RandomPottins

Property Versus People

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 23:06:00 +0000

TOGETHER against evictions. Unite union flags on tenants' demonstration. Which side is Labour on?

HOUSING campaigners and other friends are going to Lambeth County Court on Friday to show support for a worker from St.George's Hospital, where I used to work, who is facing eviction from her home, with her two kids, - by a so-called charity. Marian is a Guinness Trust assured shorthold tenant (AST) and she has been living in Kenwood House in Loughborough Park since 2007. Due to the ongoing regeneration of the estate, Guinness Housing Association are taking Marian to court to get possession of her flat which she shares with her two children aged 4 and 8.
Marian is one of the last AST tenants who has refused to leave to make way for Guinness to demolish her block. She is a healthcare assistant in St Georges Hospital and cannot afford private rents in London - she is demanding alternative affordable accommodation. The campaign by Guinness ASTs has meant that almost all the other ASTs who resisted eviction have been rehoused and nobody has been forcibly evicted. Campaigners want to show Guinness that Marian has strong support to resist any attempt to evict her too.

Help stop the eviction – Protest for Marian
Friday August 28 at 13.30
Lambeth County Court, Cleaver Street, Kennington, London, SE11 4DZ

The Loughborough park estate in Brixton was a 1930s estate of 390 social rented flats – until Guinness began their regeneration programme to demolish it and replace it with 487 new-build apartments. When Guinness started on this regeneration strategy more than a decade ago they decided not to take on any more housing association tenants with full life-time tenancy rights and as vacancies came up they brought in ASTs (assured shorthold tenants) who could keep the buildings occupied temporarily before they bulldozed them – but would not need to be rehoused by Guinness when they evicted them.

Many of the existing tenants, however, were not happy with the regeneration plans and opposed the move to new high-rise blocks which would lead to higher rents and would destroy the beautiful old buildings on the estate which had a unique architectural value. They lobbied and challenged the planning process and tried to set up their own tenants association but were blocked by Guinness and eventually ignored by Lambeth council.

The planning permission was delayed by many years but in the end Guinness even threatened to sell the estate outright if they were not allowed to go ahead with their regeneration plans and Lambeth capitulated. Guinness promised only 30 extra social housing units in the new development for rent to people on Lambeth’s housing waiting list – but even this was a deception as the number of social rented housing tenants had already markedly decreased (being replaced by ASTs) so the net effect of the regeneration will be a REDUCTION in social rented flats on the estate from the original 390 dow
- See more at: http://housingactivists.co.uk/protest/a-history-of-guinness-the-loughborough-park-estate/#sthash.3j57gqqe.dpuf

MARIAN is NHS Care Assistant.
Who cares about her and her children?

The battle on the Guinness estate is part of the ongoing struggle for living space in London which has intensified under this government. "Regeneration" becomes a formula for property development that forces working class people out of neighborhoods and even out of the capital, housing benefits are capped while rents are allowed to soar, and new developments bought and sold for profit and even money-laundering while even people in good jobs haven't a chance of buying. With some 40 per cent of council homes sold under Thatcher's much-vaunted "right to buy" policy now in the hands of private landlords and property companies, the Tories have promised to extend this to housing associations - though it would impinge on their charity status, and the cost would be subsidised at the expense of councils building new homes.

Some Tory councils in the capital have waived any obligation on builders to provide affordable homes, and made it clear they don't want working class and poor people in their borough anyway. But some Labour councils too have proved unable or unwilling to resist the trend, and are telling homeless families they must move hundreds of miles away if they want to be housed.

For all it's called "Conservative", the government can be radical when it is taking away our rights, be it in the workplace or at home. Anticipating more homelessness, and people ready to take desperate measures whether individually or organised, Cameron's Con-Dem coalition introduced legislation turning squatting of empty homes into a criminal offence.

Some people seem to have decided this was not going far enough. Last year the social media repeatedly carried a news story from the London Borough of Redbridge about police snatching food and sleeping bags or blankets from homeless people who had taken shelter in an unused building.
People who read about this were rightly incensed about this nasty, brutal behaviour by the police who, though acting on their own initiative, said they had been asked to discourage vagrants from using the premises. But if some Labour politicians had their way such actions would be more general and much worse.

As a local activist in Lambeth observed last year:

Chuka Umunna, Tessa Jowell and Lib Peck recently called for an extension to the law forbidding squatting to include commercial properties as well as residential. Clearly they are on the side of property developers and landlords against the homeless and those great experimental centres of creativity, artistic endeavour and learning that have been made possible by squatting. ....

I have visited several of these places and I am well impressed by their achievements. Did those three visit any of these establishments or were they running on the pure, unadulterated juices of prejudice, hearsay and the tired old Tory canard of squatters stealing peoples homes?

- See more at: http://housingactivists.co.uk/squatting/look-back-anger-lambeths-betrayal-commitment-social-housing/#sthash.S0Y6RwEs.dpufLib Peck is the leader of Lambeth council, and I was told there was a particular local problem over the West Norwood library site. But whatever the rights and wrongs of that, by turning to the Tory government and asking for it to extend its laws, the Labour trio were opening the door to further oppressive action against the homeless, against community and cultural groups that have made some very creative use of empty and often derelict buildings in Lambeth and other places: and potentially also against workers or anti-cuts campaigners occupying premises to resist closures. It is a far, sad cry from the days when Lambeth Labour was used to being branded "loony left" by the press because it tried to resist the Tories and defend services to local people.

So whose side is Labour on, the property speculators or the working people? Most Labour people I know would indignantly reply "the people of course!" But look again at those names. Chuka Umunna was elected MP for Streatham in 2010, and the following year made Shadow Business Secretary. Calling for Labour to target Conservatives and "aspirational, middle-class voters", he said the party needs to be "on the side of those who are doing well,."and on May 12, announced his candidature for the Labour Party leadership, only to withdraw it three days later. But he has not desisted from acting as a voice for the Right, and warning us what awful things will happen if we vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

Tessa Jowell, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, which if I'm not mistaken covers the Guinness estate at Loughborough Junction, served in both the Blair and Brown governments, while her international business lawyer husband ended up serving time in an Italian prison as a result of the money-laundering and bribery linked to former Italian prime minister (and Blair chum) Sylvio Berlusconi. Jowell is now hoping to be Labour's candidate for Mayor of London, and presumably also hoping that voters remember her part in securing the Olympics for London, rather than asking whether she really knew nothing about her husband getting Berlusconi to pay their mortgage.

There's certainly nothing about it in the letter I've received from "Trade Unionists for Tessa", signed by John Hannett, general secretary of USDAW. A lot of my friends seem to be supporting Diane Abbott for mayor, while my union's London region is backing Sadiq Khan, currently MP for Tooting. Like a lot of Unite members I was surprised just after the general election to receive a 'phone call from someone in a union survey team asking my views about the mayoralty. Contrary to the story that appeared in Private Eye, they did not mention any potential candidates, but asked what I thought should be priorities. I said something about housing and might have also mentioned transport, and I probably was not alone, as together with a Living Wage, these are taken up in Sadiq Khan's leaflet.

As it happens, though I'm not keen on the mayoral set up at all, or maybe because of that, I have chanced my first choice vote on a rank outsider, Christian Wolmar, whom I only know through his books on London transport, though I see he has also worked for the housing charity Shelter. At least he is not a clown and he is the only candidate standing who is not a career politician. Whether or not he is the man we need we'll see, but at least his candidature will give them a shake up. I was helped to my decision by seeing Christian on TV recently where he said he would support Jeremy Corbyn (as does Diane Abbott of course), Since then he has been kept out of another hustings programme, and he also had some interesting things to say about property:

Chuka Umunna, Tessa Jowell and Lib Peck recently called for an extension to the law forbidding squatting to include commercial properties as well as residential. Clearly they are on the side of property developers and landlords against the homeless and those great experimental centres of creativity, artistic endeavour and learning that have been made possible by squatting. See examples (here, here and here)
I have visited several of these places and I am well impressed by their achievements. Did those three visit any of these establishments or were they running on the pure, unadulterated juices of prejudice, hearsay and the tired old Tory canard of squatters stealing peoples homes?
- See more at: http://housingactivists.co.uk/squatting/look-back-anger-lambeths-betrayal-commitment-social-housing/#sthash.S0Y6RwEs.dpuf

The Loughborough park estate in Brixton was a 1930s estate of 390 social rented flats – until Guinness began their regeneration programme to demolish it and replace it with 487 new-build apartments.
When Guinness started on this regeneration strategy more than a decade ago they decided not to take on any more housing association tenants with full life-time tenancy rights and as vacancies came up they brought in ASTs (assured shorthold tenants) who could keep the buildings occupied temporarily before they bulldozed them – but would not need to be rehoused by Guinness when they evicted them.
Many of the existing tenants, however, were not happy with the regeneration plans and opposed the move to new high-rise blocks which would lead to higher rents and would destroy the beautiful old buildings on the estate which had a unique architectural value. They lobbied and challenged the planning process and tried to set up their own tenants association but were blocked by Guinness and eventually ignored by Lambeth.
The planning permission was delayed by many years but in the end Guinness even threatened to sell the estate outright if they were not allowed to go ahead with their regeneration plans and Lambeth capitulated. Guinness promised only 30 extra social housing units in the new development for rent to people on Lambeth’s housing waiting list – but even this was a deception as the number of social rented housing tenants had already markedly decreased (being replaced by ASTs) so the net effect of the regeneration will be a REDUCTION in social rented flats on the estate from the original 390 dow
- See more at: http://housingactivists.co.uk/protest/a-history-of-guinness-the-loughborough-park-estate/#sthash.3j57gqqe.dpuf

“Last week, the political Establishment figures watched as I was undemocratically excluded from appearing on what was supposed to be an election hustings broadcast on LBC radio,” Christian Wolmar said.

“Now, it is reported that three of my Labour Party rivals for selection have been having their campaigns generously funded by property developers.

“My party colleagues forgot to mention this at our election debates.”

Property Week reports today that, “Big-name property developers and investors have emerged as some of the biggest donors to London mayoral candidates in the early stages of the campaign.”
It had already been established that Dame Tessa Jowell received £10,000 towards her campaign from the chairman of Chime Communications, the company founded by Mrs Thatcher’s former spin doctor, Tory peer Tim Bell. Dame Tessa has since taken an executive job with a Chime subsidiary.
Now Property Week reports that Canary Wharf Ltd has given £11,500 to the Jowell campaign, which has received another £5,000 from the former chairman of Land Securities.

Sadiq Khan’s campaign has received nearly £40,000 in donations from three major property developers.

And David Lammy’s campaign has racked up donations amounting to almost £40,000 from various companies and individuals with multi-million-pound interests in property development in the capital.

Christian Wolmar said: “How can these Labour Party candidates for London Mayor say they will drive a hard bargain with developers while taking money from them?

http://unitelive.org/displaced-and-dispossessed/

http://housingactivists.co.uk/category/guinness-trust-2/

http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2015/04/brixton-evictions-and-regeneration-the-story-of-the-guinness-trust-estate-in-loughborough-park-brixton/

http://housingactivists.co.uk/squatting/look-back-anger-lambeths-betrayal-commitment-social-housing/

http://www.wolmarforlondon.co.uk/what_do_property_developers_expect_in_return

Labour's new McCarthyism is already beyond a joke

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:12:00 +0000

MARK STEEL (second from left), canvassing for Labour. But denied a vote in leadership contest.

AS left-wing maverick Jeremy Corbyn continues his amazing race towards the Labour Party leadership, with the contest and his campaign particularly breathing new life into politics, bringing old members back as well as new members into the party, panic is setting in.

The contest is revealing a farcical underside, though those adversely affected might not see it as a joke.

Labour's Establishment and Blairite careerists view big public meetings cheering socialist policies with distaste. Far from welcoming fresh young people coming to Labour with their hopes and enthusiasm, they view them with suspicion, as a threat.

Having changed the party's rules in the hope that left-wing activism and union influence could be swamped by having "supporters" register to vote in American-style primaries, where media-designed "personalities" would outweigh interest in making policies, they have sourly decided it did not work, and are talking about having to change the rules again.

Meanwhile numerous reports are coming of people who applied to join the Labour Party, old members who rejoined, or those who registered as supporters, being told they are not acceptable, and will not be allowed to vote. Andy Burnham's campaign managers were telling reporters yesterday that he is concerned about Tories who might sneak in. But there seems to be no evidence of this blue spectre, which some papers conjured up weeks ago, only to drop it. Whereas it is people with sound left-wing credentials and records of service to the labour movement who are being caught up in Labour's witch-hunt.

As with the original McCarthyism, this is hitting creative and well-liked people in entertainment, whom any Party in its right mind would be delighted to have on board. In a bit of name-dropping the other week I recalled standing in a bar queue with Jeremy Corbyn and comedian Jeremy Hardy during a benefit at the Red Rose Club in Finsbury Park some years back.

I hope it wasn't my doing, but Jeremy Hardy has reported this weekend that, having paid his £3 to the Labour Party, and stated that he supports Labour's aims and values, which should entitle him to vote, he has received a letter which said Labour had reason to believe that he "didn't support the aims and values" of the party.

Mark Steel, whose fast and funny performance delighted a packed audience at a Gaza benefit I attended during the Edinburgh Festival, had already received the same rejection notice from Labour. Mark's humorous take on topical subjects and willingness to travel brought him a loyal radio following. (The Mark Steel Solution, Mark Steel's in Town, BBC Radio Four). He used to be in the Socialist Workers Party, but packed them and their ways in years ago, without however ceasing to be a socialist, or a comedian with a conscience. I'd recommend his book "What's Going On?" (2008), as well as his witty column in the Independent.

At the last general election Mark Steel went out campaigning for the Labour Party. I don't know whether he got much publicity, but his help was appreciated and remembered by those who worked with him. Hearing that he had been denied a vote in the leadership contest, they started a petition       " We ask the NEC to re-consider this with a view to reinstating his full voting rights, as it is plain that Mark shares the values of the Labour party and is not in sympathy with any organisation that is against the said party.."
https://www.change.org/p/the-labour-party-we-call-upon-the-labour-party-to-reinstate-mark-steel-s-leadership-voting-rights?r

It isn't only the latecomers who are being turned away.
Stephen Marsh
My wife has had her @UKLabour membership cancelled after 22 loyal years membership. She is v far from being an entryist #LabourPurge


And it isn't only people in the cultural fringe,like Mark,or film maker Ken Loach (who's another). Here's Mike Edwards, an engineering worker and trade unionist from Shropshire.

Yesterday at 4.18am I received an email rejecting me as a Labour Party supporter and so making me ineligible to vote in the leadership elections.
After a long wait on the phone I finally spoke to a person from the Labour Party only to be told that they could not give me a reason why I had been rejected and that there is no right to appeal.
I said that I was willing to join the Labour Party today but was told that I would still be ineligible to vote. This is the Email I received from the Party

Dear Applicant,

Thank you for your recent application to become a Supporter of the Labour Party.
As part of the process to sign up as a Supporter all applicants are asked to confirm the following statement; I support the aims and values of the Labour Party, and I am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it.
We have reason to believe that you do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party or you are a supporter of an organisation opposed to the Labour Party and therefore we are rejecting your application.
Although you may have received or may still receive a ballot paper, it will not work and if you do vote it will not be counted.
Should you wish to dispute rejection by the Labour Party you would have to submit and pursue an application to join Labour as a full member.

Kind Regards

The Labour Party

Sent by email from the Labour Party and promoted by Iain McNicol on behalf of The Labour Party, both at One Brewers Green, London SW1H 0RH.

A brief history of my involvement in the Labour movement.
• Joined the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers 1976
• Became a Union Representative 1978
• Union Branch Secretary 1987
• Labour Party Member 1984-1997
• Wellington (Shropshire) Branch Labour Party Chair
• Member of the Wrekin Labour Party General Management Committee
• Member of the Constituency Executive and Chair
• Stood as a Labour Party Candidate in Parish District and County Elections
• Delegate to Labour Party Conferences on many occasions.
• Married to Angela McClements (1979-97) currently Labour Party Councilor for Telford and Wrekin Council and formally Secretary to Bruce Grocott MP and Peter Bradley MP
• Currently Member of UCU
• Delegate to Telford and Shropshire Trades Council and executive member
• Employed as Senior Lecturer at Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology in Trade Union Studies.
• I am not nor have I ever been a member of any other political party apart from the Labour Party.
At the recent General Election I supported and voted for the Labour Party candidate Katrina Gilman, one of my students. Delivered leaflets in support of Labours “aims and values” and helped organised 2 events in support of the Labour Party candidates in Shropshire.

I am disgusted but not surprised by the actions of the Labour Party to exclude me and many others from voting in the leadership election.Those in the Labour Party have initiated a witch-hunt among those who have signed up to vote and rejected their application need to look at themselves in the mirror and question if their actions are those of an individual or political party that truly believes in freedom, equality and democratic Socialism. I urge everyone to share my story on social media and those of you that have an opportunity to vote in the leadership election vote for Jeremy Corbin the only candidate that truly supports the aims of the Labour movement “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”

In Solidarity Mike Edwards

Joan Twelves is a former Labour leader of Lambeth council, back in the days when it stood for something, opposing the Gulf War and the Poll Tax, and was regularly calumnied in the Tory press. Some will also know her as the widow of RMT militant Greg Tucker, also in his time a Labour councillor.

Joan had this to say on Facebook

"I wrote this earlier today after walking round the neighbourhood and have hesitated about posting it as it will undoubtedly be used against me (I know how witch-hunts work....). However, I am still very very angry, so sod it -

Kennington - my patch, my manor - full of the expensive flipped flats of MPs and Lords (and those who aspire to those positions), financed and furnished by the taxpayer. Next door to council estates like mine where we live under the threat of market rents, bedroom taxes, benefit caps and 'regeneration'. I opposed the first Gulf War and was deemed to have brought the LP into disrepute; they waged the second Gulf War and have never been called to account. Some of them have stood and been elected as SDP/Lib Dems/Tories. I have never stood for any Party other than Labour. Their aims are personal enrichment and aggrandisement. Mine are to fight for the working class. They do not share Labour's values of equality, fairness, social justice, peace and solidarity; I do. They can vote for Anyone But Corbyn; but I am being banned from voting for my friend. I am very angry.

Credit should be given to MP Kate Hoey, not always in agreement with Joan Twelves, for speaking out against the exclusion and voting ban on her constituent. http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2015/08/kate-hoey-speaks-out-after-former-lambeth-council-labour-leader-purged-from-voting-in-leadership-election/

Finally (for now), a word from Mike Cushman, a lecturer at the London School of Economics, whom I know as a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, and the British Committee for Universities of Palestine (BRICUP), who went out to Gaza with books and equipment for universities when it was still possible to run the Israeli blockade. He's not the man to let things go.

Like many socialists I've been banned from the Labour election. The only way to support labour party values in the recent period hss been to support parties other than labour. Now there's a chance the party will move closer to the values that many of us believe in we are being proscribed without appeal.

I'm going to submit a DPA request for the information they hold on me so I can see the basis for their decision.

I encourage all the other banned people to do the same.

DPA is the Data Protection Act, the same law under which the Consulting Association, gathering blacklists on building workers and others, was raided. And whether or not Mike or anybody else is able to get anywhere challenging Labour's blacklist this way, I'm sure with experience of industrial blacklisting will see the connection.

BTW, if anyone still wants to look into the issue of "infiltration" or entryism in Labour, here's something looking at this in another aspect:

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7dd3-Who-are-the-real-entryists#.Vdjch5fLrjn

And a taste of Mark Steel on the subject:
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/every-club-should-be-like-labour--you-cant-join-as-a-new-member-unless-youre-already-a-member-10428421.html

Remember Deir Yassin - and Forget Paul Eisen!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 21 Aug 2015 23:58:00 +0000

WITHOUT Fear or Prejudice. Jeremy Corbyn (second from right, in open neck) with friends at Islington event, in June this year. Every picture tells a story, not always the same one (see below *).

THEY say a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. These days with electronic media the lie can get right round the world, and probably be on its way back, quite likely embellished, even after it has been refuted. But we must persevere.

On August 16 I took a critical look at a story in the Daily Mail smearing Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn by association with a "notorious holocaust denier". http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-mail-finds-link-or-does-it.html
Thin as the story was - dependent on the MP's support for commemorating a notorious 1948 massacre, and the word of aforesaid Holocaust denier, one Paul Eisen, - it has been put to use, and is becoming shop worn.

That Jeremy Corbyn denies having anything to do with Holocaust denial, and repeatedly condemns antisemitism along with any other kind of racialism is of no importance to his opponents, or to some media hacks. They have a job to do.

I've seen claims on social media that Corbyn "shared a platform with a Holocaust denier" (which even Eisen did not claim) and in the Jewish Chronicle that 7 out of 10 British Jews actually "fear" what will happen if Corbyn wins the Labour leadership. I don't know who they spoke to, but it can't be the Jews I know in Corbyn's Islington North constituency who know and like the MP, and some of whom are supporting him in the Labour leadership contest.

I've not seen what if anything is being said 'Stateside, where people may not know much about our Labour Party, but on past experience when stories like those assailing Jeremy Corbyn are put around they get exaggerated and cruder, whether because Americans don't do subtlety or their libel laws are more relaxed, and some stories suit certain agendas. So I am pleased to see that as well as some letters from Jewish people defending Jeremy Corbyn finally breaking through the media wall, there's a Facebook group called Jews for Jeremy, started by that clever entertainer Ian Saville, and including besides British Jews supporters in the United States, Israel and other countries. Hopefully these chaverim will be able to help counteract the lying.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/903669616335883/?fref=ts

One of the "facts" that the Daily Mail writer found most telling was that when Paul Eisen approached Jeremy Corbyn - his MP - fifteen years ago - about Deir Yassin Remembered, the MP took out his chequebook. It does not seem to occur to the writer Jake Wallis Simons that fifteen years ago, far from Paul Eisen being "notorious", nobody had heard of him. I doubt whether he's that famous now. Whereas the massacre at Deir Yassin was well-known, and nobody denied it had happened, even if Simons and the Jewish Chronicle's Marcel Dysch seem to think they can relegate it to a "controversy" now.

