retrace childhood footsteps. It was only in the last month or so that the disease took hold, but she remained a ‘free rebel spirit’ to the end.

Liz Willis (21.10.47-10.11.19)

As circulated by members of Liz's family

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How Green Was My Vegan?

With apologies to Richard Llewellyn

by Les May

THE last seventeen years of my working life included taking part in week long biology field courses for young adults.  We had to teach them, make sure they did not come to any harm and feed them.  One told us she only ate meat, another had strict religious dietary requirements, vegetarians were abundant, but we always managed.  The one problem we had was a young man who said he was a vegan.  We explained that as the field course was on an island off the Scottish mainland and an islander would be catering for us, we were not able to guarantee that the food would meet his requirement.  Eventually he agreed to cater for himself.

Now my attitude to people who say they are vegans is ‘whatever floats your boat’. But when I saw the food he brought I could not help noticing that it all seemed highly processed.  Now I’m fairly catholic in my diet.  Apart from ritually slaughtered meat I will eat most savoury things.  But I would have drawn the line about eating what our vegan student was happy to eat.

I had forgotten about this incident until I read an article in last Thursday’s Guardian by the food writer Joanna Blythman in which she wrote:

‘Supermarkets, global food manufacturers and biotech and chemical companies have enthusiastically embraced Veganuary.  Fast-food enterprises, formerly seen as the nemesis of public health and the environment, have recast themselves as their saviours.  McDonald’s was feted when it launched its first vegan Veggie Dippers meal: nuggets that contain around 40 ingredients, many of which can’t be found in any domestic larder, served with chips and a soft drink…..Just when ultra-processed food manufacturers were being skewered for the health damage their products cause, the plant-based push has given them a get-out-of-jail-free card.’

Blythman’s piece is perceptive, but where I don’t think it goes far enough is that she fails to point out that many of the foodstuffs which can best supply the protein in a meat free diet, lentils, soy beans, chickpeas etc, carry the burden of lots of ‘food miles’ because they are themselves imported. We could grow substitutes in our climate. Field beans, sold as Horse Beans or Tic Beans for animal food, grow well in this country and it is the introduction of these into the west European diet in the early mediaeval period which is credited with allowing the population to grow. In their present form they are an unattractive dark brown in colour. The garden form is the Broad Bean which is larger and more attractive. It was derived from the Field bean by selective breeding. Further selective breeding could be used to produce a bean with fewer ‘food miles’ which could replace our dependence on imported pulses.

If you want to tell the world that vegan food is more healthy and switching to it will ‘save the planet’, it might be useful to do a bit of homework. Blythman’s article is a good place to start. You can find it at the link below.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/22/veganuary-animal-foods-plant-vegan

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/feb/12/quorn-revolution-rise-ultra-processed-fake-meat

Bookfair 2020: Trans Totalitarian Anarchism?

Editorial Note:

IN January 1946, George Orwell wrote an essay entitled 'The Prevention of Literature' in which he addressed the indifference of the public to the promotion of free expression and what Orwell calls 'the right to report contemporary events truthfully, or as truthfully as is consistent with ignorance, bias and self-deception from which every observer necessarily suffers'.

 The reader will observe the humility here in Orwell's tone and will no doubt contrast it with the self confidence and even arrogance of much contemporary  commentary.  

'If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion.  In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.'

This lack of guts, this fear to challenge the latest orthodoxy still prevails in the anglo-saxon countries today.  But it's not the general public that are setting the agenda for acceptable opinions, it is a kind of fashionable elite view which bullies and bamboozles dissidents who either refuse, or are slow to swallow the latest flavour of the month.

2020 BOOKFAIR

The charming Tweets below from the proponents of the 2020 BOOKFAIR in London beautifully illustrate a naive mentality which is all too prevalent today.  In a way I feel sorry for the poor souls who churn out such stuff.  Do they really believe that they can silence criticism of Trans mania by such crude bans at Bookfairs?  All they have accomplished so far is to close down successful bookfairs as in London or to be forced to do deals as at the recent Manchester People's History Museum Bookfair.  Their every ban or censorious step tottering with the 'cocks in frocks' creates more opposition.

