Artist, 81, known as 'The Original Banksy': jailed for 4-years for stalking former model & ex-girlfriend

A reader, Kevin Brenan, asked NV to follow up on the sentencing of the octinarian artist Walter Kershaw and he says:

'I thought the sentence was harsh for a man of 81. I hope he appeals it.

'I also hope he is in an open prison rather than Strangeways.

'I am sure he would like to hear from you.

'I always thought his work was very original.

'It may help to find out where he is. Hopefully within travelling distance.

'Its difficult when you get in the grip of an obsession. You can see the danger to yourself.'

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As a consequence of Kevin's e-mail above N.V. contacted a retired prison officer and he suggested we talk to Walter's solicitor to try to get a request for a visit, but Walter seems not to have used a local firm of solicitors and it has not yet been possible to get hold of them. We would agree that the setence seems harsh, but we didn't attend the trial. We were reassured that in recent times owing to the tendency of courts to extend sentences there had been an increase in the prison population of elderly jail-birds and this had led to the need fot the provision of special facilies for older people. Another worry we have is that the complainants in this case tend to repeat the diffficulties they have in moving around the town were they all live without bumping into Walter, and they continually say they are forced to trudge across muddy fields and spend a fortune on taxi fares in order to avoid meeting him in the village of Littleborough near Rochdale. When some time ago I did discuss this difficulty with Walter he pointed out that Littleborough was a small place and it was hard to avoid bumping into local people. As his solicitor has argued in his defence Walter: 'There is no offer of violence and no physical intimidation.'

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For the benefit of our readers we reproduce below a report by Jacob Thorburn for the Mailonline published on 30 April 2021:

A popular British painter has been jailed for four years after a 'predatory stalking campaign' dating back to 2008.

Walter Kershaw, 81, who was dubbed Britain's 'original Banksy', repeatedly hounded Catherine Mitchell, 51, after their affair ended in 2007.

Rochdale-born Kershaw conducted a 'predatory' stalking campaign lasting 13 years, which included pursuing his ex-lover around their hometown and telling her she was beautiful.

The painter would also send life model Mitchell love letters and romantic cards and would drive slowly passed her home blowing kisses at her.

Despite Mitchell's best efforts, which included taking taxis around town and using muddy fields at the back of her home, she could not avoid her prolific stalker.

Kershaw was jailed for four years at Minshull Street Crown Court after admitting to breaching his restraining order and stalking.

The couple's relationship began in 2006, after former life model Mitchell asked 'unpredictable and controlling' Kershaw to paint her portrait.

The following year she broke up with Kershaw after she was hit by a motorbike and suffered life-threatening brain and leg injuries in a collision outside his gallery.

But Kershaw - who once counted George Best and Bob Monkhouse as friends - continued pursuing Miss Mitchell around the town and put an oil portrait in the front window of his art gallery in Littleborough, Greater Manchester.

The court heard how he would drive past Miss Mitchell's home on a regular basis, and would blow kisses towards her and also sent her love letters and cards.

He began to attend church where she and her mother were members of the congregation and appear regularly in their local supermarket.

When Miss Mitchell moved out of her mother's house into her own place, he would turn up on her doorstep uninvited and ask to take her out.

Police issued Miss Mitchell with a hand-held panic alarm and she used it when he turned up outside the house.

Eventually in January 2009 he was spoken to by police and warned not to contact her and in the following year Kershaw was instructed not to contact Miss Mitchell and her mother.

In 2013, the father of two was ordered to pay the two women compensation after he approached Ms Mitchell as she was sat in her car but in 2015 was given a suspended sentence for hounding her again.

He was eventually jailed for 26 weeks in 2017 after he approached Ms Mitchell at a Co-Op supermarket and tried to strike up a conversation with her saying: 'You've got a new cat and so have I.

'I think about you all the time. Let's pick up where we left off'.

But after being freed, Kershaw accosted her again over the Christmas period of 2018 when she was shopping in the town and told her: 'I adore you and I spent every day in prison thinking about you and I never meant any harm'.

The following year he was sentenced 20 weeks, suspended for 12 months and banned from contacting her for life, but in 2020 he twice flouted the order and was given another 12 weeks jail suspended for two years.

The latest incidents took place between July and August last year, just ten days after the suspended sentence was imposed.

In a statement to police Miss Mitchell who called Kershaw 'the Devil man' said she was so terrified of the artist she had to quit her home and subsequently spent £65,000 building an extension at the home of her mother Marjorie, 77, so she could move in with her.

Ms Mitchell said: 'Walter Kershaw has continued to stalk us relentless to the present day.

'The very fact he has dismissed the various restraining orders we have against him as mere folly is a sure sign that he only lives by his own rules in a self-centred untouchable world where the law is irrelevant.

'The last time he was sent to prison we felt free and it felt like a release from the perpetual panic and anguish which has sadly become a customary aspect of our lives.

