‘In-person Dayschool: A World To Win – Socialist Solutions for the Crisis
Saturday 17 February. 11am-4.30pm. In-person. Central London. Places are strictly limited – register today here.
The permanent crises we face here & globally show the need to renew & build a fighting, class-struggle left, putting forward socialist solutions for justice at home & peace around the world. To this end, we are sharing some session details for our #AWorldToWin in-person dayschool in Central London on February 17.
Global capitalism in crisis – what’s the socialist economic alternative? Roundtable facilitated by John McDonnell with economists Ozlem Oneran & Michael Roberts.
How Can there be Peace and Justice for Palestine? Rvyka Barnard, Palestine Solidarity Campaign; MIsh Rahman, Momentum & Jess Barnard.
Beat back the ruling-class offensive – Renewing & strengthening the fightback. Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No; Sarah Woolley, BFAWU; Aisha Malik-Smith,YL Disabled Members’ Officer & Richard Burgon.
A world to win – closing rally for global peace & justice. Kate Hudson, CND; Heidi Chow, Debt Justice; Rodrigo Toneto, Brazilian Workers’ Party & Mairéad Farrell, Sinn Fein.
Hosted by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas with the support of Socialist Future in Young Labour & Labour Students. Media partner – Labour Outlook.
ALSO COMING UP: 1) No cuts – Tax the Rich – Invest in our Future!
Online event. Mon. Mar. 4, 18.30. Register here // RT here
John McDonnell MP // Richard Burgon MP // Sarah Woolley (BFAWU) // ZIta Holbourne (BARAC) // Jess Barnard, Labour NEC & more.
Just before Sunak & Hunt’s 2024 Budget, join us to discuss how we renew resistance to austerity & popularise left economic alternatives to never-ending cuts.
Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas & Labour Assembly Against Austerity. Free event but solidarity donations key to streaming & hosting costs. If you can, please donate £20 or what you can afford here.
2) REGISTER: The Bloody History of UK & US Imperialism in Palestine & the Middle East
Online Forum. Thurs. Feb. 22, 18.30. Register here // Share & invite here // RT here
The complicity of the US & UK with Israel’s war crimes in Gaza –as Jeremy Corbyn pointed out was so exposed by the ICJ ruling – has opened the eyes of millions to the nature of imperialism, whilst both countries have also started new bombings on Yemen. Join us for an in-depth forum on how this is part of a long & bloody imperial history that must be opposed. With
Bernard Regan – Palestine Solidarity Campaign EC member & author, The Balfour Declaration: Empire, the Mandate and Resistance in Palestine
Sami Ramadani – Iraqi Democrats against Occupation, Sociology lecturer & decades-long campaigner against war & sanctions in the Middle East.
Kate Hudson – General Secretary of CND, Officer of the Stop the War Coalition & author, Breaking the South Slav Dream: The Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia.
With plenty of times for questions & discussion
Hosted by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas & media partner Labour Outlook. Part of the Socialist Ideas series. Free event but solidarity donations essential to streaming & hosting costs. If you can, please donate £20 or what you can afford to the costs of streaming and hosting the event here.
3) COMING UP: Women for Palestine
Online rally. Tuesday March 5. 18.30. Register here // Share & invite here // RT here.
With live-links from Palestine, plus: Apsana Begum MP // Beth Winter MP // Louise Regan, NEU // Ryvka Barnard, Palestine Solidarity Campaign // Jess Barnard, Labour NEC member // Hilary Schan, Momentum // Siân Errington, Arise Festival // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Baroness Christine Blower & more tba.
As part of events in the run-up to International Women’s Day 2024 join us at this online event in solidarity with Palestine. #CeasefireNow #FreePalestine
Hosted by Labour & Palestine. Kindly streamed by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas. Free event but solidarity donations crucial to hosting & streaming costs. If you can, please donate £20 or what you can afford here.‘
This came last night, and contains useful information about the situation and the protests they’re also organising in the coming weeks.
‘Newsletter – 15/12/23
🇵🇸 Tomorrow’s Day of Action – Find Your Local Protest 🇵🇸
The British government is not just complicit in Israel’s massacre in Gaza, it is an enabler of it. By abstaining on the UN Security Council draft resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza last Friday they are giving Israel the green light to continue its slaughter.
It is not just political cover that that our government is giving, it’s logistical support too. As Declassified UK revealed this week the UK has “secretly sent 500 extra troops to Cyprus base being used to supply weapons to Israel” and the RAF continues to fly transport planes to Tel Aviv, without any explanation of what is in the huge cargo loads. This is all done on the quiet because our weak government knows just how unpopular Israel’s bombardment is with the people of this country.
All this means we cannot relent in our demand for peace and justice for Palestine. We have to continue speaking up and force our elected representatives to listen to this overwhelming call for peace. This includes Keir Starmer’s Labour which is losing councillors across the country and will continue to lose support as long as its tacit support continues.