Stephen Marks on Facebook has managed to put Jeremy Corbyn's generosity fifteen years ago into context, with a little aide memoire:

As Jeremy has already pointed out in the C4News interview, he gave money to DYR when it was founded 15 years ago. At that time Eisen had not ‘come out’ as a holocaust denier, and indeed there is no evidence that he was one. And Jeremy Corbyn was far from the most distinguished public figure to give the cause his support.

According to the Jewish Chronicle on 16 April 2001;
‘Five prominent Progressive rabbis joined Sunday's Central London commemoration of the 1948 massacre of Palestinians at the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem. In a concluding prayer to the evening also attended by MPs, Arab diplomats and British-based Palestinians Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues' life president Rabbi John Rayner spoke of "sorrow and shame" that the "land of our ancestors" had been the scene of bitter conflict…

‘Rabbis David Goldberg and Mark Solomon, from the St John's Wood Liberal Synagogue, Finchley Reform minister Rabbi Jeffrey Newman and Durham University lecturer Rabbi Moshe Yehudai-Rimmer also supported the event, which attracted an attendance of several hundred.

‘Rabbi Newman confessed to having been "nervous" in advance about the atmosphere at the commemoration, organised by a joint Jewish and Palestinian group, Deir Yassin Remembered. But he told the JC afterwards that the mood had been "absolutely remarkable, particularly because of the absence of hostility, rage or anger. In many ways it was a mirror image of a Jewish evening of the best sort, with music, drama and poetry," he said. ‘

Moreover there was one other even more distinguished public figure who expressed his support for the event - Prime Minister Tony Blair. In a letter to Paul Eisen, Blair’s Private Secretary, Anna Wechsberg, stated, "The Prime Minister was grateful for your kind invitation, but regrets that due to his existing diary commitments, he will not be able to attend the commemoration on 1 April.” However she added that the Prime Minister “has however asked me to pass on his good wishes for the event.”’ [see http://www.deiryassin.org/pdf/blairletter.pdf].

Once Eisen’s holocaust denial became open most of the distinguished names on the Board of DYR resigned. But many of their names remained on the website (http://www.deiryassin.org) despite requests for them to be removed. Among those who resigned, either in protest at Eisen’s views or because of the co-option onto the board of such figures as the notorious antisemite Israel Shamir, are Israeli activists such as the civil rights lawyer Leah Tsemel and Michael Warshawski of the Alternative Informaton Centre, Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, as well as Norman Finkelstein and Professor Ilan Pappe (see for example http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com.au/…/lea-tsemel-resi… and (http://www.kadaitcha.com/…/bds-attacked-by-deir-yassin-rem…/)

As the latter site makes clear, Eisen’s board of DYR is opposed to the Palestinian campaign for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions. Meawhile Eisen has been vigorously, and predictably, defended by his old friend and ally Gilad Atzmon, who is on record as saying that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, of which Jeremy Corbyn is a Patron and which has condemned Eisen and Atzmon, is ‘controlled by Jews’.

Another person who makes an informed and well-argued case against the anti-Corbyn smears is journalist Asa Winstanley on the US-based Electronic Intifada website:
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/4-reasons-anti-semitism-attacks-jeremy-corbyn-are-dishonest

The most shocking accusation, originating with The Daily Mail, is that Corbyn has “long standing links” with Paul Eisen, a “notorious” Holocaust denier involved in the group Deir Yassin Remembered.

Eisen certainly expresses disgusting views, denying the Nazi Holocaust took place and frequently expressing other anti-Semitic opinions on his blog.

However, his only real notoriety is for his attempts to infiltrate the Palestine solidarity movement.

Once it became clear what his views were, he was widely condemned and shunned by a movement which is fundamentally anti-racist in its basic principles. Indeed, even in the blog post which the Mail relied on as the source for its smear, Eisen admits that the movement has long “despised me.”

The only real link between the two men (as the Mail conveniently omitted) is that Eisen happens to live in Corbyn’s Islington parliamentary constituency in North London.

Eisen claims to have met him in that capacity – as Corbyn is his member of parliament. It is nonetheless odd that the Mail would be so keen to take the word of a Holocaust denier when it comes to his relationship with Corbyn.

A photograph has been produced of a memorial event which the Mail claims was run by Eisen. However, as this 2013 email sent out by the Palestinian Authority’s UK Mission shows, there was nothing in the advertising about the Holocaust and nothing naming Eisen. There were certainly no links to his blog.

http://palestinianmissionuk.createsend4.com/t/ViewEmail/j/E231FA473C5F10A4/E293E0DBA44E3B9DC67FD2F38AC4859C

Indeed, even on the Deir Yassin Remembered website, Eisen is not named on the contact page, the About page or the Board of Advisors page.

The page misleadingly includes several people as advisors who resigned after some of the the group’s troubling associations became clear.

This includes the Palestinian-American novelist Susan Abulhawa, who stepped down after Eisen wrote an anti-Semitic post on his blog.

See also:
How the Jewish Chronicle dismisses letter-writers supporting Jeremy Corbyn:

http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/142553/anti-israel-activists-attack-jc-challenging-jeremy-corbyn

* And just to give a broader picture, as seen above,from United Synagogue news

On a recent look at events and stories on the You & US pages, I was intrigued to see an announcement that Islington Council, together with Islington Chabad were organising a commemorative plaque to be fixed to Barnes Court, Lofting Road, N.1 - the original site of North London Synagogue. - See more at: http://www.theus.org.uk/article/family-trip-down-memory-lane-islington#sthash.SZF05gWe.dpuf

Rabbi Mendy Korer, who helped to organise the event, followed with telling the audience of his involvement from inviting the local MP Jeremy Corbyn to Shabbat dinner when the MP suggested applying for the plaque to the procedure for residents in the locality voting for its installation.

Also in attendance was United Synagogue’s President Stephen Pack
- See more at: http://www.theus.org.uk/article/family-trip-down-memory-lane-islington#sthash.SZF05gWe.dpuf

Blood Money promised, then postponed.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:07:00 +0000

THOUGH left-wing politicians like Jeremy Corbyn are often accused by right-wing opponents and media of wanting a return to "the 1970s and 1980s" when supposedly unspeakable things were done by trade unions (such as raising wages), not so much has been said about a real major scandal from that period whose effects are being perpetuated.

Thousands of National Health Service patients were inadvertently given contaminated blood products in one of the biggest treatment disasters ever. It is estimated that more than 2,000 people died as a result of the contaminated blood, which infected them with deadly diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C.

In Britain, blood donations have always come from volunteers, and been routinely tested for infections. Between 1970 and 1991, against the advice of many experts, the NHS imported blood products from overseas, particularly the United States and Canada, many supplied by drug companies that sourced blood by paying people in high-risk groups, such as prostitutes, vagrants and drug addicts, to donate it. In some US states the prison service made millions taking prisoners blood. In other places blood was taken from corpses, but the companies claimed it came from donors. The blood products imported to Britain were riddled with the blood-borne viruses hepatitis C and HIV.

These products were then administered without being screened for the viruses, despite warnings from the World Health Organisation. Patients were duly infected as a result. About 7,500 people, of whom roughly two-thirds were haemophiliacs, are now known to have been given hepatitis C during this period.

Perhaps the most famous victim of this health scandal, Body Shop founder Dame Anita Roddick was infected with hepatitis C by a blood transfusion after the birth of her daughter Sam in 1971. She died in 2007, aged 64, from a brain haemorrhage caused by the disease.

According to an estimate by MPs, who debated the scandal in January, as many as 35,000 victims could have hepatitis C, which is often undetected for years, without yet being aware of it. Around 1,500 of the 7,500 confirmed hepatitis victims have also contracted HIV. Many then unwittingly passed it to their partners. In the Eighties, when most of these transmissions occurred, Aids was a virtual death sentence. Three-quarters of them died.

It does not end there. Many of those who faced terminal illness were forced into hardship by losing or having to give up their jobs, without being able to claim compensation from the governments who were responsible. Some had to turn to charities, but the process of obtaining help has not been easy.

Philip Wellman says his more than 40-year battle with Hepatitis C has reached “a tipping point” as he faces the winter without heating or electricity. He is unable to afford a plane ticket to see his wife, child and grandchildren in his hometown of Hampstead.

It comes after the 68-year-old was involved in a car crash in the early 1970s and became one of more than 5,000 given “killer blood” transfusions by the NHS.

The tainted batch, like many supplied to patients during the 1970s and 1980s, was imported by the Department of Health from US pharmaceutical companies due to supply shortages.

A recent privately-funded inquiry, led by the government’s former solicitor general Lord Peter Archer, found many batches of this blood came from drug addicts, sex workers and other criminals incarcerated in US prisons. The practice continued, it was alleged, “long after alarms had been sounded”.

With the blood riddled with deadly viruses like Hepatitis C and HIV, more than 2,000 of the infected are said to have since died as a result.

Many were infected at the Royal Free Hospital’s haemophiliac centre in Hampstead and the affair has been branded by MPs as “the last major, unclosed government scandal”.

As campaigners continue to accuse the government of an “enormous cover-up”, Mr Wellman says he is hoping David Cameron will “do the right thing” and give survivors proper compensation.

He told the Ham&High: “What the government did to us, and what they’re still doing to us, is horrendous – people would be in disbelief if they knew the story.

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/health/victim_of_nhs_contaminated_blood_left_in_poverty_as_david_cameron_pledge_expires_1_3889833

In May 1983, researchers warned the Department of Health that it should ban U.S. imports of blood-clotting agents. The warning was never followed up.In August that year, the first recorded haemophiliac died from Aids. Yet countless patients continued to be infected. Although the U.S. finally banned prison blood in 1984, exports were allowed to continue and, incredibly, the NHS continued to buy it.

Even though safer, heat-treated products were introduced in the late Eighties, some doctors continued to use up old, contaminated supplies first. Hundreds more people died as a result. By the time Britain started to screen blood properly in 1991, at least 16 other countries were doing so. In some action was taken over officials and ministers who had allowed unsafe blood imports, whereas here there was not even a public inquiry, When a privately funded one was set up in 2007, the Department of Health withheld vital papers and would not co-operate. Caroline Flint, then Public Health Minister, claimed key documents detailing the contaminated blood scandal had been destroyed ‘in error’ by a junior member of staff. Caroline Flint is currently standing for deputy leadership of the Labour Party.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3034412/1-800-Britons-murdered-tainted-NHS-blood-denied-justice-scandal-age.html#ixzz3jIRTOXRE

An investigation was launched by the Scottish government in 2008. under Lord Penrose, the head of court at Heriot Watt university. It cost almost £12 million and ran to 1,800 pages. when it was published in March. Penrose did not apportion any blame and made just one recommendation: that people who felt at risk should be tested for hepatitis. He said Malcolm Rifkind could have launched screening when he was Minister for Scotland, but had stuck to a UK timetable. Rifkind is today director of a company which won a major NHS contract in Staffordshire despite bidding over the in-house price.

Lord Penrose said bungling officials should be judged ‘by conditions that prevailed at the time’ rather than by today’s standards. , The inquiry was dubbed a ‘whitewash’ by campaigners, who walked out of its unveiling and burnt a copy in front of TV crews.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3034412/1-800-Britons-murdered-tainted-NHS-blood-denied-justice-scandal-age.html

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/mar/25/cameron-apologises-infected-hepatitis-c-hiv-contaminated-blood

http://www.penroseinquiry.org.uk/

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/penrose-report-blood-scandal-inquiry-branded-a-whitewash-10134095.html

Prime Minister David Cameron apologised to those who had suffered because of the contaminated blood scandal,and promised that the government would make an extra £25 million available to help victims.

But that was before the general election.

It now transpires that this money will not come until next year, at the earliest, and it is to come from existing NHS funds - in other words the Tories will generously rob Peter from one part of the service to pay Paul -if Paul is still alive.

The government says it wants to consult those affected. But the Haemophilia Society says it has written three times to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, and been blanked. (Cash barrier, Private Eye No.1398, August 7-20).

Bill Wright, chair of Haemophilia Scotland, who was himself infected with hepatitis C through contaminated blood products, said there was “real anger” around the delay to the promised funds.
He added: “We have been betrayed on this issue over decades and it is no surprise the UK government is betraying us yet again.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13599918.Victims_of_contaminated_blood_scandal_accuse_David_Cameron_of__betrayal__over_compensation_pledge/

As with past treatment of asbestosis victims, or raising the pension age, the suspicion is that by delaying payment as long as possible, the numbers who die in the intervening period will reduce the costs. And while some bitterly say they cannot afford to bury partners or relatives, the government may be hoping it can bury the issue away from public sight.

The 'Mail' finds a link - or does it?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:41:00 +0000

AS Jeremy Corbyn's campaign for the Labour Party leadership has rolled on in the past few weeks, with the bearded Left-wing veteran addressing huge public meetings around the country, from Birkenhead to Camden, Llandudno to Aberdeen, I have been impressed by his energy and stamina, and the way he keeps his cool, explaining his ideas and the kind of policies he wants Labour to adopt, and leaving it to his opponents to just keep saying he can't win, or their friends to make the personal attacks with whatever they can find.

It is not easy for them. At a time when Parliament and MPs have long declined in the public's estimation, Jeremy Corbyn, whether or not you agree with him, stands out as clean, well-liked by his constituents and the wider public that is getting to know him, honest and frugal to a fault, while generous with his time.

One accusation that has come from sources scraping the barrel is that Corbyn is not only "anti-Israel", that is favourable to the Palestinians, which he and his supporters would freely admit, but "antisemitic" or at least associated with antisemites. This has come as news to Jewish friends in his constituency who say they have known Jeremy for years, and it will also surprise those who attended the European Jews for Just Peace (EJJP) conference held at Archway some years ago, who were delighted that the MP dropped in at short notice and gave a friendly question an answer session. If there was anything antisemitic about what he had to say it went undetected.

Less surprising perhaps, and even less impressive, are the publications from which these accusations are coming. The Jewish Chronicle,whose editor Stephen Pollard is notoriously not just opposed to Left-wing views on the Middle East but on the NHS and anything else: and the Daily Mail, which scores full marks for chutzpah, having not only admired Hitler and Oswald Mosley in its inglorious past, but in more recent years gone for Labour leader Ed Miliband by attacking his father, a refugee from Nazism, as "anti-British", on the basis of an essay he wrote while 17 years old criticising British society. It wasn't too hard to spot the dog-whistle antisemitism addressed to Mail readers, or to note that young Ralph Miliband went on to serve in the Royal Navy in the War, while the Mail editor's dad was performing sterling service reporting the West End night club scene.

But the story in the Mail on August 7 seemed a real shocker - so long as you didn't know better.

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his 'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3187428/Jeremy-Corbyn-s-links-notorious-Holocaust-denier-revealed.html#ixzz3iyGqL4DR

Note the use of quotation marks. This is the 'Mail' headline writer's concession to honesty, that neither the "long-standing links" nor the "antisemitic" label are straight-forward facts.

The story by Jake Wallis Simons concerned Jeremy Corbyn's supposed "long-standing association" with a man called Paul Eisen, and an organisation called Deir Yassin Remembered, which Simons explained, " focuses on controversial allegations that Jewish soldiers killed about 100 Arab villagers in the run-up to the war of 1948, and seeks to promote its remembrance at annual events."

It will be news to those of us who have heard of Deir Yassin that there is anything "controversial" about this. The facts were well known at the time. Members of the Irgun Zvei Leumi and Lehi were sent in to capture Deir Yassin, on April 9, 1948, and massacred those they captured as prisoners. This was recorded by Israeli and UN witnesses, and the only controversies were about the overall responsibility (whether the main Zionist military force Haganah authorised the operation at Deir Yassin) and the number of people killed ("about 100" is a rather conservative estimate.Some accounts say there were more than twice that number).

Deir Yassin had been in the area set aside as an international zone under the UN Partition Plan. Its inhabitants had hoped to stay neutral in the looming conflict. The massacre took place six weeks before the State of Israel was proclaimed. Menachem Begin, who was the Irgun's commander in chief, wrote in his memoirs that Arabs began fleeing the country crying "Deir Yassin!". In other words, he boasted of his men's part in creating the Naqba. Maybe the crime has only become "controversial allegations" since the Irgun's successors have been entrenched in government.

I dare say that to some people the idea of remembering Deir Yassin is itself "antisemitic". But when Deir Yassin Remembered literature from the United States first reached us in the UK there was nothing in it that was anti-Jewish or concerned with Holocaust denial. Rather it was perfectly legitimate historical publicity about the massacre at Deir Yassin, and a proposal to invite artists and raise funds for a permanent memorial. Anyone who has been there and seen the absence of so much as a memorial stone could not disagree with this idea. It is very much in line with Jewish ethics lehizkor - to Remember.

Hearing that Paul Eisen - whom I'd never met or heard of -was the UK representative for this project, I contacted him and arranged a meeting with the Jewish Socialists' Group one Sunday evening. He told us he was due to meet a couple of rabbis that week. Before long Eisen had a number of Jewish helpers and was able to stage a major fund-raiser with their help, featuring well-known artists. He did not achieve this by going round proclaiming himself a Holocaust denier or making antisemitic speeches.

Indeed for a while he participated in the Just Peace UK online discussion list, mostly Jewish and Israeli, and though he antagonised some of the people who had helped him and irritated others like myself, it took time for his increasing obsession with "Jewish guilt" to become clear enough for us to remove him from the list. It seemed to have little to do with Israel and Palestine, and had echoes of the dark side of European Christian tradition rather than any Islamicist excesses.

Regretting that "Deir Yassin Remembered" was becoming Deir Yassin Forgotten under Eisen's tutelage, I wondered whether he could not be replaced. But it seemed he had been put in place by some Catholic cleric in California who founded DYR, and the organisation had neither the members or democratic structure to remove him. As his association with people like Israel Shamir, Gilad Atzmon,and the neo-Nazi Zundel began to emerge, we learned that DYR's prominent Israeli supporters had the same problem with Shamir, leaving them no option but to resign reluctantly from a cause they had wanted to support.(Shamir, who had initially presented himself to the world as an Israeli dissident, had a Russian background, and far Right connections. Moving from anti-Zionism through conspiracy theory to blood libel, he was uncovered by anti-fascists to have a double identity, as a Swedish Nazi),

If Eisen and DYR had been able to fool Jewish and Israeli people, or rather only emerged in their true colours quite late in the day, it is hardly surprising that they were accepted as genuine among Palestine supporters for a time, or managed to raise donations for what looked like a perfectly commendable purpose. The Daily Mail article quotes Paul Eisen as describing how he went to see Jeremy Corbyn fifteen years ago for a donation to Deir Yassin Remembered, and the MP got out his checkbook. But what does that prove except that Corbyn was prepared to make a donation to what seemed like a perfectly good cause? The article notes that the Palestine Solidarity Campaign passed a resolution against having anything to do with Eisen - but this was in 2007. And if Jeremy Corbyn attended annual events commemorating the Deir Yassin massacre, where is the evidence that he or anybody else at these events thought they were there to support Holocaust denial?

In fact, the claim that Jeremy Corbyn had a "long-standing association" with a "notorious Holocaust denier" comes from that denier, Paul Eisen. A highly reliable source!

The article by Jake Wallis Simons went on to tell us:
Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: 'Paul Eisen is a notorious Holocaust denier and if Jeremy Corbyn does have links with him this would be very alarming. We would ask Mr Corbyn to clarify the situation.'Notice the little word "if" that is key to that comment. We'd guess that Jonathan Arkush was rung for a comment and was careful to keep it conditional, rather than lend substance to the story.
It is a fair bet that however "notorious" Paul Eisen ought to be, few 'Mail' readers or anyone else have heard of him, or had until this month.

But the Jewish community has its own antennae monitoring real or imagined antisemitic threats and Holocaust deniers, and unfortunately also watching critics of Israel, like Jeremy Corbyn or me, and waiting for the slightest slip to pounce upon. And it's my guess that if they'd detected a "long-standing association" between Jeremy Corbyn and a Holocaust denier they would not have waited until now to start raising it. Whereas the 'Mail' and other media....

Limited Company, or Insiders Out

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 11 Aug 2015 08:41:00 +0000

Leadership hopeful LIZ KENDALL

Generous donor LORD DAVID SAINSBURY

WITH all the talk we've been hearing about "infiltrators" and outside influence in the Labour Party, I'm grateful to a friend up in Leicestershire, Peter Flack, for posting this piece of information up on Facebook.

It concerns a group called Progress, of which I've heard but not yet seen - unlike say, Labour Left Briefing, or Socialist Appeal, they don't seem to have dedicated supporters out selling their paper at union meetings or demonstrations, but can afford to send a free newsletter out to Labour Party members. Of fairly recent origin, they no longer call themselves "New Labour" but confidently describe themselves as Labour's "new mainstream" on their website.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/

Peter, who's of similar vintage to myself in the labour movement, though we've travelled different paths, says:
Here we go. The donors to Progress. the real infiltrators in the Labour Party. As you can see they are all ordinary working people with a civic conscience. LOL

Paul Stanton‎The Labour Party Forum

The financing of the Progress Tendency.

I see from the Progress website that:

Progress is chaired by John Woodcock MP. Our vice-chairs are Jenny Chapman MP, Stephen Doughty MP, Julie Elliott MP, Tristram Hunt MP, Dan Jarvis MP, Liz Kendall MP, Seema Malhotra MP, Alison McGovern MP, Toby Perkins MP, Lucy Powell MP, Steve Reed MP and Jonathan Reynolds MP. Progress’ honorary president is Stephen Twigg MP.

According to Wikipedia, "Progress was founded in 1995 by Paul Richards, Liam Byrne and Derek Draper, the former aide to Peter Mandelson, as an organisation to maintain a dialogue with Labour's new leadership under Tony Blair. It has organised many events and conferences, and hosted several important speeches by senior party figures. Its annual conference has become a staple of the political calendar with many cabinet ministers and other leading politicians attending.

"Lord David Sainsbury has provided substantial funding for Progress, contributing £2 million of the £3 million of donations and sponsorship to Progress from 2001 to 2011. In 2014 Progress was fined £6,000 by the Electoral Commission for accepting donations of £390,000 from Lord Sainsbury while he was not on a UK electoral register, between December 2011 and April 2013.
In May 2014 Progress dropped using the "New Labour" label, introduced by Tony Blair, for the Labour party."

