Lobster on the British State Supporting Loyalist Terrorism in Northern Ireland

Last week, the Torygraph, Scum and Heil all tried smearing Jeremy Corbyn as a supporter of terrorism and the IRA in Northern Ireland. This was due to his sincere efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Troubles, and release people he believed had been wrongfully convicted.

Mike and Eoin Clarke have effectively demolished this smear, as I pointed out in a post yesterday. You can read what Mike and Eoin have to say at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/27/dont-believe-the-warmongers-on-jeremy-corbyn-get-your-story-straight/

However, the Conservative party and the British state certainly supported terrorism in Ulster, Loyalist terrorism. They gave intelligence information on the IRA and other Republican organisations to Loyalist paramilitaries, effectively using them as death squads for a series of ‘extra-judicial executions’. Or what is usually called assassinations.

This came out very strongly in a documentary series broadcast in 1999, Loyalists, which featured a series of interviews with Ulster Loyalist terrorists and politicians. This was discussed in an article on the British state’s dirty little war in Northern Ireland by the editor, Robin Ramsay, ‘Northern Ireland Redux’ in Lobster, 38, Winter 1999: 23-25. This stated

Peter Taylor has made more TV programmes about Northern Ireland since 1969 than any British journalist. His most recent was the documentary, Loyalists, earlier this year, a series of interviews with Loyalist paramilitaries and politicians. This was followed by a book, Loyalists (Bloomsbury, 1999), which contained some of the interviews in that programme. Like the TV programme, this is fascinating stuff for anyone interested in events in Northern Ireland. But the book and TV programme are not identical. The most striking section of the TV programme was an interview with a UDA? UFF? member (I didn’t tape it and can’t remember the details) who described the torrent of official information they were receiving from their British military and intelligence connections in the late 1980s – more material than he knew what to do with, he said. This section is missing from the book. It’s not that Taylor actually tries to avoid this area: it just doesn’t get its due. the biggest story, the most important development, in our knowledge of the Loyalist paramilitaries in the past ten – may be twenty – years gets three and a bit pages from Taylor.

After recounting how in 1989 the UDA/UFF were getting official, classified intelligence material from the security forces, he writes

“To republicans and nationalists it was clear evidence of collusion between members of the security forces and the loyalist paramilitaries’ (emphasis added).

Not so: it was clear evidence to anyone.

Taylor describes how, using state intelligence, the UDA’s ‘targeting’ of the Nationalist community improved: fewer Catholics were murdered at random, more IRA members. Another way of describing these events would be this: the British Army was running the UDA’s assassins against the IRA – and successfully, too. In effect, in the late 1980s the British state decided that while they could not kill the IRA openly (the late Alan Clark MP’s solution: let the SAS loose), they could get the Prods to do it for them. A case can be made that part of the reason we have an IRA cease-fire at present is the inroads made into the IRA’s ranks by this joint Army-UDA assassination programme. (P. 23).

Any positive benefits that may have resulted from this – few innocents killed, the IRA being brought round to the bargaining table – have to be set against the fact that under Thatcher, the British state was supporting terrorism and had overturned the rule of law in Northern Ireland.

This adds a whole new dimension to Tory hypocrisy.

At the same time they were demonising the Labour party for openly stating that negotiations needed to be held with the Republicans, if peace was ever to be achieved in Northern Ireland, the Tory party and Thatcher were secretly holding such talks.

Just as the Tories were also using Loyalist terrorists as their death squads.

Vox Political and Eoin Clarke Refute Smears of Tory Warmongers Against Corbyn

Mike over at Vox Political has produced another excellent blog post utterly demolishing the lies of the Tory warmongers that Jeremy Corbyn supported IRA terrorism, and that his election would somehow leave Britain more vulnerable to atrocities such as the one on Monday night in Manchester.

His piece contains a graphic by Eoin Clarke showing that far from supporting terrorism, Corbyn consistently condemned paramilitary violence and sincerely looked and worked for peace in Northern Ireland. As such, he was respected not only by the Republicans but also by Loyalists.

Clarke’s graphic states, for example:

* In November 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary early day motion condemning the Birmingham Pub Bombings committed by the Provisional IRA.

* The same year, Corbyn held several meetings with four Loyalist leaders to discuss the release of Neil Latimer, a member of the UDR, and to be informed that October at the Labour Party’s conference of the ceasefire the following week.

