Arise 2023 kicks off with a bang Wednesday, as a vital Our Right to Resistrally (info below, register here), brings together 15+ campaigns & groups on the fight for our civil liberties & rights.
If you aren’t one of those who has got a ticket for the whole online festival yet – please grab one here today – a better world is possible, let’s keep fighting together for it.
Yours in solidarity, The Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas Volunteers (via the Labour Assembly.)
Coming up at Arise Festival
1) RALLY: Our Right to Resist
Online, THIS Wednesday May 31, 6.30pm. Register here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here & spread the word.
John McDonnell MP // Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP // Kate Osborne MP // Kim Johnson MP // Lord John Hendy KC // Zita Holbourne, BARAC // Myriam Kane, Black Liberation Alliance // Chantelle Lunt, Black Lives Matter & Kill the Bill // Ellen Fearon, GND Rising // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) & Momentum NCG // Rob Poole, Strikemap // Chris Peace, Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign // Hasan Patel, Young Labour // Daniel Kebede, NEU next General Secretary// Fran Heathcote, PCS President // Alex Gordon, RMT President // Video message from Shami Chakrabarti // Christine Blower (Chair)
Opening Arise – An Online Festival of Left Ideas 2023.
2) What can Gramsci teach us about the crisis today & what we can do about it?
Friday June 2, 1pm, Online. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here
With James Schneider, author of “Our Bloc: How We Win” & former advisor to Jeremy Corbyn.
This event will look out how the Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony & organic crisis can help us understand what is going on today.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
3) Celebrating Solidarity: Crucial role of art & music in the miners’ strike
Sunday June 4, 5pm, Online. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here
With: Mike Jackson, LGSM; Kate Flannery & Chris Peace, Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign.
Fighting oppression & injustice has inspired many artists & musicians to connect with political struggles. As well as the support for the miners’ strike that came from many groups who were experiencing the same oppression & hostility from the establishment of the day, many artists were proactive about their support for the miners, We need bread but we can have roses too!
A Socialist Sunday session, hosted by the Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign as part of Arise. Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later.
4) The Good Friday Agreement at 25: Time for Irish Unity?
BE PART OF THE DEBATE: Register here // share & invite here // RT here // get festival ticket here.
Michelle Gildernew MP, Sinn Fein // John McDonnell MP // Geoff Bell, author of ‘The Twilight of Unionism’ // Chair: Rachel Garnham, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy.
Join us for a vital discussion on Ireland’s future & prospects for real change.
5) NHS @ 75 – How can we repair & restore it after 13 years of austerity?
Online. Wed. June 7, 18.30. Register here // Share & Invite here // Get Festival Ticket here // Retweet here
Nadia Whittome MP, John Lister (Keep Our NHS Public & co-author, NHS Under Siege), John Puntis (Doctors for the NHS.) Chair: Chloe Brooks (North West. Rep, Labour Students.)
July marks 75 years of our NHS. In light of Starmer and Streeting’s recent remarks, join the discussion on how we can end the current crisis, & secure its future as a universal publicly-owned, public service for all.
Hosted by the Labour Assembly Against Austerity at Arise 2023.
6) Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist & Scourge of Empire.
Friday June 9, 1pm, Online. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here
With Katherine Connelly – author of Sylvia Pankhurst: Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire.
Sylvia Pankhurst dedicated her life to fighting oppression & injustice. This event will look at how this courageous & inspiring campaigner is of huge relevance today.
Register here to get a link to join live or watch back later. Part of the ‘Socialist Ideas’ series.
7) People & Planet on the Brink – Socialist Solutions to Climate Catastrophe
Online, Sunday, June 11, 5.00pm. Register here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
Olivia Blake MP // Tess Woolfenden, Debt Justice // Sam Knight, Green New Deal Rising // Sam Mason, Climate Justice Coalition trade union officer // Fraser McGuire, Young Labour.
The world is on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, threatening the very future of humanity. Yet our Government – like many others globally – are more interested in protecting the profits of the fossil fuel giants than urgent action to tackle the climate emergency.
A Socialist Sunday session at Arise 2023.
