Greens Take Hotwells Ward to Become Biggest Party on Bristol Council

Yesterday there was a local election for the ward of Hotwells and Harbourside in Bristol. I had an invitation from the local Labour party to help them campaign for it, but circumstances prevented me from physically going and I do not believe in phone banking. Anyway, the results are in. It was won by the Green party, who took it from the Lib Dems by 26 seats. This is quite ironic, as in the last election the Lib Dems only won that ward by the same number. This victory now makes the Greens the largest party in the council, though I gather that none of them have an overall majority.

Hotwells is one of the city’s historic districts on the banks of the Avon running through the city, and where Bristol’s harbour was before it was abandoned in the 70s and the port moved to its present location at Avonmouth. It’s a mixture of retail, office and residential buildings, including some dating from the 18th and 19th centuries when it, along with Clifton, were the city’s spa districts. Some of the housing is very modern and upmarket, while there are also a couple of 60s/70s brutalist tower blocks. It’s also the location for one of Bristol’s private schools, Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital. It’s population also includes lecturers and academics from Bristol university, which is literally just up the road in Clifton. Just across the river are a couple of converted tobacco bonds, one of which now houses the city’s archives while another is, or was, the site of a green technology centre.

Bristol is quite a green city. Under the Labour mayor, Marvin Rees, the local authority’s put in a number of new cycle lanes and in that part of the city you do see people pedalling away, including women with their children in trailers behind them. The council has also announced other plans for developing a local green economy, including a clean air zone which has caused controversy in recent weeks because of the way it affects traffic.

Bristol Live reported that the new councillor, ‘ 24-year-old Cllr McAllister, who works in legal services, said his party was now preparing to take power in Bristol.

He said: “Successive Conservative-led governments and our Labour-run council have left our residents feeling frustrated — whether it’s through botched consultations on new developments, repair works to public throughways going on for years, the cladding crisis, or even threatening to take away our library.

“There’s never been a more vital time to speak up for our communities, and that is exactly what I’m going to do from now on. The Green Party is now the biggest group in the council, with 25 councillors, and I recognise the weight of that responsibility. As a team we are putting together our programme so we are ready to run this city from next year.

“In the meantime, I think that the city council’s current leadership has a responsibility as well — they have to now recognise the mandate that the Green Party has. I’m really looking forward to getting on with the job and representing this amazing community with the commitment and enthusiasm that it deserves.”’

See: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/greens-win-bristol-election-race-8106783

He undoubtedly has a point about local service. Roadworks with the attendant diversions have been going on in Temple Meads for many years now, as well as in the rest of the city. And the council is considering closing Bristol Central Library and moving it to another location. Rees has also made decisions that make little sense, and have ignored the wishes and opinions of local people. The city wishes to build a new, top-level stadium. The ideal location would be Temple Meads, because it’s the site of the railway station and is a very short drive from the motorway. Rees decided against that, ruling instead that it should be build in Patchway, a district miles away in the north of Bristol. He also upset the local people in Hengrove and Whitchurch in his plans for the redevelopment of Hengrove Park. This was to be the site of new housing, but locals objected because there were too many homes planned and no amenities. They voiced their complaints to Rees, who politely met them. They also submitted them, and their alternative plans, to the relevant supervisory authority, who ruled in the favour. But Rees ignored them, and bulldozed his plans through.

But some of those 26 voters may also have been swayed by national issues. I’ve got very strong reservations about the Greens’ social policies. I’ve got the impression they’re very woke. It was the Green-led local authority in Brighton and Hove which caused controversy a couple of years ago by teaching Critical Race Theory in its schools. In Bristol, former Green councillor Cleo Lake put forward the motion calling for the payment of reparations for slavery to all ‘Afrikans’. In Scotland, it seems to be the Greens behind the Gender Recognition Act, which would lower the age of consent for children to identify as trans to 16, cut back on the amount of time a transperson would have to live as a member of the sex they wish to transition to. As well as the policy that has seen dangerous biologically male rapists locked away in women’s prisons.

But they also have great economic and welfare policies. As I posted a few days ago, I caught their party political broadcast the other night, and they said all the right things when it came to the NHS and the utilities: they want them renationalised along with a proper welfare state. Brilliant! These are the policies that Jeremy Corbyn put forward in his brilliant manifesto, and which Starmer promised to retain. Until he dumped them during a policy review. A few years ago the Greens were gaining on Labour in Bristol before Corbyn became leader, and I have no doubt that some of that was due to the Blairism of Miliband’s leadership.

The Bristol Live report speculates that the victory could mean trouble for Labour in the local elections here in 2024. That’s a real possibility. Novara Media has put up a video today in which Michael Walker and Dalia Gebreal discuss the failure of the Labour leadership to voice support for the strikers. There has been no messages of support from their front bench and Starmer has been going around sacking those that have stood on picket lines. On the other hand, when asked about this, the local MP for Bristol south, Karin Smyth, said quite rightly that the party still defends the right to strike and gave some reasonable objections to MPs standing with the pickets. But it still looks to me like Starmer not wanting to be seen backing strikers and alienating all the Tory and Lib Dem voters he wants to atract.