* In October 2015 Ian Paisley’s wife told the Belfast Telegraph that she found the Labour leader courteous and polite, and thought he was a ‘gentleman’.

* In February 1987 the Times apologised to Jeremy Corbyn. Murdoch’s British ‘paper of record’ had smeared him by claiming that he had not phoned the police to warn them of a suspected Provisional IRA terrorist in London. In fact Corbyn had.

* In August 1988 the Irish Times hailed him as ‘a tireless campaigner for the Irish.’ Corbyn had worked to the quash the wrongful convictions of the Guildford Four, and reopen the inquiry into Bloody Sunday.

* Corbyn in fact only ever met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams after Adams had been elected to parliament, 14 years after the commencement of the Troubles, in Adams’ capacity as an elected MP. He did, however, oppose Thatcher’s ban on broadcasting the voices of elected Sinn Fein politicians, and was keen that Adams’ constituents in West Belfast should not be silenced.

* When Adams visited Westminster in 1996, Corbyn was only one of a number of Labour MPs, who met him. The meetings were solely concerned with reviving the IRA ceasefire. This was achieved several months later. And Bill Clinton, who was then president of the US, had the previous year invited Adams to the Whitehouse. As Clarke’s graphic points out, this places Corbyn’s meeting with Adams firmly within the context of wider attempts by politicians to secure peace in Ulster.

Clarke does admit that there are two incidents, which are controversial, and do require an explanation.

* Shortly after the Brighton bombing of the Tory conference, Corbyn and other MPs met Republicans in Westminster. Corbyn’s motive for doing so was to end the strip searching of female prisoners on remand. However, Clarke states that the meeting was insensitive and wrong.

* In May 1987 Corbyn stood for a minutes’ silence to show respect for eight people, who had been killed by the British armed forces in Northern Ireland at a meeting of Irish sympathisers in London. Although one was entirely innocent, seven were members of the Provisional IRA. The circumstances of their deaths were unclear, and they may have been the victims of a ‘shoot to kill’ policy. The European Court ordered the payment of £10,000 each to the eight victims’ families.

* As for Adams himself, Clarke states that it was the Tory government, who began talking to him eleven years before Corbyn became an MP. Adams had been released in prison for the secret talks the Conservatives were holding with Irish paramilitaries following the deaths of 476 people in 1972, the worse year of the Troubles. This was revealed in MI5 files released under the 30 year rule. The files also showed that the Tories considered that Adams genuinely wanted a ceasefire and an end to the violence, and that his answers to questions were ‘reasonable and moderate’.

So while Corbyn did meet with Gerry Adams and other Irish Nationalists, he also worked with Ulster Loyalists. It certainly appears from this that Corbyn wanted to find a fair, peaceful solution to the violence and hatred in Northern Ireland.

Mike’s piece also includes a short video, running just under a two minutes, by the Labour MP Chris Williams. Williams points out that 14 years ago in 2003, Corbyn had warned that ‘the Iraq war will set off a spiral of conflict that will fuel the wars, terrorism and misery of future generations.’ He also warned several times that police cuts would leave the country more vulnerable to terrorism. He also warned that intervention in Libya would lead to it becoming a breeding ground for terrorism. He also objected to selling arms to Saudi Arabia for the same reason. Williams states that Labour has a crystal-clear policy to make Britain safer, unlike the Tories. They intend to undo the cuts to the police force, and have the longer term goal of rethinking this country’s foreign policy. This means not sending more of our courageous young men and women to die in wars no-one invited us to take part in, and destabilising countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. And Williams asks his viewers to challenges the Tories, the rich, the media magnates and the cheerleaders for these wars in voting for Labour. New approaches and responses are required following the evil terrorist atrocity in Manchester, and Labour has precisely done that.

Mike also includes a wonderful little video of Channel 4’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy refuting Michael Fallon, the Tory defence minister. Guru-Murthy quotes Boris Johnson at him. Boris had said that the Iraq invasion didn’t create the problem of Islamist terrorism – the attack on the Twin Towers occurred before that – but it did sharpen their resentment. Fallon then attacks the quote, believing it was said by Jeremy Corbyn. When Guru-Murthy points out it’s by Johnson, he then flails around trying to claim that it shows that Johnson really concurs with him, that this does not explain terrorism. But the Channel 4 newsman goes on, and quotes Boris as saying that you can’t disagree with the nay-sayers, who say that the invasion has increased Islamic resentment. Even after he’s been told, Fallon continues to state that he’d have to see what Boris Johnson really says for himself, and denies that Britain’s foreign policy explains away terrorism.