About Lord Sainsbury himself, Wikipedia tells us:

"David Sainsbury joined the Labour Party in the 1960s, but was one of the 100 signatories of the 'Limehouse Declaration' in an advertisement in The Guardian on 5 February 1981; he went on to be a member of the Social Democratic Party formed by the authors of the Declaration. After the 1983 election Sainsbury prompted the party to give more priority to recruiting members and finding a firm financial base; he was by far the biggest donor to the party, and a trustee, giving about £750,000 between 1981 and 1987. Sainsbury's donations were typically earmarked to specific projects rather than general day-to-day operations.

"Along with David Owen, Sainsbury opposed merging the SDP with the Liberal Party after the 1987 election, and provided office space for Owen to help him re-establish a separate political party, the "continuing" SDP, which was created in 1988.That party was wound up in 1990, and Sainsbury changed allegiance back to the Labour Party, rejoining them in 1996. A year later, he entered the House of Lords as a Labour peer, being created Baron Sainsbury of Turville, of Turville in the County of Buckinghamshire on 3 October 1997.

"Between 1996, the year he rejoined Labour, and 2006, when he stood down as a government minister, Sainsbury donated £16 million to the Labour Party, usually in batches of £1 million or £2 million each year. He donated a further £2 million on 7 September 2007, stating that he was impressed by Gordon Brown's leadership and believed "that Labour is the only party which is committed to delivering both social justice and economic prosperity". He gave another £500,000 on 15 December 2008, making a total of £18.5 million.

"It was reported in April 2006 that Sainsbury, "faced a possible probe into an alleged breach of the ministerial code after admitting he had failed to disclose a £2 million loan he had made to the Labour Party – despite publicly stating that he had." He subsequently apologised for "unintentionally" misleading the public, blaming a mix-up between the £2 million loan and a £2 million donation he had made earlier.

In July 2006, he became the first government minister to be questioned by police in the "Cash for Peerages" inquiry. On 10 November 2006, he resigned as Science Minister, stating that he wanted to focus on business and charity work. He categorically denied that his resignation had anything to do with the "Cash for Peerages" affair, stating that he was "not directly involved in whether peerages were offered for cash", although this was contradicted by subsequent press reports attributed to "Labour insiders" which suggested that his resignation was indeed a direct consequence of the affair.

From July 1998 to November 2006, he held the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Trade and Industry, as the Minister for Science and Innovation in the House of Lords, a government position for which he accepted no salary.

He was the Blair government's third-longest-serving minister after Tony Blair himself, and Gordon Brown. Because of his importance to the Labour Party as a donor, contemporary press reports described him as "unsackable." He has argued that there are "far too many reshuffles", and that there were considerable benefits to his remaining in post for so long.

David Sainsbury has also been associated with the Institute for Public Policy Research and Progress. Between 2001 to 2011 he provided £2 million of funding for Progress. In 2009, he created the Institute for Government with £15 million of funding through the Gatsby Charitable Foundation to help government and opposition politicians to prepare for political transitions and government.

" Sainsbury donated £390,000 to Progress and the Movement for Change between December 2011 and April 2013, while he was not on a UK electoral register, which is contrary to electoral law, leading to Progress and the Movement for Change being fined by the Electoral Commission."

(Wikipedia, my emphasis).

Unusually, for the labour movement, Progress is registered as a limited company, which means though it may be run by members, there is a tighter legal definition of who is a member. But with its big names and big money it must have expected little limit on its influence.

Environmentalists noting Sainsbury's views on nuclear power and GM crops have been among those concerned that he might have too much influence.

By 2003 Lord Sainsbury had given over £11 million to the Labour Party. Mark Seddon, a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, told the BBC, 'In any other country I think a government minister donating such vast amounts of money and effectively buying a political party would be seen for what it is, a form of corruption of the political process.' Seddon said it was causing Labour to lose members amid criticism from the grassroots that the party was now 'in the pockets of the powerful and the rich'.

When he was made Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury resigned as Chairman of the Sainsbury's supermarket chain and put into a blind trust major investments in two plant genetics-related investment companies (Diatech Ltd and Innotech Investments Ltd). Innotech has a substantial stake in a firm called Paradigm Genetics involved in a joint GM-related venture with Monsanto. Between 1996 and 1999 Diatech was granted three patents for GM products that are said to have the potential to make millions of pounds in royalties.

.......

For some, the choice of an unelected biotech investor and food industrialist to be Science Minister, based within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), was more than emblematic of the UK's corporate-science culture. While Lord Sainsbury is officially supposed to leave the room whenever GMOs are discussed at government meetings, even if this occurs, critically related areas like the strategic direction and the funding of the bio-sciences and of biotech related institutes fall directly within Sainsbury's area of responsibility and influence. As The Times (Apr 17, 2002) has noted, 'Suspicious minds looked at the 300 per cent increase in the government grant to the Sainsbury Laboratory and pondered whether this might be linked to the fact that Lord Sainsbury of Turville is the Science Minister.'
Sainsbury's biotech business interconnections with areas of his official responsibility are numerous. For instance, when Lord Sainsbury travelled to America as Science Minister in 1999, to research a report into biotechnology, he was accompanied by members of the BioIndustry Association, a lobby group for companies involved in GM food (the DTI helped pay their costs). His company, Diatech is an Associate Member of the BioIndustry Association.
Eight days before he became Science Minister he loaned Diatech money to buy a £2 million office in Westminster. Diatech has registered a patent for a genetic sequence taken from the tobacco mosaic virus for use in genetically modified plants. This was developed at the Sainsbury Laboratory by Mike Wilson who is a consultant to Diatech.

http://powerbase.info/index.php/David_Sainsbury

As for Progress , here is Wikipedia again:

"In 2012 Progress was at the centre of the debate over the direction of the Labour Party under Ed Miliband, after a widely circulated anonymous report called for Labour’s national executive to "determine the organisational nature of Progress, and whether or not this form of organisation is acceptable inside the Labour Party." Criticism of Progress had concentrated on the generous funding that Progress had secured from external donors, and on positioning, regarded as being on the right of the Labour Party. Following circulation of the report the GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny led calls at the 2012 Labour conference for Progress to be "effectively… (outlawed)…as part of the Labour Party."

In response, a Labour Party statement said, "We are a party that is reaching out to people, gaining new supporters and offering real change for the country in these tough times. The Labour Party is a broad church and we are not in the business of excluding people."

These fine words must have been echoing through the mind of Harriet Harman in recent weeks, even if they seem to have been forgotten by some Labour MPs!

See also:

http://www.leftfutures.org/2012/02/call-for-labour-inquiry-into-the-organisation-activities-of-party-within-a-party-progress/

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2012/03/labour-party-within-progress

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/why-are-right-endorsing-liz-kendall.html

Could Spin Turn Flip to Flop?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 08 Aug 2015 22:51:00 +0000

WITH newspapers and right-wing Labourites desperately digging for something to derail the Jeremy Corbyn campaign, a figure has stepped from the shadows of the not-too-distant past to remind us they are right about outside influences, alien to Labour's traditional values, meddling inside the Party.

Only these elements are not left-wing "infiltrators", in fact they are not left-wing at all, and if anyone should be embarassed over this intrusion it is not Jeremy Corbyn.

Think back two years to the row over Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland. Supplying much of Scotland, it had fallen along with much of BP's chemical business, into the hands of a Swiss-based private equity firm, INEOS. From his £130 million luxury yacht on the Cote d'Azur, INEOS boss Jim Radcliff declared that Grangemouth was losing money, and would have to be closed unless the workers took a wage drop and attack on pensions.

The 800 workers, mainly members of Unite, threatened to go on strike. But the pressure was on, with the threat to their jobs and a knock on effect on the whole area. Scotland's SNP Finance Minister voiced sympathy with the workers, and said his government would seek interested buyers for the refinery. But he ruled out nationalisation. And obviously the workers could expect no help from the Tory government in London.

Unite backed down, agreeing to a three-year pay freeze, an end to final salary pensions, and some job cuts, without enhanced redundancy payments. The workers, those who kept their jobs, were not happy, but were relieved not to be going down the road just yet, or seeing their area become a ghost town. Further afield, among those who had not had to take the decision, it was a chance to condemn the union, or more especially Len McCluskey, for a "sell-out".

Labour seems to have got off with staying in the background - or at least until this year's election,

And now comes this interesting story on the Labour Uncut website:

A lobbyist from the firm that advises energy firm Ineos, which was involved in a biter industrial dispute with Unite the Union, is now working as a key member of Andy Burnham’s leadership team.

Katie Myler, a former special adviser to Burnham when he was health secretary, now works for international lobbying company, Burson-Marsteller.
They claim on their website that their staff have provided “senior counsel” to the Ineos “CEO and management team” during “the Grangemouth industrial dispute.”
Back in 2013, 800 staff at the petrochemical plant in Falkirk threatened to go on strike after management brought forward a survival plan, which included a three-year pay freeze and changes to pensions.

Unite later relented in a bid to save jobs.

But the Grangemouth dispute was not the only row in that area in 2013. Grangemouth is part of the Falkirk constituency. The local Labour MP,an ex-army man in trouble over brawls in Commons bars, was due for replacement. Unite the union was accused of recruiting its members into the Labour Party - as though there was something wrong with that - in order to assist its preferred candidate.
Labour not only held it own inquiry but asked the police to look into the alleged goings-on. They did, and could find nothing warranting their interest. But the Tory press was naturally delighted to keep the alleged "scandal" going.

Unite reported on November 5, 2013:

...., Unite itself verified that all of its members who it did recruit to the Labour Party under the then-extant Union Join scheme had indeed willingly consented to join the Labour Party. In view of all this new or clarified evidence, it was evident that the allegations asserted in the original “Falkirk report” could no longer hold water. The Party then issued the statement on September 6, which made it clear that Unite, Mr Deans and Ms Murphy had done nothing wrong and had broken no rules. Police Scotland had much earlier found no basis for any criminal investigation in the matter.

Stevie Deans, chair of the Falkirk Constituency Labour Party, who found himself the subject of police inquiries, had been Unite convenor at Grangemouth. INEOS forwarded e-mails he had allegedly sent in company time to the police, and also leaked private information from them to the press. It did not manage to persuade the police he had done anything wrong, but it was able to get rid of the convenor as it took on the union.
http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/unite-statement-on-stephen-deans/

Karie Murphy, whom Unite had favoured for the Falkirk seat, found herself blocked, not just in Scotland but again this year when her name was kept off an all-women shortlist at Halifax. But above all the Falkirk row became Labour's spur to loosening ties with the unions, and adopting the current rules about which the right-wing is once more complaining, saying they don't stop "infiltration".

Getting back to the Labour Uncut report, it says:

"Myler was appointed as director of communications for Burnham’s campaign last week, after taking a sabbatical from Burson-Marsteller where she works as a managing director, according to a report in PR Week.

She joins fellow lobbyist, John Lehal, who is acting as campaign director.
His company, Insight Consulting Group, has worked for a string of private medical companies, according to reports in this morning’s Independent.
The revelations will come as a major embarrassment to Burnham, who has made much of his opposition to private sector involvement in the NHS."

Indeed, Andy Burnham impressed a lot of people last year when he joined the Darlington "Mums" march to defend the NHS, and spoke at their Trafalgar Square rally. Before Jeremy Corbyn's campaign took off he had been expected to get most union backing. He has called for the NHS to be shielded from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP) with its drive for privatisation.
In the Labour leadership election battle he has begun making "left"-sounding statements about the NHS and railway public ownership, which critics have dismissed as mere "flip" designed to win back support that is drifting towards Jeremy Corbyn.

That his PR team is revealed to include people with very different associations may not be his fault, or even their's - it is not a matter of conviction, just what they do for a living. All the same it does not do him any favours.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/grangemouth-crisis-billionaire-ineos-boss-2474762

http://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigning/unitepolitics/unitepoliticsblog/unite-ahd-falkirk-clp/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-25828321

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/03/labour-falkirk-karie-murphy-voting-investigation

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/halifax-selection-row-leaked-emails-reveal-labours-war-with-unite-over-choice-of-candidate-10112356.html

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-2777-Burnham-joins-hero-mums-from-Darlington-on-NHS-march#.VcaASfnLrjk

http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/06/13/burnhams-spin-doctor-is-director-at-lobbyist-firm-that-advises-union-buster-ineos/

Not all Angels, but Not Just Victims Either.

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 22:39:00 +0000

MATCHGIRLS,1888 strike lit way for new trade unionism.

REBEL councillor Minnie Lansbury on way to arrest and jail, 1921

"ANGEL OF CABLE STREET", Dr. Hannah Billig

CABLE Street, in the East End of London, entered the pages of history on October 4,1936, when police attempting to force a way through for Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt fascists ran into resistance, barricades, and unpleasant objects such as the contents of chamber pots hurled at them from the upper storeys of houses.

A much larger crowd was waiting at Gardners Corner. Eventually,though heads were bloodied and arrests were made, the police, or the Home Secretary, decided to call it a day. Mosley was told his march was off,and he should pack up and go home. Many an East Ender had stories to tell of what they had been part of that day, and most of the legend they handed on to their young were true.

But if the Battle of Cable Street has rightly been remembered, the "Angel of Cable Street" deserves her place in history too, Born in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, in 1901,and growing up around Brick Lane, Hannah Billig, the daughter of refugees from Czarist Russia, qualified as a doctor in 1925, and worked in hospitals before setting up her surgery in a Georgian townhouse at 198 Cable Street in 1935. A blue plaque there commemorates her work. Soon the lady doctor riding around to visit people, on her bike with her big black bag, became a familiar sight. She always seemed to have time for the local kids, whether ill or not. And in those pre-NHS days she would see to the patient first, and worry whether they could pay later, if at all. Sometimes she would pay for medicines out of her own pocket.

During the Blitz on London, Dr. Billig took care of the sick and injured in the air raid shelters in Wapping. On March 13, 1941, she was tending to people at Orient Wharf when an explosion threw her out of the shelter and broke her ankle. After bandaging it herself, she helped to get the others out of the rubble, and cared for them through the night.

For her courage and bravery, Billig was awarded the George Medal. Not content with this service, Hannah joined the Indian Army Medical Corps in 1942 as a Captain and was posted to Calcutta. For her work with injured soldiers and refugees in Assam, she was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1945. The story goes that she apologised for being unable to collect her decoration at the Palace because she was too busy with her patients. She carried on in the new NHS until her retirement.

Hannah Billig is one of many brave and outstanding women made what they became by their experience in London's East End, but making their own mark on history,and the prospects of future generations. It was here that Eleanor Marx helped the gas workers organise, and Sylvia Pankhurst turned from women's suffrage to workers' revolution, her follower Minnie Lansbury going on to play a leading part in the Poplar council fight. Not all the makers of history were particularly famous. We can't give the names of all the Bryant and May "matchgirls" who lit the way for the new trade unionism at the end of the 1880s, or the women who stood their ground united in the Stepney rent strikes of the 1930s, creating in their own way yet another barrier to fascist aims of divide and conquer.

But all deserve to be remembered.

So when a new museum promising to be ‘the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history’ got planning permission to open on Cable Street, that seemed only right, and commendable,something to look forward to.

The original application for the museum said: “The museum will recognise and celebrate the women of the East End who have shaped history, telling the story of how they have been instrumental in changing society. It will analyse the social, political and domestic experience from the Victorian period to the present day.”

The document cited the closure of Whitechapel’s Women’s Library in 2013 to stress that the “Museum of Women’s History”, as it was billed, would be “the only dedicated resource in the East End to women’s history”.

But what has actually opened on Cable Street has turned those apparently virtuous intentions into a sick joke. Instead of commemorating the matchgirls' strike of 1888, this museum is dedicated to the life of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer who viciously murdered women across London's East End, from 1888 and 1891. The founder (a former Head of Diversity at Google) claims "It is not celebrating the crimes of Jack the Ripper but looking at why and how the women got in that situation in the first place”.

This is rubbish. The Ripper's victims may have turned to prostitution in order to live, but they were not to know they would fall victim to a psychopathic murderer who managed to evade detection and whose identity remains a matter of mystery and speculation to this day. Critics of the new museum see it as victim-blaming, as well as treating victimhood as the only role for women, quite the opposite of the kind of history we have cited.

Besides which, it is pretty evident that what was promised in the planning application and what has been delivered are very different things. The new museum, with its sign depicting the supposed Ripper as a black silhouetted figure in Victorian costume on a rose pink background, is turning what may be a legitimate historical and criminological interest into an entertainment for tourists. Besides the implications of treating real-life murders this way, it insults all East Enders, though especially women, by treating the area as a mere backdrop for psychopaths and killers.

A petition is now under way, calling on Tower Hamlets council to revoke the planning permission for the new museum on Cable street or force it to close down and re-open as the women's history museum we were promised.

http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/exhibitions/museum-which-promised-to-celebrate-east-end-women-now-devoted-to-jack-the-ripper-10423690.html

About Hannah Billig:
http://www.eastendtalking.org.uk/ourhistory/dr-hannah-billig

Sign the petition to Tower Hamlets council:
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/celebrate-suffragettes-not-serial-killers

Learn some real East End history on the streets where it happened:
http://www.eastendwalks.com/

And read Dave Rosenberg's book "Rebel Footprints":
http://www.eastendwalks.com/?page_id=613

Don't let Netanyahu finish Iran nuke deal. Instead make it the start

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 16:34:00 +0000

NETANYAHU scare tactic misfired. So will he try again?

THE international agreement under which the Iranian government renounces the production of nuclear weapons and allows international inspection, in return for which it gets a relaxation of sanctions, is a major achievement for US President Barack Obama.

It is a humiliating setback for Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. From getting Tel Aviv children to crouch under desks in air raid drills, to treating the UN General Assembly as children, Netanyahu has done everything to whip up fear and hysteria about a supposed Iranian threat. We were told Iran was near to having the bomb, and planning to use it, even though Israel's own intelligence chiefs doubted this was the case. Past remarks by former Iranian president Ahmadinejad about erasing the Zionist state were interpreted with the help of Israel's friends in the media as meaning the Iranians were intent on a nuclear Holocaust.

It would not take more than elementary knowledge of geography to realise that any such use of nuclear weapons against Israel would destroy al Aksa and slaughter large numbers of Muslims, leaving Palestine a radioactive wasteland rather than a homeland to which Palestinians could return.

But logic does not figure much in war psychology. The threat from Iran was to be used not only for unity at home, circling the wagons, and stilling Jewish dissent by evoking a supposed new Hitler; but to let Israel pretend to the world it is the victim, threatened with annihilation, even as its bombs rained down on Gaza and Lebanon, and its government prepared new ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians.

Besides which, Israel remains the one nuclear power in the Middle East, neither admitting nor denying it, but not allowing international inspection, nor allowing nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu the right to travel and speak abroad.

Under the deal secured with Iran, its government agreed to:

Halt enrichment of uranium above 5% purity.
"Neutralise" its stockpile of near-20%-enriched uranium.
Not install any more centrifuges (the machines used to enrich uranium).
Allow international inspection of nuclear facilities.

See also: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25080217

In return the six states which took part in the Vienna talks with Iran will:

Not impose further nuclear-related sanctions.
Suspend certain sanctions on trade.
Transfer $4.2bn (£2.6bn) to Iran in installments from sales of its oil.

In response to a complaint by Netanyahu that Iran was being "rewarded" with billions of dollars, opponents pointed out that Iranians were merely being allowed to receive the money they have earned, unlike the billions which Israel receives in US aid.

In Tehran suburbs, ordinary Iranians who have been suffering the effect of sanctions in scarcity, job losses, and price inflation, were celebrating the good news this Eid.

In Washington, President Obama said the deal “will make America and the world safer and more secure”. He used his weekly address to Americans on Saturday to build support among voters, ahead of a vote in Congress and against Republican opposition.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, who took part in the Vienna talks, told Parliament on Wednesday that "no agreement with Iran would have been enough for Netanyahu. Israel prefers a permanent state of standoff (with Iran)." Hammond, due to discuss the deal with Netanyahu, added the Israeli prime minister would try to undermine the deal through influence with the US Congress, but predicted this would fail. He said he was hopeful that the UK and Iran could reopen their respective embassies before the end of this year.

While Netanyahu has been pre-occupied with the supposed threat from the Islamic republic in Iran, Western powers have shown increasing alarm at the real threat from the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant", ISIL, or Da'esh. Whatever suspicions there were that the US and Saudis might sponsor Sunni and Wahabbi militancy as an asset, this ruthless and well-armed force has threatened the Saudi regime and carried out massive attacks on Egyptian forces in Sinai. And while Netanyahu and his mouthpieces could only attack ISIL in propaganda crudely lumping Hamas and Hizbollah together with this new barbaric force, we know that Hizbollah, an Iranian ally, is fighting ISIL in Syria, and that ISIL has threatened boastfully to destroy Hamas.

It was revealed this weekend that RAF pilots are flying combat missions against ISIL forces, not only in Iraq but in Syria too. Many people on the Left and in the peace movement have protested that this goes against the vote in Parliament last year not to intervene in Syria. But what we might note here is that back then the government wanted to go to war on Syria and oust President Assad, whereas now British forces are being deployed on the same side as Assad's backers, Iran, which also has forces fighting ISIL in Iraq.

Philip Hammond is not the only European Foreign Minister telling Netanyahu to calm down and behave. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told German broadcaster ARD in an interview on Wednesday that "this is a responsible deal and Israel should also take a closer look at it and not criticize the agreement in a very coarse way.”

In Israel too, though Netanyahu's right-wing coalition partners and the "opposition" Labour Party might be drawn behind him, not everyone agrees. More than one said Netanyahu had already alienated the US government and continuing to interfere in Congress would only make things worse.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/14/netanyahu-denounces-iran-nuclear-dealcriticism-israel

Veteran political columnist Akiva Eldar writes:

'A senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official, who has been closely following the Iranian issue in recent years, discussed with Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity Israel’s ability to influence ratification of the agreement by its signatories. “Bibi [Netanyahu] knows full well that the agreement was signed between Iran and six [world] powers, and not just with the US,” he said. “Everyone understands that Russia, China and Germany will not sign off on what Congress does.” He described Netanyahu’s opposition to Obama as “uncontrollable and political,” and that he is convinced that the prime minister’s moves in Congress will fail, as did the Israeli attempt in 1981 to thwart the sale of advanced warning AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia.

