Nasty business in Bromley

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

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

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!

Is Your Vote Going to the Henry Jackson Society?

THERE's more to politics than party leaders appearing on television and supporters canvassing for your vote.  Amid all the messages I'm seeing on Facebook concerned with the May 7 general election, and what politicians said or did, comes this posted by an old friend:

Brendan Simms, president of the Henry Jackson Society, will be speaking alongside UKIP's Patrick O'Flynn in favour of Britain leaving the EU, at the New Statesman and Cambridge Literary Festival.

And he provides a link:
http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/03/new-statesman-and-cambridge-literary-festival

I first met Marko Attila Hoare at a Bosnia rally in Trafalgar Square, and got to know him in Workers Aid for Bosnia, which sent aid convoys chiefly to the mining town of Tuzla. Marko also wrote for our paper Workers Press (alas now gone), and now he is the author of several books on Bosnia and its history, particularly during World War II.


Brendan Simms is Cambridge professor of the History of International Relations. I knew his name as the author of Unfinest Hour, which sharply criticised Britain's role in Bosnia, the appeasement of Serb aggression by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, and the British army's reluctance to carry out its UN mandate protecting humanitarian aid routes or defending civilians from ethnic cleansing and massacre.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/nov/04/politicalnews.politics


Simms' revulsion from what he called "conservative pessimism" was shared by others, and undoubtedly influenced the formation of the Henry Jackson Society. Taking its name from a US Democrat Senator who believed in asserting US power to promote his ideas of freedom, the Society sought to combine an activist foreign policy and support for democratic values. For some this might seem to echo Robin Cook's call for foreign policy to have a "moral dimension" (Described succinctly as "bollocks" by an anonymous FCO civil servant).

For others, like the signatories of the 'Euston Manifesto', it could mean endorsing US or Israeli wars and denouncing opponents as supporters of dictators like Saddam Hussein or reactionary Islam. The Society's statement of aims stresses the importance of maintaining the military strength of the United States, and Britain in Europe. Asserting that Western liberal democracies are the model for the world to follow, it says that international organisations which include undemocratic regimes have no right to pronounce on human rights issues. (So much for the UN!)

The Henry Jackson Society says it is "A cross-partisan, British-based think tank with a strong British and European commitment towards freedom, liberty, constitutional democracy, human rights, ...".  http://henryjacksonsociety.org/

Others, including former members, don't hesitate to call it neo-conservative or simply right-wing, even 'hard-right'.

 Marko Attila Hoare was Greater Europe Co-Director, then European Neighbourhood Section Director of the Henry Jackson Society from 2005 until 2012. Nowadays strongly critical, he remarks on Brendan Simm's appearence alongside a UKIP MEP to show how much the HJS leadership has moved from its commitment to British leadership in Europe to calling for British exit.  Indeed, Brendan Simms is co-chair of the Brexit-euroexit project and author of Europe: The Struggle for Supremacy.

But it goes further. Raheem Kassam, who was variously described as "Director of Marketing" or "Campaigns Director" for the Henry Jackson Society, is now a senior advisor to UKIP's Nigel Farage.

We have met Mr.Kassam before. He was linked with a story which the BBC and the Jewish Chronicle ran about people at a conference in London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) drowning out a Jewish audience speaker with antisemitic chants. The supposed victim was Zionist Federation chairman Jonathan Hoffman. The BBC eventually withdraw the story after other Jewish people who had been at the conference said it wasn't true, and a recording of the conference contained no antisemitic chants. The Jewish Chronicle took longer to withdraw, but did so after Jewish people involved in the conference went to the Press Complaints Commission over it.

Kassam has been a busy man. Besides being a spokesman for Student Rights, which seems to be a Henry Jackson Society project with not many actual students, he found time to run a Climate Change skeptic campaign called 'Greencease' (geddit?)  More recently with the 'Jihadi John' excitement he was introduced on TV as a "former student" and "expert" on how the ISIS killer's "radicalisation" might have started at the University of Westminster.

Before joining Nigel Farage's entourage, Raheem Kassam was managing director of the London end of Breitbart, a conservative American news agency website noted for its unconservative, creative news stories.  Not even other conservatives are immune from attack.

The Fictitious "Friends of Hamas"

On February 7, 2013,  Breitbart.com in the United States ran a story by Ben Shapiro claiming former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, a nominee for Secretary of Defense, might have been paid to speak at an event sponsored by a group called "Friends of Hamas"  Breitbart.com said that the story was based on "exclusive" information by "Senate sources". The story was repeated by websites, and commented upon by Senator Rand Paul.

But other reporters could not find any evidence that "Friends of Hamas" even existed. On February 19, New York Daily News reporter Dan Friedman said that the story had originated from a sarcastic comment he made to a Congressional staffer.  "Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the 'Junior League of Hezbollah, in France'? And: What about 'Friends of Hamas'?".  But Breitbart continued to claim its story was from reliable sources, and Friedman was denounced as a hack.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29


"Democracy"?  But not at home!

In 2012, Marko Attila Hoare, who had known Brendan Simms at Cambridge, and been a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society, decided he'd had enough.
  

"Earlier this year, I resigned from the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) and requested that my name be removed from its website. The HJS is a UK think-tank frequently described as ‘neoconservative’. It includes among its Trustees Michael Gove, the current Secretary of State for Education, and it is alleged to have influenced the foreign policy of David Cameron and William Hague. It currently serves as a secretariat, at the House of Commons, to the All-Party Parliamentary Groups for Transatlantic and International Security and for Homeland Security. I had held a senior post within this organisation for seven years, first as Greater Europe Co-Director, then as European Neighbourhood Section Director. However, I reluctantly had to face the fact that the HJS has degenerated to the point where it is a mere caricature of its former self. No longer is it a centrist, bipartisan think-tank seeking to promote democratic geopolitics through providing sober, objective and informed analysis to policy-makers. Instead, it has become an abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge, churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership of extreme Europhobic British Tories, hardline US Republicans and Israeli Likudniks. The story of the HJS’s degeneration provides an insight into the obscure backstage world of Conservative politics.

There are three factors that define this degeneration. The first is that almost all the people who founded and established the HJS have either left or been edged out of the organisation. ...

The second factor is that there is absolutely no internal democracy in the HJS, nor any transparency or rules of procedure. Absolutely none whatsoever. Less than in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Probably less than in the Syrian Arab Republic. As someone with an early background in far-left politics, I grew up with groups like the Socialist Workers Party, in which total power is held by one or two leaders, but the totalitarianism is disguised by window-dressing consisting of branch meetings, annual conferences, meetings of the Politburo and the like. Well, the HJS is like that, but without the window-dressing: there isn’t even the pretence of democracy or consultation. Instead, the organisation operates on the basis of cronyism and intrigue. Sole power is held by one individual – Executive Director Alan Mendoza. He was not elected to the post and is not subject even to formal or technical restraints, nor to performance review and renewal of contract.

