Claire Reynolds appointed political director to Sir Keir Starmer-oid.

 

Claire Reynolds

Housewife and mother to four young children, Claire Reynolds, a former Tameside Labour councillor and the wife of Jonathan Reynolds, Labour's Business and Trade Secretary, has been appointed as Sir Keir Starmer-oids political director in Downing Street. As a self-proclaimed holy roller and church goer, Jonathan Reynolds will be familiar with Matthew 7.7, which says: "Ask, and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you."

When Labour was in opposition, Starmer-oid a former Trotskyist, promised to restore trust in British politics and to end Tory sleaze and cronyism. In the House of Commons, self-righteous Starmer-oid, constantly berated the former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, for his free wall paper in Downing Street and was incensed that Lord Bamford of JCB, had helped with the expenses for Boris's wedding reception. Despite his promises, we now know that Starmer-oid and his wife, Lady Victoria Sponger, received free gear and gifts from the wealthy gay Asian business man, Lord Waheed Alli. The Labour prime minister also received free designer glasses from Lord Alli and the use of his penthouse in Covent Garden. He also received free tickets for Taylor Swift concerts and Arsenal football matches.

It was recently disclosed that Labour was offering people the opportunity to take breakfast with Jonathan Reynolds at the Ivy restaurant in Manchester, for the sum of £30,000. It was dubbed by the press, "cash for croissants." When asked for a comment about this arrangement, Reynolds incredulously denied any knowledge of it. However, the Business and Trade Secretary has defended MPs taking 'freebies', saying that they are not perks of the job of being an MP, but part of the job of being an MP.

Reynolds sense of self entitlement and privilege, will fill many people with loathing and disgust, as he voted to take the winter fuel allowance off many of his elderly constituents in Tameside. Yet, the Bible also says, "To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

Personally, I think that the English novelist Charles Dickens had politicians and politics well sussed out. He came to the conclusion that the "average politician was a windbag, a time-server, a flunkey, and a self-seeker, and that the triumph of any party, merely benefitted a (political) class." 

Should English slave owning families pay reparations for slavery?

 

On Sunday evening I watched BBC Question Time. One of the questions that was put to the panel, was whether Britain should pay reparations to some countries for its involvement in the Transatlantic slave trade over 200 years ago.

One of the panel members was the journalist Emily Sheffield, the sister of Samantha Cameron, and the daughter of Sir Reginald (8th Baronet) Sheffield. What Emily failed to mention was that one of her ancestors, William Jolliffe, was a slave owner who owned 164 slaves on a sugar plantation on the Ballenbouche Estate in St Lucia. Jolliffe was paid £4,000 in compensation by the British government when slavery was abolished in 1833. This is equivalent to £3.25m today.

Nobody on Question Time including the panel, Fiona Bruce, or the audience, suggested that the English slave owning families like the Sheffield's, the Beckwith's and the Drax and Trevelyan families, should be held responsible for paying reparations for slavery and not the British taxpayer. In 1835, the Trevelyan family received £26,898 in compensation from the British government for the abolition of slavery a year earlier. The enslaved men, women and children, on the plantations, received nothing. The Drax family who owned 189 slaves in Barbados and Jamaica were paid over £4,000 in compensation.

I don't really see why some people think that Britain's alive today, who have no connections with the Transatlantic slave trade, should feel culpable for what happened in past history. Nevertheless, Germany has paid reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors since the 1950s. If anybody is responsible for paying reparations for the Transatlantic slave trade it has got to be the descendants of the slave owners. Some already recognise this and others resist it. The Trevelyan family have already paid some reparations to the people of Barbados.

I don't feel any personal responsibility for slavery or for any of the horrors connected with English colonialism. I wasn't alive then and my family have no connection with slavery. They were all English wage slaves. Richard Drax is one of the biggest landowners in Dorset and owns 14,000 acres in Dorset. A great deal of the family's wealth was made from sugar plantations and slavery. It's people like Drax who should pay the reparations and not the British taxpayer. And what about making Tate & Lyle cough up for slavery reparations? 

War crimes court calls for an end to the intimidation of its staff by Israelis!

