Momentum Warn Starmer that Purging the Left Could Cost Him Voters

I’ve just found this piece from the I by Chloe Chaplain reporting that Momentum have warned Starmer that he could lose votes from purging his party’s left and pointing to their own electoral successes to show that Labour can still win with left-wing policies. He’s also been warned that he cannot rely on the Tories’ implosion to secure a Labour victory.

‘Purging the left and ditching socialism could see Labour lose voters, Sir Keir Starmer warned

Sir Keir Starmer has been warned he risks alienating core Labour voters who could stay home and not vote if he turns his back on socialism ahead of the general election.

The left of his party are pointing their own local election successes as evidence that a radical agenda can be attractive to voters. And others are warning Sir Keir of the danger of losing out to apathy.

The Labour leader has made a considerable shift to the centre since taking charge, with appeals to former Tory voters who could be tempted to swing to his party. In doing so, he has pulled power away from the vocal left-wing of his party that had dominated under his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

As the general election draws closer, and with Labour’s final policy agenda being drawn up, left wing campaigners and MPs are pushing to stop the leadership turning its back entirely on pledges they argue are very popular among voters.

The campaign group Momentum argues that the results in the local elections, which saw the Labour pick up a handful of significant councils but remain short of a majority in several target areas, prove Sir Keir cannot rely on the implosion of the Tory vote along to win a majority in the Commons.

It cites the Labour administration in Worthing, West Sussex – where Momentum co-chair Hilary Schan was elected as a councillor – and successes in Broxtow, Nottinghamshire, and Preston, Lancashire as examples of a socialist policy platform winning votes. They argue that, if he continues on his current path of “purging” left-wing candidates and policies he could lose support in areas like these.

Ms Schan said the three authorities were a “a living, breathing demonstration that there is no trade-off between electability and transformative policies”.

“As a general election closes in, the Labour leadership has a chance to lay out a bold programme to fix the Tories’ broken Britain. Choosing to instead pursue yet more purges and division will only weaken our electoral coalition and damage prospects of a Labour majority,” she said.’

See: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/purging-the-left-and-ditching-socialism-could-see-labour-lose-voters-sir-keir-starmer-warned/ar-AA1byC1M?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=1184f029167a4c0c8267ef811cf5256a&ei=50

I’m glad this is being pointed out to Starmer and that it’s got what appears to be a neutral report in the I. As opposed to the right-wing press, which will probably report this with headlines screaming that it’s another attempt by Corbynite anti-Semitic Trots to keep their hold on Labour. But I have absolutely no doubt that Starmer won’t listen, and will carry on purging the left.

As for New Labour’s right-wing policies appealing to Tory voters, this needs to be qualified. The public ownership campaign group We Own It has cited statistics again and again showing that the British public, including a majority of Tory voters, want the utilities taken back into public ownership. What is stopping this isn’t public opinion but Thatcherite ideology and the media and political establishment, which will seek to demonise and undermine any politician that seeks to press for such policies.

Stop the War Coalition Holding Online Meetings Tomorrow on War in Ukraine and Yemen

I got this email from the Stop the War Coalition about changes to the meetings they were going to hold about the war in Ukraine and Yemen. The meeting about Ukraine was a teach-in, which was due to be held in London. However, Covid has meant that the event is being moved online, as is the meeting about the war in Yemen, solidly supported by our military-industrial complex. The email runs

Newsletter – 25/02/22

Ukraine Teach-In – Tomorrow!

Register Here

Our Ukraine teach-in is now taking place online due to a number of speakers having Covid. Tomorrow’s event will run from 11am-2.15pm and has an excellent panel of speakers of leading activists and experts, including anti-war speakers from both Ukraine and Russia.

It is an important opportunity to analyse the causes of the war, discuss some of the key controversies it has raised and examine its likely consequences.

There will be discussion of Ukraine’s history, NATO’s record, the threat of nuclear war, attacks on Russian culture and the issue of refugees.

Sign-up for the Zoom event now…

Register Here

The War on Yemen: A 7 Year Long Crime

In January of this year over 400 civilians were killed or injured in airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition in their war on one of the poorest countries on earth – Yemen.

The war is approaching its eighth year. It’s a war in which British personnel produce the bombs, train the pilots, coordinate air strikes and gather intelligence. All while our government provides political cover and our media largely turns a blind eye.

