Unite Sharon Graham's plan for a new workplace politics by Brian Bamford

THE UNITE ELECTION for GENERAL SECRETARY

Playing Politics or having control in the Workplace?

At the end of June the fringe website WORKERS' LIBERTY announced:

'Unite General Secretary candidate Sharon Graham’s proposals for “a Workers’ Politics” point in the wrong direction. In many respects they are a regression from Unite’s current political strategy.

'The wider output from Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace”. She has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”). In fact Graham lumps Turner and right-wing candidate Gerard Coyne together as the Westminster Brigade, as if Coyne rather than Turner winning would not matter!'

The website continues:

'Effective working-class politics does need to be rooted in strong workplace and community organisation and struggles, as opposed to just senior union officials hobnobbing with politicians or social media output; but Graham's stance is reactionary populist posturing.'

This small leftist body WORKERS' LIBERTY focuses here upon the spirit of syndicalism in Sharon Graham's strategy and calls it 'a regression from Unite’s current political strategy'.

They argue 'Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace” and that she 'has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”).'

In her own election address Sharon says: 'I am not supported by any clique of MP's. I don't have the machine of the current regime.'

THE HISTORICAL TRADITION of BRITISH SYNDICALISM

THE program set out clearly by Sharon Graham today has roots that go deep in the history of British, and indeed, European trade unionsm. It encompasses ideas that stretch back to the foundation of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in the 19th century and was popular before the First World War in 1912 when 'The Miners' Next Step' was formulated and articulated as a project for workplace syndicalism and workers' control.

The Guild Socialist and historian G.D.H. Cole has described how British trade unionists tend to return to militant workplace activity in periods when parliamentary politics fails. If Sharon Graham's message today is anything to go by we may well be entering one of those phases. As I read through the addresses of the candidates for the Unite General Secretary today there seems to be an air of disillusionment with party politics and politicians.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that Sharon Graham is cynically drawing upon a 'reactionary popularist posturing' as the hole-in-the-corner Marxists of the 'WORKERS' ALLIANCE' seem to be suggesting in their critique above. Reading her address it seems to me that she is drawing upon her own insider knowledge and experience to articulate a narative of what could be called modern workplace syndicalism. It is not surprising that the politicians are in bad odour right now. They seem to lack common decency and that goes for the Labour Party as well.

Blacklisting & LABOUR'S Defence of the Boss's Right to Vet

IT not surprising that I note that the Manchester UNITE EPIU Contracting Branch North West/1400 have nominated Sharon Graham. This Manchester branch spearheaded the campaign that led to the exposure of the Consulting Association blacklist in the British building industry in 2009. The reason that the Manchester electricians would be sceptical about professional politicians can be found in a letter sent in 2008 to Graham Brady, then a Conservative MP representing one of the blacklisted Manchester electricians; in this letter dated 30th, April 2008, the then Labour Minister for Employment Relations & Postal Affairs, Pat McFadden wrote:

'Employers often vet the people they hire. It is not the policy of the Government to make it unlawful for employers to undertake such necessary vetting in a systematic way, conferring with previous employers as required. However... the Government is aware that irresponsible vetting can lead to abuse...' Then he reassures Mr. Brady MP and his blacklisted constituwent by sternly declaring: 'The Government remains vigilant in this matter and my Department monitors the evidence that information about trade unionists is being misused to discourage employers from hiring them.'

In truth we now know for sure that blacklisting in the Britsh building trade flourished under Labour Goverments because a year later in 2009, the Consulting Assocation and its blacklist files compiled bt Ian Kerr were sucessfuly confiscated by Dave Clancy, the Infomation Commisiioner. It is with our current knowledge of politicians of all governments have a habit of looking the other way and allowing lives to be ruined by blacklist files. With her knowlege of the BESNA in construction and the leverage campaigns she is able to state: 'We can't rely on politicians and I won't be signing any blank cheques for any party [and] I will stop us becoming a branch of the Labour Party, by moving beyond factions and focusing on policies.'

It is this refreshing down to earth approach to the everyday reality that makes Sharon Graham the ideal candidate for those of us who are sick of the fashionable addicion to virtue signaling and delight in someone who has the spirit of everyday reality about her. The alternative candidates Gerald Coyne and Steve Turner both seem to have a flavour of the political factionalism of current mediocre politics.

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TRIBUNE on Union Blacklisting Complicity

STATEMENT FROM BLACKLIST SUPPORT GROUP

When the campaign over blacklisting started, we concentrated our efforts on exposing the conspiracy by big business and the police. It was directors of multinational corporations who ran the notoriously anti-union Economic League and Consulting Association blacklists, in an operation that lasted five decades and involved a two-way sharing of intelligence about union activists between company executives and Britain’s most secretive political police units.

Over the past twelve years, the exposure of corporate and state wrongdoing has led to new legislation, a select committee investigation, record compensation and a public apology in the High Court, and a dedicated union strand in the ongoing public inquiry into undercover policing. The Blacklist Support Group acknowledge the important role played by the trade unions in our campaign for justice.

But there remains unfinished business. It was known from the very beginning that some blacklist documentation included entries where full-time union officials were recorded as the source of the information. blacklistMultiple files include the entry ‘EETPU says NO’, a fact so appalling that the select committee investigation even discussed it. Witness statements prepared by blacklisting managers for the High Court trial claim that some union officials provided them with information.

In his statement, Trevor Watcham—a former chairman of the Consulting Association—claims to have shared a table at an Economic League event with ‘Leon Brittan of the Conservative Party (who had been the main speaker) and Eric Hammond of the electricians’ union together with some members of his union executive’. Norman Tebbit’s recent revelations about secret meetings with the EETPU General Secretary only add to the growing pile of evidence that union collusion in blacklisting took place at the highest levels. This is totally unacceptable, and the union movement needs to face up to this unsavoury aspect of its past.

But this treachery did not occur in a vacuum. To understand why this happened it is necessary to appreciate the industrial relations context of the construction industry. For decades, the leadership of the construction unions adopted strategies that concentrated on winning favour with employers rather than mobilising supposedly ‘self-employed’ workers to take action.

In their hunt for members, the union bureaucracy made sweetheart deals with employers that abandoned the most basic principles of trade unionism. The right wing EETPU was expelled from the TUC following their support of Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping dispute that saw over 6,000 unionised print workers lose their jobs overnight. Branches that opposed the leadership were closed down and leading left-wing members repeatedly disciplined or expelled. As an aside, the Labour MP John Spellar was the Political Officer for EETPU throughout this period.

But it was not just EETPU: other construction unions also adopted overtly business friendly strategies. Bulk membership agreements — where a union official strikes a deal with a manager to pay a set amount of union subs each month without ever talking to the workers—might sound like gangster-style protection money to buy industrial peace, but they were common in the sector.