“I will tell you something that they don’t tell you in the Foreign Ministry,” the official said. “The agreement looks good to anyone not engaged in governmental public diplomacy. That includes the [military] chief of staff and many senior officials in the intelligence community. We understand that the Iranian threat has been deferred for a far longer time than we ever imagined in our rosiest dreams, with minimal danger for Israel.”

'He added, “Not only that, the agreement creates superb opportunities, which must be and can be used, if done correctly, of course. For instance, Iran will have a vested interest in maintaining calm in the near future, and Europe and the United States can be used to pressure it to rein in Hezbollah in arenas where it operates against us — on the Golan Heights and abroad.” '

Whatever Netanyahu and his sponsor in Las Vegas, Sheldon Adelson, are able to do by meddling in Washington, hopefully Britain and others - not least China and Russia - will make it clear that they are sticking by the Vienna agreement and not going to tolerate an Israeli war threat or a return to sanctions.

Here in London, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament welcomed the deal and said it showed how tensions in the Middle East could be reduced by diplomacy.

I'd take things further. The best way to make this agreement hold, and convince Iranians and everyone else they've made the right move in renouncing nuclear weapons is to be consistent.
Make the war-torn Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone, as Mordechai Vanunu has long urged, removing this sword of Damocles from hanging over all its peoples, as part of aiming for a peaceful world for everybody.

Cartoon by Khalil Bendib.

Nasty business in Bromley

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 21:21:00 +0000

Eviction threat to diabetic carer and daughter

AS a responsible council worker and trade unionist, Paul Rooney thought it his duty to criticize the policy and workings of Tory-controlled Bromley borough council.

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/bromley/9139983.Bromley_councillors_to_decide_on_sharing_library_services_with_Bexley/?ref=twtrec

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/10632356.Campaign_over__lamentable__commissioning_plans_from_Bromley_Council/

As well he might. Bromley is closing libraries and other services - a day care centre for disabled adults is next in its sights, - with little or no consultation or concern for what service users and workers think. It isn't just a matter of saving money. It's policy. The Tory council plans to cut its workforce from 3000 to 300. Critics say it has over £150 million in its reserve fund alone, yet is still refusing to spend this.

Like their counterparts on Barnet council over in north London, the Bromley councillors not only want to cut services to a minimum but to become a commissioning body, farming out work and service provision to private firms who can make a profit.

You'd almost think they'd be glad to see the back of Paul Rooney, when he gave up his job as a social work manager.

As for the rumour that someone had said they were out to get Paul Rooney, if it reached him he probably shrugged it off. What could they do? This is England. Leafy, respectable Bromley.
Anyway, enough of rumours. Here's what's happening. A statement from Unite the union.

Eviction threat to diabetic ‘facing £51,000 council tax bill is cruel’, says Unite

The attempted eviction of a Bromley insulin dependent diabetic, who looks after his severely disabled daughter and was wrongly charged a total of £51,000 for his council tax bill by outsourcing giant Liberata, was branded as ‘ham-fisted and cruel’.

Unite, the country’s largest union, has rallied in defence of Paul Rooney, who gave up work as a social work manager to look after his 14-year-old daughter Roisin, as bailiffs today (Monday 13 July) descended on the home he owns at 22 Yew Tree Road, Bromley BR3 8HT to take repossession.

Liberata, which runs the council tax collection service on behalf of the controversial Tory-controlled Bromley council, claims that Paul Rooney allegedly owes just over £2,000 in council tax. Liberata, it is alleged, has also tacked on £49,000 in solicitors’ fees.

Unite said that the mistakes made by Liberata were in not processing his application for council tax benefit correctly and this resulted in the council tax not being paid on time – which the union said was ‘an astonishing cock-up and a catalogue of outrageous incompetence’.

Pilgrim Tucker said: “Bromley's notoriously bad outsourced council tax collection service has repeatedly messed up the processing of Paul’s council tax, and now his home is threatened with repossession today.

“Paul, a former Unite rep, gave up work to care for his daughter Roisin, who has a brain tumour and chromasome disorder, with consequent physical and learning disabilities.

“Liberata has presided over an astonishing cock-up and a catalogue of outrageous incompetence – it is shameful. It is ham-fisted and cruel.”

About 30 community activists from Unite and local residents were at Yew Tree Road in a bid to stop the bailiffs from evicting Paul Rooney and Roisin, who has a brain tumour, a chromasome disorder and, as a result, physical and learning disabilities. He gave up work to care for his daughter.

Unite’s London community co-ordinator Pilgrim Tucker said: “This is a horrific case that is inhumane and proves that the outsourcing of council’s services to the private sector is a shambles and they should be brought back in house immediately.”

Bromley council is fully committed to becoming a commissioning council and reducing the number of council employees from 4,000 to 300 – despite having £130 million in reserves. The accelerating privatisation programme has been opposed by Unite’s council members who recently staged a fourth wave of strikes over the plans.
.
Unite regional officer Onay Kasab, who represents members at the council, said: “This appalling case just reinforces the case that Unite has repeatedly made that privatising council services has been a horrendous mistake.

“Our members at the council will continue to fight for the maintenance of decent in-house council services and the jettisoning of the deeply flawed privatisation agenda.”

On its website Liberata claims to be “a business process innovation company that helps customers reinvent complex services, transactions and processing. Our strategy is simply to create value with our customers by building better services for theirs.”

Bromley trades union council as well as Bromley Unite members are rallying to the side of Paul Rooney, and have raised the issue in the Greater London Association of Trades Union Councils (GLATUC). They are also supporting a lobby at the Civic Centre on Wednesday 15th July, at 6pm to defend the Astley Centre against privatisation.The Astley Centre provides essential support for adults with learning disabilities and it is now being hugely threatened by privatisation efforts.

https://www.facebook.com/bromleyunitetheunion

Clinton campaign undermined on the streets of Tegucigalpa

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 18:54:00 +0000

HONDURANS denounce corruption.

WITH all eyes on Greece, and how far its people can defy the bankers, the IMF, the European Union's commissioners, and those Germans who insensitively forget how their occupation robbed Greece blind during World War II, and how the Federal Republic was rewarded with massive aid when it began re-armament in 1953....I wonder if I might be forgiven for trying to catch up on some events on the other side of the world?

The Greeks, of course, have experienced the limits of Western democratic tolerance before. In 1944, before the Nazis had finally been defeated, the Allies turned their guns on the main Greek Resistance movement, ELAS, because it was Communist-led, and Greece had to endure four years of civil war. Then in 1967 the colonels staged their coup, in accordance with a NATO contingency plan -though they might not have been the intended military group - rounded up opponents, and ruled for the next seven years.

If that was a shock for Europe, people in Latin America have been used to such interventions over the years, from US marines landing on their shores in the earlier half of the 20th century to recoup the bankers' losses, to the coup which overthrew Salvador Allende's government in Chile in 1973, and the US-armed Contra terror against Nicaragua through the 1980s and early 1990s.

So it is all the more remarkable today that not only are a number of countries refusing to be bullied by the great power to the north, and attempting policies of independence and social reform, but even people in some of the little 'banana republics' are gaining confidence, and getting results. Here's a report from a week ago:

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras – After weeks of thousands of people marching against the corruption in Honduras arrest warrant has been issued for vice-president of Congress, Lena Gutierrez, by the supreme court of Honduras. Gutierrez, along with 16 others, including her father and two brothers, have been charged with fraud, crimes against public health, and falsification of documents.
According to UPI: “Gutierrez and her family are linked to the AstroPharma Company that allegedly embezzled and defrauded the government out of about $120 million by selling poor-quality medicine at inflated prices.”

Gutierrez, who is a member of the governing National Party, has of course claimed innocence. She had previously made the statement that she will prove her and her family are not guilty of the accusations, however now that proceedings are underway, she has been advised to remain silent. Hernandez has also been accused in a corruption scandal dealing with social security. During his 2013 election campaign, he allegedly received about $90 million out $300 million that was skimmed from Honduras’s public health system. It is not yet known if President Hernandez will resign despite the protests.

http://anonhq.com/corruption-in-honduras/

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/02/Honduras-court-orders-corruption-arrest-of-Congress-vice-president/9321435848094/

An earlier report from Associated Press carried in the Guardian had said that "The protesters are upset over a scandal involving a purported multimillion-dollar embezzlement of social security funds, with some of the money allegedly going to finance the governing political party. Among other things, they are calling for President Juan Orlando Hernandez to resign.
.........
"Organized via Twitter with hashtags including one that translates as “resign JOH” – a reference to the president’s initials – the movement began recently as just a couple of dozen people at a torchlight vigil in the capital.

"It gradually picked up steam, and thousands marched through Tegucigalpa on Friday with similarly large protests in San Pedro Sula, Siguatepeque, Choluteca and Comayagua during the weekend.
The Honduran Public Ministry has said a network led by the then director of the Social Security Institute, Mario Zelaya, fraudulently misspent at least $120m during the 2010-14 presidency of Porfirio Lobo.

"The scheme allegedly relied on mark-ups topping 100% on goods and services such as medicines and pensions, with kickbacks then being paid by businesses that benefited. At least part of the money purportedly ended up in the hands of the National Party, which counts both Lobo and Hernandez as members."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/honduras-protests-social-security-embezzlement

The Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign and others this week circulated a message saying "
Honduras' people are currently marching in the largest protests their country has ever seen, demanding an end to corruption in their country. These demands are growing week on week, but they need international support to pressure their government to acquiesce".

https://www.change.org/p/uk-government-and-un-support-honduras-people-s-demands-for-an-end-to-corruption

James Watson, a member of the very small UK-based NGO the Environmental Network for Central America, who is in Honduras at the moment, writes:
"Our press is increasingly reporting on this issue, but it is still receiving little attention. Honduras has been suffering repression since 2009 when a military coup brought its current National Party to power. The country is known as the murder, repression and corruption capital of the Americas. This year, Honduran press revealed evidence of millions of dollars stolen from their social security institute, and used partially to fund the last National Party election campaign. They have demonstrated that at least 3,000 people have died as a result, from lack of health care. This has ignited the "Indignados" movement, which represents a call from the people of Honduras for change. They are demanding a UN-backed International Commission against Corruption, but the corrupt president Juan Orlando Hernández is refusing calls. The UN has responded with a fact finding mission, but international pressure is required to press the National Party to listen to the protests, and to end the scandalous financial and military support that the UK, Europe, the US and Canada provide Juan Orlando.

www.enca.org.uk

In the background to what is happening in Honduras now are the circumstances in which the government came to power.

In the 5 a.m. darkness of June 28, 2009, more than two hundred armed, masked soldiers stormed the house of Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. (no relation to the fraud accused Mario Zelaya - CP) Within minutes Zelaya, still in his pajamas, was thrown into a van and taken to a military base used by the U.S., where he was flown out of the country.
It was a military coup, said the UN General Assembly and the Organization of American States (OAS). The entire EU recalled its countries’ ambassadors, as did Latin American nations. The United States did not, making it virtually the only nation of note to maintain diplomatic relations with the coup government. Though the White House and the Clinton State Department denounced only the second such coup in the Western Hemisphere since the Cold War, Washington hedged in a way that other governments did not.
“If you want to understand who the real power behind the [Honduran] coup is, you need to find out who’s paying Lanny Davis,” said Robert White, former ambassador to El Salvador, just a month after the coup. Speaking to Roberto Lovato for the American Prospect, Davis revealed who that was: “My clients represent the CEAL, the [Honduras Chapter of] Business Council of Latin America.”
http://www.salon.com/2015/06/08/exclusive_hillary_clinton_sold_out_honduras_lanny_davis_corporate_cash_and_the_real_story_about_the_death_of_a_latin_america_democracy

President Zelaya had been promising measures to assist the poor in Honduras. He had also been moving too close to states like Bolivia and Venezuela for the US liking. Nevertheless the official US position was against the coup.

Press Statement
Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
November 27, 2009
The United States remains committed to help restore the democratic and constitutional order in Honduras in the wake of the June 28 coup d’état that removed President Zelaya and led to the suspension of Honduras from the Organization of American States. As part of that effort, we expect the parties in Honduras to implement the measures they agreed to in the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, including steps toward national reconciliation and the December 2 Congressional consideration of President Zelaya's restitution. We look forward to the Congressional deliberations getting underway as announced.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/nov/132501.htm

But e-mails obtained between top Washington officials reveal a different picture. In the run-up to Honduras elections in 2009, with Zelaya exiled, anti-coup opponents were murdered, rallies and newspapers suppressed, and there was suspicion of widespread rigging. But here was then Assistant US Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, who had been in Honduras before the coup, in an email to Hilary Clinton just after the November 29 election results were announced, which brought Porfirio Loba Sosa's National Party into office.

The turnout (probably a record) and the clear rejection of the Liberal Party shows our approach was the right one, and puts Brazil and others who would not recognize the election in an impossible position. As we think about what to say, I would strongly recommend that we not be shy. We should congratulate the Honduran people, we should connect today's vote to the deep democratic vocation of the Honduran people, and we should call on the community of democratic nations (and especially those of the Americas) to recognize, respect, and respond to this accomplishment of the Honduran people.
Finally, this Administration, which worked so hard to manage and resolve this crisis, should be the one who defines the results and perceptions of today's vote, and not our critics on the Hill (who had no clear pathway to elections) or our adversaries in the region (who never wanted this day to happen).

http://www.cepr.net/blogs/the-americas-blog/newly-released-clinton-emails-reveal-state-department-s-celebration-over-honduras-flawed-elections-following-military-coup

In her book “Hard Choices,” Clinton admits that she used the power of her office to make sure that Zelaya would not return to office. “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia] Espinosa in Mexico,” Clinton writes. “We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.” http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

Clinton reports that Zelaya was arrested amid “fears that he was preparing to circumvent the constitution and extend his term in office.” But others say this was simply not true. As Clinton must know, when Zelaya was kidnapped by the military and flown out of the country in his pajamas on June 28, 2009, he was trying to put a consultative, nonbinding poll on the ballot to ask voters whether they wanted to have a real referendum on reforming the constitution during the scheduled election in November. It is important to note that Zelaya was not eligible to run in that election. Even if he had gotten everything he wanted, it was impossible for Zelaya to extend his term in office. But this did not stop the extreme right in Honduras and the United States from using false charges of tampering with the constitution to justify the coup.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html

More details of Hilary Clinton's role in Honduras have come out.

A new round of emails from Hillary Clinton’s time as U.S. Secretary of State released last week, reveals her connection with backers of the 2009 military coup that toppled Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. According to an email exchange in the aftermath of the coup, Clinton requested the assistance of a prominent PR advisor Lanny Davis as a back-channel to Roberto Micheletti, the interim president after the coup. Davis was also an adviser to a group of Honduran businessmen who had supported Zelaya's ouster . The request came a week before Clinton brokered a deal to reinstall Zelaya through a national unity government. According to the Intercept, this was an attempt at undermining the democratically elected left-wing president while not explicitly endorsing the coup. The plan failed however as the legal vacuum left by the coup made the return of Manuel Zelaya impossible. The U.S. State Department continued to support and recognize what many considered fraudulent elections by the post-coup government, saying they were “free, fair and transparent.” http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Hillary-Clinton-Implicated-in-Honduras-Coup-Emails-Reveal-20150707-0022.html.

The renewed wave of popular demonstrations in Honduras have caused the first crack in the regime just as Thomas Shannon, now a Counsellor to Secretary of State John Kerry, was starting a visit to Central America, including Honduras.

And though too late to affect former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in a post she no longer holds, the latest revelations of her duplicity, as well as the signs that what she helped put together is starting to crumble, should surely damage her campaign to run as the Democrats nomination for President?. Of course she would not be the first liar in the White House. But the others were elected before they were found out.

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

By way of a personal confession

BACK in the mid-Seventies, when I was briefly employed as a journalist on the "Foreign"(sic) Desk at News Line, I was instructed to always put datelines at the head of any story, just as they came in from Reuters or Interpress. Having seen my by-line "Charles Parkins" apparently reporting from ADDIS ABABA, TOKYO or PARIS, a comrade visiting from Up North complimented me on the amount of travel I was getting in, so soon after joining the paper. I expected to see a bigger than normal twinkle in her eye, thinking she must have noticed how the day before I seemed to be filing reports from two distant locations on the opposite sides of the world, on the same day. Not even Phineas Fogg could have managed it.
In reality, unlike my senior comrade Jack Gale who was dodging bullets in the hills of Lebanon at the time, I rarely got out of the Clapham office, and the nearest I got to exotic parts was when I was despatched to rural Ayrshire to find a bunch of Glasgow lads on a jobs march, and join them on the road to London.
I did on one occasion decide to use a story about Honduras, and confidently datelined it TEGUCIGALPA. Alas our editor, a no-nonsense Aussie called Alex Mitchell (well, except when he was fed nonsense by Gerry Healy, which he pretended to almost believe), spotted it, and shook his head. I suppose the Vimto book, from which we educated Manchester and Salford lads had learned world capitals as boys, never penetrated his remote corner of Queensland. So out it came, and I was supposedly filing my story from MEXICO CITY. Which was probably safer in those days.
Having reached a ripe old age without ever visiting Tegucigalpa, and not having an editor to tell me what I can and cannot put in my blog, I can at least fulfil an ambition, by quoting an item datelined TEGUCIGALPA, and putting it in my headline. Ah, freedom!

Blue Skies, Sir Nicholas, and Fair

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 17:31:00 +0000

ARRIVAL in a strange land. Sculpture at Liverpool Street station commemorates Kindertransport

THANKYOU letter to Nicholas Winton from some of the children he helped to reach freedom

THE death of Sir Nicholas Winton at 106 at least shows an exception to the saying that the good die young. He wasn't always a 'Sir' of course. In fact, though hundreds of people owed their lives to this quiet and modest man, it took half a century after what he achieved before his name became famous, and it was not until 2002 that he was honoured with a knighthood.

It was Sir Nick of course who organised the rescue of 669 children, mostly Jewish, from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation later known as the Czech Kindertransport. This involved not only arranging for them to travel safely to Britain, but finding homes for them here, in a country that was not entirely welcoming to refugees, and whose government had been slow, indeed reluctant, to acknowledge the deadly menace represented by Nazism.

After the war, Nicholas Winton did not discuss his efforts with anyone. It was only in 1988 that his wife discovered a scrapbook in their attic, with details of the children's parents and the families that took them in. That year the Esther Rantzen programme on TV brought some of these now grown children together with Nicholas Winton, and introduced his name to a wider public.

Nicholas Winton was born on 19 May 1909 in Hampstead, London, a son of Barbara (née Wertheimer) and Rudolph Wertheim. His parents were German Jews who had moved to London two years earlier. They changed the family name to Winton, in their bid for assimilation, and converted to Christianity. Nicholas was baptised, and in 1923 he was sent to the newly opened Stowe public school in Buckinghamshire.

Leaving school without qualifications, he nevertheless managed to get into banking, first with Midland and then working with banks in Germany and France, before returning to London to become a broker on the stock exchange. Despite his immersion in capitalism, or maybe because of what he learned from it, the young stockbroker was also "an ardent socialist who became close to Labour Party luminaries Aneurin Bevan, Jennie Lee and Tom Driberg."

Just before Christmas 1938, Winton was planning a Swiss skiing holiday when one of his socialist friends, Martin Blake, asked him to come out to Prague instead, where Blake was working to help refugees. Many people fleeing repression and persecution in Nazi Germany and Austria had taken refuge in Czechoslovakia, which was now about to become the next victim of Nazi aggression and Western appeasement.

On September 30, 1938, the British and French governments signed the Munich agreement, under which Hitler could begin cutting up Czechoslovakia to devour it. Chamberlain came home bearing his bit of paper promising 'peace in our time'. The British authorities were barring refugees and sending people back, and after the Nazis completed their conquest in March 1939, the Bank of England agreed to hand them the Czech gold reserve which had been sent to London for safe keeping.

But in November 1938, following the Kristallnacht state-organised pogroms in Germany, the House of Commons approved a measure to allow the entry into Britain of refugees younger than 17, provided they had a place to stay and a warranty of £50 was deposited for their eventual return to their own country. In the limited time he had after arriving in Prague, Nicholas Winton organised the scheme for parents to at least get their children out, on what became known as the Czech kindertransport.

The Dutch government had responded to Kristallnacht by closing its borders to Jewish refugees.
Border guards were catching them and sending them back to Germany. The children were going to embark on the ferry from Hoek van Holland. Fortunately, with the help of guarantees from Britain, Winton was able to persuade the Dutch to relent, and the children were allowed through. Altogether some 669 children made it to Britain, where Nicholas Winton's mother was among those helping to find them homes. Many of these children would never see their parents or relatives again, as these fell victim to the Nazi murder and concentration camps. Another 250 children were due to leave Prague on September 1, 1939, when the Second World War had begun, and prevented their departure. Nearly all of the children on this last, unsuccessful, train perished during the war.

Nicholas Winton remained modest about the work he had done, acknowledging the part played by Beatrice Wellington, Doreen Warriner, Trevor Chadwick and others in Prague who also worked to evacuate children. "Chadwick did the more difficult and dangerous work after the Nazis invaded ... he deserves all praise".

Among those who helped find shelter for children in England was Henry Fair, who worked in the Woodcraft Folk, a youth organisation dedicated to helping youngsters acquire a love of the countryside and nature, while instilling values of community and friendship. Arising parallel to the Scouts, but with an affection for Native American lore, and distaste for militarism, and also mixing boys and girls in the same movement, Woodcraft Folk had grown close to the labour movement, especially its co-operative wing. It linked with the Red Falcons youth movement on the Continent.

But it was south Londoner Henry Fair particularly who took up the cause of the refugee children.
Woodcraft members and parents used to receiving communications from him about summer camps and hiking, usually signed off "Blue Skies", now received a letter about people being persecuted by the Nazis, and appealing for their help to find homes for the children. Fair's daughter would remember meeting refugees at the family's home in Tooting.

