Historical Slavery Commemoration Groups Plans Slavery Museum in Bristol

Bristol was, along with London and Liverpool, one of the major centres of the transatlantic slave trade. According to last Friday’s edition of the local paper, the Bristol Post, for the 24th February 2023, a group of activists and radical historians have put forward plans to turn the former Seaman’s Mission on the city’s harbour into a museum of slavery. The building is owned by the brewery Samuel Smith’s at the moment. They’re intending to sell it, but are demanding £1 million. The museum is the idea of the Abolition Shed collective, who admit that at the moment they don’t have the money for it, but have submitted plans in order to start a public debate about it.

The Collective is composed of the Bristol Radical History Group, the Countering Colston Group and the Long John Silver Trust. They are backed by the architects Marshall & Kendon, who have drawn up the plans for the suggested museum and education centre. The architect’s planning brief said

“The Abolition Shed Collective believe they have an imaginative reuse the historic buildings are crying out for – an Interpretation Centre or Museum for a Memorial to the Victims of Enslavement to be sited nearby – right where this history actually happened in the 17th and 18th centuries.”

“To tell the story of anti-slavery campaigners that, combined with African agency and resistance of the enslaved themselves, brought an end to this heinous crime against humanity. Bristol was the pre-eminent slave trading port in the world between the 1720s and 1740s, and this vital fact is little acknowledged , it was also home to one of the strongest pro-slavery lobbies in the country that did their best to continue the slave-system right up to Emancipation in the 1830s and beyond.”

The group first tried to get a museum set up in the O&M shed building, but the city council sold it to developers. The city’s elected mayor, Marvin Rees, is also unconvinced that the city needs such a museum. The Collective’s Mark Steeds said that the intention was to create a place where people could learn about the city’s past and commemorate its victims.

“This is about getting this issue out there and discussed. We want to start a conversation about Bristol, its history and how we can all acknowledge and learn from it. Too often, whenever there’s a talk about street names and statues, it becomes divisive. What we want to do is have somewhere everyone can go and learn more about about this part of Bristol’s history that is not really told, acknowledged or remembered, ‘he added. (p. 6).

This could be interesting. Bristol’s Black community has long complained that the city is somehow covering its participation in the slave trade. The city’s deputy mayor, Asher Craig, said in a Radio 4 interview a few years ago that she wanted a museum of slavery for Bristol. In practice, when one group came to her with plans for one, she turned them away and told them to find the money elsewhere. The Bristol Cable, a small local paper, has complained that Bristol should have a museum of slavery comparable to those at Liverpool and Nantes. I’m sceptical, because it seems to me that such museums are less commemorative than a form of moral reproach and recrimination by the Black community at Whites, and present slavery as something only White people did to Blacks. But this could be different, if it also talks about the Abolitionist movement in Bristol.

Woman Charged with Fraud over Bristol BLM Finances

It seems that it’s not just Black Lives Matter in America that is being run by people credibly accused of financial chicanery and embezzlement. My local paper, the Bristol Post, has as its front page headline a story about one of the BLM’s local organisers, Xahra Saleem, appearing before the local magistrates court on fraud charges. The Post article, written by Tristan Cork, reports

‘A woman charged with fraud in relation to tens of thousands of pounds raised in connection with the protest, which saw the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol toppled in 2020, has denied two charges.

Xahra Saleem appeared at Bristol Magistrates Court today, Tuesday, January 3, 2023, and entered two ‘not guilty’ pleas to two charges of fraud.

The 22-year-old answered to two charges of fraud. The first is that between June 28, 2020 and September 22, 2021, she committed fraud in that, “while occupying a position, namely ‘organiser’, in which you were expected to safeguard, or not to act against, the financial interests of the ABL Bristol, she dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain, namely used the funds raised, for yourself”.

‘The second charge put to Ms Saleem, is that between June 23, 2020 and September 22, 2021, she committed fraud in that “while occupying a position, namely ‘director’, in which you were expected to safeguard, or not act against, the financial interests of Changing Your Mindset Ltd, she dishonestly abused that position intending thereby to make a gain, namely, used the funds raised, for herself”.

The charges stated that Ms Saleem allegedly committed the offences while at an address in Tadpole Garden Village in Swindon, ‘or elsewhere’. Ms Saleem gave her present address as Briars Walk, Romford, Essex.’

Saleem outside the magistrate’s court.