The Greens have won by a very narrow majority, which could vanish come 2024. But it’ll be very interesting to see how well they do and how the local Labour party responds to their challenge.

Correspondence with Deputy Major Asher Craig on Slavery Education in Bristol

Asher Craig (below) is Bristol’s deputy mayor from communities, which takes in public health, public transport, libraries, parks, and events and equalities, and the Labour councillor for St. George West.

I sent an email to her on Tueday this week, 7th July 2020, expressing my concerns at a brief interview she had given to BBC News Sunday night, and which had been repeated that morning on Radio 4. This was about Edward Colston and the legacy of slavery in the city. The Beeb had dispatched Lisa Mzimba to Bristol to investigate this lingering issue, and sound out local people about their opinions on it. One of those he spoke to was Asher Craig. And her comments frankly annoyed me, because they appeared to show that she was unaware that the city had tackled slavery and produced books and exhibitions about it, and that there was now a gallery devoted to it at the M Shed museum on Bristol’s docks. She kindly replied to me, and I include this with my email in this article, as well as my own comments on this.

I’m very well aware how sensitive racial issues. Please don’t anyone troll her or send her abusive or threatening messages. There’s far too much of this on the net as it is, and I don’t want to stoke up more of it or increasing racism instead of trying get rid of it.

Craig had declared that Bristol had covered up its history of slavery, and that she wanted to see a museum of slavery opened here. She also said that the council was introducing a new curriculum, which would educate children about this aspect of the city’s past. This also concerned me, as I feel very strongly that western slavery needs to be put into its global context. Slavery has existed in many societies right across the world, including Africa and Islam. It was Black African kingdoms who sold the slave to us, rather than White Europeans raiding Africa directly for slaves, although that had also gone on. Furthermore, in the 16th and 17th centuries the Barbary pirates of Muslim north Africa raided Europe for slaves. Ships from Bristol were also attacked and their crews enslaved. I am concerned that these aspects of the slave trade should also be taught in order to avoid teaching a view that is equally racist but against Whites, that racism and slavery is something that only Whites do to people of colour.  And anti-White racism has also existed in Bristol alongside hatred of Blacks and other people of colour.

I therefore sent Deputy Mayor Craig the following email:

Dear Madam,

This morning Radio 4 broadcast a brief interview you did with the BBC’s news presenter, Lisa Mzimba, about the current controversy surrounding Edward Colston’s statue and the need to confront the city’s participation in the slave trade. You, like many people, feel that it has been insufficiently addressed and more needs to be done to tackle racism. Unfortunately, you made several statements which were factually incorrect and suggest that there are areas about Bristol’s education system and the various displays the city’s museums have put on to address this, of which you are unaware.

Firstly, you claimed that the city has covered up its involvement in the slave trade. This is myth, and I am shocked that it is still circulating. I understand that it comes from an incident in the 1970s when a member of Bristol’s Black community telephoned the city council whether there was anything available about the city and the slave trade. The person answering the call denied that Bristol ever took part in the trade. Obviously that is clearly wrong, and it is understandable that after this many of Bristol’s Black citizens would feel that the city was engaged in a cover-up.

However, educational materials produced at the time for teaching the city’s history in schools do cover the slave trade. The book Bristol: An Outline History for Schools, by H. Chasey (Bristol: George’s Booksellers 1975) discusses the slave trade on its page on 18th century trade. 13 years ago there was also a book published about Bristol in 1807, which was specifically brought out to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. While this was a work of general history, it made a point of discussing the city’s participation in the slave trade. The book was available from the Central Library among other venues. The Central Library has also published a booklet of materials they hold on slavery. This was published by the Reference Library, and titled Bristol 1807: A Sense of Place – Our City in the Year of Abolition. It had the subtitle, Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation: A Reading List. The local branch of the historical association also published a booklet,Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery, by Peter Marshall.

In the 1990’s the City Museum presented an exhibition, ‘A Respectable Trade’, about Bristol and the slave trade, which coincided with the drama of that name then showing on BBC television, based on the book of the same name by Philippa Gregory. This exhibition has now ended, but there is an entire gallery devoted to the subject at the M Shed. I realize that a gallery or exhibition is not the same as the museum you wish to be built, but it does show that the local council has addressed this issue.

You also said that you had created a curriculum for schools across the city that would cover this and other aspects of Black history. I’d be very grateful if you could tell me whether this includes the participation of African states in the slave trade, and their resistance to its abolition. As I’m sure you’re aware, the slave trade was not simply a case of White Europeans kidnapping Black Africans. Many African states, such as Dahomey and Mali, had slavery long before the appearance of White Europeans in Africa. Europeans were largely confined to ghettos in some of these states’ cities, and it was these African states that led the raids and obtained the slaves, which they then sold to Europeans.