Join us and Liberation on Zoom later in the day tomorrow to call for an immediate end to this horrendous British-backed war.

Register Here‘

I’m not planning to go to them myself, but I thought I’d post it up here for anyone else who might want to attend. I think holding it online actually might be better, as not everyone can go to London. Holding it on Zoom means people from across the country can attend simply by logging on, so they might have a bigger audience. The teach-in on Ukraine has a truly stellar cast of speakers, one of whom, if I recall correctly, is Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani.

As for the war in Yemen, our government is deeply implicated through selling the Saudis the armaments and providing them with military personnel and expertise in the first place. This is what all the ‘wonderful kit’ does, that Dave Cameron boasted about on his visit to an arms factory in Lancashire.

The idea behind the arms sales, apart from just sheer, amoral profit, is that they will act to encourage the countries buying them to purchase other British products. But they don’t. They just buy arms. Arms we shouldn’t be selling to deeply repressive, murderous despotism like Saudi Arabia.

Tories Promised Fat Profits to Fracking Companies While Others Starved

Donald Trump made his contempt for environmentalists and public concerns about climate change and global warming very clear this week at Davos. He called them ‘prophets of doom’ and frankly denied the existence of global warming. As I pointed out in a previous post, this is not only in line with what the Republican base believes, but also the propaganda of Trump’s corporate sponsors in the fossil fuel industries. Trump has passed legislation to gut the Environmental Protection Agency and prevent it from publishing anything supporting climate change or global warming. The fossil fuel industry, particularly the billionaire Koch brothers, have also set up a network of lobbying and astroturf fake grassroots pressure groups to try and discredit global warming and the other environmental damage by the oil, gas and coal industries. Those same billionaires also use these networks to close down mainstream academic environmental research, and replace them with laboratories funded by themselves, which publish their approved material denying the reality of global warming.

Mike put up a post this week reporting Trump’s anti-environmentalist stance, and saying that this would be a problem for Britain if Boris Johnson is successful and makes a Brexit deal with America.

But the Tories have already shown their contempt for Green politics. Although Dave Cameron promised that his would be the ‘Greenest government ever’ and put a windmill on the roof of his house, that lasted only as long as he could get his foot in Number 10. The moment he won the election, those promises were dropped and the windmill came off his roof. And that wasn’t all. Cameron, like Trump, strongly favoured the petrochemical industries. While his government cut the welfare budget to leave the poor desperate and starving, he cut the tax for the fracking industry so that they could make even bigger projects. Vickie Cooper and David Whyte discuss this in the introduction to their The Violence of Austerity. They write

Indeed, some sectors have been seen as a vehicle for economic recovery and therefore singled out for special treatment. This partly explains the lack of any meaningful regulatory change in the financial sector but also why some high revenue sectors, such as unconventional oil and gas – or ‘fracking’, are being singled out for special treatment… In July 2013 the government announced that the fracking industry would receive a major reduction in its tax burden. Shale gas producers were told that they would be asked to pay just 30 per cent tax on profits compared to 62 per cent normally paid by the oil and gas industry. In response, Andrew Pendleton of UK Friends of the Earth observed:

Promising tax hand-outs to polluting energy firms that threaten our communities and environment, when everyone else is being told to tighten their belts, is a disgrace. (p. 19).

Fracking is particularly contentious, as not only does it pollute the water table but it also causes minor earthquakes. There have been major protests against it throughout the country, particularly against its operations in Lancashire. The Tories just before the election promised a moratorium on it, but did not refuse to stop it completely.

The Tories’ welfare cuts have led to people starving to death, as Mike’s report this morning about the death of Errol Graham. Mr Graham had problems with anxiety, and could not cope with unexpected changes and social situations. He was afraid to go out and could not meet or interact with strangers. Despite this the DWP stopped his ESA, which meant that he lost his housing benefit. He slowly starved to death. When the bailiffs broke down his door to evict him, he weighed only 4 1/2 stone.

Why are we learning about disabled Errol Graham TWO YEARS after the DWP stopped his benefits and he starved to death?

Obscene! Absolutely obscene!

And he isn’t the only one. 130,000 people have died due to austerity. But while the government is content to let people starve to death, it’s prepared to give vast profits to friends in polluting industries. Reading this, I think there’s little doubt that Boris will resume fracking the moment he’s given the opportunity. And that if and when he makes his wretched deal with Trump, it will signal real danger for our precious ‘green and pleasant land’.