I’m sort of surprised, and sort-of not. For a long time it seemed that the British offshoot was more respectable and financially responsible than its American parent, whose head siphoned off something like $60 million for herself, her friends and relatives. Cullors, the American head, tried telling everyone that it was all racist slander, but the people demanding that she and her organisation be investigated included the organisation’s workers and the poor Black communities, who expected to receive help from her organisation but didn’t. Now it seems some of the same kind of light-fingered individuals may have found their way in the local branch over here. Part of the problem is that decent, anti-racist people, businesses and organisations in America gave Black Lives Matter plentiful donations without properly looking at how the organisation was going to spend it nor the procedures in place to prevent fraud and financial mismanagement. This left it open to such financial shenanigans. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this trial, but for the meantime I note that Saleem is alleged to have committed the fraud while in Swindon, and that she now gives her address as Romford. So she has precious little connection to Bristol and its great people, whether White or Black.

My Suggestions for this Issues the Lotus Eaters Should Tackle

Sargon and his chums in the Lotus Eaters have asked their readers to send them suggestions for what issues they should write articles about. I’ve therefore sent them three in the comments section. These aren’t suggestions about what they should do about their libertarianism, their frantic support of privatisation and free market capitalism when both are disastrously failing. Nor did I tell them what they could do about their support for Donald Trump, who may well be making a come-back bid to be president. They just wouldn’t publish them and I expect all I’d get would be a storm of anger and abuse from their supporters if they did. Instead I just sent them three suggestions regarding the skewed attitudes among anti-racist activists regarding the historiography of slavery, the failure to protest against the Pakistani grooming gangs and demands for autonomous communities by Islamic theocrats and Black activists. Here’s the comments I left:

‘I could present you with a list. I’d like it if you could tackle the way the historiography of slavery is being skewed. I’ve got the distinct impression that the anti-racist activists demanding reparations for slavery do not want it taught in schools or people made aware that slavery was universal and not invented by Whites; that it existed in Europe long before Europeans enslaved Africans; that Africans were also enslaving other Africans long before the transatlantic slave trade, and that some African states were not only complicit but did extremely well out of it. They also do not want to hear how the British government began improving conditions for slaves before abolition, nor how we attempted to abolish indigenous slavery in other parts of the British empire and around the world. They don’t want to know that Indians also enslaved Africans, or that the Arab slave trade resulted in the export of 14 million slaves from the continent. And above all, the really don’t want the Barbary pirates discussed. They have been erased from the narrative about slavery in the view of one academic author because they don’t fit with the idea that Whites enslaved Blacks, not the other way round. And the French postmodernists have a very racist view of them in which the pirates are ‘nationalists’ and their ‘white victims ‘imperialists’.’

‘Going further, the utter failure of the anti-racist left to protest against the Pakistani grooming gangs. Following Callum’s coverage of Unite’s and Stand Up To Racism’s protest against Tommy Robinson and his film about the rape of Telford, I wrote to Unite and SUTR complaining about their failure to protest against the gangs. I suggested that the organise a multicultural march against them, ’cause Whites have protested with Blacks on their campaigns against racism. No reply. I wrote to my local paper, the Bristol Post, suggesting this, and also to the Independent. No reply. I also wrote to Asher Craig, Bristol’s deputy elected mayor and head of equalities and children’s services. She’s a Black woman who said she wanted a museum of slavery in Bristol. No reply there either. This said very clearly to me that when it comes to racism, for the anti-racist left racism against Whites does not matter.’

‘And if you really want to be controversial, you could write a piece about colonialist attitudes among Muslims and Blacks. This exists. Anjem Chaudhury’s outfit in Belgium, Sharia4Belgium, wanted a separate Muslim territory in that country, governed by sharia law and with Arabic as the spoken language. The same demands were made over here in some of the literature published by the British Muslim publishers. A more recent argument I came across a couple of years ago explicitly ties it to the colonisation of America. The way the British encouraged other nations to settle in their colonies by allowing them to preserve their culture and laws, these Muslims argue that Muslims in the west should also be allowed to retain their laws under the protection of the British state. I’ve also seen Black British writers and politicos demand separate spaces for Blacks and autonomous communities.’

I know there are issues about people from the left dealing with right-wingers like Sargon and his crew. These are issues that I’d like the left to tackle. But they really don’t want to tackle them or see them discussed. And so, unfortunately, the only avenue is to take them up with the right and see if they will.

I’ll let you know if I get any replies.

Email to Local Bristol Paper Calling for a Multicultural Protest against the Grooming Gangs

Today I sent off this email to the Bristol Post. I’ll let you know if they publish it.