Mike comments drily if there’s anyone, who doesn’t agree with Jeremy Corbyn? (Apart, obviously, from Michael Fallon).

And at the very top of the piece is a quote from the former director of MI5, Theresa Manningham-Buller, that the Iraq invasion ‘undoubtedly increased the terrorist threat in Britain’.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/27/dont-believe-the-warmongers-on-jeremy-corbyn-get-your-story-straight/

So Jeremy Corbyn was right about the Iraq invasion. He’s been right about the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi in Libya, and he was right about the cuts to the police force. And he is very right to demand a ban on arms sales to the Saudis.

And while two of his actions in support of the Republicans in Northern Ireland have been insensitive, he is not a supporter of terrorism, as the Scum, Heil and Torygraph would have us all believe.

Go to Mike’s blog and read and watch the full article. Eoin Clarke’s information about Corbyn is in the form of a graphic, so that you can post it elsewhere on line to refute the Tories and their stooges, who still continue with their smears about the Labour leader.

And if you really want to see a just end to the violence in the Middle East, and a sensible policy to eradicate Islamist terror in this country, then vote Labour on June 8th.

If we don’t, if we continue to follow the Thatcherite warmongering of Blair, Cameron and May, it will only lead to worse violence and terror in the Middle East and at home.

Vox Political’s Long List of Tory Lies

On Saturday, Mike posted a piece asking why anyone should believe the Tories about Jeremy Corbyn considering their long record of lying. He then gave a few examples, such as May’s promise that she wouldn’t call a snap election, her promise that she would seek an agreement with three other nations in Britain – Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland before triggering Article 50 for Brexit; David Cameron’s pledge not to cut Child Tax Credits; the Tories’ promise that they wouldn’t increase NI contributions, and that they would reduce the deficit.

And those are all just starters. They come from a video about the Tories’ broken promises and flagrant lying, that is included in Mike’s article.

He also gives a few more example of Conservative mendacity, beginning with their lies to the rozzers about their election spending. They have also lied about not cutting the NHS, about helping people with disabilities – in fact, their lies, as repeated in the press, have helped fuel a 213 per cent rise in hate crime against disabled people, about the Trident missile test, their denials that their policies are actually causing a fall in British life expectancy.

The list just goes on and on.

And Mike also reblogs Eoin Clarke’s list of 30 U-turns the Tories have made since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party.

Mike’s conclusion is the obvious one: Despite all the ranting, the Tories are weak and liars.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/29/tories-lie-about-so-many-things-why-should-we-believe-them-about-jeremy-corbyn/

A few years ago I suggested that Ian Duncan Smith should really be called ‘Matilda’, after the lying heroine of the famous cautionary poem by Hilaire Bellocq, ‘Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes’. Etc. But this shows that the whole party should be called ‘Matilda’, given their own contempt for truth.

Closed Doors Greet Theresa May in Aberdeenshire

Mike has posted another great piece today, reblogging Eoin Clarke’s question on Twitter: ‘Did we ever get round to thanking Scotland for the treatment they gave Theresa May?’ This comes with a clip from Sky News showing ‘strong and stable’ May getting a very cold reaction from the guid folk of Aberdeen as she goes from door to door with an aid while ‘Rape Clause’ Ruth hangs around in the background.

It’s Scot TV on YouTube, who called Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Tories north of the border ‘Rape Clause Ruth’, after she stood on her hind feet in the Scots parliament to defend the odious decision of this government, that rape victims, who have had children because of the assault, can only claim child benefit if it’s their third child by telling the authorities this. As the majority of rapes are not reported because of the humiliation felt by the victims, this is just another further humiliation heaped on extremely vulnerable women to deprive them of benefits.

Scot TV put a clip of Davidson making her speech defending this policy but with an appropriate comment in the description box. They’re exactly right. It’s a vile speech, defending a vile policy by a vile party. Davidson’s openly gay, so her appointment as the Tories’ leader in Scotland presumably was part of Cameron’s campaign to persuade the electorate that, hey, the Tories are all nice cosy liberals now, at ease with people of different ethnicities and sexuality. Except that it’s all just cosmetic. Despite the appearance of openly gay Tory politicians like Alan Duncan, they’re still the nasty party underneath, determined to abuse, humiliate, victimise and degrade the weak and vulnerable whenever possible.