This shows the foul pair’s priorities: the world burns, the poor literally starve to death, but they’re fine so long as polluting industries can foul the planet for profit.

 

New Anti-Fracking Petition on Change.org

I had this email sent to me by Change.org, asking if I would like to add my name to a petition launched by Bob Dennett against the resumption of fracking in the UK. The email reads

News just in from the High Court: fracking is set to start in the UK for the first time since 2011, when it caused two earthquakes.

Bob has been campaigning against fracking since the earthquakes happened near his home in Lancashire.

He says that the council failed to properly assess the safety risks, and that fracking could cause serious health and environmental problems across the country. Despite the High Court ruling, he’s vowing to keep fighting – but he needs your help.

His petition to ban fracking in the UK has 116,000 signatures – will you add your name?

Petitioning Claire Perry
Ban fracking before it’s too late!

Petition by Bob Dennett
Kirkham, UK

On the last day before parliament broke up for the summer recess, the government snuck in its approval for fracking near where I live in Lancashire. This will be the first fracking in the UK since drilling by the same company in 2011 caused two earthquakes, and will pave the way for it to spread across the country.

Fracking – which involves drilling into the earth to extract shale gas – poses a serious risk to our health and our environment. This is why I’m calling for it to be banned.

In April 2011 I was woken up by my house shaking so hard that I thought a large vehicle had collided with the building. I quickly realised that it was an earthquake which was later proved to be caused by Fracking Company Cuadrilla drilling for shale gas. Ever since then I’ve been campaigning against fracking to protect future generations, including my own grandchildren.

Where fracking is happening in the US, Canada and Australia, people are getting sick as a result of the toxic chemicals they are exposed to via air and water. Even our own government reports acknowledge that emissions of polluting chemicals in the air will increase. Pollution brought about by the fracking operation can also kill crops and pose a severe threat to wildlife. Methane leaks from gas wells and pipelines make fracking a serious contributor to climate change, more serious than CO2.

The UK’s anti fracking movement is made up of ordinary people doing whatever we can to protect our communities, our lands and our grandchildren against huge fossil fuel industries.

I refuse to let earthquakes, contaminated water and climate change be an accepted part of the world that we hand down to our grandchildren.

Please sign now to tell the government to ban fracking!

As this message points out, fracking has been a major threat to the environment across the world. When Cameron threatened to introduce it over here, communities up and down Britain organized against it, including near Keynsham, a small town near where I live in Bristol.

If you want to add your name to the petition, go to

https://www.change.org/p/ban-fracking-before-it-s-too-late?recruiter=75092145&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial.pacific_abi_select_all_contacts.select_all.pacific_email_copy_en_gb_4.v1.pacific_email_copy_en_us_3.control.pacific_email_copy_en_us_5.v1.pacific_abi_gmail_send.variation.lightning_share_by_medium_message.control.lightning_2primary_share_options_more.control&utm_term=438308

RT: 3 Anti-Fracking Activists Jailed by Judge with Family Connections to Firm

This is a very short piece from RT, which suggests that British justice in this case has been much less than impartial. The video reports that the parents of judge Altham, who jailed three anti-fracking activists, are the directors of J.C. Altham & Sons, which is reportedly in the same supply chain as Centrica. Centrica has invested tens of millions of pounds in fracking. The Altham’s company also backed a letter lobbying Lancashire council to permit fracking. The report also states that the three men are supposed to be the first eco-protesters jailed as a public nuisance since 1932.

The report shows the men clambering on to the trucks during their protest, and a tweet from The Left Wing UK revealing the judge’s connections to the fracking industry.

This clearly casts grave doubts over the judge’s impartiality and the justice of his decision. I am surprised that the judge was allowed to preside over this case, as I would have thought the men’s defence lawyer would have raised an objection against him. Perhaps they did, but it was overruled by the judicial authorities. In which case, it raises wider questions about the entire impartiality of the system in this case.

Eisenhower’s Speech Warning about the Military Industry Complex

This short video from RT, posted on YouTube, was under the title ‘Speeches that Still Matter’. It’s American president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s speech of January 17th, 1961, warning America about the threat posed by an unrestrained military-industrial complex.

