Political Correctness & the Death of God by Andrew Wallace

THE scourge of Political Correctness has been with us now since the 1980s, a distinctively curious modern syndrome of angst marked by critical examination of language and custom. Something of this brouhaha has been with us over longer tracts of history if we care to survey cultural innovation and evolution across the centuries. However the present discomfiture visited upon the heads of our chattering classes, whereby seemingly innocuous linguistic chatter has recently become problematic and in many cases deemed reactionary, speaks to a novel juncture of intellectual frenzy and insecurity.

Our distinctive period of ferment has been variously labelled the late modern, the post-modern and the Anthropocene. Characterised in part by a waning optimism from the European Enlightenment and the giddy new world of neoliberal globalisation, our gilded benevolent post war progress has given way to precarity and anxiety as we attempt to grapple with the complexities of our new multi-spectrum information age.

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) is arguably the first modern philosopher and progenitor to articulate the ‘post-modern’ conundrum. Nietzsche’s arresting idea of the ‘Death of God’ is the lynchpin to his unrelenting ‘anti-foundationalism’. As Terry Eagleton has persuasively reasoned, Nietzsche seems to have been the first ‘real deal’ atheist, as all the other atheists up to this point had surreptitiously smuggled in the old Judeo Christian metaphysics and teleology amidst their loud affirmations of the secular. God had now become Reason or Humanism or some other such spurious unfounded belief in progress.

Nietzsche is seen by many as the singular uncompromising figure who primed a metaphorical slow reaction colossus of a nuclear bomb under the rickety infrastructure of Western philosophy. Pushing atheist Enlightenment thought to its apotheosis, Nietzsche spelled out in theatrical bravura the cataclysmic implications of the way ahead. The masses could no longer recoil and refuse to understand the stupendous shift in our world view.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Nietzsche’s dethronement of the Almighty was also the shattering of Western philosophy and its epistemological and ontological foundations. He would spell out the radical new existential realities for the multitude up till this point largely oblivious to the anti-foundational revolution that had upended the cosmos. A terrifying paradigm shift and cultural shock, vertiginous and exhilarating, would have to be digested by the post-modern.

With the prime mover dethroned along with all the attendant metaphysical ballast, society’s loss of its elaborate meaning system in placating our existential fears and buttressing our sense of selves, our identity and our moralities, Nietzsche had foregrounded the nihilistic conundrum at the centre of modernity. Without recourse to transcendental authority and legitimacy, uncompromising contingency would issue in an intense anomic turbulence.

The realm of normalcy destroyed, regarded as oppressive and socially constructed. Scientific knowledge is now suspect, provisional and relativised. What was once taken as God given and natural is now arbitrary and suitable for deconstruction by suitably qualified post modern scholars well versed in the radical new indeterminism. All traditional ‘centrics’ of language and culture must be prised apart accordingly.

God is dead alongside the Enlightenment belief in Reason. Patriarchy is dead, the family is dead, heterosexuality is dead, the novel is dead, the symphony is dead, the author is dead. Political Correctness is the manifestation of this modern discomfiture played out in our daily lives, an incessant Nietzschean comedy of manners as we scramble to find an acceptable form of parlance stripped of any perceived historical provocations.

Our nomenclatures betray certain socially conservative proclivities and a Christian lineage which a majority of the populace had no alternative but to acquiesce to and defer to a level of fitting observance. This may now have given way to little more than functionality, devoid of the metaphysical fervour of the devoted. Yet as cultural conservatives, the new Political Correctness is seen as an idiotic and unnecessary intrusion into a shared domain of vocabulary considered innocuous.

Nietzsche’s politics defy easy pigeonholing. Clearly not of the left himself although certainly not a textbook conservative or libertarian either. How far his heroic and affirmative existentialism stands as a viable solution and corrective against the bleak nihilist terminus remains questionable, not least because of his hostility to the universal and to the masses at large. It is also doubtful whether Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists have charted a convincing path ahead to steer us beyond the anarchy of the wasteland.

References –

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

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

Terry Eagleton – Culture and the Death of God (2014) – especially relevant is Chapter 5 :

The Death of God.

Also very useful is the related Terry Eagleton lecture uploaded to Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=ka-HG-WeW_U

Blackballing the Busybodies

by Les May

I’M sure that the good people of Rossendale will sleep easier in their beds knowing that judgement has been given and they have permission to continue with having a ‘blacked up’ face amongst their local street dance troupe.  But as I have suggested elsewhere this part of the tradition may have nothing whatsoever to do with coal mining.  So does this change anything?

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=1043332942481206469&postID=5262991119134861655&bpli=1

The answer would seem to be ‘No’.  Clearly the writer of this comment realises that context and intent have to be borne in mind. It’s the same ‘blacked up’ face whether it relates to coal mining in the area or to Pace Egg street plays.  Only the context has changed. As for intention, no-one has suggested that in either context the intention is to denigrate another group. My recollection of watching the Rochdale Pace Egg on seven occasions is that it presented the ‘Moorish’ Prince as a brave and noble character.

