The REAL HONOURS LIST! by Christopher Draper

TWICE a year, Buckingham Palace bestows royal recognition on hundreds of celebrity nonentities and local minions. For centuries the Crown and its serially sycophantic governments refused to release the names of the honourable men and women who declined the blandishment of these trinkets and tawdry titles. It eventually required the Freedom of Information Act and the intervention of the Information Commissioner’s Office to enable me to compile this select list of our most truly honourable citizens.

1) L S LOWRY (1887-1976) Refused OBE 1955, refused CBE 1961, refused Knighthood 1968, refused Order of Companion of Honour 1972 and 1976.

Salford painter Laurence Stephen Lowry holds the supreme honour of having turned down more pathetic baubles than anyone else. The Establishment initially upped the ante from MBE, through CBE until it reached the level of Knighthood in 1968 and when that failed to impress they tried another tack, attempting, twice, right up to the year of his death, to lure Lowry with offers of the more modest title “CH” but he never succumbed to such unworthy blandishments. Respect!

2) KEN LOACH (1936 - - - ) Refused OBE 1977 – “I turned down the OBE for several reasons; it’s not a club you want to join when you look at the villains who’ve got it… As a republican, I can’t accept anything from the Queen… It also meant I would be receiving something in the name of the Empire, which as an anti-Imperialist I don’t see how anyone can accept.”

3) HOWARD GAYLE (1958 - - - ) Refused MBE 2016 – the first black footballer to play for Liverpool FC declined “for the reason that my ancestors would be turning in their graves after how the Empire and Colonialism had enslaved them.”

4) KINGSLEY MARTIN (1897-1969) Refused Knighthood 1965 – Conscientious Objector to WWI. Martin was a journalist with the Manchester Guardian before editing the leading left-wing magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960, where “Martin positively relished being a perpetual critic of the Labour leadership”. In 1957 he chaired the founding meeting of CND and in his books “The Magic of Monarchy (1937)” and “The Crown and the Establishment (1962)” Kingsley Martin put forward the first modern arguments for British Republicanism. “The Monarchy…is the secret well from which the flourishing institution of British Snobbery draws its nourishment.” In a cynical and ill-judged attempt to undermine Martin’s reputation, in 1965 he was offered a Knighthood which he rapidly rejected.

5) ALBERT FINNEY (1936-2019) Refused CB 1980, refused Knighthood 2000 – “Knighthood is a disease that perpetuates snobbery… Maybe people in America think being a 'Sir' is a big deal but I think we should all be misters together.”

6) IORWERTH PEATE (1901-1982) Refused OBE 1963 – joint founder of “St Fagan’s Museum”, Wales’ national folk-life collection. After registering as a Conscientious Objector in 1941 Peate was sacked as Curator of the collection but later re-instated by the museum’s Board of Governors. Uninterested in joining the English Establishment and committed to studying, preserving and promoting the culture, language and everyday artefacts of the people of Wales, in 1963 Iorwerth Peate creditably refused to be appointed an “Officer of the Order of the British Empire”. Da Iawn, ti!

7) BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH (1958- - - ) Refused OBE 2003 – Rastafarian performance poet Benjamin Zephaniah comprehensively rejects everything the honours system represents - “I get angry when I see the word “empire”; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds me of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised.” Benjamin deserves an extra honours point as his eloquent shaming, live on Channel Four News, of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, MBE not only prompted her to guiltily return the bauble but transformed her in into a vociferous (if belated) critic of these cringeworthy awards.

8) HONOR BLACKMAN (1925-2020) Refused CBE 2002 – Acclaimed actor, self-declared republican and Liberal who opposed Monarchy and Margaret Thatcher, “She was merciless…she did damn all for empowering women… I’m not too happy about the Falklands either…” Honor by name, Honour by nature!

9) J G BALLARD (1930-2009) Refused CBE 2003 – Novelist James Graham Ballard was contemptuous of the honours system, “It is exploited by politicians and always has been…I think it’s deplorable when leftwing playwrights like David Hare who have worn their socialist colours on both sleeves for so many years, should accept a knighthood… The honours system is a Ruritanian charade that helps to prop up the top-heavy monarchy… It makes us look a laughing stock and encourages deference to the crown.”

10) BOB HOLMAN (1936-2016) Refused MBE 2012 – In 1987 Christian Socialist Bob Holman abandoned his comfy life teaching “Social Administration” at Bath University to put theory into practice and work on community projects in Easterhouse, one of the most deprived parts of Glasgow. Spurning the condescension of royal recognition in 1987, Holman comprehensively excoriated the honours system not just to explain his own action but explicitly to incite others to decline: “The unelected monarchy reinforces and sanctions inequality. The BBC and most of the press pour undiluted praise on the royals whilst imposing a virtual gag on the views of republicans. No senior politician has the courage to question the continuation of the monarchy…Refusing a royal honour is a small step but one in the right direction.” Amen brothers and sisters!