Tomorrow (16th Dec) we’re asking everyone to keep building this determined, growing movement by taking action in your local communities as part of a Day of Action for Palestine.
Help us mobilise as we build towards our next national march on January 13th. Find your local action below – every act of solidarity counts.
🚨🇵🇸 National Demonstration for Palestine – Sat 13 Jan 2024 🇵🇸🚨
🚨🇵🇸 National March For Palestine 🇵🇸🚨
📅 Saturday 13 January 2024 ⏰ 12pm 📍 Central London
As Israel continues its bombardment of Gaza our call for a full and permanent ceasefire remains unwavering. Let’s make this demonstration the biggest yet. Please start organising transport from your area now.
The consistently high number of protesters at recent Palestine demonstrations has shown just how deep solidarity with Palestine runs in the UK and we need to continue organising the movement as we head into 2024. It is vital we discuss the politics and economics behind the situation to deepen people’s understanding of the forces at play in the region.
Join us at Mander Hall in London on Monday 8th January 2024 to discuss the next steps for the movement and how best to get involved.
Over the past few months our ability to respond to the slaughter in Gaza has depended on the support of people like you. And we have been overwhelmed by your generosity. Almost a thousand of you have donated to our Winter Appeal, helping us to raise over £40,000. Thank you!
We’re now just a few thousand pounds short of our target. If you haven’t done so already, or can spare a few pounds more, please donate today…
This fortnight’s Private Eye also discusses the sending of troops and materials from British bases in Cyprus in their foreign correspondence page with the title ‘Letter from Nicosia’. The Eye states that the bases are being used by the Americans for their operations in Israel.
I’ve put a few videos in the past about the infamous Asian grooming gangs, who terrorised and raped White girls in places like Rotherham and Telford. The abuse wasn’t confined just to Whites, however. They also used to prey on Asian Women and girls, and so I feel that I absolutely have to put this video up as well. It was put up nine days ago by Black British YouTuber Shady Shae, who seems to have put up a number of videos about the grooming gangs and other racial issues. Some people may understandably find this difficult to watch, and I don’t blame them if they do.
The video simply consists of Shae watching a report from WION, which I believe is an Indian news agency, reporting on the grooming gangs preying on British Asian girls. The report says that they’re mainly Pakistani Muslims, and interviews one of their victims. She was in what first appeared to be a loving relationship with the man who became her abuser after accidentally literally bumping into him in the street. Then he started to abuse her, pimping her out as a prostitute to others like himself. The report states that the victims are mostly Sikhs, and because virginity is highly valued in Asian culture there is immense pressure on these women not to come forward with their accounts of their rape and exploitation. The anonymous lady was able to come forward with hers after hearing Mohan Singh of the Sikh Awareness Society speak at her local gurdwara (temple). Singh is an activist campaigning against the gangs and their exploitation of the women of his faith. The victim was thus able to come forward, to to the police and have the men arrested and jailed. However, they received lenient sentences and have since been released. She states that they still torment her by ringing her up to abuse and laugh at her. Her only solution to this has been to change her phone number. Like many victims of trauma, particularly women, she has self-harmed and talks about the scars left on her stomach and arms, though she hasn’t done this for quite some months now.
The video also talks to a man, who is described as a defender of Islam. He states that the abuse does not come from the religion of Islam, because Islam is against rape and child abuse. This is true. Iran certainly has a legal age of consent for marriage and so on. As far as I know, this is 16, but they were considering lowering it to 14 because of the problem of randy teenagers. Rape is punishable by death. A few years ago they executed a monster, a taxi driver dubbed ‘the vampire’ for his crimes against women and girls. He had raped and murder seven women. The man was flogged by the fathers of the murdered girls. The number of lashes were limited, but one dad had to be held back from giving this creature a few more stripes. The rapist was then publicly hanged with a crane. British rapists and child abusers should be glad they’re in Britain, where they only get sent to Britain, rather than an Islamic country. However, back to the Muslim talking about what he believes is behind the gangs. He states that there are issues present in the other south Asian religions, like Hinduism and Sikhism, and not just Islam. These include forced marriages and honour killings. In the case of the Pakistani grooming gangs, it was the culture. There was an attitude in Pakistani Islam that the women of other religions were worthless, and so could be abused and exploited.
I’ve come across allegations that Sikhs were also being abused by the grooming gangs before, and the report, and Shae’s video, make it clear that there is a problem here. A problem that doesn’t seem to be reported in the mainstream media. Mind you, there was particular reluctance by the media to report the abuse of White girls, and the police and local authorities really didn’t want to act against them, fearing riots and allegations of racism. But these Asian girls are British, and as we are a multicultural society, their suffering and abuse needs to be told and combated as well. It occurs to me that some of this reluctance to cover the story in the lamestream British media may come from Diane Abbott’s demand that inter-ethnic racism and abuse should not be made an issue otherwise ‘they will use it to divide and rule’. Well, we’ve got Rishi Sunak, an Asian, as our Prime Minister here, Hamza Yousaf as First Minister in Scotland, and other people of colour like Kemi Badenoch, Priti Patel and Suella Braverman in government, not to mention Sajid Javid and David Cleverly still popping up from time to time, so that argument won’t wash.
