Margaret Hodge's ‘Irrelevant Man’ by Les May

IN an article I wrote for NV in February of this year I said:

‘Last year I attended a Labour party supporting discussion group. Everyone who attended was aware that the constant barrage of articles in the press on the squabbling within the Labour party about anti-semitism, was simply serving to distract attention from Labour’s policy proposals. One of the people who attended had first hand experience of the disciplinary procedures within the party because they had been subjected to an investigation. One outcome of this was that they had been told they must not discuss any aspect of the investigation or procedures with third parties. Secret procedures like this seem to me to have all the hallmarks of a ‘Star Chamber’, so after the discussion group wound up I approached the person involved, told them I wrote for NV and asked if they would speak to me if I gave them an assurance that I would ensure that they could not be identified, and a veto on the use any articles I wrote about their experiences.

'We agreed to exchange telephone numbers and e-mail addresses as we lived some distance apart. I said I would contact the person after they returned from holiday. When I did the person said they had had second thoughts because even with my assurances of anonymity and a final veto, they were still scared that they would be ejected from the Labour party if it came to light that they had talked to anyone about what their experiences. It does not seem an exaggeration to say they had been traumatised by their experience.’

As I have no reason to doubt the veracity of what I was told I find it difficult to understand how anyone can claim that allegations of anti-semitism were not taken seriously by the Labour party.

Taken at its face value, the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn suggests that the findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are being treated by the Labour party as something which cannot be questioned.

This is a dangerous road to travel. The EHRC is not a court. Its findings apply to bodies, not individuals, something which is much easier to ‘prove’ because individuals are protected by the rules of evidence whereby those accused can cross-examine the witness.

By definition ‘unlawful acts of discrimination and harassment’ are against individuals and as the adage goes “where there’s blame, there’s a claim”. In coming months are we going to be treated to the spectacle of Jeremy Corbyn fighting for his political reputation, and in many ways his political legacy, alongside the unedifying sight of individuals suing the Labour party for compensation and citing the EHRC report as evidence?

Figuring out whether Corbyn’s suspension and potential expulsion from the Labour party has an impact on membership won’t be easy due to its complicated support structure of ‘full members’, ‘affiliated supporters’ and ‘registered supporters’. In August 2015, prior to Corbyn’s election to the leadership the Labour Party reported 292,505 full members. In December 2017 this figure had risen to about 552,000 full members making it Britain’s most financially well party at the time. Perhaps Margaret Hodge’s ‘irrelevant man’ won’t prove to be so irrelevant after all.

Today, Saturday, speaking on the BBC News programme ‘Dateline London’ the political presenter Jo Coburn raised the question of whether if, in response to the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour party, some unions reduced their financial support, Keir Starmer might be quite happy to see their influence wane. Coburn is asking the wrong question. As I point out in the last paragraph, the number of full members of the Labour party almost doubled in the two years after Corbyn’s election to the leadership. The right question is whether Labour can afford to dispense with the unions and Corbyn at the same time. Corbyn has asked his supporters to stay in the party; they may not feel they any longer have a home there.

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Labour Party suspends Jeremy Corbyn!

WHIP REMOVED FROM FORMER LABOUR LEADER

MARGARET HODGE said on Radio Four today at 1pm that 'I don't want to hear about that irrelevant man' and 'I think there is still a culture of anti-semitism' in the Labour Party. Meanwhile, Angela Rayner, the Deputy leader of the Labour Party also told us: 'Jeremy Corbyn has a blind spot'.

While later on the The Canary, a leftist website, Sophia Purdy-Moore wrote as follows:

'Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has been suspended, “in light of his comments” in response to an investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)’s investigation, published on 29 October, found Labour responsible for “unlawful acts of discrimination and harassment” in its handling of allegations of antisemitism.'

In his statement following the release of the report, Corbyn said he regrets it took “longer to deliver that change than it should,” but that:

"the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated."

This comment led to his suspension from the party. Corbyn told followers that he will “strongly contest” Labour’s decision to suspend him.

One Labour party member described what has happened to Jeremy Corbyn with the withdawal of the Labour whip and his suspension amounted to a 'witch-hunt' and a 'political assasination'.

Len McCluskey, the leader of the Unite union, has said this will lead to 'chaos' in the party.

Looks like more fun to come from the people's party! Watch this space!

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J.K. ROWLING & tyranny of historical processes

ON the 10th, June 2020, J.K. Rowling Wrote about Her Reasons for Speaking out on Sex and Gender Issues:

'But endlessly unpleasant as its constant targeting of me has been, I refuse to bow down to a movement that I believe is doing demonstrable harm in seeking to erode ‘woman’ as a political and biological class and offering cover to predators like few before it. I stand alongside the brave women and men, gay, straight and trans, who’re standing up for freedom of speech and thought, and for the rights and safety of some of the most vulnerable in our society: young gay kids, fragile teenagers, and women who’re reliant on and wish to retain their single sex spaces.'

She added: 'The last thing I want to say is this. I haven’t written this essay in the hope that anybody will get out a violin for me, not even a teeny-weeny one. I’m extraordinarily fortunate; I’m a survivor, certainly not a victim. I’ve only mentioned my past because, like every other human being on this planet, I have a complex backstory, which shapes my fears, my interests and my opinions. I never forget that inner complexity when I’m creating a fictional character and I certainly never forget it when it comes to trans people. All I’m asking – all I want – is for similar empathy, similar understanding, to be extended to the many millions of women whose sole crime is wanting their concerns to be heard without receiving threats and abuse.'

Evolution of Fashionable Addiction in the Cultural Realm

When I read the above address from a children's author of which I must admit to having only read the occasional oddments in newspapers, and I haven't even seen any of the associated films related to her work; I was drawn back to George Orwell's essay 'Inside the Whale' written in 1940. Orwell was then aware and worried about the poor state of English literature and he wrote of the period: 'Symptomatically, that is more significant than the mere fact that five thousand novels are published in England every year and four thousand nine hundred of them are tripe.'

Back in 1940, Orwell was clearly as pessimistic, as J.K. Rowling seems to be today, and he felt the writer was living in 'an age in which freedom of thought will be at first a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction'. He believed that: 'As for the writer, he [sic] is sitting on a melting iceberg: he is merely an anachronism, a hangover from a bourgeois age...'

A few years earlier in 1936 Orwell clarified the problem while reviewing 'The Novel Today' by the Marxist critic Philip Henderson, when he wrote that the official 'art for art's sake' school was finished and it was then being replaced by two gangs of extremists: 'Both the Catholic and Communist usually believe, though unfortunately they do not often say, that abstract aesthetic standards are bunkum and that a book is only a "good" book it it preaches the right sermon. To the Communist, good literature means "proletarian" literature. (Mr Henderson is careful to explain, however that this doesn't mean literature written by proletarians; which is just as well, because there isn't any.)'

Sermons and the Winter of Anarchistic Free Thinking

In that bleak world of 1940 with the bombs falling, the year in which I was born, Orwell pinned his hopes on Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer' and a novel 'With No sermons, merely subjective truth'

Orwell during the war regarded Henry Miller then as the best bet in the circumstances: 'a completely negative, unconstructive, amoral writer, a mere Jonah, a passive acceper of evil, a sort of Whitman among the corpses.' Not very edifying but once read never forgotten; J.K. Rowling is clearly a much more fragrant specimen and one more easy to get behind in the battle against the current cancel culture fanatics. For freedom of expression is under attack now just as much as it was in the 1930s when the Marxists held the sway; today it is now the obsessive identity politicians cracking the whip, and as a consequence writing and literature is suffering under the current historical process.

Nowadays though, it's not just the general message which is under threat from the 'cancel culture' clans, but anyone can pulled-up for some throwaway remark: a recent example is J.K.Rowling for mentioning 'Never trust a man in a dress' in her book 'Troubled Blood[' a 900-page novel that is said to be Dickensian in its scope.

Nick Cohen in The Spectator [15/09/20] reviewed Ms. Rowling's sin thus: 'Troubled Blood is a 900-page novel that is Dickensian in its scope and gallery of characters. Strike and his business partner Robin Ellacott are hired by a middle-aged woman to investigate the disappearance of her mother in the 1970s. Detectives at the time thought Creed had killed her, but no one knew the truth and the woman’s body had never been found. Strike and Ellacott investigate Creed, but then they investigate a good dozen others. You have to search hard to find a justification for the belief that the book’s moral 'seems' to be "never trust a man in a dress". But then relentless searches for the tiniest evidence of guilt are the marks of heresy hunters.'

The trouble is that this kind of censorship is that it is not just the preserve of the usual suspects among the political authoritarians on the left and the right. Curiously, the socalled libertarians at the 'anarchist' Freedom Press have been vigously rooting out dissidents who have supported people like Helen Steel and J.K.Rowling. Dave Douglass, an anarcho-syndicalist, and in August 2019 a member of the Friends of Freedom Press, was told by the secretary of the group Steve Sorba that he had 'had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics'. Dave was then encouraged to spare his colleagues blushes as directors of Freedom Press and to step down.