The phenomenon of appointed convenors, where a union regional secretary and a major employer would jointly agree on who the full-time union representative on a project should be, in the vast majority of cases without any election by the workforce, has existed for decades and continues to this day. Companies guilty of blacklisting union activists were often the most vocal in their support for appointed convenors, who became incorporated into corporate industrial relations and safety structures. The lack of democracy and potential for favouritism in the opaque appointment process is obvious and has no place in any union that claims to be member-led.

To be clear, it is not every union official in construction. Many are honest, value-driven trade unionists who have stood up for workers’ rights. But it is beyond doubt that over a fifty-year period, some general secretaries, some senior union officials, and some appointed convenors formed overly cosy relationships with employers.

Enjoying hospitality in pubs, restaurants, and hotels, or attending sporting events with industrial relations managers from blacklisting firms was viewed as acceptable practice. Press reports from the 1990s actually name UCATT and TGWU officials accused of taking bribes and other inducements from employers, including procurement of prostitutes.

A revolving door exists through which, upon leaving the union, officials regularly take up positions as industrial relations consultants working for the very construction firms they previously negotiated against. It is in this context that gossip about ‘troublesome’ left-wing union activists gets discussed – and appears on blacklist files.

While many cases may be ‘loose talk’ encouraged by alcohol, in some cases the collusion in blacklisting appears more premeditated. It was documentary evidence that forced blacklisted union members to write an open letter in 2016 calling for a fully independent investigation into potential collusion by union officials in blacklisting their own members. The letter states that ‘every union activist in construction knows who the named officials are, as does every major employer’, and describes potential collusion as an ‘open sore’ within Unite.

Branches flooded the Unite Executive Council with motions and in 2019 an independent QC led investigation to look into possible collusion was set up by Len McCluskey. Blacklist Support Group applauded the Unite independent investigation, encouraging anyone with documents or oral testimony that may be relevant to contact lawyers collating evidence.

Solicitors have travelled the country taking witness statements from blacklisted workers who have made serious allegations, including claims that some officials gave evidence at Employment Tribunals in support of the employers, rather than in support of sacked union members. And this is only the beginning, even more documentary evidence has been presented to the investigation by activists.

This includes Subject Access Request disclosures that show that a number of senior union officials were blind copying internal emails about union activists to third parties – including to industrial relations consultants working for blacklisting firms. Searches of Companies House database have discovered that some construction union officials were directors of consultancies providing services to the industry while they were employed by the union. This needs to be fully investigated at the very least.

Yet despite making good progress early on, the Unite investigation appears to have ground to a halt during Covid-19. Jane McNeill QC, the independent lawyer who will write the final report, has only just been formally appointed, and a full search of the Unite ICT system and the archives of predecessor unions has yet to take place. Everyone accepts that the unions and lawyers have been exceptionally busy during the pandemic. But if courts and public inquiries are operating, the investigation into possible collusion should also be able to continue.

The election for the next general secretary of Unite is now underway. The Blacklist Support Group calls upon every candidate to publicly pledge that the investigation into union collusion will continue under their watch, and that if any officials currently employed by the union are criticised in the final QC written report, that they will face appropriate disciplinary action.

The investigation into union collusion in blacklisting is a key battle in the long-term struggle over the very soul of trade unionism in construction. It begs the question: what kind of trade unionism do workers deserve?

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Blacklist Solicitor Quizes Labour MP on Complicity

Imran Khan QC, acting on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group, has written a letter (attached) to John Spellar MP, asking the former minister in the Blair government to clarify his involvement in secret meetings that took place between Norman Tebbit and leaders of the Electric, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union (EETPU). Lord Tebbit told a parliamentary Zoom meeting last week that such meetings took place during his time as Secretary of State for Employment in the Thatcher government, claiming that the meetings were held to discuss how to deal with 'left-wing' members of the union. Tebbit later confirmed the meetings took place in a interview for The Times, which states:

“I got briefings from Special Branch on what some of the hard-left, communist-style leaders were up to, yes,” Tebbit, who was employment secretary from 1981 to 1983, said this morning. “But I got far more briefings from my friends who were trade union leaders.” Describing secret audiences with unions including the Electric, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, he added: “Friends of mine who were trade union leaders would come to see me at the Department of Employment by arrangement. They would drive, be admitted straight into the underground car park and take the lift straight to my office, so that nobody would know that they had seen me.”

Before entering parliament, John Spellar was the EETPU Political Officer (1969-1992) which included the period during the 1980s when the union was expelled from the TUC because of what were referred to as 'sweetheart deals' with employers, including supporting Rupert Murdoch during the year long Wapping dispute. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Spellar

Blacklist Support Group represents construction workers who were blacklisted for their union activities by major building contractors, including many members of the EETPU. Dozens of the unlawful blacklist files include the entry "EETPU says NO". An internal police investigation called Operation Reuben, has admitted that the police infiltrated trade unions to spy on activists, and that Special Branch and the Security Services provided information to the illegal blacklisting organisations; the Consulting Association and the Economic League. Given that Lord Tebbit revealed that while Employment minister he received briefings about union members from Special Branch, the secret meetings between the Conservative Minister and the EETPU may be relevant to the public inquiry into undercover policing being chaired by Sir John Mitting.

To ascertain whether John Spellar MP had any involvement in the meetings, Imran Khan QC has asked the following questions:

In your position as the EETPU political officer:

1. What was your role in setting up the meetings between EETPU and Norman Tebbit?

2. Did you attend these or any other any meetings between the union and Norman Tebbit?

3. Are you aware of any documentation relating to the meetings; such as but not restricted to invitations, emails, minutes, meeting notes, diary entries, reports to the EETPU Executive, or any other records kept by yourself or the union?

4. Did you arrange any similar meetings with Conservative government Ministers, especially during the time when EETPU was expelled from the TUC?

Note:

The EETPU only ever had two General Secretaries, Lord Frank Chapple (1968-1984) and Eric Hammond OBE (1984-1992).

Following various union mergers, EETPU is now part of UNITE the Union, which in 2019 set up an independent investigation into allegations of collusion by union officials in blacklisting of union members.

Appeal Court clears Shrewsbury pickets

The Court of Appeal has overturned the convictions of 14 men sentenced for their involvement in pickets in 1972.

Trade unionists who picketed during the national builders' strike were charged with offences including unlawful assembly and conspiracy to intimidate.

Lawyers for the so-called Shrewsbury 24 had argued the destruction of witness statements made their convictions unsafe.

Lord Justice Fulford said "what occurred was unfair".

The Royle Family star Ricky Tomlinson was among those convicted. He was jailed for two years.

Speaking after the verdict, he said: "It is only right that these convictions are overturned."

Six of the 14 who brought the action have since died, including Dennis Warren, who was jailed for three years.