George Orwell, in the preface intended to accompany his book Animal Farm, which was not published in the first edition and remained undiscovered until 1971, wrote:
If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.

The 2020 Bookfair organisers are desperately trying to keep the debate over the business of the Cocks in Frocks off the agenda.   It seems they can't cope with having to defend their curiosities of their position.  

Freedom & Professor Chomsky

When we had to take on Professor Chomsky in 2001, with our publication of the Alternative Raven, entitled 'Language, Mind & Society: Chomsky & His Critics' (2001)*, we were met with a more serious and subtle resistance.  In that case pressure was applied slyly through Milan Rai to get Freedom Press to block publication, after the great man Chomsky became aware that we were going to publish some essays challenging to his linguistic ideas on the universal grammar in what was then The Raven.  Milan Rai had been for a time closely associated with Chomsky and now edits Peace News. 
Milan worked behind the scenes on Professor Chomsky's behalf to get the then editor of Freedom to prevent the agreed publication of The Raven critical of his theory on language.   In the end a group of northern anarchists and academics brought out an Alternative Raven, which included the articles challenging Chomsky's theories.  Later Freedom even refused to review the Alternative Raven. when Donald Rooum over-ruled the then editor Toby Crowe.  Later in a letter to me, Chomsky came to admit that he had throughout been in touch with with Milan Rai over that issue, but in mitigation said he only contacted him as a friend.

None of the people involved in trying to suppress the criticism of Chomsky's linguistics at Freedom covered themselves with glory over this matter, and Freedom lost some of its integrity by first agreeing to publish The Raven on Chomsky's linguistics, and to later when Milan Rai got involved to withdraw its offer.  

Self-censorship & 'uncomfortable truths'

When Orwell writes about the 'discomfort' of intellectual honesty, he meant that even during the Second World War, with the Ministry of Information’s often ham-fisted attempts at press censorship, 'the sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.'   Self-censorship came down to matters of decorum, Orwell argues—or as we would put it today, 'civility.'   Obedience to 'an orthodoxy' meant that while 'it is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other… it is "not done" to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was "not done" to mention trousers in the presence of a lady.  Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness,' not by government agents, but by a critical backlash aimed at preserving a sense of 'normalcy' at all costs.


At stake for Orwell in the 1940s was no less than the fundamental liberal principle of free speech, in defense of which he invokes the famous quote from Voltaire as well as Rosa Luxembourg’s definition of freedom as 'freedom for the other fellow'.  'Liberty of speech and of the press,' Orwell writes, does not demand 'absolute liberty'—though he stops short of defining its limits.  But it does demand the courage to tell uncomfortable truths, even such truths as are, perhaps, politically inexpedient or detrimental to the prospects of a lucrative career.  'If liberty means anything at all,' Orwell concludes, 'it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.'

Unlike in the 1940s, when Orwell was around trying to get Animal Farm published, we are not being nudged into a vulgar Marxist or pro-Soviet totalitarianism.  The kind of totalitarianism of the Trans mania we are now expected to civilly swallow is the decorum of the Cocks in Frocks.

*  http://radicalanthropologygroup.org/sites/default/files/pdf/class_text_117.pdf

 

British US Relations & Immunity from Prosecution

IT was reported today that the United States has turned down an extradition request for Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer, who is to be charged with causing the death of teenage motorcyclist Harry Dunn.  Mr Dunn, aged 19, died after a crash in Northamptonshire in August which led to the suspect Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US intelligence officer, leaving for the US under diplomatic immunity.

A Dunn family spokesman Radd Seiger said they had taken the news of the US decision "in our stride".

Extradition proceedings had been launched earlier this month.


Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Seiger said the latest move had been "factored it into our planning and strategy".
"The reality is that this administration, which we say is behaving lawlessly and taking a wrecking ball to one of the greatest alliances in the world, they won't be around forever whereas that extradition request will be," he added.
"We will simply plot and plan for a reasonable administration to come in one day and to reverse this decision."

 "A denial of justice"

The Home Office said the decision appeared "to be a denial of justice".