The slave trade was also not confined to White Europeans either. There was also the Arab and Indian slave trades, which saw people from central and eastern Africa enslaved and then exported to India, Afghanistan, Arabia and other countries. It was partly to suppress this slave trade that the British empire first made treaties with Imam of Muscat, who was then the region’s suzerain, and then invaded this part of Africa.There was also the Turkish slave trade, which saw Black Sudanese enslaved and transported north to Egypt and the other states of the Maghreb.Moroccan slave trade only ended in 1911, because the British empire actively opposed its conquest by the other European powers.

I realize that this goes beyond merely local history, but it is important to avoid perpetuating a simplistic view in which slavery in only something that Whites ever did to Blacks. You have made it very clear that you wish to stamp out racism. However, in my experience racism is far from being confined to Whites. There has been anti-White as well as anti-Black racism in Bristol’s schools, as well as vicious ethnic hatred between Asians and the BAME community. As difficult as this, I feel very strongly that this also needs to be addressed.

I would also like to know what you are doing to cover the subject of the White Bristolians, who were also enslaved. As you know, Bristol’s participation in the slave trade actually predates that of the transatlantic slave trade.The city sold English slaves abroad in the 11th and 12th century centuries. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Bristolian seamen were also kidnapped and enslaved by the Barbary pirates. Five of Bristol’s ships were captured in one year. While the enslavement of White Europeans was obviously minuscule compared to that of the Black Africans enslaved – 2 1/2 million compared to 12 1/2 million, nevertheless it occurred and is, I believe, partly responsible for modern prejudices towards Islam.

I would greatly appreciate it if you could tell me what you are doing to address these issues, and look forward to your reply

Yesterday I got this reply from her.

Thank you for your email.

I am very much aware of the history of slavery in this city and the resources & educational materials you refer to in your email.

It’s a pity that my interview was edited because if you had heard my full response you would not have sent me such an email.

The One Bristol curriculum will tell the full truth not the half truths of history we were all taught in school. It will celebrate our black history from Africa, Caribbean, UK but will also expand to look at the wider local history of poor white working class communities. The History Commission the Mayor is putting in place will  also I form our work going forward.

We have to start somewhere and we’ve always known that the burning platform, I’m sure you’d agree, is eliminating racial hatred & discrimination which is deeply embedded in this society.

Thank you for the history lesson but we know what we’re doing. We work inclusively not exclusively which I’m afraid is the centuries old way of white men in power.

It’s possible that the appearance of ignorance on her part was caused by the Beeb’s editing. I think if you challenged them, the Corporation would probably tell you that it was all for time. But considering their shenanigans in trying to present as biased a view of the Labour party as they can get away with, I’m not sure you can completely discount malice. I doubt it in this case, however, as by and large the broadcast media has presented Black Lives Matter sympathetically. I am very much aware that there are glaring exceptions to this from the usual crowd of right-wing shills. There is a problem with the broadcaster’s own ignorance of Bristol’s history. An ITV report on the pulling down of Colston’s statue recited some of the old myths including that about Black Boy Hill. This is supposed to be named after a slave, but the 1990’s exhibition at the City Museum showed that this probably wasn’t true, and that it was most likely named after a race horse owned by Charles II.

Councillor Craig’s statement that the history curriculum would include that of the White working class is interesting, and a positive step if that is the case. However, I’m not impressed her comment about White men. It’s been true of western society,  but in nearly all societies across the globe power has been in the hands of elite men. And most societies have been extremely nationalistic as well as hierarchical, excluding other ethnic and social groups from power and privilege. I’ve met people, who have been really shocked at how racist some non-Western nations, like China, can be.

Bristol has also been an ethnically diverse city for centuries. The latest issue of the Postscript bargain books catalogue contains a book on this aspect of the city’s history. Written by Madge Dresser and Peter Fleming, two of the history lecturers at the University of the West of England, it titled Bristol: Ethnic Minorities and the City 1000-2001 (Phillimore 2009). The blurb for it runs

Over the past thousand years, Bristol, as one of England’s most important ports, has been a magnet for migrants. From medieval Jews to 21st-century asylum seekers. This pioneering study examines the activities of the various ethnic groups who have settled in the city. Investigating how the survived economically, how they dealt with social dislocation and discrimination, and how they constructed identities for their communities, it offers insights into the wider history of the city and the nation.

Dr Dresser was one of those involved in the creation of the 1990s slavery exhibit along with several others. I think one of them might have been Dr Mark Horton of Bristol University and then Time Team fame. Dresser teaches 18th century history and the slave trade at UWE, and has published a book on how the city continued slaving after its formal abolition, Slavery Obscured. If the city is putting together a commission to produce a multicultural approach to the city’s history, then it almost certainly will contain her.

As for Craig’s statement ‘Thank you for the history lesson but we know what we’re doing’, apart from showing a certain tetchiness – she obviously doesn’t like being pulled up on her history by a member of the public – it remains to be seen if the council does know what it’s doing. They won’t be short of experts, with real insights into these issues from the city’s universities.