Mr Tomlinson added: "My thoughts today are with my friend and comrade Des Warren.

"I'm just sorry he is not here today so we can celebrate, but I'm sure he's with us in spirit." Some of the appellants at court

Speaking at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Justice Fulford said: "These 14 appeals against conviction are allowed across the three trials and on every extant count which the 14 appellants faced."

But he added: "It would not be in the public interest to order a retrial."

In its written ruling, the Court of Appeal allowed the 14 appellants' appeals on the grounds that original witness statements had been destroyed.

In June 1972, trade unionists called the UK's first-ever national builders' strike in protest against pay, unjust employment practices and dangerous conditions on sites.

Trade unionists travelled to demonstrate from one site to another and in September six coach-loads of strikers demonstrated in Shrewsbury and Telford.

Police arrested none of the demonstrators that day but five months later the picketers were charged and subsequently convicted.

Lord Justice Fulford wrote: "If the destruction of the handwritten statements had been revealed to the appellants at the time of the trial, this issue could have been comprehensively investigated with the witnesses when they gave evidence, and the judge would have been able to give appropriate directions.

"We have no doubt that if that had happened, the trial process would have ensured fairness to the accused. Self-evidently, that is not what occurred.

"By the standards of today, what occurred was unfair to the extent that the verdicts cannot be upheld."

Lawyers had argued the broadcast of a documentary about communism during the trials was "deeply prejudicial", but the Court of Appeal dismissed the claim that the Red under the Bed documentary might have made the verdicts unsafe. 'Serious questions'

Arthur Murray, who was convicted of affray and unlawful assembly and sentenced to six months, said: "We were innocent all along, yet it has taken us nearly 50 years to clear our names.

"Sadly my mother and four of my siblings have passed away without knowing that we were innocent.

"Serious questions need to be asked about the role of the building industry bosses in our convictions and the highest offices of government who all had a hand in our trial and conviction.

"Make no mistake, our convictions were a political witch-hunt."

Mr Tomlinson, from Liverpool, echoed his remarks, saying: "We were brought to trial at the apparent behest of the building industry bosses, the Conservative government and ably supported by the secret state.

"This was a political trial not just of me, and the Shrewsbury pickets - but was a trial of the trade union movement."

Tomlinson and trade unionists in Court of Appeal Ricky Tomlinson's strike conviction to be reviewed Latest news from the West Midlands

Terry Renshaw, a former Flintshire mayor, who was convicted of unlawful assembly, paid tribute to the campaign's researcher, Eileen Turnbull, who worked "tirelessly" to obtain "crucial evidence".

She uncovered a document in the National Archives which were part of the prosecution papers and revealed for the first time police had destroyed some of the original witness statements.

Mr Renshaw added: "It's been 47 years. I'm just so emotional. I didn't think it would hit me like this. I am no longer a criminal."

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LORD TEBBIT'S 'FRIENDS IN THE UNIONS'

QC for blacklisted workers calls on Lord Tebbit to appear before SPYCOPS PUBLIC INQUIRY

Imran Khan QC, acting on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group has written to Sir John Mitting, chair of the public inquiry into undercover policing calling for Lord Norman Tebbit to be called to give oral evidence. The formal request comes after Tebbit revealed that when he was Secretary of State for Employment in the Thatcher government, he received regular briefings about trade unions from Special Branch, which included such detail as where individual union members went on holiday. The frank admission came during a parliamentary meeting hosted by Richard Burgon and the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance (COPS).

Tebbit also told MPs and peers attending the Zoom meeting that he often held private meetings with 'friends in the unions' including the General Secretary of the EETPU electricians union to discuss how to deal with leftwing union activists. After the meeting Lord Tebbit told The Times:

“I got briefings from Special Branch on what some of the hard-left, communist-style leaders were up to. But I got far more briefings from my friends who were trade union leaders. Friends of mine who were trade union leaders would come to see me at the Department of Employment by arrangement. They would drive, be admitted straight into the underground car park and take the lift straight to my office, so that nobody would know that they had seen me.”

Dave Smith, secretary of the Blacklist Support Group commented on the letter sent to Sir John Mitting:

"We demand that Tebbit be called to give evidence to the public inquiry about these Special Branch briefings. If any official government or union documentation relating to these meetings at a Ministerial office exist, we demand that they are disclosed to the inquiry. Just as importantly, Tebbit should be forced to name his 'friends in the unions' who grassed up union members to a Conservative government Minister. Any union leaders or officials who colluded with a Tory government against other union members should be publicly exposed. Mitting has repeatedly allowed police officers and their managers to avoid giving evidence to this supposedly public inquiry, but any last minute excuses for Tebbit not to give evidence will be totally unacceptable. If Tebbit is healthy enough to sit in the country's upper legislative chamber, he is fit enough to give evidence at a public inquiry".

Previous press coverage of Tebbit's comments: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/special-branch-spied-on-union-leaders-norman-tebbit-admits-xv20rkmzw https://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/tebbit-lifts-lid-government-involvement-spying-trade-unionists https://www.union-news.co.uk/thatcher-minister-tebbit-admits-receiving-special-branch-reports-about-union-activists/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5baz3/police-spies-told-a-minister-where-left-wing-trade-unionists-go-on-holiday https://www.unitetheunion.org/news-events/news/2021/march/norman-tebbit-s-admission-about-government-involvement-in-spying-on-trade-unionists-must-be-fully-investigated/

Blacklist Support Group

Blacklisted Electrician Francie Graham dies

THE Blacklist Support Group are sad to hear the news that Francie Graham has passed away. A blacklisted electrician, socialist, rank and file union activist, political campaigner at Westminster and Holyrood and someone who liked a beer with comrades.

Francie was a stalwart of the union movement, who fought the bosses but also campaigned against corruption in EETPU and the JIB, getting the issue raised in the House of Commons through Dundee MP, John McAllion. When the EETPU were expelled from the TUC for their collusion with Rupert Murdoch during the Wapping dispute, Francie, like many other sparks joined the EPIU. His union activism meant that he was repeatedly victimized by the employers and was forced to work away from his Dundee home for many years to find work.

When the Consulting Association was exposed, Francie was found to be on the building industry blacklist and became the first blacklisted worker to give evidence to the Scottish Affairs elect committee investigation into blacklisting at Westminster. Francie was one of the most public faces of the Blacklist Support Group and the Construction Rank & File, appearing alongside his close friend Steuart Merchant in the media and raising the issue at Holyrood and Dundee council. He was still out picketing and protesting when others would have hung up their boots, active in the Frank Morris blacklisting dispute at Crossrail, BESNA and INEOS at Grangemouth.

