When they do it, it's not called a boycott

NOT GIVEN HOUSEROOM? Images like this one from Larissa Sansour’s Nation Estate project proved too much for Lacoste, who have removed artist from Elysée Prize.

I'M not a great fan of the "Cultural Boycott" idea, though I can understand the legitimate motivation which leads friends to reach for this tactic, against the "normalisation" of oppressive regimes and occupations, like Israel's hold on the West Bank, now approaching its 45th year.

Sometimes such boycotts can hit the wrong people, as when a lecturer was banned from speaking at Leicester University back in the 1970s because he was a white South African, though he had been helping black African trades unionists and was no friend of the Apartheid regime. (An apparatchnik fell back on the excuse that the man was "not approved by the ANC", unaware as of course we all were that the London ANC office was being manipulated by the South African intelligence service).

I know my friends waging the anti-Israel boycott would not be so unjust or crude, but there was the hostility misdirected at Juliano Mer-Khamis in Hungary, foreshadowing his assassination outside the theatre he had founded in Jenin.

Besides, the other side - governments, business and reactionary outfits - are much more able to enforce their boycotts, as an army checkpoint is more effective than a couple of kids giving out leaflets. They don't use the "boycott" word, don't depend on voluntary adherence, and don't care whom they hit.

It does not do them any credit.

A big American DIY firm, Lowe's Home Improvement. decided recently to pull ads from a TVreality show about American Muslims, following protests from an evangelical Christian group. The North Carolina- based retailer stopped advertising on TLC's "All-American Muslim" after a group calling itself the Florida Family Association complained, saying the program was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values."

The show, premiered last month, simply chronicles the lives of five families from Dearborn, Michigan, just outside Detroit. The area has a large and long-established Muslim and Arab-American population, and the programme just shows ordinary families going about their lives, their kids going to school and saluting the flag, and so on. But evidently this suggestion that Muslims, Arab-Americans, are just plain folk, American citizens, even human beings, is too much for some good Christians to bear.

They mobilised supporters to write to the show's sponsors, and one company pulled its ads. It is reminiscent of the days of the Hollywood witch-hunts, when such tactics made sure actors or screen-writers labelled "communist" could not work in the United States. Except in this case the bullying is aimed not at individuals nor even a political spectre, but at an entire section of people defined by ethnicity or religious faith. The comparison with Germany in the 1930s need not be stressed. In America, fascism often appears in religious guise.

Slamming the Lowe company's decision as "un-American" and "naked religious bigotry", a state senator from Southern California has said he was connsidering calling for a boycott. Senator Ted Lieu, a Democrat from Torrance, said he would also consider legislative action if Lowe's doesn't apologize to Muslims and reinstate its ads. The senator sent a letter outlining his complaints to Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock.

"The show is about what it's like to be a Muslim in America, and it touches on the discrimination they sometimes face. And that kind of discrimination is exactly what's happening here with Lowe's," Lieu said.

Suehaila Amen, whose family is featured on "All-American Muslim," said she was disappointed by the Lowe's decision. "I'm saddened that any place of business would succumb to bigots and people trying to perpetuate their negative views on an entire community," Amen, 32, told The Detroit News on Sunday.

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/11/143552956/lowes-pulls-ads-u-s-muslim-reality-tv-show

WHEN it comes to Palestine and Palestinians, boycott can be applied so automatically and unhesitatingly that merely to utter the names can be treated as "political", indeed an act of rebellion. I well remember the American gentleman who was scandalised, and lectured me about the iniquities of Arab regimes, because I wore a tee shirt artistically depicting old Jerusalem rooftops and with the one word in small print "PALESTINE". More recently I heard of the crates of Taybeh beer which could not be imported into the United States because they were labelled "made in Palestine" and the US customs insisted there was "no such country". I thought maybe Pressident Obama, who had spoken about 1967 borders, should have a word with them, but evidently they had interpreted America's policy correctly, as we have seen by the US decision to boycott UNESCO.

And it is not just America, as the story below from Ali Abumineh's blog on Electronic Intifada indicates:
The high-end French clothing chain Lacoste has demanded the removal of work by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour from the shortlist for the €25,000 Lacoste Elysee Prize that is awarded by the Swiss Musee de l’Elysee with sponsorship from the firm.

Sansour was among eight finalists shortlisted for the 2011 prize. According to a press release issued by Sansour, “Lacoste stated their refusal to support Sansour’s work, labelling it ‘too pro-Palestinian.’”

This latest instance of apparent censorship of Palestinian artists by a cultural institution comes just months after the Museum of Children’s Art in Oakland, California censored an exhibit of art by children in Gaza just before its planned opening under pressure from anti-Palestinian Zionist groups.

Sansour, who is based in London, is a native of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. The press release explains:

As a nominee, Sansour was awarded a bursary of €4,000 and given carte blanche to produce a portfolio of images for the final judging. In November 2011, three photos for Sansour’s Nation Estate project were accepted, and she was congratulated by the prize administrators on her work and professionalism. Sansour’s name was included on all the literature relating to the prize and on the website as an official nominee. Her name has since been removed, just as her project has been withdrawn from an upcoming issue of contemporary art magazine ArtReview introducing the nominated artists.

In an attempt to mask the reasons for her dismissal, Sansour was asked to approve a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination ‘in order to pursue other opportunities’. Sansour has refused.

Søren Lind, Sansour’s assistant, told The Electronic Intifada today that the Lacoste company had yet to give any public response on the matter. A Google-cached image of the official Elysée Prize website captured by The Electronic Intifada proves that Sansour’s name was on the shortlist until at least 12 December, and then removed on the current version.

Sansour’s multimedia project Nation Estate was “conceived in the wake of the Palestinian bid for UN membership. Nation Estate depicts a science fiction-style Palestinian state in the form of a single skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population. Inside this new Nation Estate, the residents have recreated their lost cities on separate floors: Jerusalem on 3, Ramallah on 4, Sansour’s own hometown of Bethlehem on 5, etc.”

Sansour was born in Jerusalem and her multimedia work has been exhibited all over the world. The photo above, from the exhibit, is published courtesy of Sansour. More can be seen at her website.

Full text of press release

20th December 2011

LACOSTE: NO ROOM FOR PALESTINIAN ARTIST

French fashion brand demands the removal of Bethlehem artist Larissa Sansour from major photographic prize.

The prestigious €25,000 Lacoste Elysée Prize is awarded by the Swiss Musée de l’Elysée with sponsorship from Lacoste, the clothing brand.

Larissa Sansour was among the eight artists shortlisted for the 2011 prize. In December 2011, Lacoste demanded that her nomination be revoked. Lacoste stated their refusal to support Sansour’s work, labelling it ‘too pro-Palestinian’. A special jury will convene in January 2012 to select the winner.

As a nominee, Sansour was awarded a bursary of €4,000 and given carte blanche to produce a portfolio of images for the final judging. In November 2011, three photos for Sansour’s Nation Estate project were accepted, and she was congratulated by the prize administrators on her work and professionalism. Sansour’s name was included on all the literature relating to the prize and on the website as an official nominee. Her name has since been removed, just as her project has been withdrawn from an upcoming issue of contemporary art magazine ArtReview introducing the nominated artists.

In an attempt to mask the reasons for her dismissal, Sansour was asked to approve a statement saying that she withdrew from her nomination ‘in order to pursue other opportunities’. Sansour has refused.

Sansour says: “I am very sad and shocked by this development. This year Palestine was officially admitted to UNESCO, yet we are still being silenced. As a politically involved artist I am no stranger to opposition, but never before have I been censored by the very same people who nominated me in the first place. Lacoste’s prejudice and censorship puts a major dent in the idea of corporate involvement in the arts. It is deeply worrying.”

Sansour’s shortlisted work, Nation Estate, is conceived in the wake of the Palestinian bid for UN membership. Nation Estate depicts a science fiction-style Palestinian state in the form of a single skyscraper housing the entire Palestinian population. Inside this new Nation Estate, the residents have recreated their lost cities on separate floors: Jerusalem on 3, Ramallah on 4, Sansour’s own hometown of Bethlehem on 5, etc.

Regretting Lacoste’s decision to censor Sansour’s work, Musée de l’Elysée has offered to exhibit the Nation Estate project outside of the confines of the Lacoste sponsorship. Musée de l’Elysée is based in Lausanne, Switzerland. The Lacoste Elysée Prize 2011 is the award’s second edition.

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/french-clothing-firm-lacoste-censors-expels-palestinian-artist-larissa-sansour

http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/evidence-lacostes-censorship-palestinian-artist-larissa-sansour-captured-google

I'd be tempted to call for a boycott of Lacoste, but to be honest I have never worn their stuff and could not afford it even if they catered for overweight old gits like me. But others might take the idea up., if they haven't done so already.

• 

Where's Crocodile Dundee when you need him?!

Wiesenthal fails to withdraw lies and tall tales about Norway

AS if home-grown nutters with guns killing the kids was not enough, Norwegians have had to contend with another kind of hate-stirring. coming from abroad, and it is not just the weekend thugs of the EDL and Walter Mitty knight crusaders with whom Breivik chatted on the internet, who are responsible.