It’ll be very interesting to see.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Windrush and EU Nationals – Tories Moving to Nazi Ideas of Citizenship

In my last post I discussed the virtual identity of some of the Libertarians’ ideas of citizenship and those of Hitler and the Nazis. Some of those on the Libertarian right, including Republicans in the US and Kippers over here, admire the ideas about suffrage and the right to vote of the SF writer Robert A. Heinlein in his book, Starship Troopers.

This is set in a future where Earth has been united into a global, highly militarized state in which the right to vote is confined only to those, who have served in the armed forces. You hear the same ideas echoed by some of the Libertarians, who openly talk about their admiration for the book. Hitler also believed in the same principles. In Mein Kampf he stated that in the Nazi ‘national state’ only those, who had done their national service and were certified healthy, meaning eugenically sound, would become citizens. Women would acquire citizenship only through marriage or becoming involved in business.

What is also shocking about Hitler’s ideas of citizenship is how close the Tory party is also approaching them with their actions in the deportation of Windrush migrants and now the compulsory registration of EU citizens and their children. The registry states that the government has the right to share their details with other public and private organisations, but will not say who. Mike has already posted up two pieces about it, commenting that it looks very much like the Tories are preparing them to be another minority they can persecute. People are understandably extremely worried about this. One Jewish man in response to the Tories’ latest plans posted up the tattoo of his identity number foisted on him for the Nazi camps.

In the chapter ‘Citizens and Subjects of the State’ in Mein Kampf, Hitler rails against how foreigners could become German citizens simply by living there, even if they were children of Blacks, and praises America for legislation banning the immigration of certain races and individuals on eugenics grounds. Hitler wrote

The institution which to-day is wrongly named “the State” only knows of two kinds of individual: State citizens and foreigners. State citizens are all those who, either by birth or naturalization, enjoy the rights of State citizenship; foreigners are those who enjoy similar rights under other States.

Nowadays these rights are acquired, in the first place, by the fact of being born within the frontiers of a State. Race and nationality play no part in it. The child of a negro who once lived in a German protectorate and now is domiciled in Germany is automatically a citizen of the German State.

The whole procedure of acquiring State citizenship is not very different from that of becoming a member of an automobile club for instance.

I know that that this is unwelcome hearing; but anything crazier and less thought out than our present laws of State citizenship is hardly possible to conceive. But there is at least one State in which feeble attempts to achieve a better arrangement are apparent. I, of course, don’t mean our pattern German Republic, but the United States of America, where they are trying, partially, at any rate, to include commonsense in their councils. They refuse to allow immigration of elements which are bad from the health point of view, and absolutely forbid naturalization of certain defined races, and thus are making a modest start in the direction of a view which is not unlike the conception of the national state.

Adolf Hitler, My Struggle (London: Paternoster Row 1933) p. 174.

The Windrush migrants Tweezer and her collaborators tried to deport illegal were Black Britons, who were born in our colonies. Often they had lived over here since they were children. They thus parallel the Black Germans against whose citizenship Hitler rants in the above passage. And now it seems the Tories are keen to begin a new process of victimization against EU migrants.

Hitler also made it clear that he believed that members of certain European races – the Slavs – could not become Germans for the same reason he excluded non-Whites from German citizenship. On pages 153-4 he wrote

It was truly distressful to see how, during the last hundred years, people holding these opinions – in all good faith, most of them – played with the word “Germanize”. I remember how in my own youth this term led to amazingly false conceptions. In Pan-German circles one heard it suggested that with help from the Government, Germanization of the Austrian Slav population might be successfully carried out.

It is hardly imaginable that any one should think that German could be made out of, say, a negro or a Chinaman, because he has learned German and is ready to talk it for the rest of his life, and to vote for some German political party.

The process would mean a beginning of bastardization of our race, and in our case not Germanization but destruction of the German element.

Since nationality, or rather race, is not a matter of language but of blood, it would only be possible to talk about Germanization if the process could alter the nature of the blood of the person subjected to it. That, however, is impossible. It would have to take place, then, by mixing the blood, and that would mean lowering the level of the superior race.

A few years ago I found a book on race and immigration in the Central Library here in Bristol. It was a collection of articles from the Tory and right-wing press, including the Spectator and Salisbury Review arguing essentially the same point: that most British people, in contrast to contemporary official attitudes, regard race as the defining feature of nationality. This is certainly how Tweezer and the Tories see it.

The Tory party is very keen to present a modern, anti-racist face, even since David Cameron took over, cutting links with the Monday Club and expelling those with connections to the BNP and racist Right. But no matter how many BAME members of the cabinet there are, there is still a very nasty racist attitude underneath. This says that Blacks, Asians and other ethnic minorities can never truly be British. They should always be considered foreigners without the same rights as traditional White Brits, and can be arbitrarily deported or discriminated against.

I am not saying that the Tories want to round them up into concentration camps, or sterilize or exterminate them. But they do have ideas on citizenship that are increasingly similar to those Hitler laid out in Mein Kampf. Ideas that have to be resisted.