The Freedom Press directors have had a troubled history since it was found that Secretary Sorba had been been running the show without reference to his fellow directors, and even placing the names directors on the Company's House register without their knowledge. Since that was discovered and exposed on the NV Blog, Secretary Sorba is believed to have cleaned-up his act.

The Seed within el Culo de un Burro

There was a time more than two decades ago when the anarchist newspaper Freedom had a good reputation for being courageous, controversal and a kind of political Daniel in the lion's den, but that seems no longer to be the case. Its current publishers seem shy and quite willing to censor folk, and to court any fashionable fad no matter how despicable.

When a few years ago two distinguished academics and historians, David Goodway and Peter Marshall, gained entry as directors of Friends of Freedom Press it was thought that things may improve. Alas, it has not really happened. Not only was Dave Douglass effectively shown the door by Secretary Soba, but the rest of the directors have not covered themselves with glory and their committee seems to continually side with censorship and the prescriptions of the cancel culture.

In 2005, David Goodway wrote 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow - left libertarian thought and British Writers from William Morris to Colin Ward' which tried to show that anarchistic forms and projects can be discovered within the structures of everyday life if we seek them and that these 'seeds beneath the snow' should be thrown into relief and promoted by anarchists. It is a seductive theory and can easily be shown to have some credibility substance by focusing upon the ordinary and everyday activities of 'people's methods' which Orwell himself had long ago advocated as a form of common place sociology. In 1967, Harold Garfinkel had even introduced what he came to 'ethnomethodology' [people's methods], which became a form of response to the then conventional sociology of Talcott Parsons with social action theory and structural functionalism.

Colin Ward had long ago criticised British anarchists for being too obsessed with history when he thought they would do better by focussing on a more sociological approach. The work of Colin Ward is very popular in Italy, and the original author of the novel 'The Seed Beneath the Snow'* Ignazio Silone is Italian. But Goodway and Peter Marshall are themselves both English historians, and both are historians presenting artful historical naratives. Now Silone was one of those writers who Orwell in 1944 said belonged to the school of foreign writers who are 'what one might call concentration-camp literature' in that they had seen and understood totalitarianism from the inside. In his book Silone has the seed hidden from the police by the peasants, not beneath the snow, but up the culo of a donkey. It is perhaps a more approprate place since neither of the two historians on the Friends of Freedom Press directorate have covered themselves with glory.

* The Seed Beneath the Snow, the final novel in The Abruzzo Trilogy, follows the fugitive Pietro Spina as he refuses to accept the conditions of pardon for his transgressions against the fascist state and flees to the mountains. As in Fontamara and Bread and Wine, Silone achieves a rich harmony of allegory and realism in his portrayal of the cafoni of Abruzzo and their struggle for freedom. An extraordinary, unburnished vision of the conflict between good and evil, communicating to its reader, in the words of F. W. Dupee, “Silone’s deep integrity, his sufferings and aspirations, his radical sense of the world’s wrongs.” ****************************************************************

Pushing Public Health Messages by Les May

ROCHDALE THE 'WORST AFFECTED' BY VIRUS!

I LIVE in Rochdale, one of the metropolitan boroughs that make up Greater Manchester. Last Saturday lunchtime I was treated to the sight of our local council leader speaking on a BBC news programme about the negotiations with the government about the financial support which would be available if ‘Tier Three’ restrictions come into force. He also raised doubts about whether the additional restrictions were necessary, citing the fact that the negotiators had been presented with ‘old data’ about infection levels.

Last Wednesday I watched the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Jonathan Van Tam, present graphics showing how in the past few weeks rising Covid 19 infections, which were substantially affecting young adults have spread initially, are now moving into the older parts of the population in my town and others like it. These of course are the people whose illness places greatest strain on the NHS and who are most likely to die.

The next day Sky News ran a piece which made the claim that my town, Rochdale, is the borough worst affected by the virus.

Now I don’t wish to suggest that Allen Brett, or Bretty as he likes to style himself, was being deliberately misleading in his comments about the infection levels in Rochdale, but I will say that I find it a little surprising that our council leader seemingly had not taken the trouble to be briefed by Rochdale’s Director of Public Health, Andrea Fallon, about the situation in the town. She’s the expert in these matters, not him. Or perhaps it’s not really so surprising.

Since March when the initial ‘lockdown’ was imposed it can hardly be said RMBC has been proactive in its approach to handling the pandemic. Residents have received precisely two communications about Covid 19, one A5 leaflet came in late March and the second a couple of months ago. No doubt the response would be that there is comprehensive information about the ‘rules’ we are supposed to adhere to on the RMBC website.

Indeed there is, but in the jargon of the computer world, this is a ‘pull strategy’. In other words if you want to get the information, which is liable to change at any moment, you have to be sufficiently motivated to go and find it. If you are a MS Windows user are you sufficiently motivated to access the Microsoft website every time you switch your computer on to make sure that your machine has the latest security patches? Knowing that you are not, MS adopts a ‘push strategy’. Each time you switch on the new patches are sent to your machine automatically; you don’t have to do anything to keep your machine safe.

Some of the money being given to local councils in the Greater Manchester area should be spent on implementing such a ‘push strategy’ to disseminate the latest information about the status of Covid 19 infections in our towns as assessed by the Director of Public Health. This could be done by running an Internet based service dedicated to doing just that. Residents would initially register an e-mail address with the service, and would receive regular updates, encouragement to continue self isolating if asked to do so and advice about infection control in their daily routine. Why should it have taken a query to a local councillor to supply evidence to support a statement she had made to unearth the fact that there was an interactive map* showing the rolling seven day number of new infections in the area I live in? How many councillors are themselves aware of this?

This virus is not going to go away quickly and we have to learn to live with it. The optimistic view of how the future is going to unfold is that at some time not too far ahead, an effective vaccine will be discovered. If we are lucky this may happen. But even if it does the first recipients will be those in involved in health care who are daily putting their own lives at risk treating Covid 19 patients and those who are particularly vulnerable due to existing conditions. The rest of us, and that includes old people like me, will have a lower priority. It may take two or more years before everyone who wants it has been given the vaccine.

The pessimistic view is that we will never have an effective vaccine or effective therapeutic drugs. This is at least a possibility which should not be discounted. Many colds are caused by coronaviruses and in the past one or two million years we humans have never evolved immunity to ‘the common cold’. So in the absence of medical methods of removing the threat to human life presented by this virus, be it for another couple of years or stretching into the future, we are left with public health interventions to mitigate its danger. This should be part of any ‘roadmap’ for the future.

In the fight against this virus it is not enough for us to be passive entities obeying rules we did no make and perhaps do not understand the logic of. Our first priority should not be to acquaint ourselves with the ever changing ‘rules’; it has to be doing whatever is necessary to keep ourselves and our families safe from infection. It is no use local politicians complaining that hospitality venues should not be closed because community transmission is highest where households mix, unless they also have a strategy for discouraging household mixing. To do this we need to have all the information available about where the infection rate is highest, where it is increasing at the fastest rate in our local area and regular reminders about why this is happening and the part our behaviour is playing in this.

Getting this information and advice on a regular basis to residents in the boroughs around Greater Manchester and similarly affected conurbations, isn’t ‘rocket science’. It simply needs a bit of imagination and effort on the part of local councils. If they cannot even manage this what makes anyone think they could run a less shambolic ‘Track and Trace’ system than the present government?

* Initially this map could be found at;

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f6912ed7076

If you go to this site you will be redirected to;

https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map

This is more detailed and more informative, but the text is not so easy to read.

If the links above are not ‘live’ then copy and paste the link into your browser.

A PARCEL of ROGUES! by Christopher Draper

YOU CAN tell what God thinks of money when you look at the sort of people he gives it to - he has a similar opinion of Britain’s Honours System and its recipients…

1) Jimmy Savile – Officer of the Order of British Empire (OBE) 1972, Knighthood 1990 – from the 1950’s many people complained of Savile’s vile sexual abuse of victims aged from 5 to 75 (including corpses) but his money and social connections protected him until his death in 2011. Feeling increasingly threatened by gossip, in 1990 Savile confided to journalist Lynn Banks, “It was a gi-normous relief when I got the knighthood because it got me off the hook.”

2) Benito Mussolini – Knighthood 1923 – Funded from 1917 by Britain’s MI5, in 1919 Mussolini founded the Italian Fascist Party. Backed by blackshirted thugs, from 1922 Mussolini headed Italy’s terror regime. His dictatorship received the British seal of approval in 1923 with an Official Visit from King George Fifth who rewarded Il Duce with a Knighthood.

3) Harvey Weinstein – Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) 2004 – currently serving 23 years imprisonment for numerous sexual assaults including rape.

4) Robert Mugabe – Knighthood 1994 – anti-colonial guerrilla leader turned murderous, homophobic dictator, responsible for genocide of 20,000 residents of Matabele land in the early 1980’s.

