Only Nice People On Social Media! by Les May

WHEN Boris Johnson said that he was going to ensure that social media companies will be compelled to remove ‘racist’ material from their sites under threat of losing 10% of the revenue stream generated in the UK, I have no doubt that he meant it, at least when he said it. But as the saying goes ‘the devil is in the detail’.

As was pointed out on this blog only recently, racial discrimination involves an individual, a group or a state treating individuals or groups of individuals differently based upon their race, colour or origin. It should be noted that this includes both preferential and prejudicial treatment, and requires some identifiable action to be taken by the individual, group or state. By contrast ‘racism’ is an ideological stance adopted by some people and people holding this view may or may not involve themselves in any action which constitutes racial discrimination. In other words it is an idea which some people have in their heads. Johnson’s problem is going to be whether he wants to be a politician who tries to legislate against ideas.

Here’s a little test. You come across the following seven separate posts on social media; at what point does the needle on your ‘outrage meter’ move into the red zone and you start to demand that that the offending post be removed.

‘You took that penalty like you were wearing carpet slippers! You played like a big girl! Where your boot laces tied together you big queer? An open goal and you missed, are you blind or something? I’ve seen cripples play better! Lazy bastards like you shouldn’t be in the team! Get back where you belong you white/black/brown bastard!’

All of these are things that someone might have said after watching eleven millionaires chasing a ball. None of them involve any action against another individual or group. The perpetrator’s only action was to type something, press a button and hey presto! Any individual reading any one of these might take exception to it on the grounds that they find it abusive. If they want to exaggerate they will call it ‘hate speech’.

And that’s another problem Johnson will face. Will a law tailored to satisfy the demands of those who feel outraged by recent events open the flood gates for other groups to expect that a law be enacted to satisfy their specific demands?

On the NV blog a year ago, 29 June 2020, I said that having read some of the abusive posts directed at Priyamvada Gopal, who had posted a ‘tweet’ which said “I’ll say it again. White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives”, I thought you would meet nicer turds in a slurry pit. But being unpleasant to other people isn’t a crime, nor should it be made one.

The assumption that those who seek legislation make is that if only we can pass the right laws we can make people be nice to each other or at least stop them being unpleasant. Does anyone really believe that?

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Still Failing? by Les May

ON 7 July last year Northern Voices published an article I wrote with the title ‘Why Black Lives Matter Will Fail’. In it I suggested that the proximate factor in the murder of George Floyd was that the USA has a militarised police force. I went on to say;

‘As of 30 June 2020 a total of 506 civilians were shot in the US, 105 of whom were black. In 2018, there were 996 fatal police shootings, and in 2019 this figure increased to 1,004. For comparison the rate of shootings per million of the population was: black 31, hispanic, 23, white 13, other 4. These figures speak for themselves. By comparison the average number of fatal police shootings per year in England and Wales in the 15 year period 2004/5 to 2018/9 was less than 3 in a population of about 60,000,000, that is about 0.05 per million.’

‘Faced with a fatality rate from police shooting which is 200 to 600 times higher than in the UK one might have thought that saving lives, black, brown and white, by demilitarising US police forces, would be central to any widespread response to the murder of George Floyd. Seemingly it isn’t.’

‘Instead of attempting to attain measurable objectives like improving police training and making officers accountable every time they use a firearm, the emphasis is on "racism", something for which there is no objective measure and having all the explanatory power of asking ‘how long is a piece of string?’ It’s a popular badge to display because it allows the wearer to get a warm glow of satisfaction from ‘calling out’ racists. If by chance the murder of George Floyd causes anyone to remember their humanity and dare to say they think all lives matter, you can call that racist too!’

Anyone viewing the recent video of the events just before a female officer drew her gun thinking she was drawing her Taser, cannot fail to notice the abrasive, bullying behaviour shown by the male officer. It’s the attitude of the police to people they are arresting not the colour of the skin of the victim 20 year old Daunte Wright which led to his death.

If you still think that ‘racism’ is at the root of the problem with policing in the USA try typing the words ‘73 year old woman dementia’ into your favourite search engine. (Startpage, DuckDuckGo, Google) You’ll be presented with more than two dozen reports and a YouTube video relating to the story of a 73 year old woman suffering from dementia being thrown to the ground, and cuffed so violently that she had her arm broken and her shoulder dislocated when she was arrested in Colorado.

After the killing of George Floyd a group calling itself ‘Black Lives Matter; Activist Coalition’ received donations totalling £1.2 million from a gullible British public.

Question; Are Age Concern, Dementia UK and Alzheimer’s Society about to be beneficiaries of similar largess? I think not!

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ASIAN VOICE: Petition for re-instating Batley Grammar School Professor

Tuesday 30th March 2021 09:05 EDT

A Batley Grammar School teacher who triggered protests after showing a cartoon of Prophet Mohammed is believed to be afraid that he and his family will be murdered, his father has reported.

The religious studies professor remains in hiding after receiving death threats and has told his family “it’s all over” and he will never be able to return to his job or his home, The Telegraph reported. The professor was described as a “terrorist” in a letter from one community leader. The West Yorkshire school sent pupils home last week and issued an apology after the parents of Muslim children gathered at the gates to protest.

The teacher’s father in a statement to The Telegraph said, “My son keeps breaking down crying and says that it's all over for him. He is worried that he and his family are all going to be killed. He knows that he's not going to be able to return to work or live in Batley. It's just going to be too dangerous for him and his family.”

In the meantime, a petition from a student of Batley Grammar School noted, “The professor was trying to educate students about racism and blasphemy. He warned the students before showing the images and he had the intent to educate them. He does not deserve such large repercussions. He is not racist and did not support the Islamiphobic cartoons in any manner." This has got out of hand and due to this, students have missed out on lessons because of "peaceful" protestors.

It further notes, “The issue is already nationwide. The professor has already apologised and has been suspended. Against all odds, students wish to make a statement and reinstate him back as a teacher in Batley Grammar School due to his pure intentions. Join with us and make a statement before this is a repeat of what happened to the teacher in France when he showed the same pictures.”

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YORKSHIRE LIVE REPORTS: THOUSANDS SIGN PETITION SUPPORTING TEACHER

Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for a Batley school teacher to be reinstated after he allegedly showed derogatory caricatures of the Prophet Muhammed.