Here are two others who remember those days:
Zusana Medusova, writing in a Prague magazine in 1998:
"My father was already in hiding from the Gestapo...an Austrian socialist, political editor of Vorwarts
, the daily paper of the Social democratic party...Of course he had to flee at once. ..the paper was forbidden and its editors were enemies of the new state! So, together with many other anti-nazi refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish, Czechoslovakia was their first place of exile...Very soon the children of these refugees were formed into a youth group called Die Rote Falken...Some of us Rote Falken had attended an International youth camp in the summer of 1937. It was held in England, near Brighton. ..None of us could guess that two years later Britain would beome our new homeland.

"The organiser of this large camp - the head of the Woodcraft Folk - was a young married man, an idealist, keen trade unionist, humanitarian - we all love this man. He was eager to know from our youth leaders what was then the situation in Czechoslovakia and he kept in touch with them after our return from this wonderful holiday. When it became obvious that the Germans had their eye on their Czech neighbours Henry Fair wrote a pleading letter to all members of the Woodcraft Folk, asking them to volunteer to take some of the children whose parents were once again threatened by the Nazis. It must be said that these were working-class families and that, by taking a refugee child, they would certainly have to make financial sacrifices... none of us could imagine that we would never see our parents again - in my case out of 52 members of my mother's extended family, only eight survived two returned from the horrors of Auschwitz and Belsen."

(Article from Rosh Chodesh magazine, quoted in Fashioning a New World: A History of the Woodcraft Folk, by Mary Davis).

Susanna Pearson, was born Susanne Ehrmann on 11 April 1928 in Moravska Ostrava, a town in Czechoslovakia… The family moved to Prague when she was four years old, for her father’s job

"My mother had many friends, loved parties and nice clothes. We were both members of the Rote Falcons, an international youth movement which had links with the Woodcraft Folk in Britain, Mother as a helper. I have happy memories of the camps we went to. At that time, we little knew that it was probably the membership of this organization that would save my life"

As the Nazis closed in, Susanne's parents and their Jewish friends were seeking ways to leave the country. "This was proving impossible as the world had closed its doors to Jewish refugees. However there were efforts made to bring out children, particularly by a British stockbroker called Nicholas Winton who was on holiday in Prague. He realized the plight of the Jews and resolved to do something. He gained permission from the British government to bring out children, providing he could find families to care for them and a guarantee of £50 per child for re-immigration. In this way he made it possible for 1,000 children to come to Britain. The start of the Second World War prevented the last transport train leaving, but nevertheless he was able to rescue about 680 children.

"The demand for places was very high, but I was probably given one because the Woodcraft Folk in England were able to offer 20 homes for Rote Falcons. They were prompted to do so having met up with some of us at a camp in Brighton in 1938. It is difficult to know how my parents felt when they learned that they had been successful in their application for me to be one of these children. I have often wondered, particularly when my own daughters were the age I was then. The decision my parents made to send me must have been a very brave and difficult one, because they knew they could not come with me. Nor did they know whether they would ever be able to join me".

"My transport left Prague on 29 June 1939 with about 241 children aged 2-15. I find it difficult to remember how I felt on that day when my parents took me to the railway station, and I became one of the children on one of the last trains to safety before the war started. Perhaps it seemed an adventure, and I certainly did not realize that I would never see my parents again…"

Susan concludes her account thus: "My own beliefs remain intact. My Jewishness is a positive part of myself, although I am not observant. I am on the left of politics, and like to think of myself as tolerant and anti-racist. My hope is that by telling my story, it will help young people to begin to understand what can happen to ordinary people when they become the victims of racism, discrimination and prejudice".

(extracts from Susanne Pearson’s account in Survival: Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Story, published by The Quill Press, in association with The Aegis Trust.
http://www.swallowcliffehall.com/pearson.html

The British Establishment may have attempted to ease its collective conscience, if it has one, or to make itself look better, by honouring Nicholas Winton with media praise and a knighthood, but what he did went against the grain of government policy at the time, and would be again. He was not really one of them, in fact we could almost claim him as one of ours.

The Woodcraft Folk has come to realise what a proud page in its history was written by Henry Fair and his helpers, and you can read some of the documents etc from the time on its digital archive,
http://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/browse.php?parent=78

Henry Fair moved to Somerset in later years, and became a councillor in Bruton. He died in 1999. Some years before that he had received what he considered the finest of compliments - the discovery that his name was on a Gestapo hit list of enemies to eliminate if they succeeded in invading Britain.
http://heritage.woodcraft.org.uk/archive/browse.php?parent=78

See also:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/03/nicholas-winton-saved-me-nazis-kindertransport-jewish-children-friend

Voices Against State Piracy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 22:02:00 +0000

DROR FEILER, aboard aid vessel Juliano, named after Juliano Mer-Khamis, director of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, who was murdered in 2011. This boat was sabotaged while in Greek harbour.

ONCE again, Israeli naval forces have illegally intercepted and seized vessels and crew attempting to breach the blockade on Gaza to deliver civil aid.

Here are two statements about this, in chronological order as received. The first is from veteran Israeli peace campaigner and former Knesset member Uri Avneri, and the organisation he leads, Gush Shalom (the Peace Bloc):

Avnery: Let the Gaza Flotilla through, open the Port of Gaza under international supervision

Press Release June 28, 2015

Former Knesset Member Uri Avnery, of Gush Shalom (The Israeli Peace Bloc), calls upon Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ya'alon to take a sober thought at the last moment and allow what had been called "The Swedish Flotilla" to reach the Port of Gaza. "Four small boats, loaded with medical equipment and solar panels to generate electricity, do not constitute the slightest threat to Israel's security. The arrival of the boats with their humanitarian cargo at Gaza would be a modest good will gesture by the State of Israel. Conversely, sending armed commandos to take over the boats at sea would be one more act of naked force which would further entrench Israel's image as an aggressive and violent Goliath - an image which is the main reason for the increasing acts of boycott against Israel all over the world ".

Avnery recalled that on at least four past occasions, the State of Israel allowed the arrival of humanitarian aid ships to Gaza. That was before the decision to adopt the policy of naked force, a policy which caused bloodshed in the disastrous Marmara Affair. For example, In November 2008, the government of Israel allowed two boats, which carried 44 activists from 17 countries, to dock at the port of Gaza. At that time, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a statement reading "We will allow these publicity-seekers to get into Gaza, and thus deny success to their public relations provocation". The Israeli Navy was then instructed to track the boats but not interfere with their sailing and docking at Gaza – and that was all. "The text of the 2008 communique can still be found in the Foreign Ministry computers, and it can still be re-published today, word by word" suggested Avnery.

"Beyond the specific issue of this flotilla, it's high time to open the Port of Gaza and free the economy of the Gaza Strip from the strangulation which drives its residents to unemployment and terrible poverty, the breeding ground for extremism and hatred. It is well known that international parties are willing to mediate an agreement on international supervision of the Port of Gaza, and the Hamas leadership is willing to reach such an agreement" says Avnery.

And this evening I received the following from European Jews for Just Peace, EJJP, to which the Jewish Socialists' Group(JSG) is affiliated. The JSG has endorsed the statement.

Statement of the EJJP on The Freedom Flotilla III
July 1st, 2015

On June 29th, the Israeli navy assaulted the Swedish boat “Marianne” in international waters, seizing it’s crew of human-rights activists and its cargo of humanitarian supplies in what can only be called an act of piracy. The passengers were dragged against their will into Israel, to the city of Ashdod.

The Freedom Flotilla aims to break the siege on the Gaza Strip, which the Israeli government has turned into the world’s largest open-air prison. Though the boats and the activists are unarmed, they seek to break the siege in a symbolic action of sailing through to Gaza, in order to call attention to the incarceration of almost 1.8 million people, who are denied their basic rights to travel and to trade, being cut-off from the world by the Israeli military.

The chairman of European Jews for Just Peace, Dror Feiler, is among the illegally incarcerated passengers of the boat “Marianne.” We learned from him that just a few days prior to the Israeli assault, one of the boats in the flotilla was sabotaged within the coastal waters of Greece, leading to the suspicion that the Israeli armed forces have violated Greek sovereignty in order to sabotage the Freedom Flotilla.

European Jews for Just Peace is a coalition of European Jewish organizations, committed to peace and to justice. We demand of our European governments to act to release the captive passengers, among them European Parliament member Ana Miranda. We strongly condemn the inhuman siege on the Gaza Strip.

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

To which I might add that Dror Feiler is a friend, and though now living in Sweden, was born in Israel and served in its armed forces. On previous Gaza flotillas he was arrested and roughed up by the Israeli forces and he is currently banned from entering Israel - except of course when they
incarcerate him. This means Dror cannot see his 92-year old mother, a nurse who has continued working with Physicians for Human Rights.

more info:

https://shiptogaza.se/en

http://www.imemc.org/article/72077

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/06/2011628101331334709.html

http://www.ejjp.org/about-ejjp.html

http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/index.php

Hame to Scotland's Hot Summer

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 23:12:00 +0000

NO EASY BERTH for privateers

SCOTLAND'S First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was on bright and sparkling form when she visited the USA earlier this month. Appearing on the satirical news programme The Daily Show she told host John Stewart: "You billed me on your website as a comedian - so you've raised all these expectations that I'm going to be funny".

"And I'm a politician, and as you know, politicians are rarely very funny."

Then when the conversation got on to Scottish oil stocks, Stewart mockingly asked: "How much are we talking about here? May we invade you."

Sturgeon replied: "I think this is progress because you just heard there Jon, presumably on behalf of the United States ask permission to invade an oil-producing country, it doesn't usually work that way."

But the SNP leader was coming home to face trouble in her own back yard - almost literally - and residents who say its beyond a joke. While she was away the 'Let's Save Govanhill' campaign group was taking council officers on a tour of their estate showing them the amount of rubbish strewn around, which they blame on neglect and fly-tipping.

They are calling on Glasgow city council leader Gordon Mathieson to intervene.
The group have also met with Nicola Sturgeon as part of their campaign. She was MSP for Govan before that constituency was abolished, and still represents the area as MSP for Glasgow Southside.

The campaigners have posted photographs of rubbish-strewn streets and greens on Facebook. Demanding "serious intervention into the ghetto Govanhill has now become", Liz Armour of the Save Govanhill group said : "Yet again the images of Nicola Sturgeon's constituency have shocked many people. Others have said this is nothing new. The sad thing is children live in this filth and they see the squalor everyday surrounding them.

"Despite council officials viewing it firsthand on their tour we are not holding our breaths waiting for some serious action from them, instead we will continue holding our noses at the stink that Govanhill is now creating for Glasgow."

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/13332113.Campaigners_call_for_action_over__filth_and_squalor__in_Govanhill/

When I first heard that protesters were going to Nicola Sturgeon my thought was that surely this was a council matter, and not up to the First Minister? I wondered if the Labour Party was stirring things up, and deliberately diverting people's frustration so as to embarrass the SNP leader. But a friend who lives in Govan assures me people there are well aware of the Labour-led Glasgow city council's responsibilities, and were turning to their MSP because they felt the authorities were neglecting them.

Meanwhile, away from the schemes and back-streets of Glasgow, another struggle is taking place, and this is one we predicted. In 2007, hearing that the SNP having received funds from the Souter family had dropped its position on public ownership of transport, I wondered how this might affect Caledonian MacBrayne, whose ferries provide the vital service to the Scottish islands.
http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2007/04/but-they-can-buy-our-politics.html

Now here is Richie Venton, industrial organiser for the Scottish Socialists Party:

Caledonian Macbrayne (CalMac) ferry workers – members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers’ union (RMT) – are taking industrial action in defence of their pensions, jobs, conditions of work – and against privatisation by the Scottish government, who seem set to hand the publicly-owned CalMac ferries over to the private, profiteering Serco.

They start with an overtime ban, followed by a 24-hour strike.

The workers run lifeline services to remote communities on the Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries.

These RMT members deserve and need the solidarity of every worker in Scotland.

They are themselves often members of the island communities who depend on these lifeline services. They are dedicated and hardworking, going out in all weather, and have only resorted to this action because of the threat to the services they provide as well as the jobs and conditions they’ve gained through collective union efforts.

SWEEPING MAJORITIES FOR STRIKE

They decided on this course of action by sweeping majorities in a ballot of RMT members, who make up about 680 of the 1,400-strong workforce. In a decisive 60% turnout, on a two-question ballot, 98% of them voted in favour of industrial action short of strike action, and 92% in favour of strikes. Even if the Tories’ vicious hurdles against the right of workers to withdraw their labour had already been made law, there would still be a legal majority for this solidarity action.

That in itself illustrates the strength of feeling of a workforce that has tried every other option to get guarantees on their pensions and against compulsory redundancies.

Read more about the CalMac struggle at Richie Venton’s blog.

https://www.scottishsocialistparty.org/calmac-ferries-trade-unions-sold-down-the-river/

http://richieventon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/calmac-ferries-sold-down-river.html

In another dispute, hospital porters who have been fighting for upgrading and a raise in pay have taken their protest to the Dundee offices of Scottish Health Minister Shona Robinson whom they say is blocking their award.
http://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-courier-advertiser-perth-and-perthshire-edition/20150627/281852937219721/TextView

Secrets and Spies linked with blacklisting

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Jun 2015 17:52:00 +0000

WITH government ministers like Ian Duncan Smith anxiously insisting the results of their policies should be hidden behind secrecy, two stories illustrate the way police are guarding their right to spy on the public.

We are not talking about dangerous criminals or terrorists here, but about those who have been at the receiving end of violence, and tried to do something about it.

Duwayne Brooks and Stephen Lawrence were teenagers, on their way home one night in 1993 when they were chased by a racist gang, and Stephen was stabbed and bled to death, just yards from the bus stop where they had been waiting, in Eltham, south east London.

Now 40, and a former Lib Dem councillor, Duwayne not only gave evidence but campaigned along with the Lawrence family for those who had attacked them and murdered his friend to be brought to justice. Since then he has called for the Metropolitan Police to reveal the truth about spying that it conducted, not against the murder suspects, but against him and the Lawrence campaigners.

The Yard said it would hand over any material its officers had collated on him. But Duwayne says what he received from the Met were three pages of intelligence reports, all heavily redacted, so that only four sentences were visible. Even the dates were covered up.

“The Commissioner promised they would be open and transparent and said the Met would provide copies of documents held on me. Instead they sent me this stuff which is a waste of time. It clearly shows they are still holding information about me. Are they still covering up? Yes 100%.”

Stephen Lawrence's mother Doreen entered the House of Lords as Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon, a Labour life peer, on September 6, 2013. Duwayne Brooks was awarded an OBE this month. But in 2013 a former police officer, Peter Francis, revealed that he had been employed to gather "dirt" on Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences. Scotland Yard promised an inquiry.

The documents do show the police were keen to play up differences between Duwayne Brooks and the Lawrences. One sentence in the report suggests he supported the Movement for Justice, and had criticised Stephen's parents for reluctance to speak at rallies. Another sentence quotes Duwayne saying that “the black community should not walk on by when the police are stopping blacks in the street”.

BLACKOUT Heavily redacted document from the Met

He said: “How did they know that? I believe the redacted information would answer that.”

The Met said: “We made an undertaking to disclose material held on Mr Brooks to his solicitor. As explained, it was redacted to protect sensitive information.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/stephen-lawrences-best-friend-says-5931021

ANOTHER attempt to uncover what the Met's snoops are up to ran into the secrecy barrier this week when they refused to disclose whether undercover copper Mark Jenner was still on active service, citing "health and safety" grounds.

Jenner, who also used the name Mark Cassidy, posed as a joiner in 1996 and became active in the building union Ucatt until 1999. He also went to the Colin Roach Centre, which was particularly concerned about police violence. Jenner/Cassidy established a relationship, lasting five years, with a woman teacher, who bore his child, while he was collecting information on her involvement in environmental campaigns. (CORRECTION: (see comment) I confused this with another case, Jenner did not give this woman a child and she was not involved in environmental campaign. Shows danger of not checking facts when working late at night!)

A diary left behind by Jenner indicates that he was interested in building workers campaigning on safety issues. He even chaired some meetings. Former police officer Peter Francis has confirmed that Jenner, a member of the Yard's Special Demonstrations Squad, was an undercover agent.

But Metropolitan Police chiefs have turned down a freedom of information request asking if the former spy was still on duty, saying they would not “confirm or deny” any details of his activities.
The Met cited the need to protect “personal data” as well as the potential for “health and safety” breaches.

“It is deeply cynical for the police to be using personal data as an excuse to withhold information, when they had no hesitation to distribute workers’ personal details to blacklisters and ruin their lives,” said Ucatt acting general secretary Brian Rye.

A database of blacklisted construction workers, held contrary to the Data Protection Act, was discovered in 2009. It included details about workers' political views, out of work activities and families, and some of the information looked suspiciously as though it had been gathered by undercover police officers. Since then other information has been brought to light about meetings between senior police officers and employers.

“The police’s continued refusal to answer questions about their role in the blacklisting of ordinary construction workers is reprehensible,” said Brian Rye. "Everyone who had their lives blighted by blacklisting deserves the complete truth. That will only be achieved through a full public inquiry into this disgusting practice.”

Promising increased police surveillance to protect national security, Home Secretary Theresa May told MPs that the “snoopers’ charter” proposals blocked by the Lib Dems during the last parliament were “too wide-ranging” and would be tightened up. Former government lawyer Victoria Prentis, who was elected a Tory MP last month, said that Britain was “lucky to have” its spies. “They have been proved repeatedly to be both efficient and decent and a great example of the values we hold so dear in this country,” she said.

http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-f936-MET-SILENT-ON-BLACKLIST-SPY#.VY1CG0bLrjm

UNDERCOVER (and under-the-covers) COP Mark Jenner, aka Cassidy, spied on workers concerned about health and safety, and lived with woman he had befriended under false identity before moving on.
"A great example of the values we hold so dear in this country,”?

Investigate Blacklisting, says Nicola's Mum

ANTI-BLACKLIST campaigners seem to have claimed some success this week having set up stall at the Scottish National Party Trade Union Group meeting in Stirling.

NICOLA Sturgeon is being urged to set up a Hillsborough-style public inquiry into the scandal of blacklisting – by her mum.

Councillor Joan Sturgeon and her North Ayrshire colleagues want an official investigation into the shameful employment practice.

The Record previously told how almost 600 workers in Scotland were blocked from getting jobs by the Consulting Association.

Their blacklist was revealed after a raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009. It led to the organisation being shut down.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/blacklist-blitz-nicola-sturgeons-mum-5943578

Blacklisting was also mentioned by new Midlothian MP Owen Thompson in his maiden speech in the Commons, in which he also, ironically, praised the speech of fellow newcomer Victoria Prentis.

BUT RMT trade unionists have been less impressed with the SNP trade union group's failure to back opposition to privatisation of Caledonian-MacBrayne ferries.
http://www.rmt.org.uk/news/rmt-responds-to-snp-trade-union-group-statement-on-calmac/

From Hajduk to Hammers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 01:09:00 +0000

NK HAJDUK, 1944, with new red stars and friends on the island of Vis.

IT was back in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in the years before the First World War. A group of Croat students attending the University of Prague went to the city's old U Fleku pub after watching a football match between AC Sparta and SK Slavia. They got talking about how popular the game was in their home city, Split, and how good their friends were, and decided Split ought to have a professional side.

It wasn't just the beer talking, because soon after they met they had their club officially registered with the authorities, on February 13, 1911. Thinking what to call their team they went to see an old teacher, Josip Barač, and he suggested "Hajduk", a name for a brigand, which had come to be romanticised and associated with guerrillas fighting foreign rule, whether the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires.

A famous hajduk called Andrija Simic had arrived in Split in 1902, after years in an Austrian prison, and been greeted by cheering crowds. Barač told the football club founders that the name "Hajduk" symbolized "that which is best in our people: bravery, humanity, friendship, love of freedom, defiance to powers, and protection of the weak. Be worthy of that great name."

Hajduk described itself as "hrvatski nogometni klub" (Croatian football club) and adopted the Croatian chequerboard coat-of-arms in its crest, reflecting people's opposition to the Austro-Hungarian policy of keeping Dalmatia separate from the rest of Croatia. This issue would reappear in World War II, when in return for Mussolini's backing the Ustashe conceded Split and the rest of Dalmatia to Italian rule, while extending their own brutal regime over Bosnia and Hercogovina.

Hajduk's first opponent had been Calcio Spalato, the club of an autonomist party from in Split, and their matches ended with a 9-0 (6-0) victory for Hajduk.Under the wartime occupation they were offered the chance to compete in the Italian first division as "A C Spalato", but turned it down, and they adopted the same defiance when the Germans occupied Split and turned it over to the Ustashe's NDH state.

In the same year that Hajduk was founded, a young man from Kumrovec in northern Croatia went to work at a factory in Kamnik, in Bohemia, going on to jobs in Germany and Austria, where he ended up a test driver for Daimler. Of mixed Slovene and Croat parentage, his name was Joseph Broz, though he was to become better known in the Second World War by the nom de guerre, Tito.

It was also in 1911 that the Serb journal Almanack published an article on Young Bosnia, and that a teenager called Gavril Princip joined the nationalist group. On June 28, 1914, Vidovdan (St.Vitus Day) to patriotic Serbs, in Sarajevo, he fired the shots which killed the visiting Archduke Franz-Ferdinand and his wife Sophie, and provided the pretext for the first Great imperialist war.

Called up to the Austro-Hungarian army, Joseph Broz made Sergeant-Major. But more important than this military experience, he was captured by the Russians, then freed from a prison camp by revolutionary workers during the February Revolution, and went on to join the Red Guards and become a communist.

Forward to September 1943, when news of the Italian surrender reached Tito's partisan headquarters in Bosnia, where they had already been joined by British officers, Churchill supporting them as the most effective if not sole force fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. It was urgent for the partisans to reach Split, and take the Italian forces' surrender - and arms supplies -before anyone else, particularly Germans, got there. It would mean a forty mile journey across Hercogovina's rough terrain -"good only for raising sheep and Ustashe", as a Bosnian saying has it.

The 1st Proletarian Division's advance force made it in a 24 hour forced march, much of it overnight, clashing with an Ustashe unit on the way and capturing weapons from them. When they reached the hills overlooking Split they saw a little old Fiat car winding its way up the zig zag road to meet them.
"What kept you?" said the driver. He told them that Split was in the hands of its citizens, and that local partisans assisted by high school students had taken over and disarmed the Italians.