 

Karim Khan - ICC Chief Prosecutor

Karim Khan QC, the international criminal courts (ICC) chief prosecutor, is seeking arrest warrants for both leaders of Hamas and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

Although Israel doesn't recognise the authority of the ICC, Khan has faced intense criticism from supporters of Israel over the applications and he's now been accused of misconduct towards a member of his office. Karim Khan said: "There is no truth to suggestions of such misconduct. I have worked in diverse contexts for 30 years and there has never been such a complaint lodged against me by anyone." He confirmed that he would be willing to provide any information needed by the independent oversight mechanism (IOM).

In statement made by the English QC, Khan made reference to the attacks he has faced over the arrest warrants he has sought for Israeli leaders as well as a Guardian investigation published in May, that disclosed how Israeli intelligence over a nine-year period, attempted to undermine, influence and intimidate, the ICC chief prosecutor's office. According to the Guardian and the Israeli based magazine +972 and Local Call, Israeli intelligence waged a decade-long secret 'war' against the court to undertake surveillance to hack, pressure, smear, and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries. It was claimed that Israeli intelligence intercepted the communications of numerous ICC officials, including Khan and his predecessor, Fatou Bensouda, from Gambia.

It has been claimed that the former head of Mossad, Yossi Cohen, initiated at least three meetings with Bensouda between 2019-21, including one meeting where he allegedly told the prosecutor,"You should help us and let us take care of you. You don't want to be getting into things that could compromise your security or that of your family." According to press reports, he also allegedly suggested to Bensouda that a full investigation into war crimes by Israel, "would harm her career, and showed her copies of photos that had covertly been taken of her husband."

The Guardian reported that Cohen did not respond to a request for a comment and Bensouda declined to comment on the reporting. A spokesman for the Israeli government told the newspaper that the report was "replete with many false and unfounded allegations meant to hurt the state of Israel."

The Trump administration imposed sanctions including visa restrictions against Bensouda, between 2019-20 allegedly in retaliation for a separate war crimes probe into Afghanistan. Mike Pompeo, the then Secretary of State, suggested that the sanctions were imposed because the ICC was "putting Israel in (its) crosshairs.”

 

Calls for all spycops files to be disclosed after new evidence proves undercover police spying on unions.

 

Campaigners are calling for the release of all police files relating to the spycops scandal, after recently disclosed Special Branch documents prove that undercover police reported on union members speaking at meetings to request solidarity.

One such file (400/84/165), until recently subject to a Restriction Order, was compiled by an undercover police spy who used the cover name Nicholas Green when attending a meeting of left-wing activists held in March 1986. The meeting was held at the Cock Tavern in Euston, which has been the venue for trade union and left wing campaigns for decades. The majority of the Special Branch file is a report of a speech given by Brian Higgins, a Scottish bricklayer and activist in UCATT (the building workers’ union). 

Higgins was one of six construction workers who were sacked by the blacklisting building contractor, John Laing, in a dispute about direct employment. The victimised workers were collectively known as the Laing’s Lock Out Committee. Taking place at the same time as the miners’ strike, the industrial action gained a high profile at the time and saw a High Court Injunction being granted against all the pickets. 

The police file records how Higgins spoke about developments in the dispute and made a request for solidarity from those present. Both the financial appeal leaflet and an 8-page rank & file paper called ‘Building Worker’ are included the police report. The first page of the file is stamped ‘BOX 500’, which indicates that the report was sent to MI5. The last page of the report shows the Special Branch file numbers for Brian Higgins himself, and for the construction union UCATT. 

In an internal police report known as Operation Reuben, the police admit that intelligence gathered by undercover policing was shared by both Special Branch and the security services, with employers and the notorious blacklisting organisations; the Economic League and the Consulting Association. 