The unnamed teacher, who is now under police protection, has been suspended from his role with Batley Grammar School issuing an apology to parents who have been protesting outside the school gates.

Ricky Gervais has waded in on the row by condemning the protesters and there are calls for the teacher to be reinstated after a pupil started a petition.

It has been signed by thousands of people and is gathering momentum despite [other] protesters calling for the teacher to be sacked.

Other reports:

The organisers behind the online petition claim to be students at the West Yorkshire school.

They said the teacher "was trying to educate students about racism and blasphemy" and was "not racist and did not support the Islamophobic cartoons in any manner".

It added: "This has got out of hand and due to this, students have missed out on lessons because of 'peaceful' protestors" .

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The Importance of Professor Priyamvada Gopal

by Brian Bamford

EDITORIAL NOTE:

COLONIALISM in my experience corrupts both the colonialists and the people being colonised. I recognised that while working in Gibraltar. Hence it should not surprise us that someone like Prof. Priyamvada Gopal should herself show signs demanding entitlement and making claims to privillege about her status at Cambridge. She is clearly a creature of the caste system* which is a 'defining feature of Hinduism' which is part of her own culture.

'"Untouchability" and Segregation

* 'India's caste system is perhaps the world's longest surviving social hierarchy. A defining feature of Hinduism, caste encompasses a complex ordering of social groups on the basis of ritual purity. A person is considered a member of the caste into which he or she is born and remains within that caste until death, although the particular ranking of that caste may vary among regions and over time. Differences in status are traditionally justified by the religious doctrine of karma, a belief that one's place in life is determined by one's deeds in previous lifetimes.

COLOUR COMPLEXIONS ON THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

ON June 25th, this year, the CAMBRIDGE VARSITY website announced that the controversal academic Priyamvada Gopal, Churchill fellow and academic in postcolonial literature in the English Faculty, had been promoted to full Professorial Chair despite a petition on change.org which called for her removal from the University. This comes following news that she was briefly suspended from Facebook and Twitter after sharing some of the messages of the hateful abuse she has received by a campaign launched on a 4chan forum encouraging users to contact the University to call for Gopal’s removal.

The Cambridge University professor Gopal had taken to Twitter to write: 'I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter. As white lives'

She argues that whiteness is primarily a cultural category, not a biological one, and is useful for explaining how western societies work in terms of how society is structured, and how such structures determine power relations between dominant and non-dominant groups.

These remarks came as India's multibillion-dollar skin lightening industry is under fire as Indians seek whiter shade of pale, and India's Bollywood actor, Abhay Deol, said: 'You have to stop buying into the idea that a particular shade is better than others,' Abhay Deol, an actor famous for playing offbeat roles, said on his Facebook page.

Deol had lambasted his Bollywood peers - including Shah Rukh Khan, John Abraham, Shahid Kapur and Deepika Padukone - for endorsing so-called fairness brands and urged them to stop using their popularity to peddle products he called racist.

Meanwhile in India, where Gopal received a BA from the University of Delhi in 1989 and an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, controversy around 'fairness' products has raged for decades, with darker skin shades variously described as "dusky" and "wheatish", and lighter tones sold as more attractive.

The market - which includes creams, face washes, deodorants, even a vaginal whitener - is estimated to be worth about 270 billion rupees ($4 billion) and is growing at a steady clip.

The World Health Organization banned the active ingredients – hydroquinone and mercury – from unregulated skin products.

Research firm Centre for Science and Environment said in a 2014 study that nearly half the creams it tested in India contained mercury, which is "completely illegal and unlawful".

CASTE at the ROOT of RACISM

SOME activists link the bias to an entrenched caste system, where higher-caste Brahmins generally have lighter skin.

In a country where arranged marriages are still the norm, matrimonial ads consistently describe a woman's complexion, and dark-skinned women often pay a higher dowry, activists say.

Bullying and taunting of dark-skinned girls and women is common, while dark-skinned actors complain of fewer roles.

Advertising campaigns for various brands have typically depicted women - and increasingly men - as winning better jobs and partners, thanks to the fairness creams.

But Kiran Khalap, co-founder of brand consultancy Chlorophyll in Mumbai, said the adverts were not to blame.

"Our obsession with fair skin didn't come from HUL or Emami: it's a deep-seated cultural bias that equates being fair with being superior," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

So when we examine Prof Gopal's background on the Indian sub-continent we can perhaps better understand her anxieties about 'blackness', 'whiteness' and colour in general which may make her a bit touchy

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Nothing To Gain, Everything To Lose by Les May

A JEWISH lady by the name of Jenny Manson had an interesting message left on her answerphone which went as follows, "You fucking Nazi bitch… You should burn in the gas oven. You dirty fucking bitch… Stinking, stinking swine… You deserve … to burn in acid." Even more interesting is that the police tracked down the caller and found him to be a middle-aged Jewish man. He was formally cautioned for the offence of malicious communications in May 2019.

Manson it seems is ‘the wrong sort of Jew’. Her crime is that as a co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) she draws attention to the fact that there is a diversity of opinion amongst British Jews both about the level of anti-semitism in the Labour party and about the behaviour of the government of Israel towards Palestinians.

In November she was interviewed by Kirsty Wark about the decision to readmit Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour Party. According the Jewish Chronicle there were ‘complaints logged with the BBC by Jewish campaigners angry at Newsnight’s decision to invite Ms Manson onto the show only a few weeks after the appearance of another leading figure in JVL Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi.’

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was suspended from the Labour party a few days ago. Her crime? There were complaints that she had made some members ‘uncomfortable’ perhaps because she had said, ‘The idea that Jewish people require for their comfort that whole swathes of subjects should not be debated by the membership of this party is insulting to Jewish people.’

The Labour party bars everyone suspended or investigated from sharing any details of their cases. But we do know that Wimborne-Idrissi is not the only Jewish member of the party to have been suspended or investigated on accusations of anti-semitism. The figure now seems to be more than twenty, and includes a significant proportion of the members of the JVL committee. Commenting on the psychological impact on Labour party members who have received Notices of Investigation. She has said: ‘It is Kafkaesque, You are not told who is accusing you. And you are not allowed to discuss it with anyone. So you receive this devastating letter – and are immediately isolated.’