In November 2004, a bunch of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant campaigners linked with Norway's Forum Against Islamisation and the Democrats' Party - a break away from the right-wing Progress Party - had what they thought was a smart idea for a stunt.

On the morning of November 9, the anniversary of Hitler's 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews, a message posted on the Democrats' website claimed that Norway's Kristallnacht commemoration had been taken over by Jew-haters and left-wing "extremists". The Democrats therefore called on people to turn up that night with Israeli flags.

So you see, the gimmick we have seen adopted by EDL and Stop the Islamification of Europe in Britain is nothing new, even if some of the new friends of Zion here have had to roll down their sleeves to hide those embarrassing Nazi tattoos.

What made the Norwegian gesture more significant is that the organisers of the Oslo march had publicly stated they did not want any national flags carried, so as to avoid their event being marred by any clashes over the Middle East. The police were notified of this specification.

When the racists and Islaphobes turned up, they were accompanied by a couple called Erez Uriely and Rachel Suissa, from the Norwegian Israel Centre. Uriely wore a talit, a Jewish prayer shawl. Several Jewish people objected that he was both making a mockery of the religion and abusing the occasion of a Holocaust commemoration.

Prevented from joining the Kristallnacht march, and told by the police to go home, the right-wingers started screaming before they left, that the police were refusing to allow Jews to commemorate Kristallnacht.

That might have been the end of it. But Uriely and the Norwegian Israel Centre contacted the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, with the story that Jews who had come with "some Norwegian friends" to take part in the commemoration had been kept away. The Wiesenthal Centre did not bother to check this for itself, but protested to the Norwegian ambassador in Washington. It put out a press statement claiming that the Kristallnacht commemoration in Norway had been made "judenrein" - a Nazi expression meaning rid of Jews.

The hue and cry about Norway was taken up and spread on the internet by various websites and bloggers, both anti-Islamic and pro-Zionist, AND THEIR VERSION REMAINS UP ON THE NET.
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/s/content.asp?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4442915&ct=5850039

This is not the only time that the US-based outfit had taken it upon itself to interfere in the affairs of European countries and their Jewish communities. We have commented before on its international campaign against Ken Livingstone when he was mayor of London, attempting to turn his intemperate exchange with an Evening Standard reporter late one night into a major issue of antisemitism. Those who saw it differently, and Livingstone's apology to the reporter, were ignored.

In the Norwegian case, the Wiesenthal Centre made no effort to ascertain the views of the Norwegian Jewish community. Had it done so it would have learned that far from having any sympathy with Erez Uriely and his partner, Der Mosaiske Trossamfund (DMT), the official Jewish community in Oslo, had decided to exclude them because of their links and behaviour. The board of DMT said in a statement that the Forum Against Islamisation represented an ideology which the Jewish community, as a cultural and religious minority in Norwegian society could not accept.

Both the DMT and the Norwegian Association Against Antisemitism sent letters to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre trying to clear up what had actually happened in Oslo on Kristallnacht and correct its wrong impression. Apparently the American-based centre did not even bother to reply.
(Norway: Jewish community expels couple who marched with racists, report by Tor Bach, Searchlight magazine, January 2005).

Maybe the attitude of some big well-funded American organisations towards Jewish communities in other countries reproduces the arrogance of US imperialism towards these little countries. Norway is a NATO member, and has been part of the Western intervention in Afghanistan. But its Labour government is not right-wing enough for the American Right, either on social policies or treatment of minorities and immigrants.

To make matters worse, it has earned the enmity of the Israeli Right. Even the Oslo peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have come to be seen as a criminal affair by some of those now running Israel. Wasn't former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin murdered for his part in them? More recently the Norwegian government has come in for stick for showing sympathy for the Palestinians' rights, as when the state pension fund decided to withdraw investment from companies engaged in the Israeli military industries or profiting from the occupation.

Even allowing for the reactionary and lumpen attitudes that find widespread expression in internet discussions, it is not pleasant to read some Israelis' comments gloating on the Norwegian slaughter, alongside the more human expressions of sympathy.
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2011/07/israeli-netizens-share-their-feelings.html

That has been commented upon by J.J. Goldberg in the New York Jewish daily Forward:

"The Norway massacre has touched off a nasty war of words on the Israeli Internet over the meaning of the event and its implications for Israel. And I do mean nasty: Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act."

Israelis Debate on the Web: Did Norway Get What It Deserved?By J.J. Goldberg
Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/140297/#ixzz1TdI5hrVc

http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/140297/

See also:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1311959069/

The idea of an alliance or Israeli backing for Europe's Islamophobes may be more a matter of wishful thinking by this section of the Far Right seeking sponsors, than reality. Even the EDL and its bonkers so-called "Jewish Division" have fallen apart, with tattooed Brazilian Roberta Moore announcing she must go elsewhere.

But there are connections at some levels, which cannot be ignored.

On the other hand the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which ignores what Jewish people and anti-racists tell it (just as it ignores Israelis advising against building its "Museum of Tolerance" over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem) is in no way fitted to lead a struggle against antisemitism or any other form of prejudice.
A new book by Tom Segev reveals that Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was for years financed in his activities by Mossad. One can't help suspecting that whatever money was paid him is nothing compared to the sums paid into the Centre that bears his name. (Director Rabbi Marvin Hier became one of the best-paid CEOs of a 'non-profit' institution in the United States).

Is it worth it? The politicians and governments with whom it takes issue tend to be exclusively those that the Israeli government does not like. If it were concerned today with hunting down Nazi attitudes rather than witch-hunts then it would have to turn some attention to the Right in Israel, not to mention the United States.

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/hunting-simon-wiesenthal-1.312914

Marching against racist 'Loyalty Oath'

SATURDAY NIGHT IN TEL AVIV. "Together we will defend democratic rights",
"The voice is that of Lieberman, the hands those of Netanyahu"


Photo from http://hadash.org.il/

THOUSANDS of demonstrators marched through central Tel Aviv on Saturday night in opposition to the Israeli government's loyalty oath bill, which requires non-Jewish residents to swear loyalty to "the State of Israel "the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." as the price of citizenship.

Many see this amendment to the government's Citizenship Act as a step towards enforced "population transfer" - that is, ethnic cleansing of the State's Palestinian minority. This is the explicitly declared aim of
Russian-born Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-Right Yisrael Beitenu party, Foreign Minister and deputy prime minister in Binyamin Netanyahu's government.

But as some banners on Saturday night's demo declared, borrowing a Biblical phrase, "The voice is the voice of Lieberman, but the hands are the hands of Netanyahu". Other banners read: "Fascism and ethnic cleansing are standing proud", the by now familiar "Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies", and "Together we will defend democratic freedom".

The marchers, who included both Jews and Arabs, marched towards the Sarona compound, headquarters of the Ministry of Defence, before holding a rally in nearby gardens. Among those leading the march were Knesset members Dov Khenin and Muhammad Barakeh, from the Communist Party-led coalition Hadash, former Knesset member Mossi Raz of the left-Zionist Meretz party, and Yariv Oppenheimer of Peace Now.
Also prominent carrying his two-flag sign was veteran campaigner Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom


"We are here to protest with the entire street against the dangerous policy of the government, which Labor ministers also support," Oppenheimer told the Israeli news site Ynet. He said Israel could not maintain an occupation and retain democracy.

"Democracy will prevail and racism will be defeated. There is no room for (Prime Minister Netanyahu) Bibi and Lieberman's games in the peace process. Everyone's interest is for a two-state solution. There will be no (population) transfer here," added MK Barakeh.

Speaking on a park bench in Sarona garden, MK Dov Khenin said,
"The statement 'The Arab citizens of Israel are the true demographic threat' was not uttered by Rabbi Meir Kahane or Avigdor Lieberman, but by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Jerusalem conference. Two years ago, the idea of population transfer was a slogan of extreme right-wing parties. A month ago it was the subject of an official speech by the Foreign Minister in the United Nations. "

"Friends, the population transfer has turned from a nightmare into an operational plan. Against this we stand here today.""The democratic freedom is in grave danger. The nightmare of a transfer is turning into a realistic plan, and that's why we stand here today. The foul wave that started with the Arabs has now reached the Jews who dare think differently. Attacks on universities, artists and academicians have also become part of the internal danger. We stand before a fatal battle for our future," he added.

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/1287341528

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/thousands-march-in-tel-aviv-against-loyalty-oath-bill-1.319431



"Lines that mustn't be crossed"

YOUNG people from Labour Zionist youth movements HaShomer Hatzair (the Young Guard) and Noar Oved v'Lomed (Working and Student Youth) have added their voices to the protest over Israel's new Citizenship Act. 'There are red lines that mustn't be crossed,' they warn.

Some 200 former Hashomer and Noar Oved members rallied outside the Knesset inJerusalem last week, and there have been similar demonstrations in Afula, Beersheba, Holon, Akko and Tel Aviv, denouncing the new loyalty oath amendment as "racist".

