The Details for the Stop the War Coalition’s March on Saturday. And It Doesn’t Go Near the Cenotaph

Just got this earlier today. Stop the War Coalition have organised a massive demonstration against the conflict in Gaza, and as you can read in their message about it, they’re avoiding the Cenotaph and urging everyone to be respectful of it.

Which isn’t what you’re being told by lying media like GB News, Talk TV, and right-wing pundits like Jim Davidson and Nigel Farage.

Which is one of the several good reasons why it needs to be put up.

‘🇵🇸 National March For Palestine – Ceasefire Now! 🇵🇸

Saturday 11th November

Assemble: 12pm at Hyde Park – Marching to the US Embassy, Nine Elms Lane, London, SW11 7US

The breadth and depth of the support for the movement’s calls for a ceasefire has ensured that this Saturday’s march will go ahead. Thank you to everyone who helped. The demonstration is set to be huge.

We want to send a clear message from the march that we represent the majority of the population in our calls for a ceasefire and that the movement in support of the Palestinians is growing in strength. There are many in the establishment and on the right who want to see us fail on Saturday so it is important that we have the biggest possible turnout and that we remain disciplined and united, and clear on the principles on which we march. Our call for a ceasefire is rooted in a sincere wish to see an end to all violence, especially that which targets civilians, while recognising that this cannot be achieved unless the root causes of that violence, the 75 years of ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people, are adequately addressed.

The march assembles in Park Lane at 12 noon and will set off around 12.45pm. We urge people to use Bond Street, Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park Corner stations as well as Marble Arch station to avoid congestion.

We will march past Victoria, over Vauxhall Bridge and past the US embassy to a stage further down Nine Elm’s Lane. This is not a usual end point but we felt it was important to protest at the US embassy and to respect the Armistice commemorations, by ensuring we were not marching anywhere near Whitehall.

There will be a very strong stewards operation but the crowds will be big so we suggest people appoint a couple of stewards from their coaches or groups in order to keep in contact with everyone. Coach companies are asked to contact their trade associations for details of drop off and pick up points.

We ask people not to let off fireworks or flares as these can be frightening and our demonstrations have been attended by many thousands of children. 

There are a number of stations near the end point including Battersea Power Station, Battersea Park, Nine Elms, and Vauxhall. We ask that when the rally is over at around 4pm, you leave the area as quickly as possible so as not to cause too much disruption to the local community.
It is clear we are starting to make a difference and pushing back those who refuse to call for a ceasefire. Let’s make this Saturday another inspiring, peaceful and united show of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

On behalf of the 6 orgnaisers of Saturday’s demonstration: Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, Muslim Association of Britain, Palestinian Forum in Britain and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. 

Click Here for Full Info

We need volunteers to help on the day including stewards, distributing placards and helping on the Stop the War stall. We also need If you’re able to lend us a hand on the day please let us know by emailing us using the button below….

Yes, I can volunteer on Saturday

🇵🇸 Trade Union Bloc on Saturday 🇵🇸

Given the attempt to silence pro-Palestinian voices in the mainstream it is crucial that this Saturday’s protest reflects the breadth and depth of feeling against the current onslaught against Gaza and elsewhere. This is particularly the case for trade union regions, branches and members.

Having a visible labour movement presence on the demonstration is vital to its impact so we’re calling on local trade union branches and trades councils to organise delegations and bring their banners down to Saturday’s demo.

The Trade Union Bloc will be congregating at 11am at Speakers Corner. Be there.‘

Ruined Leon on the Media and Activist Silence over Black on Black Murders

Ruined Leon is a Black American YouTuber, who criticises and rips into the crazy and bigoted elements in gay rights, feminist and purportedly anti-racist activism, ‘woke’ individuals whose comments and opinions are as hypocritical and offensive in their way as the oppression they oppose. This is a video he posted on the last day of February, commenting on the collapse of the trial against the four men accused of shooting BLM firebrand Sasha Johnson in the head. He notes that this was major news when there was speculation that the perp was a White supremacist. In fact, the four suspects arrested by the police were Black. There’s circumstantial evidence to link them to the crime – they were caught on CCTV casing Johnson’s house, and she and her family were already sufficiently worried to put in extra security. The men were arrested following a random ‘stop and search’ by the cops. But the prosecution dropped the case because no-one has come forward to testify against them. In fact, the witnesses’ statement at the time were confused, with some saying they were Black, others White and others that they couldn’t tell, because they were wearing balaclavas. In fact this looks like an example of the twisted code operating in some Black ghettos. It doesn’t matter what Black criminals do, even to other Blacks, no matter how violent or sadistic. Blacks don’t inform on other Blacks. Or it could be simple fear of reprisal from vicious criminals.