5) Jean Else – Dame 2001 – “Labour Luvvie” honoured as “Super Head” of Manchester’s “Whalley Range High School”. In 2004 Dame Jean Else was suspended and subsequently found guilty of making unauthorised payments and nepotism, which included promoting her twin sister from part-time clerical assistant to deputy head! Sacked and banned by the General Teaching Council.

6) Anthony Blunt – Knighthood – spied for Stalin from 1935-51. Although the authorities were tipped off as early as 1950 and Blunt confessed in 1964, as a pillar of the establishment – distantly related to the Queen, educated at Marlborough Public School and Trinity College, Cambridge, member of the British Secret Service and “Surveyor of the King/Queen’s Pictures” Blunt was honoured and the truth concealed.

7) Vidkun Quisling – CBE 1929 – founder of the Norwegian Fascist Party and Nazi collaborator honoured by George V for his murky role in “representing British interests” in the 1920’s as a rabid anti-communist member of the Norwegian Legation in Moscow.

8) Fred Goodwin – Knighthood 2004 – as CEO of Royal Bank of Scotland, Goodwin was honoured “for services to the banking industry”. He had no banking qualifications, gambled on a reckless policy of acquisitions and expansion and four years later RBS spectacularly collapsed forcing an unprecedented government bailout. While ordinary citizens continue to bear the costs Goodwin ensured that he walked away with an RBS lifetime pension of £703,000 a year.

9) Nicolae Caeusescu – Knighthood 1978 – Following the 1978 honours ceremony at Buckingham Palace the Queen gave the Romanian dictator “a rifle with a telescopic sight, his wife, Elena, received a gold and diamond brooch”. After the pair were executed in 1989 by firing squad during a popular uprising the Queen sent back the “Star of the Socialist Republic of Romania – First Class” awarded to her by Caeusescu but pleaded in vain for return of the Knight’s regalia she’d given him, “a purple mantle with a silver star and collar with gold roses and sapphires. The collar is estimated to be worth £15,000.”

10) Rolf Harris – Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) 1968, OBE 1977, CBE 2009 – Broadcaster initially famous for singing about “Two Little Boys” and tying down kangaroos, later infamous for sexually assaulting little girls including his daughter’s thirteen year old friend. In 2005 the Queen sat for Harris at Buckingham Palace whilst he painted her official 80th birthday portrait and in 2012 he performed outside the Palace for her Jubilee Concert. Two year later he was found guilty of 12 counts of indecent assault and sentenced to 5 years and 9 months in prison.

Britain’s Honours System is a tawdry confection, impressing naught but fools and narcissists. The above list of crooks, conmen, killers and paedophiles is merely the tip of the dung heap. Next on Northern Voices I’ll identify ten “Honourable Hypocrites” who broadcast their anti-establishment credentials whilst brown-nosing their way onto the Honours List.

CD 2020

Eric Preston: A life ‘lived for that better day’

OUR dear friend and comrade Eric Preston died on 20 September. He was a driving force in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for 60 years, shaping much of its perspective and political thinking. ILP chair DAVID CONNOLLY gave the eulogy at his funeral in Leeds on 8 October.

It is a great honour to be asked by the family to give the eulogy today for our dear friend and comrade, Eric Preston. We will miss him greatly but today is an opportunity to remember his contribution to all our lives.

Eric was born to loving parents, Frank and Dorothy in Ossett on 15 June 1932 and he came into this world weighing 14 pounds. His father was a miner and unfortunately a serious accident at the pit put Frank in hospital for 18 months.

As money was tight, to say the least, Dorothy had to walk to Leeds to see her husband and Eric was often fed by the neighbours during this difficult time. His mother was horrified that she had to rely on their help in this way.

Unable to continue as a miner, Frank had various jobs including at one time managing Ossett Conservative Club where the family lived for a while. Eventually they moved to Leeds where Eric’s brother, John, was born in 1946.

Eric left school at 14, his teacher telling him that he would make “a very good lorry drivers’ mate” – and Eric never even learned to drive.

He had several different jobs before signing up for the RAF for three years where he was a keen rugby player. One weekend Eric wasn’t able to play. He went to see the plane carrying his team return but tragically it crashed on landing killing several of his teammates.

Covered in aviation fuel, he was badly affected by the experience of digging them out, hence his subsequent fear of flying.

While stationed for a year in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) he saw so many wounded soldiers evacuated from the war in Korea that when he came home he assumed the streets would be full of the maimed and injured.

Angry and frustrated with the world, Eric’s political views at this time were distinctly right wing.

It was while working with Doreen Towler at the Co-operative Insurance Society that he met her husband, Dennis Towler, who was on the left. Eric, Joan, Doreen and Dennis went on a cycling holiday in 1954 during which Dennis challenged Eric’s conventional assumptions about British society and the world in general.

Immediately afterwards Eric read as much as he could about left-wing politics, including George Bernard Shaw’s Everybody’s Political What’s What and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It profoundly changed the way he thought and briefly led him to join the Communist Party, which he left in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Eric and Joan had first met when he was 17 and she was 15. He asked her to write to him when he joined up. They were married on 31 July 1954, a marriage that was to last 66 years. Robert was born in 1960 and Karen in 1962.

https://www.independentlabour.org.uk

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A Second Wave is Coming: Madrid & Manchester!

A TALE OF TWO CITIES THROUGH the LOOKING-GLASS

AS the windfall fruit began to fall from the trees earlier this month the spectre of a second wave of the virus emerged in Europe.

On October 9, the Spanish government declared a state of emergency in Madrid on Friday, wresting control of efforts to fight the spread of COVID-19 from local authorities in a region that is experiencing one of Europe’s most significant coronavirus outbreaks.

The step, which took immediate effect and lasts for two weeks, forcing Madrid's regional authorities to restore restrictions on travel that had been introduced by the national government but were struck down the previous day by a Madrid court ruling.

That successful legal challenge by Madrid officials was part of a long quarrel between the country’s main political parties over their coronavirus response. Those differences, and the changing rules, have often dismayed and confused local residents.

The Madrid region’s 14-day infection rate of 563 coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents is more than twice Spain’s national average of 256 and five times the European average rate of 113 for the week ending Sept. 27.

The central government’s measures prohibit all nonessential trips in and out of the capital and nine of its suburbs, affecting some 4.8 million people. Restaurants must close at 11 p.m. and stores at 10 p.m.. Both must limit occupancy to 50% of their capacity.

The national government had ordered police in Madrid to fine people if they left their municipalities without justification. More than 7,000 police officers will now be deployed to ensure the restrictions are observed, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said.

The Spanish government announced the state of emergency after a hastily arranged Cabinet meeting in the wake of the court ruling. Health Minister Salvador Illa said the previous measures would come back into force and that only the legal framework for them was changing.

He told a press conference it was “undeniable” that there is community transmission in the Madrid region, not just isolated outbreaks, at a crucial juncture as winter approaches and respiratory problems increase.

“Action is needed, and today we couldn’t just stand by and do nothing,” Illa said. “It’s very important that this doesn’t spread to the rest of the country.”

Yet Madrid’s conservative regional government opposed those restrictions, saying they were draconian and hurt the economy. Madrid’s regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said her own, more moderate measures were enough to fight COVID-19.

A Madrid court on Thursday [8/10/20] upheld the regional government’s appeal, saying the national government’s imposition of restrictions violated people’s fundamental liberties.

Between Madrid and Manchester one cannot help but notice the looking-glass nature of the two disputes; as the Madrid regional authorities are politically conservative in opposing the national government, while in Greater Manchester the resistance is largely Labour with a sprinkling of local Tory MPs in places like Bury etc.

Today, in England, the Boris Johnson's government has just confronted a similar situation with regard to Manchester as the region's mainly Labour politicians and Mayor's oppose the central government's insistence that a three-tier is imposed. The Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, has been in the forefront mobilising the opposition and demanding more support, but he urges that the people of Manchester to obey the law, and fall-in with the requirements of the government's new severe three-tier restrictions.

Last Saturday in an editorial leader in the Financial Times wrote: 'With events moving at such speed, and Mr Johnson's regional approach coming under strain, a circuit-breaker shutdown across England, too, now seems a question of when, not if.'

The FT editor took the view that if the goverment imposed a 'precautionary break' now, it might 'avert the need for a vastly more damaging indefinate national lock-down' later on.

Despite this, it now looks like the governmant is taking a chance on a regional approach to the problem. Just watch this space!

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“We’re all in it together!” by Christopher Draper

ASDA was packed today – the woman on the till reckons it’s because we’re about to get the full lockdown treatment in Wales – “but at least we’re all in it together”. I beg to differ…

1) April 2020, Dominic Cummings visited Barnard Castle despite lockdown regulations

2) September, Tony Blair photographed leaving Mayfair restaurant in breach of compulsory 14-day quarantine on return from trip to USA

3) September, SNP Rutherglen MP Margaret Ferrier travelled from Scotland and back on public transport to speak in Parliament despite having covid. She also preached in St Mungo’s Church, Glasgow

4) March, Stephen Kinnock, Labour MP for Aberavon journeyed to father’s birthday party despite ban on all but essential travel

5) September, Jeremy Corbyn MP defied “rule of six” to attend larger dinner party

6) July, The Prime Minister’s father (and former MEP) Stanley Johnson defied travel ban to visit his holiday home in Greece. On return to England photographed entering shops without wearing mask

7) October 5th Parliamentary authorities confirm that MP’s (allegedly including Matt Hancock) continued drinking alcohol in Parliament bar after the 10pm deadline imposed on the rest of us. Parliament refuses to identify the guilty individuals.