As for the composition of the grooming gangs themselves, they were mainly Pakistani Muslim men, but they also included people of other religions and ethnicities, like Whites and Sikhs. The Muslim spokesman strikes me as correct. These men weren’t Muslims, as they drank and did drugs, which is definitely haram. I doubt that they had ever put their face inside a mosque for years. But yes, it does seem that there is this attitude in parts of Pakistani Muslim culture. One of the Labour councillors, who helped expose the gangs and have them prosecuted, was a Muslim woman and she stated very clearly, against the denials of the police, that racism was involved.
One of the allegations from the Islamophobes is that the Pakistani grooming gangs were simply following the medieval Muslim laws that allowed sex slavery. There’s a very good book on slavery in Islam by a White American Muslim academic, that makes it very clear they aren’t doing it because of Islam. These are just like rapists and child abusers everywhere. They’re simply evil men preying on vulnerable women and girls.
It’s an interesting and chilling video, and one which shows very clearly that these gangs aren’t just racist against Whites. I do have a problem with it in that Shae seems to be impressed with Tommy Robinson for his long pursuit and campaigning on this issue. I’m not. The grooming gangs were exposed by a number of people, many of them Labour MPs and councillors. Robinson has come late to the party. He’s struck me and some of the commentators on this blog as exploiting the issue as part of his hatred of Islam. He has lied and smeared his opponents, and has had no qualms about appealing to his fans for donations. There are plenty of better people talking about this issue.
Rape and sexual abuse is repugnant and needs to be exposed and fought no matter who the abuser and the victims are. Every women needs to protected from exploitation regardless of whether they’re White, Black, Asian or whatever. And everyone fighting against it needs the fullest support from all Brits, regardless of creed and colour.
I got this comment on the rising authoritarianism in British and global politics from the pro-democracy organisation last Thursday. It notes the rise of the far right around the world, from America, Brazil and Germany, and now the call from Matt Goodwin, Dominic Cummings and others for ‘a new right-wing political party, focused on immigration, “wokeism”, British identity, and “economic populism” (but absolutely NOT wealth redistribution or addressing inequalities in any meaningful way).’ I wondered if this was the new Homeland party that the YouTube non-historian was complaining about in the week for splitting the nationalist vote.
I don’t entirely agree with the Open Britain piece, as I think mass immigration is genuinely creating strains on British society and that multiculturalism is pushing religions and ethnicities apart, not uniting them. But it is a fair point that these far right parties are using immigration and national identity to push a programme of very authoritarian, unequal politics. And yes, I realise this is an appeal for donations, but I’m still posting it because its analysis of the dangers of the populist right is largely correct.
‘Dear David,
In 2024, democracy will face an unprecedented global challenge. Key elections are due to take place around the world, and wealthy, well-connected far-right forces are already beginning to organise and mobilise their bases in preparation.
Hatred over hope. Nostalgia over vision. Rich chums over regular people. That’s what billionaires, authoritarian mouthpieces, and the right-wing press will be pushing in 2024.
In recent years, the COVID-19 pandemic, increased economic precarity, and rising global tensions have provided new opportunities for authoritarians with wealthy backers to take and consolidate power. Slowly but surely, they are nudging us into truly dark territory:
Highly organised efforts to overturn free and fair elections in the United States in 2021 were copycatted in Brazil in 2023 – both continue to the present day;
In 2022, German far-right extremists attempted to overthrow the democratically elected government and return to monarchism;
Far-right parties are on the rise in Italy, France, Spain, Austria, Germany, Argentina, and the Netherlands (to name but a few);
Here at home, the political right is concocting dangerous new narratives. Matt Goodwin’s disingenuous substack piece, published yesterday, was a bold and chilling attempt to rewrite recent history and refresh the recipe for the latest cocktail of right-wing populist ideas ready for 2024.
Goodwin, Dominic Cummings, and other dangerous opportunists are calling for a new right-wing political party, focused on immigration, “wokeism”, British identity, and “economic populism” (but absolutely NOT wealth redistribution or addressing inequalities in any meaningful way).
Pointing to people’s real and justified dissatisfaction with a broken economy, skyrocketing inequality, and out-of-touch politicians, Goodwin and his mates are working to shift the blame to the “woke mob” and the immigrants, employing misty-eyed nostalgia and limp-wristed flag-waving to distract from the facts and let the real culprits off the hook.
