Squaring the Brexit Circle: Whither Corbyn?

by Les May

THERE is a saying that ‘If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there’.   With less than eleven weeks before we are scheduled to leave the European Union (EU) I don’t think that any of the major players, the European Research Group (ERG), Theresa May, those campaigning for a second referendum, the MP(s) trying to rescind the 29 March date or the Labour party, have any clear idea where they want to end up or how they are going to get there.  Having a wish list isn’t the same as knowing how you are going to achieve it.

For the people who take the same line as the ERG leaving the EU is an end in itself.  As if by magic the problem of the Irish border will vanish.  The transition to conducting trade with other countries under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules will be seamless.  Bi-lateral trade deals with other countries will follow as surely as night follows day. We take a tough stance with the EU and the other 27 countries will be begging us to trade with them.  All these things may indeed come to pass, but I would like to see the plan of how they are to be brought about. Until I do I’ll accept the conclusion reached by Tony Blair, Nick Clegg and Michael Heseltine that for those politicians who think that leaving the EU is an end in itself it ‘would provide the pretext they have always wanted for their programme of extensive labour market deregulation and corporation tax cuts.’

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/17/we-need-another-eu-referendum-tony-blair-nick-clegg-michael-heseltine

For two and a half years Theresa May has parroted her mantra ‘Brexit means Brexit’. At no time has she given any sign that she was willing to listen to anyone who had concerns about where we would end up following our leaving the EU. She’s got deal, but it’s really a fudge so that she can say she ‘delivered Brexit’.  I don’t think she has any clear idea of where the UK will be in two years time or a plan for getting there.   The Irish border problem is not simply going to vanish.  With a few days to go before the crucial vote in Parliament we hear that she is scurrying round trying to get union leaders to pressure Labour MPs to vote for her deal.  And what has she to offer in return?  A reversal of the traditional Tory policy of ‘union bashing? I think not.

The individuals who seem to have thought least about where they want to end up are those calling for a second referendum.  I have already written that I believe such a move would undermine faith in parliamentary democracy. Parliament voted for the referendum in June 2016 with the result to be decided by a simple majority.  This produced a vote in favour of waving the EU, but not an overwhelming one.   For parliament to use this as a pretext for calling a second referendum with perhaps different rules seems to me improper. I voted to remain in the EU, but I would struggle to square my conscience with even casting a vote in a second referendum.

But just in case I find a way to salve my conscience, I keep reminding myself that I can see absolutely no evidence that the result would be any different than last time. Although there’s a lot of noise coming from politicians it does not seem to figure in everyday conversations. In the absence of evidence either way it’s an evens bet that the result will be the same. Then what? We are back at square one, perhaps with a bolstered and empowered ERG, and facing even more pressure for dropping out of the EU immediately with the consequences noted above. That’s an awful lot to risk on another throw of the dice.

The former Attorney General Dominic Grieve is the MP behind the idea that the 29 March date should be struck from previous legislation if Theresa May’s ‘deal’ fails to be passed by MPs.  As it stands this idea has a lot of merit.  There isn’t time to pass all the legislation which must be passed before we can leave the EU. It would also give time to produce a clear plan of where we want to get to in relations with the EU and the rest of the world, and how to get there.  Where I disagree with Grieve is his call for a second referendum which I think has no merit whatsoever.

Labour’s position on the EU is clearer than many people give credit.  In a long debate on the impact on security of leaving the EU the shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said that in the 2016 referendum Labour campaigned on ‘remain and reform’ and in the 2017 election on honouring the result of the referendum whilst being ‘committed to a jobs-first Brexit that will not harm our economy’. But of course that is a wish list, not a roadmap of how it is to be achieved.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2019-01-11/debates/DBEB14BC-9AE7-4965-9DC9-3C5B273B8CE7/EuropeanUnion%28Withdrawal%29Act#contribution-C160BB51-9221-403E-B323-7178361A3D0B