8) April, Government Housing Minister, Robert Jenrick MP, defied lockdown and travelled 150 miles to his parents’ Herefordshire home

9) April, Dr Catherine Calderwood, Scotland’s Chief Medical Officer, ignored lockdown regulations and on two weekends travelled from Edinburgh to her Earlsferry holiday home

10) August 19th, EU Commissioner, Phil Hogan, defied ban on group meetings by attending a golf dinner in County Galway, along with other politicians and an Irish Supreme Court judge

None of the above individuals were prosecuted although tens of thousands of ordinary folk have been fined and on October 4th five Doncaster welders authorised to work on the Isle of Man Electric Railway were imprisoned for two weeks because they unwittingly breached regulations by visiting Tesco on their brief journey from the ferry to their hotel. Ironically they were singled out because they wore masks which aren’t required on the IOM.

As far as our political class are concerned, “Laws are evidently for the Little People!”

Christopher Draper, Llandudno

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Don Pedelty, socialist and anarcho-syndicalist dies

In loving memory of Don James Donovan Pedelty

7th March 1926 – 12th October 2020

“Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease; Or was it made to preserve all her children?”

— Gerrard Winstanley, 1649 (founder of the True Levellers)

Hay Meadow Burial Ground, Glascwm, 12pm, 24th October 2020

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John Foley: A Liverpool Legend

Editorial comment: Most towns and cities have a colourful figure who stands out against the trend. In Liverpool, John Foley seems to have mastered the art of embracing an awkward squad to challenge the local scenario. The Liverpool Echo describes John as 'father figure of St John's Market', and a threat to those he felt were 'doing wrong'. He was a campaigner on many issues, including helping to rescue the famous market when it was threatened with closure. He died on the 9th, September, in Royal Liverpool Hospital after catching Covid-19. John gained the admiration of many from Liberals, like Cllr Richard Kemp, who campaigned with him on a number of issues, to Scouse anarcho-syndicalists in the local Solidarity Federation.

Colin Laphan, a close friend of John’s and the chair of the St John’s Market Traders Association, told The Echo:

'He was everything that was good about Scousers, he was salt of the earth, a fighter for justice – he was what Liverpool is all about.'

He added: 'The idea that anyone could think this virus isn’t serious is insanity. We have lost two of our friends and traders – John had no other illnesses before he got covid.'

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Tribute to John Foley: Liverpool legend by Mike C.

CAMPAIGNER and market stallholder John Foley has passed away from coronavirus at the age of 55.

John was well-known in his native Liverpool where he was a formidable campaigner against injustice and a thorn in the side of the powerful.

He fought a long campaign against Ryanair, arguing that the airline had unfairly terminated his daughter's employment whilst profiting from the thousands of euros she had paid for her flight attendant training.

The campaign involved publicity stunts such as climbing onto the roof of Liverpool John Lennon Airport, picketing Ryanair's AGM in Dublin, disrupting the Grand National and handcuffing himself to the goalposts during a Premier League match.

His campaign was backed by the Liverpool branch of the Solidarity Federation who supported many of his pickets and organised a day of action at European airports through the International Workers' Association.

Latterly, he pursued a private company contracted by Liverpool City Council to enforce litter fines. John believed the company were profiting by unfairly targeting vulnerable people on low incomes. The council eventually capitulated and ended the contract.

As a stallholder in Liverpool's St John's Market, John campaigned against the council's attempts to charge traders sky-high rents, and organised a rally to demand the re-opening of the market which remained closed even though other retailers were open following lockdown.

His final campaign was to stop the closure of two local care homes, which was ultimately successful.

As well as being a passionate campaigner against injustice, John was a dedicated family man, and a warm and genuine bloke. I was proud to have known him and campaigned alongside him.

GO TO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0I-MZC2FEI

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Covid 19: Pandemic Or Endemic? by Les May

THIS morning a ‘Lidl Weekly’ brochure dropped through my door telling me all the wonderful offers available in Lidl stores between 15 and 21 October. It’s just the most recent of a line of similar brochures from different retailers stretching back to long before the world had heard of Covid 19 or Donald Trump. In every case the intention of whoever promoted it, was to shape, change, manipulate, choose your favourite epithet, my behaviour so that I would spend some money with them. Before every election what drops through my door are leaflets, not asking me to spend money, but to buy into the policies promoted by one or other of the parties. So it would seem that our politicians realise that if you want to influence someone’s behaviour mailshots are quite an effective way of doing so. Or do they?

Yesterday morning I watched Robert Jenrick, Secretary of State for Housing Communities and Local Government, being asked about the new ‘Three Tier’ restrictions proposed by the Government which it hopes will suppress the dangerous rise in new infections, hospital admissions and deaths resulting from the Covid pandemic. How are we to find out which ‘tier’ we are in? Go to www.gov.uk says Mr Jenrick, and find out for yourself!

One of the things we have learned in recent months is that there has been a decline in the willingness of some people to comply with what is expected of them. Only one fifth to one quarter of people who are told they should self isolate after being in contact with an infected person, actually do so. It’s not clear that everyone even knows what ‘self isolate’ actually means.

A frequent excuse for non-compliance with this and other restrictions is that people don’t know what the ‘rules’ are. Personally I put much more reliance on the World Health Organisation’s common sense rules like meeting as few people as possible, keeping as far away as possible from anyone I do meet and disinfecting anything anyone else might have touched, to protect my wife and myself, rather than anything the government tells me. But common sense seems to be in short supply in some quarters

.

Unless the government makes an effort to cut through the fog of confusion and excuses the new ‘Three Tier’ system will not work. Restrictions like those proposed will be viewed as a massive inconvenience to many people, perhaps especially to those who feel they are a least risk of picking up the virus or becoming seriously ill if they do get it. So why expect them to go out of their way to find out for themselves just how much freedom of action they are about to lose?

My understanding, gleaned from news reports is that Rochdale, as part of Greater Manchester, is in ‘Tier Two’. Telling people to find out for themselves what the new restrictions are by visiting the web sites of national and local government seems to me a recipe for failure. Some people cannot and some people will not do it.

Since March my criticism of the government’s strategy of been restrained, not because I particularly like what it has been doing, but because I am sceptical that anyone else would have been able to do much better.

But all along it seems to have been ‘penny wise and pound foolish’. It has relied too much on technology because it appears to be a cheap short cut to getting things done. We’ve had the fiasco of the ‘world beating app’, when the money might have been better spent on old fashioned shoe leather and door to door methods of tracing contacts. Telling people to go to a website to find out the rules in their area is just another example of this.

Starmer and Johnson may spar across the floor of the Commons, each claiming they know how to cut down the number of new infections. Neither seems to have paused to reflect upon the fact that this virus is not going to go away. It is going to be with us for the foreseeable future and possibly forever. If that pessimistic assessment is correct then we have to learn to live with it by changing our behaviour to accommodate that fact.

If we are to live anything like a normal life again we have to make doing the things that will keep the virus in check, and ourselves and others safe, second nature. By not doing this we have squandered all the effort and inconvenience that was needed in Spring to get the virus under control.

As I pointed out in an article on the NV blog on 16 August the number of cases was already beginning to rise again. Instead of delaying taking action until something as drastic as a ‘circuit breaker lockdown’ was needed, the time could have been better spent in reminding everyone that public health measures like physical distancing, mixing with as few people as possible, wearing a face mask when inside buildings with people not of your household and scrupulous hand washing, were still important.

The virus is apolitical; Labour or Tory it can kill you if you become infected. Starmer and Johnson need to stop playing politics and start to look at how we can avoid once more squandering the effort and inconvenience which will be needed to bring the virus under control

.

Though I take much the same view as the economist J. K. Galbraith, that advertising is just another way of boosting consumption, hence profits, by creating demand where none would otherwise exist, it may be just what the government needs to turn to, to get the public health message across.

Seven weeks ago on 27 August I wrote something on the NV blog with specific reference to Rochdale Council, but the same applies to the government:

‘These are irksome things to do for most of us. We’ve a devil dancing on our shoulder telling us to just get on with our lives. We need constant reminders as to why these things are important. It’s got to be Education, Education, Education! A nd this is where I think Rochdale Council has failed miserably because it is "just going through the motions". Where are the large notices on every lamp post and every shop window and every billboard, reminding people of what they need to do to beat the virus? Non-existent so far as I can tell.’

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The Plot to Kill Franco - Stuart Christie

Was General Franco a Fascist? by Brian Bamford

JOE Bailey sends NV a quote from Paul Preston, historian: “If people are looking for a quick and easy insult to those on the right, then fascist, is your go-to term,” he says. “If you’re asking an academic political theorist what constitutes a fascist then you’d have to say Franco isn’t.”