After a few words about the structure of society at the beginning of the snippet, Eisenhower declares

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defence with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

It has become one of the classic speeches in modern American history, and is referred to whenever activists and politicians criticize the military-industrial complex. Because since Eisenhower’s time, it has grown and seized power. The American military machine and armaments industry sponsors American politicians, and generals, senior civil servants and politicians frequently take up positions on the boards of armaments firms after their military or political career has ended. And the American government gives billions, if not trillions to its weapons manufacturers and armed forces.

I’ve read left-wing analyses of this situation which suggest that this is a deliberate policy of the American government to stimulate the economy. It’s a form of Keynsianism, but as the right-wing ideology of free trade and laissez-faire prevents the government from openly stimulating the economy through public works projects and a proper welfare support network that allows the poor enough to purchase the goods and services they need, which will also stimulate production and industrial growth, the only way the government can actually do so is by giving more and more money to the arms industry.

And all those planes, tanks, ships, missiles, guns and bombs have to be used.

The result is endless war in which small countries in the Developing World are invaded and their leaders toppled, their industries and economies plundered and seized by American multinationals, and Fascist dictators or sham democracies are installed instead. All in the name of giving more profits to the military machine. If you want an example, think of the close connections between the Bush family and the massive industrial conglomerate Haliburton.

When Martin Luther King said in one of his speeches that America was the chief exporter of violence in the world today, he had a point. And our government under the Tories and Blair has been no better. Blair lied to us to get the support of the British public for the Iraq invasion. Maggie Thatcher promoted British arms exports, as did Blair, as did Cameron, drooling all over the ‘wonderful kit’ produced in that BAE factory in Lancashire.

And all the while ordinary people have seen services cut and the infrastructure of countries – roads, railways and so on – left to decay by the profiteering firms that should be maintaining and building them. There are cuts to public services and even more attacks on welfare payments, all in the name of ‘austerity’, ‘making work pay’ and the other lies and buzzwords used by the right to justify their impoverishment and victimization of the poor. And this is done to give massive tax cuts to the already bloated rich.

It’s high time this was stopped, the military-industrial complex reigned in, the wars for their profits ended, and the government invested instead in proper economic growth, domestic industries, infrastructure, public services, a proper welfare state and medical care, and giving working people a proper, living wage.

Ken Livingstone Praises RT’s Coverage of the War in Yemen

Okay, this is a clip of RT getting one of their fans to blow their trumpet for them, but ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone is right. He praises RT’s coverage of the war in Yemen, and its news reporting, as it reveals the stories that the Americans would rather not be covered. He states that during the evening he flicks between the news on the BBC, RT and Sky, and all of them inevitably have a bias that reflects their national interests. But when he looks back at the American coverage of the Vietnam War in the 1960s and ’70s, the bias was horrendous. RT is much better, as it shows the British public what the Saudis are really doing in Yemen.

And not just the Saudis. The Americans and we Brits have been very keen to sell them all that ‘marvellous kit’ David Cameron enthused about when he went to see a BAe System plant in Lanchashire. Yemen is a human rights atrocity, with seven million people starving in famine, and the Saudis deliberately butchering civilians, including women and children, in schools, factories and mosques. But we’re allied to the Saudis through big oil, and are desperately keen to sell them arms they don’t need and can’t maintain, simply to keep our own bloated military-industrial complex awash with money. All while ordinary Brits starve.

You can expect the Tories and their Zionist bedfellows to go berserk at this one. ‘Red Ken’ was regularly slandered in the 1980s as a ‘Communist’. Those, who knew him, were very frank in denying this. He wasn’t. He was not averse to using bits of Marxist ideology or phraseology when it suited him, and he certainly used them when it was convenient, but he wasn’t one himself. But he was a real danger to entrenched capitalist interests, not least because he believed in workers’ control. And that really loosened the bowels of the newspaper proprietors.