8) Free Palestine – Mustafa Barghouti briefing + Q&A
Monday June 12, Online, 6.30pm. Register here //Share & Invite here // Retweet here // Get festival ticket here.
In-depth briefing + Q&A with Mustafa Barghouti, Palestinian National Initiative, on the latest developments in Palestine as Israel’s far-right government steps up its aggression.
With supplementary contributions from Young Labour, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign & Labour & Palestine. Chair: Louise Regan, National Education Union & PSC.
Free event but solidarity tickets & donations essential for funding Webinar & streaming. Hosted by Labour & Palestine as part of Arise.
9) The Case for Labour Party Democracy – for Members’ Rights & the Union Link
Online, Wednesday June 14, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Get festival ticket here // Retweet here.
With: Jon Trickett MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS//Simon Fletcher // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour.
Join us for a vital discussion to make the case for a democratic party & movement – & to map out next steps in campaigning for members’ rights & in defence of the union-link.
I also got this email from the Arise Festival of left Labour ideas notifying me that they’re organising a physical conference in London this December. Unfortunately I won’t be able to go to it, but I’m putting details of it up here for any Labour members who’d like to go. The email runs
‘CONFERENCE: Solidarity 🌹 Struggle 🌹 Socialism
In person. Sat, 10 December, 10:00 – 16:30. Conway Hall, Central London. Get tickets here // share & invite here // Retweet here & spread the word.
A national conference bringing together the Left & anti-Tory resistance movements in unity to discuss next steps in the fightback.
With: John McDonnell MP // Sarah Woolley, BFAWU General Secretary // Richard Burgon MP // Mick Whelan, ASLEF GS // Nadia Whittome MP // Zita Holbourne, Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) // Lord John Hendy QC // Hilary Schan, Momentum // Ben Chacko, Morning Star // Sabby Dhalu, Stand up to Racism // Heidi Chow, Debt Justice // Mick Burke, Socialist Economic Bulletin // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Ruth Hayes, Labour Women Leading // Matt Willgress, Labour Outlook // Sakina Sheikh AM // Steve Howell, author, Game Changer // Holly Turner, NHS Workers Say No // Jon Trickett MP // Laura Smith // Barry Gardiner MP & many more.
Themes, sessions & international guests tba – put the date in your diary today!
Mike’s just put up a short piece this afternoon commenting on the fact that a protester was arrested by the rozzers for holding a placard up outside the Tory party conference calling Priti Patel and nasty name. No, it wasn’t anything racist or personally vicious. It was just a comment on her politics. The placard just said ‘Priti Fascist’. Nadia Whittome has posted this Tweet aptly summing up Patel’s policies:
To summarise her conference speech, Priti Patel wants to:
– push back boats of refugees, risking lives
– make our asylum system even harsher
– further criminalise peaceful protesters
– penalise people with drug addiction issues.
A brutal, authoritarian vision for our country.
As Mike says, the demonstrator was right. Patel is a Fascist. Quite so, but she’s not as far down the line to real goose-stepping Nazism as some would like. Yesterday mad right-wing YouTube Alex Belfield in one of his videos reported that the French cops had shot at the channel migrants with rubber bullets. He felt we should be doing the same, and mocked the lefty snowflakes who would complain if we did. Simon Webb of History Debunked put up a piece stating that the Polish army had been stationed at their border to repel unwanted migrants after 1,000 had tried to enter the country illegally. Why can’t we do the same, he opined.
I think there are a number of reasons why such highly authoritarian behaviour is more acceptable in Poland but not over here. England hasn’t been conquered since William the Conqueror and the Normans in 1066. Britain went on from the sixteenth century onwards to conquer an empire in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Even after decolonisation, we see ourselves as historically the conquerors and imperial rulers, not as the subjects. It’s because of this history that demands for action against racism and the remains of colonialist attitudes have been successful.