It just doesn’t add up. Four in five Brits believe that it’s okay to be “woke”, and two-thirds are open-minded about immigration. Who would this new party really be representing?
Note that in Goodwin’s and Cumming’s “Make Britain Great Again” policy platform, “democracy”, “accountability”, and “rule of law” are not mentioned once. As ever, it seems as though they just want to leverage outrage and hatred for their own personal benefit.
In a world overshadowed by rising inequalities, unchecked corporate power, and advanced digitally-driven propaganda, our democracy stands on the very edge of an abyss. It’s not enough to simply hope that our decrepit institutions and outdated rules don’t buckle under this increasing pressure. Hope isn’t a strategy. Passivity isn’t an option.
This summer, Open Britain is working with committed fellow campaigners to craft a blueprint for a resilient democracy—one that will protect against all forms of extremism, regardless of the label it is disguised with. Not all the proposed policies are new, but they are all long overdue. What matters now is that they are adopted without delay before it is too late to save our country from the likes of Farage and his shadowy friends. That will be the focus of our work as the world of politics cranks up again after the summer break.
2024 will be a pivotal year for democracy. To prevent our country’s continued descent into democratic darkness, we urgently need your support. Unlike Goodwin and Farage and the political extremists they rub shoulders with, we don’t have the financial muscle of international billionaires or media giants behind us. The overwhelming majority of our funding comes from you, our loyal supporters.
It should go without saying, but let’s say it anyway, just to be absolutely clear…we always ensure we squeeze every ounce of value out of your donations. We do that by running a tight ship, taking a “tech first” approach to avoid the need for expensive office space, capping senior pay (below £45k), keeping as much of our work as possible in-house, and collaborating intelligently with fellow campaigners to create synergy and avoid duplication wherever possible.
Whatever contribution you make, however big or small, you can be reassured none of it will be wasted, and all of it will propel us forward on our important mission.
I’ve noticed that after Starmer drove all the real, old Labour, socialist supporters and activists away, the Labour party has started trying to raise funds my selling merchandise. It looks to me not just like conventional internet merchandising, but also an attempt to find another source of money now that the expelled left-wingers have taken their subscriptions with them. And then there were the sales of tickets to banquets, where you could meet great and inspiring Labour politicians like, er, Peter Mandelson, the master of the dark arts. Today I got a message from them advertising NHS merchandise to celebrate the coming 75th anniversary of the health service, along with their pledge about how they’re going to reform and improve it.
I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m tempted to buy an NHS mug or something like that, not just to support the health service, but also to display it as a gesture when Starmer starts breaking his promises there.
Here’s their message’
This year, the NHS celebrates its 75th birthday. Labour’s introduction of the NHS transformed lives, giving access to world class health care to all.To mark the occasion, the Labour shop is proud to launch our brand-new range of “Your NHS” Labour Party merch, so we can celebrate the NHS:
Your purchase will also help fund the campaign to elect the next Labour government and help us put our plan for the NHS into action – putting patients first.
The next Labour government will build an NHS fit for the future by:
Delivering the biggest expansion of the NHS workforce in history, doubling the number of medical school places, training 10,000 extra nurses and midwives every year, and training 5,000 more health visitors, paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status.
Harnessing modern technology to diagnose patients earlier and treat them sooner.
Putting patients first and enabling them to easily book GP appointments to see the doctor, in the manner they choose – whether it’s face to face, over the phone, or online.
To achieve this, Labour must kick the Tories out of Downing Street at the next general election.‘
This is followed by an appeal to help their election fund and support the NHS.
Well, I do support the NHS. Which is why I’m very sceptical about Blairite Labour. Blair did more than the Tories to privatise it. Alan Milburn, his health secretary, wanted to reduce it to a kitemark on healthcare given by private companies.
This is why I’m going to watch what Starmer does with this most precious of British institutions very carefully.
I got this message on Wednesday. It’s an appeal for donations and notification that they’re planning a mass demonstration on the 8th of next month. I haven’t donated, and can’t go to the demo, but I’m putting this up here for anyone who can or may want to go.
As the fighting in Ukraine has intensified so too has our activities calling for peace. Over the last few months we have held local meetings across the country from Glasgow to Brighton and engaged with trade unions at their national conferences with stalls and fringe meetings. And there’s more to come.
On 8 July, days before the NATO summit, we are inviting all our groups to take part in a day of action with street stalls and leafletting sessions.
But our resources are limited. We rely on the generosity of our members and supporters to enable staff to travel to conferences and meetings, to pay for stalls at events and to produce pamphlets and publicity materials.
Over the summer months we are seeking to raise much needed funds so we can continue with our campaigning against this brutal war. We must counter the mainstream analysis and change the way this war is perceived. To do so we need to produce more materials for street stalls and continue to engage with the wider labour movement.