Hashomer Hatzair, which played a significant part in pioneering the kibbutz movement, was the youth movement associated with the left-wing Mapam party, which merged into Meretz. The much larger Noar Oved v'Lomed is the youth section of the Histadrut labour unions.

"We, the former members of the Zionist youth movements, consider this law "anti-Zionist and anti-democratic," said Ziv Rosenberg, spokesman for Noar Oved v'lLomed.

"The state was established in the spirit of respect for the minority which resides in it. This law obligates every citizen, even if he is not Jewish, to pledge allegiance to values that go against his way of life. This law reeks of racism and is incompatible with the values of democracy," he said.

According to Rosenberg, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, due to political considerations, is "appeasing Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a law that does not make sense. There are red lines that must not be crossed; first and foremost for ourselves, but also for Israel's reputation abroad." (YNet)

Loyalty law is last straw, says Mike

AWARD-winning film director Mike Leigh has cancelled a visit to Israel because of the Israeli government's new 'loyalty' oath. The British Jewish director had been due to fly out on October 20 for a number of engagements, the main one having been to take part in the "great masters" programme at the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School in Jerusalem.

In a letter to school director Renen Schorr, he cited several of Israel's policies, including the oath, which would require non-Jews seeking Israeli citizenship to pledge allegiance to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic state".

"As you know, I have always had serious misgivings about coming, but I allowed myself to be persuaded by your sincerity and your commitment," Leigh wrote. "And it is because of those special qualities of yours that I am especially sorry to have to let you down. But I have absolutely no choice. I cannot come, I do not want to come, and I am not coming.

"Eight weeks after our lunch, the Israeli attack on the flotilla took place. As I watched the world very properly condemn this atrocity, I almost cancelled. I now wish I had, and blame my cowardice for not having done so.

"Since then, your government has gone from bad to worse. I need not itemise all that has taken place ... I still had not faced up to the prospect of pulling out until a few weeks ago, but the resumption of the illegal building on the West Bank made me start to consider it seriously. And now we have the Loyalty Oath.

"This is the last straw – quite apart from the ongoing criminal blockade of Gaza, not to mention the endless shooting of innocent people there, including juveniles ..."

Although many artists have responded to calls for a boycott of Israel, including notably film director Ken Loach, Mike Leigh's decision is the more significant not just for his prominence but because of the director's background. The son of a Salford Jewish GP, Mike grew up in a home where the Zionist JNF blue box stood next to the phone. Both his parents were active in local Zionist affairs, and Mike spent most of his younger years in the Zionist youth movement Habonim. He has both family and friends in Israel.

But though long personally critical of Israel and Zionism, Mike preferred to reflect rather than engage in controversy in his one "Jewish" play, 'Two Thousand Years" (2005) and he has not appeared on political platforms or engaged in public gestures. Not until now.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/oct/18/mike-leigh-cancels-israel-visit

previous expectations -
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3956515,00.html

disappointment -
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3970718,00.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/apr/18/theatre.religion

Rights Lawyer for London meeting

ISRAELI human rights lawyer Orna Kohn has been retained by Adalah, the centre for Arab minority rights in Israel, fighting the cases of Palestinians affected by existing Israeli law, and she represented Israeli citizens seized on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Orna says the Israeli security establishment already has more than enough powers to control Arab citizens, and the new 'Loyalty Oath' is both racist and unnecessary.

Orna Kohn is due to speak in London on November 11th on
Israel's decade of impunity -October 2000 to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla

Thursday, 11 November, 7pm, The Indian YMCA, 41 Fitzroy Square, London, W1T 6AQ

Meeting organised by Jews for Justice for Palestinians and the Jewish Socialists' Group.

A name lives on in Dalston

DALSTON in the east London borough of Hackney has a history that includes the battles with Oswald Mosley's fascists as they sought to make a post-war comeback, holding street meetings at Ridley Road. It has also been quite a cultural centre, becoming particularly known for black music venues from the late 1960s.
Add the Rio cinema, and the market, the culinary ambience of saltfish and beigels and Turkish kebabs, and social mix of artists and writers with working people from at least a dozen ethnic backgrounds.

I'd have liked to add the Unity Club, a labour movement venue in a fine house, where I attended some good events years ago, but alas that has long gone.

Just recently another kind of battle has been rumbling in Dalston. Quite a lot of local people are not convinced they'll be the ones to benefit from a "regeneration" which Hackney council is partnering with private capital, some of it based a long way from Hackney. Campaigners have complained of lack of respect for listed buildings or local shopkeepers who have been elbowed out of the plans. Working class residents fear that rising property prices will push them out of the area.

One little battle, possibly not unrelated to the bigger changes, has come our way, it seems. Back in the 1980s, after the grievances and anger of Black people and youth had erupted around Britain, including Hackney, and the miners' strike had united a wide front of working class militancy and those fighting oppression, Hackney council took a decision to name the library in Dalston, the C.L.R. James Library.

It showed a wish to make local services more responsive to Black and ethnic minority needs and aspirations - the libraries also began establishing a Three Continents Liberation Collection - and an assertiveness by the Left in Labour. That was not entirely new - in Salford we had a block of flats named after Fred Engels, and when local Tories complained they were reminded that he was a respected local mill manager.

Cyril Lionel Robert James has more than one claim to fame. Born in Trinidad, he was to become an important figure in the Trotskyist movement in both Britain and the United States, albeit at odds with others and later branching out with those who felt Trotsky's analysis of the Soviet Union was inadequate, and seeking a more libertarian perspective.

But like his compatriot Learie Constantine, CLR had originally gone to Lancashire for cricket, and wrote about the game for the Manchester Guardian, going on to write Beyond A Boundary, hailed as the best book ever on this - and some say, any - sport.

He was also the author of Minty Alley, published by Secker and Warburg in 1936, the first novel by a Black West Indian author to be published in this country. He wrote a play about the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint L'Ouverture, which was performed with Paul Robeson as the star. Then in 1938 he wrote what is probably his best-known book, The Black Jacobins, a classic history of the Haitian revolution which has been republished more than once, and graces the shelves of many who might not otherwise have liked C L R James uncompromising brand of leftism.

Like many of us who come to London, James lived at different addresses over a time - I seem to remember he and his family living near Willesden Green Library in the early 1960s, later he moved to Brixton, but at some time he was in Dalston apparently.

When it was reported that the CLR James Library would be replaced by a new Dalston library that would not bear his name, as part of the Dalston Square redevelopment, this raised concern and protests, including an online petition that I was pleased to sign. I wondered whether making CLR an unperson might give an idea of what 'regeneration' meant for those he championed, as well as for culture in Dalston. The promise that there might be a plaque commemorating him was not enough.

Well, as we enter Black History Month, this piece of news came out today, October 7:

A message from Black and Ethnic Minority Arts to supporters of the campaign to retain the name of CLR James Library:

Following a short meeting between representatives of BEMA and Members and officers of Hackney Council, an in principle agreement has been reached that the name of the new facility will carry the name of CLR James Library as per our campaign demand. A formal statement will follow shortly. Many thanks to the thousands who have supported our successful campaign online and in other ways.

Bema will be playing an ongoing role in the development of a permanent CLR James exhibition at the new library as well as the establishment of an annual event commemorating his life and work".

Ngoma Bishop & Andrea Enisuoh

http://luna17activist.blogspot.com/2010/10/victory-for-clr-james-library-campaign.html
(thanks incidentally to Tyneside campaigner Alec Snowden for keeping an eye on NE London from the NE of England!)

an earlier report:
http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2010/10/04/storm-over-clr-james-set-to-rage-through-black-history-month/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4caa378292139443%2C0

and that ongoing battle over Dalston's "regeneration":
http://opendalston.blogspot.com/

The Fash get a Harrow education

A BUNCH of bigots, bullies and assorted members of the Master Race are fuming this weekend over their humiliation at the hands of Muslim youth and anti-fascists in the London borough of Harrow. It was Friday, the Muslim sabbath, and the middle of Ramadan. In Harrow, as in mosques throughout Britain, an extra prayer had been ordered for the victims of the 9/11 attacks, regardless of religion. But for some anti-Muslim groups the anniversary of the terror attacks was seen as a good time to choose for a demonstration in Harrow against "Islamic extremism". Outside the mosque.

No matter that the Harrow mosque has no connection with "extremism", let alone with 9/11. A new mosque is still under construction next to what were plainly inadequate premises for the local Muslim community. For the anti-Muslim campaigners the mere sight of its minaret arising proudly over the neighbourhood is cause for outrage. They alleged the new building was being extended to include a sharia court, though both the mosque and the local authority which had given planning permission denied this.

The sharia matter is a phoney issue anyway. As with Jewish rabbinical courts, sharia courts in Britain can only deal with religious, family and commercial disputes among members of the faith concerned, and where both parties agree to submit to their judgement. They do not supersede the law of the land. It is true that women in both communities have their criticisms of religious authority. But neither are anxious to be "liberated" from patriarchal family values and tradition by a bunch of hooligans whose heroic traditions stem variously from the Chelsea Headhunters and Adolf Hitler.