In December 1943, George Orwell wrote an 'As I Please' essay in which he observed:  "...it is difficult to go anywhere in London without having the feeling that Britain is now Occupied Territory.'  

Orwell continued:  "Before the war there was no popular anti-American feeling in this country.  It all dates back from the arrival of the American troops, and it is made vastly worse by the tacit agreement never to discuss it in print...  As a result things have happened which are capable of causing the worst kind of trouble sooner or later."

And he adds:  "An example is the agreement by which American troops are not liable to British courts for offences against British subjects - practically 'extra-territorial rights'.' 

In these circumstances, the current decision to block the Anne Sacoolas extradition request by the US would merely seem to be business as usual.

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Is Labour losing its traditional voters?

by Brian Bamford

A POST ELECTION REPORT   from  Steve Gillan (POA), the TUC-JCC General   Secretary, POA, claimed 'Brexit was a key issue' and Labour lost 37% of leave voters who voted Labour in 2017, and 21% of remain voters who voted Labour in 2017.

A recent comment in Heywood and Middleton from a Labour canvasser, campaigning on the doorstep, told me people were closing their front doors when they realised it was Labour on the knocker.  

It was said that this dislike seemed to be down to two things: an intense dislike of Jeremy Corbyn and Labour's stance on Brexit.

Heywood, near Rochdale, has long been a solid Labour constituency but at the General Election in December the local Labour candidate was defeated by the Conservative.  

Steve Gillan in his report also claimed 'we should be building on, increasing and challenging the growth of the far right, anti-semitism and Islamophobia.'

 Yet,  as the Secretary of Tameside TUC, I wrote twice to Jeremy Corbyn asking him where he stood as regards the case of the persecuted Pakistani Catholic Asia Bibi, who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy in Pakistan.  She had drank water from a cup used by Muslim fruit pickers to quench her thirst and had spent eight years on death row.  The family sought asylum for Asia in the UK but nobody from Theresa May's government was prepared to meet her husband and daughter when they came to London.  May refused asylum to the family because she said it could lead to racial unrest in the UK and put the lives of British diplomats at risk in Pakistan. 

Meanwhile, Corbyn never gave us a reply and I'm not aware of him speaking publicly about her case. We concluded that he was frightened of alienating the Muslim Labour vote.  I asked a Labour Party friend to speak to Angela Rayner about Asia Bibi. Rayner told him that Labour was supportive but the problem was the family hadn't applied for asylum in the UK, which was untrue.  Corbyn, did however, speak out publicly in support of the Isis bride, Shamima Begum, demanding that her British citizenship be restored. Asia Bibi and her family were eventually given asylum in Canada where she campaigns on behalf of other persecuted Christian's in Pakistan.

The Heywood and Middleton constituency in Lancashire has a strong Roman Catholic presence, having received immigrants following the Irish potato famine in the 19th Century.   Among today's fashionable addicts they they are now yesterday's people and the recent failure of Rochdale's Labour councillors to condemn an axe attack on four tree surgeons working in the Newbold area of Rochdale in October 2017 by an Asian gang shouting 'white bastards' at them, seems to be a symptom of post-modernity.  This might sound like blatant 'Orientalism', but the thing is Irish Catholics are no longer the flavour of the month in politics, and the local Labour Party is more inclined to wag-its-tail and fly the flag of Kashmir or Pakistan outside Rochdale Town Hall these days. This may go some way to explaining why Heywood and Middleton, which is one of the two Rochdale constituencies, now has a conservative MP.  Labour is so frightened of offending the Asian clans that it appears to be losing the white working class.

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Royal Exchange: ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS

A Royal Exchange Theatre World Premiere

ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS  

By Winsome Pinnock
Directed by Miranda Cromwell

12 March - 4 April 2020
Press Night: Tuesday 17 March, 7.30pm - The Theatre 

Winner of the 2018 Alfred Fagon Award ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS is an astonishing new play from one of the UK’s most pioneering playwrights Winsome Pinnock. Seamlessly weaving the past and the present together ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS explores Great Britain’s role in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from a unique perspective. This World Premiere production is performed in the Royal Exchange, once one of the world’s largest cotton exchanges, and examines the impact of historical legacy and the representation of painful subjects. Juxtaposing the intimate and the epic, the personal and the political it invites us to ask what is chosen to be represented and what is denied. Innovative director Miranda Cromwell makes her Royal Exchange Theatre debut with this beautifully poetic play powered by love, resilience and hope. ROCKETS AND BLUE LIGHTS can be seen in the Theatre from 12 March - 4 April.  