David Starkey is also one of the speakers at the National Conservatism conference, and once again has stirred up controversy because of his comments on race. According to the Independent, the Tudor historian said that the left is jealous of the Holocaust and wants to replace it with Black Lives Matter. And they’re not interested in protecting Black lives, but it tearing down western, White culture. The article says
‘Left-wing activists are “jealous” of the Holocaust and want to replace it with slavery, a leading historian has said.
In a speech to the National Conservatism conference in London, David Starkey claimed that groups such as Black Lives Matter were attempting to destroy “white culture” and “do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust”.
He said: “The determination is to replace the Holocaust with slavery. In other words, this is why Jews are under such attack from the left, there’s jealousy, fundamentally. There is jealousy of the moral primacy of the Holocaust and a determination to replace it with slavery.”
The historian’s comments brought swift condemnation, with Daniel Sugarman, public affairs director at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, tweeting that they were “pathetic attempts to drive a wedge between communities” that “will not work”.’…
‘In his speech to the National Conservatism conference on Wednesday, Dr Starkey renewed his criticism of Black Lives Matter, denying that the movement cared about black lives at all.
To applause from the audience, he said: “Movements like critical race theory and Black Lives Matter are not what they pretend to be.
“They are attempts at destroying the entire legitimacy of the Western political and cultural tradition.
“The idea that they are there to defend black lives is a preposterous notion. They do not care about black lives, they only care about the symbolic destruction of white culture. We have to be absolutely clear about this.”
He added: “The narrative of Black Lives Matter is that Western culture and Anglo-American culture in particular are fundamentally morally defective, they are characterised by the mark of Cain and their strategy is to do exactly what was done to German culture because of Nazism and the Holocaust.”’
Starkey’s wrong about the left seeking to replace the Holocaust with slavery, but he does have a point about Critical Race Theory and Black Lives Matter being used to discredit White culture. Jackie Walker, a Jewish woman of colour, was unfairly charged with anti-Semitism by the witch-hunters in the Labour party a few years ago because she dared to ask questions about how other genocides, such as the Black Holocaust of slavery, would be commemorated as part of Holocaust Memorial Day. She said this in a Labour party workshop about the proper commemoration of the Day, which stated that there would be no restrictions on what anyone could say. I think she’s technically wrong to describe transatlantic slavery as a holocaust. The Holocaust and similar genocides are deliberate attempts to wipe out nations and ethnicities. That wasn’t the case with transatlantic slavery, which aimed at the forced use of the enslaved peoples’ labour. This doesn’t remove the fact, however, that the violence and cruelty involved in the transatlantic slave trade was horrendous and it contributed to increased warfare and conflict in Africa, as tribes competed to capture slaves to sell to Europeans. The ceremonies on Holocaust Memorial Day also include the remembrance of other genocides, and Walker definitely did not want to replace the Holocaust with the slave trade, merely add it to the other atrocities also commemorated. Walker’s case, which was an attempt to silence a long term and principled critic of Israel, is the only one I know that comes anywhere close to a demand to replace the Holocaust with the commemoration of slavery. And she didn’t do that. When left-wingers have denounced the commemoration of the Holocaust, it’s been because of the way it is used as a propaganda device to muster support for Israel against the Palestinians. Who are being ethnically cleansed from their traditional home.
Starkey has much more of a point with Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory. Black Lives Matter was a response to a deep felt issue – what was perceived as racism in the American police which resulted in the greater shooting of Blacks. In fact, Black and other Conservatives have challenged this, and shown that more police get shot than Blacks, and more Whites are shot and killed by cops than Blacks. The organisation itself is Marxist, and rejects capitalism and the traditional family. In America, it’s also been rocked by scandal as its leader, Patrice Cullors, has used the millions donated to the organisation to enrich herself, her relatives and lieutenants. There have been a couple of similar scandals in Britain. A Black Lives Matter activist from Bristol is being sued for similarly taking donations. And a few days ago it was reported that the British Film Institute is taking a BLM-supporting film maker to court. She received funding from them to produce a documentary about Black liberation and the BLM movement, but hasn’t done so. Moderate and Conservative Black commenters have also criticised BLM for ignoring the problem of Black on Black violence and killing, which seriously afflicts many Black communities in America and Britain. Innocent Black people are still being murdered, but the movement ignores those lives unless the killers are White.