The response of the good people on that street begins with a polite ‘No thank you’, from the first house May tries, followed by very firmly closed doors and a stony silence. Clarke comments that this shows that May is definitely not ‘fake news’, and those, who say so, are just haters.

And for your further viewing pleasure, there’s the Benny Hill version, in which she’s slightly speeded up and the music of ‘Yakkety Sax’ is added.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/05/01/did-we-ever-thank-the-scots-for-the-treatment-they-gave-theresa-may/

So let’s thank Scotland for shutting the door on these awful bullies.

As for May herself, ‘Yakkety Sax’ is an appropriate piece of music for her. Despite her campaign to be taken seriously as a leader, she’s a clown. A particularly unfunny one. And the only people who are laughing are the Tory rich, as her policies criminalise, impoverish the already poor and disabled.

Vox Political: Eoin Clarke Shows How Labour Will Pay for Its Policies

Mike over at Vox Political has reblogged a piece by Eoin Clarke, who’s on Twitter as @LabourEoin, showing how Labour will pay for their reforms. It’s to counter all the critics, who complain that Labour haven’t shown where they’re going to get the money from.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/23/sick-of-people-telling-you-the-uk-cant-afford-labours-plans-show-them-this/ and follow the links to Eoin’s original article.

This also answers, in part, a deeper object that you’ll always hear from the Tories: That the country can’t afford Labour’s welfare policies. Of course it can. As Mike has shown ad infinitum, Labour kept well in budget during its time in power. The only period of massive overspending was when Gordon Brown had to pump money into the global economy after the banking crash. This wasn’t Labour’s fault. Labour had contributed to it by following the same ‘light touch’ regulation – in fact continuing the Tories’ deregulation of the financial sector – but the direct cause was the massive speculation and bizarre financial shenanigans of Goldman Sachs et al in Wall Street. I’m not a fan of Gordon Brown. Despite claims that he was ‘Old Labour’, I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that he did not share Blair’s neoliberalism. But Brown did keep us out of the Euro, and he did save the global economy.

What is clear that is the country and its people definitely can’t afford another five years of the Tories.

Thanks to the Tories’ privatisation of essential services, we are paying more for a worse service for everything from the NHS to the railways. We are paying more in subsidies for the rail network than we were when it was nationalised. And contrary to Tory claims, during the last years of British Rail when the network was operating under Operating For Quality, the company offered better value for service than any time since nationalisation or after privatisation. Since then, fares have been raised and services cut.

The same is true of the Tories’ privatisation of the NHS. Private healthcare is actually far more bureaucratic than socialised medicine, as the private healthcare companies charge for advertising and their legal department as well as administration. They also must show a profit for their shareholders. Thus, as the Tories have outsourced NHS services, a process that began with Peter Lilley and the PFI, costs have actually gone up due to the inclusion of private industry.

Not Forgetting the millions of low and unwaged workers, and the unemployed, Cameron and May have created.

There are 8 million people in ‘food insecure’ households, according to the UN. This is because Cameron and May have deliberately kept wages low, and introduced zero hours contracts, among other tricks, in order to keep labour costs down and the workforce frightened. As a result, we’ve seen millions of people forced to rely on food banks for their next meal. These are hardworking people, who have been denied a living wage, all for the profit of big corporations like Sports Direct.

Then there are the millions of unemployed and disabled, who have been thrown off benefits under the absolute flimsiest of pretexts. This has been covered by left-wing bloggers again and again. And tens of thousands have died from poverty and starvation. See the stats and biographies of some of those, who have been murdered by these policies, collected by Stilloaks, Johnny Void, Mike over at Vox Political, Another Angry Voice and so on.

It isn’t a case of Britain being unable to afford Labour. The country cannot afford not to have Labour in power.

Blair Should Be Thrown Out of the Labour Party for Urging People to Vote Lib Dem or Tory

Mike also put up a piece yesterday commenting on the news that the former Labour leader, Tony Blair, had urged people to put party differences aside and vote for a Conservative or Lib Dem candidate if they have an ‘open mind’ about the Brexit deal. He said he wanted to maximise the number of people willing to stop May ‘steamrolling’ a hard Brexit.