The third factor is that, although the HJS was intended to be a centrist, bi-partisan organisation, its leadership has now moved far to the right, and abandoned any pretence of being bi-partisan or pro-European (its Associate Director, Douglas Murray, is on record as having stated that ‘the EU is a monstrosity – no good can come of it… The best thing could just simply be for it to be razed to the ground and don’t start again [sic]’).

Alan Mendoza is an ambitious young professional politician of the Conservative Party and a former Tory local councillor in the London Borough of Brent. ... Once he took over the running of the HJS from Rogers and Simms, Mendoza had his hands on all the levers of power within the organisation, of which the most important was control of the website. Mendoza set about converting the HJS into his personal fiefdom, packing its staff with his own apparatchiks recruited via his personal network.

The practice of regular staff meetings was now ended, and staff members were no longer consulted or even informed about major policy or organisational decisions. In practice, Mendoza just did whatever he wanted to, adding or removing staff to and from the website and inventing or erasing their virtual job-titles as and when he felt like it.

 Praise from 'Mad Mel' to Audience with AIPAC

Marko describes how HJS members who differed from the changing line on Europe were sidelined or sat upon.  But he also noted another aspect of Mendoza's takeover.

The people who replaced the HJS founders at the head of the organisation were staff members of another think-tank: the Israel-advocacy organisation ‘Just Journalism’, of which Mendoza was a member of the Advisory Board and which shared the HJS’s London office. At the time of Just Journalism’s launch in March 2008, the Spectator columnist Melanie Phillips wrote of it that ‘A very welcome and desperately-needed initiative has just been launched to monitor distortions, bias and prejudice in British media coverage of the Middle East.’

Neo-con former Daily Mail columnist Melanie Philips acquired a name for linking her support to Israel with Islamophobia.  Her book "Londonistan", claiming Britain was harbouring a "terror" state within was a hit with the far Right, while she became known as "Mad Mel" to many Jewish people, even Zionists.

We can't blame Alan Mendoza for that, but we can for the line he took adressing members of the main Israeli lobby organisation in Washington, AIPAC:

“Immigration is also a reason for rising anti-Israel feelings [in Europe]. In 1998, 3.2 percent of Spain was foreign-born. In 2007, that percent had jumped to 13.4 percent, Mendoza said. In cities such as London, Paris and Copenhagen, 10 percent of residents are Muslim.”
“The European Muslim population has doubled in the past 30 years and is predicted to double again by 2040.
“For all the benefits that immigration has brought, it has been difficult for European countries to absorb immigrants into their society given their failure to integrate newcomers. Regardless of their political views, Muslims in Europe will likely speak out against Israel whenever any Middle Eastern news breaks, just as they will against India in the Kashmir dispute. Their voices are heard well above the average Europeans, who tend not to speak out Mendoza said, adding that the Muslim immigrants do this with full knowledge that they would not be allowed to speak out like that in many Middle Eastern countries.’

This line that European criticism of Israeli actions is solely motivated by fear of Moslems has been widely repeated in US, particularly Murdoch-owned media, which has followed up with stories about parts of British cities becoming entirely Muslim, no-go areas for non-Muslims.

 The HJS website is currently running a piece by Douglas Murray, originally published on March 18 in the Spectator, in defence of Benyamin Netanyahu against criticism. Murray, Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society, also founded the Centre for Social Cohesion. If that sounds harmless enough, this is what it means, in Douglas Murray's words:

‘Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition. We in Europe owe – after all – no special dues to Islam. We owe them no religious holidays, special rights or privileges. From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs. There is not an inch of ground to give on this one. Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don’t have a mosque to go to, then they’ll just have to realise that they aren’t owed one. Grievances become ever-more pronounced the more they are flattered and the more they are paid attention to. So don’t flatter them.’


If that sounds like a slightly more articulate version of the lumpen who follow the English Defence League, it should be no surprise that Murray has described the EDL as acceptable, and spoken favourably of Robert Spencer, a leading Islamophobe in the United States who denies the Srebenica massacre.  That's coming full circle from 'Unfinest Hour'.

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/alan-mendozas-putsch-in-the-henry-jackson-society/

https://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/alan-mendozas-henry-jackson-society-and-william-shawcrosss-charity-commission/

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/5440-the-henry-jackson-society-and-scaremongering-with-aipac 

http://leftfootforward.org/2013/05/labours-links-with-the-anti-immigration-right/

http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/06/05/exclusive-top-libdem-resigns-from-controversial-think-tank-henry-jackson-society/

Alan Mendoza is now the Tory candidate for Brent Central. I trust his views will be made known to voters, even if not by him.

 A top Lib Dem resigned from the Henry Jackson Society.

But several Labour MPs remain members, including the Labour Party leader in Scotland, Jim Murphy, who is on the Society's Political Council. .  If he has resigned from it, I will be happy to apologise and record that.

Dirty Tricks department turned on Sturgeon: Was Memo Leaked or Faked?

STORY TAKEN UP BY MAIL TOO.  And these Labour campaigners in East Lothian accepted it. (photo by Edddie Truman). Maybe they should remember an earlier story (see below). Or that only last week the Tory Mail called SNP leader "Most Dangerous Woman in Britain".

SCOTTISH National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon remained centre stage this weekend, offering Labour's Ed Miliband a deal to keep Tory David Cameron out of Downing Street.  Writing in the Observer, Sturgeon challenged Miliband to lead the Labour Party into an anti-austerity alliance with the SNP so they could prevent the Tories forming a government.

“If together our parties have the parliamentary numbers required after 7 May, and regardless of which is the biggest party, will he and Labour join with us in locking David Cameron out of Downing Street?”

Miliband has so far ruled out any talk of an alliance before the election. One reason might be that it would make it easier for more Labour supporters to consider switching their votes to the SNP, which is already outpolling the Labour Party in Scotland.

The SNP leader's call for an alliance came as an inquiry was being ordered into how the Tory Daily Telegraph obtained a Foreign Office memo about a conversation with the French consul general in  which Nicola Sturgeon supposedly confessed that she would prefer to see Cameron remain prime minister. The SNP leader said the story was "categorically, 100%, untrue", and called on Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood to order a probe. The French embassy also denied the report.

 http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/04/sturgeon-offers-new-deal-to-miliband
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32187255
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/04/04/nicola-sturgeon-snp-david-cameron_n_7003408.html?utm_hp_ref=tw 

Unfortunately the Labour Party was quick to accept the Telegraph story and comment about it, without checking what Nicola Sturgeon or the SNP had to say. And if they did not take her word for denial they could have asked why the French ambassador, who is not a party to the election, should feel obliged to cover up.

BBC Scotland’s James Cook asked Nicola Sturgeon  about the Telegraph‘s "leaked memo", claiming it chimed with what he has been told by senior SNP figures – that it suited their wider purpose to have a Tory Prime Minister because that would rally support for independence. Later Cook complained of the angry way SNP supporters had rounded on him. "What an extraordinary level of vicious abuse I have received today for simply reporting the news. Is this the country we want folks? Is it?"  And reporting this the Spectator said it showed the ugly side of Scottish nationalism. 