‘Dear Sir,

I am appalled and disgusted by the latest news about the grooming gangs in Telford. Yet again the police and authorities were afraid to act against a gang of racist predators because they were of Pakistani origin, the victims were White, and they were themselves afraid of being accused of racism. I firmly believe that we need to have multicultural marches to show that this racism and racist politics is not acceptable. Apart from the anti-White racism of the gangs themselves, there are figures on the extreme right who are seeking to demonise ordinary Muslims by presenting this as normal Muslim behaviour. It is not, as is most forcefully shown by the Muslim politicos and legal officers who worked hard to bring the gangs to justice. We need to wrest this issue away from the racists so they cannot use it to create more hate and division. A genuinely multicultural march which included Whites, Blacks and Asians would show that the authorities that racism against anyone, whatever their colour or religion, will be denounced and opposed. I’ve no doubt that Blacks and Asians would support Whites in such a march, as Whites have for decades supported people of colour in their struggles against racism and hate. White support for the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and their participation in the toppling of Colston’s statue are only the latest example of this. I also feel strongly that Bristol would be a very good place for such a protest, although mercifully it hasn’t suffered the predation of such gangs, because of its diverse, multicultural population. I have written to Deputy Mayor Asher Craig about such a march in her capacity as head of equality and children’s services for this city, and eagerly await her reply.

Yours faithfully,

David Sivier’

Care UK in Bristol Offer Private Operations for those Wanting to Jump NHS Queues

This piece of news was reported in the Bristol Post yesterday. Care UK, the private healthcare provider, which runs some services on behalf of the NHS in Emerson’s Green in Bristol, was sending out material to GPs, including price lists of operations up to £9,000. The company was hoping to encourage them to get people to go private for a number of simple operations, so that they could jump NHS waiting lists. The paper noted that there was a long waiting time at Emerson’s Green for operations.

This naturally outraged GPs and organisations dedicated to preserving our embattled NHS, and much of the article was comments from them attacking this latest attempt by private enterprise to run down the Health Service. Those defending the NHS and protesting against Care UK’s actions made the point that this was very much part of the general ‘direction of travel’ that the government has been following in its policy of privatising the NHS.

Mike put up an article a few days ago reporting on the latest Tory wheeze to privatise GP services, using much the same trick. This involves a special line you can use, where, for £40, you can jump the queue to be seen by a GP. Mike stated, very clearly and entirely accurately, that this was against the principles of the NHS, and was about setting up a two-tier health service.

Of course it is. All these private services violate the founding principles of the NHS that healthcare should be universal and free at the point of service. Maggie Thatcher wanted to privatise the NHS completely, but was prevented by a cabinet rebellion. She did, however, have the goal of making 25 per cent of the British population take out private health insurance. Peter Lilley and John Major introduced the Private Finance Initiative, because they wanted to open up the NHS to private investment. Meaning they wanted private enterprise to run hospitals, clinics and so on.

As did Tony Blair and New Labour – the right-wingers in the Labour party, who are now telling you that Jeremy Corbyn is too left-wing and unelectable. And David Cameron and Theresa May have been just as determined to privatise the NHS. Under the terms of Andrew Lansley’s 2012 healthcare act, the secretary of state for health is no longer responsible for making sure that everyone has access to state healthcare. And the Tories have deliberately arranged the reforms to allow healthcare providers to charge for services. Again, this is a violation of the fundamental principles of the NHS.

Enough’s enough. It’s time the Tories were thrown out of government, and parasites and profiteers like Care UK out of the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn has promised to renationalise the NHS. If there was only one reason why Britain needs him and Labour in government, this is it.

Kipper Insurance Firm Moves Jobs to South Africa

Okay, I really I’ve been away from blogging for over a week or so now. I got sidetracked doing other things after the Tories won the election. As I said in my previous blog about the Tory victory, I was just so angry and upset that I simply couldn’t face blogging.

Well, I’m back. And I couldn’t let this story up, because it affects my home town, Bristol. According to Hope Not Hate and the local paper, the Bristol Post, Aaron Banks, the founder of the insurance company, Go Skippy, has decided to outsource its 150 jobs to South Africa. The staff at their headquarters in Cribbs Causeway were greeted on Monday by company representive, who read from a script and told them to pack their bags and clear the office.