At the same time, Critical Race Theory holds that Whiteness is a bourgeois quality that automatically gives White people a privileged position in western society, which is intrinsically and systematically racist. The amount of racism in western society hasn’t changed, but only become more hidden. Hence demands to ‘destroy White privilege’ and for Whites to ‘be less White’. Slavery has become part of this, because the current disadvantaged state of Black communities in America and Britain is attributed to the slave trade and its legacy. Hence the demands for reparations. And yes, it is being used to delegitimise those nations. The 1619 Project about the influence of slavery and racism in America deliberately took that date as part of its name, because it considers it the true date of the founding of America. This was when the first Black slaves were imported into the nascent British colonies. At the same time, Britain is also coming in for criticism because of slavery and imperialism. For campaigners, the two or intrinsically linked, despite the fact that the later British empire and its annexation of Africa was partly motivated by a crusading zeal to stamp out slavery and the slave trade. Apart from the toppling of slavers like Edward Colston in Bristol, there are campaigns by Critical Social Justice activists to censor art and literature connected to slavery. And one of the problems is that slavery and imperialism is framed as something that only Whites do to people of colour. One of the arguments used by the slave-owners against the abolitionists was that slavery had been practised across the world down through history, and its abolition would leave Britain vulnerable to other nations and empires that had no such moral scruples. I’ve put up videos from the Arab, Turkish and Iranian world about their Black citizens, who also have their origins in those countries’ slave trades. Dubai, to its credit, has a museum to its history of slavery and slave trading. But few in the west seem to be aware of this and there is an active opposition amongst western anti-racism campaigner to tackling the resurgence of real slavery in Africa and elsewhere in the world. One of the left-wing writers in the I, Emma Maltby, rejected such demands as a distraction from the goal of achieving racial equality in the west. And Critical Postcolonial Theory rejects any criticism of extra-European societies traditional cultures as racist. Radical ideologies like Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory are part of the wider movement of Critical Theory which is a postmodernist revision of Marxism that seeks to overthrow capitalism, patriarchy and the gender binary as part of the intersectional leftism called for by the German-American Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse in the 1960s.
I’m not a fan of Starkey, and he’s way off with his complaint about leftists trying to replace the Holocaust with slavery. But he does have a point in that slavery is being used as an ideological weapon against traditional western culture as part of a wider, postmodern assault on the Enlightenment values of individualism, rationality and reasoned debate. And this not only bothers those on the right, like Starkey, but also people on the left, like Helen Pluckrose, one of the trio of critics of Postmodernism and its assault on western culture with Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay. They have pointed out that CRT and related ‘isms’ differ strongly from the traditional anti-racism and feminist movements.
You can therefore criticise them without necessarily wanting the extremely right-wing economic and social order called for by people like Starkey.
I got a round robin email from Starmer yesterday, announcing that he had declared his five missions for building a better Britain in Manchester. He set them out, along with the usual requests for donations. Sorry, not sorry, Starmer – I’m not going to donate. You have my membership fee and that should be enough. It was under Corbyn, when millions joined because of his inspiring, socialist vision. Now you’ve purged the party of those people and driven the rest away through phoney accusations of anti-Semitism designed to placate the Israel lobby rather than do anything against real anti-Jewish hatred. You’ve also lost the contributions of many trade unions because of your anti-working class policies. As a result, you’ve shrunk the party, lost the confidence of ordinary, traditional Labour voters and supporters, and placed it in a dire financial strait. All to ingratiate yourself with the Tory voting right and their press. I am not going to donate until you reverse these policies, and especially not until you readmit and apologise to everyone you’ve smeared as a Jew-hater. And especially to the Jewish victims of the witch hunt.
‘David, this is an important moment for the Labour Party as we prepare for government.
Today in Manchester, I set out how my Labour government will be driven by five missions:
Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7
Build an NHS fit for the future
Make Britain’s streets safe
Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage
Make Britain a clean energy superpower
I believe that delivering on these five bold missions is how we will restore Britain’s pride and purpose, giving our country its future back.
To do it, we must win the next general election. We must be ready to show the country that Labour will build a better Britain. That there is light at the end of the tunnel.
David, donate to win today:
……
No more sticking plaster politics.
Mission driven government is a different way of doing things. It sets the direction, a clear plan for the years ahead and spells out the fully costed steps to achieving them.
It requires everyone to play their part, in every community, in every part of the country. A real partnership between government, national and local, businesses, trade unions and civil society.
With missions comes greater stability and certainty – instead of a government chopping and changing all the time, blowing with the wind.
Step by step, we will show how each mission will be achieved. So that everyone, in every part of the country, feels that they are moving forward, and that life is getting better.
But without reforming the role of government, we will achieve nothing. That is why Labour must win. Together, delivering on our five missions, we can build a better Britain.
….
Thank you,
Keir Starmer
Leader of the Labour Party‘
Let’s go through them.
Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7.
A good promise, but nothing any other party wouldn’t promise. The Tories promised that Brexit, more cuts to the welfare state and further privatisation would deliver economic growth and prosperity. That hasn’t happened. The only way to do it would be to reverse the Tory policies, including the wage restraint that is pushing so many working people into poverty and starvation. But there are no promises by Starmer how he intends to deliver this mission. Possibly because, like his hero Blair, he intends to take over the Tory policies and try to implement them better.