So it seems that what we are left with is that the complainers are just busybodies who think that their perception and interpretation is all that matters; that we must accept the meaning they give to actions and events. Anyone who has followed Donald Trump’s long term detachment from reality will be able to see the dangers in this.

************

Long-Bailey ignites row after pledging to fight 'transphobic' women's groups!

Drag Queen Story Times for 5-year olds

The Salford MP Rebecca Long-Bailey, has ignited a furious row within Labour's ranks after signing up to a campaign to fight women's groups who have been branded 'transphobic' and has pledged to expel offending party members, if she becomes the next Labour leader.

The Labour leadership contender has urged Labour members to join her in backing a 12-point plan initiated by a group called the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights. The plan demands the expulsion of anyone deemed to have espoused "bigoted transphobic views" and names 'Women's Place UK' and 'LGB Alliance' as 'transphobic organisations' that must be opposed. 

Women's Place, which is comprised  of Labour Party members who want to keep women-only safe spaces, denied it was transphobic and said the accusation was 'defamatory'. It called on the Labour Party to oppose the misogynistic abuse of women. "Defend us or expel us", it said, in a statement. Other Labour members have warned of a "witch-hunt" if the 12-point plan is adopted.

While some Labour members have warned that the plan, if adopted, will lead to thousands of women leaving the Labour Party, the gay Guardian columnist and Labour supporter, Owen Jones, called Long-Bailey a "hero."

Only recently, Long-Bailey provoked criticism when she announced that she opposed the law on abortion after 24-weeks on the grounds of disability. She said that she believed that disability and none disability should be treated equally. She also said that though she believed in a women's right to choose, she "would never contemplate an abortion."

What seems curious, is why Long-Bailey, a Roman Catholic, should be in favour of abortion at all or why she should be a supporter of same sex marriage or want to expel Labour Party members who insist that a person's sexuality, is determined by their biology and not something that can be self-assigned.

Having antagonised many feminists in the Labour Party by allying herself with the vitriolic transgender faction and having pledged to fight and expel so-called 'transphobic' women's groups, is this now the nail in the coffin for Long-Bailey, and has it quashed any hopes of her becoming the next leader of the Labour Party? Already 50 MPs have said they will quit the Labour Party if Long-Bailey wins the Labour Leadership.

At the last General Election, huge numbers of working-class traditional Labour voters deserted Labour to vote Conservative, in order to put Boris Johnson back in Downing Street. If Labour is serious about winning back these disenchanted Labour voters, do they really think that bizarre arguments about transgender rights, queer politics and identities, or Stalinist purges of people who question the cult of transgenderism, is the way to woo these Labour voters back? A northern Labour MP has told the 'ipaper': "My constituents don't give a flying fuck about transsexual issues."

Take this, as an example, of political correctness gone mad in a looney-left Labour controlled council. The picture at the top of this article, which shows a child on the stomach of a drag queen, was quickly taken down by Newham library after there was a backlash from members of the public who found the picture offensive and inappropriate. Newham London Borough Council, which is only composed of Labour councillors and has been Labour controlled since 1964, celebrated LGBT History Month in February with a series of 'Drag Queen Story Times' for the under 5s and their parents and carers. Newham library said:

"By providing spaces in which kids are able to see people who defy gender restrictions, Drag Queen Story Time allows children to imagine the world in which people can present as they wish. Where dress up is real."

Is life really one big gay party? Life is certainly no dress rehearsal, and you only get one crack at it. Is it any wonder that Labour is becoming unelectable and is a laughing stock, when five year old's are being taught to 'defy gender restrictions' by drag queens as some form of crazy social engineering project. Childhood doesn't last very long, so leave the kids to it. Thomas the Tank Engine and Horrid Henry, are far more appropriate stories for 5-year-olds than 'Drag Queen Story Times.' 

When is a Hate Crime not a Hate Crime?

by Les May

Last Wednesday 23 October my local paper, the Rochdale Observer, carried a report of an incident in which a tree surgeon had his hand chopped off with an axe in an attack carried out by an armed gang of up to 20 men some of whom were carrying knives, machetes, knuckledusters and a claw hammer.

Further details of the attack, the attackers and the sentences received can be found at:

https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2019/october/Four-men-have-been-jailed-for-their-part-in-a-brutal-gang-attack-which-left-a-man-with-life-changing-injuries-after-being-hit-with-an-axe-in-Rochdale/

 'Black & White Bastards'?

Before the attack, which took place in the Newbold area of Rochdale, the four tree surgeons had been called ‘white bastards’ who were ‘in his country’ by one of the attackers. (This is taken from The Observer article and I assume that the ‘country’ referred to is the Newbold area of Rochdale.

What the Rochdale Observer did not make clear is that this attack was a ‘hate crime’.  We seem to have become so used to hearing these words to describe what in many cases are little more than hurt feelings being reported to the police, that we have lost track of what the term actually means.  What the term means is that a crime, in this case a violent and brutal attack with an axe, had coupled with it an aggravating factor involving one of several ‘protected categories’, of which a person’s race is one. We are not talking about references to ‘pillar boxes’ here, we are talking about a young man being subjected to an attack which left him with injuries which will affect him for the rest of his life.