(This is the third and final part of Chris’s series on the British Honours System – previous articles are archived and available on this NORTHERN VOICES site)

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

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’?

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

Belarus: Release 42 trade unionists who were arrested this afternoon

A few days ago I wrote to give you the good news that four union leaders who had been jailed in Belarus were now free.

  

We know that our campaign helped.  They told us so in a video.

But this afternoon we received some terrible news: some of those very same union leaders, together with around 40 other union members, were arrested by the police and are now being held in a local police station.

They are likely to be held until Monday and possibly much longer.

The independent trade unions of Belarus and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) have called for a global campaign of protest.

Please join us in sending an urgent message to the local and national police demanding their release.

 

Free the 42 jailed trade unionists now!

Thank you!

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

Eric Lee ***********************************************************

John McDonnell: 'Mistake' on Spy Cop Powers

POLITICS 09/10/2020 14:14 BST

John McDonnell has warned Keir Starmer it is a “mistake” to order Labour MPs to abstain on controversial laws that give MI5 and police undercover operatives the power to commit crimes.

The former shadow chancellor was, along with Jeremy Corbyn, one of 20 Labour MPs to defy Starmer’s orders and to vote against the legislation this week.

He described the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill, which will put into law for the first time an exemption to allow undercover informants working for the police and MI5 to commit crimes, as “unsupportable”.

And he urged Starmer to give Labour MPs a free vote in future divisions on the legislation, describing it as a “matter of conscience” because it deals with life and death.

Campaigners have long called for informants’ shadowy practices to be put in law, as long as there are safeguards to explicitly exclude murder, torture or sexual violence.

But the bill is deliberately vague on this as ministers fear that terrorists or others will be able to expose undercover agents by setting them tests against a “checklist” of crimes.

Starmer has said he will try to amend the Bill but McDonnell stressed: “I just can’t see what amendment would enable Labour to vote for this legislation and therefore if you can’t vote for it, and it is so serious, you just have to vote against”.

On Labour’s apparent plans to continue abstaining on the laws if it cannot pass amendments, McDonnell told HuffPost UK’s Commons People podcast: “I just think it’s a mistake.

“On issues like this, they are matters of conscience, they are dealing with life and death in some instances and certainly in terms of extreme emotional and physical harm that could take place as well.

“I think actually you do have to take a decision and you have to stand up on these ones.

“If the Labour frontbench doesn’t do that, that’s a matter for them, but I’ve made it clear that I won’t vote for this legislation.

“And I can’t see how it could be amended to make it in any way effective in those terms.

“I do not see how we can sanction state agents, whether they be military, police or others, or undercover agents, to perpetrate murder, rape or torture in our names.”

McDonnell described the timing of the Bill’s introduction as “extremely suspicious”, despite a recent court case on the issue, and speculated that Boris Johnson and his chief aide Dominic Cummings may be trying to undermine Starmer’s attempts to paint himself as a patriot.

And he called on Starmer and other party leaders to give their MPs a free vote.

McDonnell said:

“I think it is, to a certain extent, Boris Johnson and Cummings and others playing politics with this./i>

“Keir quite rightfully has, in his conference speech, made it clear about his own personal patriotism and what the party stands for in that respect.

“And I wonder, I just speculate, whether these Bills were brought forward with a view to try and undermine some element of that.

“If it is a grubby political exercise like that by the Tories I think it’s despicable.”

He added: “Anything that involves the potential of determining life and death like this I think is a matter of conscience and I would rather there was no whip whatsoever across the whole House.”

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

'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

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

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!

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

The Covid 19 Vaccine Has Pros and Cons.

by Les May

THE new vaccine developed to provide protection against the SARS Cov2 virus which causes the disease which we know as Covid 19, has one huge advantage; it does not contain any attenuated or killed virus particles. Potentially this makes it an even safer candidate for extensive use.

The four letters mRNA stand for messenger RiboNucleicAcid. Viruses whether they infect, bacteria, fungi, plants or animals, are essentially strings of instructions, (messages) which tell infected cells what to produce and how it should assemble the components. An mRNA vaccine works by copying just a small part of these instructions. It’s the bit which instructs the cell how to produce just the molecules (antigens) found on the surface of the virus which the immune system of our body recognises. The immune system then produces antibodies which can lock onto the antigen on the surface of any virus particles if the individual becomes infected.

Because the synthesis of the mRNA is essentially a chemical process done in the laboratory there is no possibility of virus particles being introduced into the vaccine. But there’s some bad new as well.

The molecules of mRNA are not stable at higher temperatures and in this case ‘higher temperatures’ are still very much colder than your average deep freeze. After manufacture the vaccine must be kept at about minus 80 degrees Celsius at all times, otherwise it will degrade and become non-functional.