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/04/the-hounding-of-the-bbc-scotlands-james-cook-exposes-the-uglier-side-of-nationalism/

The Spectator, whose former editors include Boris Johnson, is owned by the Telegraph group. As for James Cook, he wasn't "simply reporting the news" but repeating a dubious story in the Telegraph and adding his own commentary.  It was Nicola Sturgeon who was being hounded.

It may be just a coincidence that the Torygraf ran its story  - based on a memo supposedly written a month ago, on March 6, concerning a conversation which allegedly took place in February - on Friday, April 3, the day after it was reported that the SNP leader made such an impression in the televised party leaders' debate that viewers in England were saying they wished they could vote for her.  A debate in which Sturgeon said she agreed with Ed Miliband on many issues and would be willing to work with him.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/03/can-voters-outside-scotland-vote-snp

Craig Murray, an SNP member who also happens to be a former British ambassaddor with more than twenty years' experience in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, had no doubt about the likely provenance of the "leaked memo" story.
"The fake FCO memo has MI5 written all over it. This is the worst example of British security services influencing an election campaign since the Zinoviev letter." 

That was of course the alleged letter from the Soviet minister instructing British Communists on subversion, probably forged by Czarist emigres, and presented by an MI5 officer to the Tory Daily Mail, which turned it into a front-page story in time for the 1924 general election, claiming it showed Labour's instructions from the "masters" in the Kremlin. A report commissioned by Robin Cook when he was at the Foreign and Commonwealth confirmed that this was contrived by the security services.

Major Joseph Ball, the MI5 officer involved, went on to work at Tory central office, running media manipulation and dirty tricks, even against people in the government and Tory party when required, before resuming a security post. *

 https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/uk-intelligence-services-attack-snp/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2015/04/frenchgate-definitely-the-security-services/

HERE'S ONE THEY RAN EARLIER.  Daily Mail in 1924


Foreign and Commonwealth Office employees are supposed to be "non-political", or so I was told when I once somehow came in sight of a job as filing clerk and tea boy. Maybe passing material to Tory papers does not count as politics; but now I see the FCO says the memo did not come from them, and the Telegraph says its came from the Scottish Office. Craig Murray seems to think it was not so much "leaked", as faked.   

 Whatever we think of the Scottish National Party -and I'm one of those who used to jeer that they were "Tartan Tories" - its leaders are neither knaves nor fools. They know that the votes for independence in the referendum were strongest in what had been solid Labour areas; and that the support they have gained is not based on romantic nationalism nor blaming "the English" but on the wish to defend what's left of the welfare state and build a better Scotland, in opposition to the austerity and privilege that David Cameron represents.

The idea that it would be better to have a Tory government make things worse so as to drive people to revolt is a schoolboyish conspiracy notion, of tactics that might work for underground groups desperate to generate resistance in occupied countries, and hoping for outside help. It is no use at all to a party dependent on grass-roots enthusiasm and public trust, and leaders able to articulate their supporters' aspirations with conviction.  It is the kind of ulterior motive which those who don't understand mass politics - spies or journalists - sometimes maliciously attribute to the Left, and we will doubtless hear it again if any of the Left groups standing against Labour make a real dent on Labour majorities in the coming election.

Maybe some Scottish Labour Party MPs and hangers on,  with redundancy staring them in the face, will have clutched gratefully at the Telegraph story, hoping it was true. And some of them might prefer a Tory government rather than have the SNP shoring up Labour, and leaving them sidelined.

The Tories - who might be prepared to share government with UKIP if needs be - are bound to want to block and divide any possible combination against them.

And that's not all.

Besides the SNP's policies on health and education, one aspect of Nicola Sturgeon's appeal beyond Scotland, to voters and many within the Labour Party and further Left, is her forthright opposition to Trident and to nuclear bases in Scotland.  And that suggests one reason why the security and intelligence services, and maybe not just in Britain, could have a hidden hand in the campaign against Nicola Sturgeon.

*  For more about the pre-war development of Tory "Dirty Tricks" and Major Joseph Ball,  see for instance: http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/features/item/cabinet-conspiracy

Meddler on the Roof

SINGING from the same...er hymn sheet?  Or getting another report on Tower Hamlets? Eric Pickles, here with Home Secretary Theresa May, is Minister for Communities and Faith. So will he put money where his mouth is, and help repair synagogue roof?

(a real East Enders' tale)

A former East Enders actress says the series is unreal in its depiction of the area's ethnic make up. I've often thought the same about its socio-economic model. I can suspend disbelief and accept residents going to the cafe for breakfast, on Coronation Street or Albert Square, is a dramatic device.
But an entire community living by pulling pints or selling each other dodgy gear from market stalls seems a bit unreal to me.

With no one leaving the Square for work, or social life, I fear the effect of isolation and inbreeding once associated with Fenland villages, though it spares us Walford residents grumbling about London's transport problems or talking about the bus strike.

Steering clear of anything political seems a soap rule generally, though Coronation Street once had young Ken Barlow worrying his Mum by going on a CND march. (I don't know whether this had anything to do with ex-miner and Left-wing writer Jim Allen contributing scripts. I did go on a march down Cross Lane, Salford. not unlike the one heard going past the Street on Corrie.)  Brookside, which I rarely watched, had brother-sister incest and bodies under patios, one Liverpool-born critic I know praised the "social realism"; but as a regular fan confirmed to me, nobody in the series ever once mentioned the three-year long struggle waged  over Liverpool docks.  

This must have been galling for one member of the cast, ex-docker Peter Kerrigan, who'd entered TV in a Jim Allen play, and hadn't forgotten his old comrades. But in the end it was Robbie Fowler who broke the TV blackout on the dockers.

Anyway, to get back to 'East Enders',  I thought I'd suggest a real East End story, albeit introducing a couple of implausible characters. The Rt.Honorable Eric Pickles MP is, to quote his full job title, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Minister for Faith. After recent tragic events in Paris and before sending out a letter to mosques on their duty to prove they are British, Pickles took part in a photo opportunity alongside Home Secretary Theresa May, both holding up signs declaring 'Je suis Juif' - I am Jewish. My reaction when I saw this was a horrified shudder, but I suppose that is ungracious. There is a way that Pickles could win appreciation.  

Here is an item that caught my eye in the online Jewish News:
"A group of young Jews are fundraising to help save one of London’s oldest synagogues on Nelson Street, Whitechapel. East London Central Synagogue, founded in 1923 is the East End’s oldest purpose built synagogue, but its roof is collapsing and its original features are in need of major repair. Jewdas is aiming to raise at least £5,000 to save the synagogue, and have started a campaign. http://www.jewishnews.co.uk/fundraising-campaign-save-whitechapel-shul-state-disrepair/

Jewdas, as their name suggests, are a witty, irreverant but creative young group whose seemingly wild but well-organised cultural events have breathed new life into their community, and its better traditions, while blowing more than a raspberry at the Establishment. Some of these young people were to be seen marching behind the Young Jewish Left banner on last year's Gaza demonstrations.
Now they are showing the same lack of inhibition taking responsibility for something constructive and positive.

It's almost like a small piece of Cameron's forgotten 'Big Society', but without the big money advertising, over-paid CEOs,  and exploited charity workers.  Jewdas are just amateurs. 