If as is anticipated Theresa May fails to get a majority for her ‘deal’ and Labour tables a vote of ‘No Confidence’ which fails immediately or in the later vote to be held within 14 days, then if Labour really is committed to ‘jobs-first Brexit that will not harm our economy’ it is going to have to come up with concrete proposals about how it is going to get to that desirable situation.  Simply saying it will renegotiate the present deal is to repeat Theresa May’s mistake of not involving MPs representing the wide spectrum of views about the EU which exists in the present Parliament.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2011/14/section/2/enacted

Views on the EU, and on leaving it, are so polarised that no way forward is going to satisfy everyone.  There is no perfect solution which will honour the referendum vote, get us out of the Common Fisheries Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy, give us the benefits of the single market, block immigration from the EU, cease payments to the EU and resolve the issue of the Irish border, all in one neat package.  It is time for MPs to tell the public that this is the case and that some compromises will have to be made. I’d like to think that Corbyn is the man to do this, but I’m not holding my breath.

 **************

Protesting the Chop & Sheffield's Trees

Labour Council outsources tree felling to Amey / Ferrovial*

The outsource companies currently contracted to Sheffield City Council include:

• Amey manage the city's 'Streets Ahead' project including management of highways.
• Kier Sheffield maintains and repairs the social housing stock.**
• Veolia manages household waste disposal.
• Capita provides HR, payroll and IT services for council employees. ***

*       Amey, is a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company grupo Ferrovial
**     Kier is one of the seven companies that in 2015 admitted to blacklisting building workers.
***  Capita has been compared to Carillion, and its share price has plunged from around £11 to £2 in just two years and it dropped out of the FTSE 100 last March.

******

OVER 5,000 trees have been cut down in Sheffield since 2012, as part the city council's £2bn Streets Ahead project with the excuse of improving roads and footpaths in the city.

The council, which is planting sapling trees after removing existing mature ones, insists the trees earmarked for felling are either 'dangerous, dead, diseased, dying, damaging or discriminatory'.

Yet it seems many of the trees condemned by the council as 'damaging' or 'discriminatory' are healthy specimens which campaigners say should be saved.  They say that alterations should be made to surrounding pavements and roads instead.

Today an event 'Get Off Our Tree!' is being held at Sheffield City Hall.  Also playing are local artists The Everly Pregnant Brothers, lead singer of Reverend and the Makers, Jon McClure, and former Pulp drummer Nick Banks and the Compare is Jason Cocker , who was interviewed on Radio Four's 'Today' program.

These are just some of Sheffield’s tree protesters, members of local groups coordinated by the Sheffield Tree Action Groups (Stag), which are claiming that this is another example of local government gone wrong.  Stag have made it their mission to protect the trees from council-backed felling crews in what is often hailed, with more than a pinch of Yorkshire hyperbole, as Europe’s greenest city.

Labour Council's PFI Contract

The fellings are part of a 25-year, £2.2bn Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract.  Signed in 2012 between the Labour-led council and a private company, Amey, the Streets Ahead programme is intended to upgrade 'the condition of our city’s roads, pavements, streetlights, bridges …'  –  no small feat in a place that was known as 'pothole city'.

The contract has serious implications for the city’s 36,000 roadside trees, which have in effect been privatised until the late 2030s. Amey, a subsidiary of the massive Spanish company Ferrovial, has so far removed around 5,350, including oaks, elms and limes. Alison Teal, a local Green party councillor, believes she knows why many were chosen:  'I can only assume that because it’s a 25-year contract, they’re felling mature trees because they are more expensive. They cause pavement and road disruption and a hell of a lot of leaves fall off them.'

Loose and wonky kerbstones and cracked pavements owing to tree roots are among the reasons given for the fellings.  But there is a belief among the Sheffield protesters that the 14 alternatives priced into Amey’s contract – from flexible paving to root pruning and pollarding – are being underused.