Banks himself, who comes from Thornbury, a small town just north of Bristol, made the news last year, when he gave £1 million to Farage’s stormtroopers. He was originally only going to give £100, 000, but increased the amount after William Hague sneered at him as ‘someone we haven’t heard of’. Before that, like so many of the Kippers’ backers, he had been a Tory donor.

The Post stated that they had seen a letter from the company, which says

“The most robust and prudent way for the company to test this new way of working is to divert all live functions in its entirety to South Africa for the period of this trial.

“This will ultimately establish if this proposal can succeed against rigorous and demanding service level agreements that will be scrutinised over the coming weeks.”

The Post’s article states that the letter goes on to say it will “significantly reduce” the workforce in the UK if the trial is successful, and that it was taking this measure after the poor results of the insurance business in 2014. It also states that during the trial period, departments in Bristol affected by the trial will be closed down.

The article reports the shocked reactions of some of the workers, one of whom nicely summed up the situation. One woman said ” I think it’s quite ironic that he (Mr Banks) is a UKIP supporter and yet is taking his business to South Africa”.

It is, but it’s part of the party’s deep hypocrisy and highly misleading and mendacious attitude towards British nationalism and the European Union. While Farage and the others tried to get working class votes by playing on fears about immigrants taking British jobs, and British industry supposedly being stifled by Brussels bureaucracy, in actual facts they are deeply hostile to workers’ rights and all in favour of globalisation. As so many blogs have pointed out, ad nauseam, the Kippers want to get rid of basic rights like paid holidays, sick pay and maternity leave. This last is part of their highly reactionary and grossly sexist attitude towards women. Like the Daily Fail, they seem to have the attitude that employing women is a particular burden to companies, as they have to be supported and their jobs kept open when they become pregnant and take the necessary time off to bring junior into the world.

Much of their hostility to the EU comes partly from nostalgia for the time when Britain could command the resources of an entire Empire, and the standard Tory resentment to the European Union because of the provisions protecting workers in the Social Charter. Way back in the 1990s and the first decade of this century, there were noises from the transatlantic Right – American Republicans and some sections of the Tory party, that Britain should leave the EU and join NAFTA – the North American Free Trade Area. Years ago there was an article in Lobster that covered the history of calls from the Conservative party for Britain to join America as the 51st state. It’s a bizarre, and unrealistic dream, but it resurfaces every so often because the Tories in this country like and admire the country’s cut-throat capitalism and corporate power. Hence the way some of the Tories on the extreme Right over here, like the Tory MEP for Dorset, Daniel Hannan, go on about the ‘Anglosphere’ – the English-speaking world in preference to links with the continent.

As far as jobs go, they have absolutely no objection to outsourcing them if they think they can make a quick buck out of it. And they have definitely not raised any objections to the TTIP, the transatlantic trade agreement that would allow corporations to sue national governments for legislation that damages their profits. As so many bloggers have pointed out, this is a danger as it would cement in place the Tories’ creeping privatisation of the NHS.

UKIP have now gone into something of an eclipse, having failed to get any MPs except Douglas Carswell elected. The Fuhrage’s fake resignation, which has been compared to that of Stalin’s own threat of resignation in order to force the rest of the Politburo to endorse him, has led to the party currently being riven by a leadership contest. Nevertheless, they’re still about, and just might make a come-back. So, it’s worth making it even harder for them.

And this story is relevant far beyond UKIP. They’re actually putting into practice, and saying what the Tory Right also believes and says. Cameron and co are just more subtle about, and better at hiding it all behind spurious pretexts and outright lies.

Never mind their verbiage about the EU – this incident shows what the kippers and the Tories really think about ‘British jobs for British workers’.

And quite frankly, they don’t care two hoots.

The Bristol Post story is at http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/150-staff-Bristol-insurance-company-Skippy-told/story-26621857-detail/story.html#ixzz3c7OEcSTg.

The Hope Not Hate story is at: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/news/home/article/3784/jobs-of-150-staff-at-bristol-insurance-company-founded-by-ukip-donor-could-go-to-south-africa

Kipper Councillor Says Bristol Elected Mayor ‘Looks Like Scruffy Little Asylum Seeker’

I found this story in today’s Bristol Post , ‘UKIP councillor claims George Ferguson looks like a ‘scruffy little asylum seeker’ through the Hope Not Hate site. Michael Frost, who became UKIP’s first ever councillor in Bristol, representing Hengrove, made the remark when speaking on community radio. He was on BCfm radio’s Politics Show.