What angers Ruined Leon is that while the initial shooting was well publicised, he had to Google to find out about the collapse of the trial. Like many ordinary Black peeps, he’s angry about the amount of violence within the Black community and that it’s ignored by Black activist organisations like Black Lives Matter. At one point in this video he asks if Black lives only matter when they’re killed by Whites. It’s a good question. Jason Riley raises the same issue in the book, False Black Power, I reviewed earlier. Among other things, he cited the Barbershop series of comedies, set in a Black barbershop. In these movies, the hero and his friends and clients are less worried about systemic racism than with the gang violence plaguing their community. The film caused an outcry from the anti-racist activists Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but Riley defended it on the grounds that it showed what Blacks really talked about when Whites weren’t around.

Leon has a point. The Lotus Eaters and others have gone through the stats, and at least over here, Black people are far more likely to be assaulted and killed by other Blacks than by White racists. But no-one wants to talk about it. They did nearly thirty years ago, when Black on Black violence was such an intense cause of concern that Sasha Baron Cohen, in his alter ego of Ali G., invited a senior cop on to one of his spoof interviews to discuss Black on Black violence and the weapons brothers were using against brothers.

But even twenty years ago, there were Black activists trying to silence the issue and demanding that attention be directed elsewhere. Readers may remember the Demilola Taylor case. This was a Black lad in London, who was attacked and stabbed to death by a gang on his way home from school. He bled to death in their stairwell of the block of flats where he lived.

I have a particular horror at this case. I was bullied at school, though it was not like today when kids are carrying knives. But the fear I remember from just normal thumps and abuse has stayed with me. I can’t image the fear that child must have experienced as he was set upon and died. The incident is one of the reasons I broke with a Black activist group I was corresponding with when I was working at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. This was the Black and Asian Studies Association, and I got on so well with them that they sent me a copy of their magazine. And it offended me so much that I wrote them a letter back, criticising some of their points. The articles in it varied in quality, but the overall tone was that all White people are racist and all Blacks the victims of racism. Which ignores other forms of racism, such as that of the Sudanese Arabs to the Black Beja people of the Sudan. But one of the comments in their magazine which really infuriated me was about Demilola’s murder. They, or at least, the magazine’s editor, felt that its coverage was ‘racist’. Why couldn’t the Beeb and the other news companies cover all the Blacks murdered by White racists? Reading between the lines, it seems to me that they thought the lad’s murder was only covered because it had been done by a Black gang. In fact it was a case of them jumping to conclusions. The race of Taylor’s murderers was not mentioned. When it was, it was stated that the gang was made up of people of different races. It wasn’t all Black.

A child died in pain and terror, murdered by thugs. But this should be ignored because Black activists thought he was murdered by other Blacks. I find that attitude absolutely contemptible.

I’ve reblogged some of the videos made by Simon Webb of History Debunked on racial issues and some of the myths and falsehoods being retailed as solid fact in Black history. Webb needs to be read carefully, as he is a Telegraph-reading Tory who believes that Bell Curve nonsense about Blacks being less intelligent than Whites. I’ve had one commenter criticise one of his videos I’ve posted here for what he considered to be its historical inaccuracies, and I do advise people to check what he says for themselves. Some of his material, where he sites his sources, seem sound, others much less so. But one of his videos explicitly commented on the problem of this media silence. It asked ‘What’s So Special about Stephen Lawrence?’ Lawrence, you may remember, was a young Black lad killed in a racially motivated incident. The Met police failed to properly arrest and charge his killers, who seem to have been the sons of notorious criminals. This rightly caused a national scandal and resulted in further examination and actions against the Metropolitan Police to purge it of racism. But Webb’s video pointed out that Lawrence was far from the only Black male murdered. The thumbnail to his video showed the faces of many other Black men and lads, who were also killed, but whose murders generated much less interest simply because they were killed by other Blacks.

Not that it’s just Blacks like Stephen Lawrence who are murdered by racists. Years ago Private Eye stated that just before Lawrence was killed, an Asian and a White man had been killed in two separate racist attacks. The Met police treated their deaths with the same cavalier indifference and incompetence they treated Lawrence’s. But there was no public outcry, no denunciations by anti-racists, questions in the House, or marches. Absolutely nothing.

Ruined Leone is right. Black lives only matter when to anti-racist activists like BLM when they’re taken by Whites. Otherwise the same people want you to ignore them.