This is not a problem for laboratories and hospitals, but it is for local surgeries and pharmacies, both of which have been suggested as locations where the vaccine could be administered.

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

‘Little faith’ in spy cops inquiry getting to truth

By Zaki Sarraf Justice Gap reporter 3 November 2020 |

The public inquiry into undercover policing Inquiry began yesterday five years after the then Home Secretary Theresa May announced the inquiry. It will examine the contribution that undercover policing has made to tackling crime, how it is supervised, regulated and the effect on individuals involved. The inquiry will also examine whether individuals may have been wrongly convicted in cases involving so called spy cops.

Bindmans Solicitors are acting for a number of the core participants. ‘Our clients have waited more than five years for this Inquiry to commence,’ the firm said. ‘During this time the Inquiry has granted anonymity to most of the undercover police officers being called to give evidence, in some cases to their cover names as well as their real names.’

‘Those of us who have been following the Undercover Policing Inquiry go into the start of proceedings today with very little faith in the process,’ commented core participant Tom Fowler. ‘The huge concessions to police anonymity that that has been partly responsible for the delays that have taken five years for the Inquiry to get started gave made sure of that. We will however be watching proceedings closely in the hope that some droplets of truth will sneak out. Myself and others will be providing live updates over the duration of the hearings, using the #spycops hashtag on Twitter.’

Theresa May’s announcement of the judge-led inquiry in 2015 was in response to Mark Ellison QC’s review which sought to answer whether there was evidence of corruption in the Metropolitan Police during the investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence; whether the Met had evidence of corruption it did not disclose to the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder; and whether there was inappropriate undercover activity directed at the grieving Lawrence family.

The Ellison review found undercover officers being deployed to influence and smear the Lawrence family campaign whilst the Macpherson inquiry was ongoing. Specific allegations by police officers of corruption against other officers were ignored by their superiors and not brought to the attention of Macpherson; key evidence was shredded by the Police; and undercover officers failed to correct evidence given in court which they knew was wrong. In March 2014, Theresa May May described its findings ‘profoundly shocking’ and ‘of grave concern’.

The Lawrence case is one example of undercover policing and there are over 230 core participants in the UCPI including individuals that have been duped into relationships with undercover officers, families of victims of murders, politicians, trade unionists and more – a full list of the core participants can be found here. Sixty-nine officers’ names have been published from the Special Demonstration Squad to enable members of the public to determine whether they were affected by undercover policing and come forward with evidence.

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

Stuart Christie and the Spirit of Don Quixote

by Brian Bamford

REASSESSING STUART CHRISTIE IN CONTEXT

Stuart Christie: a Scottish anarchist writer and publisher. 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. When he died he was probably the best know anarchist in the UK.

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

Died: August 15, 2020

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

From Shakespeare's Macbeth: "I dare do all that may become a man; Who dares do more is none." in Macbeth act 1

From Christie's 'My Granny...' on pages 32-33: 'I couldn't warm to Shakespeare in the classroom. He simply had no resonance with us. The language was remote and difficult, as was the historical period...'. (Rabbie) Burns* was my first encounter with the emotions and ideals I've since come to call socialism. Who could grow up to be anything but a class war socialist on reading Burns' clarion call to egalitarianism in "A Man's A Man For A' That".'

ON REVIEWING Don Quixote and Cervantes** in 'The LITERATURE OF THE SPANISH PEOPLE' Gerald Brenan writes: 'the KNIGHT of the DOLEFUL COUNTINANCE is mad, and that's that. But presently it dawns on us that his madness is confined to one thing - the belief, not itself irrational by the standards of that age, that the books of Chivalry were true histories. Once that is taken for granted, it was no more mad for him to attempt to revive the profession of knight-errantry than it was for a monk to imitate the Fathers of the desert.'

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

WHEN CONSIDERING the role of Stuart Christie and his adventures on the Spanish peninsular in August 1964, we would do well to observe his likeness to the knight of the Doleful Countenance. We learn for instance that Don Quixote was conceived by Cervantes in a Spanish jail at a low water mark in his life. Much like, I dare say, Stuart's autobiography 'My Granny Made Me An Anarchist'.

Interestingly Gerald Brenan writes of Don Quixote: '...in so far as Cervantes intended the figure of Don Quixote to stand for anything, it was quite simply for a man who ruins himself and others by his romantic and generous illusions and by his over-confidence in the goodness of human nature.'

Moreover, Brenan claims: In the novel '...there is the contrast between the actual situation and what it appears to be to Don Quixote: there is that between his noble and exalted way of feeling and Sancho's peasant shrewdness and self-interest: and if one likes, that between the knight's wise and sane ratiocinations and his violent fantasies whenever the subject of Chiivalry enters his head.'