We can gain some insight into what is going on from a comment made about her; ‘She can marry whomever she pleases and hold whatever ideological stance she finds attractive. Naomi Wimborne was free to marry a Muslim, and become Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi... But, given her life choices, is Naomi really in a position to talk publicly as if she is representative of British Jewish identity?’

Some people might find the comment implicitly offensive or suggest it verges on ‘racism’. But the real import of it, as with the complaints to the BBC about interviewing two members of Jewish Voice for Labour on Newsnight, is that it is an attempt to silence people who will not accept that the views presented in Jewish Chronicle and by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), are representative of those of all British Jews.

In addition to Jewish Voices for Labour there are a number of other organisations, Independent Jewish Voices, Jewish Socialists’ Group, Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Manchester Jewish Action for Palestine, Free Speech on Israel, which are equally representative of the views of British Jews. The JLM organisation differs from these other Jewish organisations because it has what Jewish Voices for Labour has called a ‘profoundly Zionist orientation’ and seems to be unwilling to be in any way critical of the treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel.

So anxious is JLM to control the narrative around accusations and definition of anti-semitism, and by inference around Labour’s attitude to the treatment of Palestinians by the state of Israel, that in April 2018 it asked for, and received, a guarantee that JLM would remain Labour's only Jewish affiliate, after suggestions that Jewish Voices for Labour might be allowed to affiliate.

The Jewish Chronicle has described JLM as a 'gathering-place for moderates concerned about the direction the party is taking under Mr Corbyn' and JLM has changed its rules to facilitate this by allowing non-Jews to have affiliate membership so providing a base for attacking him. But the fact that so many Jewish members of the Labour party have been accused of anti-semitism suggests to me that what we are seeing is Labour being the battleground chosen by the Zionist oriented JLM to drown out the voices of protest from other non-Zionist oriented Jews. Corbyn was a reluctant accessory to this; Starmer, Nandy, Long-Bailey and Rayner have jumped in with both feet and embraced it by signing up to the ‘Ten Pledges’ I have written about previously.

Is it not absurd that a definition of anti-semitism is being adopted by the Labour party which can be used against Jewish members on the basis of complaints made by other Jewish members and organisations, some of which like CAA, (Campaign Against Antisemitism) are utterly pernicious and adopt dubious tactics to discredit their opponents? Labour has nothing to gain and everything to lose by allowing this battle to be fought on its territory. Blackmailers always come back for more.

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Lies, Damn Lies and Lies About Statistics

by Les May

AFZAL KHAN, MP for Gorton recently wrote, amongst other things, ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’ and ‘We have seen during this Covid 19 pandemic that people of Muslim heritage have been disproportionately affected.’

The latter statement is complete bunkum because there is no evidence to support it. Kahn’s use of the term ‘Muslim heritage’ is an attempt to give credence to his claim that the followers of Islam form a distinct racial group and should be treated as such. This claim will no doubt come as something of a surprise to all the people who would identify as being Muslims in Africa and China and the Middle East.

The latest research, published only today, indicates that Black people are about twice as likely to become infected as White people and Asian people about one a half times more likely. It provides no statistics and makes no comment about ‘Muslim Heritage’, and no doubt Black and Asian people whose heritage is that of Buddhism, Christianity or Judaism, share an increased susceptibility to infection.

It has been speculated, and it is only speculation not an established fact, that this increased susceptibility results from multi-generational family structures, the nature of their employment and higher prevalence of co-morbidities in these two groups. Equally plausible are that it results from genetic differences or differences in behaviour.

What Kahn is trying to do is claim exceptionalism for Muslims, something which no other religious group in this country has. Roman Catholicism is frequently subject to criticism due to its views on homosexuality, divorce, contraception and abortion. What would your reaction be if Roman Catholics insisted that such criticism is a form of ‘racism’?

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'Muslimness': What's it all in aid of?

by Brian Bamford

BRING ON the Bandwaggon of Muslim Awareness!

AFZAL KHAN MP for Manchester Gorton, wrote to Rochdale Council:

'I am writing to you in my capacity as vice-chair of the All Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. As you may be aware, in 2018 we published our report on 'Islamophobia Defined: the inquiry into a working definition of islamophobia'. The definition is 'Islamophobia is rooted in racism and a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or a perceived of Muslimness', and includes an inexhaustive number of contemporary examples of Islamophobia. It has now been adopted by over eight hundred organisations, such as Manchester and Salford City Councils, Bury MBC, and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.

'Islamophobia is sadly rife across Britain - including the media and public life - and can have distressing real life implications for our Muslim community, including the threat of violence. We have seen during this Covid-19 pandemic that people of Muslim heritage have been dispropotionately affected. This Muslim Awareness Month, is the responsibility of everyone, including all levels of government, to tackle this insidious hatred.'

Yesterday, a concerned Carl Faulkner wrote in response to this that: 'Rochdale Labour and Rochdale Council have adopted a definition of Islamophobia that actually has no legal standing, but is simply something that has been pushed upon them by Afzal Khan MP.'

A CAREER BUILT on being MUSLIM

Afzal Khan was born in Pakistan and came to the UK aged 11. After leaving school without qualifications, he had a number of jobs, including as a Greater Manchester Police constable, before returning to education and qualifying as a solicitor:[1] He is now a partner of solicitors Mellor & Jackson in Oldham.

Khan was first elected a Labour Councillor in 2000, being re-elected in 2004, 2007 and 2011, representing Cheetham Ward. He served as Executive Member for Children's Services. Khan became the first Muslim Lord Mayor of Manchester, taking the position for 2005–2006.

In 2010, Khan was appointed CBE for his race relations work.

In March 2017, he applied to be Labour's candidate in the 2017 Manchester Gorton by-election and was officially selected on 22 March.[14] During the by-election, he said "I condemn the statements made by Ken Livingstone and I believe there is no place for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party." He added, "I have been a lifelong campaigner against racism and anti-Semitism. In 2008, I was awarded a CBE in part for my work encouraging greater understanding between Muslims and Jews."