He apparently said that “I think the way he presents himself, to dignitaries and places that he has to go and people he has to see, he looks like a scruffy little asylum seeker, who’s got dressed in a pound shop. I’m appalled by his appearance.”

Ferguson himself laughed off the remark, but observed that it was insulting to asylum seekers. He also said that Frost should ask himself, if foreign heads of state really thought he was that scruffy, why he got such good feedback.

Tim Malnick, a Green councillor, who was on the show with Frost, was also offended by the comment. He said he was sorry, but the metaphor of an asylum seeker as scruffy was ‘stereotypical’.

Frost apparently has responded in turn, by describing Malnick as ‘looking like an asylum seeker’.

The story can be read at: http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/UKIP-councillor-slams-George-Ferguson-looks-like/story-26438061-detail/story.html

Frost, according to the article, is also a candidate in the parliamentary elections for UKIP for north-west Bristol. Let’s hope the people there have the good sense not to elect him. He sounds utterly crass and charmless. He makes a comment he should realise would be inflammatory and seen as racist, and when he’s criticised for it, he makes the insult again.

As it stands, a lot of people in Bristol do think Ferguson is scruffy. Ferguson strides about in red trousers, including for funerals, when he adopts a ‘dark claret’ pair. Many of the people I know, especially the older generation, feel that this especially shows a lack of respect, and Ferguson should wear a more conservative colour.

The elected mayor is also far from my favourite local politician. He’s a former Lib Dem, who suddenly decided he was an independent, when it came to standing in the elections for mayor. He seems to be a supporter of all the neo-liberal twaddle about cuts, and last Christmas pushed through £90m of them. He denied that they would have much of an impact, however, and told Bristolians that we ‘shouldn’t be afraid of them.’

However I or anybody feel about Ferguson and his wardrobe, Frost was wrong to compare him to an asylum seeker. It shows the contempt for immigrants and the global poor characteristic of the Kippers. And it also shows the party’s contempt for their opponent’s views and general insensitivity when Frost repeated the insult about the Green councillor. It both shows that Frost doesn’t think he’s said anything wrong, and that he just doesn’t care if he has and has no reservations whatsoever about showing his contempt for those who do.

The ward he represents, Hengrove, is just down the road from me. It’s like Stockwood, the other area of south Bristol that John Langley, the porn star, hopes to win for the Kippers. Both areas are normal suburbs. Their populations are mostly White, but there are some Black and Asian people there.

I raised the issue of the large numbers of people voting for the Kippers in Hengrove, when Mike and I met the local Labour candidates for my part of Bristol. I was worried, as this has never been an area, which showed much support for the NF or other goons from the Fascist right. She said that from her experience of talking to people on doorsteps, the driving motivation for them voting for the kippers was job insecurity.

Presumably, the people there have, or had, bought into all that nonsense UKIP had spouted about not being like ‘LibLabCon’, and having some alternative economic views. This has led a lot of their prospective supporters to imagine that they were somehow a centrist party. I’ve even reblogged material from the Angry Yorkshireman, that showed that most of their members were almost as left-wing as Labour regarding nationalisation and state intervention.

Except that the party isn’t. It’s been described as ‘the Tories on steroids’. They are even more committed to deregulation and privatisation, including the NHS, as the Tories. They are also very firmly in favour of destroying the remaining shreds of the welfare state and basic workers’ rights like sick pay, paid maternity leave and paid holidays.

As for international relations, while they object to immigration and the EU, they have no objection to international agreements like the TTIP, which would be used to lock in the privatisation of the NHS, and allow big business to sue national governments if they pass legislation harming their profits.

Like Veolia did a few years ago when they used a similar trade agreement to sue the Egyptian government, when it raised the minimum wage for its people.

The Kippers don’t represent the workers, and they don’t represent the small businesspeople, who would lose trade if we were taken out of European Union. Any trade we did then, would have to go through the tariff barriers intended to stop the EU being flooded with cheaper produce from elsewhere in the world. Which would then also mean us.

No, the Kippers stand solely for big business, as well as racial bigotry, Islamophobia, anti-feminism and a bitter hatred of gays. And the people of Bristol are very well aware of it. I was talking to one of my uncles today about the election, and he described Farage as ‘that Britain for the Whites guy.’

Exactly. And Michael Frost’s comments bear out this image of racial hatred and intolerance. Bristol is a large, multicultural city, and hopefully the Kippers and their intolerance will not find much support on Thursday. Frost’s comments show you why they, and not asylum seekers, should be kept out.