In all this it is hard to escape the feeling that the Stuart that I met in Paris in August 1964, already commited to carry explosive to Madrid, was so full of Rabbie Burns* and the Bonnot Gang. So wound-up was he on romance that he could have been a younger version of Lord Byron or a kind of blunt working-class Rabbie Burns; pioneer of the Romantic movement .

In El País, the historian Julián Casanova Ruiz has recently written in what I think is the best memorial of Stuart: 'Yet he was a committed anarchist using his pen and 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's suggestion that Stuart Christie was steeped in the 'spirit of the older epoch of Spanish anarchism' implies that he was indeed a romantic soul. Quixote, who has gone mad owing to reading too many books about Chivalry, according to Brenan should not be regarded as 'lacking in shrewdness or being gullible by nature' because 'his delusion is a result of a long secretly sustained wish to rise above the dullness of his monotonous life, have adventures and distinguish himself.'

Any objective reading of Stuart Christie's autobiography will I think confirm that that in 1964 he was determined to escape his dreary life in Glasgow and somehow experience what he then believed the anarchist Holy Land. I felt the same about escaping Manchester and going to Spain in the winter of February 1963.

Alas, the actual Holy Land, as was shown in Don Quixote, was in reality somewhat more complex than any of us anticipated in our overwrought and vivid imaginations. Stuart was determine and he asked: 'Why did I, for the most part an unaggressive and easy-going person, commit myself to going to Spain to engage in an unspecified but violent campaign against the Franco regime?' and he continued 'I wanted to change the world because the world needed to be changed. Right in the middle of Europe, Franco was running one of the most brutal and represive regimes in modern history - he had killed more Spanish people than Hitler killed German Jews - and the Western democracies were now helping him to survive. Even now, while the civilized world was humming along to the songs of the Beatles and the Supremes.... the number of political dissidents being arrested and tortured by Franco's secret police was steadily increasing.'

Stuart's view here is clearly that of a foreigner looking at Spain in the early 1960s, and seeing it with eye of an outsider; the Spaniards I got to know between March 1963 and August 1964 both in the fishing village in Alicante where we lived and worked, and later on in La Linea de la Concepcion near Gibraltar, certainly did not have the feel of being downtrodden. The workers I worked with were mostly optimistic, cheerful and I felt they were more amiable than the workers I knew in England, we all seemed have enough money to live on, but I struggled to put something on one side for a rainy day.

All this everyday reality in the period 1964-67 when Stuart was in jail in Madrid was outside his grasp, and he was consequently able to decieve himself about the nature of Spanish life as it was evolving for most workers in the 1960s. Clearly in 1964, I was financially better off working 5-days for the MOD at the airport in Gibraltar, earning just over £8 for a 40-hour week; than when I was working a 48-hour week in Alicante at the Casa Such for 750 Pesetas (about £5).

Among other things, Stuart seemed to have been influenced by George Orwell's 'Homage to Catalonia', and Orwell wrote in an essay 'The Art of Donald McGill' that 'If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?' and he wrote:

'Almost certainly you are both. There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a little fat man who sees very clearly the advantages of staying alive with a whole skin. He is your unofficial self, the voice of the belly protesting against the soul. His tastes lie towards safety, soft beds, no work, pots of beer and women with "volupuous" figures. He it is who punctures your your fine attitudes and urges you to look after Number One, to be unfaithful to your wife, to bilk your debts, and so on and so forth...'

It seems to me that these attitudes have been poetically displayed in the adventures of Stuart Christie and is amply demonstrated in his autobiography especially were he describes his chance meetings with many amiable fellow prisoners who he concluded to be 'champion' only to later learn that they had committed unimaginable crimes: someone he thought was a 'nice chap' turned out to be Gestapo officer awaiting extradition on charges of mass murder, or an OAS terrorist, a South American gangster, a professional assasin, an arms dealer, a rapist etc. Prison life is like that, you come across all sorts of folk, I don't know about Spain but in places like Strangways prison in Manchester there were clear hierarchies with the wife-killer and the murders at the top, and then people like debtors would be at the bottom, and in the 1960s, this last category were distinguished by having to wear brown, and these days I believe the child abuser is the lowest of the low.

Stuart had been brought up a protestant and he writes:

'Before I went to prison my world-view was black and white, a moral chessboard on which everyone was either a goody or a baddy. But the ambiguities in people I came across in prison made me uneasy and I began to question my assumptions about the nature of good and evil.'

Orwell felt that to be among Spaniards in Spain was to be in the best country in the world for a foreigner. The 10th, July 1967 was Stuart's 21st birthday, and the jefe de servicio agreed to use the infirmary dining room to organise a party for him. The menue was set-up with a kid goat cooked in wine with roast potatoes, ensalada, coffee, cheese and ice cream. Beer, wine and Spanish brandy were supplied. The cabaret was put on by a Philipino rock star who was inside for murdering his agent, together with a band of gypsies who singing and dancing flamenco. The 'do' lasted from 2pm to 11pm. Everyone ended up legless.