To understand the background, mind, let's start with an item headed 'Politics and race: A tale of two mayors',  which appeared in 2013, in of all places,  The Economist:  

 STRIDING into the east London Central Synagogue, Lutfur Rahman grasps Leon Silver, a wiry Jewish elder, in his arms. Mr Silver hugs back. Since winning the mayoralty of Tower Hamlets, an east London borough with a quarter of a million inhabitants, in 2010, Mr Rahman has allocated some £3m ($4.5m) to repairing religious buildings. The synagogue is one of them. Tactile and soft-spoken, with a beaming countenance, Mr Rahman—a Bangladeshi Muslim—is every bit the local champion.  http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21589485-two-very-different-models-running-diverse-bit-east-london-tale-two-mayors

The contrast in styles was with Newham's Labour mayor Sir Robin Wales, who I'll deal with another time. The E15 mothers protesting social cleansing and taking part in Saturday's housing march have already been dealing with him.

That 'Economist'  article appeared on November 9, 2013,  which happened to be the anniversary of Hitler's Kristallnacht pogroms, a point that's only been given significance now by news of swastika graffiti in parts of east London, and Holocaust memorial posters being defaced.

 Lutfur Rahman was re-elected mayor of  Tower Hamlets last year, but his re-election is being challenged in the courts. In December, although a police investigation found no evidence of fraud, Eric Pickles sent his commissioners in to take over the council, having received a report from Price, Waterhouse and Cooper alleging a “worrying pattern of divisive community politics and alleged mismanagement of public money by the mayoral administration of Tower Hamlets”.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/dec/17/eric-pickles-commissioner-takeover-tower-hamlets

So how does that affect the synagogue?
"East London Central Synagogue, founded in 1923, is the East End's oldest remaining purpose built synagogue. It is a remnant of a once thriving Jewish East End culture, and an important emblem of Jewish Heritage. The synagogue was due a grant from Tower Hamlet's Council to cover much needed renovations - in particular the roof, which the congregation has been waiting to repair for many years. However, due to recent intervention in the running of the council by communities minister Eric Pickles, the grant has been frozen, and is likely to be much lower in value if it is still given. " https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/save-the-shul

We might add that as well as amalgamating several previous congregations, the synagogue hosts varied cultural as well as religious activities. Keeping it going helps maintain Tower Hamlets' diversity, affording confidence to old East Enders staying in the borough and newcomers deciding to make it their home.  


One does not have to agree with Lutfur Rahman's policy of working with faith groups, or other aspects of Tower Hamlets council, to see that it is not quite the "divisive" policy unduly favouring Muslim groups or places of worship which media and political rivals have been suggesting. We do have to ask whether Pickles, and those egging him on,  have been divisive in singling out Tower Hamlets for intervention.  

And while we admire the spirit of those young people who have taken responsibility for raising funds for East London synagogue, it does not seem unreasonable to ask that Mr.Pickles and his commissioners, and anyone else who meddles in Tower Hamlets, should take responsibility for honouring the council's legitimate pledges.

   The synagogue in Nelson Street.
http://www.jewisheastend.com/nelsonst.html

Plots against Labour

WITH all the interest shown in various anniversaries this year, one slipped past almost unnoticed last month which might have topical relevance. It was 90 years since the Daily Mail published a front-page story, four days before the October 1924 General Election, about instructions supposedly sent from Moscow to British Communists, on how to subvert the armed forces and bring about a revolution, - supposedly with the help of the first Labour government.

Labour had opened trade and diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union that year, then lost a confidence vote from the Liberals for deciding to drop the prosecution of communist John Ross Campbell under the 1797 Incitement to Mutiny Act, for publication of an open letter in Workers Weekly calling on soldiers to "let it be known that, neither in the class war nor in a military war, will you turn your guns on your fellow workers."

New national elections were scheduled for October 29.

On October 10, the Foreign Office received a document purporting to be the letter signed by Grigori Zinoviev and Arthur McManus of the Communist International, and hence referred to as the "Zinoviev Letter".  Thought to have been the work of Czarist Russian emigres out to sabotage Anglo-Soviet relations, or possibly even commissioned from them, the forgery was nevertheless treated as genuine,  and through the collusion of the intelligence services and Tory Central Office it was passed over to the Mail for publication.

"CIVIL WAR PLOT BY SOCIALISTS' MASTERS" was the Mail's headline. Plainly aimed to strike fear into the middle class, it certainly put the wind up Labour's Ramsay MacDonald. Whether or not it made a big difference to Labour's vote, it made clear that senior officialdom in the state would not let an elected our government do as it pleased.

A leading part in the behind the scenes collaboration between state intelligence services, Tory party and media was played by Major Joseph Ball, whose shadowy career took him from MI5 and the Zinoviev Letter to Conservative Research Department, and links with an antisemitic magazine that was used to smear Leslie Hore-Belisha, and remove him as War Minister.  Handling secret contacts between Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Mussolini's diplomats, Ball also set up spying operations not only against Labour but against those anti-Appeasement Tories around Winston Churchill. Ball then had a hand at the start of the Second World War in deporting "enemy aliens" -often anti-Nazi refugees.

All this may seem a long way in the past, though we do get occasional echoes. The Mail went for Ed Miliband's refugee father as "anti-British" , though he served in the Royal Navy. Unable to frighten us with Zinoviev or the Soviet Union, the Tories make do with denouncing Len McCluskey and Unite the union as "masters" of the Labour Party.  Alas, as a Unite member I regret its not true.

But nowadays, the stories can be more subtle, and plots more insidious. Lynton Crosbie, the Aussie whom the Tories hired as campaign strategist may not be a tough guy like Major Ball, but he has a reputation though he operates in different times.

This weekend the big story was supposed to be Labour MPs wanting to ditch Ed Miliband as a loser before he is even put to the test. It was the Observer's front-page lead.  Now the Observer has not got the Mail's reputation as a right-wing rag, nor its history. (Well not quite. I'll deal with the so-called "Red House" story and the police raid on the WRP school another time).

it's certainly not aimed at the same readership.

But pro-Labour blogger Tom Pride noticed something odd about this story. He asks:

Why is the Observer employing a Mail journalist to smear Ed Miliband?
by Tom Pride


The Observer has a naughty little article today claiming there are "at least" twenty shadow ministers calling for Ed Miliband to stand down.

I say naughty, because the article fails to name even one shadow minister.

And considering there are only about 24 shadow ministers in the entire shadow cabinet, "at least" 20 would have to be just about all of them. Including Ed Miliband himself.

In fact, the whole article is so ridiculous in its anti-Labour spin and propaganda, it's exactly the kind of thing you'd expect to see in the Daily Mail.

Which is not very surprising considering the journalist who wrote the Observer piece - Daniel Boffey - used to write exactly the same kind of political smear articles for the Mail on Sunday:

Miliband and his £18m holiday villa
Fury over Gordon Brown’s ‘cynical’ letter to murder victim’s local paper
Jacqui Smith's cleaner hasn't had a pay rise for five years
Labour's army of spin, G20 summit is 'choreographed' by private firm

We reveal explosive report Ed Balls refused to make public

So why is the Lib Dem Guardian/Observer employing a hack who writes anti-Labour articles for the Tory Mail?  Another example of the Lib Dem /Tory coalition in action perhaps?