And the appartchiks at New Labour and their friends in the Israel lobby have been trying to smear him as an anti-Semite since. Just like they’ve been smearing thousands of others. It’s because he dared to point out that Hitler briefly made an agreement with the Zionist pioneers to smuggle a few Jews out of Germany to the nascent White European Jewish colony in Palestine. This was entirely factually correct. It was the Ha’avara agreement. But you’re not allowed to mention historical fact. It’s anti-Semitic if you do. Never mind that ‘Red Ken’s’ administration in the GLC was regularly mocked for being anti-racist, anti-homophobic and pro-feminist. Never mind that he gave money to real Jewish Socialist groups, which upset the Tory Jewish establishment at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and condemned anti-Semitism along with other forms of racism – against the Blacks and Irish, for example, in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. He’s an anti-Semite. Because he dares to criticise Israel, when few others will dare to do so, and he frightens the Blairites by actually standing up for workers’ rights when they just want to kow-tow to big business.

John Pilger: What Did Theresa May Know About Manchester Terrorists?

Now for a very serious question, amid all the hilarity surrounding Theresa May’s craven cowardice at the Leaders’ Debate yesterday. Earlier that day, veteran human rights journalist, John Pilger, had written a piece on the Counterpunch site asking what May knew about the Manchester bomber and his fellow terrorists.

He pointed out that Salman Abedi and his family had been members of a Salafist (Muslim fundamentalist) terrorist group, the LIFG. These people were such a threat, that they had all been subject to control orders. When demonstrations broke out in the Libya against the dictator, those control orders had been lifted so that the terrorists could travel to Libya to overthrow Gaddafy, just as other Salafist groups, trained and supplied by Britain, and reinforced with the SAS, rose up against him. Britain and America also began a bombing campaign in support of the rebels.

Britain gave its military support because of a spurious claim by the Salafists that Gaddafy was about to start a massacre of his opponents on a scale comparable to the Rwandan genocide in the 1990s.

Parliament subsequently held an inquiry, which concluded that David Cameron, the Tory prime minister, had led this country into a war on ‘erroneous pretences’.

Pilger places the actions of the security and intelligence services using the Manchester terrorists and others like them to overthrow Gaddafy in the context of western imperialism. Britain and the West had allied with the Salafists and intolerant Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia as a way of combating secular Arab nationalism. Gaddafy was deemed a threat because he wanted to abandon the petrodollar, substituting instead an unified African currency based on gold. He also wanted a common African bank and work towards economic union between poor nations with valuable natural resources.

And additionally, Libya possessed valuable oil fields.

The Manchester boys were no strangers to attempting to overthrow Gaddafy. In the 1990s they had made a series of attempts to assassinate him with covert British support.

After overthrowing Gaddafy, the Salafists moved south to attack Mali. Obama, who was the principle force behind the western support for the rebels, took the opportunity to send US forces into Uganda, South Sudan, the Congo and the Central African Republic. The London Chamber of Commerce staged a massive arms fair, at which British merchants of death boasted about the market for their wares in the Middle East. And last month Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia again, trying to sell them British arms, arms that have been and are being used to kill innocents, including children, in Yemen.

He makes the point that the Manchester bombing was another case of imperial blowback, in which the terrorists the West have trained and used to overthrow secular and progressive Middle Eastern regimes then return to attack and kill America, Britain and the other western countries.

Just like Blair was warned would happen prior to the disastrous, illegal invasion of Iraq.

Pilger also makes the point that Abedi’s connection to western backed Salafist terrorism is being denied. The official line is that he was a ‘lone wolf’ and petty criminal.

And critically, the FBI warned Britain that the terror cell of which he was a part was looking for a ‘political target’ in Britain.

Pilger writes

‘The unsayable in Britain’s general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions – such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist “assets” in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst – remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal “review”.

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a “hardline Islamic state” in Libya and “is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida”.

The “smoking gun” is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in “battle”: first to remove Mu’ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a “terrorist watch list” and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a “political target” in Britain. Why wasn’t he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the “lone wolf” spin in the wake of the 22 May attack – thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump’s apology.’

‘In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the “Manchester boys”. Implacably opposed to Mu’ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders – house arrest – when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. “I was allowed to go, no questions asked,” said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.’

‘In London, one of the world’s biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the “demonstration effect in Libya”. The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled “Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies”. The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank’s arms party lauded the “unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies.”’

‘The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a “political target” in Britain?’

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/31/terror-in-britain-what-did-the-prime-minister-know/

Abedi’s attack in Manchester was made easier by May’s decimation of the police, armed forces, border guards and emergency services. She warned that this would harm intelligence gathering and damage national security. She airily dismissed these criticisms as ‘scaremongering’.