Anyone who knew Francie probably enjoyed a pint in the pub after meetings or protests, where he continued the debates and added to our informal education. Raise a glass to a man of principle and one of our own.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/calls-for-building-firms-to-be-probed-over-1550224 https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13078739.companies-operated-a-blacklist-of-union-activists-they-took-peoples-livelihoods-away-they-should-be-jailed/ https://www.eveningtelegraph.co.uk/2013/04/17/dundee-electrians-anger-over-blacklist/ https://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/137469/workers-ask-bam-construction-to-apologise

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A Gradely Book for Gradely Folk!

BOOK REVIEW by Christopher Draper

FOR anyone who imagines Sir Keir Starmer, a sharp-suited, Cambridge-educated lawyer and Knight of the Realm, is the embodiment of Socialism, Paul Salveson’s newly published evocation of the writings and cultural milieu of a pioneering Bolton socialist will prove a revelation.

“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” celebrates, revisits and re-enacts a classic text (“Moorland & Memories”) published a century ago by Allen Clarke (1863-1935), an astonishingly prolific and wide-ranging radical journalist familiar to his contemporaries as the proprietor, editor and chief writer of such popular Northern newspapers as, “Teddy Ashton’s Journal – a Gradely Paper for Gradely Folk”. Clarke wrote poetry, short stories, social and political commentaries and philosophical essays. Although he was an exceptional talent, the popularity of Clarke’s writings with working folk is indicative of the vivacity and cultural diversity of the North’s pioneering socialist and labour movement before it fell beneath the wheels of electioneering and concentrated on getting careerists and snake oil salesmen into Parliament.

Salveson describes Clarke’s politics as, “Libertarian Socialist” but notes that “quite a big part of him leant towards anarchism of the non-violent Tolstoyan sort”. That’s how I first came across Clarke, whilst researching the street-level origins of British anarchism and John Tamlyn, a Burnley-based libertarian whose stories were published in “Teddy Ashton’s Journal”. Much of this very warp and weft of the everyday lives, political networks and cultural milieu of pioneering Northern socialists is still missed by London-centric historians and ivory-towered academics. In contrast Salveson digs down into his home turf and maintains living links with the people, places and politics he writes about. Through a hundred and eighty pages and twenty-eight profusely illustrated chapters, “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” meanders around Clarke’s Lancashire homeland on foot, by bike and rail, teasing out the many and varied threads running through Clarke’s original 1920 volume. (If only Salveson had included an index readers would be spared page-turning meanderings in attempting to locate particular topics!).

Firstly we get an introduction to the man himself. Clarke was the son of cotton workers and he joined them as a “little piecer” employed in the mill when he was only eleven but the family were far from passive, ignorant victims of poverty. His father was a union activist, blacklisted for his beliefs and the family were avid readers interested in a range of intellectual topics. Appalled by the working conditions he experienced in the factories Allen turned to writing. Employed as a journalist by a series of Northern newspapers he also experimented as a newspaper proprietor and with publication of “Teddy Ashton’s Journal” hit upon a winning formula, which at its peak in the 1890’s attracted a readership of 50,000 every week.

The paper’s letters column, bulging with missives from weavers, minders and railwaymen, shows his readership was overwhelmingly working class. Clarke considered himself part of that great Northern industrial working class and his stories, both serious and comic, featured ordinary people’s lives in the mills, weaving sheds and mines. His political vision, though, extended way beyond the factories he thought so damaged the beloved landscape as well as workers lives. He delighted in nature and the wild places of the North. Salveson clearly shares Clarke’s wider vision of how socialism should and can offer so much more than higher wages and in tracing the threads of Clarke’s writings Salveson re-enacts some of Clarke’s original geographical and philosophical rambles.

Tolstoy, Gandhi, Whitman, Edward Carpenter and Michael Davitt all appear in “Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” as well as trams, windmills and steam engines. Besides the richness of detailed local history perhaps the ultimate value of this book is as a model and inspiration to readers to dig into their own home turf and rediscover the rich radical networks of mutual aid that thrived before our political vision grew dim. As Clarke recalled in “Teddy Ashton’s Lancashire Annual (1908)”:

“I remember Pendle,

Where in days gone by

Crowds of comrades gathered

‘Neath the moor top sky;

Oh the friendly greetings,

When our hearts were jolly bowls

With fellowship o’er flowing,

And the vision in our souls!”

(“Moorlands, Memories and Reflections” – priced £21 – is available at all good bookshops and WH Smith, or direct from the author at paul.salveson@myphone.coop)

Blacklist Support Group: Spy Cop's Inquiry

Dave Smith, core participant in the undercover policing public inquiry was scheduled to make the opening statement on behalf of the Blacklist Support Group at 4:15pm, Friday 6th November. There has been a last minute legal challenge over the content of the statement, which will now not take place. A meeting before Sir John Mitting, chair of the Inquiry into undercover policing, is set for Monday morning.

ORDER OF BUSINESS: POLICE SPY INQUIRY

AFTER a five and a half year delay, the public inquiry into the abuses carried out by the UK's undercover political police has finally started.

The Blacklist Support Group plus the three unions in the inquiry; UNITE, FBU and NUM will be making their opening statements on Friday 6th November. Watch all the union strand opening statements via this link: https://www.ucpi.org.uk/hearing/opening-statements-5/

10:00 AM

James Scobie QC (Core Participants represented by Paul Heron)

12:15 PM

Ruth Brander (Non-Police, Non-State Core Participant Group)

2:00 PM

Lord Hendy QC (Fire Brigades Union and Unite [Category E Core Participants])

3:45 PM

Gareth Pierce (National Union of Mineworkers [Category E Core Participant])

4:15 PM

Dave Smith (Blacklist Support Group [Category E Core Participant])

Some of the press coverage so far:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iObTQK1qqhk

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/504930-police-justice-campaigns-ricky-reel/

https://www.union-news.co.uk/__trashed-3/

https://www.thecanary.co/uk/2020/11/01/campaigners-question-if-mammoth-undercover-policing-inquiry-can-get-to-the-truth/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8903241/Met-spy-police-inquiry-told-sexism-racism-flings-activists.html

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/police-spying-inquiry-examine-targeting-black-justice-groups

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/oct/28/secrets-and-lies-untangling-the-uk-spy-cops-scandal

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18838759.stephen-paton-demonising-activists-today-may-well-praise-tomorrow

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/undercover-policing-inquiry-spycops-mark-kennedy-protesters-women-b1456200.html

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/government-spooks-posing-as-humanitarian-aid-workers-may-have-infiltrated-some-of-uks-largest-charities/01/11/

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/entertainment/blowing-the-cover-what-type-of-people-become-spycops/02/11/

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.

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Playing Russian Roulette With Workers’ Health

by Les May

UNTIL the last election my MP was Liz McInnes.  I did not always agree with her, but I thought of her as ‘one of us’.  Unlike the many MPs who get into politics through the law, business, finance, charities etc, Liz had had what many people would call ‘a proper job’ before going into politics.

