Silence is the enemy
A friend told me recently about an evening she’d just spent visiting an elderly uncle who was staying with her parents. Now this uncle, let’s call him Bob, is in his seventies, and is fond of telling stories about his past. This particular evening was no exception, and as my friend, her partner, and various other relatives (including his wife) settled down to chill out after a big family meal, Bob started off on one of his tales.
But this story turned out to be a bit different from the normal, everyday reminiscences the family was used to hearing: this one was about the time Bob was out in Libya doing his National Service, more specifically about the time he witnessed 6 or more of his colleagues line up and rape a young woman.
Apparently the soldiers had been given a night off and so had gone out to a small town close to where they were billeted. There, they’d come upon a local couple, and after a brief discussion among themselves about how they hadn’t seen a woman in ages, one of the group went over to the man and asked him how much he’d be prepared to take to let them have sex with his wife The two men negotiated, and eventually the husband settled on a price.
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Are UKIP and the BNP Blair’s ideological legacy?
Tony Blair built his success on neutralising ideological debate. The New Labour project, which is now in collapse, had two aspects and one purpose: to steal the Conservatives’ clothes, to strip Labour of its ideological commitments, and to do it all in the pursuit of power.
As Blair put it himself: “I have taken from my party everything they thought they believed in, I have stripped them of their core beliefs. What keeps them together is success and power”. (Andrew Rawnsely, Servants of the People pg 195).
But the New Labour project didn’t just strip Labour of its ideology and wrong-foot the Tories to generate electoral success. It re-defined the nature of political success as occupation of the centre ground via a deliberately non-ideologically appeal to vague notions of a “Third Way”, or “community” or “progressivism”. In the process, New Labour stripped the other main parties of their ideology too.
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It’s not the immigrants’ fault that BNP voters are badly educated
Which schools in the UK do worst? No, it’s not the ones in areas crammed with ethnic minority kids. Or at least, not only do all ethnic groups other than black kids perform more-or-less identically in GCSEs [*] – out of the four worst-performing councils in London educationally, two of them have above-average levels of white-British kids, and one is hovering on the margins.
Financial-gain Spotting
created by the talented Beau Bo D’ Or
I’m backing voting reform
by Tom Watson MP
Labour’s first term in office was characterised by a paradoxical approach to political power. On one hand there was the biggest redistribution of power for a century through devolution and a bill of rights. Yet there was also a huge consolidation of political control of the Labour party machine tothe centre. Many believed the party was run from 10 Downing Street. Intoxicated by the euphoria of Labour in power, different strands of representation in the party – my union included – let this happen.
The more I became a willing participant in Labour’s efforts to prove the iron law of oligarchy, the more trenchant I became in the view that if working people were to retain a voice in parliament, the current system of first past the post should be defended. It was the one issue on which my union completely disagreed with the then prime minister, Tony Blair. The vehemence with which we held our views led, in part, to proposals for electoral reform being held up for a decade.
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Is the Russian buying the Indy?
Brand Republic is reporting that Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev is in talks to buy The Independent.
The left needs to confront the root causes of BNP support
This article is by author Paul Kingsnorth
The response of the British ‘left’ to the depressing sight of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons grinning like spoilt children on the election podium on Sunday night seems to be dividing into two broad approaches. The first is attack, the second denial.
The first approach was illustrated nicely by the egg-throwing, car-kicking, insult-chucking attack on Griffin yesterday by Unite Against Fascism. The left can’t agree on much, but it can always agree that it doesn’t like fascists, so it feels good and righteous and very simple to shout and throw things at them. But, entertaining though it is to see Nick Griffin pelted with yolks, he is no longer a fringe baddie; he is an MEP, and he represents people. It may be hard to stomach, but it is a fact that nearly a million Britons voted for his party last week.
Pelting elected representatives with eggs and shouting down their press conference has the effect of making the BNP look reasonable and the egg-throwers look, well, a bit fascistic in their keenness to silence by force the views of those they don’t agree with. Any approach which makes Nick Griffin look reasonable has to be judged a pretty dismal failure.
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Who’s been helping the BNP?
If we’re going to have a bit of a post-mortem on the reasons behind the election of Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons to the European Parliament then it falls to us bloggers to ask the one question that the mainstream press isn’t going to ask…
…just exactly what kind of contribution did they make to this sorry state of affairs?
So, it’s time for a bit of quick and dirty research… continue reading… »
A naked picnic at Steen’s very large pad
From the people who bought us Warmongers in your neighbourhood?, Don’t Panic magazine, comes the naked picnic at Tory MP Anthony Steen’s very large pad – which he accused taxpayers of being jealous of.
via Guido.
Meanwhile, Sir Peter Viggers is to auction his duck house for charity. Tory MPs are all heart.
Trying to blame the left for racism
There are two strategic reasons why the BNP was elected. First, the Labour party vote split and collapsed. Secondly, the left was split by infighting and small, inconsequential parties that had not much separating them. These things can be debated, and it’s right to ask why the Labour party has failed the working classes.
What does annoy me though are attempts by rightwing commentators, who really should know better, to pin the blame on ethnic minorities themselves and “the left”. It’s a nice rhetorical trick that makes them feel better – it’s not like the Conservative Party ever appropriated the language of the racists and had any of their members use the slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour vote Labour“. I mean that is just the work of fantasy isn’t it?
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