But if May was told by MI5 that Abedi’s terror group were looking for a target in Britain, then this makes May, in my opinion, culpably negligent for not placing him and his gang under greater scrutiny. Quite apart from using them as part of another imperialist war of aggression.

Jeremy Corbyn has made it very clear that imperialist aggression in the Middle East does not justify Islamist terrorism. But he has pledged to restore Britain’s police and armed forces, border guards and emergency service, so that they can give us better protection.

And he does recognise that the western invasions of the Middle East are not solving the problems of global terrorism, and that another approach is needed.

We need Corbyn’s wisdom. We won’t see any such insights from Theresa May, who will just bring more wars, and more domestic terrorism created by these wars. All so that she and her paymasters in the arms industries can sell more of that ‘wonderful kit’ Cameron lauded when he visited an armaments factory in Lancashire.

Vote Labour on June 8th, and do something to stop more deaths.

Paul Nuttall Photographed with Another Islamophobic Racist

Last Friday, Hope Not Hate posted a piece reporting that Paul ‘Eddie Hitler’ Nuttall had been photographed grinning with yet another member of the British Far Right. The national press had reported last May that he had posed with Andrew Edge, a violent thug from the English Defence League.

Now he is photographed smiling with Wayne Riley, an islamaphobe, who has regularly gone on far right protest marches and abused Asians in Bolton in Lancashire. He has been convicted of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause alarm or distress on election day 2015. He apparently got so violent when his case was heard that he had to be removed from court. At the anti-mosque demo last November the Nazi youth group, National Action, threw Nazi salutes, while Bolton paraded around in a niqab with his dog draped in the Union Flag. And last month he put a video of himself on Facebook abusing local Asian men, vowing that he would ‘fight these retards until I die’.

http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/ukip/paul-nuttall-pictured-with-another-far-right-activist-5132

The Kippers have a policy of not tolerating members from the racist right, but they keep on turning up, again and again. This is why the residents of Stoke on Trent, when they were interviewed by Chunky Mark this week, expressed fear and dismay at Nuttall trying to get elected as their town’s MP. Nuttall’s only there because three other towns have conspicuously failed to elect him as their parliamentary representative. He has no connection to the town and in their view, does not care about its diverse people. One gentleman interviewed said that he was only cause division, while one of the ladies observed how hurtful his lies about immigrants only coming to Britain to claim benefits must be to those migrants, who hadn’t. Which constitute the great majority according to the stats.

Whatever Nuttall says to the contrary, he clearly likes the company of extreme right-wing thugs, with whom he seems to share a racist hatred of immigrants.

Demonstrations Across the UK Today Against Trump’s Muslim Ban

Mike has put up news that there are going to be mass demonstrations across the UK today against Trump’s ban on immigration from seven Muslim majority countries. The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has demanded that Trump’s state visit to Britain should be cancelled. And, almost predictably, Theresa May has failed to say very much about it. She has asked Boris Johnson and the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, to raise the issue of the travel ban with their opposite numbers in the US administration. But this seems to be less than altruistic. She’s not worried about the ban on Muslims going to the US so much as how it would affect the Tory MP, Nadhim Zahawi.

The demonstration in London is due to be held this evening at 6.00 pm outside Downing Street. There are also demos in Birmingham, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Edinburgh, Falmouth, Glasgow, Hastings, Leeds, Manchester, Nottingham, Preston in Lancashire, Sheffield and York. The demos are organised by Momentum, but people of other views are welcome to join them.

There is also a petition currently being compiled against a state visit by Trump to the UK, which people may also wish to sign. And Mike has also suggested that those with a Tory MP may also like to write to them in protest about it, using the tools provided by Write To Them for creating such messages.

For further information, please go to Mike’s website, where there are appropriate links to the internet pages of the organisations mentioned.

Mike’s article also has a few Tweets from those disapproving May’s silence on this critical issue. One of them is Gary Lineker, wondering when May’s going to speak out. The other is Hugh Terry, who aptly describes May as not a prime minister, but a ‘fascist apologist arms dealer disguised as a rancid old school-marm!’ Which is an accurate description of May, and indeed, of that great, golden Tory icon, Maggie Thatcher.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/01/29/join-demonstrations-across-the-nation-january-30-2017-against-trumps-muslimban/