The council says it only resorts to removing trees if they are 'dangerous, dying, diseased, dead, damaging or discriminatory' (meaning that they damage pavements and potentially obstruct disabled residents).  Of the eight mature limes destroyed on Rustlings Road, however, the council’s own independent tree panel found that seven were in good condition with a good life expectancy.

The heavy redaction of the contract between Amey and Sheffield council doesn’t help clarify things.  With many details kept from the public in the name of 'commercial confidentiality', there is no way of verifying, for instance, the council’s warnings of “catastrophic financial consequences” if the fellings are delayed.  The gaps leave room for conjecture about why the PFI deal isn’t being called off, or its terms renegotiated.  Protesters think they have found legal reasons that would allow the council to annul the contract – a recent petition focuses on Amey’s alleged failure to disclose a 2011 health and safety conviction following the death of an employee.  A council spokesperson said it was aware of the death before the contract was awarded, but it failed to provide written evidence of that knowledge in response to Freedom of Information requests made by campaigners.

 Thatcherite Law Used by Labour Council

Many cite “the battle for Rustlings Road” as a turning point – following a pre-dawn raid and scenes that the former local MP Nick Clegg described as “something you’d expect in Putin’s Russia”, pensioners were arrested for peacefully protesting. Eight trees were chopped down.
It has been a long and gnarly road to today’s situation, with frustrations running high.  In 2016, arrests of peaceful protesters started under the 1992 Trade Union and Labour Relations Act, which criminalises anyone who persistently stops someone from carrying out lawful work – in this case, tree surgeons contracted by Amey.

'We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens,' says Ian Rotherham, professor of environmental geography at Sheffield Hallam university.  'Only about 30 years on from Orgreave, our local councillors seem to not see the bitter twist in all this.'

We have the harsh irony of Thatcherite anti-union law being used by a Labour council against its own citizens.

None of those arrested have ever been prosecuted, however, with the Crown Prosecution Service saying there was insufficient evidence.  Then, last summer, the council brought an injunction against nine named protesters – including the Greens Alison Teal, and Brook, as well as 'persons unknown'.   It prohibits protesters from entering safety zones around condemned trees, or encouraging others to do so, either on social media or in person.

Labour's 'One Party State' !

In Ms. Teal’s opinion of local democracy is low – and no wonder, after a year in which the council on which she sits took her to court for breaking the injunction, only for the case to be thrown out.  'This is a one-party state,' she says. 'Sheffield has 84 councillors; 56 are Labour.  They can’t be outvoted.'  She mentions Nasima Akther, a Labour councillor who defied the whip to abstain on a vote about the fellings.  'For her courage she was suspended from the party.  It’s bullying and she subsequently resigned.'

******

Failure of Vision on the British Left:

Political Leadership and moral decline

 

THE success of the Conservative Party in last week's elections showed up the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the British left in general.  Since the death of the former leader of the British Labour Party Michael Foot, I have been arguing that the Labour Party has for many years been a party that has outlived its mission.  Last week's election result merely confirmed what has been evident for a long time. 

But the failure is not just that of the Labour Party but that of the British left in general, including the trade union movement in this country.  Since the strikes of the miners in the 1980s, the British trade union movement has been industrially a busted flush that has politically looked to the Labour Party to usher in social change.  The unions had no plan or serious strategy of their own other than capturing influence and power through the British Labour Party in government.  That involved them in the rather vulgar prospect of buying political influence through the sponsoring of Members of Parliament.  In the eyes of some of their members this has been a case of throwing good money after bad. 

Last November, at the building worker's Rank and File Conference, I watched closely as one such Scottish Labour MP, Ian Davidson, performed as a honoured guest of the building workers.  Mr. Davidson was then introduced as the M.P. for Glasgow West, and it was he who performed so well when he recently he chaired the Scottish Affairs Select Committee enquiry into blacklisting in the British building trade:  see the books 'Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business & Union Activists' by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain (price £9.99), and Tameside Trade Union Council's 'Boys on the Blacklist' by me and Derek Pattison (price £3).  In his speech to the building workers Mr. Davidson was careful not to offend the trade unions, some of whose paid officials disgracefully may well have been involved historically both in the enforcement, and supply of intelligence about blacklisting in the construction industry.  Last week after the elections, Ian Davidson was calling on Jim Murphy, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, to stand down, as he and almost all of the other Scottish Labour M.Ps had lost their seats to the Scottish Nationalists.  Unlike Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband, Jim Murphy who performed worse than either is, at the time of writing this, determined to to stay in office. 