The current season of clashes over Islam ostensibly began on March 10, with a peculiar demonstration by Muslims in Luton. Peculiar, in that it was not against some fresh atrocity or escalation of war in Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine, but against a homecoming parade by troops of the Royal Anglian Regiment. Peculiar also in that Luton has one of the largest Muslim communities in Britain, nearly 15 per cent of the town's population. Many have taken part in anti-war demonstrations and protests. But this time the demonstrators numbered eight, and even some of them had to be brought from out of town.. The leader was a former activist in al -Muhajiroun, already banned from the Luton mosque, as well as by the British government.

Without ignoring the behaviour of British or US troops in Iraq, or Afghanistan, the anti-war movement concentrates on attacking the policies of the governments which have sent them to these places, not on blaming the men and women for the orders they carry out. With a majority of the British public, including families of military personnel, against, or at very least questioning these policies, there is no reason to assume that people who turn out to show respect for the soldiers or relief at their return home, are in agreement with the wars. The pro-war media might like you to think that. But the eight young men in Muslim dress shouted abuse against the soldiers. The police let them provoke a response from the crowd, and the media gave the scene full prominence. At the risk of being called a conspiracy theorist I must admit to having wondered who wrote the script.

Next thing was an arson attack on Luton mosque, and then a number of anti-Muslim groups and individuals from the British National Party, together with known football hooligans, trying a march in Luton on Easter Monday, followed by a bigger one on May 24, when some turned to turned to attacking shops and cars. Next it was the turn of Birmingham.on July 4, when people were attacked in the street, and again on August 8, when the English Defence League, which operates with an outfit called United Casuals, tried to persuade interviewers it was not racist, not even anti-Muslim, only anti-"Islamic extremist", against those who were attacking "our troops" while a woman kept chanting "this is OUR country, we were born here". Again thire was trouble, with some of the Muslim youth unable to contain their anger.

There was some confusion about just who was planning the Harrow event, whether it was English Defence League, as many assumed, or a group called Stop Islamiification of Europe (SIOE), which seems to have been the case. SIOE too claims it is not fascist or racist, but just against mosques. "Islamophobia is common sense" was one slogan. A look at its website shows support for Serb nationalists over Kosova, and for Israel (thanks a million, or several). There also appear to be links between SIOE, EDL and other right-wing groups.
Anyway, having seen some of the internet publicity on sites like "Stormfront", as well as what happened in other places, people who gathered to oppose the Harrow demo had a fair idea what sort of characters to expect.

As it happened there was no anti-Muslim demo in Harrow.on Friday. From about 1pm, people thronging out of the mosque were joined by others coming to defend it, while acros the road a newly formed Harrow United Against Fascism set up stalls and distributed placards. Some shops were boarded up, as it turned out unnecessarily. Trades unionists from the PCS union, Watford Trades Union Council, and TGWU Unite came with banners and flags, students from Harrow college nnd local schools arrived, and by late afternoon the crowd had swelled across the road. Labour MP John McNulty came and spoke, and later speakers included Steve Hart from Unite, Nick Grant of the National Union of Teachers, and a Unite rep from local bus garages.

Meanwhile the youth were gaining confidence without losing any of the anger that had built up at the pereived threat to their mosque and community. The slightest glimpse of any suspected anti-Muslim demonstrators attempting to sneak up across the civic centre car park or down nearby side streets was enough to send them swarming across to attack. Police withdrew from the mosque area to form a cordon blocking the way to Harrow and Wealdstone station, where the fascists were supposed to be gathering. It was left to an imam and stewards from the mosque to part the waves in the dense crowd so three buses could get away.

By 7pm it was clear the anti-Muslims would have no march and they were the ones who would need defending. Stephen Gash of the SIOE was arrested for his own protection, and so were some skinheads who had been trying to reach the site from Harrow centre, unaware of the reception that awaited them. Some of the youth who had wanted to get at the fascists ended up throwing sticks and stones at riot police, and ten arrests were made.

Some anti-fascists discussing the campaign against Muslims assumed the British National Party (BNP) had something to do with it, recalling how the far-Right party used violent clashes in Oldham and other towns to boost its vote in the North. Certainly some BNP individuals, notably from Luton, are involved. Others suspect at the BNP's rivals on the far-Right, as well as members straining on the lead against Nick Griffin's turn to 'respectable' electoral politics. Labour's minister for communities John Denham has compared those involved to Mosley's blackshirts with their forays into Jewish areas in the 1930s. But Harrow MP McNulty says this is giving them too much significance.

Some people on yesterday's UAF stall would accept the reference to the Battle of Cable Street, in 1936, and mention how black people and anti-racists confronted the National Front in the battle of Lewisham, in 1977.
It has to be said that the rabble which the EDL and SIOE have organised hardly match Mosley's well-resourced pre-war fascists with their uniforms and military discipline. But nor are their "anti-terrorist" gambits entirely new. We can think back to the Napoleonic wars for the "throne and altar" mobs combining booze, patriotism and reactionary violence, or First World War attacks on anyone sounding German; or come forward to other campaigns attempting to brand entire communities by supposed association with "terrorism".

In the late 1940s the fascists tried to revive their movement by stirring up anti-Jewish feeling over the terrorist attacks on British forces in Palestine. They were not without success in some areas, though when they invaded the Hightown area of Manchester near where I grew up they had to be rescued by police, and some of them had to be taken to the Jewish Hospital. (I was four years old at the time, and only heard about these stirring events years later. I don't know if they have entered recorded history). Then in the 1980s the National Front made links with Ulster Loyalists, and fascists tried to turn football chants of "No surrender to the IRA" into organised gang attacks on Irish people in Kilburn.

The very appearance of chaos among today's far-Right groups, with alliances forming then coming apart, and
rival leaders whose line seems to depend who is listening, has its advantages for them. Those who concentrate on one issue - anti-Islam - can con members of other minorities, winning their support or at least weakening opposition. If the Muslim communities feel vulnerable, and youth feel isolated and turn to extremism, or blindly hit out, that suits those whose overall goal is to divide people. 'Respectable' right-wing leaders can disown those caught in provocations and violence, while still hoping to benefit from the atmosphere that is created.

For all that, though what happened in Harrow was not without its problems (some people may have been wrongly attacked, or frightened of attack), it was a good day. The 'fash' ( fascists) have had their Harrow education - and for those football hooligans who might have come looking for any excuse to cause mayhem, as for those tossers who tell themselves they are the Master Race, there can be little fun in seeing your leaders taken away for their own protection, needing it yourself, or simply having to give up your march, and plans for the evening.

For the youth who came to defend their mosque and community, there is not only the satisfaction that they won, but the realisation that they were not alone. Those who give it some thought may realise there is more to beating prejudice and hostile forces than one punch-up, and more to securing your future than controlling the street for one evening. Then hopefully, those trade union flags and banners, and people with political leaflets and papers, talking about working-class unity, may come to mind, and have some meaning.

Sweet Charity, Bitter Competition

HERE'S another example of the bitter competition between charities and voluntary organisations for resources and public business.

Regular readers of this blog will know about Southall Black Sisters' battle to save the grant from Ealing borough council which enables them to do vital advocacy and advice work, focussing on the particular problems of immigrant and ethnic minority women.

Southall Black Sisters have never turned away any woman who came to them for help. Though they originated mainly from the Asian community they are currently helping Somali women. But they point to their specialist knowledge of religious and cultural backgrounds, as well as language, and readiness to confront issues from arranged marriage and domestic violence to genital mutilation and 'honour killings '. The Tory council thinks a "general" service will do, though it has not come up with extra funds.

The Southall Black Sisters have gained wide respect for their work, well beyond their area and the field of social work, and it not surprising their campaign to continue has won wide support both locally and nationally.

Not from some people in the charity business it would seem. Here's a message recently posted to
supporters on the Save the Southall Black Sisters Facebook group.

Refuge We are extremely disturbed to note that the organisation Refuge has decided to make a bid for the recycled funds that should be awarded to SBS. Refuge is a national domestic violence charity that has considerable resources at its disposal. In 2006/7 for instance, its total annual income was £9.4 million. Refuge has made a bid for the £100,000 to provide a domestic violence service in Ealing. Needless to say, this move undermines our struggle for funding and for our autonomy. By way of a gesture of support, Refuge wrote to Ealing Council requesting it to make reserve funds available for SBS following the bidding process! It is a matter of great disappointment to SBS that a well known, well resourced national organisation like Refuge is colluding in the closure of a vital specialist organisation. Given its annual income, its bid for the £100,000 represents a ‘drop in the ocean’, but the same funds will make all the difference to our work with black and minority women. Its attitude displays a patronising, unprincipled and indifferent approach to our struggles as black and minority women.'

This case raises special issues, but it is also part of a wider pattern. Another contest I heard about the other day apparently involves Shelter and the St.Mungo's Trust, bidding for work concerning the prison service and ex-offenders.