Mike quotes a spokesman for Jeremy Corbyn, who said

“On 9 June, we will either have a Labour government or a Tory one. If you want Brexit to be used to turn Britain into a low-wage tax haven, vote Tory. If you want a Britain for the many not the few after Brexit, vote Labour. The choice is clear.”

This is absolutely correct. If you vote Tory, you will be voting for more poverty, more starvation and more privatisation of the NHS, all to turn Britain into an offshore tax haven. Lobster examined the source of Tory funds a few years ago. Guess what? They’re not coming from their grassroots members. Membership of the party was falling, and some branches were closed to new members. Others had closed entirely. And the grassroots members were complaining that they were being ignored by the party bosses. The Tories simply don’t have enough coming in from party subscriptions to support them. At the moment it seems that the party is being funded primarily by American hedge fund managers in London.

Mike also states, quite correctly, that Blair should be thrown out of the party for encouraging people to vote against it. He’s right. This is against the Labour party constitution. He also states he agrees absolutely with Eoin Clark that Blair’s administration was far better than the Tories under May. Well, you really can’t argue against that.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/23/tony-blair-should-be-drummed-out-of-labour-after-urging-voters-to-support-other-parties/

But this latest comment shows how tenuous Blair’s own connection to the Labour party was. Lobster and other political commenters have made the point that Blair and the New Labour coterie’s support for the Labour party was only tribal, not ideological. Blair himself also seems to have said that he joined the Labour party because he believed he had a better chance at promotion within it than any of the others. Once in power, he threatened to tear the party’s heart out by cutting ties with the trade unions, despite the fact that the Labour party was partly founded by them in order to represent the interests of British working people. He also ditched the Labour party’s commitment to nationalisation, Clause 4, and continued the Tories’ policy of privatisation, including the NHS. He was essentially a Tory entryist, and this latest pronouncement shows he still has the same mercenary attitude to politics.

And this is quite apart from the fact that he took us into an illegal war with his and Bush’s invasion of Iraq, a war that has killed and displaced millions of people across the Middle East and destabilised the entire region. There are very good reasons for having him indicted as a war criminal. See the book by Nicholas Wood and Anabella Pellens, The Case Against Blair: War Crime or Just War? The Iraq War 2003-2005 (London: South Hill Press 2005).

Blair did some very good things when he was in power. But he also managed to destroy much of Labour’s grassroots support, and pioneered some of the policies that have been continued so disastrously by Cameron and May. In some ways, his present disloyalty to the party he led is the least of his crimes. His actions in the Middle East alone mean that he should not be allowed anywhere near power, nor be listened to by anyone ever again.

May’s Strong, Confident Election Campaign: Two of Her Senior Advisors Quit

Here’s a little mystery, that has been reported courtesy of Eoin Clarke. Mike has put up a piece about a tweet from Eoin that two of May’s senior advisors have left already. This is very interesting indeed, as May only announced her decision to call a snap general election yesterday. Mike pointedly asks whether we will ever find out the reason why they left. It’s unlikely, as May has said that she’s not taking questions from journalists, and, as Mike also reports elsewhere, she ain’t going to appear on the debates between the leaders.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/21/two-of-theresa-mays-most-senior-advisors-have-apparently-quit-will-we-ever-find-out-why/

Now does that sound like the actions of a party confident of an election victory, as May would like us all to believe. Not even remotely. Mike has also suggested in one of his pieces that May is seriously ‘frit’ to use Thatcher’s words, and has called the election in order to forestall losing her majority as 30 of her MPs are disbarred for electoral overspending. As for ‘unelectable’ Jeremy Corbyn, one poll showed that he’s only 9 points behind her, a lead which can evaporate very quickly. Mike also suggests that she’s calling for an election now, rather than 2020, as Brexit hasn’t had its full effect yet.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/20/the-real-reasons-theresa-may-has-called-a-snap-general-election/

Clearly she’s well aware that when Brexit does kick in, it’s going to hurt the British people very hard indeed. And she doesn’t want to take responsibility.

Needless to say, media coverage of the departure of the two senior advisors is going to be mutes, as some of Mike’s commenters have pointed out. If they were Corbyn’s advisors, it would be different, and the cold, soulless hacks now infesting the Beeb and the press would be all over it like a rash.