One of the baffling things about the government response to the Covid19 pandemic is that building sites are being allowed to stay open. Is it, I wonder, that so many of our MPs are drawn from the ranks of those I listed above and simply don’t have any grasp of what actually happens on a building site?

Telling the us to wash our hands frequently and maintain a distance of at least 2m apart, is excellent advice for the general public, but just how do you do this on a building site?  How do you keep 2m apart when passing on scaffolding?

Workers on sites will be handling materials and tools which will have been handled by their workmates.  If one of these is infected with Covid19, not yet showing symptoms, but shedding the virus, where are the facilities for regular hand washing to prevent the virus spreading by contact?  At best lavatory facilities on building sites are often not much more than barely adequate.

Health and safety has always been a big issue in the construction industry and sometimes a source of conflict between employers and workers, sometimes leading to men being ‘blacklisted’ for drawing attention to safety issues.

By not ordering building sites to close the government is playing Russian roulette with the health of these workers and their families.  Is it possible that someone does not want to draw attention to the bogus self employed status of men working in the construction industry if the sites are closed?

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

New Alliance of Northern Anarchists Meeting

New Alliance of Northern Anarchists

Meeting for Free Debate: against Censorship & Blacklists.
Noam Chomsky:  ‘Free speech is an achievement and a right’.

On Sat. 14th, Dec. 2019.
At the Town Hall Tavern
20, Tib Lane, Manchester M2 4JA, England
EVENT
Starts at 12 Noon & ends at 5p.m.
Food available Pie & Mash & vegan options.

Speakers include:
Dave Douglass, retired miner, and former Friend &
Director of Freedom Press

Brian Bamford, Joint Editor of the Northern Voices Blog,
  a former Northern Editor of Freedom & the editor of
 a series of essays entitled ‘Chomsky & his critics’.

Brandon, "New Offensive Collective"
Which has recently published ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids’,
a counter punch to identity politics
*

The purpose of this meeting is to bring together those
libertarians who wish to uphold liberty of expression.

Contact e-mail:  northernvoices@hotmail.com

Blogspot: 

Tuesday, 10 December 2019

 www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com
e-mail:  northernvoices@hotmail.com
 
**********

THE BLACKLIST & LABOUR MANIFESTO

Page 48 of the Labour Manifesto:

"We will establish public inquiries into historical injustices including blacklisting and Orgreave, and ensure the second phase of the Grenfell Inquiry has the confidence of all those affected, especially the bereaved families and survivors. We will also consider a public inquiry in the case of Zane Gbangbola.

We will require judicial warrants for undercover operations and retain the Mitting Inquiry into undercover policing.

We will release all papers on the Shrewsbury 24 trials and 37 Cammell Laird shipyard workers and introduce a Public Accountability Bill".

Blacklist Support Group are proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder on shared platforms for more than 10 years with campaigners fighting for justice for Orgreave, Grenfell, Zane Gbangbola, victims of undercover political policing, the Shrewsbury Pickets and Cammell Laird ship workers.  We have demanded and fought for a public inquiry for over a decade - its is our campaigning that has led to this manifesto commitment. We therefore whole heartedly support this pledge towards getting the truth we, and other working class miscarriages of justice, deserve.  But working people should never place dewy eyed trust in politicians, lawyers or union leaders to solve our problems for us; continuing to build a movement remains essential.  

Full manifesto available to view here: https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/

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

WITCH-HUNTS! or WHICH-CUNTS?

Echoing Big Mick Bakunin, JOHN COOPER CLARK might say:  
'Distruction is a Creative Urge 
'Transgender is the way of the World! 
'August is the silly season,
'So do away with the patriarchal penis, 
'Cultivate a matriarchal cunny-become a Cool Dude!
'Distruction is a Creative Urge!
'So let's have a bit of a Purge!'
 **************
CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL ON THE FREEDOM CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Trans-maniac Trauma Grips Friends of Freedom
by Brian Bamford

THE WEEKEND in the run-up to the Glorious Twelfth day of August, and the start of the shooting season for red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotica), was this year a busy and anxious time for the secretary of the Friends of Freedom Press Steve Sorba.  On Friday  the 9th, August Secrretary Sorba sent out a message to all of his fellow directors urging them all to give some thought to some facebook comments of one of their colleagues which he thought 'transphobic'.

 Here Comes a Dynamic Duo: Batman & Robin

FREEDOM since the departure of the wayward, Andy Meinke last year, has been run as a kind of Sorba and Saunders' show, with seemingly Simon Saunders pulling the Director of the Friends of Freedom, Steve Sorba's strings.   They could be likened to Batman and Robin staring in a matinee Comic Opera, the problem for the average commentator is deciding which is which.  

It this latest case the allegations of 'transphobia' against the distinguished former militant miner, Dave Douglass, has been made by the posh East Anglian former public schoolboy (in the USA this means 'private schoolboy') Simon Saunders, who now presides over the so-called 'Freedom collective', which busies itself with day-to-day management at Freedom Press.  Some both here and abroad will think this odd.   On the 9th, August an e-mail from Secretary Sorba, based on a complaint from posh boy Simon Saunders, spells out the dilemma in Steve Sorba's communique to his fellow Freedom Friends of Freedom Directors: 

'Hi Everyone,'

'I have received a message from Simon [Saunders] that we may well need to reflect on over the weekend. Sorry for the short notice.

'Apologies to David as I would have liked to speak to him in advance but there is no time now so I pass it on below.

'I don’t pick up work emails at the weekend but copy me in using my personal email above if you need to.

'I paraphrase:

'It has been brought to my attention that Dave Douglas has made public comments supporting a pamphlet which is fundamentally transphobic (and in places homophobic as well). Describing trans people as "cocks in frocks", and all just men with mental health issues etc and describes their supporters as a "gang of ponces", which rather than encouraging nuanced or sensitive debate, actively undermines it. (https://tinyurl.com/y3msflq6 )

'The Freedom Collective has a public pro-trans position and has committed to defending trans people against what has become increasingly a form of moral panic where even rights which have already stood for years without comment are being attacked. Having someone who agrees with that pamphlet's approach, which blames trans people for the sum of recent bookfair confrontations and finds transphobic bullying funny elected to the board would place us in an extremely difficult situation.

'Dave's post has been picked up by trans people and he's been accused of having a transphobic position. This means that if he's elected to a Freedom-related post there is every chance the Friends will come in for a lot of criticism and it will stir up yet another useless argument to no good end that I can see. This topic is an extremely febrile one in the movement at large, and essentially by appointing him we'd be causing enormous drama that we (and probably Dave too) really don't need right now.

'No doubt David would like to reply to these comments as I am sure that he is being misrepresented.