Derek Pattison had asked the question 'Was Franco a Fascist?' and he drew attention to some similarities and differences: 'Franco did use forced labour, concentration camps, and mass executions and terror was a deliberate strategy used to pursue his goal of overthrowing the republican government and winning the war. He then established a military dictatorship, but I don't think he'd much time for fascism, the Falange or its leader, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera.'

The historian, Sir Paul Preston, is an interesting personality to turn to for an answer to this question 'Was Franco a Fascist?'. The then Prof. Preston answer to the interviewer Rob Attar, was:

'If people are looking for a quick and easy insult to those on the right, then fascist, is your go-to term,” he says. “If you’re asking an academic political theorist what constitutes a fascist then you’d have to say Franco isn’t.'

And then Preston continued:

'But that’s not intended to let the Spanish dictator off the hook. “I caused quite a stir in Spain a few years ago when asked this question,” Preston recalled, “and I said Franco wasn’t a fascist … he was something much worse.

'What I meant by that is that the only absolutely indisputable fascist leader is Mussolini and the only indisputably fascist regime is Mussolini’s regime. And, there are so many ways in which Franco is different.'

'How, then, was Franco “much worse”? Preston argues that Franco was a “deeply conservative” man who, having previously served with the Spanish Army in North Africa, “had the mental furniture of a Spanish colonial officer”. This had seemingly imbued him with a shocking disregard for human life.'

Derek Pattison was questioning Stuart Christie's assumption that Franco was a 'Fascist' and I believe Derek is right to say General Franco didn't have much time for the Falange (the Spanish Fascist Party). In 1963, my boss pointed to a house where a local Fascist lived in Denia, Alicante, and told me that he'd been imprisoned for a time under Franco. What Sir Paul Preston now calls 'the mental furniture of a Spanish colonial office', Sr. Juan Paris, my boss, saw Franco as a solid army man who couldn't be swayed by the dodgy nature of party politicians. Later on in 1975, after Franco had died* my boss told me that he then regarded democracy as the best thing for Spain.

Juan was probably the best boss I've ever had and he looked after me and my family as best he could, but when I think on this, I'm put in mind of what Ignazio Silone said in 'School for Dictators' where he wrote on Fascist Italy about how folk flock to those in power and this was his advice:

'Don't be in such a hurry, I beg you. The poets and the monsignori, the generals, the ladies and their escorts will all come to you after you are in power. With some exceptions, they flock to success like flies to honey, or if you prefer, like rats to cheese. Democratic when there is a democratic government, they are naturally fascists under a fascist dictatorship and Communists under the hammer and sickle. The behaviour of the priests might surprise us, if the pagans hadn't already advised us that the winning cause has always pleased the gods. Christian theology later corroberated this interlectually, explaining that all authority comes from God. And as for the ladies, it's well known that Venus has always felt a particular attraction for Mars, the God of strength.'

This quote is probably a good explanation of the evolution of Franco's Spanish dictatorship, which was an authoritatian, regime rather than totalitarian as in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia.

Sir Paul Preston himself also represents a good example how to get on in academia, he doesn't yet seem to have commented on the death of Stuart Christie, which is a little strange given that he was very keen to court Stuart, particularly in the early days, and Stuart told me he helped to get some anarchist publications into print in English. One of Preston's students 'Neil' told me that Preston made much of his association with Stuart in academic circles. When I once, some years ago, mentioned to Stuart about Prof. Preston's association with the International Brigade Memorial Trust, he told me that 'it was his bread and butter'..

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* Officially, Franco died a few minutes after midnight on 20 November 1975 from heart failure, at the age of 82 – on the same date as the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of the Falange, in 1936. Historian Ricardo de la Cierva claimed that he had been told around 6 pm on 19 November that Franco had already died.[171] Juan Carlos was proclaimed King two days later.

Winter Hill 125

by Paul Salveson

DID you know that in 1896 the people of Halliwell, (Bolton), and surrounding areas were involved in a historic battle with wealthy landowner Colonel Richard Ainsworth? Many thousands of local people were involved in what was the biggest rights of way dispute in British history when Ainsworth closed public means of access to the moors so he could hold private grouse shooting parties for his friends. Will Yo’ Come o’ Sunday Mornin’?

One Sunday morning thousands marched up Halliwell, Smithills Dean and then along Coal Pit Road. They were determined to defy Col. Ainsworth and his restrictions. A folk song ‘Will Yo’Come o’ Sunday Mornin’? was written to encourage people to take part. Local historian Paul Salveson wrote a pamphlet of the same name which led to commemorative walks in 1982 and 1996.

Sunday 5th September 2021

A commemorative walk is planned to mark the 125th anniversary of the original “mass trespass”. We hope you’d like to be involved!

Please look out for details. Facebook: Winter Hill 125.

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Long, Long Covid 19? by Les May

SCOTLAND’s Sunday Post newspaper reports that Health Boards in Scotland have placed on-line advertisements in an attempt to recruit staff to act as contact tracers during the present pandemic. The contracts being offered are of eighteen months duration. This suggests that there is a growing recognition that Covid 19 is going to be with us until at least 2022 and possibly far longer. *************************************************

An Indirect Route of getting Covid-19 by Les May

AT intervals throughout the day Sky News (Channel 233) broadcasts a short information piece dealing with the key points in protecting ourselves against becoming infected with the Covid 19 causing virus. One of these is a reminder that the virus can remain infectious for a period if it contaminates hard surfaces, including metal surfaces. In her daily briefing a couple of days ago the Scottish First Minister, Nichola Sturgeon, reminded people to avoid touching hard surfaces when in the hospitality venues which have been allowed to remain open.

Unlike in the case of close contact between individuals which can result in direct transmission of the infection, the path of transmission from an infected person to a previously uninfected individual via a hard surface, is indirect. In both cases it involves the infected person ejecting minute virus laden droplets of mucus from the nose or of spittle from the mouth, by sneezing, coughing, singing, or even speaking excitedly or loudly. The largest of these rapidly fall to the ground and are unlikely to travel more than two metres. Smaller particles fall more slowly, persist in the air much longer and may be carried further by air currents caused by body movements.

If these minute droplets are inhaled they are likely to come in contact with the mucus membranes of the nose and throat; they can also drift into the eyes of bystanders. Each route provides a means for the virus to enter the body and initiate and infection.

Droplets which otherwise would fall to the ground can be intercepted by hard surfaces; supermarket trolley handles, door surfaces and handles, tables and chairs, milk bottles and metal cans… the list of things with hard surfaces which have the potential to hold infectious virus particles is endless. In the worst cases virus particles can remain viable and able to reproduce within the human body, for up to three days.

Anyone who comes in contact with a surface carrying virus particles is in danger of picking them up on their hands. Touching their face with a virus contaminated hand can result in a Covid 19 infection becoming established in the body, even though they have not spent any significant time in close contact with an infected person. No ‘App’, nor ‘Track and Trace’ can alert us to the fact that an infected person shed virus particles onto a surface which we later came into contact with. The ONLY defence against this is to avoid touching our face and either wash our hands regularly with soap and water, or apply a sanitiser gel containing at least 60% alcohol, every time we have touched a surface in locations outside our own home.

The importance of this indirect method of passing on the infection has been overshadowed by the problems of getting the ‘App’ to work at all and ‘Track and Trace’ to work effectively. We need to reinstate it.

Do I practice what I preach? Yes I do! Before any bottle or can is allowed into the house it is sprayed with dilute bleach (one part bleach plus ten to twenty parts water) and left for a few minutes before being rinsed with water. Anything else is quarantined for three days. If anyone other than my wife or myself touches a door handle, door knocker, mail flap, bell push is is wiped over with soapy water or alcohol. In the case of our waste bins on collection day before they are brought back into the garden the handles and flap of each of each bin is sprayed with dilute bleach.

Pedantic? Yes! But I make my own rules about what I think will keep my wife and myself safe. That way there’s no confusion about what is and what is not ‘allowed’.

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Don’t Blame Tories For This One! by Les May

EARLIER this year the Northern Voices carried an article which drew attention to the fact that the average daily number of new Covid 19 infections was beginning to rise, ('The Fat Lady Still Isn’t Singing' 16 August). Later in the month a second article drew attention to the fact that the increase in the daily number of new infections was continuing and that it could not be accounted for by the increase in testing, (Don’t You Know There’s A War On? 27 August).

Prior to the second article the daily number of new infections had been increasing slowly; it took some 50 days for the average number of new infections each day to double from 550 to 1100. After 27 August the number of new cases each day doubled from 1100 to 2200 in only thirteen days, and it doubled yet again in the next 15 days. In other words the pandemic in the UK had entered the ‘exponential phase’ with the daily number new infections doubling about every fortnight.

In the last week or so the picture has changed considerably. The time taken for the number of new infections to double has fallen to about nine days. This 5 day decrease in the time taken for the daily number of new infections to double might not seem very significant, but it is!