Brian Higgins was one of many union activists spied on by undercover police and blacklisted by major construction employers. He passed away in 2019, so never got to see any of the documentary evidence of police spying. On viewing the police file reporting on their father, Monica and Noelle Higgins issued a joint statement:

“Our dad campaigned for better health and safety and workers’ rights all of his life. He always said Special Branch were involved in his blacklisting, and this is now proven beyond any doubt. It’s just a bit of a strange feeling to see it in print. Treated as enemies of the state, as if you were planning civil unrest or domestic terror attacks! It’s unbelievable, but shows how scared the state are of militant workers, and how far they are prepared to go. The police saw this as politics, but the impact on our family was very personal.”  

The Blacklist Support Group (BSG), the campaign representing blacklisted union members, is a core participant in the public inquiry. The Special Branch file was disclosed to BSG but with Restriction Orders put in place meaning that until now the files were not allowed to be shared in the public domain. Dave Smith, BSG secretary (himself a core participant in the inquiry and an ex-UCATT Branch Secretary and) commented:

“The undercover cop known as Nicholas Green reported on UCATT member Brian Higgins: but it could have happened to absolutely any union activist asking for solidarity while on strike. Speaking at meetings during an industrial dispute is a perfectly legal union activity: it is not subversion. Despite police denials, the UK political police units were gathering intelligence on trade unionists prepared to stand up for workers’ rights. There is now conclusive evidence that Special Branch infiltrated trade union meetings and kept files on every trade union in the UK. To get to the truth of this anti-democratic state spying on trade unions, all the spycops files need to be disclosed to those who were spied on”. 

 

 

Attached images from Special Branch report 400/84/165 by undercover police officer HN82 - cover name Nicholas Green

 

1. Report of the speech:

 

 2. Brian Higgins Special Branch registry file reference:

 

 3. Trade union Special Branch registry file reference numbers:

NUR = National Union of Railworkers

UCATT = Union of Construction, Allied Trades & Technicians

4. 'Building Worker' rank & file union paper (8 pages of which were attached to the report)

 

 

Operation Reuben Unpicked - by Undercover Research Group

https://specialbranchfiles.uk/operation-reuben-unpicked-pt1/

 

Special Branch file 400/84/165 on the Undercover Policing Inquiry website:

https://www.ucpi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/UCPI0000026544.pdf

 

Blacklist Support Group

book: http://newint.org/books/politics/blacklisted-secret-war/

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcgrNs6pB8

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/blacklistSG/

blog: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog 

Scandal-prone council appoints new Labour leader.

 

Eleanor Wills & Jonathan Reynolds

Tameside, in Greater Manchester, has been a one-party state and Labour controlled since 1979 - some forty-five years. In that period, the council has veered from one calamitous scandal after another. The Manchester Evening News once dubbed Tameside Council the "Laughing Stock Council."  It has also been called the "Lambeth of the North."

In the 1990s, we had the scandal of Tameside Enterprises Development Ltd (T.E.D.L.) which led to jobs for the boys and bills for the taxpayer. T.E.D.L. went bust in 1993 having incurred debts of over £2 million. It also led to a police fraud investigation. The council had transferred its 12 elderly people's home to T.E.D L. as well as its employees. When the company secretary of T.E.D.L. - whose wife was a Tameside Labour councillor - was asked why the company had run into financial problems, he said that elderly residents in the homes hadn't been dying fast enough. The company's financial secretary - who was also a Tameside Labour councillor - was also found to have had no financial qualifications even though he'd been given a reference for the job, by the then Labour council leader, Roy Oldham, an Ashton freemason.

We've seen the scandal of Russell Scott school in Denton where TMBC paid Carillion £2.7m to refurbish the school that finished up being unusable and unfit for the school children. The building was structurally unsafe, the playing fields were water logged and the school class rooms were flooded with sewage.  They're now talking of having to rebuild the school. The governors of the school claimed that Carillion owed the school £100,000 for energy costs.

Carillion was the councils 'preferred developer' and was given contracts to provide school meals in the borough and to run the council's estate and management services. When the council transferred its estate and management services to Carillion in 2011, the public were told by councillor David Sweeton, the executive cabinet member for business and community development, that it would protect jobs and services and cut costs. Carillion was also given the contract to build the £48 million Tameside One building in Ashton town centre. The school meals contract that Tameside Council negotiated with Carillion came in at 26 pence per unit more than the central government gave to schools to provide them. This left schools in Tameside having to dip into their own budgets to make up the difference at a cost of over a million pounds a year. It was reported that the council officer who negotiated the school meals contract finished up taking a job with Carillion. When Carillion collapsed in January 2018, leaving the building unfinished, the council had to bring in the contractor Robertson Construction Group which required an additional £9.4 million investment. Tameside Council have spent over £13 million on fixing defects in buildings worked on by Carillion, including 24 schools.