GORTON's FASHION for 'FOOT in the MOUTH' MPs

Khan was again selected for as the Labour candidate for Gorton in the general election and was elected, becoming Manchester's first Muslim MP.[17] In July 2017, Khan was appointed Shadow Immigration Minister.

However, in July 2019, Khan had to humbly apologised when he shared on Facebook two years earlier a video of American comedian Jon Stewart talking about Benjamin Netanyahu. The text under the video referred to an "Israel-British-Swiss-Rothschilds crime syndicate" and "mass murdering Rothschilds Israeli mafia criminal liars". Khan said he was "mortified", claiming "I didn't read the text below, which contained an anti-Semitic conspiracy about the Rothschilds. I would never have shared it if I had seen that".

It may be worth mentioning that from 1983-2017, Sir Gerald Kaufman, Father of the House of Commons, represented the same Manchester Gorton constituency. And should I say funnily enough in November 2015, he too was castigated by none other than Jeremy Corbyn for claiming: “It’s Jewish money, Jewish donations to the Conservative party – as in the general election in May – support from the Jewish Chronicle, all of those things, bias the Conservatives,” Kaufman said. “There is now a big group of Conservative members of parliament who are pro-Israel whatever government does and they are not interested in what Israel, in what the Israeli government does.

“They’re not interested in the fact that Palestinians are living a repressed life, and are liable to be shot at any time. In the last few days alone the Israelis have murdered 52 Palestinians and nobody pays attention and this government doesn’t care.”

At that time predictable Jeremy Corbyn released a statement saying that Kaufman’s remarks were 'completely unacceptable and deeply regrettable'. He added 'Such remarks are damaging to community relations, and also do nothing to benefit the Palestinian cause,' he said. 'I have always implacably opposed all forms of racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia and will continue to do so. At my request, the chief whip has met Sir Gerald and expressed my deep concern.'

In such a climate of clumsy bumbling blundering politicians, can we be sure that the smart suited former solicitor Afzal Khan MP for Gorton, will not fall foul again of the standards and the taboos of the Muslimness criterior, which he and others are recomending? Or is it just another opportunity for virtue signaliing

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A Nasty Smell from the Pork Barrel by Les May

ONE might have hoped that now that the anti-semitism witch hunt has begun to subside in the Labour party we might see a period of relative calm punctuated only by the ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ knocking eight bells out of each other and in between these bouts there might have been a focus on the things that Labour needs to put right in this country. Things like the gross inequalities in income and wealth, which are linked to both differences in total life expectancy and length of life without disability, and the lack of social housing forcing people into the hands of a new ‘rentier class’ of private landlords.

Seemingly not, judging by a tweet from Rochdale Labour Group which seems eager to sow the seeds of yet another witch hunt, this time in the name of ‘Islamophobia’.

The definition they propose to accept runs as follows; ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type or racism that targets Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. Quite how anyone got from a religious belief, which is open to anyone to adopt, or not, as they so wish, to being a form of ‘racism’ is anyone’s guess. But then again logic does not seem to be a strong point for those who like to dabble in identity politics.

Nor are we offered a working definition of ‘Muslimness’, which seems like a convenient oversight. Is it for example adherence to fasting between dawn and sunset during Ramadan so that believers can experience what it is like to be someone who is so poor that they have to go without food? Or is it cutting someone’s throat because they have been perceived as causing offence? Is it risking your life in a Red Crescent team trying to rescue someone from a collapsed building? Or is it detonating a bomb in a crowded building? As with every other religious faith some of its adherents are good and some are evil. Or as the line from the film ‘The Dynamite Man from Glory jail’ runs, ‘God uses some people, and some people use God’.

This definition has no legal status and to the extent that it can be seen as an attack on our freedom of expression, including the freedom to offend, it is unlikely that any court would offer support to any council, public body or company attempting to using it as a criterion for determining someone’s suitability for continued employment.

Rochdale Labour Group’s decision to announce this looks rather like an exercise in what our American friends call ‘Pork Barrel Politics’, intended to secure the loyalty at the ballot box of a particular group of voters. I look forward to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Pagans lining up to demand similar protection from criticism. And don’t forget the Vegan who wants his dietary choices classed as stemming from a religious belief!

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Mea Culpa. by Les May

WHEN I wrote the recent piece ‘Blackmailers Always Want More’ I described Margaret Hodge’s attempts to avoid the potential consequences, for her, of calling Jeremy Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ I wrote; ‘This must surely be one of the most preposterous exaggerations that any politician has ever uttered’.

I failed to recognise that not all Jewish people would automatically accept her comments at face value. This was a mistake on my part. Below I give the transcript of a response by the historian Michael Finkelstein.

“Dame Hodge hasn’t a clue what it means to talk about deportations, having a suitcase and being prepared to flee. My parents, both of them, were in the Warsaw Ghetto from 1940s until the repression by the Nazis of the uprising in 1943. They were deported at the Umschlagplatz. If you go there now there’s a monument to the deportees, and my mother’s name Maryla and my father’s name Zacharias; they’re on that monument.

“You haven’t a clue, Ms Hodge, Dame Hodge, you haven’t a clue what you’re talking about. You know the suffering? You know the death? My mother used to talk about how she walked the streets of the ghetto and there were dead bodies all around her. She lost both of her parents, all of her family: her sisters, her brother were deported. But unlike you Dame Hodge they weren’t deported to a summer home, they were deported to a death camp. My parents ended up in Auschwitz and Majdenek, and slave labour camps. Where are you going Ms Hodge? To Switzerland? To your chalet? And you have the gall, the brass, the audacity to compare your life with what my parents endured.

“You felt it was like 1930s, when you got a letter from the disciplinary committee. I wonder Dame Hodge when you were in sixth grade and your principal called you down to his office, did it bring back memories of the Holocaust? Or maybe you got a letter from the tax office, and they called you down, did that remind you of the Holocaust? What’s the point… What’s the relevance… What’s the pertinence of dragging in the suffering, the death, the martyrdom of what Jews endured during World War II in this context, except to cheapen and exploit the memory of Jewish suffering, as you carry on a blackmail and extortion racket against Jeremy Corbyn.