'When he was in jail, no longer was it necessary to take expensive taxis or cross a muddy field as avoidance strategies.

'We desire to live our lives without the continuous worry for this arrogant, predatory person who has affected out peaceful lives for over a decade with his narcissistic attitude and behaviour.

'His behaviour is obsessive distressing, disturbing and alarming and we simply do not know where or when we will encounter him next.'

Kershaw had shot to fame in the 70s with his large-scale murals on houses and later was dubbed 'the Original Banksy' with his work displayed as far afield as Sao Paolo in Brazil.

In mitigation, defence lawyer Anthony Morris said: 'There does not seem to be anything done that is intentionally malicious.

'There is no offer of violence and no physical intimidation. From his point of view, he was trying to build bridges and was not consciously aware of the fact the victim was suffering from psychological distress.

'He lived in the hope that he could break down barriers and build a friendship again.'

But sentencing Judge Mark Savill told Kershaw: 'It is extremely sad to see a gentleman with a great skill as an artist before the court for such serious matters.

'Catherine was doing what any normal citizen should be allowed to do and yet you have caused very serious harm or distress.

'Your age does not justify your appalling behaviour in this case.

'Two women have had to suffer with their lives blighted and ruined by your selfish behaviour.

'The time has come where you must receive the message from this court that this behaviour cannot continue.'

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In plain sight Putin's doing-in Kremlin's star Critic .

Who Will Save Alexei Navalny?

Michael Weiss on Yahoo News

Thu, April 22, 2021

“If you saw me now—maybe you would have a good laugh,” Alexei Navalny wrote on Facebook April 20. “Look at him! A skeleton walking, wobbling around his prison cell. In his hands he is holding his court ruling, rolled up in a tube. With that tube he fervently swings away at mosquitoes covering the walls and the ceiling of his cell. Those buzzing stinging monsters can finish up a man faster than any hunger strike.”

The tone is characteristic of the world’s most famous political prisoner: comic stoicism in the face of approaching death combined with a Gogolian fascination for all the absurdities and trivialities still imposed by a cruel Russian system responsible for its arrival.

Navalny has been starving himself for three weeks. It is a feeble protest, perhaps, against being an involuntary guest of a 21st century gulag, but at least it is wholly his own. For someone who eight months ago was almost killed with a weapon of mass destruction (Novichok), Navalny seems determined to go on being Navalny until the very end, which could be “any minute” now, according to his physician who has not been allowed to examine his patient and can only make diagnoses from afar, based on blood test results.

Navalny risks kidney failure and cardiac arrest owing to abnormally high levels of potassium and creatinine in his blood (“After Novichok,” Navalny wrote, “potassium is not a biggie”). He has been transferred from one miserable penal facility to another where he is now on a regimen of “vitamin therapy.”

No one believes Navalny is being treated; rather, he is being gradually murdered in an internationally exhibited snuff film executive produced and directed by Vladimir Putin.

“I think they will kill him,” a former senior U.S. official, someone I typically turn to for good news, not bad, told me this week. “I don’t think they’ll do a last-minute release back to Germany [where Navalny recuperated from his Novichok poisoning last August] or something like that. Their goal is to watch Navalny slowly die in prison.”

And what can the United States do, or better yet, what is it willing to do to stop “them” and this obscenity? Judging by President Joe Biden’s rhetoric, not much. Navalny’s plight, Biden told reporters last week, was “totally, totally unfair, totally inappropriate,” which is something one says of a lousy referee call on the pitch, not live-streamed, slow-motion homicide.

The messaging, however, is clear: Putin may be a soulless killer but he nevertheless runs an aggressive nuclear hyperpower with which the United States seeks to have “a stable and predictable relationship,” as the White House readout of Biden’s call with him on April 13 stated. Good luck with that, you might say, but the readout ended by telegraphing Biden’s openness to a “summit meeting in a third country in the coming months.” It made no mention of Navalny, who may well be dead by then.

The backdrop to this cautiously extended olive branch is also obvious: the Russian Army could very well be in a “third country” uninvited in the coming days: Ukraine.

As of this writing there are reportedly anywhere between 80,000 and 100,000 Russian troops currently deployed to occupied Crimea and the Russian border of the Donbas, itself occupied by undeclared Russian soldiers and intelligence officers masquerading as “separatists.” These troops are joined by a steady increase in warplanes, attack helicopters, tanks, cruise missiles and all the other matériel necessary for a conventional invasion.

Is one forthcoming or is this just a well-choreographed intimidation exercise intended more for Washington’s sake than for Kyiv’s? Russia’s Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu ordered a partial withdrawal from the border a day after Putin’s annual press conference April 21, in which the Russian president spoke of “red lines” against “insults and interference, including in elections,” and he darkly insinuated that the U.S. had just failed to assassinate his client, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a claim White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said has “no basis in fact.” Last year, the fear among Russia watchers from Washington to Tallinn was that Putin might intervene militarily in Belarus, if not annex the entire country in a definitive move to quell a rising protest movement over stolen election and expand Russian hard power closer into NATO’s backyard. Now, he threatens to re-invade Ukraine.