:
http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/11/09/why-is-the-observer-employing-a-mail-journalist-to-smear-ed-miliband/

Maybe where there is a whiff of smoke, there is fire, or maybe it is something decomposing. At the Labour Representation Committee's conference on Saturday, left-wing Labour MP John McDonnell
said if there was a move to get rid of Ed Miliband now it was a right-wing plot. Referring to one of the suggested replacements for Miliband, LRC political secretary Pete Firmin, a retired postman, said "If anyone thinks Alan Johnson's the answer they must have asked a bloody silly question!"  Johnson, a former Communications Workers Union general secretary who was Home Secretary
from 2009-10, ruled himself out as a leadership contender today. and warned that remov Miliband now would be political suicide for Labour.

So if there are some hardened Blairites willing to take that risk, it suggests that rather than worrying Labour might lose, they fear what might happen if it wins, and finds an aroused working class demanding the reversal of austerity cuts, and trade unionists demanding their rights. The Party is already in difficulty explaining why the railways can't come back under public ownership, a call which has widespread public support. Energy and utility companies would be next. What with creeping big business tyranny under  TTIP, to which public awakening has just begun, some MPs might fancy a quiet time staying in opposition (without actually doing any opposing) or a weakened Labour Party entering yet another coalition, where it can pretend its hands are tied.  This is the basis for a fifth column feeding stories to, and taking leadership from, the class enemy and its press,

Not to be outdone by the Observer with its anonymous quotes , the Independent has another story about people being against Miliband, of a more specific kind. It claims wealthy Jewish donors regard Miliband as "toxic" because he and other Labour MPs voted for recognising Palestine.

One prominent Jewish financial backer, a lifelong Labour supporter, said he no longer wanted to "see Mr Miliband in Downing Street or Douglas Alexander as Foreign Secretary".

A senior Labour MP warned that Mr Miliband now had a "huge if not insurmountable challenge" to maintain support from parts of the Jewish community that had both backed and helped fund Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's election campaigns.

At the same time, a former cabinet minister privately admitted that Labour's fundraising efforts were in disarray. The former minister said the party would struggle to raise anywhere near the £19m a party is entitled to spend under electoral law in the run-up to next May's poll. "We will have to pass the begging bowl round to the unions," they said. "That would send a bad signal. In return, they [the unions] would demand to call the shots on policy."

It's an ill wind that blows no good!

But are Jewish donors that important to Labour nowadays?  And are so many presumably intelligent professionals and shrewd business people really taking their line from 'Beaty' (Maureen Lipman) and Mr.Netanyahu and his embassy, when there is so much dissent within the Jewish community over Israel's stubborn and aggressive policies?  A very large number of prominent Israelis, including former intelligence chiefs, wrote to British MPs before the vote, urging them to vote FOR Palestinian recognition. Unlike the sources quoted by the Independent, these people not only know what thet are talking about and were only too willing to give their names, and positions held.

Assuming the people quoted in the Independent are genuine, but too shy to give their names, who was it it, I wonder, who put the reporter on to the story, and to them, in the first place? I suppose we could make some intelligent guesses. And they would not be Labour Party members.

Besides telling possible pro-Israel and Jewish donors what attitude they are supposed to take, rather than leaving them to think for themselves, the article has also woken the sleeping dogs of prejudice, for whom any mention of Jews and money in the same or nearby sentences sets them yapping, even if they haven't a clue what its all about.  

And between now and the general election in May I expect there'll  be all sorts of stories.  

By the way, getting back to the Tories campaign manager, here's what the Telegraph, of all papers, had to say when he was appointed 

...Lynton Crosby had concentrated on the visceral issues that have been proven to bring out the core Conservative vote. This is how he has always operated – and he should under no circumstances be underestimated. He is the genius behind the most successful Right-wing politician of the last quarter-century, Australia’s John Howard, who was elected four times between 1996 and 2004, and remains the second longest-serving Australian prime minister, after Sir Robert Menzies. Working for him, Crosby developed what opponents labelled “dog whistle” politics – campaigning techniques which sent out a covert message. John Howard’s enemies claimed that this was sometimes implicitly racist.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9637490/Cameron-should-beware-the-Australian-master-strategist.html

Mr.Farage Finds a Friend

IT's always nice to follow a character's career, having noticed them early on, and today we heard news of Raheem Kassam, a young man whose latest employer, a right-wing American outfit called the Breitbart network,  was pleased to announce that its London editor Raheem Kassam was moving on to become an adviser to the United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP)'s leader Nigel Farage.
Extolling UKIP's recent successes, Breitbart says

"As a result, the party is moving onto an election footing, with Kassam set to lead on advising Mr Farage in developing party messaging, strategy, fundraising and publicity. The role is the first of its kind as UKIP grows and professionalises, and Breitbart London understands from senior UKIP sources that Kassam was picked specifically for his political nous and campaigning prowess.
Executive Chairman of the Breitbart News Network Stephen K Bannon said: "Raheem is a huge piece of manpower, as proven by one of the most important political movements in the world bringing him onboard. The entire company will miss his intelligence and drive."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP said: "I'm delighted that Raheem has joined the People's Army of UKIP. His experience in media as well in political campaigning will be important to us on the run up to the general election in 2015."

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Breitbart-London-Editor-Becomes-Senior-Aide-to-UKIPs-Nigel-Farage

Hat-tip to my friend Marko Attila Hoare for bringing this news to my attention. I must admit I'd hardly heard of Breitbart before, though its name reminds me of the crazy far-Right Norwegian gunman Breivik. Breitbart is not quite that far to the Right, but is named after a 'conservative' American called Andrew Breitbart and specialises in circulating news stories "exposing" what it calls "big government", that is anything resembling the Welfare State and taxing the rich to pay for it.

This would fit Nigel Farage's promises to outdo the Tories in cutting NHS jobs and spending, though his supporters have been denying on TV that they're against the service. (Apparently it is bad manners to remind UKIP spokespersons of anything they or their leader said from one week to the next, or before different audiences).

Breitbart has also been behind sensational stories smearing unlikely political figures by association with "terrorism", described by others as hoaxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29

Andrew Breitbart himself died in 2012. Conspiracy theorists claim he was assassinated on orders from President Obama. We are in the world of the Tea Party, and perhaps its wilder fringes.

Breitbart's London edition was launched on February 16, 2014 headed by right-wing journalist and climate change skeptic James Delingpole as executive editor and Raheem Kassam as managing editor. 

Raheem Kassam's work came to my notice in 2009. On December 17 that year the BBC carried a report that a man called Jonathan Hoffman had been barracked during a university debate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),  by people chanting that he was "Jewish", and as such, not welcome. This referred in fact to a public event held by the SOAS Palestine Society and the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP), with speakers from South Africa, one of whom Ronnie Kasrils is himself Jewish, as is academic Steven Rose, who also spoke.