The competition between charities for the public's money has already been highly profitable to the advertising and PR business. Smaller, community-based groups do not have the same resources, nor may they want to divert what funds they have from the purpose for which they were raised.

The competition to take on tasks for government may well make the business-like charity organisations cautious about saying or doing anything that those in power might not like. Southall Black Sisters have earned their reputation by standing up for their cllients against authority whenever it was necessary, whether that of a bullying husband, religious leaders, or the Home Office. Will those after their council money do the same?

Supporting my sisters in Southall

SOMETIMES it's tears, sometimes
triumph! But Southall Black Sisters'
hard work and bravery has brought an all-too rare success story we ought to support.

SOME years ago, at the height of the row about Salman Rushdie's 'Satanic Verses'. a group of brave women stood holding placards on a road island in central London. Across the road from them on one side were angry young Muslim men whipped up by religious leaders to clamour for the burning of books, and death to whoever they were told had blasphemed against the prophet.

On the other side of the road, a bunch of white racists bellowed their hatred of the Muslims, the liberal Asian writer, and the women, who stood their vigil for their freedom and ours, against fascists and fundamentalists. I think the women's demonstration may have been organised by Women Against Fundamentalism. I was not there. But I was told that among them were several prominent members of Southall Black Sisters.

If so, their presence was appropriate and symbolic. Based in an outer west London area with a large Asian population and a history of social and anti-racist struggle, the Southall Black Sisters have grown up taking their stand against the prejudices of British society and the reactionary, patriarchal and backward forces in their own communities.

Formed in 1979, their choice of name may reflect a now no longer fashionable identity by "colour" label put upon them by enemies, but it remains a valid assertion of unity, no matter whether your family roots are in Gujarat or Punjab, East African or Afro-Caribbean, and whatever your religious background. This has renewed importance today, when street gangs and 'respectable' politicians alike foment and exploit sectarian division.

I've met some Southall Black Sisters at various meetings, demonstrations and social occasions. But along with campaigning, their main work to change things and challenge outmoded authority has taken the practical form of providing help, advice and support to women who come reporting problems, domestic abuse and violence.
http://www.southallblacksisters.org.uk/

Their work has been the subject of academic theses, and sometimes news headlines. Their success in helping free Kiranjit Ahluwalia, jailed for murdering her husband after suffering ten years of his abuse and violence, set a precedent, and inspired a movie, "Provoked". This has also been made into a book.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=395633&in_page_id=1879&in_a_source

Deputy prime minister Harriet Harman MP referred to the Southall Black Sisters by name in a speech last July, as to what sort of organisations deserved support. Already honoured with an award by the civil rights group Liberty, last week Southall Black Sisters were at Westminster to recieve the Asian Voice Lifetime Achievement Award for service to the community.

Yet ironically, amid such recognitions, comes the news that the future work of Southall Black Sisters, if not their existence, is threatened. In a letter sent out recently, Pragna Patel warns : " We are currently facing threat of closure as a result of our local authority's (Ealing) decision to withdraw our funding as of April 2008.

Since the mid eighties our 'core' funding has been provided by Ealing. Over the years we have on average received £100,000 per annum from the local authority and this is utilised to provide advice, advocacy, counselling and support services to black and minority women in the borough who experience violence and abuse. The experience and insights gained through this work has led us to become a strategically important service, providing advice on policy and legal developments to government, and international, national and local organisations and
professionals. The Ealing grant has, of course, had to be supplemented by funds raised elsewhere.

The local authority's decision is based on the view that there is no need for specialist services for black and minority women and that services to abused women in the borough need to be streamlined. This view fails to take account of the unequal social, economic and cultural context which makes it difficult, if not impossible, for black and minority women to
access outside help or seek information about their rights. In effect the council proposes to take away essential life saving services provided by SBS. Ealing council suggests that we either extend our service to cover the needs of all women in the borough or that we set up a
consortium of groups to provide such a service for the same sum of money. The amount of funds available to the voluntary sector in Ealing has shrunk year in, year out, but the withdrawal of funds to SBS will have a number of far reaching consequences.'

Southall Black Sisters say they have never denied their services to any women who came to them for help. But pretending as the council seems to do that all women are equally in need of their services only ignores reality and strengthens inequalities. Problems such as forced marriages, about which some politicians have pontificated lately, 'honour' killings, and immigration difficulties, are bound to affect Asian women more than others, and Southall's ethnic make-up gives it an obvious emphasis. Women from a particular background or 'traditional family are bound to feel more confident approaching a friendly face with their troubles, and talking to someone who understands because they have been there.

We have already read of the tragedies in the child welfare and protection field, elsewhere in London, caused by the uncertainty of professional social workers faced with what seemed like a different culture.

If Southall Black Sisters are forced to reduce their services, or diffuse the expertise they have acquired and been able to offer other parts of the country, the consequences could be just as serious. As they point out: "The suicide rates of Asian women for example, are already three times the national average and homicides - where abusive men and families kill their wives, daughters or daughters-in-law - are also high within some black and minority communities. In all likelihood, any reduction in our services will see a rise in suicide and homicide rates amongst black and minority women".

Ealing's pretence to be cutting support in order to back more generalised services is undermined anyway by the news that amid all the talk of cohesion and "integration", the council has not only chosen to undermine a group that cuts across religious and ethnic divides and bridges differences, but is seeking to set up Muslim women only groups!
Southall Black Sisters say there is no demand for such groups, so I wonder whose idea was it? What are the chances, I wonder, that a young Muslim woman who goes to religious counsel will be encouraged if she wants to resist religious and patriarchal authority, whether on dress code, choice of partner, or escape from an oppressive marriage? How will separate groups counter the hostility which some persons have tried to incite between Sikhs and Muslims in Southall?

Southall Black Sisters have asked supporters to write to the leader of Ealing Council, Jason Stacey, and to send them a copy, as well as messages of support. They are also calling a demonstration tomorrow evening, 6pm -7pm at Ealing Town Hall. This time I think I will be there.

DEMO DETAILS

SAVE SBS PICKET

26th February 2008
6pm to 7pm
Outside EALING TOWN HALL

7pm onwards: we need to pack out public gallery
in the Liz Cantell Room (Ealing Town Hall) on the
Ground Floor to support Southall Black Sisters

Ealing Town Hall, Uxbridge Road, Ealing W5 2BY
Bus: 65, 83, 207, 297, 607, 112, E1, E2, 37, E8, E9, E10, N23, N2
British Rail & Underground - Ealing Broadway
Other transport: nearest major roads, A406, M4, M40, M25
Parking at rear after 5pm Mon-Fri. A Small charge
applies between 8am and 6pm at weekends. Large
multi-storey car parks within a five-minute walk
at Springbridge Road and Ealing Broadway Centre.

CONTACT:
mailto:southallblacksisters@btconnect.com

Unholy row over sharia and multiculturalism

FIRST it was the Archbishop of Canterbury talking about how Muslim sharia law might have a place in the British legal system, now we have a report from the Royal United Services Institution(RUSI) telling us Britain has become a 'soft touch' for terrorists, and all because of pandering to multiculturalism.

What with record numbers of home repossessions, jittery banks and worrying inflation, I suspect some of our media will have turned with relief to anything that promises to divert middle class insecurity and fears away from the economy.

They have been trying to sustain the sharia controversy for a week, leaving many of us little the wiser about what recognising Muslim law entails (no I don't think Rowan Williams was advocating amputation of hands, though that might prove a vote winner in some areas); but aware now that some Anglicans feel it was a mistake to abandon the Crusades.

The 'soft touch' report - actually an article in the RUSI Journal - filled the front-page of the Daily Mail, as we might expect in a paper that has been campaigning against immigrants and asylum seekers just as it once did against refugees from Nazi Germany. Only then it thought we might need a strong man to take charge, and thought it had found one in Sir Oswald Mosley.

Now we are supposed to believe that young people turn to "extremism" and terrorism because they were not taught to salute the Union Jack and understand this is a Christian country. The "experts" who are latest to offer this diagnosis, complaining that authorities had not laid down the line to immigrant communities", turn out to be Gwyn Prins, a professor at the London School of Economics, and Lord Salisbury, a relic of the Tory imperialist family. I bet these two really know what gives in Birmingham and Bradford. Mind you, they say they have been talking with army officers and people from the intelligence services. I can imagine.

"The United Kingdom presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and in its political identity," say the authors. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/15/rusireaction

Ah, history. The Salisburys have long played a distinguished part in it. A previous Marquess wanted to carry on war for the Suez canal. This one was involved in backing the Afghan mujahaddin, so you can't say he is prejudiced against Muslims. He could teach imperial history just by talking about his family. But what makes these upper-class twits think it is only "immigrant communities" that don't share their so-called values? Or that they have the right to brainwash the rest of us, or our kids?
Of course they love "the country" . They own it.

Incidentally, the LSE gives the RUSI article top spot on its website under the heading UK suffering crisis of confidence over security.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/

Talking of standing up to extremists, reminds me of the time the LSE authorities told some Iranian students they could not hold a cultural evening including readings from Salman Rushdie. The event was moved to Conway Hall, and passed without undue incident. I wondered whether the college was worried about its security, or about securing funding from Middle Eastern sources.