Jeremy Corbyn Blasts Universal Credit

As Mike has described in detail on his blog, Universal Credit is set to increase the misery of millions more people across the UK when it is rolled out across the country. Various Tories have made gestures of opposing it, but as Mike also explains, you can’t trust any of them. When Tory rebels have their bluff called, or the government offers just a token gesture to placate them, they immediately show their true colours: blue, all the way through. They automatically give in. And the Tories making noises about opposing it are doing no more than that: making noises. Heidi Allen made a great show of weeping in parliament at one woman’s description of the hardships she had suffered due to Iain Duncan Smith’s wretched brainchild. But when Labour made a humble petition to have all the documents published, which the government has not released on the effects of Universal Credit, Allen voted against it with the rest of the Tory party.

Hypocrites to a man and woman.

The Labour party is genuinely critical of Universal Credit, and will do something about it. And in this video, Jeremy Corbyn attacks it and reveals some of the changes he intends to make. He also talks about the mess Brexit has created regarding Northern Ireland and the open border with Eire. It’s from the Daily Heil’s channel on YouTube, but they seem to be letting him speak without misrepresenting him. Corbyn made the comments to them when he appeared in Bristol, and gave his opinion that British schoolchildren needed to know the complete history of the British Empire, and what it had done to the subject nations and peoples.

The video shows Corbyn getting out of his car in front of Bristol Cathedral and the city’s Central Library before going into City Hall, where he watches a video on the Empire. It then moves to him standing outside, with College Green and Park Street, including the Lord Mayor’s chapel, as his backdrop. He says

Three million families are going to be worse off by about fifty pounds a week from Universal Credit, 2.7 million more families will be forced into Universal Credit next year. So immediately we will say ‘We will stop this process and we will make sure that no-one is worse-off under Universal Credit. The experience of Universal Credit has been that the majority of people are considerably worse off, many forced into debt due to delays in payments and many, particularly in the private rented sector, property or home is put at risk because of it. This has got to change very, very rapidly. I raised it yesterday with the Prime Minister the question of the poverty that’s come about because of austerity and because of University credit.

He goes on, but it’s obvious there’s been a cut at this section of the interview.

Well, it would cost in the sense that we’re cutting benefits by Universal Credit, we would be maintaining existing levels of benefit immediately.

There’s then a question from the interviewing journalist, who asks about ‘those savings being built into projections of the country’s (path?)’

Corbyn replies that
That is the problem. The savings that are built in are at the expense of the poorest in our society.

Then comes the inevitable question: ‘so how will you pay?’

Corbyn replies

We’ll pay for it by increasing income from corporate taxation and the wealthiest in our society. We would not be taxing the lowest paid and medium income groups.

Another cut, then

I think it has to change, I think the system has to change dramatically and we will be using a more comprehensive system on this, but essentially our benchmarks would be: nobody should be worse off, nobody should have their homes put at risk because of Universal Credit.

Another cut, then

Well, I think it’s a very real threat, and the DUP are obviously speaking up for their own constituency on this, and indeed there is a great deal of unity on this amongst all political parties in Northern Ireland across all the political divide on having an open border with the Republic, obviously open trade and therefore a customs union within the European Union which reflects that, and I think their position is very real. We will judge this government against the six tests that Keir Starmer has laid out for us and we will vote accordingly in parliament, but we cannot support chequers.

Another cut, then Corbyn concludes

The government has had more than two years to negotiate this and still hasn’t made any progress on it. Quite simply there has to be open trade between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and that has to be the basis of any agreement.

Mike today reported that the DUP were threatening to vote against Tweezer and with as many as 40 other Tory MPs. May was seen blustering in parliament when it came to questions about Northern Ireland. She declared to do that Brexit was ’95 per cent complete’. Among the many excellent Tweets Mike has put up about this issue, from Clare Hepworth, David Lammy, Corbyn and Steven Swinford was a nice rebuttal from Dan Lewis, the NW Chair of the CWU. He reminded everyone that the Titanic also successfully completed 95 per cent of its journey.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/10/22/so-much-for-her-1bn-bribe-dup-turns-against-may-and-joins-the-eurosceptics/

Tweezer and her disgusting party are a menace to the British people. The poverty foisted on us through austerity and Universal Credit is killing people. And their debacle over Northern Ireland risks one of the essential pillars of the Good Friday Agreement. And if that goes, then the province really could return to murderous chaos.

Mike states that it’s possible she won’t last till the end of the week. I hope so. And if she’s pushed tomorrow, it won’t be too soon.

‘No Confidence’ Vote Needed Against Racist May’s Betrayal of the Windrush Generation

This is another issue that’s so glaringly unjust, I can’t let it go. This week it’s been revealed that Tweezer, when she was Dave Cameron’s Home Secretary, had all the landing permits awarded to the generation of immigrants that came with the Empire Windrush. And not only that, the piece of legislation that specifically protected them from being deported as illegal immigrants, was removed in secret.