I suggest that we await this reply and discuss the matter further on Monday when we all meet up.'

 Readers must judge for themselves who is pulling the strings here?

********

 Saddle Skedaddlers Squeeze Thoughtful Analysis

THE significant paragraph (underlined by me) that gives away Secretary Sorba's own attitude and character is the next to the last one in which he shows his own clear lack of personality:  How can an anarchist with a true spirit of independence run away from a drama or a moral controversy, as Secretary Sorba is proposing here?  It is the spirit of the skedaddler rather than the political radical.  Sorba's own facebook interests show a fondness for cycling, which he shares with his fellow 'Director Friend' Carolyn Wilson.  The Saddle Skedaddlers, if you like are far from noble.

Ofcourse, Mr. Sorba is first and foremost a publisher, a businessman, and not an anarchist, his main relationship with Vernon Richards seems to have been that they both shared a passion for Italian opera.  Sorba  it turned out had the most to gain by the closure of Freedom as a hard copy publication and it is he who wants to keep the premises in Angel Alley as it fits better with his own business interests as a publisher

Posh boy Simon Saunders, who provoked the dismissal and no-platforming of Dave Douglass a retired miner from South Sheilds, has acted in a similar way to the recent pressure put on Hong Kong business community by China's ruling communist party in Beijing when on August 9th (the same day Sorba sent out his message) the Chinese aviation authority [CAAC] accused management at Cathay Pacific of not doing enough to discipline their employees who have been alleged to have been involved in the demos that have hit the territory over the last couple of months.  

The warning from CAAC came shortly after John Slosar, Cathay's non executive chairman, said the airline 'wouldn't dream of telling [employees] what they have to think about something' as it reported profits of HK$1.35 billion ($172m) after two years of losses.

The latest reports from Hong Kong suggest that the pilot, 30-year old Liu Chung-yin, who was arrested with 16 others for allegedly having participated in a violent demo on the 28th, July, has now been detained. 

“If you’re a boss, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God!’” said Carol Ng of the Hong Kong Cabin Crew Federation, a union that represents airline workers. “‘I just want to do business here.  Now they’re screening my staff.’”

This kind of fear could do real damage to Hong Kong’s economy, Ms. Ng said, “much more than the protests or rallies themselves.” 

The attentive reader will detect the parallels between the Freedom episode with Dave Douglass, a tough northern workingman living in South Shields being witch-hunted and no-platformed by a self righteous middle-class southerner, to the mind control now being applied by the Beijing communists bosses on the workers on Hong Kong.  This may be giving Mr. Saunders at Freedom, a little too much credit, because he merely spends most of his time fiddling with his smart phone and going on Face book like some demented Internet Nosey Parker who is on record of creating a blacklist of veteran anarchists who he thinks should be declared persona-non-grata.  Yet he has been quick to complain when others have described him as a paid Morning Star hack.

I use these terms advisably based both on my own observations of Simon Saunders' body language behaviour when he aided Andy Meinke in bungling me into Angel Alley outside the Anarchist HQ, while the Friends of Freedom sat on their butts upstairs, on reports of his general attitude of entitlement, and overall pushy demeanour in which he comes over as a bit of a boss, and also as a conversational analyst I'm curious about his form of language.  But when considering the recent predilection at Freedom Press for appointing folk who to put bluntly are 'a slate short'.  Readers here and in the USA, should consider the history of Freedom as presented by Chris Draper in his history of Freedom*:  Toby Crowe took the editor's chair around 2000 when Charles Crute (apprenticed by Vernon Richards) was forced out, Mr Crute had looked to involve the Northern Anarchist Network in Freedom so as to broaden both the paper's geographical appeal or to as the anarchist Peter Neville said handing over part of Freedom to the writings and reports of 'Northern workingmen'.  In the end Toby, who was for a time Secretary of the Marxist Socialist Party of Great Britain soon fell-out with the NAN and the solidly northern writers like Derek Pattison; Harold Sculthorpe (a Friend of Freedom); me (Brian Bamford) who was at the time the Northern Editor of Freedom, and quite separately with Chris Draper in North Wales.  In truth Toby came over as a bit supercillious he'd been an infant school teacher giving stars to toddlers, and he eventually moved on and took to the cloth, perhaps the editors that followed Charles Crute felt a little insecure in the editor's chair because monomania seemed to become a feature of the these later editors.  They seemed to be uncomfortable in their own skin  Later when he realised that people in the Anarchist Federation like Gerry Spenser, a civil servant in Liverpool, couldn't deliver the reports or stories from the North he came back to me and begged me to send his stuff:  as Harold Sculthorpe told me at the time: 'Toby wants to be friends, Brian'.  Chris Draper had similar appeals from Toby Crowe to deliver him material. By that time we had lost confidence in him as an editor and Northern Voices was by then being produced by the anarchists up North.

What followed the departure of Toby Crowe has been generally agreed to be a poor editorial effort.  So what began with Toby Crowe ended up with Charlotte Dingle as editor, who at one time boasted that she had 'a border-line personality disorder'.   One of the current Freedom Friends who knew her told me a little while ago that Charlotte was indeed really being modest in describing her condition as 'border-line'.  When recently I described Simon Saunders as having 'a totalitarian mind set' the historian, Dave Goodway, another Freedom Friend director, said: 'many anarchists have totalitarian mind sets'.  Simon too with the aid of his mum has used his somewhat disoriented condition to advance his career.  First at the Ipswich Star and later at the communist Morning Star.* 


During the Spanish Civil War the Spanish communists accused the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist CNT of admitting anyone into their organisation including Fascist sympathisers.  Well, after 2000 Freedom under the influence of Donald Rooum began an open doors policy which quickly led to its decline as a serious publication.   Vernon Richards who had retired to Suffolk told the anarchist carpenter Peter Turner that he was impressed by Toby owing to his IT skills.  These events have been well documented on the NV Blog by Chris Draper.**   

All this reminds me of what Malcolm Muggeridge had said about people like Kim Philby, the Russian spy, when he helped him get a job on The Observer in the 1950s. Of this the journalist Clive Irving wrote:

'Malcolm Muggeridge, a highly entertaining political commentator in print and on television, who had worked with Philby at MI6 during the war. Muggeridge advised Philby to contact the editor of The Observer, a left-leaning Sunday paper that, Muggeridge told Philby, “is that Salvation Army for the ideological drunks and bums of our time”.'

Has Freedom Press in the end become a kind of rest home for 'the ideological drunks and bums of our time'?  Andy Meinke memorably described Freedom as a 'hangout' declaring boastfully that 'Kropotkin started it (Freedom), but we fucking finished it!' 

Why is Secretary Sorba so enslaved by Posh Simon?

Why did he make such a fuss over 'a storm in a teacup'?