Biden would no doubt think it more than “unfair” and “inappropriate” of his having to navigate any hot crisis in Easter Europe within the first year of his presidency. A pandemic still rages, China rises, and the U.S. has to withdraw from a 20-year campaign in Afghanistan, to say nothing of roiling domestic cultural crises.

Moreover, Biden already has his hands full with peaceful Europe. See Czechia’s recent disclosure that in 2014, a team of Russian military intelligence operatives blew up an ammunition depot in a village in the east of the country. And not just any operatives: two of them, Col. Alexander Mishkin and Col. Anatoly Chepiga, were the assassins responsible for later trying to murder Emilian Gebrev, a Bulgarian arms dealer in Sofia in 2015 and the former intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. Mishkin and Chepiga’s weapon of choice in both instances was Novichok in what may have been proof of concept for the later operation to kill Russia’s opposition leader, at least the first time around.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN there would be “consequences” if Russia eliminated Navalny in prison. What kind? Sullivan did not elaborate. Nor do we know if he relayed them to Nikolai Patrushev, the chairman of the Russian Security Council, with whom he has his own phone call this week, this one ending with “let’s keep in touch.”

Presumably Navalny would rather Sullivan got his retaliation in first, as a form of deterrence. But neither the U.S. nor E.U. seems eager to impose sanctions before Navalny’s demise. And Angela Merkel, once Navalny’s primary caretaker-in-exile, has reaffirmed her commitment to Russia’s controversial Nord-Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Europe, which the U.S. opposes.

What about sanctioning those hemisphere-hopping Russian oligarchs Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation named when he was first arrested upon his arrival back in Moscow from Berlin in January? That list was divided in three categories, the last two consisting of Russian human rights abusers and those specifically linked to Navalny’s persecution. But the first category is the one that would rattle the Kremlin the most: “Oligarchs upon whom Putin has bestowed wealth and power, and who wield it on behalf of the regime.”

The official excuse I hear from U.S. policymakers is that designating “oligarchs for being oligarchs isn’t how sanctions work.” Washington has to establish a predicate offense. The unofficial excuse I hear is that going after foreign billionaires who act as agents or plenipotentiaries of the Kremlin abroad is embarrassing because they’re so deeply entrenched in the Western financial system—banks, media companies, sports clubs, and real estate. Doing so would only expose the West’s see-no-evil policy with respect to money-laundering, lobbying and kleptocracy, the taints of which should now be obvious to anyone who survived the Trump era.

Putting our own house in order might make it more difficult for Putin to destroy his since there’s no use stealing in Moscow what you can’t spend in London, Paris and New York. As Navalny’s aide Vladimir Milov told me recently, “You don’t have to separate the human rights agenda from realpolitik. They’re inextricable now.”

And so, all across Russia’s eleven time zones, the people have done what they can and turned out to demonstrate for the dying hunger striker who has spent a decade telling them with blog posts and YouTube videos that they deserve better. Again we have seen the stirring scenes of young and old defy riot police and arbitrary detention in an authoritarian state. The solidarity and support have already made a difference to the prisoner. “[T]here is no better weapon against injustice and lawlessness,” Navalny wrote. “This is what keeps me alive right now. Despite the very high level of potassium.”

We in the West are left to hope it will work—while secretly suspecting, like the former U.S. official, that it won’t.

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STUART CHRISTIE DIES! Intro. by Brian Bamford

PART ONE - THE AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION:

Stuart Christie: a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. Who when aged 18, Christie was arrested in Madrid while carrying explosives to assassinate the Spanish caudillo, General Francisco Franco. He was later alleged to be a member of the Angry Brigade, but was acquitted of related charges.

Born: July 10, 1946, Partick, Glasgow, United Kingdom

Died: August 15, 2020

Movies: The Angry Brigade: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Britain’s First Urban Guerilla Group Organizations founded: Anarchist Black Cross Federation, Cienfuegos Press

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BEYOND an OBITUARY!:

STUART Christie was an anarchist who had quality and consistency as well as quantity and a prolific output. From the early 1960s when he first engaged with Bobby Lynn and the Glasgow anarchists to his death bed listening to 'Pennies from Heaven' Stuart sternly stuck to his beliefs dedicated to a classical version of anarchism.

My last contact with Stuart was an unusually brief e-mail from him last November in which he wrote: 'Bearing up, Brian. Hope you are too. Un abrazo!.'