Perhaps we'll hear from the RUSI experts what they think of the report this week that investigation of the British Aerospace bribery and Saudi arms deals was stopped after the Saudis warned of terror on London streets when they withdrew intelligence co-operation. But then, an extremist regime becomes a "moderate" regime when it opens its chequebook for arms deals.

Getting back to the Archbishop, being neither an Anglican nor a Muslim, nor a believer of any kind, I could not get worked up enough to follow the controversy. So far as I can see what Rowan Williams advocated was not that sharia be introduced as British law, but that people be given the option of using sharia law to settle civil and marital disputes. Some already turn to Muslim religious counsel for marital issues. Channel Four looked at this earlier this month, before Rowan Williams had spoken.
http://www.channel4.com/culture/microsites/C/can_you_believe_it/debates/divorce.html

I can understand many people, particularly from Muslim backgrounds, being alarmed at the thought of religious courts being recognised and given more authority. I can remember Jewish women demonstrating over the issue of rabbinical courts' reluctance to free them from agunot, chains binding them to an unhappy or broken marriage. Without a get from their husbands they could not divorce, or remarry in an Orthodox synagogue. There was even a famous case in Israel when some women whose husbands had gone down with a stricken submarine could not obtain release, as widows, and it went on for years. I'm not sure if Muslim courts are likely to be worse or better. (There are four or five different schools of sharia anyway). I'm not a Muslim woman.

Under the 1996 Arbitration Act, rabbinical courts are recognised in Britain, to settle civil disputes, providing both parties agree. Some say it is cheaper and more discreet than civil courts. But that part about both sides agreeing, which might suit Stamford Hill businessmen, may be less reassuring in family cases. It is up to couples to decide whether they want or need a religious decision on their marriage and divorces, just as it is up to a woman to decide if she wears a scarf. But does that take account of pressure from family, parents, communities? Giving religious authority legal recognition may mean removing safeguards and reinforcing oppression.

Not that such worries are what concerns some of those who have been shouting for Williams' head, or at least his job. Some are the kind of Christians who think Jesus Christ was an Englishman and are all for religious oppression providing they do the oppressing. They regard the archbishop's ideas as but the latest reprehensible concession to liberalism.

I'm grateful to Richard Bartholomew's excellent and informative blog 'Bartholomew's Notes on Religion ' for drawing attention to another voice raised in execration of the archbishop. That of Irene Lancaster who says: "Of course I've read the original speech, plus the amended material…I don't care how erudite, numerous or conciliatory the audience was. To me it sounds like a Hitler rally, in which Hitler also received standing ovations from the learned academics, lawyers and clerics of the day…"
Really? I've seen old clips of Hitler ranting to well-drilled Nuremburg rallies, and somehow old beardie from Canterbury diffidently voicing his thoughts on the BBC or explaining them to a synod does not quite fill the bill.
Irene Lancaster: Williams Speech "Like a Hitler Rally"
http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/

We've met Dr.Lancaster before, mind. She it was who denounced veteran Jewish community figure Henry Guterman as "unfit to hold any position", after he had shared a platform with Ken Livingstone at a Unite Against Fascism conference on stopping the BNP, and denied that Livingstone was an antisemite. Guterman, who came to this country as a young refugee from Germany, after witnessing Kristallnacht, knew a bit more than Irene Lancaster about Nazi rallies and what an antisemite looks like.

There was a further shock for the anti-Williams crusaders this week on the front-page of the Jewish Chronicle. Top rabbi backs Williams on sharia, it said. http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m11&SecId=11&AId=58044&ATypeId=1
Not Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sachs, who is apparently hedging his bets on the issue, but Dayan Yisroel Lichtenstein, head of the Federation Beth Din, which is a court. (Beth Din means house of judgement, and a Dayan is literally a judge). Inside the paper is some balanced discussion. Professor Geoffrey Alderman, who besides his academic career has represented Orthodox federation synagogues on the Board of Deputies, argues that Jewish courts function in London and Manchester, forming "a legal 'state within a state' -with no harm done". But Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips will have none of it. "The state does not recognise the authority of Jewish law. Why should it recognise Muslim law?"

How much 'Mad Mel' actually knows about either tradition, I wonder. But we can count on her to oppose any concessions to multiculturalism, or Muslims, and to be 'holier than the Pope' with regard to Anglicanism. Whereas for my part, opposed to religious authority in general, I look forward to the day when the opinions of an archbishop, as of a chief rabbi or imam, will be of slight interest to anyone not of what should be their dwindling flocks. And the same goes for the imperial museum pieces in the Royal United Services Institute.

This Bishop speaks Bosh; Disestablish the Church!

ON a weekend when most Church of England clergymen would have been preaching to half-empty pews, the Anglican Bishop of Rochester was accorded nationwide airing for his views, on radio and TV news, lunchtime and evening. The Bishop,Michael Nazir-Ali, had claimed there were places in England that had become "no go areas" for non-Muslims,because of Muslim extremists encouraged by policies of multi-culturalism.

He named no areas. But as evidence of attempts to "impose an Islamic character on certain areas" he cited the amplification of the muezzin's call to prayer from the minarets of mosques. If that is intimidatory or discomforting to those of us who are non-Muslim, I suppose I should have felt uncomfortable as a non-Christian growing up in an area where church bells rang out loudly every Sunday morning as I was going to Hebrew class. Not to mention the Sunday school processions with Boys Brigade bands blowing bugles and banging big drums.

If there are neighbourhoods where people are threatened if they don't "belong" that's bad. I suspect the culprits are yobbos for whom religious or other extremism is but an excuse. It is still safer being a non-Muslim in areas where many Muslims live than being perceived as different in some areas where the Bishop's co-religionists (at least nominally) still hold unrivalled sway. Indeed, Christian clergyman though he is, the Karachi-born bishop's face alone would make him a target.

It is true that wherever religion provides a cloak for claiming privilege and political power, messages about loving thy neighbour are liable to give way to oppression and thuggery, whichever the brand of faith that's being asserted, and whether its banner is raised by generals, political opportunists, neighbourhood gangsters or members of the clergy themselves. We recently saw on television ugly scenes of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem who considered it their duty to stage nightly harassment of a Christian family. Zionist settlers claim religious sanction for terrorising Palestinians in Hebron. From India comes news that Hindu extremists attacked Christians in the state of Orissa over Christmas, ransacking and burning six churches. Leaders of Iraq's ancient Christian minority had said they would not be able to celebrate Christmas in Basra this year because they feared attack from Islamic militias encouraged by the Iraqi government. From what I remember they did not have this problem under Saddam Hussein. But then as we have seen in that part of Ireland which is governed as part of the UK, Christians are not always gentle, meek or mild when determining which sect should inherit the earth.


As his attack on "multiculturalism" indicates, Bishop Nazir Ali was not calling for live and let live, religious tolerance. Whatever confusion may be sown by well-meaning liberals or not so well-meaning characters using cultural relativism to excuse accommodation with backward elements and half-fabricated traditions, the current fashion for condemning "multiculturalism", like the worn-out stories of "political correctness", is really an attempt to rehabilitate bigotry and chauvinism. Bishop Nazir-Ali himself is on the conservative wing of Evangelism, sharing the Muslim fundamentalists' distaste for gay and lesbian rights, though not of course advocating the Iranian regime's drastic way of "curing" them. He has urged restrictions on the Muslim veil. Not as a secularist of course. Nor is this evangelist content to rely on preaching. In place of multiculturalism he urges government to reassert Britain's "christian roots", whatever these are.

It would not do to remind some of those applauding the bishop that their professed religion was founded by Jesus of Nazareth, in the Middle East, not Essex. His remarks against multiculturalism were welcomed by Tory spokesperson David Davies, but I'm sure he will also be quoted by others further to the Right, like those who went rampaging through Oldham claiming they were entering a "no go area". Being able to quote a "Paki bishop" will only add to their fun.

Labour's Hazel Blears, a "townie" of mine so to speak, has rightly rejected the bishop's claims, and declared Britain is a "secular democracy". I wish. Perhaps she has got confused about the government in which she serves, as she seemed to do when turning up at a health protest in Salford. her heart is on the right side perhaps, wherever her head is. Britain still has the anachronism of an Established Church, headed by that other antiquity the Queen, with MPs regardless of faith or lack of it expected to pronounce on its affairs, and bishops entitled of right to sit in the Upper House of Parliament. Why else, apart from wanting to encourage his views, should the popular media pay attention to the opinions of some cleric, from a Church whose declining attendance makes it doubtful whether it can still claim majority status among believers, let alone the rest of us?

What's worse, this government has encouraged faith schools subsidised by the public, and handed state education provision and resources over to city academies, where wealthy individuals and institutions can impose what beliefs they like. Former prime minister Tony Blair, now a declared Catholic, sent his son to the Brompton Oratory school (no mere state Catholic school would do) and was happy to consign other school students to an academy run by Creationists. His appointment of Opus Dei member Ruth Kelly as Minister for Integration might have been a clue to his subsequent affirmation. Not quite "British roots" perhaps but certainly "Christian" enough.