The national Labour Party and have now taken over control of Tameside Council and its Labour group and have appointed a new Labour leader for the council. For too many years, Tameside Council has resembled a family affair with husbands and wives on the council, brother and sisters, and mother's and sons. The Labour council has been politically incestuous and incompetent! They need to clean up their act. The new Labour leader of Tameside Council, councillor Eleanor Wills (see above photo), who was recently sacked as an executive cabinet member of the council after a scathing report by a government commissioner into Tameside Children's Services - which were rated 'inadequate' - is one of three members of the Ballagher family to have been Tameside Labour councillors. Both her mother and father were Tameside Labour councillors. You might say that being a Tameside Labour councillor runs in her family, as it does, with many other Tameside Labour councillors.

 

Blacklisting collusion investigation update

 

Statement from the independent investigation into union collusion in blacklisting, commissioned by Sharon Graham:

 “90 per cent of the investigation has been completed. However, in preparing the last 10% some new issues have been thrown up which need some urgent investigation, and these issues have to be looked into which will cause a delay.”

The independent investigation into union officials colluding in blacklisting was one of the first things Sharon Graham set up when she was elected as General Secretary of UNITE the union. The independent legal team is headed up by Nick Randall KC (Matrix chambers), alongside JC Townsend (XXIV Old Buildings) and Paul Heron (Public Interest Law Centre). Witness statements, documentary and electronic evidence has been collated over the past two years. 

The investigation was set up because blacklisted union members in the Blacklist Support Group, the Construction Rank & File and UNITE branches campaigned for it. An oversight committee made up of blacklisted workers, has been assisting the legal team, and has ensured that the investigation is independent from the union itself. There has been much speculation about the likely outcome of the final report. This statement gives an indication that there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

 

https://ibci.uk/

 

 

Blacklist Support Group

book: http://newint.org/books/politics/blacklisted-secret-war/

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcgrNs6pB8

facebook: http://www.facebook.com/groups/blacklistSG/

blog: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog

 

Assisted Dying Bill

 

Some years ago, a friend of mine died because he had an inoperable brain tumour. He went into a local hospice and died shortly after. As an end-of-life patient receiving hospice care, he would almost certainly have been put on morphine and other pain killing medications.

I don't have a problem with this if it alleviates pain and suffering. However, we have seen cases where patients have been given opiates inappropriately by doctors. In May 2023, an independent panel found that 456 patients had died prematurely after being given opiates at Gosport War Memorial Hospital, when it wasn't medically necessary. The police are currently investigating this scandal.

Before he died my friend told me about his father who had been admitted to a hospital in Manchester. He said that he'd been told that his father was coming to the end of his life and was asked if he would agree to his father being out on end-of-life palliative care. He told me that he hadn't agreed to this and had insisted that the hospital do everything to keep his father alive. I asked him what was the outcome? He said his father left the hospital and had returned home with him and that he'd lived another three years.

Knowing when someone is about to die, isn't always an exact science. It's understandable that people have concerns about the implications of the Assisted Dying Bill that is currently being debated in Parliament.

Tolstoy & the Russian Peasantry.

 

Leo Tolstoy

In 1910, around 80% of Russia's population were peasants. In 1900 the Russian population was said to be around 132.9 million people. There were around 200 different nationalities in the Russian empire and Russian society, was still largely feudalistic.

Russian serfdom was abolished by Tsar Alexander II in 1861. As the land was owned privately, the Russian peasant had to 'redeem' their land allotments from the landlords using government loans. They then had to make "redemption payments" to the government for 49 years until they were terminated by the government in 1905. Though some well-to-do peasants did emerge, most Russian peasants remained poor, land hungry and crushed by huge redemption payments. Most of the land was held communally by the village and the peasant remained tied to the village.