See: https://www.cps.gov.uk/hate-crime

I do not believe it to be improper to suggest that had the attack been preceded by the words 'black bastards' it would have been reported as a 'hate crime'. 

Counter Productive Coyness!

If the intention of the wording of The Rochdale Observer report was to ensure continued harmony between the different communities in Rochdale then I suggest that it was counter-productive and was a potentially dangerous path to take, because it lays The Observer open to the charge that it treats reports of violent crimes differently based upon the colour of the victim's skin.

It would seem appropriate for all Rochdale councillors, and perhaps especially those who may feel they have some affinity with the perpetrators, to take the opportunity to utterly condemn this attack and the thinking behind it, both criminal and racially motivated.   By speaking for the people of Rochdale in this way it will deter those who try to exploit incidents like this for their own racially inspired motivation from claiming that it is they who speak for us.

Already we are beginning to see references being made to this attack on websites which contain material derogatory to people who would self identify as being of a different race.  Being coy about condemning racially motivated hate crimes when they are perpetrated by people who would not identify as ‘white’, only gives the conspiracy theorists ammunition.

***********************

The Axeman Cometh & Ludwig Wittgenstein

 ASPECT BLINDNESS in ROCHDALE & BEYOND

by Brian Bamford

Editorial Note:  Below I have tried to lay out

the editorial position of our NV Blog in the light of the 
axeman's attack on a team of tree surgeons after
a group of Asians in the Newbold area of Rochdale 
had trapped them, called them 'white bastards' and 
cut off one of their hands.  

 https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2019/october/Four-men-have-been-jailed-for-their-part-in-a-brutal-gang-attack-which-left-a-man-with-life-changing-injuries-after-being-hit-with-an-axe-in-Rochdale/

As I write these words Barack Obama, the former US 
president has  called out the cancel culture on the 
Internet, saying that it is not an effective form 
of activism.  

He said: “This idea of purity, and you’re never compromised, 

and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, 

you should get over that quickly.  The world is messy. 

There are ambiguities.”   

https://www.nytimes.com › politics › obama-woke-cancel-culture

 We believe the case of the actions of axe man in Newbold 

Rochdale illustrates better than any form of words the

dilemma facing the liberal left and community relations.

The Newbold axeman case better than any clever intellectual 

argument clearly shows us the 'aspect blindness' of the 

current spirit of our age.  

For the relevant post on the story of the Newbold gang's assault on the tree surgeons go to:

https://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk › blog › when-is-a-hate-crime-not-a-hat..    

**********************

“What can be shown cannot be said,” that is, what cannot be formulated in sayable (sensical) propositions can only be shown. - Ludwig Wittgenstein.

***************

WHEN Northern Voices was established in the summer of 2003 at a meeting in The Buffet Bar on the Stalybridge Station in Greater Manchester, it was decided we would produce a regional publication dedicated to local news and cultural issues in the North of England.  The editorial in the first issue began with a quote from Ray Monk's biography of Ludwig Wittgenstein:

'We do not ... need to consider imaginary wild tribes to find examples of people with a world picture fundamentally different from our own.' 

Even among our neighbours we can find distinct differences as the curious Newbold axeman case shows so clearly here and Ray Monk no doubt had in mind what Wittgenstein had already said to one of his students: 'Hegel seems to me to be always wanting to say that things which look different are really the same ... Whereas my interest is in showing that things which look the same are really different.'

At that time we wrote: 'Northern Voices' editors seek to find variety and differences within our local northern communities at street-corner level.  We do not seek easy generalisations and simple minded explanations, which so often lead to hole-in-corner ideas and solutions.'

Since then we have tackled a wide variety of news stories, cultural events, political scandals, and items of interest to northerners.  In doing so we have built up a readership outside the narrow confines of what has been called the political left to embrace a more general northern constituency.

This blog aims to establish a web presence for Northern Voices. It will feature some current and past articles from the printed journal, as well as things that don't quite fit in the magazine - both for editorial and technological reasons.

**********************

A DEFENCE OF TOMMY ROBINSON

by Green Swiper

Editor:  Some weeks ago we were given a report which suggested that the Tommy Robinson campaign may have been provided with funds from a pro-Israel lobby.  We decided to take it down because we considered it may have been defamatory.  We publish the comment below by Green Swiper because we believe in free expression, not because we support all of the sentiments expressed.

*******

THE 'I HATE TOMMY ROBINSON' bandwagon is groaning under the weight of self-righteous 'civic and faith leaders'.  It is being pushed along by drivelling politicians and subservient social-media outlets.  All of them have jumped on board to court public approval, curry favour and safeguard their own ratings.  They seem to be saying:  'Look at us.  We’re all on message.  Come and join our feeding-frenzy, er, popular alliance.'  

If those cringing sycophants carry on down that road, their wheels will come off and then they will be embarrassed.   It’s another case of  'The Emperor’s New Clothes'.   They are “posing in the altogether” and most onlookers will clearly see 'what’s what'.   They claim to be against 'hate crime and hate speech etc', but they seem to think it’s alright to hate Robinson.   That’s flagrant double standards and bullying.   Isn’t it?