However I must offer a health warning, as in the 56 years since we first became acquainted in Paris in 1964, our paths have been very different. His commitment was to internationalist view while mine since the 1960s when I lived and worked in Spain has been mostly more parochial. My engagement with the anarchist movement in Spain and later Gibraltar was very different from that of Stuart even though we were functioning in the same organisation: the FIJL (DI). My role was purely one of propaganda and intelligence, and at no time was I involved in the violent activist deeds which were designed to discourage tourism or strike at General Franco.

My task and that of my then wife, Joan, was the much more humdrum; in my case one of working on the tools as an electrician, and delivering Butane Gas to the villages on the Cabo San Antonio in Alicante. Much more boring than 'daring-do' and prison life, but a way of soaking-up Spanish culture and everyday life as it was lived by many young Spaniards at that time who migrated to the coast from places like Albacete and Andalucia: working a six day week and paid 750 pesetas. Meanwhile, our FIJL campaign against Spanish tourism clearly failed, yet fortunately less tragically than Stuart's failed mission to kill Franco.

Among the many obituaries published on Stuart the most perceptive that I have yet seen has been that of the historian Julián Casanova in El País 'El escocés de la FAI que trató de matar a Franco' Casanova argues that Stuart Christie believed that 'a fusion of different forms of resistance such as the workers, the students, the greens into the language of political anarchism. Just as Bakunin, thought it was possible to harmonise individualism with the socialist collectivism.' Casanova writes: 'He [Stuart] liked the men of action, but in reality he [Stuart] and his wife Brenda went on to propagate forms of idelogy with various cultural manifestations, which demonstrated the force of culture with ideas.'

'

Stuart's wife Brenda died last year aged 70 years, from cancer. Casanova writes: 'The obituaries now record that his prime intention was to kill Franco. Yet he was a committed anarchist using his pen and the engaged in cultural aggitation, in times when the revolutionaries with "consciences" have past into history. Anarchist solidarity, that reflects on the concequences of industrial capilalism, nuclear disarmament, and abuses by the State. He was a Scot who would have loved to live in the golden epoch of Spanish anarchism.'

Julián Casanova knew Stuart Christie from when he met him at Queen Mary College, London, in the Autumn of 1985. At that event were other hispanistas like Ronald Fraser, and he speaks warmly of the seminars, dinners and debates over the Spanish Civil War, Franco, the monarchy, Juan Carlos and the transistion.

It strikes me that Casanova understood Stuart better than most of us.

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War on the Home Front (part one)

by Chris Draper

WHILST British workers concentrated on killing German workers at Passchendaele back home loyal servants of the State used every trick in the book to frighten and torture 16,000 conscientious objectors into uniform. The Church of England assisted as recruiting sergeant and despite their hallowed reputation, a third of Quakers signed up to exterminate their fellow man.

The organised labour movement colluded with the killing but rebel socialists and anarchists refused to bang the jingo drum and here in the North West thirteen brave anarchists confronted the rabid State and refused to bear arms.

Atheists go to Hell Conscription started in 1916 and the only individuals the State considered fit for ‘conscientious objection' (CO) were pacifists obeying orders from GOD. Political objections were derided and dismissed so anarchists were on a hiding to nothing appealing to the authorities.  Once conscription began everyone was deemed to have enlisted so if you didn’t turn yourself in you would be arrested, fined and handed over to the military.  Any refusal to follow orders then led to court martial and imprisonment with hard labour, usually for 112 days for a first offence.

On completion of this sentence you were handed back to the military and the whole cycle recommenced with subsequent sentences extended up to two years and continuing even after hostilities Workers’ Playtime Thirteen anarchists from the North -West of England defied the draft and refused to fight. This was a pretty good contribution, comprising more than a third of the total AC’s (Anarcho-Conchies) from the whole of England. This comparative strength

derived from the influence of the Stockport Workers Freedom Group (WFG)

.

The group started up in 1913 and the following February opened their own clubrooms at 18 Park Street, Hazel Grove, with funds provided by millionaire anarchist and Kodak director, George Davison.  WFG proved a powerhouse of anarchist propaganda and in September 1913 under the auspices of the group, Guy Aldred delivered a series of eight open-air lectures in Stockport’s ‘Armoury & Mersey Squares” on revolutionary topics from, ‘Capitalism and the Child’ to ‘Direct Action, Legislation and the Social War’ .

Once conscription started Aldred was himself imprisoned as a conchie but the Stockport comrades were ready primed to resist

.

Gone Fishing

Legislation enacting Conscription received Royal Assent on 27 January 1916 In Stockport magistrates Court, ‘Inspector Billinge said that on February 1 the Chief Constable took out a warrant under the Defence of the Realm Act to search the premises, 18 Park Street occupied by the Workers Freedom Group or Anarchist Club’. The police failed to arrest anyone on that occasion but seized, ‘a number of documents and pamphlets, many of which were of a revolutionary nature and, no doubt, cry prejudicial to recruiting’

.