The average number of new infections over the past seven days is 10,500. In one month, 28 days, the daily number of new infections would double twice, first to 21,000 after a fortnight then to 42,000 after a month if the doubling time were still 14 days. With a doubling time of 9 days the number of new infections would double three times; first to 21,000 after nine days, to 42,000 after 18 days and to 84,000 after 27 days. This is NOT a prediction that there will be 80,000 cases a day in one month’s time: it is what COULD happen unless something is done to slow down or preferably halt the spread of the virus.

The ‘Track and Trace’ system may be shambolic as is the failure in the last few days to accurately report the number of new cases, but these are not in themselves the reason we are seeing 10,000+ new cases a day. I am a lifelong Labour voter, but I am not going to blame Johnson for the fact that the time taken for the number of new cases each day to double has shortened in the past week or so. The only way to halt the spread of the virus is to meet as few people as possible, wear a mask in any indoor space, physically distance yourself from other people wherever you are and decontaminate your hands, and anything that other people may have touched, by washing. Neither Johnson nor any other Tory in the land can do this for us. It is up to us.

Appendix

The figures for doubling time for new cases and daily deaths were obtained from the daily figures published by the Government. The method used was first to calculate each day the average number of new cases during the past seven days. This is commonly known as the ‘rolling average’. This eliminates the weekend effect where reported numbers are lower on Saturday and Sunday, then higher the following Monday.

The doubling time can be found by counting the number of days for the number of new infections to double directly from the rolling average. I prefer to calculate the logarithm to the base two of the rolling average. That way every time the number before the decimal point (the characteristic) increases by ‘1’, we know the number of infections each day has doubled.

Eric Preston former ILP activist has died

by Brian Bamford

ERIC PRESTON who lived in Leeds died last month.

Eric Preston who had been an active member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) since the 1950s has died. In 1959 when I first met him he was involved in founding the Rank & File Movement in London: the ILP together with the London Anarchists; the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF); the Solidarity Group (formerly 'Agitator'); the then Worker's Party which later merged with the SWF; and some subscibers to the paper Freedom set up the Rank & File movement to try to introduce an organised shopfloor form of libertarian campaigning element into the then active shop-stewards movement.

This Rank & File movement was mainly London based and according to Pete Turner later an editor of Freedom, this movement merged into the London Industrial Sub-Committee of the Committee of 100. Futher events like the Spies for Peace revelations emerged as a natural consequence of political evolution of these activists in the early 1960s. Eric Preston, who lived in Leeds, and his friends Bill and Joan Christopher at that time based in London, were central to these developments on the libertarian left.

Bob Galliers writes: Eric's funeral will be next Thursday but because of Covid restrictions etc we will not be going as numbers allowed to attend are few and standing outside is impractical and limited numbers too. The plan is that someone will film the ceremony so that those who cannot attend will be able to access it - not sure yet if this will just be recorded or live. There is a lot of research going on about Eric's early involvement in the ILP/ politics but sadly so many have passed on and those that are still alive have very vague memories. Seems that there are plans to have a good bash next year sometime to remember Eric. If there is a written obituary or I get any more information I will pass this on.

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'Undercover War': David John Douglass' review

Undercover War Harry McCallion

Britain’s Special Forces And Their Secret War Against the IRA

9781 78946 285 2 John Blake Publishing

£8-99

HARRY McCallion is in a position to know, seven tours of the occupied counties with the Parachute Regiment and the Intelligence Company together with six years with the SAS he also served with the RUC.

The British Army’s war against the PIRA between 1970 and 1998 and its associated war against the republican community is one of its most bitter and controversial in the history of the British Empire. The fact that this is acknowledged within the first two pages of the book “murderous ill-discipline” and “The British Army’s reputation was damaged for decades” was a refreshing piece of honesty at least. The author lays the blame of the early disasters on Brigadier Frank Kitson, a person well known to many of us on the left at this period an open advocate if push comes to shove of a ‘A very British Coup’.

McCallion describes Kitson’s ‘Military Reaction Force’ as basically a self-acting terrorist organisation under no outside control and revolving almost entirely round Kitson and his anti-guerrilla warfare techniques perfected in Kenya fighting the Mau Mau. We are told SAS, SBU, and other covert sections of the army where banned from operating in Ulster initially, but all these regiments assigned men to MRF. They operated in civilian clothes, they attempted to don the hair styles and clothes,beards and dress common to young males of the period and to all intent and purpose where indeed a state terrorist organisation with no formal connection to the armed forces, this was especially so when they went to murder people. There were no ‘rules of engagement’.

The British state took no responsibility for them and troops assigned to them were instructed of the ‘Deniable missions'. There was something of MO and Organisational rational of the Black and Tans in much of this. Their murders of which there were many, and McCallion exposes this early on with many of the names and circumstances of the murders, were either not reported at all, it being left for the RUC and public at large to conclude these were sectarian murders or para-military executions. Or else where they called it in, they were explained as ‘returning fire’ or ‘caught in an ambush’ the crimes were investigated by the Military Police and the ‘Murder Squad’ version recorded as fact without further enquiry. Their so called ‘intelligence’ was woeful, having been brutalised and tortured out of basically anyone from the community and chosen it seems because of their Non-involvement with the armed struggle, on the twisted logic such innocents would have no loyalty the republican military and point the figure. In fact, the attitude of this unit was that everyone in the community was guilty or potentially guilty, so innocence or ‘guilt’ was not a prime concern.

A consequence of the murder of unarmed catholic civilians in drive-by shootings was that the RUC and more generally the British Army blamed the Loyalist militias which often resulted in counter attacks or worse sectarian attacks on unarmed loyalist civilians. One would be naive indeed to see this as an unintended bonus rather than part of the overall reign of state authorised terror. MRF Sergeant ‘Taff’ Williams machine gunned three Catholic men standing by a car in the same spot where innocent car passenger Jean Smyth had been murdered in an attack on their car just previously. Williams used a Thompson machine, a weapon favoured by the Provisionals. Another man in his own house was injured in the fire that killed the Catholic men. By sheer flook the MSR car was intercepted by a RUC patrol and Williams arrested. He was prosecuted for attempted murder. His cover story that the men had been armed was disproved by forensic evidence and eyewitnesses. He was acquitted and stayed with the unit. Indeed, fellow unit members swore to the author they knew he had killed at least 15 civilians to their knowledge. Concern at the cavalier murder and indiscipline were highly counterproductive and solidarizing the community further to the republican movement set alarms bells ringing among more conventional of the states armed forces. By the time they moved to disband them, had killed at least 40 identifiable innocent civilians, comrades in the republican communities say this is a gross underestimate and put numbers over 100. The author says, “the total number of people killed by MRF will never be known.”

The mantle of conducting Britain’s undercover surveillance and counter insurgency would pass to the SAS. But the problem for the Government would be one of recognising the war in Ireland as just that, when they had throughout claimed the violence was just down to criminal gangs and not a political liberation struggle. B company SAS was consequently ‘disbanded’ or ‘debadged’ half the unit was engaged in recruiting and training a force to replace the MRF, the other half were formally disengaged from SAS but were posted as an operational surveillance team operating armed in plain clothes. ‘Debadged under ongoing deniability‘ and the legitimacy they thought they owned, they were operating officially as the SAS. Far from being a clean replacement for the murderous MRF the new force aspired to be a more efficient version of the old one taking over their old barracks in Hollywood. It is interesting that the Author mentions the briefings given to this new team on republican and loyalist militias were built on MI5 infiltration, sleepers and informers within the respective ranks.

After a period of strenuous operations to break the command chain of the Belfast brigade by regular identification and arrest of Brigade Commanders the debadged unit was disbanded, it was replaced by the other half of what had been ‘B’ Company, now under the new title status 14 Intelligence Company nick-named The Det (officially titled the Special Reconnaissance Unit). From its inception this Unit had the operational strength of a normal Infantry Company. That’s a lot of plain clothes civilian looking assassins, in normal cars with lethal weaponry coming and going without apparent constraint and control. The Author was a leading member of this Unit. Operators were allowed to grow long hair and moustaches fashionable among young men of their age in civilian life. A nice touch was the inclusion of shopping bags, cots or child seats to their civilian cars. Operators were taught to imitate and Ulster accent for at least one sentence replies to questions. CQB (close quarter battle) techniques, close range use of the Browning 9mm pistol “the workhorse of the Det”, “most operators could draw and hit a target in less than a second”. The weapons we are told were frequently ‘customised’ an extended 20 round magazine for example a feature one wouldn’t have normally associated with ‘targeted’ still less ‘low key surveillance operations’. All operators would carry a ‘car weapon’ a machine gun or American MAC-10 . This latter is highly inaccurate rapid firing weapon but sprays large numbers of lethal bullets in the shortest possible time, never mind the accuracy feel the death count. This weapon didn’t fall out of popular usage with Det or the SBS until the 1980s when it was replaced by the Heckler and Kosh MP5. The Author makes no apology that the purpose of the Det was to wage war on the insurgency, although by 1976 the ‘non-political’ game was up, and the SAS was officially sent into Ulster where of course in one hat or another it had been throughout.