“It’s disgusting, it’s revolting, and if any of the rules that are now being implemented in the Labour Party have any meaning whatsoever, if they have any content whatsoever, the first person who should be booted out of the Labour Party is Dame Hodge, for trivialising the memory the Nazi Holocaust and for making wretched, disgusting, repulsive comparisons between herself and what Jews endured during World War II.

“Speaking of bags and suitcases, Dame Hodge, it’s time now to pack your bags, pack your suitcase, and get the hell out of the Labour Party.”

The transcript is taken from; https://wallofcontroversy.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/norman-finkelstein-calls-out-dame-hodge-and-speaks-to-the-crucifixion-of-corbyn/

The original video can be found on YouTube and at; http://normanfinkelstein.com/2018/08/16/norman-finkelstein-to-dame-margaret-hodge-you-havent-a-clue-what-youre-talking-about/

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Think You’re Not A Racist? Take The Test!

by Les May

I LIVE in Rochdale; it is an ethnically diverse town and the district I live in is no exception. Recently I fell into a physically distanced conversation with an old man who lives in the neighbourhood about an incident in which he had been involved a week or so ago.

It seems the he and his somewhat younger wife, who has underlying health problems, had encountered a group of secondary school children in a narrow passage. Needing to negotiate the passage and the children, his wife explained that she was ‘shielding’ and went through without further ado.

When it came the turn of the old man to negotiate the group one of the teenagers, a boy, coughed over him. I don’t know exactly the old man’s age, but I do know it must be in the region of eighty, so his age significantly increases the risk of him dying if he were to become infected with Coronavirus.

The old man’s assessment was that being deliberately coughed over in the middle of a pandemic can reasonably be construed as an assault. Certainly it resulted in alarm and distress for the old man as he told me.

But there’s a twist to this story. As I mentioned earlier, Rochdale is an ethnically diverse town and the old man and the schoolboy belong to different ethnic groups. One of them would I think identify, or be identified by others, as Asian or British Asian, the other as White British. Does this fact propel what happened into a racially motivated action which ought to be reported to the police as a hate incident?

So there we are; we have a ‘perpetrator’, we have a ‘victim’ and we have the fact that the two are from different ethnic groups. In this case does context matter? Should we be ‘colour blind’ in reaching a judgement, or should we take into account the ethnicity of the ‘perpetrator’ and the ‘victim’?

Comments are welcome.

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Conserving Deference by Christopher Draper

“The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate, God made them, high or lowly, And ordered their estate.”

(C F Alexander 1848)

OR so the NATIONAL TRUST would have us believe for 'Europe’s largest conservation charity' above all conserves Britain’s class system. Whilst the National Trust's Country Houses celebrate wealth, power and aristocratic privilege, Chairman, Tim Parker, 'a private-equity asset stripper' with 'a record of brutality and heartlessness towards workers' is sacking 1,200 people, 13% of the Trust’s workforce.

A Strange Kind of Conservation

The gullible swallow the excuse of 'Covid-related income loss' but the National Trust has over a billion pounds of investments to tide it over, not to mention the two hundred million pound personal fortune Chairman Tim Parker made by closing Clark’s shoe factories, sacking workers and outsourcing to Vietnam and then asset-stripping the AA (4,000 sacked) and KwikFit (3,500 sacked).

Charity for the Over-Privileged

National Trust is indispensable to the aristocracy as a mechanism for maintaining social status whilst avoiding taxation. The State is complicit in this game, granting the National Trust a unique legal status (1937 National Trust Act) that facilitates aristocratic tax avoidance (1953 Finance Act). Off-loading liabilities onto National Trust the toffs who remain in residence, retaining title to valuable contents which they permit the Trust to display, maintain and insure then claim back and sell when financially opportune – all for merely allowing limited public access. Income-producing assets such as shops, farms, pubs, holiday cottages etc are also retained. It is a cynically perpetuated myth that there’s been any fundamental redistribution of landed wealth and power in Britain since the Victorian era.

Welcome to Dudmaston Hall

'I am Elfrida and I live here with Mark and our two children, Oscar and Rachel, plus a few family pets! We have followed in the footsteps of Mark’s parents, James and Alison Hamilton-Russell…The photographs we have spread around the Entrance Hall and family rooms belong to the Hamilton-Russell family – most of which have been taken somewhere here at Dudmaston – see if you can spot where! As a visitor to the house, not many people realise that your front door is our front door…' This drivel continues and comprises the introductory leaflet I was handed on arrival at Dudmaston, as volunteer room guides, with hushed deference, revealed that lady bountiful herself was arranging flowers in the hallway. The Trust fosters this reverential aura of enduring aristocracy, inviting visitors to share their jaundiced view of reality.

Thoughts of Chairman Tim

Tim approves of this nonsense and is so pleased with the “history” projected by the Trust’s country houses that he told the Daily Express, 'Immigrants should visit stately homes to feel more British…we all of us need to have a sense of how we arrive at where we are today' - although not all of us arrived in a Porsche, with £200m in the bank and owning expensive homes in Hampshire and Chelsea.

The British?

Managing mansions is NT’s core business and each embodies, promotes and celebrates an air-brushed version of aristocracy from which all reference to slavery, exploitation, racism, criminality and colonial oppression has been excised; a picture of the past in which the great mass of ordinary, working class people are invisible. When immigrants, on Tim’s recommendation, visit the grand houses over which he presides the only “British” they see represented, from Francis Drake to Robert Clive, were in large part rapacious racists and ruthless exploiters sufficiently deferential to monarchy to be 'ennobled'. 'Their story' never was 'Our story'.

Who Lives in a House Like This?

The Trust’s selection of whose story is told starts with its acquisition of properties – a portfolio stuffed with grand country houses but no mining villages, holiday camps, allotments or council flats. As Times correspondent Brian Hughes observed in 2007 'The National Trust has always been keener on conserving the houses of the rich and powerful than those of the riff-raff…' In recent years Trust made a token effort to acquire a few less than grand houses, usually because they’re associated with 'celebrity' but of all the hundreds of National Trust properties only one represents radical challenge to class privilege and that’s Rosedene an 1840’s Chartist cottage. Even then the Trust restricts visits and uses the cottage as a holiday let. 'English Heritage' criticises the National Trust’s misrepresentation of the property as 'visitors are presented with a slightly rosy interpretation of rural life rather than the revolutionary force that Chartism represented in the mid-nineteenth century.'