The Chief Constable wanted to destroy everything but Herbert Holt , a leading member of WFG, argued their literature should be returned. Although magistrates agreed Holt could retain a few titles for some inexplicable reason they incinerated:  ‘Down With Conscription’, ‘The International Anarchist Manifesto on the War’ and ‘Apes and Patriotism!’ Patriotic Apes.

Hazel Grove police had already removed thousands of similar pamphlets from Langley Cottage, the Hazel Street home of another WFG club member, commercial traveller WilliamJackson. Jackson was grassed up by patriotic member of the local community, John James Warren after William gave him a publication entitled, ‘Unite Against the British Prussians’. Warren testified that in January he’d been a passenger on a train from Manchester to Hazel Grove when Jackson was handing out these pamphlets to passengers. Warren claimed he’d previously seen him giving them out in London Road, Hazel Grove. As a God-fearing jingo he obeyed his patriotic duty and took a copy down to Hazel Grove police station who’d responded with a raid on Jackson’s home. In court, William argued for return of the haul removedfrom his house, which included, “2,000 pamphlets headed, Unite Against the British Prussians–500 pamphlets headed, Fight Against Conscription–100 pamphlets headed, ‘An Appeal to Socialists–and 36 pamphlets headed, A General Strike’.

Unfortunately magistrates ordered the destruction of all these classics but on the plus side, they

did return, ‘Tariff Reform Monthly Notes’!

Hard Won Lessons

Anyone intending to claim “Conscientious Objection” was permitted until 24 June 1916 to appeal to a local ‘Military Service Tribunal (MST)’ but ten of our conchies just ignored their call-up papers and waited to be arrested as “absentees”. Of the remaining three, one lad was yet under-age and the two that applied to have their conscience adjudged by MST soon found their trust was misplaced.

Twenty-six year old lithographer Arthur Helsby applied to St Helen’s MST as soon as conscription began, requesting exemption but offering to serve in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). Instead he was conscripted into the army’s ‘Non-Combat Corps (NCC)’ and on 25, March 1916carted off to Kinmel army camp in North Wales for military training.

Helsby soon learned ‘non-combatant’ didn’t exempt him from the war machine. The NCC were obliged to wear khaki, obey military orders, dig trenches, load munitions– ‘soldiers without guns' constantly the butt of insults and abuse from regular troops.  When Arthur objected, on Monday 29 May 1916 he was covertly ‘rendered’ over to the killing fields of France for the army’s cunning plan was to transport CO’s over to the battlefield and terrify them into submission..

Refusing orders under fire would then invite court -martial and death by firing squad . Thirty-four of Arthur’s fellow CO’s in France were formally condemned to death be fore their sentences were commuted to 10 years imprisonment after details of this army deception became public.  So Helsby wasn’t shot but for refusing to go on parade was subjected to 28 days of the notorious 'Field Punishment Number One', which involved being spread -eagled and chained to a field gun wheel, or fixed posts, and was routinely described as 'crucifixion'.

On 10 June Arthur was court martialled at Calais and sentenced to two years imprisonment with hard labour, Initially incarcerated in a military prison at Rouen, on 4 July 1916 Helsby was conveyed, in irons, back to England to serve his time at Winchester civil prison. Public outcry over the army’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ prompted the authorities to commute Arthur’s sentence and he was released from Winchester on the 29 August 1916, having served barely two months of a two year sentence. He was bloodied but unbowed Manchester MST.

Thirty-two year old shipping clerk William Greaves made his application for absolute exemption to Manchester MST on 20 September 1916. Like Helsby, he was nevertheless conscripted into the NCC.  He avoided being sent to France but didn’t accept this NCC role and pressed his absolutist claim through both County and Central Tribunals to no good effect. Formally consigned to the Royal Welsh Fusiliers he was first court-martialled at Oswestry and sentenced to serve 6 months in Shrewsbury Prison.   On his release from Shrewsbury he was returned to Oswestry, court-martialled again and then sentenced to a two-year stretch at Liverpool’s Walton Gaol.

‘I am an Anarchist!’

Oldham-born Walter Barlow, a twenty-one year old “hat leather cutter”, of 2 Stream Terrace, Victoria Road, Stockport put his call-up papers in the bin and was arrested as an absentee. 
 

Unintimidated, on Tuesday 13 June 1916 he told magistrates, ‘I am an anarchist and do not believe in the government of men by men’. Walter went on to expose the cynical function of MST’s in dividing and defusing the peace movement, explaining ‘tribunals were used to smash opposition to the Military Services Act’. Predictably, the magistrates were unpersuaded, fined him 40s. and decreed he be handed over to the military but the military never got their man.

For the duration of WWI Walter Barlow went AWOL.