The life of a Russian peasant wasn't that great under the old Russian Tsarist regime, but it became far worse under Bolshevism. Not all Russian landowners were like Count Lev Tolstoy who tried to educate the peasant children on his estate at Yasnaya Polyana.  He fathered a child with a peasant woman from the estate and by the 1860s, he often worked in the fields with his peasants and dressed as a peasant.

I am currently reading the diaries of countess Sophia Tolstaya. His wife Sophia, resented her husband's love of the common people and thought it beneath a Russian aristocrat to associate with the peasantry. She also disliked the disciples of Tolstoy who she thought were riff-raff. They often turned up at the house and estate to meet with Tolstoy and expected free food and accommodation. Tolstoy dreamt of social equality while enjoying the privileges of a Russian aristocratic landowner. He wrote that "Serfdom is an evil, but a very pleasant one."

They say that in later life Tolstoy was always courteous to the peasants and enjoyed their company and that he never lost his temper with the servants. The peasants, in turn, seemed to have respected him. In his novel War and Peace, Pierre meets the Russian peasant Platon Karataev, in a prison-of-war camp. For Tolstoy, Platon Karataev idealised the archetypal good Russian peasant.

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche is an elitist and anti-democratic philosopher. They say that Nietzsche is one of the easiest philosophers to read but one of the most difficult to understand.

 It has frequently been claimed that Nietzsche despised modern feminism, along with democracy and socialism. The English philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote that Nietzsche never tired of inveighing against women and said that Nietzsche wrote: "Thou goest to woman? Do not forget thy whip." This actual quote is uttered by an old woman to Zarathustra. Russell wrote that Nietzsche's writings displayed the power fantasies of an invalid and that nine times out of ten, a woman would've taken that whip off Nietzsche, and given him a good beating with it. Yet, Nietzsche had numerous close friendships with early feminists and highly educated women, including Meta von Salis, the first woman in Switzerland to gain a PhD. He was also a friend of Lou Salome, a psychoanalyst, author and essayist. 

 Nietzsche called socialism "the tyranny of the meanest and the dumbest" and claimed that it attracts inferior people who are motivated by resentment. Nietzsche saw ordinary human beings as the "bungled and botched" and he saw no objection to their suffering if it was necessary for the production of a great man. He claimed that exemplary human beings must craft their own identity through self-realization and become the masters of their own fate. Nietzsche's "Ubermensch' or 'Overman' represents a human ideal and a goal for humanity. He saw civilization and its values has being born from barbarism a process where the strong eliminated the weak and the educated eliminated the uneducated. He wrote:

 "Life is the will to power; our natural desire to dominate and reshape the world to fit our own preference and assert our personal strength to the fullest degree."

 He also believed that morality was the herd instinct of the individual and that there were no facts but only interpretations. He wrote: “Morality is just fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior individuals.”

 Bertrand Russell wrote: "What Caesar Borgia was to Machiavelli, Napoleon was to Nietzsche: a great man defeated by petty opponents."

 I know that Nietzsche greatly admired the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky and in Dostoevsky's novel 'Crime and Punishment', there is much talk of the Napoleon complex and ordinary and extraordinary people. Raskolnikov's theory of the ordinary and extraordinary individual, mirrors Nietzsche's thoughts very closely. I think Nietzsche was probably very much influenced by this book and Dostoevsky in general who he saw as great psychological writer.

 Nietzsche has been identified with German Nazis but this is mainly due to the influence of his pro-Nazi sister Elisabeth, who had married a notorious anti-Semite agitator called Bernhard Forster in 1885. Nietzsche refused to attend the wedding and the couple went off to Paraguay to found a New Germany of "pure blooded" Aryan colonists.

 If there were three things that Nietzsche hated, it was the big state, nationalism and anti-Semitism. He once proposed marriage to the Russian-born, Lou Salome, who was Jewish and she refused his offer. She certainly made the right decision because Nietzsche finished up going mad which they think was due to syphilis. His philosophy influenced many writers including Jack London, D.H. Lawrence and George Bernard Shaw.