Kedleston Hall

In contrast, the National Trust is keen that you 'Experience the ambitious grandeur of this lavishly decorated 1760’s show palace, lived in over the centuries by the Curzon family. Discover the treasures of the Eastern Museum, a collection amassed by Lord Curzon while he travelled through Asia and during his service as the Viceroy of India...” There’s no hint from NT that Curzon imposed divide and rule, setting Hindu against Muslim, - an arrogant Imperialist, even Balliol, his old college has hidden away his portrait out of post-colonial embarrassment. Nor does the Trust care to mention that Kedleston’s current incumbent, the Hon. Richard Francis Nathaniel Curzon was in 2016 jailed for serial convictions of driving whilst banned. His older brother, the Rt Hon. Peter Ghislaine Nathaniel Curzon, the 4th Viscount Scarsdale is the rightful occupant of Kedleston’s 23-roomed Georgian Wing and two servants’ flats granted rent free in perpetuity by the Trust but he was imprisoned for refusing to pay his divorce settlement and never returned. Perhaps fear rather than prejudice prevents the National Trust/i> from including such unsavoury aristocratic history for Peter Curzon warned a Daily Mail reporter who tracked him down, 'Be careful what you write because people like us are very powerful – how do think Earls can do away with their nannies and disappear?'

Conserving Privilege

It’s difficult to unearth the range of privileges NT concedes to 'donors' as it refuses to publish these 'gentleman’s agreements'. They’re often arrived at informally, 'between friends', only for this imprecision to cause rifts when subsequent generations claim title to valuable contents. This occurred, for example, at Chirk Castle where descendants reclaimed and sold several valuable items before NT formalised contracts.

At Penrhyn Castle, Richard Charles Harper Douglas-Pennant retains title to a mansion in the grounds as well as 75% of the castle’s contents. NT’s Castle guidebook originally featured Jan Steen’s painting of the 'Burgomeister of Delft', until in 2004 it was withdrawn from exhibition on Douglas-Pennant’s instruction and sold for £8.1m. The current edition of the guidebook features Rembrandt’s portrait of 'Catrina Hoogsaet – the masterpiece of the collection', unfortunately Douglas-Pennant reclaimed and sold that in 2015 for £35m. In lieu of paying inheritance tax on that sale the government accepted title of 34 minor paintings already on show in the castle, including six eighteenth century watercolours of Jamaica where the family owned sugar plantations until 1943.

Skeletons

Bodnant Gardens is unusual amongst NT properties, as it wasn’t financed from profits of the slave trade but here, as elsewhere, NT assists in hiding aristocratic skeletons. There’s a deafening silence over the curious disinheritance of John Pochin, the only son of the garden’s founder (hence the estate passed from the “Pochins” down the female line to the “McLarens”). Then there’s Charles Melville McLaren’s guilty secret - until three years before he died, Lord Aberconway, father of the present incumbent, concealed the fact that he was amongst a group of seven British businessmen who secretly met Goering and other leading Nazis on an island off the German coast, just three weeks before war was declared in a last ditch appeasement attempt to offer Hitler a 'second Munich agreement'. The tragic effect of this meeting was to encourage the Nazis to invade Poland in the belief that Britain would not fight.

At Bodnant the Trust maintains the accessible 82 acre gardens but the family retain ownership of the 5,000 acre estate which includes farms, forestry, holiday cottages and retail outlets that the National Trust obligingly channels 260,000 visitors through each year. Michael Duncan McLaren forbids access to Bodnant Hall even though he works in London as a highly successful commercial barrister owning multi-million pound houses in Kensington and Tuscany.

Venite Adoremus

Plas Newydd was given to the Trust by the Marquis of Anglesey in 1976 but the family retain ownership of Parys Mountain which supplied invaluable copper to the African slave trade. You wouldn’t learn this from the National Trust’s presentation of the property nor would you discover much about the extraordinary life of the flamboyantly camp fifth Marquis of Anglesey as the family don’t want this publicised. The Marchioness does wish that her late husband’s study remains on view, unchanged and maintained as a shrine to his memory and NT duly complies. The Trust’s site manager, Jane Richardson, did clash with the Marchioness over her insistence on limiting public access to the gardens but was forced to concede after she was 'given a very, very clear steer' by the Trust’s Director General 'That I have a responsibility to work with the donor family and to keep them happy'!

Conserving Control

The National Trust’s Constitution provides for the restraint rather than representation of members’ views. It is a centralised and hierarchical organisation with a Chairman heading a ruling Council while the executive wing is controlled by a 'Director-General' and 'Executive Team'. Although NT comprises 14,000 staff, 65,000 volunteers and 5.6 million members they have little opportunity to influence policy.

In 2013 the National Trust bosses commissioned Leicester Business School to investigate disaffection amongst volunteers. In 2015 it concluded, 'Volunteers often felt a sense of marginalisation with respect to decision making, property developments, skills utilisation and creative input.' A staff member reported, 'I agree with the volunteers. The volunteers’ complaints are being dismissed as 'bad behaviour' by management. 'As paid staff we cannot express our opinions or feelings, we just have to toe the line.' 'Kim' articulated management’s response, 'We need them to buy into what we are ultimately trying to achieve!'

Sheep and Goats

Trust bosses claim “Our pay policy recognises that our staff are not motivated or attracted solely by pay…” and reflecting the organisation’s charitable status most of the workforce are indeed modestly remunerated although the bosses employ a different yardstick in calculating their own pay and, conveniently, “The pay arrangements for senior managers are not covered by the Partnership Agreement”. The National Trust’s top 15 bosses pocket two million pounds a year between them while Director-General Hilary McGrady “earns” £190,000 plus perks. Perks for top managers include accommodation in properties donated to the Trust but not open to the public. Thomas Hardy’s home, “Max Gate”, for instance was quietly acquired by the Trust in 1940 but kept under wraps and only opened to visitors 54 years later. Scotney Castle was donated to the Trust in 1970 but wasn’t opened to the public until 2007. For most of the 1970’s and 1980’s Margaret Thatcher occupied a three-bedroomed apartment at Scotney but despite the determined efforts of M.P.Dennis Skinner, National Trust bosses refused to disclose details of this cosy arrangement.