Collar the Lot

With gaping holes apparent in the conscription net and the last opportunity past to appeal for exemption, the Stockport authorities planned a return to 18 Park Street and this time seize more than just pamphlets.

‘Anarchist Club Raid–Capture of Absentees at Stockport’ yelled the Manchester Evening News of 22 September 1916’.

Herbert Holt, William Hopkins, William Jackson and Charles Warwick arrested for dodging the draft.

‘These four were hauled up before magistrates along with a character the authorities couldn’t then identify but we already know as our recently returned hero from France and Winchester comrade Arthur Helsby!

The Stockport constabulary informed the press that this mysterious character was ‘evidently a man of foreign extraction’, which seems a harsh judgement on a man born in Liverpool.

During ongoing enquiries the other four anarchists were each fined 40s. and handed on to the military.

Once the police resolved Arthur’s identity he was carted of to Leeds Prison before being restored to the farcical conscription treadmill and returned to “his regiment” at Kinmel Camp. Four further anarchists were rapidly rounded up in raids in and in and around the WFG clubrooms but I’ll identify them (a long with the two further AC’s) and unravel the rest of this fascinating tale in part two (coming soon on the NV website).

Peace & Love

Christopher Draper

Egyptian Trade Unionists Jailed

The toppling of the Mubarak regime in Egypt led to workers winning for the first time the right to free and independent trade unions. That right is now under threat as the current regime seeks to imprison trade union members at the IFFCO edible oils factory in Suez.

Those workers have faced severe repression but finally had a glimmer of hope when on 29 January the jailed workers were all acquitted of the "crime" of inciting a strike.

But the story doesn't end there.  The prosecution has appealed the decision and the workers will be tried again.  Fifteen IFFCO workers including the union President and General Secretary are barred from returning to work and union members are under pressure to "resign".

The International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) has launched a major online campaign to demand that the charges be dropped -- and an end to anti-union repression.

Please take a moment to send your message of protest -- it WILL make a difference:

Click here to send your message

Please share this message with your friends, family and fellow trade union members.

Thank you very much!

Eric Lee

Torment and Corruption in British Jails



Specialist "Tornado" teams were sent into HMP Swaleside, on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, after a disturbance at about 19:00 GMT on Thursday.

Meanwhile a prison spokeswoman said:

'The challenges in our prisons are longstanding and won’t be solved overnight but the justice secretary is committed to making sure our prisons are stable while we deliver wholesale reforms to the prison estate to help offenders turn their lives around and reduce reoffending.'
Meanwhile, a week ago rioting prisoners took over four wings of HMP Birmingham, setting fire to stairwells, destroying paper records and causing £2m in damage. It was the latest high-profile disturbance to break out in a jail, prompting Justice Secretary Liz Truss to warn that "long-standing" problems in the nation's prisons could take months to solve.

AN editorial in the Financial Times last Wednesday commenting on the state of British prison's being 'a national disgrace', quoted Fyodor Dostoyevsky as saying that 'the degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons'.

In 1971 or thereabouts, a prison officer in Brixton jail suggested to Stuart Christie then remanded in there of charges relating to the Angry Brigade, that he should write a comparative book about his experiences in Spanish and English prisons.  He was found not guilty when the case came to trial.  Later in his autobiography 'Granny made me an anarchist' Stuart Christie wrote:

'I discussed this with Miguel Garcia, my friend and former fellow prisoner, he agreed that it was the soullesness of British prisons that made them outstanding in the history of penology.  National characteristics come into it as well.  Cold cabbage, muddy fishcakes, soggy sponge lumpy custard and gnats' piss for tea would be considered a provocation diet in Spain.  The authorities offering it would be expecting a riot.  British prisoners have probably been conditioned by years of factory canteens, greasy spoon cafes and now Macdonalds. 

'But there was another striking difference between the two countries: British jails were run on a system of state socialism, where you get what your given ('Incentives' and 'earned privileges' are now the system).  Spanish jails in Franco'ws time were run along on much more humane lines inasmuch as there was some degree of choice involved.  You could work and earn more, or – and this is a punishment – not work and scrape by if you were prepared to do without things like fags and Serrano ham sandwiches.  You could have money sent in from outside and spend it in a fanteen or the prison restaurant.  Thus responsibility for the individual's quality of life in prison became his own, that of his family and his comrades.

'Like money everywhere, its circulation in jail leads to corruption, but it is also the one thing that eases tyranny.  Corruption certainly exists in English jails – albeit fitfully.  In Spain it was built into the system.  But for those who have illusions as to what can be achieved by the parliamentary system, a comparison of Spanish and English prisons would be interesting.'

As the prison spokeswoman said 'the challenges to our prisons are longstanding...'

  

Workers Jailed in Egypt

I sent you this message last week, but I'm not sure you saw it.  These workers need our support today, so if you can -- please add your name to this important campaign.  Thanks.