2.Build an NHS fit for the future
Again, every politico would promise this. The Tories have been doing so, even while privatising it. The madder of them have even stood up in parliament to demand its privatisation quite openly, or the introduction of charges, thus violating its founding principle that it should be free at the point of delivery. Blair did nothing about privatisation, except to push it through even further. The only way to restore the NHS is to reverse its privatisation. But Starmer does not promise that, and I suspect he really wants further private involvement in the health service.
3. Make Britain’s streets safe
Again, a great promise. The Tories cut the number of police drastically, and as a result crime has massively increased. The Labour party seem to be serious about tackling the issue, as a few weeks ago I got another round robin email from them, this time from Angela Rayner, laying out their intentions and including a questionnaire so the party could get suggestions and feedback about their concerns from their members. The seriousness with which they take this mission might be because law and order are a particular concern of the right. But it isn’t just a question of more coppers. It also means launching social programmes to deter kids from crime and tackle some of the underlying causes, which include poverty, lack of opportunities and the glamour of gangsta culture among young men in some communities. The police have also been criticised for apparently being more concerned with appealing to gays through appearing at Pride marches and dressing up as rainbow-coloured bumblebees rather than tackle crime. Some of those making that criticism are gay themselves. Will this also be tackled, while making sure gays are protected, and are confident that they are being protected like every other citizen?
4. Break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage
Again, sounds good, but it’s something that would also come from the Tories despite all the evidence to the contrary. And Blair’s record on social mobility is not good. It was already declining under Major, and stopped completely under Blair. A key method for restoring social mobility would be to start investing in schools and giving them the proper funding to buy equipment, pay teachers a proper wage, and restore state school buildings. And state education would be greatly improved by returning the academies to state or local authority control. But the academies are a failed Tory idea that Blair took over and promoted, so that’s not going to happen.
It also means creating jobs in areas like manufacturing, which have been decimated by the focus on the financial sector, and which have traditionally employed the working class, along with proper work training schemes. Not everyone is suited to academia, and there is quite a high drop-out rate according to friends of mine who worked on such policies. For those in higher education, tuition fees need to be cut, especially for poor and working class students, who are worried about being able to afford their education. Student loans are not good enough. It also means inspiring and opening up the professions to White working class boys as well as other traditionally marginalised and underperforming groups, such as Blacks and women. But I suspect this will be ignored and the traditional exclusive focus on BAME and women will continue, ignoring working class Whites.
5. Make Britain a clean energy superpower
This is possible. Labour certainly come across as far more serious about this than the Tories, who have consistently opposed it while boasting about their Green credentials. Remember Cameron’s boast that his would be the Greenest government ever? That lasted right up until he got his rear end through the door of No. 10. Then the windmill he had on his house came off, and it was back to promoting fracking.
Will Starmer go the same way? I don’t know. It’s possible. He’s broken every promise he’s made so far, and Blair attracted the same lobbying groups and companies who funded the Tories and guided Tory policy, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the same polluting industries sidle up to Starmer and he goes the same way.
Looking at them, two of the three missions look like they are being seriously tackled by Labour, at least at the moment. But I have little confidence in the rest as this would mean tackling Thatcher and her legacy head on. And that’s the very last thing the Blairites want.
This is absolutely unbelievable. Sarah Phillimore is a lawyer and writer, who has co-authored a report with Harry Miller of the Bad Law Project of a report entitled Transphobia as Security Threat: The Danger of Conflating Political Speech with Violence. This is a response to the three reports into gender critical people declaring that they are terrorists, simply for what they believe. There are three such reports, two of which were written by universities. One was published by Northumbria university, another by one of the Oxford colleges. The reports don’t define one what ‘trans’ is, and neither do they therefore define ‘transphobia’. But it is important, when writing an kind of academic study to define first the subject under discussion. These reports all state that opponents of the trans craze are security risks simply for not believing that trans people are genuine members of the sex to which they have transitioned. Because of this, they are considered to be real Fascists and terrorists.
If gender critical feminists were organising themselves into terror cells to attack transmen and -women, then these reports would be fair. But they aren’t. Phillimore says that she found herself described as a terrorist in one of these reports by Northumbria university. She wrote to the uni inquiring about this, only to get no reply. She later found that she had been put in some kind of email dumpbin or something without anyone telling her. She found out that one of the writers of the report was a Craig McRitchie. This person no longer exists. There is someone, however, called Anne McRitchie, who is evidently the same person through looking through their biography and publications. She feels it was wrong for that fact not to be disclosed. Obviously, there is a problem in the report being written by someone who has a clear personal interest in the issue. Her co-writer, Harry Miller, is a former policeman as well as founder of the Bad Law Project. I think he was prompted to form it after having his collar felt by the rozzers for putting up a tweet against the trans cult. Despite the absence of any terrorist activity from the gender critical crowd, the argument is that they are still a security threat because of the Alpert Scale. This scale states that it all starts with what Phillimore describes as ‘naughty tweets’ and culminates in a full scale genocide. She describes how she has been subjected to abuse and intimidation by trans activists. This includes doxxing, as they have put a picture of the house which she shares with her daughter online. She describes the people responsible for this and other death threats as mentally ill, entitled narcissists. At which point her interviewer, who I think may be gay himself, says that she doesn’t mean all trans people, of course. No, she replies. Trans people should be protected from discrimination and sacking. But it was absurd for men to think that simply putting on a bit of lippy and a dress made them women. And the people responsible for the threats and violence were mentally ill, entitled and narcissistic.