Robinson is a beacon of light.   He is boldly leading the way out of the alien multicultural gloom of 21st century Britain.   He actually represents the silent, invisible majority of British people: probably about 90%.   It’s true.   Some of those same British people wearily tried to express their anxieties by voting for BREXIT.   Where did that get them?

Why don’t we try another test?   We never had a vote on multiculturalism.   We could ask people somewhat belatedly in a referendum:  'Would you like to replace your civilised British monoculture with multiple primitive foreign cultures?'   Everybody knows what the answer would be.   That’s why it will never be allowed to happen, and that’s why our so-called 'civic and faith leaders' are trying to snuff-out Robinson‘s candle.

Readers ought to watch the relevant Robinson videos.   It’s all there on the Net.   They will see him standing on a trailer talking to British people while dozens, if not hundreds, of masked Pakistanis are hurling missiles at them.   A thin blue line of police officers are trying to hold back the demonstrators.

Why do Pakistanis think that they have the right to prevent a British man from talking to British people in Britain?

Britain is supposed to be democratic yet anybody like Robinson who has a different opinion from the smudged Conservative, Liberal, Labour coalition is denied a platform by the 'Thought Police' and the 'PC Brigade'.  Our imposed 'civic and faith leaders' accuse him of being hateful, racist, intolerant, controversial and far-right.   I say thanks, but no thanks for the implants.   Please may we be allowed to make up our own minds?

Stop persecuting Robinson.   Give him a platform.   Let him speak.

**********

VICTORY FOR COUNCIL WORKER ACCUSED OF ANTI-SEMITISM!

Marxist Stan Keable

I'm pretty sure that one of the things that unites Brexit and Donald Trump supporters, is an abhorrence to what is termed 'political correctness'. People are sick to the back teeth of being told what they can or cannot say or what they can or cannot think by  politically correct dipsticks, and it has led to a kind of reactionary backlash, in both the U.S. and UK. It's a kind of creeping and subtle form of totalitarianism, that is intolerant to free speech.

Christian's who have objected to gay marriage or to gay people adopting children on religious grounds are denounced as homophobic or told they must submit to a kind of 'Maoist' re-education, known as equality and diversity training, or have been dragged through the courts. Parents are told that they cannot exempt their five-year-old tots from classes in same sex relationships and this has led to protests outside schools. 

What lies behind much of this negation in freedom, is the notion that there is a set of liberal social values and language that aims not to offend minorities, is all inclusive, none discriminatory, and which we must all subscribe to, as members of society. Just to suggest that something is sexist, racist, or homophobic, is guaranteed to stop debate dead in its tracks. It's almost as though the lunatics have taken over the insane asylum. And it now applies to the ruckus about anti-Semitism, both in, and outside, the Labour Party. Whereas not long ago, anti-Semitism meant simply hostility to or prejudice against Jews - which is real enough -  it now seems to encompass almost anything that is deemed offensive to the State of Israel and people are losing their jobs, because they have expressed opinions, critical of Israel and Zionism in general. 

In May 2018, I reported on the case of Stan Keable, a London council worker who was suspended by his employer Hammersmith & Fulham Council, after claiming that Zionists "collaborated" with the Nazis. 

Keable, a  Left-wing activist and environmental enforcement officer, had shared a tweet on Twitter in March 2018 while attending a counter demonstration outside Parliament protesting that Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had been unfairly smeared as an anti-Semite. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, had organised a demonstration against 'anti-Semitism' in Parliament Square. He was removed from his duties as an environmental enforcement officer after writing:

“The Nazis were anti-Semitic. The problem I’ve got is the Zionist government at the time collaborated with them. They accepted the ideas that Jews are not acceptable here.”

A council spokesperson said that Keable had been suspended  while an investigation was carried out and that the council "does not tolerate anti-semitism." His trade union, UNISON, told Stan to plead guilty and to plead mitigation. He was subsequently dismissed and claimed unfair dismissal. 

Although Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights, guarantee freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, and Keable was attending a demonstration in his own free time, Hammersmith & Fulham Council, claimed that Keable had expressed views that were contrary to the Council's "Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy" and the Council's Code of Conduct. The council's charges against him were:

"That, in attending a counter demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on the 26th March 2018, you knowingly increased the possibility of being challenged about your views and subsequently proceeded to express views that were in breach of the Council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and the Council’s Code of Conduct."

"That you made inappropriate comments which were subsequently circulated on social media which are deemed to be insensitive and likely to be offensive and potentially in breach of the Equality Act 2010 and/or the Council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy."

The Central London Employment Tribunal, recently upheld Stan Keable's claim for unfair dismissal both procedural and substantive. The Judgement has not yet been put online but it took two hours to read out. At the time of writing, it is not known if Stan Keable also intends to take legal action against his trade union UNISON, who have questions to answer.