Poland doesn’t have that history. Following the reign of Jan Sobieski, who defeated the Turks at the siege of Vienna in the 17th century, Poland was conquered and divided between Prussia, Austria and Russia. The Russians had a policy of russification. Polish was not taught in schools. If it was, it was taught as a foreign language. The country only gained its independence following the First World War. It was conquered again by the Nazis during the Second World and its people subjected to horrific atrocities. Poles, like all Slavs, were regarded as subhuman. They were rounded up to be used as slave labourers and racist laws put in place to prevent them marrying or having sexual relations with Aryan Germans. At the same time, the SS looked for Aryan bloodlines in the Polish population. Children with blonde hair were stolen and given to German Nazis to raise because of their assumed Aryan racial heritage. Polish villages were razed ready for German occupation and settlement. After the war Hitler planned to destroy their educational system and professional and intellectual classes and reduce them, along with the other Slavonic peoples like Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians, to peasant farmers producing agricultural goods for the German settlers and overlords. After the Jews, the Poles formed the largest proportion of Nazi victims in the concentration camps.
After the War Poland was again under Russian domination as a satellite of the USSR. Stalin was brutal in his treatment of them and the other subjects of his new empire. Anyone who had been to the West was rounded up and massacred or sent to the gulags. There is also the infamous Katyn massacre. Initially blamed on the Nazis, this was the slaughter of Polish troopers by the KGB preparatory to the Soviet conquest. Stalin also deliberately held his troops back from liberating Warsaw so that the Nazis could finish putting down the uprising there.
Given this experience of foreign rule and conquest, I’m not surprised that the Polish government, which is extremely right-wing, reacted with such intolerance towards illegal immigration. Which, of course, doesn’t make it right.
My fear is that, with everything else the Tories are doing to erode and destroy British democracy, the approval of the use of such military force will lead, but by bit, to the establishment of real Fascism in Britain.
As for the arrest of someone simply for holding up a placard calling her one, I fail to see how that constitutes any kind of offence. He wasn’t violent nor did the placard incite anyone to violence. I don’t even think you can call it libellous, as people with intolerant, authoritarian personalities are called Fascists and Nazis all the time. This is shown very well in Godwin’s Law, the saying that every debate on the internet will always end with someone from one side or the other comparing their opponent to the Nazis. Unless someone made a serious claim that someone was a real member of a Nazi group, like the NF, BNP, British Movement, Column 88 or such like, I really wouldn’t have thought it qualifies as libel. And I certainly concur with Mike. In the case of Priti Patel it’s fair comment.
It seems to me that the arrest of this man for nothing more than expressing a reasonable opinion on a viciously intolerant Tory minister is itself an act of Fascism.
This will amuse you, but probably not a lot, as the late, great Paul Daniels used to say. I got an email from the Labour party last week asking me if I had ever considered being an MP, and if I had, here was the information about training and guidance sessions about the process of becoming one. Here are the relevant extracts, with personal information removed, of course.
“Are you a future Labour MP? Our candidates come from a broad range of professions, races and backgrounds, but they all start out as members, just like you, with a passion for their community and Labour’s values.
That’s why we’re inviting you to apply for our Future Candidates Programme – running from September 2021 to July 2022, ahead of Parliamentary selections beginning. This could be the start of your journey to represent your community in Westminster.
Don’t worry if you’re not sure how to apply – to help you put yourself forward, we have designed a series of application support webinars taking place in June:
Although the primary aim of the scheme is to encourage applications for Westminster seats – the programme will also explore with successful applicants other ways they can stand for elected positions on behalf of the Labour Party.
We’re committed to ensuring that our candidates reflect the full diversity of our society. Before applications open in July we have pre-application Zoom sessions for all members alongside dedicated sessions for young people, women, BAME, LGBTQ+ and Disabled members.
You can find out more about them here:
We can’t wait to see you on one of our webinars.” The Labour Training Team
I’m too ill and weak to even consider becoming an MP, and, as someone who also suffers from depression and anxiety, I am certainly not mentally strong enough. Despite the low opinion most of have our elected representatives, I think that in general they do work extremely hard. I’ve heard of some of them working 60 hours weeks. I certainly don’t blame Nadia Whittome for taking time off due to damage to her mental health caused by her parliamentary work. Of course, Alex Belfield and the rest of them waded in to accuse her of being a ‘snowflake whipper snapper’, but I genuinely think that really dedicated MPs must be extraordinarily tough in their own way, especially when it comes from the abuse the get from members of the public. And I think that as a woman of colour, Whittome probably got more than her fair share.