Surely it is more than a failure of leadership that has brought about the decline in the fortunes of the Labour Party, and in some respects the labour movement.  It is a systemic failure that is rooted in an underlying lack of imagination and political vision that is common, not just in the trade unions, but on the left in general.   The British left, including the anarchists, seem to fear of self criticism.  On the eve of the election Russell Brand called on his anti-establishment constituency to vote Labour but to no avail.   

Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times last Saturday wrote:

'Elections are decided by fundamentals that take shape years in advance.  The five-week flurry of campaigning at the end might actually be the least significant phase of a parliament.....  But the best campaigners understand that campaigns do not change very much:  they merely uncover what already lurks inchoately in the mind and breast of the electorate.  On that score Labour lost the election long ago.' 

I can remember at the Manchester Labour Party Conference in 2010, when Ed Miliband was anointed as leader of the Labour Party.   At that time it was seen by some, particularly in unions like Unite, as a victory for the left.  It now looks like another dose of what George Elliot in 'Felix Holt: Radical' called 'vain expectations' from which the British left periodically suffer.  As Labour faces another leadership election Janan Ganesh warns:

'Whoever they choose (as leader), there has to be the all-out argument that was dodged in 2010, when the party entered a stupor of mutual reassurance and wishful thinking.'

It is doubtful if either the the Labour Party members or their trade union paymasters understand what is required here.  Unfortunately, Mr. Ganesh doesn't help his case when he writes:

'The consolation is that it (the Labour Party) can choose a  new leader from a promising field.  Andy Burnham, from the left, will offer Milibandism without Miliband.  The more market friendly flank of the party might assemble behind Liz Kendall or Chucka Umunna, the man the Tories fear most.'

 

Not much sign of profound vision or any great social transformation for humanity here.

Easter Monday's Times' Editorial on Cyril Smith!

Clegg must explain the Lib Dems’failure to act against the paedophile Cyril Smith

·

When Sir Cyril Smith, the 29-stone Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale, died in 2010, Nick Clegg described him as “one of the most likeable politicians of his day”. That depended on where you sat. Vulnerable children whom Smith sexually abused over 40 years at hostels and residential schools are unlikely to have shared Mr Clegg’s judgment. What the Liberal Democrats knew and when they knew it about Smith’s assaults is a matter of urgent public interest and a gathering scandal. Mr Clegg’s answers have so far been legalistic and unconvincing.

Smith’s covert life as a paedophile has emerged into the public spotlight in the past week owing to a new book co-authored by Simon Danczuk, the current Labour MP for Rochdale. It expands upon allegations that Mr Danczuk made in the House of Commons in 2012. Yet it is literally incredible that the party in which Smith was a huge figure should have been uniformly unaware of them.

The Times today publishes disturbing testimony by John Walker, who broke the story of Smith’s crimes 35 years ago. Mr Walker, a college lecturer, was co-editor of a magazine called Rochdale’s Alternative Paper. The magazine published in 1979 an account, based on sworn statements, of how Smith had repeatedly administered spankings on teenage boys and fondled their genitals during bogus“medical examinations” at Cambridge House boys’ hostel in Rochdale.

Mr Clegg said last week that his party had been unaware of this appalling history, and added: “Many of the actions, the repugnant actions, which we now learn about took place well before the party I now lead even existed — in fact, took place before I even existed.”