SECRETARY Sorba desperately wants to hang onto the Freedom property at 84A, Angel Alley because he wants an address in central London that he can use to promote own business interests in publishing.  Some would regard this as conflict of interest.  But unless one of the other Directors question this he is safe in his key position at the top.  Thus the Freedom show will stay on the road because there is no sign of any challenge from the rather subservient Directors.

None-the-less it is understood that a new Director Nick Heath failed to turn-up at the crucial Freedom Friends meeting dealing with Dave Douglass on the Glorious Twelfth, and it is understood that he stayed away because he resents how he was previously hounded-out as leader of the Anarchist Federation by his Trans community critics only last year.***

Furthermore it seems that three other Friends had concluded before the meeting the the whole complaint about Dave Douglass Facebook comment was 'a storm in a teacup'.  Yet the prime movers on this occasion challenging Dave Douglass was Simon Saunders and his Trans mates, and Steve Sorba wants to keep-in with Simon so what we had here in trade union terms is a case of 'Constructive Dismissal' in which Dave Douglass was elbowed out by Secretary Sorba who told Dave that he had 'Embarassed the Committee (Friends) by his "transphobic remarks".'

Dave in response said that he refuted the claim that he was not 'transphobic', but said that as he didn't want to embarrass the committee of anyone.  Hence he agreed to stand down.

    

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

*  

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk › news › my-struggle-with-adhd-1-110117

**

northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2016/08 › a-year-in-death-of-freedom

***
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2018/01 › anarchist-federation-splits

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

Democracy & the anarchists

by Brian Bamford

REVIEWING a recent interview involving the academic Ruth Kinna, the critic Les May asks on this blog about the way she tackles the question about the attitudes of English anarchists to democracy. Here Les May suggests that she hesitated and appeared to stumble when the interviewer asked her whether anarchists believed in democracy.   Mr. May puts this down to the abysmal way in which some modern anarchists have handled themselves when confronted with political, moral and intellectual differences.  He probably has in mind people being roughed-up, shoved around and sent packing at anarchist  book fairs and other events.  The list is long but the recent exclusions of Helen Steel has excited interest, and not just on Mums Net.  This raised another issue: the crude hierarchical nature of the anarchist's methodology in so far as some of them seem more than willing to defend minor celebrities like Ms. Steel but hold back from backing 'lesser' figures who fall foul on some political point of order.

At the Liverpool Anarchist Book fair last year, where a blacklist was in operation and tolerated, even by Milan Rai, the editor of Peace News failed to give his full backing to people who were blacklisted there.  Mr. Rai who accepts that the practice of a blacklist was unfair in Liverpool, non-the-less he didn't let it get in the way or prevent him from doing his own book promotion at the same event.  Political expediency seems to be name of the game among the political libertarians of all shapes and sizes.  Moral compass, it seems, takes a back seat.at all levels among the English, particularly when it gets in the way of business.  The New from Nowhere set who were organising the Liverpool Bookfair, were more worried about losing business through the bad publicity that ensued than upholding any moral standards.

Les May writes:  'Democracy isn’t just about voting, it’s also about how we treat people we disagree with.'

What is democracy, we might ask?

The book 'School for Dictators' by the Italian novelist Ignazio Silone, has a character called Thomas: the Cynic who declares:  'Democracy is universal sufferage plus certain conditions.  The Greeks who were the first to experience it, [and] described four of them as follows: isonomia, or equality of rights before the law; liberty (which is a word plain enough in itself); isocratia or political equality; and isegoria, or freedom of speech.'

Mr. May asks:  'Why is it that people who claim to follow a political philosophy which extols personal freedom, trust in the individual, working for the collective good and personal responsibility, so often turn out to be authoritarian when they band together in groups?'

What maybe puzzling Mr. May, who has been around the English anarchists at least since the Freedom Anarchist Ball in the early 1960s, is that some anarchists today are actively repressing others and trying to prevent them presenting alternative viewpoints.  


But it is not only Milan Rai at Peace News who has fallen short and failed to be consistent in his stand against the persistent censorship, bullying and gagging among the adherents of anarchism in this country.  Pensioned-off academics like David Goodway and Peter Marshall who wrote 'Demanding the Impossible:  A History of Anarchism', both sit on a committee 'Friends of Freedom Press' which oversees a blacklist which named several northern anarchists.  This blacklist was compiled by a Freedom incomer from East Anglia Simon Saunders who also works as a hack for the Morning Star.

As Les May writes in his article:   'There’s no shortage of examples of such authoritarian behaviour which have been recorded on the Northern Voices blog, some in recent weeks.   Why do they do it?'

We live in troubling times in which politics on all fronts in this country has now been generally discredited by a degree of intolerance.  It is surprising that in some respects it is at its worst among the anarchists and among the readers at book fairs.  

*******

'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

a critical review by Christopher Draper

THIS shocking booklet should be read and acted upon by everyone claiming allegiance to anarchism for there are no innocent bystanders.  I was intimately involved when the author was thrown out of last year’s 'Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair' and I witnessed the appallingly authoritarian behaviour of the organisers.  As he observes this was but a single incident in a growing catalogue of oppressive, exclusionary and often violent acts perpetrated by bigots claiming to be anarchists.  The author fairly concludes that, 'Anarchism has pretty much become a Wendy house for children to play in'.

The central argument is that the key role of class in the everyday oppression of millions of people has been displaced by the adolescent politics of personal identity and doctrinaire opinion is imposed and enforced by censorious authoritarians.  'The massive attention paid to identity politics has utterly distracted from attention to real problems and issues in the world – capitalist greed, poverty, injustice, war etc. In this respect, identity politics is the ultimate counter-revolutionary ideology and has utterly divided the left.  Much worse, people are now afraid to say what they think and are being turned off politics for good by this laughable charade.'

The author accurately identifies the takeover of anarchism by poseurs exploiting gender issues to gain a dominant role that enables them to define the limits of permitted opinion, dictate what’s labelled 'hate speech' and who’s excluded for imperilling their self-declared 'safe spaces'.  A determined, dominating minority has been allowed to take over as pusillanimous comrades refuse to challenge bullying behaviour.  I witnessed this lack of solidarity at Liverpool and previously saw the same cowardice at a 'Manchester Anarchist Bookfair' from which other comrades were unjustly excluded.

At the Liverpool workshop from which the author was expelled, as the 'Inquisition' burst in I requested that they circulate amongst comrades present the leaflet the 'excluders' claimed comprised 'hate speech' so vile that their 'victim' be immediately thrown out.  It seemed to me that those attending the workshop should judge whether he needed to be excluded or not but the 'Witchfinders' insisted that he go and the rest of us passively defer to their authority. I objected that this was hardly, 'anarchism in action' and managed to retrieve a copy of the banned leaflet from our 'blasphemous' author before he was led away.