I highly suspicious of this, as it looks like Starmer and the Blairite bureaucracy are simply looking for suitably right-wing candidates with which they can pack the parliamentary party, which is already stuffed to bursting with the blackguards. They certainly wouldn’t want me. Not only do I support Jeremy Corbyn and reasonable criticism of Israel, I also want to see a return to genuine Labour values and polices – a restored, confident, dignified and powerful working class, a proper welfare state that does exactly what it was set up to do, nationalised utilities and a renationalised NHS which delivers healthcare to everyone free at the point of delivery. I also want workers’ control, or a proper share in management and proper, powerful trade unions and employment rights. I want an end to gig economy. And while I despise Black Lives Matter, I recognise that in general the Black community is poor and impoverished, and has been particularly hard hit by austerity. There are real problems with British Islam, which in my view are being covered up and hidden, but Muslims, as a rule, also suffer from the same lack of education and employment opportunities as the Black community. And yes, I’m not impressed by Tommy Robinson, the EDL or the rise in Islamophobia. And I am not impressed by Starmer and his failure to deal with the racists who bullied Diane Abbott and the other Black activists and MPs.
I also suspect I’m too socially conservative for some of the hip youngster now running the party. I’d very much like a return to proper, two-parent families, with fathers keeping an active presence looking after their children. There’s a great deal of evidence showing that children from this background do much better than those from single parent families. I am not blaming single mothers – far from it. I really recognise there are good reasons why some have broken away from the fathers of their children. But I think that family decline has had a terribly detrimental effect on British society.
I am also an ardent opponent of the trans ideology. I don’t hate transpeople, and realise that there are also good reasons why some feel their only recourse is to transition to being a member of the opposite sex. But I feel it has become a pernicious ideology that encourages the transition of troubled people, particularly young women and children, for whom it most definitely is not the answer, and that there is a danger from trans-identified males in women’s spaces. This makes me an odious transphobe in the eyes of many, although I firmly believe that the science and stats are on the side of gender critical feminists, those dubbed TERFs.
I’m therefore very definitely the wrong type of candidate, which the cowering Blairite Starmer definitely wouldn’t want as MP.
This is another incident which shows the real, intolerant, treacherous face of Starmer’s administration. And it could have come straight out of the Blair playbook. Yesterday Starmer sacked three MPs from their posts as Parliamentary Private Secretaries – Nadia Whittome, Beth Winter and Olivia Blake because they had the conscience and the guts to vote against the government’s Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Bill 2019-21. The ladies objected to the bill’s provisions that would have exempted British service personnel for prosecutions for torture committed overseas. Starmer, however, had set up a one-line whip demanding that the Labout MPs abstain.
Other MPs from the ‘Corbynite’ wing of the party also had the courage to vote against the bill. They were: Diane Abbott, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Jeremy Corbyn, Ian Lavery, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell, Kate Osamor, Kate Osborne, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Zarah Sultana, Jon Trickett, and Claudia Webbe. Kudos and respect to all of them.
Lobster has put up a number of articles about the involvement of British armed forces in war crimes and supporting brutal dictatorships. At the moment the British military is giving training to 17 regimes, including the Chinese, that are on a list of thirty which are of concern because of their history of human rights abuses. The SAS was also involved in training the Sri Lankan army in its brutal war against the Tamil Tigers, which included reprisals and atrocities against the civilian Tamil population. A recent book on war crimes by the ‘Keenie Meenies’, a British mercenary company, also notes that, although they’re not formally part of the British army, they too have been used by the British state to give military support to some very unpleasant movements and regimes at arm’s length. Like the Mujahiddin fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Fascist regimes in Central America in the 1980s. Going further back, British armed forces were also responsible for brutal reprisals against Black Kenyans during the Mao Mao rebellion, including torture and mutilation. The victims of the atrocities were only granted compensation after a long legal campaign a few years ago. For details of the atrocities themselves, see the book, Africa’s Secret Gulags.