Some of this no doubt comes from the way the right-wing press has reported Black crime figures to generate anti-Black racism and opposition to non-White immigration. It’s why Ashley Banjo of the dance group Diversity told Jim Davidson that the reporting of Black and White crime had been used to oppress Blacks. Davidson had asked him why it was all right to report a White police man killing a Black man, but not a Black man robbing a White man. But when the amount of Black on Black violence has reached such a pitch that it is a major issue that ordinary Black people are living in fear of their and their children’s lives, I don’t think it is fair to remain silent. People should be organising and marching against it, just as they should be organising and marching against the Asian grooming gangs. It should be done as part of proper anti-racist movement, and not left to be exploited by real racists and xenophobes like Tommy Robinson in the case of the grooming gangs.

But it’s acutely embarrassing to the Black and other other anti-racist organisations, who currently control the narrative on racism and racial issues. I think they seem to believe that somehow Black on Black violence will stop or decline once White anti-Black racism is tackled and conditions and opportunities for Blacks improve. This is undoubtedly the case, but in the meantime innocent people are being killed, but the professional anti-racists would rather you looked away and only saw those who were butchered by Whites.

Black lives matter regardless of the race of the people that take them. And Ruined Leon is right to be angry, because silence is violence whatever the colour of the killer.

Agent Stool Pigeon Tears Apart Alex Belfield in Answer to Fans

Last week was not a good one for mad YouTuber Alex Belfield, as he was suspended from YouTube for a series of violations. It appears he has now gone off to Ustreme with his friend, Jim Davidson. Belfield is very much a man of the right, ranting about the Channel migrants, whom he calls ‘dinghy divers’, calling for the privatisation of the NHS and criticising the Covid lockdown as well as other diatribes about race and Black Lives Matter and the trans craze. He has some kind of feud going with individuals from the Beeb which has resulted in a long series of court cases. He takes every chance to talk down the corporation and demand its privatisation and sneers at its staff as ‘Guardian-reading, oyster-eating, champagn-sipping, university-educated Naga Manchushy types’. He hates middle class left-wingers, and presents himself as a White working class lad from a pit village whose managed to succeed despite opposition from a woke, left-wing middle class establishment.

But he has his critics. I’ve put up a number of pieces on here criticising him, and have had a number of replies from his fans. Some of them are polite, but most are just abuse. And it seems I’m not alone. He has another critic in the shape of ASP – Agent Stool Pigeon – on YouTube. I found this video on the gentleman’s channel in which he answers Belfield’s fans by tearing further into their hero. I got the impression that he’s done this several times before, and that this is an answer to their complaints.

After denying that he’s making money from Belfield, he states that most of the mad YouTuber’s content doesn’t contain a thread of truth. Belfield simply looks at the day’s headlines and then makes up the rest. He tells his listeners that they could do the same and save themselves the time and expense of watching Belfield. All they have to do is go to the supermarket, pick up a paper, read the headline and then make up their own story. And then walk back home. They’ll have saved themselves money and had a walk. He also makes the point that while Belfield tells his viewers not to trust the mainstream media, all his stories come from that same media. He doesn’t do anything original. He leaves out information that contradicts his points and doesn’t provide links, though he will give a screen shot of the headline. But he’s also groomed his fans so that if someone questions him, he’ll set them off on a pile-on against that person. He did it the other day in Tweet about the Times journo he said banned him from YouTube.

The Pigeon also states that Belfield attacks and slams people all day to make money not caring whether what he says is true or not. But he’ll block anyone who questions him. He will never interview anyone who questions him. He’ll give his story on stage or on screen when no-one can interrupt or question him. The Pigeon also advises people not to give money to people on YouTube. But people have given donations to Belfield, who has not shown what he’s done with the money through providing bank records and so on. He points out how hypocritical this is coming from Belfield, who regularly attacks the Beeb for not showing what it is doing with the money donated to it. He compares his hold over his fans to that of a cult leader, who’s trained his followers to think like him and give him all their worldly possession. But after Belfield’s ban, he communication with his fans has come to a halt. There isn’t anything on YouTube and nothing on his Twitter feed except repeated requests to buy tickets for his shows, or join the mailing list for his shows, The Stoolie points out that all Belfield does is push their buttons to amplify their anger, while using some of the most disgusting and unfunny innuendos. His jokes come from 1977.

The Pigeon also corrects the view that the Beeb is taking Belfield to court. It’s not. Some of the Beeb’s employees or ex-employees are taking the mad YouTuber to court for defamation, and this could be expensive. If he loses, he’ll have to pay damages and court costs. He also being sued by 8 people on 12 counts of stalking. Belfield claims that the whole world is against him, but things like this don’t happen for no reason. And now he wants people to spend a pound a week for him to recycle the headlines. And all the while he’s laughing at them.