Anyone who has lived in Spain and worked among Spaniards in the 1960s will find this account perfect plausable. No wonder Stuart was later to favourably compare his Spanish prison experience with life in an English jail. Somehow the Spaniards conduct themselves a more human manner, sometimes it can be delightful as it was for me when I was detained in the barracks of the Civil Guards up in the province of Segovia after I'd failed to carry my passport as identification returning from a journey to report on a strike of miners in the Asturias. The Civil Guards were unbelievably kind and considerate, and their wives served me up a dinner fit for a King. Maybe a Spaniard who'd failed to carry his identity card would not have received such sympathetic treatment because, as the Gibraltarians have often noted, Spaniards can be cruel to each other; I note for example that Fernando Carballo, Stuart's contact in Madrid, was treated much more roughly in police custody: his wrists were hammered with the butt of a policeman's pistol while another 'systematically punched him in the kidneys and stomach'. (see 'Granny' page 165).

We learn from Gerald Brenan that 'Don Quixote grew out of Cervantes' long and painful experiences of frustration and failure' and he adds 'It thus deals with one of the classic themes of Spanish literature - disillusionment.' According to Brenan, who lived in Spain on and off from 1919 when he came out of the British army after the First World War, 'Spaniards who commonly set their hopes too high and expect a miracle to fulfil them, often come to feel themselves deceived by life.'

When we were in Paris in February 1963 and about to leave for Spain, Salvador Gurucharri our handler told me he was atheist who believed in the God of nature,and I've noticed this with other Spaniards over the years. Gerald Brenan in his book The Spanish Labyrinth writes about this importance of nature with regard to Bakunin: 'He (Bakunin) therefore maintains that a free society will necessarily create strong, open, outstanding men and accepts without fear a strengthening of those great conservative forces that govern societies - custom and public opinion, which are good "because they are natural".' Brenan writes 'Something must be said about this word "natural", for it is one of the keys to Bakunin's ideas.' Bakunin, rather like John Ruskin and the romantics, seems to have felt angish at the growing artificiality of modern life, Brenan claims that for Bakunin 'all artificiality in his eyes was bad, so all "nature" was good.'

Bakunin is recognised as having a great influence on Spanish anarchism.

When I set out to write this piece on Stuart Christie I had in mind a critique based on the idea that he was a romantic who had too much faith in actions like setting off small bombs that at best only got the coverage of a small column in a foreign newspaper outside Spain. Yet I've been seduced by re-reading Stuart's autobiography in conjunction with re-reading Gerald Brenan's Literature of the Spanish People.

Yet, I am aware of that some would have liked me to contrast Stuart Christie's approach to anarchism with that of David Graeber who also died in August this year. Graeber in the USA, and for example Colin Ward in the UK, took a more considered rationalist approach. When I thought about it I remembered what George Orwell said about Tolstoy in his essay 'Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool', in it he wrote of Tolstoy: 'Clearly he could have no patience with a chaotic, detailed, discursive writer like Shakespeare. His (Tolstoy's) reaction is that of an irritable old man pestred by a noisy child. "Why do you keep jumping up and down like that? Why can't you sit still like I do?".' What Orwell concludes is that people like the pacifist Tolstoy would 'make children senile'. On reflection my worry is that those of who argue for a more cerebral approach to life and social change may simply be urging that the young should become old before their time.

It would seem, from this point of view, that the journey for all of us is bound up in an eternal pilgrimage from the madness of youth to the senility of old age.

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

* Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire and the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets,[nb 1] was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in English and a light Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.

He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.

As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country.

** Wikipedia on Cervantes: Aside from these, and some poems, by 1605, Cervantes had not been published for 20 years. In Don Quixote, he challenged a form of literature that had been a favourite for more than a century, explicitly stating his purpose was to undermine 'vain and empty' chivalric romances.[61] His portrayal of real life, and use of everyday speech in a literary context was considered innovative, and proved instantly popular. First published in January 1605, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza featured in masquerades held to celebrate the birth of Philip IV on 8 April.[51]

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

Aja Romano asks ‘Can I still read Harry Potter?’

AJA ROMANO claims to have been a Harry Potter superfan for yonks! So much so that the BBC has invited her to present a 30-minute Radio 4 documentary called: ‘Can I still read Harry Potter?’

Alas, in June this year J.K. Rowling ventured her views on the trans issue resulting in Romano rethinking a treasured childhood allegiance. On Thursday Radio 4 at 11.30am addresses questions about cancel culture, safe spaces, the appeal of Potter for LGBTQ readers and the new online relationship between authors and fans. Meanwhile, the Financial Times critic reports that Rowling has suffered a increase in sales since furore about her comments began. ***********************************************************

Charles - The Real News:

BY now most of you will know: Donald Trump has been defeated in the 2020 election. For a lot of the people celebrating in front of the White House, in Philadelphia and around the country, it's a sweet moment of relief after a lengthy and stressful wait.