That is a casuistical distinction between the Liberal Democrats and the old Liberal party. Nor is the claim of ignorance plausible. Smith had been chief whip of the Liberals’ very small parliamentary presence in the 1970s. As part of the original article, Mr Walker had contacted the office of David Steel, then Liberal leader. A spokesman had replied: “All [Smith] seems to have done is spanked a few bare bottoms.”

Mr Walker’s findings were reported by Francis Wheen in the New Statesman and Paul Foot in Private Eye. Despite a mass of corroborating evidence, these did not curtail Smith’s public prominence. He was knighted in 1988 and retired as an MP in 1992. He continued to abuse children at a school in Rochdale as late as the 1990s. Since Smith’s death, the Crown Prosecution Service has admitted culpability in failing to prosecute him.

Mr Clegg correctly says that the police will need to investigate what happened. He and his colleagues also need to exercise historical accountability, however, and explain how Smith got away with a catalogue of depravity.

There is a terrible parallel with the activities of Jimmy Savile, the television entertainer now known to have been a prolific child abuser. In both cases, a populist personality created a public image of concern for disadvantaged children, which provided the perfect cover and opportunity to perpetrate grotesque crimes against them.

Savile and Smith operated in, respectively, the BBC and the Liberal Democrats, which celebrated their fame till their deaths and afterwards. Mr Clegg must account for how this happened. It is not good enough, for it is demonstrably not true, to maintain that nobody knew.

Farage, UKIP & the White Working-Class

LAST night's exchange between Nigel Farage of UKIP and Nick Clegg of the Lib-Dems was a mainly unremarkable encounter.  I thought the result was fairly even, but the public poll by YouGov gave the UKIP leader the best performance among 68% of viewers against 27% for Clegg.

Mr Farage's claim last night that the white working-class have been abandoned by the main stream politicians will be a telling factor in the forthcoming EU elections.  With the rise of the far right in France, it would seem that UKIP will score well in those elections.

It is not yet clear how this will effect future elections such as the General Election in the UK in 2015.  For the moment though talk and interest in the pubs among the white working-class favours Farage and UKIP. 

Lord Steel Nominated Shamed Rochdale MP for knighthood

Information Commissioner forces Government's hand in revelation of man behind Sir Cyril!

 

A Daily Star investigation has exposed that the former Liberal Party leader David Steel proposed Cyril Smith for a knighthood.  Smith, who was knighted in 1988 and who died in 2010, has now had his reputation become enmeshed in a a trail of child abuse scandals in Rochdale and beyond. 

 

The Liberal Democrat Party, that was formed out of the old Liberal Party, has said that it was not aware of Cyril Smith's crimes during his lifetime. 

 

Yet the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which has now compelled the Government to publish who nominated Smith for a knighthood, has said that while the full extent of Smith's activities were not known at the time of his nomination in 1988, 'there was quite widespread knowledge at that time that he was the subject of allegations'. 

 

In the latest issue of Northern Voices (NV14 - Summer/ Autumn 2013) a former editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) John Walker has written how in 1978/79 his 'small community magazine... decided to investigate what lay behind the rumours of the "Smith story" that had circulated in political circles in the town (Rochdale) for a decade.'  Mr. Walker continues:

'In the course of the six month investigation, the paper (RAP) interviewed more than 30 people, including seven former residents of Cambridge House, senior local politicians and police officers and council officials, all on an "off the record" basis, about (Cyril's) activities at the hostel.  Having had every word of the story they published libel-read by three independent sets of lawyers, ..., RAP published a 2,000 word account of (Smith's) sexual and physical abuse of teenage boys at Cambridge House.'

 

The RAP editors in 1979 then  sought the views of then leader of the Liberal Party, David Steel, and reply came from Steel's press secretary:

'It is not a very friendly gesture publishing that.  All he seems to have done is spanked a few bare bottoms.'

Well there you go!  Last Sunday's Daily Star repeated this quote and its journalist Jonathan Corke wrote:
'... last month the Information Commissioner's Office ruled that Mr Steel's involvement in recommending him for a knighthood should be made public.  The Cabinet Office, whose ministers include Lib Dems Nick Clegg and David Laws, spent more than six months trying to hide the revelation from us.'