Grooming Scandals & Cover-ups

 Editorial Note:   Normally we at Northern Voices are uneasy about publishing anonymous comments and accounts, because they clearly do not in the nature of things carry the level of credibility of a signed authorised opinion.  And yet, we feel obliged to give space to the views expressed below about 'voting irregularities' in Rochdale even though we have no way of authenticating the details expressed.  When the Smith case was considered by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the 1970s, it is said that it was decided that it was not in the public interest to pursue the matter.   Similarly in the light of current publicity about more cases of Asian grooming gangs in Huddersfield following earlier cases in Rochdale and Rotherham etc, it would seem that local authorities have been guilty of what we would describe as aspect blindness, and what others have entitled 'political correctness'.  For this reason we publish the unverified text by the anonymous author below.

******

Anonymous said...

Voting irregularities are rife in this town.  My partner who is of South East Asian extraction knows of friends who only know how they have voted when their husbands tell them ( or not as the case may be) how they filled the postal vote form in.  Criminal prosecutions would be the result anywhere else but Rochdale.  Why does this kind of behaviour go unchallenged by the authorities I wonder?

In this town there is a proactive dysfunctional culture of wilful denial of inconvenient facts - a culture that allowed monsters like Smith to go unchallenged for decades and the Grooming Scandal to be allowed, then ignored - with a collective 'blind eye' being turned yet again - with a collective cognitive dissonance by the guilty, and complicit to allow the same abysmally piss-poor services to then make warped claims that because they are no longer as criminally incompetent and negligent at delivering basic service standards that they have as a result achieved some kind of magnificent improvement as a consequence.

I suspect there is so much more to be exposed in the political cess-pit that Rochdale has become ?

**********

Circumcision - Not just the Jews!

by Brian Bamford

WHEN, in the 1970s I worked at Arrow Mill in Rochdale as a bobbin weigh-man and unofficial representative of the workforce, my Pakistann workmates once suggested that I should convert to Islam.  In the next breath, I was told that naturally if I did, I would have to get myself circumcised.

I was recently reminded of this when I read recently an account by Malcolm Muggeridge of how he and Anthony Powell had been laughing about an incident in a novel by Arthur Koestler in which the hero, in seducing one of the female characters, through being circumcised, reveals that he is a Jew.

It seems that George Orwell was very put out by their amusement, and he said it's not true, that in this country only Jews are circumcised, but it is true that, generally speaking, the upper classes are and the lower classes aren't. 

Orwell cited his own problems when he was at Eton, where in the changing-room he was ashamed of being uncircumcised, and had apparently kept himself covered.  Muggeridge described this as 'vintage Orwell'.

I don't suppose it occurred to Orwell, as it did to me and my Pakistani workmates in the 1970s, to get himself circumcised in order to pass himself off as upper class.  He, Orwell, had been disapproving when Muggeridge told him 'how in Travancore I use to wear an Indian dhoyi made of kadi, the homespun cloth which was the uniform of the (Indian) nationalist, and live on Indian food which I ate with my fingers, and travel third-class on railways, and suffer the tortures of the damned by making myself sit cross-legged on the ground.'

Of course, this would now be categorised as cultural appropriation by those obsessed with political correctness.

******

"Closed minds stop THOUGHT Crimes!"

 Do we need a First Amendment?

A London council worker has been suspended after being caught claiming Zionists “collaborated” with the Nazis.

"Stan Keable has been removed from his duties as an environmental enforcement officer for Hammersmith & Fulham Council after saying: “The Nazis were anti-Semitic. The problem I’ve got is the Zionist government at the time collaborated with them. They accepted the ideas that Jews are not acceptable here.”

The Left-wing activist made the comments, shared in a clip on Twitter, at a demonstration outside Parliament led by the Board of Deputies of British Jews protesting against anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. He was in a counter demo which said Jeremy Corbyn has been unfairly smeared as an anti-Semite.

A council spokesperson said he had been suspended while an investigation was carried out and that it “does not tolerate anti-Semitism”. His job includes inspecting private landlord properties. He does not work with social housing tenants.

Conservative MP for Chelsea & Fulham, Greg Hands, said: “I am shocked someone expressing hateful opinions could have a job meeting vulnerable tenants. The council leader should launch an inquiry into whether there are others of his ilk in the council.”

Suspended - Stan Keable (right of picture)

Mr Keable also works for union Unison, which said it is investigating and “takes allegations of anti-Semitism seriously”. Labour expelled Mr Keable last autumn for his role as the secretary of Labour Party Marxists.

Mike Katz, of the Jewish Labour Movement, said: “To try to twist the history of the Nazis to fit an anti-Zionist narrative is offensive.”

Image not part of article - NV Editor

When contacted by the Standard, Mr Keable said: “I am sorry for any offence I may have caused. But the Nazi regime and the Zionist Federation of Germany collaborated, through the Haavara agreement, in the emigration of some 60,000 Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939.” He said he did not insinuate that Jews collaborated with the Nazis."

Source: London Evening Standard (3/4/2018) Kate Proctor.