For those of us working at The Real News Network, it's a reminder that standing up to a neoliberal Biden administration poses a challenge in some ways more complicated than standing up to Trump. But we're here for it, advancing a critical understanding of politics and the world. If you're out there celebrating, enjoy it. When you're done, recommit to standing up to unjust power, no matter who is wielding it.

— Charles Lenchner, Digital Director

A Gradely Book for Gradely Folk!

BOOK REVIEW by Christopher Draper

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I remember Pendle,

Where in days gone by

Crowds of comrades gathered

‘Neath the moor top sky;

Oh the friendly greetings,

When our hearts were jolly bowls

With fellowship o’er flowing,

And the vision in our souls!”

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

Blacklist Support Group: Spy Cop's Inquiry

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

ORDER OF BUSINESS: POLICE SPY INQUIRY

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

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

10:00 AM

James Scobie QC (Core Participants represented by Paul Heron)

12:15 PM

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

2:00 PM

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

3:45 PM

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

4:15 PM

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

Some of the press coverage so far:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blackmailers Always Want More by Les May

AFTER Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the Labour party the Guardian newspaper opened its comment column to Margaret Hodge. Her article is high on opinions, hers, resorts to generalisations, ‘the hard left’, complains about online conspiracy theories, which originate abroad and have nothing whatsoever to do with the Labour party, and dismisses as ‘fantastical’ the notion that she and her acolytes sought to ‘weaponise anti-semitism’, a view that is shared by many Labour supporting people I know.

Here’s an example.

In the article she claimed; ‘Only last week, the trade union leader Len McCluskey repeated a common antisemitic trope on television when attacking Peter Mandelson.’ But a more detailed account in the Jewish News, an online publication of the Times of Israel, which I quote verbatim, suggests a very different interpretation.

The Unite union’s general secretary, a leading ally of Jeremy Corbyn, made his comments on BBC Newsnight after reporter Lewis Goodall told him that former cabinet minister Lord Mandelson had been 'nothing but full of praise for Keir Starmer' in an interview.

Len McCluskey responded: 'I stopped listening to what Peter Mandelson said many, many years ago. I would suggest Peter just goes into a room and counts his gold. Not worrying about what’s happening in the Labour Party – leave that to those of us who are interested in ordinary working class people.'

Mr Goodall had said earlier in his report that 'When Mr McCluskey sat down with me, he used language that could be considered an antisemitic trope.'

After the Newsnight report looking into Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership and the future of the Labour party was aired, a clarification of Len McCluskey’s comments was read out.

The statement by Unite the union said:

'Mr Mandelson’s religion was not relevant to the comments made by Mr McCluskey. Indeed to the best of our knowledge Mr Mandelson is not Jewish.

'The ordinary meaning of the statement made by Mr McCluskey is one of his belief that in recent years Mr Mandelson has had more interest in increasing his own wealth than fighting for justice for working class people. The suggestion of any antisemitic meaning to the commentary would be ludicrous.'

Lord Mandelson is not religiously observant but his grandfather founded the Harrow United Synagogue.’

At this point you might ask yourself if you knew that Mandelson had Jewish ancestry and whether knowing it now makes any difference to your opinion of him. As for ‘counting his gold’; in August 2011 the media showed considerable interest in how he could afford an £8 million pound house and in January 2009 the Evening Standard published the results of its detailed investigation into how he could afford to buy his £2.5 million pound Regency Villa.

Hodge shows far more interest in the Jewish ancestry of herself and others than I can muster. And, as in this case, she’s always ready to ‘play the race card’ when it suits her, though she is hardly the first politician to do this.

In July 2018 she called Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ in the chamber of the House of Commons. Her response to hints that she might face being reported to the Whips, and face a disciplinary inquiry was to give an interview to Sky News and say: 'On the day that I heard that they were going to discipline me and possibly suspend me, it felt almost like, I kept thinking what did it feel like to be a Jew in Germany in the Thirties?' For ITV News this was: 'Because it felt almost as if they were coming for me. It’s rather difficult to define, but there’s that fear… '

This must surely be one of the most preposterous exaggerations that any politician has ever uttered. To try to draw a comparison with what happened to many Jewish people and many others in Nazi Germany in the 1930s beggars belief. And then she has the gall to use the word ‘fanatastical’ about other people!

Hodge’s response to the Unite statement was to say: ‘Regardless, he doesn’t get to obfuscate and dictate to us what is and is not anti-Semitic when called out. The ignorance with which these tropes are used by McCluskey and others shows just how pervasive and unchallenged antisemitism is on the Hard Left.’