The video doesn’t consist of anything beyond the Pigeon’s dulcet Liverpudlian tones and caricature of Belfield. But it is a very effective demolition of him.

It’s also interesting reading some of the comments by people, who’ve also lost faith in him or seen how he cynically twists the news. For example, Swoop said: ‘Here’s one you’ll like: During one of Belfield’s livestreams last year he was spouting a load of rubbish about how the Army being called into Liverpool meant that people we’re going to be getting visited at home and having covid tests forced upon them by soldiers……I actually managed to get through to the phone in and asked him where on earth he was getting this rubbish from, when he inevitably became insulting I told him to put his money where his mouth is and make a bet on it. Since then I’ve not been able to get through again. Funny that innit? Alex Belfield owes me £500. Correction: Alex Belfield owes the RAF Benevolent Fund £500.’

And there’s this from Chocolate Frenzie: ‘

I followed Alex Belfield for over a year- sent him money twice and then a few months ago he had a rant and said something along the lines that he didn’t care about his followers continuing to follow him- I was so hurt I stopped listening to him after that – as for his phone in well I gave up on them a while back as I couldn’t stand listening to him making innuendoes to the female callers – goes a bit too far – drinks in wits out’

Alex C commented: ‘Agree 100 percent with every word on this video..well done..he grooms as you say,,he mind controls . He does not care one bit about the people he fleeces.He is driven. The things that please me… He was a radio 2 dj ..with hundreds of thousands of listeners,, And his circle keeps shrinking. Everytime he burns a bridge his world shrinks,less people…despite the money he yearns fo4 lots if people to adore him. He is twisted, bitter,,,and is a huge star in his own head. Remember he was once Bankrupt. Remember he was until his 20s plus a morbidly obese man. Remember he uses your money to live a great life. But his sheep enjoy being fleeced.’

And there’s more, much more, from people stating out that according to the Times it was the advertisers who pulled the plug on him. One of the things they disliked was his misogyny. Another commenter states that Belfield claimed to have set up a charity account for all the donations, then admitted he hadn’t.

If even some of these allegations are true, then it’s devastating and Belfield definitely shouldn’t have an audience.

Right-Wing YouTubers Praise Priti Patel for Wanting to Repeal Blair’s Anti-Hate Speech Legislation

The noxious, smirking, ambitious idler Priti Patel was in the noxious Express last Sunday, delighting various right-wing Youtubers with her comments about the laws Blair passed against hate speech. These, she apparently declared, undermine proper free speech and so should be scrapped.

One of those applauding her was Alex Belfield, of whom I have previously blogged many times. Belfield is constantly reviling left-wing activists against racial and other prejudices of being oversensitive ‘snowflakes’. Instead of getting upset and moaning about comments or portrayals they find offensive or hurtful, they should instead grow up, stop whining and get over it. This is more than a bit rich coming from Belfield, as he is very ready to moan about anything which he feels casts unfair aspersions on White folks. For example, a week or so ago he got very annoyed at a sketch in a BBC comedy show, ‘Bamous’, or something like that. The show’s cast are Black, and it seems aimed very much at a Black, Asian and minority ethnic audience. The sketch that raised Belfield’s blood pressure was ‘the Black Broadcasting Corporation’, which portrayed what it would be like, or what it’s cast thought it would be like, if the Corporation’s management were all Black and they casually patronised and humiliated Whites who had suggestions for programmes and wanted to climb up the career ladder in television. Belfield tore into the sketch as yet another example of the Beeb’s ‘woke’ racism against Whites, and yet again demanded that the Corporation should be defunded.

I did find what little I saw of it offensive, and I only saw the clips Belfield included in his video, so I don’t know if this accurately reflected the sketch as it was originally broadcast. But I think the sketch reflected the anger of various Black actors and writers at having their ideas repeatedly turned down by the corporation. The historian David Olasuga said in an interview that he suffered from depression after having his ideas for programmes rejected, while Lenny Henry and others have also criticised the Corporation for not being sufficiently inclusive.

It also struck me that the sketch wasn’t all that original either. Previous comedy series by ethnic minorities have also lampooned White British racism through the same strategy of role reversal. Goodness Gracious Me, the Asian comedy show which ran on BBC 2 on the ’90s with the sketches ‘Going for a Blandi’, in which a group of Asian friends go to a restaurant serving traditional British food. And a friend of mine said he never realised how condescending shows like Great Indian Railway Journeys were about India and its people until Goodness Gracious Me sent it up in a sketch in which they looked at the British railway system making the same type of comments. Not that Goodness Gracious Me was anti-White. It also sent up British Asian culture and the bigoted attitudes of some Asians towards Whites. For all I know, Bamous might do the same to Black culture.