 Today, this German philosopher, has been adopted by the alt-right. Richard Spencer, a leading light of America's alt-right claimed in an interview that he'd been "red-pilled" by reading Nietzsche. In the film 'The Matrix', popping the red pill, allows you to perceive reality. Spencer is an advocate of white nationalism, anti-feminism, racial and cultural purity. Nietzsche would've been opposed to all these things. He insisted that he'd rather be a good European than a good German, calling ("Germany, Germany, above all") the death of German philosophy. One of his last letters proposed that all anti-Semites should be shot. 

Starmer's Labour government bans Mandela's grandson from entering the UK.

 

Zwelivelile Mandela

Nelson Mandela's grandson, Zwelivelile Mandela, has been denied a visa to enter the UK by Starmer's Labour Government. He was due to fly to Britain to speak at a number of pro-Palestinian events during Black History Month. British officials had initially told him that his South African government passport did not require a visa to enter the UK.

Recently, Mr Mandela, joined an event organised by 'Sheffield Palestine Coalition against Israeli Apartheid' by video link.  Although he couldn't physically attend the event in person, he said: "It seems that there are those who are intent on preventing me from being physically with you (in Britain). I have been criticised for statements that I have made in support of Palestinian Resistance and its various formations." As a former South African member of parliament, Mr Mandela has spoken previously of his support for the 7 October attacks on Israel.

Despite high-level political intervention by figures within the African National Congress (ANC), the British embassy has refused to issue a visa. Britain considers both Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organisations.

During his lifetime, Nelson Mandela often expressed support for Palestine and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which was considered a terrorist organisation by both the U.S. and Israel. Both Nelson Mandela and the former Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, have also been denounced as terrorists. As the head of the terrorist group Irgun, Begin targeted the British in Palestine and was banned from entering the UK.

A Home Office spokesman said: " The UK has robust safeguards to ensure visas are only issued to those who we want to welcome to our country." Despite being banned from entering the UK, Mr Mandela will be visiting Dublin in Ireland, where visa requirements to enter the country have been waived.

South Africa has accused Israel of committing acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention and brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). The ICJ have already declared that Israel's occupation and annexation of the Palestine territories are unlawful and its discriminatory laws and policies against Palestinians, violated the prohibition on racial segregation and apartheid.

Unlike the British Labour government which continues to supply arms to the Israeli apartheid state, the government of Ireland recognises Palestine as a sovereign and independent state. Britain's Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer-oid has publicly declared, "I support Zionism without qualification."

Starmer rebukes Labour's Transport Secretary for branding P&O a "rogue employer."

 

Although Karl Marx believed that the interests of capital and labour were diametrically opposed, Labour's obsequious Business and Trade Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has said that the Labour government is 'proudly pro-business and proudly pro-worker." Is it really possible to reconcile the economic interests of both capitalists and workers? Isn't this really like trying to square the circle?

Labour's transport secretary, Louise Haigh, has been rebuked by Sir Keir Starmer-oid for branding P&O Ferries a "rogue operator" and for calling on customers to boycott the company. When P&O Ferries sacked 800 workers without notice or prior consultation in 2022, and replaced them with foreign workers on lower wages, Angela Rayner described the companies' actions as "outrageous." When P&O Ferry boss Peter Hebblethwaite subsequently appeared before a Commons business select committee, and was asked why he'd broken British law, he was asked, "Are you just a shameless criminal." 

Following the comments made by Louise Haigh, P&O's parent company DP World, threatened to pull out of an investment summit in London and to shelve a £1bn infrastructure project at the London Gateway. When Starmer-oid was asked if his transport secretary had been wrong to brand the company a "cowboy operator" and to encourage a boycott, he said this was not the view of the government.

Although Starmer-oid is well known for being able to turn on a dime and for breaking pledges and promises, official sources said that they were astonished that Haigh had been "hung out to dry" and "thrown under a bus" because she had only been echoing a government press release about new protection for seafarers, which had mentioned "rogue employers" and specifically said that the measures were necessary to prevent another P&O scandal. The press release had been signed off by the Downing Street communications team. Both Haigh and Rayner were said to be "hopping mad" that No 10 had not protected them despite having sanctioned the same highly critical language towards P&O. 