It would have been surprising if Jonathan  Hoffman had not encountered some hostility at this meeting, since he had become notorious as an aggressive leader of the Zionist Federation, and his 'question' at the SOAS meeting was an attack on one of the speakers. But Hoffman was allowed to make his point without interruption, which is more than he allowed Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer at a House of Commons meeting the following year. The Zionist federation chair was escorted out by police after persistent heckling of Dr.Meyer.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/445742.html?c=on

Several other members of the SOAS audience were also Jewish, including Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, who can be heard on video of the meeting introducing herself as Jewish before she spoke, and being applauded. None of them experienced any anti-Jewish chanting, and indeed it seems Jonathan Hoffman himself did not notice it or think it worth mentioning in his blog about the meeting on December 13.

The person who supplied the "antisemitism" story was Raheem Kassam. The BBC referred to his membership of Student Rights, describing this as an "anti-racist" campaigning organisation, though its own website prefers to identify itself as against "extremism". We don't know who else was in Student Rights.


According to a website called Standpoint in which some of his ideas appeared, "Raheem Kassam manages the counter-radicalisation pressure group 'Student Rights' from within the Henry Jackson Society. That's a society dedicated to aggressively bringing American-style 'democracy' to other countries. He also airs his views on the Conservative Home site, which says: 'Raheem Kassam hails from Uxbridge, studied Politics at university and is now a freelance political campaign strategist'".

The BBC had to pull its story about the SOAS event after complaints from people who had been there. But it seems to have continued treating Raheem Kassam as a reliable source on the subject of "extremism", particularly the Islamic variety, in British universities.

Having travelled from the ostensibly liberal Henry Jackson Society to the determinedly conservative (even by American Republican standards) Breitbart outfit, will Kassam be continuing to report extremism from his post in UKIP, with its known contingent of Holocaust deniers and believers in the famous Protocols? He takes up his new job in the same week that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, not known for exagerating (when right-wing parties are concerned) had this to say, about UKIP's links in Europe:

Board Vice President Jonathan Arkush said: “The Board is gravely concerned by reports that UKIP may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid to save its funding.  Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments.  He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.

 “Furthermore, we entirely reject UKIP’s justification that ‘All groups in the European Parliament have very odd bedfellows (and) The rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not UKIP’.  Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced.  Even France's far right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.

 “For UKIP to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer.  He has placed in issue the credibility of UKIP."  

http://www.bod.org.uk/live/content.php?Item_ID=1302

Cruelty of Capital Clearances

THE front-page story of yesterday's Daily Mirror gave a true
picture of the brutal reality behind words like "regeneration"
applied in our cities, and claims by politicians and tame
academics in recent years that "the class struggle is over" (they

mean "and you lot lost!").

The Mirror's Nick Sommerlad drew our attention to the Hoxton area of London, traditionally a poor neighbourhood though not too far from the bustle of finance and the City where fortunes are made and gambled, and banker's bonuses rise.
 
As older small businesses make way for new office blocks and the fashionable arty crowd flash their money in restaurants and clubs, Hoxton has been on the up, but not for working people living there. 

Sommerlad says up to 90 households on the New Era estate, some of whom have lived there for many years, fear they could be forced out by a massive rent rise.

Built in the 1930s, the estate looks pretty ordinary, and has a long history of providing affordable housing, but it has been taken over by a consortium which has already raised rents by ten per cent in the past year and plans further increases to bring rents up to "market values".

Tory MP Richard Benyon, is a director of his family’s 300-year-old Englefield Estate, which owns 20,000 acres of land from Hampshire to Scotland. Its portfolio includes the 250-property Benyon Estate in East London which is now a “minority shareholder” in the flats on the New Era Estate. His brother Edward Benyon confirmed the family was part of the consortium during a meeting with tenants, and said besides raising rents they want to build more flats on the estate. .

The Mirror quotes Debra Cox, a teaching assistant, who has lived there for 18 years, as saying: “This is social cleansing – this has always been a form of social housing and they just want rid of us.  I have been to the council and was told we don’t have a chance of being rehoused.”

Debra told the new landlord: “You do realise that as soon as you put them on at market value, whenever that may be, myself, my husband and my 18-year-old daughter will be homeless?”
Her husband Gary, 50, fumed: “My wife had a seizure during the night brought on by the stress.
"My wife is ill and I am going to lose my f*****g flat because of you and your mates.”

While rents and house prices have been soaring, particularly in London, the Con Dem coalition has capped housing benefits, knowing this means working class people are being forced out of the capital.
 
The Mirror says an investigation with the GMB union earlier this year revealed Benyon’s £110million estate has received hundreds of thousands of pounds of housing benefit – despite the MP attacking the “something for nothing” welfare state. "On top of Mr Benyon’s haul from tenants and the taxpayer, his family farms received more than £2million in EU subsidies since 2000."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/devastated-families-face-eviction-after-3786578#ixzz36BbUsGYQ

Apparently the Newbury MP says he is seeking legal advice about the report.
Let him.
 http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/2014/newbury-mp-seeks-legal-advice-over-national-newspaper-claims 


Although a Labour councillor in Islington expressed concern over what was happening in Hoxton, it is not clear what, if anything, the council intends to do about it.  Meanwhile some Tory councils like Westminster and Wandsworth have notoriously had their own policies of clearing working people from properties and estates, and Hammersmith Tories wanted to get rid of council housing. 

 At the trades union councils' conference in Cardiff on June 14, speaking in support of a motion on housing, I defended a clause at the end which worried some delegates, calling for decriminalisation of squatting. Reminding conference of the big squatting movement just after the war, when homeless families took over luxury mansions as well as disused army camps, I said the Tories knew their policies would cause more homelessness, and that is why they have made squatting a criminal offence for the first time in centuries. Sadly, far from opposing this, leading Labour MPs have said the law should be extended to cover business premises.

The resolution was passed, complete with the call for decriminalising squatting.

A young worker I know had this to say on the subject the other day: 
I remember the last time I moved to London. I was skint, jobless and without a place to stay, but a mate put me up in a squat he was living in at the time, and when that squat closed, another mate kindly put me up in his squat, and so it developed that I ended up squatting in empty houses all over East and North East London for the best part of a year. At the time, that was legal of course, and you didn't see that many rough sleepers on the streets of London.

In fact, I remember a mate telling me at the time that basically, most medium to long term rough sleepers in London were folk with serious drug and/or mental problems, because it really wasn't that hard to find an hostel or an empty house no less. I believed him, because it made sense.

Five years later, I'm walking through Brent Cross after the nightshift, and I spies a family spending the night in an underpass, with two kids. Five years later, they've banned squatting, at the same time as they've introduced the bedroom tax, unleashed a mass wave of sanctions on dole claimants, cut benefits and cut council funding. And that's what you end up with, in the world's financial capital, the seat of a once great empire. Children sleeping rough. I remember seeing a propaganda poster in humble Cuba back in the day. It said, '350,000 children are sleeping rough tonight, all over the world. Not one of them is Cuban'. You can draw whatever conclusions you like from that, but what a Great country this Britain is, eh?