In late May this year, workers at the shipyard docks in Alexandria, Egypt organized a peaceful protest. Company management had refused to negotiate with them and rejected their demands.
Following their protest, the workers were summoned by the the military prosecution for interrogation. Fifteen workers presented themselves voluntarily and were surprised when they were all apprehended (except for one woman worker who was released on bail). A warrant was issued against the remaining eleven workers.

Today, the workers remain in jail as they await sentencing. Those jailed workers and their families have no incomes, while the other workers are on the run and could be jailed at any time.

The Center for Trade Union and Worker Services (CTUWS) has asked for our help to publicize this gross violation of human rights.  Together we've launched an online campaign demanding the release of the jailed workers.

Please show your support:

http://www.labourstart.org/go/alexandria

And please share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.

Thank you!

Eric Lee

El Mondo Reports 'ESCÁNDALO • Parlamentario laborista ': 'SCANDAL OF LABOUR POLITICIAN'

Danczuk's 'Crime of Passion' Defence?

Under General Franco Simon Danczuk Could Have Killed Karen!

The report below on the El Mondo website by Marina Bou is interesting because it gives us a Spanish slant on the strange 'polemics' of the Danzcuk crisis.  El Mondo is perhaps the second most influential national newspaper after El Pais in Spain.  What English speaking readers should understand when considering this particular violent incident in the province of Alicante,

is that once upon a time in similar circumstances Simon could have killed Karen and had a strong defence under the 'crime of passion'.

In the early 1960s, when I was working and living on the Cabo San Antonio on the Costa Blanca (White Coast), just  up the coast from where the Danczuk's have their 'house', I was told by my boss of cases in which men in Denia had killed their wives caught red-handed having affairs and who were then liberated after murdering them.  The only worry then was for the men, and it was only I believe a defence for men (not women) who had been cuckolded, to depart their pueblo (town) so that

they themselves would not become victims of a vendetta from members of the victim's family.

As I understand it, the 'Crime of Passion' defence existed in Spain for cuckolded men like Simon Dancuk, until the death of General Franco in the mid-1970s.  Given the other excuses and justifications for his curious behaviour Mr. Dancuk, MP for Rochdale, has come up with so far, I'm surprised he hasn't fallen back on this historic 'crime of passion' defence.

Perhaps even more surprising is the silence of the British feminists over the exploits of the Honorary Member for Rochdale.  What for heavens sake, does the man have to do to incur their wrath?    Apart from Janet Street-Porter on the program 'Looses Women'; so far as I know, only one woman has spoken out against the curious conduct of Simon and Karen Danczuk.  That woman is the former Rochdale Labour Coucillor, Eileen Kershaw, who lives up Whitworth near Rochdale: she wrote a piece entitled 'Pack it in Karen' in the Rochdale Observer, and this was later reprinted under the same title on the Northern Voices' Blog.   
Karen Danczuk told to 'Pack it in'!

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How the Spanish press are reporting the Rochdale 'SCANDAL' as Simon Danczuk, the 'Labour politician' assails his former wife - a translation into English is underneath the Spanish account:

EL parlamentario británico Simon Danczuk, de 49 años, fue arrestado la noche del domingo (date 14th, August 2016) como supuesto autor de un delito de violencia de género contra su mujer en Alicante, el destino elegido por la pareja para disfrutar de sus vacaciones junto a sus dos hijos. Danczuk fue enviado ante un tribunal especializado en este tipo de crímenes en Orihuela, después de que su esposa tuviera que ser trasladada a un hospital con un pequeño corte provocado durante una fuerte discusión.

Tras pasar dos noches en el calabozo (la primera con la Policía Local y la segunda con la Guardia Civil), ella no presentó cargos y el caso fue archivado este martes una vez ambos declararon ante el juez en una audiencia a puerta cerrada.  El político -suspendido por los laboristas en diciembre al admitir que había enviado mensajes de alto contenido sexual a una joven de 17 años- fue liberado el mismo día debido a que su mujer se negó a ratificar en la corte lo que había dicho a la policía. Según la prensa británica, la familia se encontraba de vacaciones en su casa del municipio valenciano de Algorfa cuando empezó la pelea y los vecinos llamaron a la Policía Local, que lo arrestó y lo retuvo en el calabozo hasta que la Guardia Civil lo remitió a los juzgados de Orihuela.

El político -cuyo partido se ha negado a hacer ningún comentario- salió supuestamente de su casa esposado por la policía, tras arrebatarle el teléfono a su esposa y lanzarlo a una piscina al grito de "Karen, sólo quiero hablar contigo". La pelea habría surgido de una escena de celos de Danczuk, que se casó con su mujer tras su elección como parlamentario en 2010 y habría aceptado recientemente su adicción al sexo y una aventura con una joven de 22 años. Ella saltó a la fama después de compartir una serie de fotografías subidas de tono en Internet. La decisión del tribunal aún no es definitiva, pues se puede apelar si cambia de opinión y decide testificar contra su marido.