Tameside Council leader resigns! Labour NEC step in to take control of council.

 

Councillor Ged Cooney

Within the last week, both the Chief Executive of Tameside Council and the leader of the council, have resigned their positions as the council descends into havoc and chaos. According to press reports, Labour’s NEC have now stepped in to take control of the Labour group and will now appoint a new council leader, to run Tameside Council.

As with most things within Zanu-Labour controlled Tameside Council, there may be far more to the resignation of the Chief Executive, Sandra Stewart, and the council leader Ged Cooney, than the public is being told about.  The Chief Executives salary of nearly 187K, was far higher than both the UK Prime Minister and Sue Gray.

It doesn't seem entirely fair that Sandra Stewart should carry the can for the failures in the local authority's children services department. As the Chief Executive of TMBC, and the council's chief legal officer, Sandra Stewart didn't run children's care services in Tameside that have been repeatedly found to be inadequate by Ofsted. This has led some Tameside councillors to suggest that she’s been used as a scapegoat because of a failure of leadership within Tameside Council and a reluctance to accept personal responsibility. Sandra Stewart is one of several Chief Executives of Tameside Council to have suddenly resigned within the last fourteen years.

In July 2022, the former Chief Executive of TMBC, Steven Pleasant, was forced to resign when he was found to have broken "impartiality rules". His resignation came at a time when there was a change in the Labour leadership of Tameside Council following a coup and plot hatched against Brenda 'the bulldozer" Warrington, which was led by the current Labour leader, councillor Ged Cooney. In April 2010, Janet Callender, the former Chief Executive of TMBC, resigned after being in her "dream job" for just five years. Her surprise resignation sparked a flurry of speculation about the motives for her departure and it was rumoured that she'd been forced out by Roy Oldham, the former Labour leader of Tameside Council.

Although Sandra Stewart has resigned as the Chief Executive of Tameside Council, she seems to have been pushed sideways into the job of the Chief Executive of the Greater Manchester Pension Fund which is administered by Tameside Council and chaired by the council Labour leader Ged Cooney. If Sandra Stewart has resigned following criticism about inadequate children services in Tameside, then some people may well wonder why she's been offered the job of Chief Executive of the £32 billion Greater Manchester Pension Fund?

Since her resignation, four Tameside councillors have resigned their official positions on the council. There have also been complaints about fear, bullying and intimidation of staff working for Tameside Council and criticism that the Labour leadership on Tameside Council "lack empathy" and are unwilling to accept personal responsibility for the state of children services in Tameside.

All three Tameside MPs, Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds and Andrew Gwynne, have welcomed the departure of Sandra Stewart and have called on the council to "move on." They said the Ofsted commissioners report had revealed "unacceptable working practices and conditions for staff at the council."

It has been reported that Oldham council's chief executive Harry Catherall, is expected to take on the role of Chief Executive of Tameside Council on an interim basis.

Following a cabinet reshuffle, councillors John Taylor and Eleanor Wills - who were the cabinet members responsible for adult social care and inclusivity and population health and wellbeing - have been replaced by Longdendale councillor Gary Ferguson and Mossley councillor, Tafheen Sharif.  Councillor Sharif recently stated that she had refused to accept the cabinet post that had been offered to her.

Funeral plea by grieving relatives and Ricky Tomlinson for Kier Starmer to release the Shrewsbury pickets papers.

 

Arthur Murray

The grieving family of the jailed Shrewsbury Picket Arthur Murray have made an emotional plea for Kier Starmer to release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets.

 The funeral service for Arthur Murray was held at Flint Crematorium [Monday 30th September] only five miles from Mold Crown Court, where over 50 years earlier one of the most notorious working class miscarriages of justice in British legal history took place. The case of the Shrewsbury Pickets saw construction workers from North Wales jailed for taking part in peaceful picketing during the 1972 national building workers strike. Arthur Murray was one of the jailed pickets, alongside Dessie Warren, Ricky Tomlinson (who later became an actor and national treasure) and others. After decades of campaigning, the convictions of the Shrewsbury 24 were finally quashed in the Court of Appeal in March 2021. Arthur Murray was the first person to submit an appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission that eventually led to the historic legal victory, which saw the pickets leave the Royal Courts of Justice as innocent men - which they always were. 