McCallan while trying to persuade us his unit were now the good guys admits to the murder of two protestant civilian’s with no political or military affiliations, who they had assumed were members of the PIRA. The two men who had been shooting pigeons, had had the air let out of their tyres while they were at their sport. The passing 14 Unit was laughing loudly as they drove by and the men assumed these were people who had done it and set off in hot pursuit. Only to be shot dead as they confronted the unit. McCallan, with more honesty than most, in his cover for other deaths associated with the Unit, as mistakes, or ‘not us’. Indeed as his story unfolds the number of innocent people they accidently or mistakenly kill is quite breath-taking, we had always previously been accused of making this stuff up, or else it was blamed on republican or loyalist fighters, here we have the horse’s mouth. Additionally, the explanation repeated more than once that captured republicans ‘had attempted to grab weapons and were shot dead’ must be taken with a large pinch of salt, I think. 'The Murder on the Rock’ (Gibraltar) in which three unarmed members of the IRA were shot dead in public because they went for their non-existent guns, or in the case of the women attempted to detonate a car bomb in a car found to have had no explosives in it, are repeated in the teeth of witnesses evidence and agreement from the author that in fact they were unarmed without any bomb. Republicans of course will not be surprised by the events they lived through in their communities, but the British public might well be, suppose this book gets wide distribution as it surely should. In among his whole review of the struggles and chronicles of who shot who and how it happened Bloody Sunday is notable by the absence of any description or analysis. Although “bloody Sunday” is mentioned as just one of the ‘events’ of the war, there is a deafening silence as to justification or explanation for what is acknowledged now by the British state to be cold blooded murder.

One of the most pressing absent analysis on the republican left, is the degree of penetration by states forces into commanding areas of the IRA and through them the political direction of the movement. Some of this has broken the surface following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, with senior Provisionals breaking deep cover. This book would be unlikely to provide us chapter and verse or any comprehensive revelation even suppose he knew, and he doubtless knows much more than he says as do current Key players in the Provisional movement in my view. The early highly accurate targeting of Commanders of the Belfast Brigade revealed in this book, was not as suggested due to their intelligence work when so much else of it was so wrong. Someone on ‘our side’ was simply tipping them off even to quite sophisticated undercover identities and safe remote house operations. The author tells us that “increasing penetration of their organisation by both MI5 and RUC Special Branch” the Provo’s formed an internal security organisation aimed at discovering and eliminating informers and sleepers. The author happily tells us that the senior officer of the PIRA charged with setting up and operating the Unit was in fact an RUC Special Branch double agent.

It is literally breath-taking how so many respected and trusted ‘leaders’ of the republican movement, in full knowledge of the sacrifice and loss were all the while pissing up our backs. It is hard to credit that even tiny breakaway teams like the Irish Peoples Liberation Organisation (a split from INLA but with some left dissident PIRA members) in one of its few anti state operations had also been penetrated and the RUC knew about the attack before it happened.

It is illustrative the book claims that the major strategy of the undercover units was recruiting informers and having deep plants inside the PIRA together with misdirecting the movements own internal security unit to killing men totally innocent of collaboration. McCallan claims one of the main drives to abandon the armed struggle was the degree of penetration with three out of every four operations known to the army in advance. The heavy penetration of Belfast Brigade meant three of every four actions were notified to the security forces, the Special Branch claiming one in every twenty members of the Brigade was an informer or enemy plant. Their penetration could not have happened without the gross treachery we had long suspected and this book confirms it. It must also be said that the book reluctantly admits they were far from having things all their own way and many daring and skilful engagements by the Provo’s are recounted in which the occupation forces paid the ultimate price. The author conceding that for every operation that ended in capture or the death of a terrorist, there were hundreds that did not.

One of the not well-known facts from SAS operations is that they used American fragmentation grenades without official authorisation, the author confesses that they were deployed with attack units and their use threatened though they were not in fact deployed. We are not told how they were able to have large numbers of unauthorised American weapons present on raids and how they got them.

One very telling line used by McCallion given the subsequent unprovoked mass civilian murders on Bloody Sunday. In a lull in operations on all sides, he tells us, the SAS troop decided to make themselves a target “and invite the PIRA to come out and play”. I have always thought the Parachute Regiment was doing just that when it went into Derry into what the Para’s considered was the Provo’s backyard and certainly the community in which their families lived. It was a come-on meant to draw out an enraged PIRA into a full blown no holds barred shoot out. Republican units had under agreement with the marchers withdrawn from the area, to prevent just such an excuse for murder. As we know no one was there to be drawn out, and the people who were shot down were all unarmed civilians, but that throwaway line has a wider ring of truth to it.

The heavy penetration of the leadership of the PIRA caused the ASU (operational units) to become almost self-acting & self-contained, with only a loose overall control of operations. This was aimed at stopping plants and informers, but the downside was very dubious not to say murderous targets without any clear strategy aimed at the whole purpose of the armed struggle. For the Provisionals, the ostensible overall control tactics and direction were the eight-member Army Council. The overall political and military leadership by the mid 70’s had moved to Adams and McGuiness who had by that time lost any belief in a military victory for the republican movement, though this wasn’t their public face. It had serious implications for the military campaign and the poor sods at the front end of it. Politically it meant moving the movement back to the positions which it marched out of in their formation. It meant steering the whole movement away from military insurgency and toward at first radical politics and then ultimately constitutional politics. Opposition within the military and the political movement by key individuals was put down with the up-front threat of assassination in the case of Ivor Bell. Other less isolated military and political leaders moved into open opposition to the Leadership and its new strategy. Not only that they devised new military tactics which were proved to be the most successful during the whole campaign. From then on in, a well-placed double agent within the IRA and possibly at least one of the eight on the Army Council started to work for the defeat of the revised military campaign. The SAS spent the five years between 85-90 directing its operations against this new military initiative and leadership. From this point on the most meticulous of operations skilfully planned and prepared for, became excuses for mass executions as ‘senior sources with the PIRA’ gave away the full operational details directly to the MI5 to set up ambushes. The Provisionals ‘dissidents’ were being purged with direct help from the SAS. The authenticity of this evidence, quoting who was being set up and what was known of the plans which were supposed to be highly secret, can hardly be in question.

McCallion had earlier in his book expressed Adams and McGuinesses intention to wage war on anyone within or without the organisation in order to be the only game in town and one whose aims would be directed by them. But speaking either for himself or the SAS and their handlers this was seen as mutually beneficial. “Ultimately the crushing of internal dissent and the forging of a largely unified republican policy was to be one of the most decisive factors in bringing the Troubles to an end” (143). The leading opposition faction within the IRA was focused round East Tyrone Brigade, it had become the main focus of the states war in a conscious effort to intervene into the internal political division (not for the first time in republican history) “In the coming decade, the SAS acting on high level source intelligence from the very top pf the PIRA, would further degrade the capabilities of the East Tyrone Brigade. By the time a political compromise was reached between the Republican Movement and the British Government, the Tyrone Brigade would be in no position to challenge its own leadership’s new commitment to peace.” (219) South Armagh and Tyrone Brigades were also the only main units of PIRA which the states forces were totally unable to penetrate or compromise from within. The author claims it wasn’t until the 1994 ceasefire when these units on instruction lower their guard which allows the conditions for penetration of these Brigades as well.

The suggestion from the author is that Gerry Adams himself was the MI5 informer and the Mail ran with a double page inside story focusing solely on the accusation while ignoring the army’s history of murder also revealed in it. For us of course the two are inseparably connected.

This is a valuable book, it is as said ‘from the horse mouth’ it gives credence to the long held suspicions that the Provisional leadership both political and military were both penetrated from without, and from internal political degeneration and treachery. For ordinary members of the British public who have believed at face value the story of brave and principled British soldiers fighting a ruthless enemy by Queensbury Rules this book should be a revelation. For that reason, I doubt it will be given wide publicity and distribution, I can’t for example see any ‘Panorama TV documentary based upon it. The book is of course written by a faithful member of many of the assassination squads he writes about and has doubtless kept to his chest far for than he has revealed. That he has had permission to publish this book, begs a number of questions. But I totally recommend it , the implications of which are shocking and far reaching.

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'Joint Enterprise'* and deportation!

by John Wilkins

AN article in The Guardian caught my eye this week because it dealt with the use of what it termed “controversial and discriminatory joint enterprise law.” It also involved the order to deport the person involved in a crime.

I will outline the case first but then look at how double standards seem to be involved when it is a 'black' person rather than a 'white' or 'brown' person involved.

Osime Brown is 21 years old Jamaican born man who came to the UK aged just 4. He is autistic and was slow as a child even in learning to walk. He had behavioural and learning problems at school and it resulted in exclusion aged 16. It would seem his problems had not been forensically diagnosed until then so he never received adequate support, merely being labelled disruptive.