It had been claimed disclosure would breach data protection rules but the ICO found that there was a 'legitimate public interest' in it being disclosed.

Tomorrow's Rochdale Observer quotes a Lib Dem 'spokesperson' as saying  'they were unaware Smith was a child abuser during his lifetime', and that 'His actions were not known or condoned by anyone in the Liberal Party or the Liberal Democrats'.  It is also alleged in the Rochdale Observer that 'Lord David Steel has always denied any knowledge of Smith's actions.'

Northern Voices has just received a response by e-mail to this above quote from John Walker, who together with David Bartlett in May 1979 edited the issue of RAP that broke the original story, and he now says:  'This is clearly misleading, at the very least.'

The blue plaque commemorating Cyril Smith was removed in 2012, but Rochdale Town Hall still apparently has a 'Cyril Smith room', and is it true that he is still a freeman of the borough of Rochdale?
_______________________________________________


A few copies of NORTHERN VOICES 14, are still on sale at some of our usual outlets with coverage of our role in the outing of Cyril Smith. John Walker, a former editor of RAP (the Rochdale Alternative Paper), in a leading feature documents the intimate story of Cyril Smith which was used as the basis of the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches last September on the eve of the Lib-Dem annual conference. Since he left RAP Mr. Walker has occasionally contributed to Private Eye, here he is flattering in his praise of N.V. and he writes of us 'being part of that long tradition of a radical press, that has never been afraid to call into question abuses of the powerful.' 

________________________________________________

The printed version of NORTHERN VOICES 14, may also be obtained as follows:
Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included)
Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' sent to
Jim Petty,
c/o 52, Todmorden Road,
Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com 

Legal Threat to Lib Dem Party

SOLICITORS for the abused victims have said they are considering taking action against the Liberal Democrats.  Nick Clegg has said that sexual abuse allegations against the former Lib Dem MP, Sir Cyril Smith, are shocking and must be investigated 'to the bitter end'.

The party's leader said victims needed to feel 'justice is on their side'.

After Cyril Smith died in 2010, Nick Clegg, deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrat party declared:

'Cyril Smith was a larger-than-life character and one of the most recognisable and likeable politicians of his day. I am deeply saddened to hear the news of his death today, and offer my sincere condolences to his family and friends. Everybody in Rochdale knew him not only as their MP but also as a friend. He was a true Liberal, dedicated to his constituency, always showing great passion and determination. Cyril was a colourful politician who kept the flame of Liberalism alive when the party was much smaller than it is today. Rochdale and Britain have sadly lost one of their great MPs, and I think we can safely say there will never be an MP quite like Cyril Smith again.'

Police have now said young boys were abused by the late MP at a children's home he opened in the 1960s. He was never prosecuted.

Concerns have been raised that a dossier of evidence against him went missing in 1970.

Channel 4's Dispatches programme last week revealed details from the file and made allegations of security services involvement.

Mr Clegg told BBC Radio 5 live:
'I'm shocked and appalled by the allegations I've seen.  I would like to see the police and the long arm of justice, even after all these long years, finally pursue this to the bitter end.'

Smith was first a Liberal councillor for Rochdale and then the MP. He was knighted in 1988 and died in September 2010.

Nick Clegg, Nick Heath, SWP: Crisis Cover-ups!

The Strange Death of the English Liberal-Left

THE news of the travails of Nick Clegg, as he tries to explain how got into mess of 'knowing', but not being 'aware of specific complaints' of inappropriate behaviour by a senior Liberal Democrat, Lord Rennard, towards a number of women dating back to 2008, comes on the back of the other problems and allegations regarding the late Liberal MP for Rochdale, Sir Cyril Smith.  The scandals of a sexual nature have tended to attach themselves to the Liberals and Tories over the years (one thinks of the Profumo Affair in 1963), while it has been pointed out that the Labour Party has more in the way of financial scandals.