Aside from the fact that comments in a similar vein about Mandelson are unlikely to be confined to what she calls the Hard Left, it seems clear that the intention of Hodge and those who think like her is to insist that they, and they alone, have the right to decide what is, and what is not, anti-semitic.

We have already seen this used to attack Livingstone, Corbyn and McCluskey, allowing her view to prevail would have implications, not just for the Labour party, but for the whole of civil society. In February of this year Lisa Nandy said that if she became leader she would try to go further than accepting the IHRA definition of anti-Jewish hatred. 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.

In September 2018 Hodge excused her calling Corbyn a ‘fucking racist and antisemite’ on the grounds that she had just learned that Labour’s NEC had declined to adopt the IHRA definition.

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

Query for Prof. Oswald on Lockdown & Restrictions

TODAY in the Financial Times Peter Cave writes a letter in reply to Pro. Andrew Oswald*:

'Professor Andrew Oswald asks for a cost-benefit analysis of the virus inspired restrictions, taking into account wellbeing and intergenerational unfairness (letters, November 3). That request raises two questions.

'First, how do you do a cost-benefit analysis of wellbeing and fairness? Many of the vulnerable and elderly underwent war and postwar deprivations that that would horrify many of today's young. How will analysts take such lack of wellbeing and unfairness into account?

'Secondly, while analysts analyse away, what should be done right now? Sheild the elderly and vulnerable? Leave other lives unrstricted? They forget that many elderly sweep the streets, clean the hospitals and work in factories: some are well-trained carers, nurses and doctors. Who would do their jobs? Further, many live in crowded multigenerational housing, unsheided.

'I conclude that we are back to medical and care services, underfunded for years, lacking capacity to deal with the many increasing Covid and non-Covid demands, unless restrictions are imposed. No cost-benefit analysis can magically show that conclusion to be false.'

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

* Pro. Oswald wrote a paper entitled 'The Case for Releasing the Young from Lockdown: A Briefing Paper for Policymakers'::

"The UK is ‘locked down’ because of coronavirus (COVID-19). No clear exit strategy currently exists. This paper suggests a possible way forward that combines elements from economics and epidemiology. The paper proposes as a policy a ‘release’ from lockdown of the young cohort of UK citizens aged between age 20 and 30 who do not live with parents.

"The paper calculates that there are approximately 4.2 million UK individuals who fall into this 20-30 age-band and who live outside the original parental home. Of those, 2.6 million work in the private sector, so unless some corrective action is taken they are likely to be extremely harshly affected, financially, when compared to employees in the public sector.

"The paper argues that a young-workforce release of this kind would lead to substantial economic and societal benefits without enormous health costs to the country. In this way, the nation might begin to move forward in the footsteps of the young."

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

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/

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

Nigel Farage: 'Is Bleach a Disinfective?'

JUST now Nigel Farage refused to say if bleach was disinfective. He was responding to Piers Morgan on Breakfast TV. Piers had made the mistake of saying that Donald Trump had recommended that people take 'Disinfective or Bleach' to treat Covid-19.

Piers Morgan then asked him if bleach was an 'disinfective'! Nigel then accused him of playing games.

They were commenting on the US election as counting was taking place. Watch this space.

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

Freedom: Anna Kleist & Spring Cleaning

by Brian Bamford

ON the 30th, October, a writer called Anna Kleist wrote on the FREEDOM website complaining of 'anarchist smugness' following the defeat of what she called 'the first mass movement for socialism this country has seen in decades': the Corbynista experiment which seemingly ended last December after the General Election. She was refering to the gloating of London anarchists in the FREEDOM bookshop following the result coming through.

According to Anna it amounted to a good dose of 'I told you so'!.

This is how she colourfully described the scene in the FREEDOM BOOKSHOP at the time:

'While these bilious has-beens represent a particularly grotesque extreme of anarchist opinion, their unabashed joy at Corbyn’s defeat is not so far different from the smug “we told you so” that has, for the most part, constituted “the anarchist response” to December’s election results. One might have hoped that anarchists would have had something useful to say following the defeat of the first mass movement for socialism this country has seen in decades. Sadly, with one or two minor exceptions, all we seem to have produced are some rather tiresome Urban 75 posts about how we’re so wise and everyone else is pathetic and naïve.'

Following a brief consideration of the history of British anarchism she bitterly concluded:

'

'My contention is that we in the British anarchist movement are way overdue such a period of radical reassessment. Capitalism is in crisis, fascism is in the ascendency and yet we have never been more politically irrelevant. Now is not the time for smugness or schadenfreude. It is time for us to turn our “ruthless criticism” back upon ourselves.'

JON BIGGER Knows Best: Having the Key to the Universe!