Belfield’s criticisms would also carry more weight if two of his comedy heroes didn’t specialise in racist material. He’s a friend of the notorious Jim Davidson, with whom he hosts a programme on his internet radio show in the week. He also seems to be a fan of the late Bernard Manning. Last week he put up a video praising Mark Lamarr and wondering what happened to the former host of Never Mind the Buzzcocks. The clips he used to show Lamarr’s skills as a interviewer came from a video in which he talked to Bernard Manning. And as older readers are probably all too aware, Manning was infamous for his racist jokes, although he always maintained that he was not personally racist. They were just jokes, right?

But those jokes are really hurtful to the Blacks and Asians, who were the butt of them. Way back in the ’90s Mike and I were on a bus coming home from an evening out drinking. We got talking to one of the other passengers, an Asian lad who’d been sent home from work. He was a waiter in one of the swish restaurants in town. Davidson had turned up for a meal, and the lad had been ordered to serve him. He refused because hated Davidson’s jokes about people of his colour. The manager insisted, the lad refused again, and was sent home. And I’m on the lad’s side and respect him for sticking to his guns against serving someone whose material he found deeply abhorrent.

I’m no fan of Blair, and do think that right-wing critics of the legislation against hate speech do have a point. I think they are stifling a proper and very necessary debate about immigration and race relations. But I also feel that they are also necessary. I think the first such laws in Britain were passed in the 1930s or thereabouts and were intended to stop the demonisation of Jews by Fascists, like Mosley’s BUF. At the same time, the BBC had a very strict code over what could and couldn’t be said on air. There was a list of about 200 words that couldn’t be used by presenters. This included slang terms, such as ‘lousy’, for something that was simply bad or poor in quality, and the crude and insulting terms for people of different ethnic groups. When the Goons started in the 1950s the Corporation also had a list of subjects which were strictly forbidden for comedy. These were religion, the monarchy, disability, the colour question and ‘effeminacy in men’. These prohibitions went a long time ago, especially regarding religion and the royal family, although they remain very sensitive subjects. Issues of race and racism can be lampooned, it seems, but only from the point of view of ethnic minorities or which sends up racism. But Belfield would, it appears, like to overturn this and return television to the days of the 1970s when Manning and Davidson were both telling their jokes on mainstream TV.

If the jokes manning and Davidson told about race had no effect, and people took them as just jokes, then perhaps there’d be an argument for allowing that material back on television. I don’t believe that the producers of Love Thy Neighbour, a comedy about a racist White man who finds out that his new neighbours are Black, were being deliberately offensive or trying to promote racism. But there was much more overt racism then, including jokes going round playground and workplace that really did show a contempt for people of colour. I think one of the issues with racist jokes is that, even if they are meant to be innocuous, they can and do reinforce real racism in wider society.

Speech and the attitudes expressed matter. Sir Alan Burns, the last governor of Ghana, says in his book, Colour Prejudice, that much could be done to tackle racism simply through courtesy and politeness. His book, published in 1948, is clearly very dated, but that observation is undoubtedly very true. The legislation against hate speech, and the attitudes against racist comedy that has accompanied them, are really an attempt to make this courtesy mandatory.

It appears very much to me that Patel and Tories like her want to repeal all of the 1970s anti-racism legislation. The attack on Blair’s legislation against hate speech is just the beginning, and the explanation that they stifle free speech just a pretext. They’d like to drag us all back to the days when businesses could refuse service and employment to people on the grounds of their colour or nationality. When hotels and guesthouses could put signs up in their windows saying ‘No dogs, no Blacks, no Irish’. And when the Tory party could put up posters telling the British public that if they wanted Blacks for neighbours, they should vote Labour. But they should vote Conservative if they didn’t.

Patel’s Asian, and so is potentially one of those affected by such prejudices and the removal of the laws protecting people of colour. She obviously feels she’s exempt because of her lofty position as a government. Or perhaps she feels that British society has changed so rapidly these laws aren’t necessary. I think they are, and no matter how secure she is, others aren’t so lucky. And there is a real danger that the vicious racism these laws are designed to combat will return all too quickly.

For those reasons, the laws should stay and it doesn’t matter how funny some Tories think Manning and Davidson are. The racism the laws are intended to combat is very definitely no laughing matter.