The interviewer states that it’s ridiculous to call the critics of the trans movement, left-wing socialist lesbians, fascists. Phillimore that anti-trans activists are always accused of being far right or the tools of the far right. She and her organisation have been accused of receiving money from the Heritage Foundation. In fact, she got all her money from personal donations and nothing from that particular right-wing group. Yes, gender critical feminists agreed on some issues with extreme right-wing Christians, but were firmly against them on other issues, such as gay rights as a whole and abortion. She also made the point that thanks to these reports about opposition to the trans movement, which simply hold a point a view which most people in this country share, Britain has been referred to the Council of Europe as the most homophobic country, along with the Turkey. This is clearly grotesque and simply wrong.
I am well aware that some of the readers and commenters on this blog don’t share my opinions about the trans movement. I appreciate the comments some of them have made that some of the people criticising the trans rights movement are doing it for their own right-wing agenda, like Matt Walsh and GB News itself. And they’ve also made me aware of a piece on BBC News reporting that transwoman was abused by a mob when she was taken ill and had to be taken away in an ambulance. I will also state once again that I condemn anyone being abused, persecuted or discriminated against because of their sexuality or gender identity.
It is clearly wrong, however, to label someone a security threat like a real far right or Islamist terrorist, simply for rejecting the trans ideology and standing up for women’s sex-based rights. And from what I’ve seen, the overwhelming majority of the abuse and death threats come from trans rights activists, who are often not trans people themselves, at gender critical feminists. You can see some of this in the videos Kelly-Jay Keen has put up of her protests in Manchester and Bristol. These show very aggressive and menacing behaviour from the trans rights activists and their fellow counter-protesters from Antifa. These turn up dressed in black and wearing black balaclavas, waving the Antifa banner and hurling abuse. At the protest in Manchester they tried to push one of the feminist protesters over all a small wall. In Bristol they were dressed exactly the same and accompanied by a contingent from Bristol Anarchist Federation. This crew tried to push through the police cordon. When the protest ended and Keen and her people went off to the pub they followed them, still being unpleasant. And while they didn’t follow them into the pub, Keen’s part were told to move on after a while by the police because the cops couldn’t protect them.
Remember that Keen’s party and her organisation, Standing For Women, are largely, but not exclusively, women. And they were faced by an angry mob in paramilitary guise.
And I think some of the trans rights activists are mentally ill. Not just to post death threats and dox people simply for holding a different belief than their own, as unfortunately this seems all too common amongst some denizens of the internet. What makes them appear mentally ill to me is the constant assertion that there is a trans holocaust going, or that if they don’t get their way and are allowed into all women’s spaces, such a genocide will begin. Well, there was no trans holocaust going on ten or so years ago when this phase of trans activism started and it isn’t going on now. In the past few years only three trans people were murdered and none were killed last year. Obviously, that’s three trans people too many, but it’s not the systematic mass murder which constitutes a holocaust or genocide. When one of the trans activists who asserted that there is a trans holocaust was confronted about it, they stated that it was only just beginning.
And it isn’t just the threat of arrest and imprisonment of gender critical feminists that is in jeopardy here. These reports set a precedent for the state to arrest and imprison people as threats to the state simply for opinions that have traditionally fallen outside the definition of terrorism.
And this means such reports are danger to everyone’s freedom of belief.
This is why I believe they should be firmly rejected, whatever your personal stance on the trans issue.
Here’s a bit of fun satire I found on the Screwed Politics channel on YouTube. As this blog reported earlier this week, mad right-wing YouTuber Alex Belfield has been guilty of several counts of stalking, and may be looking at a custodial sentence. And a lot of people whom he scammed into giving him money so that he could live the high life, while pleading he needed it to produce his content, will not be sorry. One of these who is certainly not lamenting the verdict handed down on Belfield is Screwed Politics, who has celebrated it by producing this short video. It mixes the end titles of the hit 1980s BBC comedy programme, Hi-Di-Hi, with pictures of Belfield, his dog, and two of his supporters or production team replacing the cast. And it retains the phrase the writers Jimmy Perry and David Croft, used on all their comedies: ‘You have been watching’. Indeed you have been watching Alex Belfield and co. But possibly not for much longer.
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