SUCH criticism couldn't go unchallenged by those clever dicks who reckon to know better; one such 'Jon Bigger'* only the very next day scolded Anna thus:

'Yesterday, Freedom published a piece encouraging anarchists not to be smug, instead looking inwards at how we have failed to build a mass movement. I agree, but standards and principles matter. Let the last few years be a lesson about principles, as much as it is a lesson in building a mass movement.'

Yet to the non-partisan observer British anarchism is a political non-entity, as indeed Ms. Kleist described it in her brief contribution: the best thing it used to be able to do was to run bookfairs, but nowadays it can't even accomplish that. Despite what the Community of Scholars at Loughborough University claim, seldom has British anarchism been more ineffectual. Only if you count Extinction Rebellion can it claim any significance or real relevance today.

FREEDOM and SPRING CLEANING ANARCHISM

CURIOUSLY the editor of FREEDOM [Vernon Richards?] writing on the January 31,1953 in an editorial entitled 'SPRING CLEANING ANARCHISM' asked:

'IS anarchism, the denial of the State, of the right to rule, a merely negative doctrine? Should it not put forward also a positive contribution to political, social and economic theory? Such questions have periodically been asked since the time when the parliamentary Marxists of the eighties and nineties first accused anarchism of being a negative conception.'

At that time, almost 60 years ago, the FREEDOM editor was responding to a correspondent, R. A. M. Gregson, who had called for 'a Revaluation of Ideas' making a plea for 'recapitulation. for a re-evaluation of M basic ideas, and evolving new ones'. Mr. Gregson wrote: 'Destructive criticism, is easier than the expression of posit!ve beliefs and proposals.' Following this up with the claim: 'The literature of the movement . . .intents itself with protestations on the one hand and yearnings after past revolutionaries on the other.'

The FREEDOM editor then asks:

'How does such criticism apply to FREEDOM? To keep ideas up to date is an important function of a paper such as this, and it is always important to be on guard against the hardening of ideas into dogma, of their losing their significance through mere repetition. To do so all the more necessary since fundamental anarchist ideas have to changed much over the years, much that Godwin wrote over a century and a half ago could not usefully be added to to-day.'

Here the Freedom editor recognises the real dilemma for an editor who has sat perhaps too long in the editor's chair and is in danger of a cookbook approach to every unfolding event. Many of the publication on the left fall into this trap of repetitous cliques and dogma. Anna Kleist may not have fully grasped the real problems, but I venture to say, she can see things more sharply than the more mature than Jon Bigger with his plea for 'standards and principles'. The Direct Action Movement [DAM] to which I was once affilated in the 1980s spent time endlessly debating its 'Aims & Principles' but i never had a policy directed at the real world. The Anna Kleist approach is refreshing as the Gregson analysis was in 1953 because their assessments detect some seen but unnoticed features of the current crisis in the anarchist tribe.

* 'Jon Bigger' was a post-graduate at Loughborough University.

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

Rolls Royce: Barnoldswick Dispute

From Unite the Union:

#BattleforBarnoldswick & #SaveOurSite

OUR members are due to start strike action at Rolls Royce Barnoldswick on Friday 6thNovember 2020, they are taking this courageous action to fight for the future of their site and their community. We have provided notice that we are taking a number of key departments out for at least 3 weeks, after our members returned a huge 94% yes vote for strike action.

The dispute is over compulsory redundancies as 83% of the world wide job losses made at Rolls Royce have come in the UKand the company has announced it will transfer Fan blade work fromthe site to Singapore,this is dispite the fact the Government has used tax payers money to;•Provide a £1.6bn government Guarantee for £2bn loans to Roll Royce•Is due to provide a further guarantee for £1 bn of refinancing support•Provided a £300m coronavirus loan•Invested over £600m in research and development over the last 20 years, whilst off shoring over 20,000 UK jobs•Contributed a further £75m + in furlough payments• & there couldbe a loss of £9m a year just from the tax and NI from the workers employed at the site. A number of branches have been in touch to ask how they can show their solidarity and our members would like you tokeep checking the campaign page,complete the actions sign the petition, watch the full (updated) video or email your MPhttps://unitetheunion.org/RRSaveourSiteand share this link.

They have had great support on social media with people using #BattleforBarnoldswick & #SaveOurSite if you wish to do the

same. Our members have a dispute fund so they are not asking for financial donations for the strike but if you do want to send a donation to their branch they will use this to make a donation to local food banks as the area is struggling with job losses,the impacts of Covid-19 and the local Tory MPs recently voted against extending free school meals for children living in povertythe Pendle constituencyhas 37% child poverty. The branch and the workforce regularly donate to charitable causes including foodbanks and the local cancer hospice, all of which will not be possible if the site is closed, this will also highlight the knock on effects of loosing employment beyond the immediate factory gates.Cheques can be made to NW 2B 0062 Branch.

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