 Jillian Murray-Keddie and Cheryl Clark, the daughters of Arthur Murray, described how the families of the jailed pickets had suffered but were supported by the solidarity of other workers, but how when their father was first released from prison: "he was blacklisted and found it almost impossible to get work. But he never backed down because he knew he had done nothing wrong". 

 Ricky Tomlinson, who served two years’ imprisonment for his role in Shrewsbury, and who last met Arthur just a few weeks ago, spoke at the funeral, telling mourners:

 “Arthur fought like hell to clear his name, and all the other pickets who were fitted up by the state by a conspiracy between the Heath government and the construction employers when they wanted to wipe out trade union organization after winning a £6 a week settlement of the strike. This was a vicious, spiteful and malicious conspiracy against ordinary workers who dared to challenge the construction industry bosses. The quashing of our convictions is not the same as justice. The real conspiracy was between the building employers, the police, MI5 and the government. When will they be held to account?"   

 One of the outstanding issues for the Shrewsbury Pickets, their families and supporters is that even after fifty years, the official government papers on the dispute and the trial have still not been released. The vast majority of government papers are released under the 30-year rule (and now the 20-year rule); but successive Home Secretaries (both Conservative and Labour) have refused to allow the papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets to be placed into the national archive. At the wake, when members of Arthur's family and trade unionists who had travelled from around the UK shared their memories of Arthur, a unanimous vote was taken calling on the new Labour government to immediately release all the official government papers relating to the Shrewsbury Pickets. A hastily written note of the vote reads: "This gathering of friends and comrades call upon Sir Kier Starmer to release all the Shrewsbury secret files". 

 Phil Simpson, a long standing Shrewsbury campaigner and close friend of Arthur commented:

"We are calling on the Prime Minister to draw a line under this outrageous episode in industrial relations, where consecutive governments have used the same lame excuse that publishing the records would be a 'threat to national security'. I just don't buy it. When we see the world around us heading to monumental disasters, it’s more to do with consecutive governments covering one another’s backs regardless of the political party. The PM told us he was going to change society for the better: so let's start here."

 

The Devils - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 

They say that what inspired Dostoevsky's novel 'The Devils', was the trial of the Russian anarcho-communist Sergey Nechayev. He and others comrades in 'People's Vengeance', had murdered fellow comrade Ivan Ivanov in 1869. Ivanov had questioned Nechayev's political ideas. Nechayev was tried for the murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died.

A character called Shatov, gets murdered by his comrades in Dostoevsky's novel. The character of Pyotr Verkhovensky is based on Nechayev. The character of Stavrogin is said to be based on the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, but I can't see the similarity. Nechayev and Bakinin had written 'The Catechism of a Revolutionary', that also inspired Dostoevsky's novel. Nechayev knew both Bakunin and the Russian socialist Alexander Herzen.

I read the novel many years ago and enjoyed it. But Dostoevsky's Russian characters are very bizarre and fanatical and you find that in most of his novels. How typical these characters are of Russians in general, is a moot point. You could say the same thing about the characters in a novel by Charles Dickens. There's a suicide maniac called Kirillov, who commits suicide and leaves a note confessing to the murder of Shatov. Stavrogin also commits suicide. I think in part of the book, there's a section where a young man had been sent by his mother to town to buy something for his sister's imminent wedding. He books into a hotel and blows his mother's money on food and drink. Rather than go home and confess to what he's done, he commits suicide. when the town gets to hear of it, people start to turn up at the hotel to gawp at the body.

I think there's little doubt that Dostoevsky's novels contributed to Tsarist repression in Russia and a crackdown on civil and political rights. They would've put the fear of death in the Romanovs. Yet Dostoevsky's novels seem to predict the murders of Tsar Alexander II and Tsar Nicholas II.