The author accurately observes, 'Anarchist bookfairs have become social occasions for marginalised reality shy people.  They are not progressive or libertarian and are isolated from the real world by maintaining "door policies".  This keeps them and their delusional self-importance safe from most of us outside their social scene.'

And it’s certainly true that, 'This publication is in sharp contrast to the jokers patting themselves on their back in London, who remain – as ever – isolated from the real world but hope to be seen as a credible mouthpiece for current anarchist thinking.'

But the shocking contents of this pamphlet are not entirely warranted or welcome.  Like the author, I am also a 'northern working class anarchist', and can claim even longer allegiance to the cause (approx 50 years) yet I don’t like his language.  Authoritarian behaviour comes in different guises and labelling people, 'ponces', 'idiots' and 'creepy-looking fucked up men' is intimidatory and undermines the persuasiveness of his argument.  I don’t think people should be excluded for not conforming to middle class modes of expression but I do believe anarchists should empathise with others and not needlessly offend. Instead, this pamphlet rejoices in the use of aggressive, macho language; 'cocks in frocks', 'confused fuckers', 'couldn’t give a shit', 'What a fuckin’ joke'!  I personally challenged Pablo, one of the 'excluders' at the Liverpool Bookfair and found him utterly robotic in his narrow-minded bigotry but I don’t think it’s fair, funny or clever for the pamphlet to depict Pablo with, 'I love Franco' and a swastika added to his photograph.

The author is wrong to insist that, 'When people politicise irrelevant lifestyle choices the bigger picture of dealing with class oppression as an argument is just pushed to one side by them as they politicise their insignificant individual decisions as radical positions – such as veganism…' Unpicking the myriad authoritarian, exploitative threads that bind together our oppressive society is an essential, complex, ongoing task that would need to continue even beyond any successful revolution.  I fully acknowledge the political importance of class but I also believe that 'the personal is political' and it is wrong to dismiss other people’s experience of oppression as trivial, irrelevant or less important than our own perception of class.  After all, Russia destroyed Capitalism but maintained authoritarian control.

Anarchism requires more than turning the other cheek or looking the other way and though hundreds signed a petition supporting Helen Steel many more (including some of the signatories to Helen’s petition) looked the other way when less well-known or popular comrades were victimised. Anarchists must take personal responsibility and I regret that the author (or authors) of this publication choose to remain as anonymous as most of the exclusionary 'Witchfinders' they deplore. There’s much of interest and importance in this pamphlet and I would urge comrades to read it and respond by intervening everywhere and on every occasion that you witness authoritarian, exclusionary behaviour.  As this publication never said, for evil to triumph it only takes good men, women and those of gender-fluid identity to do nothing.

 _________________________________________________________________________

 "Shit Wigs and Steroids: Anarchism's (and the left's) Tolerance of Delusion" 

 'BOOKFAIRS & BULLSHIT'

This booklet is an A5 size 24-page critique of identity politics which challenges what it sees as the dominant politics of a 'wannabe' London based elite who are setting themselves up as a mouthpiece for current anarchist thought in the UK.  It claims to be rooted in a northern working-class perspective based on anti-authoritatianism.  It is a collective project that questions what it sees as the 'bogus claims of the transgender headcases' ; it entitles itself under the e-mail address:  newoffensive01@gmail.com

 Price £2 including postage & packing.

_______________________________________________________________________

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

Justice Posponed is Justice Denied!

 Brian Higgins dies before Unite does its duty!

NV Editor: ON this Blog we recently reported

that Private Eye had revealed that bricklayer 

Brian Higgins, a blacklisted trade unionist in the building 

trade, had given evidence that some union officials had

been a font of information in fingering militants. One

such is alleged to be Jerry Swain, now a Unite national

officer.  That was last month's news on this Blog, and we 

regret to announce below the news from Dave Smith of

the Blacklist Support Group that Brian Higgins, the 

victim of blacklisting, is now dead.  So much for justice 

on the building sites.

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

IT is with sadness that we report the death last weekend of blacklisted bricklayer Brian Higgins, former secretary of Northampton UCATT and the the rank and file Building Worker Group.  Our sincere condolences go out to his wife Helen, his daughters, plus the rest of his family and friends. 

Brian's blacklist file starts in 1978 and ran to 49 pages, the largest held by The Consulting Association. During the miners strike, Brian was part of the Laing's Lock Out Committee, and was presented with a High Court injunction to stop picketing after he and other activists were sacked for their union activities on a building site in South London. He ignored it. 

He was also spied on by Mark Jenner, the undercover police agent provocateur from the Special Demonstration Squad, and was a core participant in the public inquiry into undercover policing. 

Brain sat on the BSG executive and spoke at our AGMs, until ill health led to him to stand down. Brian was instrumental in setting up a private meeting in Brussels with the European Commissioner Laszlo Andor, which resulted in new anti-blacklisting legislation being presented to the European parliament. 

Brian was uncompromising in his call for an independent investigation into possible union collusion in blacklisting. This is Brian in his own words, when he wrote a review for Blacklisted:

"The book says I raged against the blacklist. I did and still do. But I have to say the thing about it which angers, in fact, enrages me most, is that some full time officials undoubtedly aided and abetted blacklisting of rank and file union members and some are probably still doing this as the Blacklist continues. It is painfully obvious building employers – who regularly wined and dined full time union officials, took some on golf outings and to sporting contests, to very expensive posh hotels, and even on visits to the Naval and Military Gentlemen’s Club – would demand some things in return! After all there is no such thing as a free lunch and we’re talking about this with knobs on here! Don’t tell us that sometimes the names of site union militants and activists did not come up, and what full time officials said, in these circumstances, did not end up on some Consulting Association (CA) files. This sort of socialising, fraternising and consorting with building employers masquerading as ‘negotiations’ is corrupt and corrupting in the extreme. It’s absolutely disgusting to think that while fulltime union officials were doing this many rank and file union members were being blacklisted out of existence!"

Brian was one of the blacklisted construction workers who signed the Open Letter to UNITE calling for an investigation to be set up. It is now too late for Brian, but we hope that the UNITE EC will set up the investigation into possible collusion ASAP. 

Anyone who has heard Brain speak will remember his booming Glaswegian voice, disdain for union bureaucracy and his liberal use of industrial language. I've stood on pickets lines and attended union conference with Brian. I didn't always agree with everything Brian said (but that is not unusual in the labour movement) and internal union polemics were part of his persona, but it is undeniable that Brian was one of the leading rank and file industrial militants of his generation, who had a significant impact on trade unionism in the construction industry. 

As a fitting tribute, former bricklayer, Neil Findlay MSP submitted

Motion S5M-17548 to the Scottish Parliament titled: 

Brian Higgins - a working class hero (full text attached)

Further details to follow. Our thoughts are with his family.

Dave Smith

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