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Media Freedom in Oldham & Beyond

From journalism's Oven-Ready Corporate Cooks
to a kind of 'Cook Your Own Local Media' 
by Brian Bamford

YESTERDAY Chris Rea, the President of the Manchester Branch of the National Union of Journalists, addressed a packed Focus Day:  'Creating Our Own Media' [sponsored by The WORD] aimed at promoting a move towards grassroots media by encouraging and energising the emergence of a free and independent journalism based in the community.

Chris said that control the national press in this country was in the hands of three companies:  News UK; the Rothermere group and Trinity Mirror.  He added that the local press is owned by only about ten companies. 

This media corporatism, he argued required the 'development of of our own institutions'. 

The problem of the decline of liberal culture

In his essay 'The Prevention of Literature' [Tribune 4th, January 1946], George Orwell wrote:

'In the future it is possible that a new kind of literature will arises, but no such thing is at present is imaginable.  It seems much likelier that if the liberal culture that we have lived in since the Renaissance actually comes to an end, the literary art will perish with it.'

Is the liberal culture we once took for granted coming to an end with the shift from reading printed hard copy media?

In some of the workshops at yesterday's Focus Day, some of the participants were concerned about print journalism's rapid decline.  A workshop discussed the technicalities of production of an alternative media in both print and on-line journalism.  The problems of distribution, circulation, finance and advertising was considered.  The content, the lack of a coherent 'House Style', and the layout of The Word newspaper were examined critically.  

The Word newspaper, it was admitted, had not always had a clear 'House Style':  Slabs of column-justified print smothered in some cases a full A3 size page from side to side and in some cases from top to bottom without the relief of a picture.  It was claimed that what was needed was short snappy articles, sometimes with quirky story-lines and photos was what was needed.

It was pointed out that these problems were not unique to the present time, and that George Orwell had discussed the issues of straight forward language in the presentation of ideas.  That fanciful writing often resulted in confusing the meaning of what we are saying, even from ourselves.

One lass from Romania argued for a free press and suggested that 'identity politics' in her view was an underlying threat in this country to the liberties her people had struggled to get in Romania when it was ruled by a regime of Romanian leader Nicolae Ceaușescu.

Orwell himself had predicted in 1946 [The Prevention of Literature] that:
'Newspapers will presumably continue until television techniques reaches a higher level, but apart from newspapers it is doubtful even now whether the great mass of people in industrialised countries feel the need for any kind of literature.'

He added:  'Probably novels and stories will be completely superseded by film and radio productions.  Or perhaps some kind of low-grade sensational fiction will survive, produced by a sort of conveyor belt process that reduces human initiative to a minimum.'

The Shape of Modern Media 

Well, newspapers are not surviving very well even in the main stream.  Any idea of truth being presented fearlessly in the press often seems to be an illusion.  Yet, even when Orwell was around he was then able to write:  'Radio features are commonly written by tired hacks to whom the subject and manner of treatment are dictated beforehand: even so, what they write is merely a kind of raw material to be chopped into shape by producers and censors.'

So need the participants at the Oldham's Focus Day worry about this historic development down hill?  It may explain why in 1979, when the conduct of Cyril Smith abusing lads at Cambridge House was first exposed, it was the alternative newspaper RAP [Rochdale's Alternative Paper] that then ran the story and not the mainstream press.  Indeed, the national press and local papers backed off when threatened by possible court action.  Nationally, at that time only Private Eye published the RAP revelations about Cyril Smith, and in consequence the man who became the Rochdale MP went on to serve for 20-years until 1992; only to be denounced in 2012 on this NV Blog discredited.

What we have now got is as Orwell argued, is a kind of self censorship rooted in 'stupidity' and 'economic self interest' or as he puts it more precisely: 

'The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. …  The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.  But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio.' 