© Provided by Independent Print Limited

Enough Said!

by Les May 
******
THE editors of 'Northern Voices' have decided to give this post by Les May below some prominance owing to a level of half-baked thinking, which appears to be developing today in the anglo-saxon world.  Sensing this following the open letter published in Le Monde in January offering an alternative view to the #MeToo campaign, and signed by Catherine Deneuve and 99 other prominent French women, Agnès Poirier last month wrote '...an insider’s guide to French feminism'. In this essay Agnès Poirier comments on the Catherine Deneuve letter thus:
 'In other words, these 100 French women, representing many more in France, argue that this new puritanism (of the #MeToo campaign) reeks of Stalinism and its “thought police”, not of true democracy.  What they refuse to countenance is an image of women “as poor little things, this Victorian idea that women are mere children who have to be protected”, the same one extolled by religious fundamentalists and reactionaries.'
****** 

A number of copycat actresses with an eye on some cheap publicity have announced they will wear black at the BAFTA awards on 18 February to support those ‘fighting’ sexual harassment.

On Tuesday 6 June 1944, 61,715 British men, 70,000 American men and 21,400 men from eleven other nations were landed on the beaches of Normandy.  They were there to start to liberate Europe and the World from the Nazi ideology.  By the end of the day 4,414 were dead and 5,500 wounded, in the fighting which followed.

Can anyone point me to any evidence that General Eisenhower was inundated with correspondence from outraged women demanding that every man accused of sexism, sexual harassment, misogyny, manplaining etc, should be withdrawn from the invading force? 

****** 

 Anonymous said...

This makes no sense whatsoever. So it's fine for men to sexually assault women because men at times have fought in wars? What has the entertainment industry to do with war anyway?
I've read better journalism in the Daily Mail.So now you've gone after women, who's next on your list?

Friday, 23 February 2018 at 10:26:00 

******

Les May said...

As the writer of the piece which drew this response I do not feel under any obligation to respond to a comment written by someone who is unwilling to put their name to it. However as it is predicated on an assumption that ‘women’ are a homogeneous group and that adverse comment on the behaviour of a small number of women is somehow an attack on all women, I will do so.

What this piece drew attention to was that these women were not ‘fighting’ sexual abuse, they were posturing.

When someone claims to be ‘making a stand’ or ‘fighting’ some perceived evil it is a good idea to ask what the cost to them really is. Posturing in a posh frock in front of the camera or clicking on a smartphone to tweet your favoured hashtag carries zero cost.

The men who made a stand against fascism in the Spanish civil war, the men who landed on the beaches of Normandy, the women of SOE who parachuted into occupied Europe, the men and women who joined Resistance groups, all stood to pay a terrible price for the choices they made. That is courage.

Similarly the people who emerged from the death camps can rightly be called survivors, as can the people who escaped from the Grenfell Tower fire. You can’t if you mean a man who was ‘trying it on’ put his hand on your knee.

And if I am going to ‘go after’ anyone it would be the spineless male journalists who have shown that the lack the balls to take on the more grotesque aspects of this witch hunt, which demands no less than that every accusation by a woman is assumed to be true, and ideas of natural justice and due process are jettisoned. Instead they have stood back and let women like Catherine Deneuve, Joanna Lumley and Germain Greer try to bring some sense of proportion to this issue.

Women are not some homogeneous group who all think the same way. The BAFTA women and the women journalists who drench them with praise are not a representative sample of all women. Stop pretending that they are.

Saturday, 24 February 2018 at 20:38:00 GMT

******

‘Of the Left’ or wrap around economics?

by Les May

SPEAKING to students at the Cambridge Union during a book promotion tour of the UK earlier this year Bernie Sanders said 'If I give a speech about combatting racism people would say ‘that’s great we cannot tolerate racism or sexism or homophobia’ and people respond to that. But what is harder for a variety of reasons for people to deal with is the fact that increasingly in this country, and Corbyn makes this point, and in my country, we are looking at oligarchic forms of government where the people on top have increased power, increased wealth, while the middle classes shrink and why many people live in desperate poverty.  That is an approach that makes certain people uncomfortable. They feel uneasy about that, but I applaud Jeremy Corbyn for raising those issues”.

At the Oxford Union he said, 'There is an area which is not nearly so sexy as dealing with race, as dealing with gender, as dealing with homophobia and that is the economic struggle and in that struggle we are not only not making progress, we are losing ground'.  As if to emphasise his point the applause came when he made reference to ‘gay’ marriage in the UK.

He had said much the same thing in his own country. On the campaign trail in 2015 he said 'Once you get off of the social issues — abortion, gay rights, guns — and into the economic issues, there is a lot more agreement than the pundits understand.'

Both Sanders and Trump announced their bid for the presidency in that year so saying that there was ‘agreement’ on economic issues seems strange.  But as Trump went on to show millions of voters were ready to listen to someone promising to reverse the long time decline in their economic prospects. Trump may be a phony but he won the Republican nomination and the election by saying he could do just that. And it was Hillary Clinton not Bernie Sanders who was nominated by the Democrats.

Sanders it seems did not ‘connect’ with ‘women,  Latinas and Blacks’ in the way that Clinton did, or so we are told.   If that’s true it tells you more about the priorities of some members of the Democratic party and their journalist friends than about the priorities of voters.

The response to Sander’s 2015 comment from one Destiny Lopez was to say he had ‘set economic issues against reproductive health’ and he was ‘throwing abortion rights under the bus’.