I hope there is more resistance to evictions and support for squatting empty properties in future. I say taking away social housing to make profits is theft. Forcing people from their homes, or denying anyone a roof over their head, is violence, whatever the law says. And if someone hits you, you have a right to hit back. . 

Tory Liars and Labour Lords

ORGREAVE  For those who did not believe Thatcher's lies, the government had other convincing arguments.




HITHERTO secret papers from the Thatcher government have revealed the plans it made before the 1984-5 miners' strike, and confirmed what many of believed from the start, and many more people became convinced of  as time went on.

National Union of Mineworkers' leader Arthur Scargill was telling the TRUTH.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was LYING.

A document, marked "Not to be photocopied or circulated outside the private office", records a meeting at No10 Downing Street, attended by just seven people, including the Prime Minister Thatcher, the Chancellor, the Energy secretary and the Employment secretary.

The meeting was told the National Coal Board's pit closure programme had "gone better this year than planned: there had been one pit closed every three weeks" and the workforce had shrunk by 10%. The new chairman of the board, Ian MacGregor, who had made his name battling trade unions in the United States, meant to go further.

"Mr MacGregor had it in mind over the three years 1983-85 that a further 75 pits would be closed... There should be no closure list, but a pit-by-pit procedure. The manpower at the end of that time in the industry would be down to 138,000 from its current level of 202,000.

As a result, two-thirds of Welsh miners would become redundant, a third of those in Scotland, almost half of those in north east England, half in South Yorkshire and almost half in the South Midlands. The entire Kent coalfield would close.

The final paragraph of the document read: "It was agreed that no record of this meeting should be circulated."

A week later another document written by a senior civil servant suggested the same small group should meet regularly in future, but that there should be "nothing in writing which clarifies the understandings about strategy which exist between Mr MacGregor and the secretary of state for energy".


"If this document had ever emerged during the strike it would have been devastating for the credibility of Margaret Thatcher" because Mrs Thatcher and Mr MacGregor always maintained there were plans for the closure of only 20 pits, said Nick Jones, who covered the strike for the BBC..

 " It raises in my mind the question of whether there was a cover-up of these figures, and whether when we look back at what actually happened Arthur Scargill was right when he claimed that Ian MacGregor wanted to butcher the industry all along."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25549596

In the Morning Star, NUM secretary Chris Kitchen, who was a 17-year old miner at Wheldale colliery in West Yorkshire when the strike began,  said the revelation of MacGregor's hit list came as no surprise. Wrecking the coal-mining industry following the strike paved the way for privatisation of a raft of publicly owned industries - and led to today's energy crisis, soaring fuel bills and economic decline.


"We all knew it was not an industrial dispute, but a political dispute orchestrated by Thatcher and following the blueprint of the Ridley Report to destroy the trade union movement and pave the way for privatisation."

He said Thatcher and the government determined when the strike should be provoked - just as summer was approaching and coal stocks were high."We did not decide the timing of the strike. But the only option was to fight. If you just roll over you have no hope of winning. If you fight at least you have a chance."

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-4162-Thatcher-files-show-Scargill-was-right

Besides strikebreaking plans going back to Tory minister Nicholas Ridley in the 1970s, the newly released documents show the Thatcher cabinet considered using troops to break the strike. This was in July 1984 when it also faced a docks dispute. Fortunately for Thatcher this was avoided, and with it the feared possibility that power workers would react to the military bringing fuel through busted miners' picket lines.

In later years when workers in other industries said "Arthur Scargill was right", they were not just expressing sympathy for the miners and their communities, but ruefully acknowledging that thanks to other unions not backing the NUM, the Thatcher government and big employers were able to take on different sections of workers one slice at a time. Devastating an entire industry and the communities around it was a price the Tories were happy to pay to smash union strength, especially as they favoured finance capital and the City above all else. Globalisation means the rich can export capital and the country can import energy and goods produced in Third World sweatshops. Public services can be milked by private companies, though it is the users who are stigmatised as a burden, as the call is made for more cuts.

With Thatcher finally dead and buried, discussion of the released papers and memories of the strike have quickly led to consideration of who her accomplices were, and how did she get away with it? Neil Greatrex, of the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers(UDM) which led scabbing, is serving time for ripping off miners' sickness charity funds. Serve him right, we agree. But there were others in the shadows who aided and encouraged the UDM, and some may still have managed their stealthy re-entry into the movement.

And what of the TUC? Its leaders refused to support any action in solidarity with the miners, adopting a neutral stand while leaving it to ordinary working people throughout the country to do what they could in collecting food and money for the miners and their families.

As for Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, he was much readier to denounce the pickets and say he "detested" Arthur Scargill than he had been to condemn Margaret Thatcher. Putting this together with his attack on left-wing councillors like those in Liverpool who resisted the Tories, some people say the rot started in the Labour Party with the leadership of Neil Kinnock. Maybe so, but we should not forget that Kinnock was promoted as the "left-wing" half of the so-called "dream ticket" for leadership. Roy Hattersley, later to find himself overtaken by Blair's party as it moved to the Right , was the other half.

It was to some of the supposed Left - the Communist Party's "Euro"s - that Kinnock looked for ideas, and their part in prettifying Thatcherism, as well as their conduct towards the strike, should be looked at.

After the longest ever run as opposition leader, Kinnock never made it to Prime Minister, becoming instead a European Union commissioner and Baron Kinnock of Bedwellty. It was left to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown to say they followed in Thatcher's footsteps.

 But it is was another Labour Lord who caught my attention, well after the strike was over, by what he said. In 2003, during the Brent East by-election, in London, I was having a cup of tea in Alf Filer's house in Kensal Rise, when who turned up in the road outside but Labour's John Reid, MP, accompanied by a couple of large minders. Reid was serving as Health Minister at the time, and Alf stepped out to challenge him on something happening in a local hospital. I followed,

Possibly misinformed by his minders into thinking that we were supporters of Scargill's Socialist Labour Party (we were actually working with the Socialist Alliance, though the SLP also put up a candidate), Reid said something like  "Tell Arthur Scargill to come up to my constituency and see the damage he did to communities". Seeing us momentarily puzzled by this, he repeated that Scargill should come and see the communities he had ruined.

."But that was Margaret Thatcher!", I replied. Then as Reid looked as though he might have realised he had said something outrageous, I added "Oh I forgot -you lot have joined her", By then the minders were hustling him back into his car.

John Reid had started, like Arthur Scargill, in the Young Communist League. At one time he had a 'Marxist' reputation and an image in the Labour Party as a Glasgow "hard man", He became an adviser to Neil Kinnock. By the time I met him he had evidently softened enough to accept a Tory view of what happened to the mining areas. Anyway he is now Lord Reid of  Cardowan. 




A miner's views on Neil Kinnock



Neil Kinnock's "Favourite Marxist"
 

  Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign

Mandela's enemies, and his legacy

HOW considerate of Nelson Mandela to the end, to time his departure so that David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and John Major can escape the British winter to attend his funeral. I won't join the vulgar types expressing unpleasant wishes for their journey or return, it is not nice, and besides the immediate replacements would be just as bad, or worse.