If anything with the coming of corporate media this situation has deteriorated since the time Orwell was writing in 1946.

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Pimp groomer allowed access to Victoria Agoglia

Report reveals culture of gangland entitlement and intimidation!

YESTERDAY Joan Agoglia, the grandmother of Victoria Agoglia whose death triggered the now discredited police Operation Augusta probe into child sexual exploitation in Manchester, told a press conference how the young girl was systematically beaten, bruised and drugged by her groomers.

According to the Manchester Evening News [16th, January 2020]:
'Victoria, who was living in a home under the responsibility of Manchester City Council, died aged 15 after she was injected with heroin by a man then aged 50.'

A report issued this week found:  'Two months prior to her death, Victoria had disclosed to both her social worker and substance misuse worker that an older man was injecting her with heroin.'

It was her death in 2003, that led to the launch by the Greater Manchester Police of their probe and it emerged that she had repeated reported her abuse at the hands of much older Asian men, who according to the report seemed to 'operate in plain sight' in and around care homes often parking their cars outside.

The current report found Victoria had endured 'severe abuse and exploitation' for two years prior to her death.  Sometimes she was taken back to her residential home 'intoxicated'. 

Nazir Afzal was the former Chief Prosecutor for North West England.  He is a British Pakistani Muslim.  He was interviewed very briefly on the Radio 4 PM program on 19th, October 2019.

In the interview he made a quite astonishing claim which does not seem to have received the publicity it deserves so we thought it worth publicizing here.  He said (@34minutes): 'You may not know this, but back in 2008 the Labour government (under Gordon Brown and home secretary Jacqui Smith) sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying:  'as far as these young girls who are being exploited in towns and cities, we believe they have made an informed choice about their sexual behaviour and therefore it is not for you police officers to get involved in.'

In the Manchester case Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester, who had commissioned the current report, has said that he will write to the Attorney General to ask that her inquest be reopened.

This case and others more recently, reflect a troubling trend in some areas of this country of a gang culture in which a kind of organised criminality prevails to which some in authority turn a blind eye.

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DOPE: An Anarchist 'Big Issue'?

by Brian Bamford

ON 'START the WEEK', on Radio 4 this week, Tom Sutcliffe discussed a world without work with Daniel Susskind, Suzi Gage, Anoosh Chakelian and Sir John Strang.

Journalist Anoosh Chakelian of the New Statesman, had gone behind the scenes at a new magazines set up to rival the Big Issue, as she explored Britain's homelessness crisis.

The journal called DOPE is run voluntarily as a radical publishing 'affinity group', and all the money they make from sales and subscriptions goes back into the cooperative’s efforts, in particular printing more solidarity copies of the DOPE Magazine for street-vendors.

Following the pattern of The Big Issue, these new journals enable rough sleepers to earn money rather than beg, and creates respectable employment opportunities.  But also Chakelian troubled about the way in which a country with growing numbers of homeless people is now evolving these  industries based upon their suffering.

On a daily basis the homeless vendors turn up keen to sell for more copies, to the point where affinity group has had to limit the number they give to individuals to ensure there are enough to share around. Starting out printing 1000 copies per issue back in 2016, the last issue (Autumn 2019) went up to 5000 copies.  Next they want to print 10,000.

The Whitechapel premises has in the past been describe as 'an anarchist hangout', and it has long been used as a premise for all sorts of odds and sods to shack-up.  Historically it was the base of British anarchism in times when it was run by traditional anarchists to publish Freedom, perhaps one of the oldest anarchist publications in the world, which was first established in 1884.


DOPE is funded by people buying a copy online, or taking out a subscription, or supporting them on Patreon.  It is a direct way of contributing to autonomous and political support of homeless and imprisoned people.

 The affinity group claim:
'We’ve reached the point in the economies of scale now where it only costs £75 to print an extra 1000 copies. The cover price is £3, so that equates to £3000 to the people selling it on the street. To us that seems like a pretty good (and cheap!) win-win – anarchist propaganda in the hands of people who might not otherwise have read it, and money in the pocket of people who need it most.'