But as Sanders told his Oxford audience the economic issues ‘wrap around’ all the social issues.  If you are on a zero hours contract, living in a lousy house for a rent which takes a third of your income, are always one pay packet away from being penniless, working but having to use a food bank, it’s not because you are black/white, male/female, gay/straight, cis/trans, keto/enol, it’s because the people who run the system want it that way.  They and their even richer friends benefit from running the political system along neo-liberal lines.  And you will find some of the beneficiaries in all the categories listed above.

It’s not just the Sun and the Daily Mail in their efforts to present Corbyn and his supporters as dangerously left wing which bolster the status quo. At least these have the merit that they are focused on Corbyn’s political and economic policies.   The supposedly liberal papers play the same game and are equally opposed to radical change.  A few week ago the news that one Holly Willoughby was getting a pay rise found its way onto three pages of the ‘i’ culminating in an article by Jessica Barrett with the heading ‘Why stars pay matters to all of us’.  It seems that Ms Willoughby had been given a pay rise of £200,000 taking her pay from a measly £400,000 to £600,000. It also seems that Jessica Barrett was using a different dictionary for her definition of the word ‘all’ than the one I use.

I doubt the lady who cleans the toilets at the ITV studios gave a whoop of joy at the news. I suspect that like me she would be more likely to ponder what qualities Ms Willoughby has which makes her worth £600,000 a year.  If she did, she was more astute than Jessica Barrett to whom it does not seem to have occurred that the ratio between the pay of women at the top and the bottom of the pay hierarchy is much, much, greater than the ratio between men and women. The same is true of the pay hierarchy for men.

In the world that those journalists who characterise themselves as being ‘of the left’ inhabit, Holly Willoughby’s pay rise was no doubt seen as a blow for gender equality. The fact that in Rochdale we now have two ladies who work as loaders when our wheelie bins are collected each week probably wasn’t. It’s not a high status job so it doesn’t count.   Call it snobbery or the antics of the liberal elite the effect is the same. They and their male counterparts are marginalised. The likes of Jessica Barrett aren’t going to write articles telling us that what wheelie bin loaders are paid matters to us all.

Thirty years ago in his book ‘Choose Freedom: The future of democratic socialism’ Roy Hattersley pointed out that there isn’t such a thing as a ‘socialist’ foreign policy. By the same token there isn’t such a thing as a ‘socialist’ view about gender, sexual orientation, racism, abortion, nuclear weapons, women only railway carriages, or whether transexuals should be allowed to enlist in the military or use women’s toilets. But there is room for a nuanced debate about all of these things. And if you don’t accept the possibility of debate you are headed down the road signposted totalitarianism.

Bernie Sander’s question needs to be answered. Why is it that people, and not just young people with their demands for ‘safe spaces’ and the like, cannot resist sniffing out and condemning anything they think smells of racism, sexism or homophobia, yet don’t show the same enthusiasm for combatting the rise in vast inequalities in both income and in wealth, the growth of zero hours contracts, the receding possibility that they will be able to live a dignified and not poverty filled old age, the demonisation of the poor as work shy
scroungers, the lack of social housing and the increasing proportion of household income that is going to a new rentier class?


You can find video recordings of Bernie Sanders talks to the Oxford and Cambridge Unions on YouTube

*******

Political Righteousness at the Oscars

Ryan Gosling star of La La Land elbowed out during upset at the Oscars

KEN Loach’s film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, against expectation in the UK, failed to get nominated for an Oscar.

Why?
I suspect that it was too plebian and didn’t fit-in with the current sub-prime politics or the now fashionable alphabetic soup: LTBQI or the requirement for what one of my fellow workmates in the local foundry use to call ‘a compulsory Coon’*.
The day before the Oscars were awarded, Damien Thompson in the Mail on Saturday predicted that ‘Moonlight’ ticks ‘every conceivable box, the story of a black child – living in Miami with his crack-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) – who grows up gay. Cue an examination of the difficulties of homosexuality in the ghetto.’
None-the-less, last year the Los Angeles Times reported:
‘Its another embarrassing Hollywood sequel: For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated an all-white group of acting nominees.‘
In 2016, the civil rights film ‘12-years a Slave’ also failed to land a slot on the director list, spurring the social-media movement #OscarsSoWhite and a pledge from the academy to do better.
This year, Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC), which has organised the Oscar balloting event for the last 83-years, has had to apologise for mixing up the envelopes:
‘We are currently investigating how this could have happened, and deeply regret that this occurred. We appreciate the grace with which the nominees, the Academy, ABC and Jimmy Kimmel handled the situation.’
It is worth mentioning that during the Miner’s Strike of 1984-85, Price Waterhouse Cooper was the company of accountants which did work for the Thatcher government in tracking down the funds of the National Union of Miners (NUM). The Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom has posted evidence from Cabinet papers about the links between the security services MI5 and Price Waterhouse in the pursuit of NUM funds during the Miner’s Strike:
‘Government-backed legal action to seize the £8.5 million that had been transferred to banks overseas was so successful that law officers had to advise that a case involving the sequestrators might have to be abandoned because of fears that the scale of the surveillance would be revealed in open court.
‘Assisted by highly-accurate intelligence about the NUM’s clandestine operation, chartered accountants Price Waterhouse managed to freeze secret accounts in Luxembourg, Zurich and Dublin without the union’s knowledge and before further withdrawals could be made.
‘When senior civil servants realised that evidence of widespread telephone taps had leaked out to lawyers, the Cabinet Secretary warned the Prime Minister that her government would have to be careful.’