Nor will I dwell overlong on the hypocrisy of some of those paying tribute to the African leader (and incidentally I see Israeli premier Netanyahu is not going,blaming the cost of security, though probably fearing hostile protests, besides which he must regret the precedent set by South Africa's white rulers in freeing Mandela let alone letting him take their place peacefully. Aging President Shimon Peres has been diagnosed with a convenient dose of 'flu and advised not to travel, so memories will not be stirred of his role in for instance Israeli nuclear co-operation with the Apartheid regime.)


 Here in Britain, like lots of people, I remember the way demonstrators demanding the release of Nelson Mandela and other Apartheid prisoners were harassed by police outside South Africa House; the use of British-made Alvis Saladin armoured vehicles in killing and repressing Africans at Sharpeville and Soweto; and the jolly "Hang Nelson Mandela!" tee shirts adopted by young British Tories.

The tee shirts were particularly associated with the Federation of Conservative Students(FCS), dubbed "Maggie's Militant Tendency" in a BBC Panorama programme that was sued for libel and disowned by the BBC under Tory pressure. Later, in 1986, Norman Tebbit disbanded the FCS, not because of their nasty tee shirts about Mandela but for an article attacking Harold Macmillan. Harry Phibbs who wrote the article went on to join the Evening Standard as a columnist, and is today a leading Tory councillor in Hammersmith. House of Commons Speaker John Bercow MP has regretted the right-wing views he associated with in the FCS.

Former MP Terry Dicks however, now a member of Runnymede district council in Surrey,stands by his denunciation of Nelson Mandela as a "black terrorist" who had, what's more, insulted Margaret Thatcher by declining to see her on his 1990 trip to Britain. Fortunately the electors of Hayes and Harlington are no longer saddled with Terry Dicks as their MP, his place having been taken by left-wing Labourite John McDonnell MP. That's as far a swing from right to left as you could get in British parliamentary politics!

Although the Tory students acquired a reputation for racially abusing bar staff during their boozy beanos, and one since prominent as a blogger has been upset by revelations of his attempts to woo the BNP, they were not strictly dogmatic in their racialist alignments. A black leader like Jonas Savimbi could be their hero, since his Unita movement in Angola was an ally to the South African regime.

Even after the big vested interests that run South Africa had decided to dump Apartheid, and the process which made Mandela president was under way, some Tories in Britain, and perhaps some elements in the secret state, were ready to back anyone, black(Buthelezi) or white(Clive Derby-Lewis) who might seem able to stop what now seems inevitable from taking place. Derby-Lewis, who visited London and became vice-president of the right-wing Western Goals network, is serving time in South Africa for hs part in the assassination of South African Communist party leader Chris Hani  Maybe one day the whole story will be told.

On the left, reactions to Mandela's death have ranged from those, not all of the same persuasion, who have spoken only of the ANC leaders; greatness to some who see only the 'sell out' of a potential socialist revolution for Stalinist "stages theory". Many refer more concretely to the way in which miner's union leader and ANC vice president Cyril Ramaphosa became a multi-millionaire mine owner, while miners were left in poverty and squalor alongside the immense wealth they extract, and striking platinum miners shot down by police at the Marekana mine.

It  is a far cry from the day soon after Apartheid fell, when thousands gathered for a triumphal rally with MPs and churchmen in Hyde Park, and I stood outside selling, or trying to sell, my Workers Press, with its front-page reporting South African police using dogs to attack striking shopworkers, and faced the hostile glares of those for whom the workers should be grateful for their freedom and the new South African regime, ven with the same old South African police, could do no wrong.

That was nothing to the hostility, or at best cold indifference, faced by comrades - former freedom fighters, ex-prisoners, active trade unionists who'd defied death threats -who came here from Namibia or South Africa to seek support for their struggles and warn against trusting the new regimes.     

But things have changed.

Here, introducing his autobiography, Armed and Dangerous, is Ronnie Kasrils, a leading member of both the ANC and the Communist Party, who became a minister in Mandela's government. Kasrils, who says the 1960 Sharpeville massacre led him to join the ANC, was shocked by the killing of 34 workers at the Marekana mine into looking at where they had gone wrong:

South Africa's liberation struggle reached a high point but not its zenith when we overcame apartheid rule. Back then, our hopes were high for our country given its modern industrial economy, strategic mineral resources (not only gold and diamonds), and a working class and organised trade union movement with a rich tradition of struggle. But that optimism overlooked the tenacity of the international capitalist system. From 1991 to 1996 the battle for the ANC's soul got under way, and was eventually lost to corporate power: we were entrapped by the neoliberal economy – or, as some today cry out, we "sold our people down the river".

What I call our Faustian moment came when we took an IMF loan on the eve of our first democratic election. That loan, with strings attached that precluded a radical economic agenda, was considered a necessary evil, as were concessions to keep negotiations on track and take delivery of the promised land for our people. Doubt had come to reign supreme: we believed, wrongly, there was no other option; that we had to be cautious, since by 1991 our once powerful ally, the Soviet union, bankrupted by the arms race, had collapsed. Inexcusably, we had lost faith in the ability of our own revolutionary masses to overcome all obstacles. Whatever the threats to isolate a radicalising South Africa, the world could not have done without our vast reserves of minerals.

To lose our nerve was not necessary or inevitable. The ANC leadership needed to remain determined, united and free of corruption – and, above all, to hold on to its revolutionary will. Instead, we chickened out. The ANC leadership needed to remain true to its commitment of serving the people. This would have given it the hegemony it required not only over the entrenched capitalist class but over emergent elitists, many of whom would seek wealth through black economic empowerment, corrupt practices and selling political influence.

To break apartheid rule through negotiation, rather than a bloody civil war, seemed then an option too good to be ignored. However, at that time, the balance of power was with the ANC, and conditions were favourable for more radical change at the negotiating table than we ultimately accepted. It is by no means certain that the old order, apart from isolated rightist extremists, had the will or capability to resort to the bloody repression envisaged by Mandela's leadership. If we had held our nerve, we could have pressed forward without making the concessions we did.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/24/anc-faustian-pact-mandela-fatal-error

PS   SOMETHING I'd just like to add from the days when Mandela was a fugitive fighter for freedom, but some recognised him early as a great man.
Back in 1962 Nelson Mandela spent 11 days in June in London before returning to South Africa and almost certain arrest. The then secretary of Willesden trades council, Tom Durkin, thought it would be a pity not to take advantage of the African leader's visit, and invited Mandela to address the trades council. It was probably the last public meeting Mandela did before he was locked up by the Apartheid regime.
Unfortunately the NW London trades unionists were not the only people interested in Mandela. We now know that the CIA helped the South African authorities lift Mandela after his return to the country.
Willesden and Wembley merged to form Brent Trades Union Council, better known for backing the Grunwick strikers, but we are just as proud of our predecessor's initiative in holding that historic meeting with Mandela, just another example of the important function trades union councils can play. Think globally, act locally -and make sure your branch affiliates to the local trades union council!