Now the Metropolitan police are to interview Lib Dem officials to talk about if a crime has been committed in connection with the claims of sexual harassment against the ex-party chief executive Lord Rennard.  The Daily Telegraph has reported that one of the accusers of Lord Rennard, Helen Jardine-Brown, a former boss of fund raising in the party, who made an complaint 4-years ago, was paid a £50,000 settlement by her employers accompanied with a gagging clause conditional on her silence.  Recently, Lib Dem peer Baroness Hussein-Ece told the Daily Mail, that there were similarities to the Jimmy Savile situation. 'There aren't sufficient checks and balances in place,' she said.

In The Guardian, 27th, Feb. 2013, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who first raised concerns in parliament in November about Cyril Smith's activities, said that there is a pattern whenever allegations of sexual abuse emerge inside the Lib Dems.   He added:  'They bury their heads in the sand and claim to know nothing,' he said.  'For the sake of Rochdale victims, Clegg has to stop stonewalling and now come clean on what his party knew about the sexual abuse carried out by Cyril Smith.'   Now there is further evidence from the police files that Cyril Smith tried to meddle with the police probe according to Simon Danczuk.
 
In January, another left of centre party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was engulfed in allegations of rape and sought to resolve the matter through what some of their media critics have described as a 'socialist sharia court' cover-up to investigate rape accusations against a senior member instead of reporting them to the police.  The reasoning of the SWP leadership, outline by a member, was that as they had 'no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice' they would engage in a bit of do-it-yourself proceedings in the spirit of the quasi-judicial.  The result seems to have been a bit of a judicial circus in the forensic investigation of the facts of the case. 

Andy Newman, a Swindon-based Labour Party member described the SWP's conduct thus: 
'It's quite clear reading their account of what's going on that they sort of see themselves as an alternative group in society that is not part of mainstream society... they think someone couldn't or shouldn't go to the police because it would damage the party.' 
Mr. Newman, it seems, likens the SWP's disciplinary hearing to an extrajudicial 'Sharia' system or the much criticised investigations by the Roman Catholic Church into clerical abuse that by-passed reporting allegations to the authorities. 

The minutes of the SWP's disciplinary committee show that allegations were put against a 'Comrade Delta', a senior member on the party's central committee.  These accusations were made by an unnamed female member of the party, who says she was assaulted over a 6-month period between 2008 and 2009.  The minutes show that she did not want to go to the police.  The disciplinary committee cleared 'Comrade Delta', with six out of seven members of the committee supporting his story of what happened.  But when the case was later put to party members, the disciplinary committee's decision was only accepted by 231 votes to 209 votes. 

In his resignation letter, the SWP journalist Tim Walker wrote: 
'I thought that they took the case seriously, this was not a jury of his peers, but a jury of his mates.' 
A friend of the female complainant, who was not allowed to attend the disciplinary hearing, said that she felt betrayed by the party, and another said that the woman thought, naively, that 'if she put in a complaint to the party it would be dealt with in line with the party's politics and our proud tradition on women's liberation... sadly her experiences were quite the opposite.'

The Independent newspaper has contacted the SWP's head office for a comment on the allegations but got no reply.  The SWP was formed in 1977 out of the International Socialists, it considers itself a 'revolutionary party' in the tradition of the Russian politician Leon Trotsky.

Beyond the realms of the Lib Dems and the SWP, another left-wing tendency is now dealing with a dilemma of a more political nature.  On the anarchist left censorship and restraints of freedom of expression are considered an even greater sin than sexual deviation.  Recently a major row has brewed up among anarchists and their fellow-travellers about attempts to censor the northern anarchists in the Northern Anarchist Network and to put the publication Northern Voices out of business.  Bookshop managers who stock Northern Voices have been approached  menacingly, book-stalls at Bookfairs have been overturned, and the printers of Northern Voices have been telephoned, and on one occasion a couple of years ago threatened with a solicitor.  The leftist group that is now embroiled in this embarrassing political dilemma is the British Anarchist Federation (AF), some of whose members have been involved in political bullying, blacklisting and feeble-minded violence aimed at the censorship and control of the publication Northern Voices, that culminated last December in Barry Woodling being herded out of a Manchester bookfair and forced to climb down a fire-escape. In the 20th Century, the two social movements that harassed shopkeepers to distraction were the mafia in the USA and the German national socialists, but now the perverse anarchists of the AF seem to have taken a leaf out of their book.