He had been engaged in low level criminal behaviour but the latest crime involved the theft of a mobile phone. Although he was part of the group who took the phone witnesses said he had asked the other teenagers he was with to stop the street robbery, but he was convicted under the joint enterprise law which anyone considered complicit in a crime can be arrested even if they played no part in the crime. Critics say this law has disproportionately criminalised many young black men with those imprisoned through it being 11 times their presence in the community.

I used the term double standards in the headline for a reason. Our local Campaign Group, BOLD, have been following up the way our local authority have appeared to 'sweep under the carpet' the conviction of only 4 out of nearly 20 men who were present when a local workman suffered three broken ribs, a punctures lung and nearly had his hand severed in an axe attack. They were summoned by one of the gang by phone after the victim interceded in a dispute between the man and a lady driver.

The judge quite clearly termed it gangsterism and when local MP was asked to condemn the case as gangsterism he was happy to publicly acknowledge it as such also. Despite councillors, including the leader, the Local Authority officials being asked not just to condemn the gangsterism and how they can work with the police to reduce it in area no one is prepared to comment. A contrast here is that the police have been very open and forthright about how they are working on this issue.

That is one comparison with how Osime has been treated but let me turn to a more startling disparity, that of deportation. The effect of imprisonment itself on Osime has been considerable. He has suffered racial abuse and bullying. Without, his mother says, a mentor or support worker his health has deteriorated and he is self harming. He does not fully comprehend how he would cope in Jamaica, thinking he could catch a bus to visit mum from there!

I have over time felt that those now termed Immigration Enforcement Officers will use easy targets to boost their figures for deportations. Now I come to another very worrying comparison again from my town Rochdale.

Few people will not have knowledge of the grooming scandal involving vulnerable young girls in Rochdale. Three members of the grooming gang remain in the UK more than 18 months after they lost an appeal against losing their British citizenship. I concur with the Independent's sub headline: 'Home Office accused of prioritising offenders with Jamaican roots over sex abusers.'

Yes Osime has been involved in low level crime, but deportation would be extremely cruel for him with no family support in Jamaica and a condition which will make him even more vulnerable there. It is known that at least 11 have died as a result of unjust deportation from the Windrush scandal, it is likely that Osime could be another unnecessary death. I urge you to sign the Change.org petition for Osime Brown.

* Editor's note on Joint Enterprise:

'Why joint enterprise is unfair and needs changing' by Sandra Paul in The Law Society Gazette 23 December 2014

Exactly two years ago, I stood in tears outside Wood Green Crown Court, having just left my 16-year-old client, one of four teenage black males of previous good character, in the cells facing a three-year custodial sentence for GBH. Some 18 months earlier, he had been part of an altercation at Hendon tube station.

He was guilty of common assault, even ABH, and certainly affray. All of these were offered as guilty pleas to the prosecution. However, they were rejected on the basis that joint enterprise would convict a group of the more serious offence of GBH.

CCTV footage shows my client was as far as 20 feet away from the victim at the time he was stabbed. However, my client was convicted of section 18 GBH on the basis that it was ‘reasonably foreseeable’ that others might get involved when he punched the complainant and that ‘serious harm might’ result, irrespective of whether that was what he intended. My client was 14 at the time of the incident and I am convinced could not have forseen that his action could have led to the ultimate outcome which resulted.

Looking at the CPS guideline published since then, I am hopeful, but not convinced, that a review on the same facts would lead to a different result. Consideration of the judge’s directions for the jury outlined in the Crown Court Bench Book is equally problematic for young people.

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The Wrong Colour Of Black? by Les May

IN November 2018, I wrote an article for Northern Voices with the title ‘The Silent Sisterhood’. It raised the question of why feminist politicians and journalists had so little to say about the plight of Asia Bibi, a poor Christian woman who had fallen foul of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws, had spent eight years in jail, had finally been declared innocent by the Supreme Court, and was still being held in custody so that the court’s decision could be ‘reviewed’ as a sop to the mobs demanding that she be hanged.

As I pointed out at the time there has never been any shortage of white, affluent, western feminists ready to discover examples of ‘misogyny’. Just another case of selective outrage it would seem. Is it going to happen all over again with the Black Lives Matter supporters displaying their own unique brand of selective outrage?

On Tuesday a 22-year-old woman died of severe injuries in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh after being gang raped. The same day another 19-year-old woman died two weeks after she was gang-raped and strangled by upper caste men. Both were Dalits and in India's caste-based hierarchy Dalits are ranked the lowest and have been referred to as ‘untouchables’ in the past. Last month, a 13 year old Dalit girl was raped and murdered in the same state. Last year, two Dalit children were allegedly beaten to death after defecating in the open.

As with religious minorities in Pakistan where Christians like Asia Bibi are persecuted and young Hindu women forcibly converted to Islam before being married to older men, India’s caste system is structural discrimination because although in both cases technically illegal, it is built into the fabric of those societies.

Concern is expressed about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter becoming echo chambers reinforcing the existing attitudes and prejudices of their users. We hear nothing about how the choice of issues by the mainstream media determines what is ‘news’ and what is not; what causes outrage and what does not. We all know and can remember the name of George Floyd because his murder has been extensively covered in the press and on television. Unlike the USA, India and Pakistan are not part of the affluent West where ‘people are just like us’ and those of us who happen to have been born with a white skin can be made to feel guilty about events which happened a long time ago and in which we played no part.

Will anyone be asked if they will ‘take a knee’ in memory of these two young Dalit women; will some ‘Royal’ chip in his four penn’orth? I doubt it; selective outrage is the order of the day!

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Nigeria on the Brink? by John Wilkins

AS Nigeria reaches its 60th. year of independence on October 1st, I fear for its future. With a population of over 200 million people and endowed with incredible natural resources it has still become a failed state.

The blame currently lies with the Head of State and the Federal Government and the army and security services. However the source of its troubles go back to the British creating a new country out of a land with several hundred tribes and languages by drawing a line on a map.

After the horrors of the Biafran Civil War the country had a period of military rule, which stabilised the country and then moved to a democratically elected government. However the corruption now in Government and almost all walks of life has left a divided nation. Whilst millions live in abject poverty, vast wealth lies in the hands of a few. Throw into the mix religious differences which have resulted in more Christians being killed in the country than the whole of the Middle East over the last decade. There was even a massacre of more than 350 Shia Muslims in the northern city of Zaria in December 2015 by Federal troops. #1

There has also been a violent crackdown by the state on largely peaceful protests by Biafran separatists seeking their 'Right to self-determination' under Article 20 of the African Charter.

However the current President, Muhammadu Buhari (a Fulani), has allowed Fulani cattle herders to take their animals across huge swathes of farm land. Any resistance by locals has resulted in countless killings by the heavily armed herdsmen. The Federal Government takes no action, many would say it is using the Fulanis as an armed militia to subdue Christian communities in the Middle Belt and now deep into more Southern states.

Also one could view Buhari's poor record of eliminating the threat of Boko Haram #2 in the country is a ploy for greater Islamification of the country. They now have control of parts of northern Nigeria and claim it to be part of the Islamic Caliphate. Over 100 of the mainly Christian Chibok schoolgirls abducted in 2014 have not been returned to their families despite Buhari's pledge on gaining power.

An even more frightening development is the increasing number of Isis fighters and other terrorists coming through Nigeria's porous northern border. I understand this has being encouraged by Turkey over recent times. There is now friction with Egypt, which many terrorists travel through.

Most of the top posts both in Government and the army are held by Hausas or Fulanis. Although there are other ethnic groups represented in Government many do not raise these concerns, either through fear or bribery.

However protests from Muslim and Christian religious leaders, often say the same thing, that poverty and corruption are the twin evils in the country. One Muslim respected voice of reason was silenced recently, namely the former Emir of Kano Sanusi who was dethroned in March this year. Little wonder when he articulated such views as the following: He called for an end to child marriage, women empowerment, building more schools instead of mosques, and infrastructural development. Sanusi also called for population planning, and said that polygamy is increasing poverty in the region.

The country is now engaged in an economic row with Ghana with wrong on both sides. Ghana has been clamping down on largely Igbo traders they claim are not all acting lawfully and Nigeria has closed Western highway linking the countries which passes through Benin, a breach of ECOWAS rules (Economic Community of West African States).

I have spent three years writing to my MP, then Shadow Foreign Secretary and now the current one, to get our Government to exert some political pressure on the Nigerian state to unite the country rather than let it become another Rwanda but worse. The House of Lords debated the issue of violence in Nigeria two years ago warning of impending genocide. More recently 20 of the House of Lords have sent a plea to Baroness Scotland, Secretary General to the Commonwealth highlighting concerns over escalating violence in Nigeria. The letter quotes highly respected former Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Danjuma, who says the armed forces are 'not neutral..... they collude in the ethnic cleansing....by Fulani herdsmen'.

I call on all Nigerians in diaspora to speak out. Altering the slogan of the Black Lives Movement, 'White Silence is Violence' to "Nigerians" Silence Equals Violence'.

#1 See Amnesty Report: “Unearthing the truth: unlawful killings and mass cover-up in Zaria,” #2 Boko Haram: the name translates colloquially as “Western education is sin”.

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