Hazel Blears is right in a sense, mind you. So far as most people's inclination goes, whether or not they believe in any religion themselves, Britain should be a secular democracy, where your faith or ability to live without it is nobody else's damn business, least of all government's. Bishops, rabbis and imam's deserve no authority beyond the voluntary respect of their particular followers, and religious bodies should have no right to frighten and brainwash young kids. How does that grab you, bishop?

Chinese in UK tell their story

NEITHER "SILENT" NOR "INSCRUTABLE".
Anna Chen (left) with Yvonne Foley, whose research into her own family background led her to believe her father was one of Chinese seafarers forcibly repatriated after their wartime service on Britain's Atlantic convoys .

Now we can hear the story of Britain's Chinese on Radio 4, starting Monday next week.


YASMIN Alabhi Brown was writing a while back on the "silence" of Britain's Chinese community, of established citizens fearing for their own respectability after the Morecambe Bay tragedy, rich people ready to collude with the government in calling for stricter immigration control and deportations, and useless unelected "community leaders". Nothing unique there, then.
http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/yasmin_alibhai_brown/article68233.ece
In fact, some Chinese people, though well-integrated into British society, were ready to speak out, and to organise, over the exploitation of migrant workers which led to the deaths in Morecambe Bay, the misrepresentation in the media, and expose the way immigration restrictions are precisely what strengthens the power of the exploiters and gangmasters, who should be controlled.

Jabez Lam, whom Alabhi-Brown quoted in her Independent article, was able to organise Chinese people on this, as he has on other issues, such as racist attacks, or the developers' threat to London's West End Chinatown. He also raised awareness among trade unions. But at the public meeting over the Morecambe tragedy I went to in St.Anne's Church, Soho, the notable absence were the usual white lefties (must admit I was pleased not to have to brush past the usual cordon of paper sellers).

Anna Chen wasn't altogether surprised. As press officer for the Socialist Alliance (as well as Stop the War Coalition) she was successful both in raising its media profile and hoisting its banner when Chinese people marched over their community being scapegoated for the foot and mouth outbreak. But she came into conflict with the control-freakery of the Socialist Workers Party, which seized and eventually strangled the Alliance.

"The SWP are fond of espousing anti-racist sentiments.
And yet, for example, a District Organiser can insist that because ‘all’ Chinese supposedly work in catering and are therefore atomised, we must all be petit bourgeois: the deadliest insult in the far-Left lexicon apart from ‘fascist’. When I questioned this at a meeting, Rees barked that ‘The Party’ doesn’t do any work with the Chinese because ‘it’s British workers who count, not Chinese’. We apparently experience no racism because ‘the axis of racism is black and white’. "
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages///////Politics/Chen.html
(This was presumably before the SWP met MAB and discovered Islamophobia).

Anyway, as proud of her roots (her dad organised Chinese seafarers into a union) as she is a feisty critical presence in the Left, Anna Chen is also a creative writer, dramatist and actress, and she is using her talent to take the authentic voices of Chinese people into the mainstream media and culture. In the past year she has been around talking to famous and not-so-famous Chinese people in Britain, revisiting the Liverpool streets where her Dad lived, and listening and learning about people's history. I'd say it has the makings of a TV series, but for now starting next week, we can hear it on the Radio. As Anna writes:

Dear All,

I'm presenting a new ten-part series exploring the early history of Chinese people in Britain, a groundbreaking labour of love that has been great fun to make over the past year.

You can listen to it on the BBC Radio website:
www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
Chinese in Britain - BBC Radio 4,
3.45pm weekday afternoons from Monday April 30th 2007
http://www.annachen.co.uk/

I'll be looking at the lives of the Chinese who came to Britain before the sixties: as sailors, scholars, writers and artists, as well as laundrymen and cooks. It's told largely from the point of view of the Chinese themselves and their descendants, people who have made fascinating interviewees.
1. The First Chinese VIPs
2. The Creation of Chinatown: the myth and the reality
3. From Ship to Shore: experiences of Chinese seamen in Britain
4. Steam and Starch: life in a Chinese laundry
5. Educated in Britain : the history of Chinese students
6. Feet unbound: pioneering Chinese women in Britain
7. Mixed Blessings: growing up half Chinese
8. Artistic Pursuits: stepping out on Britain's cultural landscape
9. Screen Beginnings: the first British Chinese screen actors
10. Peking Duck and Chips: early Chinese restaurants

All programmes will also be available to listen again for a week after broadcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4
Apologies to all my friends who may have received this more than once.

Happy listening,
Anna

See also:
http://www.annachen.co.uk/

Will nobody stop Dame Pauline?

NEVILLE-JONES. Cameron's adviser has 'form'.

TORY leader David Cameron is grabbing the headlines from obliging media with a speech damning "multi-culturalism" and accusing Muslim organisations of fostering separation and being akin to the British National Party.

Who is helping David Cameron with his homework? Up pops the new leading thinker heading Cameron's advisers, Dame Pauline Neville Jones. On TV tonight she admits that her target is not just those who use or advocate violence and terrorism, but anyone whose ideas "threaten the liberal foundations of our society". I'd guess that could include us Marxists, as well as Muslims, folks.

Especially, once that "multicultural" idea is out, those of you whose efforts to be more British than the British aren't judged sufficient. Whether it's your origins or ideology that are "alien" you'd better watch it!

We've met Dame Pauline before. Back in the days when people were being butchered as "Muslims", even if secular ones, while much of the Left preferred looking the other way and had not discovered the word Islamophobia. Pauline Neville-Jones was a Foreign Office political director and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. She stood with Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for maintaining the arms embargo on Bosnia. Hurd said easing it would only create a "level killing-field". While the Chetniks (Serb nationalists) could sow cluster-bombs and anti-personnel mines, Britain would not let those resisting them even buy mine detection equipment.

Neville-Jones was senior British official at the Dayton peace negiotiations imposed on Bosnia. "Balkan experts remember her from Dayton as a 'very tough' negotiator who was continually pushing the Bosnians to accept the de facto partition of their nation". (Francis Wheen, Guardian, 4 September 1996).

Three months after quitting the Foreign Office, Lord Hurd joined NatWest Markets, investment arm of the National Westminster Bank, on a salary of £250,000 a year. His qualifications for the world of finance were not obvious, but he knew people, and he had a helper - Dame Pauline. The dire duo went out to Belgrade in 1996 for breakfast with Slobodan Milosevic, whose government was strapped for cash, with Serbian workers demanding unpaid wages. NatWest helped Milosevic sell off the post and telephone system, PTT, and obtained a contract to advise on debt management. It eyed up Serbia's electricity industry and oil for further privatisation. While it was Italian and Greek money that went into the telecomms deal, NatWest did well out of tending advice, and so did Lord Hurd and Dame Pauline.

Then Neville-Jones was off to fresh fields. She became a BBC international governor in January 1998. In 2004 the Corporation was brought to heel over its coverage of Iraq, and the Blair government's dodgy dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Following the Hutton report, and after Greg Dyke was made to resign as director general, some people questioned Dame Pauline's objectivity as a governor. It was revealed that besides her intelligence past, she held £50,000 shares in the privatised former Ministry of Defence firm QinetiQ and had earned £133,000 the previous year as chairman.
http://www.bilderberg.org/milne.htm#qinetiq

Last year, the US Carlyle group, - whose investors have included George Bush senior, Colin Powell, former Defense Secretary James Baker and, at one time, members of the Bin Laden family - floated Qinetiq on the stock exchanges, and once again Dame Pauline must have done well out of it. But money, though it doubtless comes in handy, is not her first interest, and off she went last February for an "Intelligence Summit" in Arlington, Virginia, though I dare say her US hosts didn't see her out of pocket for this.

Among those taking part with her were former CIA directors John Deutch and James Wooley, as well as Steve Pomerantz, former director of "counter-terrorism" for the FBI. Not to be confused with Cointelpro, the FBI's programme of domestic infiltration, disruption and assassinations which has been reinstated as part of "Homeland Security". But also billed to appear were Colonel Oded Shoham, Israel army reservist, Yoram Hessel , "former senior Mossad officer", and Israeli-born Yousef Bosasky, now director of the Congress Task Force on Terrorism.

Another speaker was Rachel Ehrenfield, who two years previously warned of dangerous efforts by Tony Blair and the World Bank to pressure Israel into concessions that would lead to "an independent terrorist Palestine state".

Now I'm not suggesting that the head of David Cameron's political advice circle would have agreed with all those she might have rubbed shoulders with at Arlington, anymore than in Belgrade ten years previously. But I can see people asking whether her advice on multiculturalism and Muslims is well-meant, and even questioning her right to lecture anyone on association with extremists.