General Emilio Becuzzi surrendered the Split garrison, consisting of "Bergamo" division, some 12-13,000 men, on September 12, 1943. Italian officers wanted to keep command of their own units, but this was not accepted. Instead, some 350 Italian soldiers who wanted to join the partisans were formed into the Garibaldi battalion - same name as an Italian unit in the International Brigade in Spain. (There's a memorial plaque honouring these Italians on the post office as you enter Split from the south). On September 15, in Livno, Herzogovina, the Matteotti battalion was formed, taking its name from an Italian Socialist MP whom the fascists murdered.

More Italians joined the partisans in Montenegro, forming an entire Garibaldi Division which stayed in Yugoslavia until early 1945, when it's member were shipped back to Italy.
http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/inc/print.asp?url=/20030912/feljton01.asp
http://147.91.230.48/ifdt/izdanja/casopisi/ifdt/IV/D1/document

Meanwhile in Split, while partisans used captured Italian vehicles to cart away weapons and ammunition, the British Captain Deakin made a balcony speech to citizens, with Croatian poet and partisan officer Lola Ribar interpreting, promising that as British and Allied forces advanced up through Italy they would be able to give more support to the liberation struggle in Yugoslavia.
His speech was widely circulated by the resistance paper Slobodna Dalmacija (Liberated Dalmatia) - (which still exists as a title today, though President Tudjman and his business cronies put paid to its independence). A Nazi paper in Zagreb reported this as an "unfortunate speech made by a local Jew disguised as a British officer").

As for Hajduk, at a ceremony on their home ground, the entire football team lined up and pledged their allegiance to the partisans.

The partisans could not stay in Split, where their presence made them and the civilian population prey to Luftwaffe bombing. The Germans took the city. But they could not have Hajduk.

The club's players made their way to the Adriatic island of Vis, where a new partisan headquarters was set up, from which joint operations were launched with British commandos and special boat units. On May 7, 1944 on the Feast of Saint Duje, the patron saint of Split, Hajduk began playing again as the official football team of the Yugoslav resistance. They played against teams from the Allied forces in Italy, and famously defeated the British in a friendly match.^[12] The team sewed the partisan red star on to their white-and-blue strip,

In 1945, Hajduk made a tour through Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, where they were honoured by de Gaulle, Syria and Malta. After the war, Tito, who frequently attended matches, invited his favourite team to move to Belgrade and become the official Yugoslav People's Army team. But they preferred to keep their "Dalmatian spirit" and stay in Split.

And why am I recounting all this in my blog just now?

Well the other day I was talking to a comrade of mine who was over the moon because the football team which he supports, West Ham, acquired a new manager this month, Slaven Bilic, whom he describes as a "Socialist", and not like the owners.

PLAYER TO MANAGER

Not knowing much about football, I looked up Bilic, a Croat who began his professional career with Hajduk, and past player for both West Ham and Everton, and found that he is certainly on record when in Croatia as wanting to drive racialism out of the game,

When managing the Turkish side Besiktas he declared:
"The team's philosophy is 'power to the people.' There are no rich or poor here. No classes. That's why I can say that I am endeavoring for a socialist team." (Post-match interview after Beşiktaş beat Gaziantepspor 2–0 in Spor Toto Super Lig).[28]
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/bilics-socialist-besiktas-maintains-100-percent-record-with-gaziantepspor-victory.aspx?pageID=238&nID=53653&NewsCatID=362

Wikipedia tells us:

Along with his native Croatian, Bilić is fluent in German, Italian, and English, while he also holds a degree in law. As a big fan of rock music, he plays rhythm guitar with his favored red Gibson Explorer and is a member of Rawbau, a Croatian rock group. In 2008, the band recorded a song for Croatia's performance at Euro 2008 called "Vatreno ludilo" ("Fiery Madness").Bilić has identified himself as a socialist, and has said "If you know to share what you own, you live happily and with honor. I am a true socialist. I know I can't save the world on my own; but if there is a struggle against unjustness, I always prefer to be on the frontline, and that is my attitude toward life."

My West Ham mate reckons Bilic is bound to be a big change from Sam Allardyce, whom he replaces. Sounds like he is a change from most managers, though of course Fergie and Brian Clough have been outspoken Labour men. Sir Alex indeed has credited his early days as a trade unionist and shop steward in the shipyards with teaching him leadership skills. (not a fashionable background for Labour politicians in recent years).

Both Hajduk and Slaven Bilic have had checkered careers as well as badges, and no doubt my mate's fanzine will be able to appraise what contribution the new manager brings to the Hammers' game as well as his politics, and what if anything it owes to his first club's heritage. Meantime I thought his arrival a good excuse to dig up a bit of history.

Ambassador's Assessment

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 21 Jun 2015 15:00:00 +0000

JEREMY CORBYN meets supporters on June 20 anti-austerity march.

CRAIG Murray is a former British diplomat who fell out with the Blair government over its support to foreign dictators, became a human rights activist, and is today a member of the Scottish National Party. Well-travelled, and well-educated, he easily refutes any notion of patriotic Scots being dim or parochial.

Being acquainted with the ways of intelligence services, and newspapers, Craig Murray didn't hesitate to characterise the supposed Foreign and Commonwealth Office memo about what Nicola Spurgeon had told the man from the French embassy as having "MI5 written all over it". "This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter", he commented.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/uk-intelligence-services-attack-snp/

As it turned out, the ambassador story did not do the SNP any harm.

And now, here are some real, and interesting things, that a former British ambassador - Craig Murray - has had to say about another election, the one for leader of the Labour Party. I recommend his arguments to any Labour supporters feeling intimidated by the so-called "realists" sighing that a left-winger just can't win, and to any honest journalists plucking up the courage to differ from their proprieter's party line.

The media are working overtime to marginalise Jeremy Corbyn as a Labour leadership candidate on the grounds that he is left wing and therefore weird and unelectable. But they face the undeniable fact that, Scottish independence aside, there are very few political differences between Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon. On issues including austerity, nuclear weapons, welfare and Palestine both Sturgeon and Corbyn are really very similar. ..

Nicola Sturgeon won the UK wide leaders debate in the whole of the United Kingdom, despite the disadvantage of representing a party not standing in 90% of it by population. She won not just because she is clever and genuine, but because people all across the UK liked the left wing policies she articulated.

A Daily Mirror opinion poll following a BBC televised Labour leadership candidates’ debate this week had Jeremy Corbyn as the clear winner, with twice the support of anyone else. The media ridicule level has picked up since. This policy of marginalisation works. I was saddened by readers’ comments under a Guardian report of that debate, in which Labour supporter after Labour supporter posted comment to the effect “I would like to vote for Jeremy Corbyn because he believes in the same things I do, but we need a more right wing leader to have a chance of winning.”

There are two answers to that. The first is no, you don’t need to be right wing to win. Look at the SNP. The second is what the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents? The problem is, of course, that for so many in the Labour Party, especially but not just the MPs, they want to win for personal career advantage not actually to promote particular policies.

The media message of the need to be right wing to be elected is based on reinforced by a mythologizing of Tony Blair and Michael Foot as the ultimate example of the Good and Bad leader. These figures are constantly used to reinforce the consensus. Let us examine their myths.

Tony Blair is mythologised as an electoral superstar, a celebrity politician who achieved unprecedented personal popularity with the public, and that he achieved this by adopting right wing policies. Let us examine the truth of this myth. First that public popularity. The best measure of public enthusiasm is the percentage of those entitled to vote, who cast their ballot for that party at the general election. This table may surprise you.

Percentage of Eligible Voters

1992 John Major 32.5%
1997 Tony Blair 30.8%
2001 Tony Blair 24.1%
2005 Tony Blair 21.6%
2010 David Cameron 23.5%
2015 David Cameron 24.4%

There was only any public enthusiasm for Blair in 97 – and to put that in perspective, it was less than the public enthusiasm for John Major in 1992.

More importantly, this public enthusiasm was not based on the policies now known as Blairite. The 1997 Labour Manifesto was not full of right wing policies and did not indicate what Blair was going to do.

The Labour Party manifesto of 1997 did not mention Academy schools, Private Finance Initiative, Tuition Fees, NHS privatisation, financial sector deregulation or any of the right wing policies Blair was to usher in. Labour actually presented quite a left wing image, and figures like Robin Cook and Clare Short were prominent in the campaign. There was certainly no mention of military invasions.

It was only once Labour were in power that Blair shaped his cabinet and his policies on an ineluctably right wing course and Mandelson started to become dominant. As people discovered that New Labour were “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”, to quote Mandelson, their popular support plummeted. “The great communicator” Blair for 90% of his Prime Ministership was no more popular than David Cameron is now. 79% of the electorate did not vote for him by his third election

Michael Foot consistently led Margaret Thatcher in opinion polls – by a wide margin – until the Falklands War. He was defeated in a victory election by the most appalling and intensive wave of popular war jingoism and militarism, the nostalgia of a fast declining power for its imperial past, an emotional outburst of popular relief that Britain could still notch up a military victory over foreigners in its colonies. It was the most unedifying political climate imaginable. The tabloid demonization of Foot as the antithesis of the military and imperial theme was the first real exhibition of the power of Rupert Murdoch. Few serious commentators at the time doubted that Thatcher might have been defeated were it not for the Falklands War – which in part explains her lack of interest in a peaceful solution. Michael Foot’s position in the demonology ignores these facts.

The facts about Blair and about Foot are very different from the media mythology.

What the bloody hell are you in politics for anyway? Do you just want your team to win like it was football? Is there any point at all in being elected just so you can carry out the same policies as your opponents?

CRAIG MURRAY

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

All Gas and Knighthoods

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 10:44:00 +0000

ANTI-FRACKING protest on Lancashire's Fylde coast. Offshore fracking may have caused minor earthquake. GMB union called conference in Blackpool to reassure people about benefits of fracking.

LAST weekend's conference of local trades union councils, meeting in Crewe, discussed motions, and action, on a variety of issues, from Climate Change to Child Abuse, Low Pay to Benefit Sanctions. Delegates pledged to resist attacks on Trade Union rights in the civil service and to reject the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), about which politicians are being so suspiciously quiet.

But when it came to prioritising the resolution that should go to this year's TUC, conference voted to select one which essentially repeats what we said last year. That the fraternal or sororal delegate whom we are entitled to send to congress each year should have proper speaking and voting rights, including the right to move the one resolution which we are entitled to submit.

This might not seem an earth-shattering decision, or likely to make front-page news, but it is one which the TUC has found far from straightforward. When it was raised a few years ago as part of a resolution urging trade unions to give more support to trades councils, moved on our behalf by the late Bob Crow of the RMT union, the resolution was passed, but TUC officers registered "reservations"on behalf of the General Council, centred on the question of representation at Congress.

It is hard to get at what's behind these reservations. Trades councils, to use their traditional name, are not some weird and wonderful idea dreamed up by trendy left-wing intellectuals. They go back to the 19th century. It was a conference called by the Manchester and Salford trades council in 1868 which became the Trades Union Congress.

Nowadays, trades union councils, as they are properly called, represent trade unionism in the community. Bringing together members of different unions with branches in the same area, they remain essentially rank and file bodies, consisting of lay members not only supporting each other in any struggles at work, but campaigning from a working class point of view on issues that can range from housing in London to flood prevention and control in the West Country, and of course the fight for the National Health Service. With this belief in workers' unity it is only consistent of trades councils to stand against racism where they live and be interested in an international perspective. Being concerned with where they live has increasingly led also to concern with the environment and climate change.

Maybe it is this spectre of lay activists, unconstrained by narrow sectional advantage or careerism, campaigning in their own time, and liable to be "political", that more conservative union officialdom finds worrying? Looking at trades councils in decline with their old industrial base, and aging officers, former TUC president Brendan Barber is reputed to have said that the problem could be left to anno domini. But though weakened by neglect, and sometimes falling, trades councils have not gone away. New ones have been formed, old ones revived, and with new ways of organising and attracting younger members, those of us making use of retirement and our freedom passes may look forward to handing over to a new generation.

But that aside, surely the admission of one delegate and allowing that person to speak can hardly be seen as threatening the whole TUC edifice with overturn, can it?

When the issue was raised again at last year's TUC, only a couple of minor union's delegates spoke against it, expressing fears that having an extra delegate might give some unions unfair advantage, the delegate from the Royal Society of Physiotherapy objecting -quite incorrectly -that trades council delegates were not accountable to anyone.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-7a6d-TUC-Trades-council-delegate-plan-defeated-by-Congress-vote#.VYOQMEbLrjk

It looked as though the resolution might be passed. But, as last year's fraternal delegate, Dave Chapple from Bridgwater TUC, explained to this year's trades councils' conference, when the chair decided to go to a card vote (meaning unions can cast votes proportionate to the size of their official membership), the trades councils' motion was defeated by 2,908,000 votes to 2,718,000. There are not two million chartered physiotherapists in Britain. It appears the big GMB union was one of those whose delegates did not enter the debate, but whose weight made sure the motion was defeated.

Hearing this, I was reminded of what I heard at the TUC in Brighton in 2012, when I was the fraternal delegate, officially welcomed by the chair, (now Sir) Paul Kenny from the platform, albeit I was consigned to the outer darkness of a seat in the remote visitor's gallery. At that congress, outside which demonstrators were calling for a "general strike", delegates agreed to a motion from the RMT union to explore the prospect of concerted industrial action against the Con Dem coalition's austerity policies. Only a handful of smaller unions like the Airline Pilots' Association spoke against. Others, like Sir Paul's union the GMB, and perhaps Unison, reputedly agreed among themselves not to oppose the motion, but to make sure afterwards that nothing came of it. And of course, nothing did.

Hearing about the GMB again last Saturday, trades council conference delegates were amusedly pointing out to each other the news in the papers that GMB general secretary Paul Kenny had been knighted in the Queen's birthday honours list. For "services to trade unionism", naturally. The Tory press were claiming this was merely for the union's generosity to Labour. But I was thinking that whoever advises on these things must have had a shrewd knowledge of what went on behind the sometimes militant-sounding speeches at union conferences.

Fracture

Perhaps I should have remembered something else Dave Chapple said, at last year's trades councils conference in Cardiff. At that conference we passed a motion about the dangers for the environment and global warming of the oil and gas prospecting method known as "fracking". Bridgwater postman Dave got up to ask why nobody had spoken against, particularly why no one from the GMB union, which he understood was in favour of fracking.

There was no response.

At the time, I thought maybe Dave was being a bit unfair. Delegates were all there representing their trades council, irrespective of their own particular trade union, with whose national policy they might not necessarily agree anyway.

But the more we see of the GMB's distinctly pro-fracking policy the more we must wonder at the union's apparent lack of concern about explaining itself to other trade unionists.

Already in April last year the GMB joined its voice to contractors welcoming reports that fracking could create a £33 billion industry eventually employing 64,000 workers.This ignored the doubts expressed by others concerning the viability of the energy industry as well as the harmful effects on areas.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-493a-GMB-welcomes-report-on-fracking-jobs-boost#.VYMf2UbLrjk

Then in January this year it was claimed that unions had pressured Labour MPs to abstain from a vote that would have imposed a moratorium on the shale gas industry. Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt, who resigned from the government to support the moratorium, said: “Two of Britain’s biggest unions – the GMB and Unite – weighed in [on Monday], begging Labour MPs not to support a ban on fracking. This may go some way to explaining... Labour’s 180 degree about-turn.”

Only 52 MPs backed the moratorium, with 308 against. Earlier in the day there had been suggestions the anti-fracking rebels could win with Labour support.

http://www.cityam.com/208130/unions-helped-save-fracking-ban

Unite members were concerned at the claim their union was involved. Unite's own conference in July 2014 had passed an anti-fracking resolution.
http://www.unitetheunion.org/uploaded/documents/Decisions%20of%20the%20Policy%20Conference%20201411-21375.pdf

http://stopfyldefracking.org.uk/latest-news/unite-reaffirms-policy-to-oppose-fracking/

But the GMB union sent a letter to MPs before the vote urging them to oppose the amendment, saying that support for the moratorium would be “a total abdication of any moral responsibility” for the UK’s use of and extraction of gas.“We will be using gas for many decades to come and this gas needs to come from somewhere,” it said.

"GMB says that over 80 MPs are members of its union. Only seven voted for the amendment proposing a moratorium, while most of their Labour colleagues abstained. On Friday GMB will hold a conference on fracking in Blackpool, close to a site where shale gas tests are believed to have caused earth tremors in 2011".
http://www.cityam.com/208130/unions-helped-save-fracking-ban

The GMB's welcome for the supposed benefits of fracking last year came as it was reported that the UK government was resisting EU efforts to regulate the industry.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/14/uk-defeats-european-bid-fracking-regulations

The government is continuing to push through changes in its Infrastructure Bill to take away obstacles to fracking under people's homes and property and under national parks.
http://www.cnplus.co.uk/opinion/expert-opinion/fracking-opens-up-as-trespass-law-changes-pass-with-infrastructure-bill/8677608.article

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/12/fracking-will-be-allowed-under-national-parks

Much of this activity threatens to take place in what have been thought of as Tory areas, and yet precisely because residents have made efforts to conserve their neighbourhoods and property values, can arouse bitter local opposition which environmental campaigners -and even possibly Labour - could harness.

It would be a pity if this resistance and the possibility of new alignments were to be weakened by trade union bureaucrats preferring to stake their members' hopes on promises from greedy bosses in return for their political services.

The GMB has been evoking its longstanding link to the gas industry. Will Thorne, a socialist whom Eleanor Marx helped learn to read, founded the gasworkers' union in 1889, and went on to become one of the first Labour MPs, representing West Ham South. The GMB can claim to be the gasworkers' successor union. But Thorne built his union by organising the workers in struggle for their rights against the employers, not through a sweetheart deal for privilege by championing the employers' interests.

But then Thorne only got an OBE, and that much later, not a knighthood.

The Times reported on June 9.

GMB breaks with Unite to support fracking

One of Britain’s biggest unions has backed fracking by agreeing to work with explorers to develop the industry.

In a move that splits the labour movement — Unite, Britain’s biggest union, has been anti-fracking — the GMB has signed a charter with UK Onshore Oil & Gas.

The charter, signed at the GMB’s annual conference in Dublin yesterday, said that companies and employees would commit to safety rules and the development of skills and the supply chain to support fracking — the production of gas or oil through the hydraulic fracturing of rock in difficult-to-access reserves underground.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/industries/naturalresources/article4464120.ece

And here's a press statement yesterday from the union:

GMB Northern Region on fracking

Thursday, June 18, 2015

GMB northern region welcome June 18th briefing from chemicals industry on fracking in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
Given the fragility of the oil and gas sector due to price pressures, diversification through shale gas could well become a key employer within the energy sector says GMB Northern Region.
GMB Northern Region welcome a briefing to businesses on fracking which took place in Newcastle upon Tyne today (18th June 2015). See notes to editors 1 for copy of press release from the Chemical Industry Association.
On 8th June the GMB Congress agreed an important statement on fracking which acknowledged that while there are important considerations, the economic, indigenous energy and employment benefits cannot be ignored. See notes to editors 2 for copy of GMB CEC statement agreed by GMB Congress in Dublin on 8th June 2015.
Billy Coates, GMB Northern Regional Secretary said "This is very much work in progress. The strategic importance of fracking within the UK's balanced energy mix must not be ignored. Along with nuclear, renewables, green coal, oil and gas, fracking could be absolutely essential to achieving near self -sufficiency which will benefit domestic and business need.
Fracking has in effect being going on for years as a by-product of oil and gas exploration. Given the fragility of the oil and gas sector due to price pressures, diversification through shale gas could well become a key employer within the energy sector.
Policy makers need to take this into account as we look to sustainable communities through employment, investment, secure energy through supply, price and use".

http://www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/gmb-northern-region-on-fracking

Surely all this deserves more than a mere knighthood?

BRO. KENNY, now Sir Paul, at TUC. "TUC get off your knees", the demonstrators chanted. Did he hear "Arise ye faithful servant"?

Spying on the Victims

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 00:05:00 +0000

FAMILY of Jean Charles de Menezes held gathering outside Stockwell tube station where he was killed. This was early in January, 2006. Below, the big guy on the left was using a big camera taking close-ups of faces in the crowd.

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes are going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, using Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to life, to challenge the decision by British authorities that nobody should be prosecuted for his death.

The 27-year old Brazilian electrician was on his way to work when he was shot dead by police marksmen on a tube train at Stockwell, on July 22, 2005. Some thought the way he was shot several times at close range suggested an army-style killing rather than police action.

They had supposedly mistaken him for a terrorist suspect they were pursuing for attempted bombings the day before. The police story carried by the press was that Jean Charles had been wearing an unseasonal bulky coat, such as might be concealing a bomb or a weapon, and that he had vaulted ticket barriers in his hurry to escape pursuit and get on to the tube.

In fact Jean Charles was not wearing a big coat at all, just a light denim jacket, and he used his season ticket to go through the barriers in the normal way. An inquest held at the Oval in 2008 heard how police had been watching the south London block of flats where he lived, and followed him, although the man they were supposed to be watching had left London the night before and was out of the country. At one point a plain-clothes officer actually sat next to Jean Charles on the bus. When the electrician alighted at Stockwell he unknowingly passed two other police watchers as he walked to the tube.

Meanwhile, if any officer had any doubts that they were pursuing the right man, they could not get through. The communications officer in the crowded control room at Scotland Yard could not make himself heard above the excited din of those following the chase.

The inquest returned an open verdict.

Cressida Dick, the officer in charge at the Yard received a medal and was promoted acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She is now Assistant Commissioner of Special Operations.
Speaking about the family's decision to go to Strasbourg with the case, Patricia da Silva, a cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes said: "For 10 years our family has been campaigning for justice for Jean because we believe that police officers should have been held to account for his killing.
“Jean's death is a pain that never goes away for us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11664591/Family-of-Jean-Charles-de-Menezes-launch-Strasbourg-human-rights-case.html

An interesting sidelight on this battle for justice is that while the authorities claimed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anybody over Jean Charles' death, the police did put in an effort to spying on the family and their supporters and friends. They were subject to surveillance as were the relatives of Cherry Groce, who was shot by armed police in Brixton, and Ricky Reel, the student victim of a racial attack. A report acknowledged that the information collected by a controversial undercover unit "served no purpose in preventing crime or disorder".