In 1987, in the town of La Línea de la Concepción at the anarchist branch of the CNT trade union in the Bay of Gibraltar in Andalucia, Spain, a similar attempt was made to help the locals find homes, as I recall the venture was egged-on by the La Línea Social Democratic Party [PSOE]; it turned out to be a bit of a con and the local CNT suffered in consequence.  

The new publication, DOPE Magazine is a quarterly newspaper called, is produced by an anarchist publisher called Dog Section Press in London since spring 2018, and is now being sold by homeless people in cities around the country, from Bristol to Edinburgh.

Stylishly designed with edgy cover illustrations, its contributors include the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, musicians Sleaford Mods and Drillminister, and artists Laura Grace Ford, Cat Sims and Liv Wynter.  It already has a circulation of over 5,000.

DOPE is not the only new publication to rival the Big Issue.  Another non-profit underground paper called Nervemeter started up in 2011 under the coalition government, for 'people who may have found that their benefits have been cut: they are skint, they may be sick, they desperately need to make some cash', according to the introduction of its first issue.

Still running, this is a bit different because the vendors ask for donations from recipients for the magazine, with a suggestion of £3 minimum.  Yet part of its appeal is also as a Big Issue alternative. 'Nervemeter is not a registered charity,' reads its website.  'We don’t trust registered charities and you shouldn’t either. We are a charitable organisation and are 100 per cent transparent, which means every penny you give us goes on printing and nothing else.' 

There have always been grassroots responses to homelessness, but trends like this reflect its scale in the country.  The latest count for the whole of England, in January last year, showed a 165 per cent increase in rough sleeping overall since 2010.

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Heritage Sector & Bigots!

 BLANCMANGE or NEUTRALITY in the Heritage Sector?

NEXT Friday, the 17th, January 2020, Tristram Hunt, the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, will begin a series of talks on Radio 4 about Museums in the 21st Century and their relevance.  In the blurb the BBC announces this forthcoming event thus: 

'Museums have never been more popular around the world or faced such sustained criticism. While the Louvre enjoys record-breaking visitor numbers, Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island builds a new museum campus for the Middle East and blockbusters from Leonardo to Van Gogh to David Bowie circle the globe, museums are also under challenge. Critics questions historic claims to neutrality, call for the repatriation of colonial-era artefacts and protest over the origins of sponsors' money.'

 https://www.bbc.co.uk › BBC Radio 4 › Curating the Future

In May 2018, the director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tristram Hunt, had caused a bit of a stir when he announced: ‘I see the role of the museum not as a political force but as a civic exchange.’  Adding that he ‘was not so sure [that museums] have a duty to be vehicles for social justice’.

On July 5th, 2019, in an article on the Red Pepper website Siobhan McGuirk wrote a passionate piece entitled 'Museums are socially vital precisely because of their political nature' in which it was declared:

"We are in the midst of a momentous self-regarding public debate over what it means to be British. From the shadows of referendum campaigning until now, misrepresentations, half-truths and outright lies have proliferated, recasting the past to demonise the other. The phrase ‘fake news’ has been co-opted to the point of meaninglessness, while flagship media outlets grant platforms to bigots, justified as promoting ‘neutrality’ – as if facts were up for debate, or ‘civic exchange’."

Indeed, Red Pepper's mention of  'flagship media outlets grant platforms to bigots', naturally reminds one of an incident in April 2010 in which the Rochdalian lass,Gillian Duffy, 65, heckled the prime minister [Gordon Brown} as he was interviewed live on TV in Rochdale.  Brown initially ignored her but was then asked by senior aides in his entourage to meet her.

Later the Prime Minister was then famously caught on tape as, unknown to him, the microphone was still turned on:
Brown: 'That was a disaster. Well I just ... should never have put me in with that woman.  Whose idea was that?'

Aide: 'I don't know, I didn't see.....'

Aide: 'What did she say?'

Brown: 'Oh everything, she was just a sort of bigoted woman.  She said she used be Labour. I mean it's just ridiculous.

 'Just a sort of bigoted women'.  Which is precisely the attitude someone on the self righteous left of politics would take, is it not?