Ethnic Cleansing in Essex

I complained last year to the BBC about a misleading news report concerning the cost of cleaning up some land in Essex "after the Gypsies left". I pointed out that I had visited the site at Paynes Lane, near Broxbourne with friends, just a week before the eviction - which the media did not cover -and there was no sign then of the rubbish strewn on site. The families there had purchased this site for their homes and were taking care of it. In fact it was the council's hired bulldozers which piled up stones and debris, and spilled poisonous chemical toilet fluid on the land. The BBC report came months later.

This week the BBC and other news media reported the High Court ruling ordering a travelling family off council-owned land near Leeds. Once again we were given images and sound-bites suggesting Gypsies and Travellers are a public nuisance. But off-camera so far as the BBC and other bourgeois media are concerned, Gypsies and Travellers continue to be evicted from land which they own, families' homes are destroyed, and those hired by the councils charged with protecting the environment are the ones wrecking it.

When "squatters" were evicted in South Africa it sometimes made our television. We heard about "ethnic cleansing" in former Yugoslavia. When Israeli forces demolish Palestinian homes and bulldozers uproot olive groves there is quite rightly an international solidarity movement, and it occasionally - though all too rarely these days - gets news coverage. Since the mainstream British media don't want to let the public in Britain, let alone abroad, know what is happening in this green unpleasant land, I am posting two reports from longstanding Gypsy rights campaigner Grattan Puxon.


Ustiben report March 22, 2006

BRITAIN'S ANSWER: SEND IN BULLDOZERS

Grattan Puxon

Yesterday the bulldozers were sent in yet again to crush the homes of Travellers who by the British Government's own admission have nowhere legally to live. Basildon council, fulfilling its pledge to rid the district of unauthorised caravans, smashed up the homes of four families at Five Acre Farm. It was a merciless operation conducted by hired thugs. I saw small children on bicycles weaving past heavy machinery, dangerously close to a giant JCB. Huts and caravans were crunched flat like card-houses, as mothers stood by helpless.

Within hours, huge earth mounds had been piled around each yard. The stench from splintered drains and broken cesspit tanks was nauseous. The earth banks, blocking people from entering their own land, are illegal. The contractors, Constant & Co., and subcontractors H.E.Services and Terranova, are breaking the law and ignoring safety regulations.

One of the H.E.Services machines, during a previous eviction, smashed through the fencing on a yard which is under protection by a High Court injunction pending the outcome of a judicial review. Basildon council, led by Tory Malcolm Buckley,who pushed through the decision to spend up to five million euro ethnically-cleansing Gypsies, is undoubtedly the arch villain in this case.

He has his evil eye on nearby Dale Farm where nearly a hundred families know they are in line for the same treatment.; unless Buckley can be stopped. All human appeals and attempts at reasoned persuasion have so far failed. But the UK Government itself, in particular Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, must take its share of responsibility. He has exposed the shortfall of at least 4,000 yards or pitches needed by Travelling families. Yet his department have done nothing to curb the relentless ethnic-cleansing.

Local councils, hiding behind a smoke screen of planning regulations, are brutally hounding Gypsies from one part of the country to another. Moreover, they are not only behaving in an anti-social manner as Gypsy Affairs spokesman Joe Jones points out, but are habitually breaking the law. Millions have been spent erecting earthbanks around land owned by Travellers and trenching possible stopping places.

"This is wanton destruction of people's property," says Jones, who has reported increased harassment in neighbouring Kent. "Just who is being anti-social here?" A delegation from the new UK Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Forum will be urging the ODHM to step in and stop some of these illegal practices - which clearly contravene the Human Rights Act - when they meet Government officials on 6 April in London.

WHAT HAPPENED AT FIVE ACRES FARM YESTERDAY MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO BE REPEATED AROUND THE UK - PLEASE ADD YOUR NAMES TO THIS PETITION:

WORLD APPEAL AGAINST UK ETHNIC CLEANSING

We, the undersigned, condemn all acts of ethnic-cleansing and forceful removal being perpetuated against Roma and Travellers around the globe. Aware of the mass forced exodus from Kosovo, pogroms in Romania, the raising of Romani homes in cities from Athens to Kaliningrad, from Budapest and Belgrade to Novisibirsk, we wish through this appeal to draw attention to the courageous stand being made by the residents of Dale Farm in England, among them eight pregnant mothers.
They are the victims of constant move-on operations and evictions up and down Britain, where thousands of Gypsies, Travellers and Roma have been "cleared" from their own land. Despite a racially-tainted vote by Basildon District Council to spend up to £3 million on destroying their 86 homes, they continue in the name of Travellers everywhere, a non-violent campaign to save their community from the bulldozer.We call for common sense, reason and tolerance.
Stop UK ethnic-cleansing: leave Dale Farm alone.
Add your names by emailing dale.farm@ntlworld.com



Ustiben report March 24, 2006

GYPSIES RE-GROUP AS CARAVANS BURN

By Grattan Puxon

Burned out caravans alongside the London M25 motorway bear witness to the ever worsening plight of Britain's 350,000 Gypsies. Scorched by the flames of a seemingly unquenchable racism, Travellers are determined to step up efforts to gain respect for their homes and their human rights.

Earlier this week, I reported on the home-crushing that has taken place at FiveAcres Farm, only a few minutes drive from the charred trailers at Birchfield Lane. And much, much more is going on unseen and unreported. Hundreds of families face eviction following the failure of Law Lords to protect caravan-dwellers with nowhere legally to live.

This has given a green light to local authorities bent on ethnic-cleansing who know that despite a new Government circular urging land provision for Travellers, councils are unlikely to get much stick if they carry on "clearing encampments". For the past four years, the Gypsy and Traveller Law Reform Coalition has lobbied for legislative change. It has had a moderate success through the inclusion of assessment needs for Gypsies in the 2004 Housing Act. But no results from this are likely to be seen on the ground for some years yet. Moreover, it is now apparent that hiring a lobbyist cannot be a satisfactory substitute for self representation.

Indeed, bringing in outsiders was almost bound to cause uncomfortable inner tensions. Some have begun to complain, I think unfairly, that salaried staff in the burgeoning Gypsy industry, benefit a tad more than their Traveller "clients". However, it is the upsurge in eviction activity let loose by the Lords ruling and the frightening rise of racism which has led to a demand for a radical change at the top in the UK Gypsy rights campaign. A meeting of the most influential Gypsy leadership took place in Matlock, Derbyshire last Saturday (18 March) to call for the dismemberment of the flagging G&TLRC.
It could hardly continue without them unless prepared to tough out accusations of blatant usurpation.

DISBAND COALITION A proposal for a formal dissolution of the coalition is to be tabled, I understand, at its annual general meeting on 3 April. Waiting in the wings to take forward the campaign, under Gypsy control, is a new federation of frontline Traveller groups. "The coalition did some great work,"says Cliff Codona, chair of the UK Gypsy, Traveller and Roma Forum. "But it has gone as far as it could and needs to be replaced." Codona, who has just returned from a meeting with Roma leaders in Budapest, says the Forum is giving the UK campaign a growing international dimension. He is confident the federation will provide the grass-roots, working eventually to a common strategy in England, Scotland and Wales.

Links with Ireland, through yard-owners at Dale Farm and Smithy Fen, Britain's two largest Traveller communities, are already assured. Here the defence of homes and human rights has its footings in the firmest ground, a fact of which the Government, and a besieging anti-Gypsy opposition led by Tory MP John Baron, are well aware. Significantly, the historic assertion of rightful leadership, by Romanies and Irish Travellers alike, is happening on the eve of Roma Nation Day, 8 April. The Forum-sponsored Red Wheels Against Racism festival, an event which promises to bring togetherall those involved in this powerful resurgence, also marks the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the original Gypsy Council.

Meanwhile, in the run up to a meeting with the Office of Deputy Prime Minister on 6 April, a name and shame initiative has started against private companies hired to carry out ethnic-cleansing operations. It is on these firms, which have looted and burned Gypsy property across Britain, that racist councils depend to do their dirty work. We are already well acquainted with Constant & Co., the self-styled Gypsy eviction specialists. They tore up Cliff Codona's model Woodside caravan park, in Bedfordshire, and fired trailers and huts at Meadowlands and Twin Oaks Farm, in Essex and Hertfordshire. The total of their crimes against humanity builds by the month. Joe Jones, of Gypsy and Traveller Affairs, reports that Constant has cut a swathe of destruction through Kent.

At the same time, and often in partnership with Constant, police officers in that county, as elsewhere, ignoring recent efforts at diversity training in Travellers' needs, continue to hound families on a daily basis. But there are also new boys on the block earning their living off the suffering of others.H.E.Services, of Rochford, again sent their heavy vehicles to Basildon last week. For the first time, during the Five Acres Farm eviction, I also saw Terranova Group machines in action alongside Constant. For anyone who cares to let this Reading-based outfit know that you know what's going down, the email is: cranes@terranovagroup.co.uk

Please also add your name to the Worldwide Save Dale Farm Petition
dale.farm@ntlworld.com

* GRATTAN PUXON is co-author with Donald Kenrick of "The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies" (1972), republished as "Gypsies Under the Swastika" by University of Hertfordshire Press (1995).