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/23/undercover-police-spied-on-families-de-menezes-groce-reel

The family and friends of Stephen Lawrence, murdered in south-east London, were spied on as they campaigned for justice. In fact, far more police work went into infiltrating and spying on their campaign than into pursuing the murder suspects. It is likely that one reason south London police were reluctant to proceed against Stephen's killers, besides institutional racism, was that one of the gang involved was the son of a professional criminal and police informer.

But more than one police force was engaged in spying on the Lawrence campaign.

"Greater Manchester Police has admitted that it spied on people attending the Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, making it the fourth constabulary known to be involved.
When the MacPherson Inquiry took place in 1998, it held a number of hearings outside London. A GMP memo was issued on 8 October asking for ‘information or intelligence on groups or individuals who are likely to be attending’ to be given to a Detective Chief Inspector in Special Branch.
The spying appears to have been motivated by wholly political concerns. There was no anticipation of any threat to public order, there is no suggestion of anything criminal, and the memo makes no mention of anything untoward.

http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/05/26/yet-more-spying-on-the-lawrence-campaign/

Since there was no suggestion of illegal activity or threatened disorder from any of these campaigns, which were simply out to seek the truth and obtain justice, would we be unreasonable to suggest that what the police were after was any 'dirt' they could find or make up to try and discredit witnesses and campaigners, and cover up their own wrongdoing?

Trade unionists digging out the truth about blacklisting, mainly in the building industry, have come upon evidence that those compiling illegal files and selling information to employers were able to work hand in glove with police officers and undercover agents infiltrating the unions and meetings. So officers paid for by the taxpayer, including the workers, were being used to target workers who took up perfectly legitimate issues of safety and conditions, and help unscrupulous employers penalise them and their families by denying them work.

Environmental and other campaigns have also been targeted by undercover police, who went so far as to form relationships with women in groups they were infiltrating, and even father children by them, before disappearing on to other work. It is also well known that where campaigns are infiltrated, provocations and actions that land people in trouble with the law can follow. In perhaps the most notorious case an undercover agent named as perpetrator of a store bombing has been promoted and found an academic post.

While the government and tame media pretend that police need more powers for surveillance to protect us from terror, a campaign to raise public awareness of what the snoops and agents are really up to has been formed, and is promising new exposures coming along.

This is the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, COPS,
http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/

Political Repression is All in the Game, When Big Money is in Play

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 10 Jun 2015 08:57:00 +0000

BIG OIL lubricated way for Azerbaijan, but protesters steal the light.

THE European Games are due to open in Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan, on Friday, but the Azerbaijani government's hope to use this event to boost its image suffered an own-goal last night with the news that a British rights campaigner, Emma Hughes, had been detained at the airport and would not be allowed to enter Azerbaijan.

In a message to friends, Emma, who has called these "the BP games", accusing the British Petroleum company of backing the Azerbaijani regime, said:

"I'm being detained in Baku. I may get deported, but Azerbaijan's 100 political prisoners face years in jail until the BF-funded regime falls".

Emma works with Platform, a group dedicated to promoting education, art and political activism concerning the global oil industry and its effects on society and the environment.

http://platformlondon.org/emma-hughes-and-azerbaijan-prisoners/

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/azerbaijan-holds-activist-who-attacked-european-games-as-bps-games

RAISING PRISONERS' PLIGHT , Emma Hughes exposed lobbyists.

In September 2013 she wrote about how an Azerbaijani government-backed lobbying outfit, The European Azerbaijani Society(TEAS) was working the British conference season, holding receptions at the conferences of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties.

Life in Azerbaijan is starkly different from TEAS facade of drinks and jazz. Azerbaijan's ruling elite have used the country's oil and gas wealth to establish a repressive system where police constantly monitor people, there is almost no press freedom and even the most peaceful of protests are violently broken up. In the past 18 months the Azerbaijani government have conducted what Human Rights Watch calls "a deliberate, abusive strategy to limit dissent" as it attempts to stifle opposition in the run up to the Azerbaijan presidential elections. In January in the town of Ismayilli, batons and teargas were used to break up demonstrations and in March water cannons and rubber bullets were fired on a protest in Baku – afterwards police arrested seven members of the youth movement NIDA for planning to incite violence, despite the demo remaining peaceful throughout. Human Rights Club have spent the last few months documenting political prisoner cases, they estimate there are over 100 political prisoners in Azerbaijan's jails – two of whom were expected to be election candidates until their incarceration forced them to withdraw.

Her article, published on September 27, 2013 in the Guardian 'Comment is Free' column, was headed: Why UK politicians should be wary of Azerbaijan's overtures

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/27/uk-politicians-wary-azerbaijan-overtures

It would seem some British politicians have taken her warning with a pinch of salt, some barrels of oil, or a generous helping of mazooma.

As Private Eye (no.1393, May 29-June 11) reports:

Two days before polling, the Electoral Commission released details of the latest political donations, including a £50,000 gift to the Conservatives from one Javad Marandi, who last year gave the party £75,000 in a series of smaller gifts. Marandi is a British businessman who since 2002 has been managing partner of Pasha Construction, part of the Pasha Holdings conglomerate owned by the family of President Ilham Aliyev’s wife, Mehriban Aliyeva (nee Mehriban Pashayeva.)
According to a leaked US embassy cable in 2010: “The family of First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva” is “the single most powerful family in Azerbaijan.” It dominates several ministries and “controls Pasha Holdings, a conglomerate that includes Pasha Bank, Pasha Insurance, Pasha Construction, and Pasha Travel”. Most firms in Azerbaijan have to pay off officials demanding “slices of the corruption pie... [but] projects by Pasha Construction face few, if any, of these setbacks and are generally among the fastest to be built in Azerbaijan.”
Projects include the new Four Seasons hotel in the capital Baku, which had a glamorous launch in 2012 at which Pasha Construction was represented by Mr Marandi. He has also appeared in photographs at New York charity balls alongside Leyla Aliyeva, the president’s daughter.
When the Eye asked Mr Marandi if his donation was related to his business interests, his spokesperson said he gave the money “in a purely personal capacity as a British citizen and any suggestion that it was made for any other reason is entirely inaccurate”.
Concerns about human rights in Azerbaijan are currently building as the government imprisons critical journalists before next month’s European Games in Baku.

££££££££££££

Of course, £50,000 might be a lot of money to me and you, and it is probably helping to flavour BP's own influence, but Azerbaijan is not the only ex-Soviet republic proving remunerative, and of course not the biggest. (Kazakhstan's ruler has paid Tony Blair for advice, but that was through a company, whereas here we are talking about Party donations).

A report on the Tories' generous new supporters last year said:
"Since 2010, at least £1,157,433 has been donated to the party through British citizens who were formerly Russian citizens or are married to Russians or their associated companies."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-28450125

And another:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/01/-sp-tory-summer-party-drew-super-rich-supporters-with-total-wealth-of-11bn

Keeping up the sporting link, money was even raised with the promise of a tennis match to the highest bidder. And if the reference to Russians living in London sounds like we're talking about rich emigres separate from the Russian government, one of those involved in the fundraising fun was a former Finance Minister favourite of Putin.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2702132/As-Cameron-talks-tough-Russia-scrutiny-grows-oligarchs-Putin-cronies-showering-Tories-Moscows-millions.html

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/22/tories-russian-tennis-match-auction

That some of those who've made fortunes from the former 'workers' state' have followed their money to the City of London, settled and sent their offspring to posh public schools, does not stop them providing a useful channel for dosh and influence. It facilitates it.

Critics thought not. And adding grist to their mill, Electoral Commission records promptly revealed Mrs Chernukhin to have been deemed an ‘impermissable donor’ when she first tried to give £10,000 to the Tory Party in 2012, seemingly on grounds that she was then a foreign citizen.

Publicity over the links to Russian wealth may sit uncomfortably with Cameron's calls to keep up sanctions against Russia now. But never lacking in hypocrisy or chutzpah, the Bullingdon Boy's champions David and Boris may sense new opportunities to shine by making speeches about "corruption" , and riding the tide of the FIFA scandals.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33025225

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/jun/06/cameron-g7-fifa-corruption-bribery

Trust some spoilsports to point out that not all corruption involves foreigners, and even the FIFA affair appears to involve British banks and companies.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/08/david-cameron-crusade-against-fifa-corruption-start-uk

Could the Cameron government combine its new-found desire to lead a crusade against corruption with its seeming willingness to bite the hand that feeds, reviving Cold War, to steal the 2018 World Cup plans and prestige back from Russia?

In the (now Russian-owned) Evening Standard, (June 9) Simon Jenkins writes that
Cameron previously tried to suppress questions about FIFA, but now could use the corruption row to land the games for Britain.

But could he get away with this? Never trust a Tory!

Support the Challenger from the Left!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 21:48:00 +0000

JEREMY CORBYN, MP (Islington Tribune)

...and a message from North of the Border we should note.

First, the good news. There is a Left-wing, anti-austerity candidate standing in the Labour Party's leadership election. I don't know whether Jeremy Corbyn will even get the 35 nominations from fellow Labour MPs necessary for his name to appear on the ballot paper. But he should.

We saw the hurdles John McDonnell had to face when he made a challenge for the leadership.

The news tonight was that Jeremy Corbyn had obtained ten nominations within 24 hours of announcing his intentions, and I'd guess some are from the new MPs who previously issued an anti-austerity statement. Adding my vote to an online poll run by the Daily Mirror I was heartened to find myself among 87 per cent for Jeremy Corbyn. It won't count in the official leadership stakes of course, but it should count for something.

With the other candidates competing to be most right-wing, complaining that poor Ed Miliband pulled the Party to the Left, and sounding like they've rooted through David Cameron's waste bin for old speeches attacking welfare claimants, it's good to see anyone making a challenge from the Left.
Not that Jeremy Corbyn is just anyone. He opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has championed the rights of the Palestinian people, with more principled consistency than George Galloway and none of the latter's tainted links or bloated arrogance.

As a supporter of working people's rights and aspirations for a better society (not the selfish individual "aspiration" some other Labour lights have been extolling), Jeremy Corbyn ranks close to John McDonnell, with whom he often shares a platform, in respect from rank-and-file trade unionists.

Jeremy Corbyn is also a good MP, known and liked by people in his Islington North constituency. Many years ago when I read about rumours that right-wing, Blairite councillors in Islington were plotting to oust the MP, I mentioned it to a mate of mine long resident in the Holloway Road and active in the community. "They must be mad," he opined, "Everyone here likes Jeremy, even if they have no time at all for the council". Since then those right-wingers have gone, and as local councils go, in these days of pervasive privatisation and cuts, Islington is not that bad, according to my trade union informants.

As for Jeremy, besides those union activists who'll back him, I know people in Tufnell Park who left the Labour Party in disgust at Blair's lies an war, and joined the Greens. But come election time, as they explain to friends, "We have to vote Labour for Jeremy Corbyn". That's anecdotal of course, but Jeremy Corbyn's 21,000 plus majority is real enough.

Some years back, helping to host a conference of European Jews for Just Peace, I asked Jeremy Corbyn along as a guest panel speaker. Well, we were meeting near Archway, in his constituency, though there were not a lot of votes to be gathered from the delegates from Stockholm, Brussels, Paris and Rome. Jeremy turned up hotfoot from Heathrow where he had been dealing with an immigration case, spoke and spent more time answering questions and discussion (he is a good listener as well as speaker), before getting away to hold his surgery for constituents.

More recently, I was at a rally held in tribute to the late Mike Marqusee, writer and journalist, who died at the beginning of this year. It was little more than a week after the depressing result of the general election. Jeremy Corbyn was jointly chairing, or compering, the event, along with comedian Mark Steel, who had us all on our feet not for a minute's silence in memory of Mike, but a rousing cheer in recollection of his life. Indeed, though we were all, family and friends and comrades, remembering a sad loss, we came away from that gathering with a very positive feeling, some of the unity and courageous defiance that Mike Marqusee bequeathed us.

I see Jeremy Corbyn's challenge for leadership as continuing and embodying some of that spirit. As he says on TV tonight, the party, and the movement, should really be having a policy debate rather than a leadership contest, but he hopes his his challenge can encourage that debate. If we can get behind it, and especially if Jeremy can get a decent vote, the Left is finding its feet again. Then we will be on the march.

When Scottish Affairs are All Our Affairs

NEIL FINDLAY, MSP

DAVE SMITH

One of the odd aspects of the campaign against building industry blacklisting was that hearings were held in the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee. As anti-blacklisting campaigner Dave Smith explained to Brent Trades Union Council's meeting the other week this was solely because it was one committee where Labour had a majority and so the issue could be pursued.

Like others, Dave was hoping that an incoming Labour government under Ed Miliband would honour its promises to hold an inquiry into blacklisting, particularly with the evidence that has come out about undercover police activity in trade unions and campaigns. Dave, and the Blacklist Support Group, were keen that is should be a full public inquiry.

Though the return of a Tory government is obviously a setback, Dave Smith said we should not be depressed or give up. "Cameron has only got a 12-seat majority. Thatcher had 144 seats at one point, and we still defeated her!"

Many people are hoping that Labour and the Scottish National Party can combine to beat the Tories, and I have seen messages complaining that Left-wing Labour MPs have not come out openly for an alliance with the SNP against austerity and Trident.

These are still early days, and too early for recriminations before things have really started, but we cannot ignore the message from Neil Findlay, MSP, who was Jim Murphy's challenger for the Labour leadership in Scotland, and resigned last month from the Party's shadow cabinet over its failure to analyse its disaster north of the Border.

Neil Findlay writes (Wednesday, June ):

"Today in parliament I called for a Scottish Inquiry into the Blacklisting of construction workers. It is clear that the Tories won't do it but the Scottish Government could.

Depressingly only two SNP MSPs turned up for the debate and the only one who spoke, Mike McKenzie actually questioned whether the big construction companies had actually blacklisted people!!!!! I find this astonishing as I thought there was a general consensus given all the evidence that has been unearthed in the information commissioners raid. I will post the video later so people can see the debate."

Two Scottish building workers interviewed by the Daily Record were not amused to hear that what they had experienced might all be imaginary.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/meet-two-scots-targeted-firms-1868444

And here is that video of the Scottish parliament as promised.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNBW29K3lrY

PS In a message on Facebook today, Neil Findlay says:

"Great meeting today with Jeremy Corbyn's campaign team - please urge Labour MPs to nominate him and your trade union to support him - let's have the widest possible debate about the future of the Labour Party".

FIFA's Unfinished, and Proper, Business

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 22:53:00 +0000

WAITING for sporting chance. Palestinian team detained at border.

IT did not make the front-pages nor TV news here, unlike the arrests in FIFA, but there was a not unconnected incident on May 21 this year, that deserves to be recorded in history. It was not one of the great moments in sport, nor a proud episode for the State of Israel.

"This evening Israeli Forces delayed the Palestinian National Football Team at the Allenby/Al Karamah Crossing, the only international border for Palestinians living in the Occupied West Bank. The national team was on its route to Tunisia as part of their preparation for its upcoming official matches.

"This new Israeli violation occurred less than 24 hours after Mr. Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA, left Israel and Palestine, having received a commitment from Israeli PM Mr. Netanyahu about facilitating the travel of Palestinian athletes. The Israeli Football Association, as usual when Palestinian athletes are harassed by Israeli Forces, haven’t issued any condemnation.

Please find below the letter sent by the head of the Palestine Football Association Gen. Jibril Rajoub to FIFA President Mr. Sepp Blatter on this new Israeli violation against Palestinian sports.
http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/palestinian-netanyahu-facilitate

The following was sent out by the Palestine Football Association earlier today:

Date: 21/5/2015

Ref: X-Pob/2015/156

Mr. Joseph Blatter
President

Fédération Internationale de Football Association

Subject: VIP escort for Palestinian Footballers on the border

Dear President,
Dear Brother

I hope you had the time to rest after your trip to our region and the busy schedule of meetings with both the Palestinian and Israeli sides.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Israeli Government’s promise to facilitate the movement of our players is having its first test as I am writing this letter. Our National team, which is heading for Tunisia for a training camp, has been delayed at the Allenby crossing point by the Israeli authorities.

Player Sameh Maraabah has been detained by the Israeli authorities for two hours now, and the team has decided it will not leave without him.

The implications of this incident can only confirm the PFA’s position on the promises given by the Israeli Government; that they are only words unless they are included in solution that can only come through, and be guaranteed by the FIFA congress.

Sincerely Yours

Jibril Rajoub

President

Palestine Football Association

ALL SMILES. Netanyahu with Blatter. But within 24 hours of promises team was detained at border.

Sepp Blatter's mission to the Middle East, meeting both Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, and symbolically releasing a peace dove in Ramallah, was meant to contain conflict before it reached FIFA.

On 20 March 2015, the Palestinian Football Federation (PFA) submitted a motion for debate at the 28-29 May FIFA annual congress in Zurich. The motion called for the suspension of the Israeli Football Federation (IFA) from FIFA until the following conditions were satisfied:

- Football participants and all equipment related to the sport to be able to move freely in, out and within Palestine.

- Football facilities are to be built and maintained in Palestine without hindrance.

- Football clubs established within illegal settlements in the West Bank to be banned from playing in IFA competitions

- IFA to take firm action in order to eliminate racist and apartheid practices within its own leagues.

- IFA to recognise the PFA as the sole governing body for football within Palestine.

Thus the Palestine Football Federation was not just taking the conflict with the Israeli state into another international body without considering specific relevance, not relying on rough application of the "Apartheid" word, and not calling for an unconditional boycott based merely on disapproval of the Israeli state, or questioning its legitimacy.

There's no need to "bring politics into sport", when thanks to Israel and its occupation it is already there. Israel systematically restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinian footballers as of other people. The use of road blocks to control Palestinian movement often means that away games can take two days and cause worry for players' families, even though the game could be in a neighbouring town or village. Athletes, staff and officials are also routinely denied permission to travel internationally, as well as between the West Bank and Gaza. Matches have had to be cancelled and foreign visitors have been humiliated at borders.

Footballers and other sportspeople are frequently targets for arrest and detention. In July 2009, leading national team member, Mahmoud Sarsak, was arrested without charge, imprisoned for three years and tortured while in prison. He was only released after worldwide pressure was imposed by FIFA and UEFA. In April 2014, Sameh Maraabeh was arrested and imprisoned without charge for eight months then denied permission to travel to the 2015 Asian Games in Australia.
Damage and destruction inflicted on facilities

Football facilities have been hit by war, as well as restrictions on development. In 2014, during Operation Protective Edge, the pitches and buildings of 30 Gazan football clubs were damaged or destroyed. The rebuilding of facilities in the West Bank has been extremely difficult. Since many of these facilities are in Areas B and C (80 percent of the West Bank) Israel has the power to prevent development for what they deem “security reasons” while FIFA officials have been prevented from constructing new facilities as part of FIFA's Goal Project. Additionally, the importing of new equipment to both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been blocked and massive taxes have been imposed.

An argument that I've more than once used against comparisons with Apartheid South Africa is that Israeli sport is not legally segregated, and even the national football team has Arab players, Palestinian citizens of Israel. But that does not mean the game in Israel is free of racism. Fans of Betar Jerusalem, historically linked with the ruling right-wing party, are notorious for racialist chants on the stands and violence in the streets. They protested when two Chechen players were taken on, and neither theirs nor other Betar teams are likely to tolerate Palestinians.

The blatant racism imposed at Beitar Club has been highlighted to FIFA and UEFA by The Mossawa Centre and the Coalition Against Racism. IFA has never been disciplined for the club's failure to employ any Arabs, and the management that signed two Chechen Muslims was ousted, as were the players - after destructive demonstrations by fans. In November of 2014, during a football match, Beitar fans chanted "Death to Arabs." This kind of chanting has been an issue in the past and continues.

IFA recently segregated Palestinian youth teams from Jewish youth teams by splitting a national children's league in the al-Shomoron area, in clear breach of FIFA's statute (No 3) on racism. Reports say that this action was taken following the request of parents of Jewish child participants. The rights group, Adalah (the Legal Centre for Arab Minorities in Israel) has taken IFA to the district court and a decision is yet to be determined.

Israel has failed to stop the alarming growth of racism against Arab minorities in Israeli football. The Coalition Against Racism in Israel's 2013 report stated that incidents in the premier league were rising steeply and that despite various initiatives in this field, it appears that so long as enforcement measures are not announced, including penalties, this trend will not show any significant decline.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/fifa-must-suspend-israeli-membership-it-did-apartheid-south-africas-694678643#sthash.I3bXO7Oy.dpuf

The timing of the moves against FIFA officials accused of corruption have led some people to talk as though it was all a plot to save Israel from expulsion. In fact the investigations had been going on for some time, and if there are any "dark forces" at work, as suggested by Sepp Blatt's daughter, they are probably interested in even bigger global issues than Israeli and Palestine football fixtures.

Besides which, FIFA was unlikely to have expelled the Israelis. Whereas, though the PFA withdrew
its expulsion call, the Israelis were not left untouched. The issues are still live. The Israeli journalist Amira Hass, a thoughtful and forthright critic of her government and its occupation, and committed anti-racist, writes:

"A laywoman’s question to UEFA, the European soccer federation, and to its president, Michel Platini, who worked diligently to shelve the Palestinian bid to suspend Israel from FIFA.

Will you let Beitar Jerusalem play against European teams? This question is based on an amended Palestinian motion adopted in full at the FIFA congress relating to Israeli violations of the organization’s statutes.

"After its win against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Beitar is in fact expected to play in Europe. This is the team whose coach Guy Levy said about a month ago: 'Even if there was an [Arab] player who suited me professionally, I wouldn’t bring him on because it would create unnecessary tensions.'

So I ask you, Platini, how do you square Levy’s statement with Section 3 of the FIFA statutes, entitled 'Non-discrimination and stance against racism'? The section states: 'Discrimination of any kind against a Country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin color, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion … is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.'