Manipulating the Membership

National Trust members can stand for a position on the ruling Council or submit a motion for debate at the AGM, where nominations and resolutions are decided by members’ votes, but there’s an important proviso. Members not attending routinely authorise the Chairman to vote on their behalf. Most people assume this provides a casting vote in the event of a stalemate but this isn’t the practice at the Trust. The National Trust chairmen, past and present, employ thousands of these 'proxy votes' to systematically vote down motions otherwise endorsed by the majority of members. The anti-democratic effect of this procedure has been denounced at AGM’s for more than fifty years, prompting one unsuccessful nominee, Nicholas Fry a trustee of Chester Cathedral, to describe the Council as a 'a self-perpetuating oligarchy'

.

In 2000 two Q.C.’s, who were also Trust members, successfully proposed a resolution banning the use of the Chair’s 'block vote' only for it to be overturned by the Chairman’s 'block vote'! Facing a membership increasingly angry at the Trust continuing to allow fox hunting on its land, in 2002 the Chairman made free use of the 100,000 'proxies' in his pocket to pack the Council with blood-sports enthusiasts including Clarissa Dickson Wright and Nicholas Soames MP. With a curious irony the National Trust’s 'democratic deficit' was denounced by the House of Lords! Forced to reform, the Trust’s Chair was compelled to reveal to members, for the first time, exactly how many proxy votes he cast at AGM’s and proxy voting for Council membership was abolished. Members were then directed which candidates to vote for and these names were printed in bold-type on ballot papers! In a rare victory, at the 2015 AGM, members finally voted out this disgraceful practice despite the chairman casting 4,065 proxy votes against. Of the total of 18 members’ resolutions submitted to the last 7 AGM’s the Chair opposed every single one including motions on ending trail hunting, on banning barbed wire and even on serving Fairtrade tea in the Trust's cafes.

At the 2017 AGM members would have finally banned trail hunts (which are a ruse to continue fox hunting with terrier men convicted for releasing foxes to be ripped to pieces by trail hounds) but the Chair cast 3,460 proxy votes to 'keep on killing'. Seventy or so trail hunts operate on National Trust land but with the 3-year exclusion rule (for resubmitting resolutions) expiring in 2020 the ban was due to be voted on again at this year’s AGM and members were confident of victory. Curiously the National Trust bosses decided to cancel the meeting. Meanwhile the Scottish National Trust responded to Covid by moving its 2020 AGM online. the National Trust adamantly rejects its members’ calls to follow suit.

Beyond Reform

As I’ve illustrated in this series of articles, the National Trust is fundamentally class-biased, racist, uninterested in ending animal cruelty or supporting environmentally friendly transport and the bosses are antipathetic to the views of volunteers, workers and members. It is an undemocratic corporation that’s proved itself incapable of internal reform and must be broken up to create numerous smaller, localised, perhaps county-sized, independent Trusts more willing and better able to reflect the many and varied histories of the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Christopher Draper (Part 4 of 4-part NT series)

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Not Just A Bit Of ‘Wacky-Baccy’ by Les May

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IT SEEMS that the chickens are finally coming home to roost for some Rochdale councillors. Perhaps now they will take seriously the threat of gangsterism in parts of the town.

Last autumn in a series of articles I drew attention to an attack by a hastily assembled gang in the Newbold area which left one young man with life changing injuries when his hand was hacked off by an axe wielding individual who, along with three compatriots, was later sent to prison.

I also published an ‘open letter’ which had been sent individually to all Rochdale councillors asking them to publicly condemn the attack which, although clearly a case of gangsterism, had racial overtones.

Only a few councillors were courteous enough to reply. All were happy to reassure me that they were not ‘racist’, but none were willing to go on record and condemn this attack and the gangsterism it entailed. This led me to conclude that it was reasonable to describe Rochdale Council as ‘institutionally racist’.

Ten months later we have a report that three people, two men and a woman, were arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs. These are considered to be the most harmful and include heroin, methadone, cocaine (including crack cocaine), ecstasy, magic mushrooms and ‘crystal meth’. The arrests took place at addresses in Newbold and Deeplish.

As the estimated ‘street value’ of these drugs isn’t far from one million pounds, we are clearly not talking about a bit of ‘wacky-backy’ in a roll up under the canal bridge. A haul valued at £900,000 points to organised crime, and organised crime points to the involvement of a gang or gangs. With this kind of money involved it makes a mockery of the idea that one can blame the problems of these areas on ‘deprivation’.

If these arrests result in convictions I don’t think it is too much to ask that on this occasion councillors of all political stripes begin to take the problem of gangsterism seriously and say so.

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Not Just A Bit Of ‘Wacky-Baccy’ by Les May

IT SEEMS that the chickens are finally coming home to roost for some Rochdale councillors. Perhaps now they will take seriously the threat of gangsterism in parts of the town.

Last autumn in a series of articles I drew attention to an attack by a hastily assembled gang in the Newbold area which left one young man with life changing injuries when his hand was hacked off by an axe wielding individual who, along with three compatriots, was later sent to prison.

I also published an open letter which had been sent individually to all Rochdale councillors asking them to publicly condemn the attack which, although clearly a case of gangsterism, had racial overtones.

Only a few councillors were courteous enough to reply. All were happy to reassure me that they were not ‘racist’, but none were willing to go on record and condemn this attack and the gangsterism it entailed. This led me to conclude that it was reasonable to describe Rochdale Council as institutionally racist.

Ten months later we have a report that three people, two men and a woman, were arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the supply of class A drugs. These are considered to be the most harmful and include heroin, methadone, cocaine (including crack cocaine), ecstasy, magic mushrooms and ‘crystal meth’. The arrests took place at addresses in Newbold and Deeplish.

As the estimated ‘street value’ of these drugs isn’t far from one million pounds, we are clearly not talking about a bit of ‘wacky-backy’ in a roll up under the canal bridge. A haul valued at £900,000 points to organised crime, and organised crime points to the involvement of a gang or gangs. With this kind of money involved it makes a mockery of the idea that one can blame the problems of these areas on ‘deprivation’.