Brown then followed with more painfully patronising talk from:

Brown:  'Very good to meet you, and you're wearing the right colour today. Ha, ha, ha: How many grandchildren do you have?'
Duffy:  'Two. They've just got back from Australia where they got stuck for 10 days. They couldn't get back with this ash crisis.'
Brown: 'We've been trying to get people back quickly.  Are they going to university.  Is that the plan?
Duffy: 'I hope so. They're only 12 and 10.'
Brown: 'Are they're doing well at school?  [pats Duffy on the back]  A good family, good to see you. It's very nice to see you.'

How pompous and smarmy can you get?  And is it any wonder that Labour is failing to gel with the northern working class?

Red Pepper itself has previously distinguished itself by finding space to argue the case for 'no platforming' people they don't like or people they may regard as being 'bigots'.  .   

For more on Museums go to: 

BRING BACK KROPOTKIN! - Northern Voices

northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2020/01 › bring-back-kropotkin

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Construction must change to end modern slavery

 forwarded to NV by Joe Bailey

THE construction union Unite is calling for fundamental changes in the way that the construction industry is organised and for the introduction of licensing of gangmasters.  The union call came in response to an investigation conducted jointly by Construction News and BBC Three, who used undercover journalists from the UK and Romania to reveal the extent of modern day slavery in construction.

Unite said it believes the way that the industry operates means that there is a real potential for exploitative practices occurring on even the largest projects.  The union repeated its all for the gangmasters licencing regime to be extended to construction. The licensing requirement currently only covers agriculture, food processing and shellfish collection.

Companies which operate in the sectors where licensing exists are also required to ensure that they are only working with licensed gangmasters.

Unite national officer for construction Jerry Swain said: “The revelations about the extent of modern day slavery and how it operates in construction must be a wake-up call to the industry and government. This is not simply a problem on smaller sites, even the largest sites have the potential for modern day slavery.  Major contractors simply don’t know who is supplying labour on their sites, how they have been recruited and if they are being coerced.”

He added: “Until the unnecessarily long labour supply chains are tackled the potential of modern day slavery will exist in every area of our industry. One major way to help tackle the problem is to extend gangmasters licencing to construction and to force the rogue employers out of the industry. The industry needs to be honest, if a labour supply company needs to get a third party to supply the labour, they are not really a labour supply company.”
Unite news release. Construction News. BBC Three.

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Health and Safety Executive (HSE):

 Company pleads guilty!

A COMPANY and its director have been fined after failing to comply with health and safety regulations and an enforcement notice.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard that, between May 2018 and February 2019, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) carried out a series of inspections at a construction site at Chelmsford Road, South Woodford, London following health and safety concerns raised at the site. During the inspections, the site manager and company director Mr Tahir Ahmed was served with two Prohibition Notices and his company, All Type Electrical and Building Limited, were served with two Prohibition Notices and two Improvement Notices. All Type Electrical and Building Limited’s Improvement Notice for competent advice was not complied with.
   


ALL Type Electrical and Building Limited pleaded guilty to breaching Regulation 15(2) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015; and Section 21 of The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. The company was ordered to pay a fine of £60,000 plus a surcharge of £170 and full costs of £5216.46
Mr Ahmed of Sutlej Road, London, pleaded guilty to breaching Section 21 of The Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. He was sentenced to 18 weeks’ imprisonment suspended for 12 months, 180 hours of unpaid work, and was ordered to pay a surcharge of £115, and full costs of £5060.69.
After the hearing, HSE inspector David King commented: “This case highlights the need for suitable and sufficient planning, managing and monitoring, using the appropriate work at height equipment and having a competent site manager.
“Dutyholders should be aware that HSE will hold to account those who do not comply with health and safety legislation, or who do not comply with enforcement notices served on them.”
Notes to editors 

1. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety. We prevent work-related death, injury and ill health through regulatory actions that range from influencing behaviours across whole industry sectors through to targeted interventions on individual businesses. These activities are supported by globally recognised scientific expertise. www.hse.gov.uk
2. More about the legislation referred to in this case can be found at: www.legislation.gov.uk/
3. HSE news releases are available at http://press.hse.gov.u