"Racial segregation in sports led to South Africa’s suspension from FIFA in 1962. The Israeli sociologist Tamir Sorek, who teaches at the University of Florida, has researched Palestinian soccer before and after 1948. He told Haaretz that in 1977, whites were asked in a South African opinion poll to name the greatest damage inflicted by apartheid. Damage to South African sports ranked No. 3. “Historians disagree on the extent sanctions in general, and in sports in particular, contributed to the downfall of the apartheid regime,” Sorek said. “But there is no doubt that the ruling party believed that the boycott was influencing public opinion.”

....

"On Friday, 163 FIFA members voted in favor of the Palestinian amendment to the motion (with nine against and 37 abstaining). The headlines and reporting focused on the shelving of a resolution that would have suspended Israel from FIFA. My Haaretz colleagues Barak Ravid and Uzi Dann suggested that anybody celebrating an Israeli victory shouldn’t overdo it.

In that same spirit, I would suggest that Palestinians angry that once again a Palestinian leader has caved should learn something about how politics work.

"A Palestinian insistence that FIFA vote for Israel’s suspension would have ended in failure. The head of the Palestinian soccer federation, Jabril Rajoub, could have retained a macho image and flaunted the demand to put the Palestinian resolution to a vote, just as those who fire Qassam rockets at Israel from Gaza flaunt their dubious military achievements. But the predicted defeat of the motion would have given a kosher stamp of approval to Israel’s violations.

"But now, 167 delegates have affirmed in the amendment that passed: “Restrictions of Palestinian rights for the freedom of movement. Players and football officials both within and outside the borders of the occupied State of Palestine, have been systematically restricted from their right to free movement, and continue to be hindered, limited, and obstructed by a set of unilateral regulations arbitrarily and inconsistently implemented. This constitutes a direct violation by IFA of Article 13.3 of the FIFA Statute, specifically in relation to Article 13.1(i) and its correspond[ing] articles in UEFA rules.”

"Commentators spoke of a yellow card against Israel, not a red card. Another hackneyed phrase — a snowball effect — would no less accurately reflect the maneuver room the Palestinian delegation managed to create.

"FIFA has now appointed the equivalent of a probation officer for Israel. The establishment of a monitoring committee will enable the Palestinians to continue to pester FIFA, and it puts Rajoub under the microscope of social-media activists who will demand proof that a corrupt FIFA hasn’t bought him off.

"On the other side of the front, the monitoring committee leaves Israel in a state of constant tension. Any expression of racism on the Israeli soccer field and the delaying of a soccer player at the Allenby crossing would be grounds for deliberations and possible punishment of Israel."

https://medium.com/@thepalestineproject/palestinian-fifa-move-hit-an-israeli-nerve-74b0e05f967d

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/fifa-must-suspend-israeli-membership-it-did-apartheid-south-africas-694678643

It remains to be seen whether Amira is too optimistic, or if UEFA and Western governments together with a media focused on different matters will allow Betar to play in Europe and the Israeli government to get away with holding up Palestinian teams, in breach of the promises it has made.

To put this in a wider context, in 2009 a Palestinian under-19 team was invited to Britain, to train and play some friendly matches, only to be prevented from coming not by the Israeli authorities but by British officialdom refusing them visas. Some MPs and other people asked why, and I was deputed by the Jewish Socialists' Group to write to then new Foreign Secretary David Miliband. I argued that if Britain wanted to be an honest broker and help achieve peace in the Middle East, it should be doing everything to encourage such contacts and restore confidence in a better future among Palestinian youth.

In reply I received a letter from some Foreign and Commonwealth Office official whom I'd never heard of, naturally ignoring the points I'd made, and setting out in detail procedures for visa applications.

Hopefully since Ed Miliband supported recognition of a Palestinian state and possibly lost some votes in certain quarters as a result, things have started to change, even though Labour's defeat has sent Ed off to Ibiza, and the Nasty Party are back again. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign is to lobby Parliament on Tuesday, June 23, and it would not surprise me if football became one of the issues raised.

PS

Jordan has reportedly declared the Palestinian football federation leader ' persona non grata' after he backed Sepp Blatter over the Jordanian candidate for the top FIFA post.

Jibreel Rjoub has complained before he can only enter and exit the West Bank through Jordan - claimed he can't go through Israel. Now it seems he can't go through Jordan either!

http://jordantimes.com/palestinian-football-chief-persona--non-grata

London Coroner's Careful Verdict Leaves Case for Pursuing Justice

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 31 May 2015 12:49:00 +0000

A London coroner has accepted that London student Jeremiah Duggan was killed when he ran into motorway traffic outside Wiesbaden, in Germany, as reported by witnesses; but rejected the German authorities' verdict that Jeremiah committed "suicide".

Although he did not accept a theory that Jeremiah could have been killed elsewhere and his body taken to stage the accident on the autobahn, the coroner at Barnet acknowledged that some of the bruising on the young man's body suggested he had been involved in an "altercation" before he met his death. He also noted the political circumstances which might have had a bearing on Jeremiah's death.

Concerned at the build up to war on Iraq, Jeremiah, 22, had been attending a supposed anti-war conference called by the Schiller Institute, part of an international organisation headed by American cultist Lyndon LaRouche, when he died.

In a narrative verdict, Coroner Andrew Walker said:

“On the 27th March 2003 in the early hours of the morning Jeremiah Joseph Duggan, who had been attending a conference run by a far-right wing organisation, was staying with a friend in Wiesbaden with a family. “Having spoken to his girlfriend and mother in alarming terms Mr Duggan, having asked to leave the house for a cigarette accompanied by the friend, suddenly ran from the house. The friend who was with him did not follow him.

“At about 6am the same Jeremiah Joseph Duggan received fatal injuries following a collision with two cars on the Berlinerstrasse and died in a road traffic collision.

“The fact that he attended a conference run by this far-right wing organisation, and the method that the organisation used to recruit young persons at that time - against the background of the start of the Iraq war, together with Mr Duggan expressing that he was a Jew, British and questioning the material put before him - may have had a bearing on Mr Duggan’s death, in the sense that it may have put Mr Duggan at risk from members of the organisation and caused Mr Duggan to become distressed and seek to leave.

“There are a number of unexplained injuries that suggest that Mr Duggan may have been involved in an altercation at some stage before his death.”

(my emphasis -CP)

During the inquest expert witnesses including a former member of the LaRouche organisation testified to the methods used by the cult in attracting and indoctrinating members. The court also heard that after Jeremiah Duggan rejected some of the things said in conference, members were told he must be some kind of spy.

When the verdict was read out, Jeremiah's mother, Erica Duggan, shouted “Justice, we want justice”.
Speaking outside, she welcomed the verdict but said she was disappointed the coroner had rejected expert evidence suggesting Duggan had been killed before his body was moved to the motorway as part of an elaborate setup.

“I was emotionally shocked and disappointed at the fact he did not take enough notice of the very powerful evidence he had from experts,” she said. “I am going to fight on but I am not sure I will do it through the justice system.”

In a statement, the Duggan family said they were grateful that some of the facts had come out in court about why Jeremiah tried to get away from the conference, and expressed the hope that other students would not be taken in by such extremist organisations.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/jeremiah-duggan-death-not-suicide-british-coroner-rules

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/crime-court/anti_semitic_cult_may_have_subjected_jeremiah_duggan_to_mental_violence_before_his_death_

http://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/crime-court/shadowy_world_of_larouche_the_far_right_cult_that_hides_behind_veil_of_left_wing_political_movement_1_4091305

When political tricks misfire

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 25 May 2015 23:13:00 +0000

DEMONSTRATORS outside Kirkwall cathedral (pic from the Orcadian) and below, marching on Carmichael's Shetlands office (BBC).

FORMER Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael, the last Lib Dem MP left in Scotland, could soon be gone as a result of a clever little piece of political mischief which has misfired.

Mr. Carmichael, whose Northern Isles constituency covers the Orkneys and Shetland Isles, has admitted he was behind the "leak" of a civil service memo which claimed Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon had said she would prefer to see a Tory government under David Cameron returned in the general election.

The SNP leader denied saying anything of the sort. Describing the leak, which appeared in the Daily Telegraph before the election as a "blatant election dirty trick", she has said Carmichael should seriously consider his position as an MP.

The confidential memo, written by a civil servant in the Scotland Office, was a third-hand account of a conversation between the Scottish first minister and the French ambassador, in March, which Ms Sturgeon was reported to have said she wanted David Cameron to remain as prime minister. Both Ms.Sturgeon and the ambassador denied any such conversation had taken place.

After the story appeared in the Daily Telegraph, the cabinet secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, ordered an inquiry into how the confidential memo got into the public domain. He discovered that an official mobile phone belonging to Euan Roddin, Carmichael’s special adviser, was used to contact one of the reporters who wrote the Telegraph story.The official cabinet office inquiry into the leaking of the memo said Mr Carmichael's former special adviser Euan Roddin gave the details to the Daily Telegraph - but he had Mr Carmichael's permission to do so.

LIB DEM CARMICHAEL. MP wants to carry on but may have to go.

Carmichael now says he accepted the memo was wrong about Nicola Sturgeon being pro-Tory, and described the leak as “an error of judgment”, He apologised to the SNP leader. He has said he is waiving the severance pay he is entitled to after losing his cabinet job. He said that if he had still been a minister it would have been a resigning matter.

Speaking to BBC Radio Orkney, Mr Carmichael said: "I have said already that I very much regret the position I am in. I have been the member of parliament for Orkney and Shetland for the last 14 years.
I have worked hard for local people and believe that's the record on which I am entitled to rely and that's the job that I am now going to be getting on with. None of that has changed."
On Saturday, the Scottish Lib Dem's party executive agreed Mr Carmichael would not face any disciplinary action and the party's leader Willie Rennie has said the MP "deserved a second chance".

But there have been demonstrations in both Lerwick in the Shetlands and Kirkwall in the Orkneys, demanding that he stand down. Scottish Nationalists insist they are not the only ones demanding he go.

The nationalists have repeated calls for a formal investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into Mr Carmichael's behaviour. SNP MP Pete Wishart said Mr Carmichael must explain if he was sent a copy of the memo. He said: "Mr Carmichael no longer has any credibility as an MP - the best course of action would be for him to stand down.

"Mr Carmichael must now explain if he was sent a copy of the memo before authorising the leak. If he was, he must then explain why he apparently failed to read his own ministerial papers. A formal investigation by the Standards Commissioner would help shed light on these matters."

Stewart Hosie, MP for Dundee East and the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that Carmichael, who had at first denied involvement in the leak, ought to resign. He said: “This is potentially career-ending precisely because he went into an election suggesting one thing and then we find out – lo and behold, just after the election – it wasn’t true.

“Given the scale of this – a dirty tricks campaign that involved the French ambassador and the Scottish First Minister – all of which is completely false, bogus, made up, really he ought to consider very seriously whether he can be even be trusted by his constituents to remain an MP.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/23/alistair-carmichael-nicola-sturgeon-leaked-election-memo-snp

http://www.shetnews.co.uk/news/10706-lerwick-and-kirkwall-protests-demand-mp-resigns

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-32874009

Searching for Justice for Jeremiah Duggan

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 21 May 2015 08:48:00 +0000

JEREMIAH DUGGAN. Unlikely 'suicide'. Normally cheerful student 'phoned home in terror before meeting his death at Wiesbaden.

A LONDON family's long search for truth and justice for the death of their son in Germany reached Barnet Coroner's Court this week, and reports of the case have brought to public notice the sinister international cult headed by Lyndon LaRouche, little known in Britain, but long notorious in the United States, where it began, before extending its activity to continental Europe.

Jeremiah Duggan was just 22, and studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2003 when, worried over the prospect of war on Iraq, he bought a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite, and was invited by the seller to attend a youth anti-war conference being organised in Wiesbaden, Germany, by the Schiller Institute.
What he was not to know was that Nouvelle Solidarite is produced by Lyndon LaRouche's supporters in France, and the cultural-sounding Institute (Friedrich Schiller was an 18th century philosopher and poet) was founded by LaRouche's German wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche.

At the conference, Jeremiah apparently disagreed with some of the things he heard, - some of the speakers seemed to blame Jews for the war - and he said so. But he agreed to attend a cadre school to continue discussion. He was not to make it. His body was found by the side of an autobahn on the outskirts of town. German police accepted that he had run out into the road, and been struck by two vehicles, and recorded it as "a suicide by means of a traffic accident".

The Duggan family and friends have never accepted this explanation. For one thing they say Jeremiah was a cheerful, healthy young man, happy with his studies and his girlfriend, and had no reason to end his life in the horrible way described. For another, his mother Erica Duggan received a 'phone call from Jeremiah on the night that he died, saying he was in serious trouble and sounding terrified. In May 2010 the High Court ordered a fresh UK inquest after judges said evidence of possible foul play must be investigated.

At the new inquest in Barnet, as well as hearing Erica Duggan retell that 'phone call, the court heard from Paul Canning, a forensic photographic expert Paul Canning who said that after examining pictures from the scene, "the only possible conclusion is that it must have been a set-up".

Mr Canning, who has over a decade of experience working with the Metropolitan Police, said there was no evidence of contact between Mr Duggan and two vehicles - a Peugeot 406 and a Volkswagen Golf - which the German investigation found had been involved in his death.

He said: "After making a lengthy examination of the photographs I conclude that, based on my experience of attending hundreds of fatal and very serious road traffic accidents, that in examining the scene of the accident, the road, Jeremiah's body and both vehicles involved, I could find no traces of blood, hair, tissue or clothing on the vehicles or road, except round the immediate vicinity of Jeremiah's body."

He added that both vehicles and Mr Duggan appeared to have traces of a wet sandy substance which was not present at the scene and therefore placed them elsewhere before the alleged accident - perhaps a builders yard or quarry. .

He said the damage to the Peugeot, which is claimed to have hit Mr Duggan, appeared to have been caused by a "heavy metallic instrument" or possibly another car rather than a person. He described damage on the Volkswagen, which is said to have run Mr Duggan over after he jumped out and hit the Peugeot, as "inconsistent".

Coroner for north London Andrew Walker asked: "Are you saying the damage to the vehicles is unlikely to have been caused by an impact with a person?"

"Yes sir, in my opinion," Mr Canning replied.

"Is it likely that damage to the vehicle has been placed there?"

"After looking at the photographs the only possible conclusion I could find was that it was placed there and further, that it looks like pre-existing damage that was undertaken prior to this incident."

"Are you saying this was a constructed road traffic collision?"

"It certainly looks that way, sir."

Written evidence from forensic pathologists said Mr Duggan’s body had not suffered from drag marks or head injuries consistent with being run over by a car, the inquest heard.

After Mr Duggan’s death on March 27, 2003, a witness told the family of the chaotic scenes at the LaRouche conference, the court heard. Jeremiah's father Hugh Duggan said: “All their members, 40 to 50 of them, were gathered into a room and addressed by Helga LaRouche, the wife of LaRouche, at this stage she said, ‘Jeremiah Duggan is dead. We believe he was a spy sent to harm the organisation and now we want you to pack up and go home right away. Don’t talk among yourselves about this and don’t talk to others.”

That summer Hugh Duggan arranged a meeting with the German ambassador in London to discuss his concerns over the far-right group’s involvement in the lead up to his son’s death, the inquest heard. Mr Duggan told the court: “The first thing he (the German ambassador) said was, ‘We know all about LaRouche. We have been after him for years’.”

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/death-of-british-student-jeremiah-duggan-killed-after-attending-farright-cult-must-have-been-a-set-up-10261696.html

If the authorities in Germany knew all about LaRouche they, and particularly the police in the State of Hesse where the Wiesbaden institute is situated, seem to have been quick to accept the "suicide" story which the LaRouchites proffered. British police have been slow to follow up the call for a new investigation, saying they were awaiting evidence from Germany. Most if not all the efforts to investigate what happened have been pursued by the Duggan family themselves.

I regret to say I never met young Jeremiah Duggan, nor knew the family, but as it happens I did know his grandfather Hans Freund, who died in 2007. Having left Germany as a refugee from the Nazis, Hans joined up to fight them in World War II, taking part in the campaigns in north Africa and in a daring prisoner of war escape. Later he was involved as a Communist Party member in the underground struggle against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, a cause he continued to support after coming to Britain. Best-known and loved in London as a hearty Jewish choral singer, Hans also joined the Jewish Socialists' Group, which was how I came to know him. A good-humoured, even jovial man, modest about his own role and background, but a source of strength and encouragement.
http://www.sacsobu.org/memoriam09.html#3
http://www.ajr.org.uk/journalpdf/1990_april.pdf

I'm sure Jerry Duggan must have taken courage, intelligence and good humour from both the Jewish and Irish sides of his family.

Like Jeremiah Duggan, and I suppose many other people, I started my acquaintance and active involvement in politics through buying a paper off someone in the street, though thankfully it was not Nouvelle Solidarite but Newsletter, the paper of the Socialist Labour League, when I was 17, and though neither still exist I'm alive to tell the tale.

From 1976-8 I was employed as a poorly-paid hack on the daily News Line. One morning my colleague the late Jack Gale took a 'phone call, and hand over the mouthpiece, turned to ask me whether the reformist party in Sweden was called the Social Democrats? Which I confirmed.
Jack had taken a call from someone saying they spoke for the "Swedish Labour Party", asking for information about a former British soldier who had turned up in Sweden. This was a man who had testified about torture used by British forces on prisoners in South Yemen. But I also recognised the name "Swedish Labour Party" as one used by an organisation which Lyndon LaRouche had established in Sweden. We did not ring them back with any information.

Lyndon LaRouche, often using the name "Lyn Marcus", had been among a group of left-wing dissidents around the US Socialist Workers Party, America's original Trotskyist organisation, who opposed its leadership and made contact with the Socialist Labour League, led by Gerry Healy in Britain. Unable to remain long in any group that he was not leading, LaRouche/Marcus (Tim Wohlforth recalls his "gargantuan ego") soon broke with the rest and set off on his own direction.

Still posing as some kind of left-wing revolutionary, setting up the National Caucus of Labor Committees, while concentrating on recruiting students, LaRouche began to systematically inculcate violent hostility to other groups among his followers, going well beyond ordinary sectarianism. They turned to organised violence and thuggery.

Armed with chains, bats, and martial-art nunchuk sticks, NCLC members assaulted Communist Party, SWP, and Progressive Labor Party members and Black Power activists, on the streets and during meetings. At least 60 assaults were reported. The operation ended when police arrested several of LaRouche's followers; there were no convictions, and LaRouche maintained they had acted in self-defense. Journalist and LaRouche expert Dennis King writes that the FBI may have tried to aggravate the strife, using measures such as anonymous mailings, to keep the groups at each other's throats.^[45][46

http://www.lyndonlarouche.org/newamericanfascism.htm

Opponents doubted whether LaRouche's organisation could operate in the way it did without some complicity from state forces. Although he did serve a prison sentence for fraud, LaRouche seems to have led a charmed life, and his organisation and publications have had no shortage of funds or prestigious contacts as they expanded their activities to Europe. Former members describe the organisation as functioning like a cult, while the LaRouchite Executive Intelligence Review, circulating among business and political circles, combines often well-informed analysis with bold conspiracy theory.

Among other things the LaRouche movement has claimed the British Royal Family heads a global drug smuggling racket, the Tavistock Institute in London is a British intelligence front for brainwashing subjects, and that Jessica Duggan's quest for truth about her son's death is part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the British Foreign Office.

Back in 1977, when we got that 'phone call from the LaRouchites to News Line, little or nothing had been published about them in Britain. But there had been plenty in the left-wing press in the United States, including The Bulletin published by our co-thinkers in the US Workers League. They were also starting to get attention in Germany. Thinking we ought to publish something about this organisation and its expansion to Europe, I gathered what material we had and wrote an article.

To my surprise, our editor Alex Mitchell, who was away much of the time working on a project and series of articles called Security and the Fourth International, assisted by Dave North of the Workers League (nowadays Socialist Equality Party), came into the office looking worried, after a meeting with Gerry Healy, and said there was no way we could publish anything about Lyndon LaRouche and his organisation. By way of an explanation, he remarked that the last thing we wanted was some "LaRouchite nutter throwing a bomb into the printshop".

That made me feel I'd been irresponsible, instead of conscientious, and I did not argue. All the same, and though it was not the only time I was told something could not go in the paper, there was something odd about this. Much of what I had written had come straight from our US comrades. What's more, as part of the Security and the Fourth International campaign we had not only accused the Socialist Workers Party in the United States of harbouring FBI agents, which it did, but implied that it had a hand in the murder of Trotskyists, including Tom Henehan in the United States and even a Sri Lankan comrade. If all this was true - and I never questioned it - we were being brave and bold in publishing it, but apparently could not do the same with what we knew about the LaRouchite movement.

Anyway, my article never saw the light of day, and within a year -albeit for other reasons - I was exiled from the News Line office, ostensibly to cover the firefighters' strike in the West Midlands, and then sacked by Gerry Healy. Thus ended my brief career as a professional journalist.

In the Autumn of 1985, Gerry Healy exited the Clapham centre in somewhat greater haste than I had, and public disgrace over his treatment of party members, particularly young women comrades. According to Alex Mitchell, and others who went with Healy, he was still a great revolutionary and the victim of an MI5 conspiracy. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone endorsed this line. Alex Mitchell returned to his native Australia to resume his journalistic career, and in a memoir published in 2012 he recalls hearing that Healy had denounced him too as an intelligence agent; but this does not seem to have inspired him to re-examine his own previous accusations.

In 1986, the Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme was assassinated, and a former member of the LaRouche organisation in Sweden, renamed European Workers Party, was arrested though later discharged as a suspect. The LaRouchites denounced efforts to throw suspicion their way, but their Swedish organisation seems to have undergone a crisis after this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Workers_Party

In recent years, despite its increasingly right-wing image and reputation for extremism, the LaRouche organisation seems to have continued acquiring wealthy and influential friends, including some in Russia and eastwards. Perhaps the investigation of Jeremiah Duggan's death will threaten to uncover a real and bigger conspiracy.

Who's your friend?

American fascist Lyndon LaRouche, his wife and colleague Helga-Zepp LaRouche and current Putin's aide Sergey Glazyev, then Russian parliament chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee, June 2001