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Escándalo en España
translation of the above report in El

by Marina Bou (London 18/08/2016) on El Mondo website

The polemics of Simon Danczuk:  arrested in Alicante for harassing his partner:
THE British parliamentarian, Simon Danczuk, 49-years-old, was arrested on Sunday (14^th, August) for allegedly being the author of an offence of violence against his partner (Karen Danczuk) in Alicante, where the couple were enjoying their holidays with their two sons.  Danczuk appeared before a Special Court for these types of crimes in Orihuela, following which his partner (Karen) was taken to hospital with a small cut provoked during a strong discussion (Spanish journalistic irony or under statement?).
After he past two nights in cell (the first with the local police and the second with the Civil Guards), she (Karen Danczuk) did not present her evidence and the case was filed this Tuesday (16/08/16) and both parties accepted a declaration before a Judge in a private audience. 
The politician, Danczuk – who was suspended by the Labour Party last December when he admitted sending messages with a high sexual content to a young girl of 17-years – was liberated (by the Spanish authorities) on the same day that his partner failed to ratify in the Court what she had previously told the police.  According to the British press , the Danczuk family were taking their vacations in their house in the Valencian municipality of Algorfa when a an argument began and the neighbours called the local police, who the arrested Danczuk and took him to the cells and later to the Civil Guards barracks before placing him before the Judge in Orihuela.
The MP, who did not want to comment, is believed to have left his house in handcuffs with the police, after snatching the telephone of his partner and throwing it into the swimming pool with the cry:  'Only Karen wants to talk to you'.
The row had cropped up after a jealous scene of Danczuk, he had married Karen after his election in 2010, and has recently admitted his addiction to sex and an adventure with a young 22-year-old girl.  For her part, Karen, sprang to fame after she shared a series of risqué photographs on the Internet.  The decision of the Court in Orihuela is not yet final, it is still possible for there to be an appeal if there is a change of opinion and (Karen) should decide to testify against her partner (marido).

Workers sacked and replaced by prison labour. POA says government's use of prison labour, is immoral and disgusting!

Earlier this year the Daily Mail newspaper, ran a story that the Swedish company IKEA, had used political prisoners in STASI camps in East Germany during the 1970s and '80s to make the IKEA sofa. Mail readers were told that prisoners working three shifts a day were used to assemble cheap furniture for the company whose founder, the Swedish billionaire, Ingvar Kamprad, had been an active recruiter for a Swedish NAZI group the SSS, while a young man. In 1987, IKEA had also ordered 45,000 tables to be manufactured in Cuba, most of which, had also been made by prisoners. The newspaper stated that all this had been revealed on Swedish national television and that Kamprad, had apologised and doubled his charitable donations to £100m.

Now, as we all should know, the former GDR (East Germany) and Cuba, are Communist country's and amongst other things, what is implicit within this story written in a right-wing English newspaper, is the view that the use of prison labour is what you might expect from any beastly communist regime that imprisons its citizens for their political opinions. We are expected to be shocked by this, because we're being led to believe, that such a thing could never happen in a country like little old England.

Of course, prisoners have always undertaken work within prisons and are often glad of it. But as Britain heads towards a triple dip recession, the clueless Con-Dem government, have latched onto a novel way to boost the profits of companies which has the potential to undercut the wages of those in work, and to put more workers on the dole.

Increasingly, what we are now seeing in Britain is the use of prison labour to work outside of prison for a pittance, for the benefit of private companies, which is euphemistically described by the government as 'training' or 'work experience'.

Last week, the Guardian newspaper revealed that dozens of prisoners from Prescoed prison in Monmouthshire, Wales, were being ferried in busses to go to work in Cardiff for a call-centre that is operated by a company called 'Becoming Green' a roofing and environmental refitting company. The prisoners are being paid the princely sum of £3 per day and according to the newspaper, since being taken on, the company has fired 17 paid members of its staff. Although not 'political prisoners', the Guardian says their convictions range from murder to fraud and drug offences. A former employee of the company told the newspaper:

"As they started bringing more and more in, they (the company)started firing people... They would have kept their jobs if it wasn't for the prison thing... Everyone was pretty miffed because at the end of the day there's no way you can compete with £3 a day."

The company confirmed that since starting the prisoners, it had sacked other workers for "performance issues" but denied that they had been sacked because it was cheaper to hire prison labour. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ), said they had sought assurances from the company that the prisoners would be put into "genuinely vacant" posts.

Steve Gillan, the General Secretary of the Prison Officer's Association (POA), said:

"For any company to rely on the cheap labour of prisoners was 'immoral and disgusting'. The POA wants to see prisoners working and leading law-abiding lives, but not at the expense of other workers being sacked or laid off to facilitate it."