How utterly disgraceful!

As a result, the people of that generation, who have every right to live here in the UK, have been denied the proof they need to show it. About 7,600 people have already been deported in ‘secret flights’, many of them shackled in various ways, including leg restraints.

These are men and women, who came to this country to work. They were given the worst, dirtiest and lowest paid jobs that we didn’t want. But we benefited enormously from their hard work and their skills. You think of the various Pakistani doctors and Jamaican nurses, who entered and expanded our health service. Quite apart from all the others, who worked as cleaners, street sweepers, domestic staff, or on the buses. They had to put up with horrific racist abuse. In Bristol there was a colour bar on the buses against employing Blacks. Bristol’s Black citizens launched a campaign against it, which was backed by the great socialist legend himself, Tony Benn. And the Whites, who befriended them could also get abuse and vilification from the racists. One of my aunts had it done to her in the 50s or 60s, because she had a Black friend. It’s commonplace now, and almost completely unremarkable. But at the time people were attacked for having Black friends. Never mind interracial romances and marriages.

It should be very obvious to everyone that these deportations are monstrously unjust, and that the person responsible for them should be sacked. Which would be Theresa May.

May, however, did what Tories always do, and started lying to protected her sorry rear end. First of all she claimed the decision to destroy the documents had been taken in 2009 by Labour. A lie. It was taken by her, a year after in 2010. Then she blamed that convenient scapegoats, civil servants. I’ve absolutely no respect for the upper ranks of the civil servants, many of whom have been promoted way beyond their ability, and seem to be as snobbish and class-ridden as the rest of the establishment. You think of the name of their ‘staff association’ the ‘First Division’. That’s so smug and self-congratulatory, that it just about says it all about the mentality of the people who named it. But civil servants don’t take action except on the authority of ministers. Someone must have told them to do so. And that person was Tweezer.

She’s now got herself into the papers, saying that the decision was wrong, and no-one will be deported. Too late. People have been. And the British public aren’t happy. Mike put up a stream of comments from his Twitter feed from people condemning May’s decision, and the racism that underpinned it.

Yes, racism. The Tories have always been against immigration. I can remember the Mail and Depress railing in the 1980s against the hordes of ‘unassimilable’ immigrants. There was one article I remember in particular, which complained how disgusting it was that Black folks from the Caribbean had a greater right to enter this country than Whites from Canada under the-then immigration rules. And a few days ago I blogged about how I found in Bristol Central Library a book of articles, arguing that the British regarded race as the defining feature of ethnicity, not culture. With contributions from the extreme right-wing Salisbury Review, and journos from the Torygraph, Mail and Express.

One of the best comments I’ve seen from the peeps on Twitter was from Michael Rosen, the children’s poet laureate. He said that May’s demands for documentation, which she had deliberately arranged so that the Windrush people couldn’t provide it, wasn’t Fascist, but was certainly Fascistic. Mr Rosen’s Jewish, and so I’m confident that his family know about this from personal experience of Nazi persecution. As do so many other British Jews.

Mike was so outraged, that he urged people to get on Twitter and demand a ‘no confidence’ vote on May. Absolutely. I totally agree. It’s too early to call a general election, but May should go, because of the immense harm her government is doing to the poor, the disabled, the unemployed, the way they’re destroying the welfare state and privatising the Health Service. And, of course, because of their carefully camouflaged racism. Despite all their smooth assurances, nothing has been done for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. And in fact the Tories have repealed even more fire safety legislation, so that horrific accidents like that are now even more likely.

And then there’s the issue of the vans May sent round, trying to encourage illegal immigrants to hand themselves in. Some Tory called Nick Timothy got on Twitter to claim that May was against them, and that the decision for them was taken when she was absent on holiday.

Well, as the host says on the Beeb panel game, Would I Lie to You, ‘it was a lie’. May wasn’t happy with the message on the vans, but only because they weren’t nasty enough. She thought people might think the Tories were being too soft on illegal immigrants.

Which tells you all you need to know about the Tories, the people who vote for them, and the supporters in the press. Since Thatcher, governments have been desperate to curry favour with them and particularly with Murdoch. Enough’s enough. May’s the racist leader of a racist party, although I know individual Tories, who are very definitely anti-racist. Tories, who will be as shocked at this as people on the Left. The time’s long past that May and the rest of her vile crew were gone.

I back Mike’s call for a ‘no confidence’ vote. She’s a disgrace, and this attack on people, who came here seeking a better life and to make our great country their home, is particularly deplorable. And her wretched decision then also has implications for the children of people, who came here from the EU, after Brexit.

Get her out, before she and her storm troopers humiliate and deport even more decent, law-abiding people.

Tory Journos’ Support for Racial Nationalism

Racial nationalism is the official ideology of the BNP, National Front and others on the Fascist right. It’s the doctrine that only the traditional, white inhabitants of these islands are really British. It was supported by a wide section of the Conservative party base under Thatcher, although she tried to close it down and make sure that accounts of far-right infiltration of her party were never aired.