Interestingly, Rudolf Rocker and Noam Chomsky, both distinguish libertarian/ anarchist social thinkers, have defined the intellectual origins of anarchism as lying in the two strands of progressive thinking coming out of the Enlightenment: a socialist strand on the one hand and a liberal strand on the other. The historian David Goodway in his book 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow' (First published 2006 and now revised & expanded by PM Press in paperback in 2012 and to be reviewed by Derek Pattison in the forthcoming issue of Northern Voices) argued:
'A fruitful approach to understanding anarchism is to recognize its thoroughly socialist critique of capitalism, while emphasizing that this has been combined with a liberal critique of socialism, anarchists being united with liberals in their advocacy of autonomous associations and the freedom of the individual and even exceeding them in their opposition to statism.' 
This split personality of anarchism allows in certain shallow personalities who operate a form of secretive and conspiratorial politics; it is hard for example to decide if the political body that describes itself as the Anarchist Federation has an authentic voice or face. The only AF individual I'm aware of connected with it for sure, is one of its founders Nick Heath, a retired London librarian, who now works in the bookshop of Freedom Press on Wednesday afternoons and successful got the bookshop manager to take NV13 off the shelf last August.  It was Heath, who like Cyril Smith with the police, successfully sought to bully the independent anarchist publication Freedom not to publish material about the attacks involving his AF organisation on Northern Voices and others.  Others in AF are most often known only by their first-names or pseudo-names such 'Sally', 'Andy of London AF', 'Claire of Nottingham AF' and 'Alex the National Secretary of AF', there are also a number of strange miscellaneous AF groupies such as the shy one who calls himself 'Spikymike' and another called Ron Marsden from Didsbury. But no-one from the Anarchist Federation has yet made any official statement or justification for the crazy conduct of their members: indeed one must doubt the existence of the AF as a serious political entity.

The silliness with which these AF people and  the way this rag-tag-and-bobtail 'anarchist' army have performed, has been such that some respectable anarchists have sought to try to pretend that nothing has happened. But to ignore these acts, or just to dismiss these people as 'fools', or to play the Pontius Pilate is to risk falling into the trap that the Liberal Nick Clegg and the socialist SWP is now facing.  All these cases suggest is that the 'left' in British politics, whether Liberal, Socialist or anarchist, is suffering from a deep-seated corruption and lack of serious purpose; Simon Danczuk from Rochdale with his Cyril Smith revelations, Andy Newman from Swindon in highlighting the SWP's misdemeanours, and Barry Woodling in affirming the rights of a free press, are all fighting on the side of political decency.  As Simon Danczuk says of the Lib Dems  and Cyril Smith; burying 'their heads in the sand' may be a pattern but it is certainly not a solution.
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Mrs Duffy confronts Nick Clegg

NEWS reports at lunchtime today say that Nick Clegg was confronted by the now famous Rochdalian pensioner, Gillian Duffy, when, this morning, he visited Holroyds engineering factory up Milnrow, near Rochdale this morning. It will be remembered that it was Mrs Duffy who stuck up to Gordon Brown in the run up to the General Election last May when he later called her a 'bigot' and made her a news item in the international media. With Cyril Smith now dead and under the sod, and 'Our Gracie' having passed a way long ago it is being left to the new spirit of Rochdale, in the form of Mrs. Gillian Duffy to carry the torch of 'non-conformism' in the town. She certainly gave Lib Dem and Coalition Deputy, Nick Clegg, a run for his money today, having all but crucified Gordon Brown last year.