If these arrests result in convictions I don’t think it is too much to ask that on this occasion councillors of all political stripes begin to take the problem of gangsterism seriously and say so.

'If Liberty Means Anything!'

EDITORIAL STATEMENT: A STATUE of George Orwell stands outside Broadcasting House, the headquarters of the BBC, in London. The wall behind the statue is inscribed with Orwell's words 'If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear'. Although the statue was not unveiled until 7 November 2017, the Northern Voices blog, and before that the magazine of the same name, was established to be a concrete manifestation of that same sentiment. We do not have an alignment with any political party and have a scepticism about the activities of many politicians. It will be apparent to readers that our contributors have left of centre allegiances. This covers a spectrum of libertarians, trades unionists and democratic socialists. We believe that everyone has the right to have a different viewpoint from ourselves and from others, irrespective of who they are, and no one should be prevented from expressing that viewpoint, even if we or others disagree with it. This does not place upon us any obligation to publish material which is abusive, unsubstantiated or merely an assertion. However often an assertion is repeated, it does not make it true. In commenting on the views of others we avoid overused terms like, racist, sexist, homo-phobic, trans-phobic, islamo-phobic, anti-semitic, fascist, nazi etc, and object to their use in contexts where they are little more than abuse intended to intimidate others into remaining silent and so stifle debate on contentious issues. If anyone reading this blog objects to what one of our contributors has to say then we encourage them to write a comment. Unless they can provide some evidence more substantial than their own opinion about the nature of the content, it is unlikely that it will be taken down or altered.

Who Will ‘Call Out’ Economic Inequality?

by Les May

LAST Friday a US doctor interviewed for the PBS (Channel 91) documentary ‘The Virus: What went wrong?’ said that 40 to 50% of American families were ‘just managing’. In the 1990s the British economist and journalist Will Hutton said ‘We live in a 30:30:40 society.  Thirty percent of people have made it; thirty percent think they will make it and forty percent know they will never make it.’  Two weeks ago an Indian economist speaking on the AlJazeera programme ‘Inside Story’ (Channel 235) said that if less than 1000 of its most wealthy citizens were made to pay a 4% wealth tax, India could double its spending on health care.

In his August 7 2020 article for The Atlantic US journalist Kurt Andersen writes ‘In 2006 the annual revenues of Goldman Sachs were greater than the annual economic output of two-thirds of the countries on Earth—a treasure chest from which the firm was disbursing the equivalent of $69 million to its CEO and an average of $800,000 each to everybody else at the place… In 40 years, the share of wealth owned by our richest 1 percent has doubled, the collective net worth of the bottom half has dropped to almost zero, the median weekly pay for a full-time worker has increased by just 0.1 percent a year, only the incomes of the top 10 percent have grown in sync with the economy, and so on. Americans’ boats stopped rising together; most of our boats stopped rising at all. Economic inequality has reverted to the levels of a century ago and earlier, and so has economic insecurity, while economic immobility is almost certainly worse than it’s ever been.’

Full text at: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/i-was-useful-idiot-capitalism/615031/

Examine it closely and Boris Johnson’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda is just a re-run of Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Trickle Down Economics’; invest in infrastructure to boost productivity in the North to London levels; the rich will get even richer and a bit of that wealth will trickle down. There will be no change in the relative levels of income; it will still be a world of zero hours contracts, food banks, two jobs and insecure tenancies for those at the bottom of the heap.

Who cares? Certainly not the young, or at least not the privileged young, that 30% who will ‘make it’ or the 30% who think they will. They are far too busy demanding the removal of statues, patronising those they see as ‘oppressed’ by demanding ‘safe spaces’ for them, and ‘no platforming’ speakers because they lack the ability or willingness to engage in rational debate with anyone they disagree with.

Speaking at the Oxford Union in 2017 Bernie Sanders said:   'There is an area which is not nearly so sexy as dealing with race, as dealing with gender, as dealing with homophobia and that is the economic struggle and in that struggle we are not only not making progress, we are losing ground'.  As if to emphasise his point the applause came when he made reference to ‘gay’ marriage in the UK.

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

If the young don’t care, what about ‘The Left’.  How about Labour?  You’ll remember in February three Labour leadership hopefuls declared themselves Zionists and one, Lisa Nandy, said if she became leader she would press for the IHRA definition of anti-semitism to be accepted by the Labour party. This is some of what the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has to say about that definition;

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.

This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.

Full text at: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english

Same month, same cast; Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Emily Thornberry all pledged support to the 12 demands of the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights. To which one senior Shadow Cabinet member representing a northern constituency is reported to have said ‘My constituents don’t give a flying fuck about transsexual issues’.

Text at: https://twitter.com/Labour_Trans/status/1226939313264394241

Their priorities seem to be different from mine, but I suppose being on £80k or so blunts the judgement when it comes to thinking about poverty. Increasingly ‘wealth creation’ for some is generating the makings of poverty for others. We see this especially in the privately rented housing market where a new ‘rentier’ class has emerged funded by rents which require a significant proportion of tenant income.

But ‘The Left’ isn’t just the Labour party and here we have yet another problem. There are those who like me think that our society is structured along economic lines, more wealth equals more privilege, and that our priority should be to tackle the vast inequalities between the richest and the poorest in our society. And there are those who want to view our society as structured along racial lines and insist that getting rid of what they define as racism is far more important than pursuit of a more economically equitable society.

Terms like ‘structural racism’ are dragooned into explanations for everything that is wrong with our society; they are sufficiently vague that they can be made to mean exactly what the speaker wants them to mean at the time.

Structural inequality is measurable; income ratios, wealth ratios, rates of direct tax, infant mortality, years without disability, differential morbidity and mortality, are all good measures. And if we can measure it, we can measure how successful we are at reducing it. Eliminating the inequalities of wealth in our world would do far more to help what some people like to see as ‘oppressed’ groups than any amount of rolling statues into the local dock or ‘calling out’ someone as a ‘racist’.

Postscript. I write this as someone who in Will Hutton’s terms has ‘made it’. That doesn’t mean I’m rich. It just means that I have always had a regular income, decent working conditions, a place to live I wasn’t going to be kicked out of at my landlord’s whim, a warm bed, four meals a day, a pension in my old age...