Despite this, it still lives on, and is promoted by some of the very same Conservative journalists now eagerly accusing Mike and the other victims of the smear campaign against the Labour left and critics of Israel.

A few years ago, I found myself looking around the Ethnicity section of the Central Library here in Bristol. Along with books on Black, Asian, and Gypsy culture, as well as studies of Jewish life and culture and analyses of anti-Semitism, I found a large volume on Whiteness as the defining characteristic of Britishness. The blurb on the back said something about Britishness being redefined in terms of culture, rather than ethnicity, in the wake of mass immigration. But for the mass of British people, the essential defining characteristic of Britishness was a White British origin. Which as a description of many people’s attitudes, is probably true. But this was more than a simple description of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ attitudes.

The book was a collection of writings on the subject, which included some far right journals promoting the idea, like the notorious Salisbury Review. It also included more respectable writers, like some of the famous hacks writing for the Telegraph, the Daily Heil, Express and the Spectator. The same journos I can remember complaining about the mass immigration of unassimilable immigrants. I can remember one of them in the Heil or Express – it was that long ago – raging about how unjust it was that coloured immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean found it easier to pass through the immigration restrictions than our racial kindred like White Canadians.

And these are pretty much the same newspapers and hacks now smearing Mike and the others as anti-Semites. Which shows their massive, gross hypocrisy, as 90 years or so ago, when Hitler was on the rise, these same newspapers hailed Hitler, in the case of the Mail with its notorious support for Mosley, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’, or else were completely indifferent to the persecution of Jews under Nazism in Germany and Austria. There was also an attitude at the times that Jews were similarly not really European because of their origins in the Middle East. They were really orientals, with a different, and unassimilable culture and racial biology. Which is pretty much how many racists perceive Blacks and Asians today, and which, stripped of the racial biology, is the attitude of much of the Tory right and the right-wing press.

Mike and the others, who have been smeared by the Israel lobby and the Blairites, are not anti-Semites or racists. But the hacks smearing them – possibly including ‘Steerpike’ in the Spectator – are. And despite their lies, more and more people are becoming aware of how racist and hypocritical they are. They are using anti-Semitism as a weapon to destabilise Corbyn. But as Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite, and he is supported by very many Jews, anti-racists and Jewish groups, this will further serve to undermine public confidence in the press and mainstream media, and turn more people to getting their news from the Net. And these liars, bigots and moral frauds have only themselves to blame.

Vox Political: 3 Pro-Corbyn Labour Councillors Purged in Bristol

This is another story about the anti-Corbyn shenanigans in Bristol. A few weeks ago one of the city’s Labour MPs, Thangam Debonnaire, attacked Jeremy Corbyn. Now the local Labour party has purged three councillors, who support the Labour leader. They are Harriet Bradley, the councillor for Brislington West, Mike Langley, of Brislington East, and Hibaq Jama of Lawrence Hill. As a result of these purges, the local party has destroyed its slim majority on Bristol city council. They used to have 37 councillors. Now that they’ve purged these three, it’s gone down to three.

Mike asks the obvious question: what kind of politician destroys their own party’s majority in a major city council, simply out of spite against a leader they don’t like? He states that it’s exactly the type of behaviour he criticised the NEC for in a previous article, and state that the people responsible must be named, shamed and disciplined. They’ve harmed the Labour group on the council and made the party the subject of ridicule and disrepute. He states very clearly: Not in my name.

Labour loses its majority on Bristol City Council after Corbyn supporters are purged

The I newspaper adds a few more details to the story. It states that

Bristol was one of the success stories of Mr Corbyn’s mixed local election results earlier this year, with the party taking over the mayoralty and controlling it alongside the elected council for the first time since the post’s creation…

Labour’s national office said it does not comment on the reasons why people are suspended from the party. The Bristol City Council Labour group whip Christopher Jackson confirmed the councillors had had their whips removed “as per the usual”.

The three councillors could not be reached for comment at the time of publication.

The paper also quotes a Labour spokesman as saying

“The Labour party has a robust validation process for all votes to ensure every vote cast is eligible in keeping with the Labour Party rules.”

This affects me as a Bristolian. My local councillor was one of those, who signed a petition against Corbyn, so this purging of the three pro-Labour councillors basically tells me that the party does not want my support, or those of people like me, and regards they and me with fear and contempt. The party hasn’t given any reason why the three were purged. Simply trying to shrug it all off as ‘as per the usual’ is nowhere near sufficient. Quite honestly, I don’t think they have a good reason, just as they haven’t for all the 130,000 Labour party members Smudger and the NEC have purged.

I know I’m not going to be alone in being outraged by this. A few months ago there was a mass demo of Corbyn supporters on College Green outside the Library, Council House and Cathedral here in Bristol. The great man himself also appeared to address the crowd. But this has been too much for the Blairites on the local council. No doubt they will start cooking something up about the three having brought the party into disrepute through abusive emails, but the fact that Jackson just shrugged off demands for an explanation saying, ‘as per usual’ simply indicates that they’re so arrogant the Blairites can’t even be bothered to make up any kind of pretext for the purges. They just say, ‘the usual’, and hope the rest of us will swallow.