'PwC' would seem to have better at pursuing the NUM than managing the Oscars.
*   A coon is a black actor or actress, who takes roles that stereotypically portrays black people. They think theyve made it but they are slaves to the same images.

Richard Blair on Legacy of George Orwell

In February 1937, an idealistic and ungainly Englishman in his thirties traveled to Spain to take his place in the trenches at the Aragón front to defend the Republic. His name was Eric Arthur Blair, remembered by history as George Orwell. This month, 80 years after the start of that adventure, Richard Blair, the writer’s only son, now a 72-year-old retired agricultural engineer, visited Huesca to take part in the opening of a major exhibition about his father.

TALKING to EL PAÍS during his brief stopover in Madrid on his way back to London, Richard Blair evoked the figure of Orwell and commented on the relevance of his legacy and the enormous interest in his final novel, 1984, which has become an international best-seller since Donald Trump became US president.
“It’s true that in recent weeks, with the references in the United States to ‘alternative facts’ [cited by Kellyanne Conway, one of the president’s top advisors], there has been increased interest in his book. But my father has never gone out of fashion.” The book was not so much a prophecy as a fable about Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism, says Blair, although as he points out, some details from the novel that once seemed like science fiction have been part of our everyday life for some time, such as security cameras that watch our movements, or what some companies know about us from our internet activity, or how we use our credit cards. “Society has evolved toward what he saw. The world is becoming Orwellian,” he says.
Blair is patron of the Orwell society, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to spreading knowledge about the life and work of the writer, as well as debate about ideas, and that remains scrupulously neutral about politics. Which might explain why he is so careful in choosing his words when talking about Trump.
“I think that there is a lot of tension and compression in the White House right now. It is true that Trump is attacking the press, but he is a complete enigma, they are all maneuvering and learning to live with each other,” he says.
Nevertheless, he says he cannot help but be happy at the hike in sales of his father’s books, particularly as he inherited the publishing rights (“which expire in 2020,” he points out). But he recognizes concerns that this has been due to the public finding parallels between the current situation and the dystopia Orwell described.
Orwell and his wife Eileen adopted Richard in 1944. Ten months later, Eileen died on the operating table. Some of the friends of the tuberculous-stricken writer suggested that he give up custody of the child but he ruled out the possibility. The relationship between Orwell and his adopted son became closer when the two of them moved to the Scottish island of Jura, chosen because it was a healthier location for Orwell to overcome his illness and where it was so cold that “if you move six feet away from the fireplace, you freeze.”
Blair’s memories from those days are of a loving father who made wooden toys, who had a strange sense of humor, and whose parenting style had none of the political correctness of modern upbringings. On one occasion he allowed the three-year-old Richard to smoke from a pipe filled with tobacco collected from his cigarette butts. The result, aside from a vomiting fit, was that the child saw himself temporarily vaccinated against the vice of smoking.
It was on Jura that Orwell finished 1984, writing in his room during the day and spending the evenings with the child. One of their favorite activities was fishing, especially for the lobsters that filled out a diet otherwise made frugal by post-war rationing. One weekend in August 1947, however, on a journey back from a weekend of relaxation on the west side of Jura, their boat sank and they almost drowned. Blair says Orwell’s health suffered as a result. David Astor, owner of The Observer newspaper, which published the writer’s work, asked to be allowed import the newly discovered antibiotic streptomycin from the United States, with which he was treated between December 1947 and July 1948 in a hospital near Glasgow. But his efforts were in vain: Orwell developed an allergy to the medication. “His nails fell out and blisters appeared on his lips,” Richard recalls. The writer died in January 1950 at age of 46, when his son was about to celebrate his sixth birthday.
What is the most important lesson that Orwell taught us? For journalists, says Blair, there are many. “To be honest. The most important things are facts which can be corroborated, not reality as you want it to be. Journalists today do not have time to check facts, and errors are perpetuated and multiplied on the internet until they become true.” The writer’s son also recalls Orwell’s six rules for clear writing from his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print; Never use a long word where a short one will do; If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out; Never use the passive where you can use the active; Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent; Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.”
Blair finished up with his father’s definition of liberty: “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
Blair is particularly concerned about the lack of dialogue in contemporary society. “All people do is shout at one another, without actually listening.” And he is surprised to see young people who, instead of speaking face to face, spend all day staring into their smartphones. “Even couples in restaurants! Are they communicating with each other via text messages?!” he jokes. And what would Orwell make of the 21st century, the era of the internet, great scientific advances and post-truth?
“Ah, now that’s the million-dollar question. But it’s impossible to get into anyone’s head. Nor to come up with the answer by reading his books. If he were still alive he would be 113, and would have had a lot of new influences… There’s no point in speculating.” As such, we don’t know, and we can’t know. But he does go as far as to assume one thing: whatever his thoughts, they would be characterized by common sense.