We’re not. I’m very tempted to write a letter to the local Labour party complaining about this and demanding an explanation. I do not want to see the Labour party in my city taken over by people, who are Tories in all but name, and who, as Blairites, are complicit in supporting his privatisation of the NHS, the welfare cuts, the work capability test and all the rest of the foul policies Blair introduced to grind the working people of this country down so he could get votes from ‘aspirational’ – read, ‘snobbish and embittered’ ex-Tory voters.

Hope Not Hate: Polish Fascist To Visit Britain

Dzien dobry mojym polskim przyjacielom! Which I hope means ‘Good morning to my Polish friends. One of the great events that have changed the world for the better in my lifetime has been the fall of the Iron Curtain. I really do think it’s great that people from eastern and western Europe can meet in peace and friendship, and visit and go to work and open businesses in each others’ countries. What worries me, is the rise of the extreme Right across Europe.

Hope Not Hate, the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism magazine posted up on their website yesterday the news that a Polish Fascist, Marian Kowalski, was coming to Britain in April to try and drum up recruits from the Polish community over here. See their report at http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/blog/insider/polish-fascist-to-speak-at-rallies-in-england-4794. Britain has benefited from its links to Poland and Polish workers. One of my uncles was Polish and Bristol has a Polish church. A few years ago, the Polish community in Bristol put on a display in the Central Library, showing some of their nation’s history and culture. Amongst the pilots who fought in the skies to keep this country free during the Second World War, most of the enemy aircraft shot down were by the Free Poles serving in the RAF. My old college also ran for a few years an exchange with a Polish college. The people I know, who went over there were impressed by their Polish exchange partners’ hard work. They told me that Britain had was greatly respected in Poland, because of the way we had stood and fought with them against the Nazi invasion that launched the Second World War.

It therefore amazes me that anyone in eastern Europe, and particular Poland, should support the Fascist right in any way whatsoever. I’ve blogged on this issue before. A day or so ago I put up a couple of pieces from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Goebbel’s Diary and a Russian soldier describing the horrific atrocities and maltreatment the Nazis inflicted on Poles, and the other Slavonic peoples of eastern Europe. Hitler also made his contempt for the peoples of eastern Europe and his plans to enslave them very clear in his Table Talk, which was recorded by Martin Bormann. An English edition of this was published by Oxford University Press in 1988.

Here’s what the Fuehrer said about the Slavs:

It’s not a mere chance that the inventor of anarchism was a Russian. Unless other peoples, beginning with the Vikings, had imported some rudiments of organisation into Russian humanity, the Russians would still be living like rabbits. One cannot change rabbits into bees or ants. These insects have the faculty of living in a state of society – but rabbits haven’t.

If left to himself, the Slav would never have emerged from the narrowest of family communities. (p. 24)

The Slav people are not destined to live a cleanly life. They know it, and we would be wrong to persuade them of the contrary. It was we who, in 1918, created the Baltic countries and the Ukraine. We must likewise prevent them from returning to Christianity. That would be a grave fault, for it would be giving them a form of organisation.

I am not a partisan, either, of a university at Kiev. It’s better not to teach them to read. They won’t love us for tormenting them with schools. Even to give them a locomotive to drive would be a mistake. And what stupidity it would be on our part to proceed to a distribution of land! In spite of that, we’ll see to it that the natives live better than they’ve lived hitherto. We’ll find amongst them the human material that’s indispensable for tilling the soil. (Ibid).

As for the ridiculous hundred million Slavs, we will mould the best of them to the shape that suits us, and we will isolate the rest of them in their own pig-sties; and anyone who talks about cherishing the local inhabitant and civilising him, goes straight off into a concentration camp!

At harvest time we will set up markets at all the centres of any importance. There we will buy up all the cereals and fruit, and sell the more trashy products of our own manufacture. In this way we shall receive for these goods of ours a return considerably greater than their intrinsic value. The profit will be pocketed by the Reich to defray the price of the campaign. (p. 617).

And here’s Hitler sneer about the Poles:

‘As regards the Pole, it’s lucky for us that he’s idle, stupid and vain’. (p. 234).

This was how the Nazis regarded Poles and the other eastern European peoples, Czechs, Slovaks, Belorussians, Ukrainians and Great Russians – as sub-humans to be exploited and worked to death as slave labourers for the Reich. I’m acutely aware that the Poles have had to fight for their freedom against foreign domination in a way which Britain has been extremely fortunate not to have had to undergo. Nevertheless, Fascism and Nazism don’t have anything to offer anybody, except brutality, exploitation and mass murder. The last thing the peoples of Europe, in Britain, Poland, Germany or anywhere need is another set of fanatics trying breed hatred in the name of a perverted patriotism.