Mike also points that Starmer’s order that Labour should abstain on the bill, but not vote against it, is similar to Harriet Harman’s order a few years ago that Labour should also abstain on a Tory welfare bill that would further cut benefits and impoverish claimants. It’s all part of the Blairite strategy of trying to appeal to Tory voters at the expense of the people they should really be standing up to protect. But they try to make it seems that they’re also paying attention to their working class and socialist base by abstaining. It’s unconvincing. To me, it recalls Pilate in the Gospels washing his hands and walking off when the Sanhedrin brought Christ before him to be crucified.
What makes Starmer’s decision particularly noxious, however, what adds insult to injury, is the way it was done. Whittome was not told she was sacked but a Labour ‘representative’ – some of us can think of other epithets for this unnamed person – instead went of an briefed Guido Fawkes. That’s the far-right gossip and smear site run by Paul Staines. Staines is an extreme right-wing Tory and libertarian, who’d like to ban the trade unions and other working class organisations, privatise everything, including the NHS, and get rid of the welfare state. When he was a member of the Freedom Association back in the 1980s, the organisation invited the leader of a Fascist death squad from El Salvador as their guest of honour at their annual dinner. Other guests, I think, included members of the South African Conservative party, who were staunch supporters of apartheid. He was also mad keen on the various psychedelics that were coming into the rave scene in the 1990s, including and especially ‘E’. It’s disgusting that anyone in the news should have been told before Whittome herself, but especially a Fascist like Staines and his squalid crew.
And Mike has pointed out on his blog that this is exactly the same tactic the Blairites in the Labour party used to stab him in the back. Mike was suspended for anti-Semitism the evening before he was due to stand as a Labour councillor in the mid-Wales elections. But he only found about it when a reporter from one of the local Welsh papers rang him up to ask him about it. And then some other weasel at the NEC went off and leaked Mike’s details to the Sunset Times, which then ran a feature smearing and libeling him as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Which Mike has never been, and very strongly and utterly condemns, as he has all racism.
But this also brings to mind the negative briefing Blair himself conducted against those MPs, who dared to go ‘off-message’ during his regime. Notable victims included Clare Short, who I think also clashed with him over his definitely unethical foreign policy. If a Labour MP or senior figure dared to contradict one of the Dear Leader’s policies or announcements, Blair and Campbell called the media hacks in for an anonymous briefing in which they or a representative then attacked the dissenting MP.
And now it seems that these old tactics have returned under ‘centrist’ Keir Starmer.
The Labour party is haemorrhaging members because of the way Starmer has turned his back on the great, socialist, genuinely Labour policies that Corbyn and his team were determined to return to. Mike’s pointed out that so far Starmer has broken 9 of his pledges to uphold them. Including his commitment to add 5 per cent tax to the upper right for big earners. That’s the multi-millionaires who have benefited from massive tax breaks, funded by savage benefit cuts to the poor and starving at the bottom of society, and who have squirreled their money away in offshore bank accounts. Including companies like that well-known patriotic group of papers and media, News International. Black members are particularly bitter and disappointed because of Starmer’s scant regard for the Black Lives Matter movement, which he dismissed as a ‘moment’.
Starmer has done nothing against the intriguers, who cost Labour the 2017 and 2019 elections, and who were responsible for the racist bullying of three senior and respected Black Labour MPs. Instead, the intriguers are arming themselves with lawyers and claiming that they have been smeared. And it shows how low Private Eye has fallen that the satirical magazine is uncritically pushing these claims, just as it was an enthusiastic supporter of the anti-Semitism smears against Corbyn and his supporters.
Mike yesterday put up a piece commenting on this grossly shabby action by Starmer, including citing some very excellent tweets from the public. They include people like Tory Fibs, Kelly-Ann Mendoza and Rachel Swindon. But my favourite comment is this from Mark Hebden
Nadia Whittome has essentially been sacked for voting against war crimes.
The Labour Party is the Party of War criminality again then
Yes, just as they were when Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq.
Mike has pointed out that Labour is behind the Tories in the polls, although Starmer himself is actually more popular than Boris. He asks, quite credibly, if this is because the Labour party acts like this to betray its own members.
What comes out of this is that Starmer himself is another intriguing Blairite and that he and his scuzzy advisors really haven’t learnt that not only are such tactics against one’s own unacceptable in themselves, they will also make you unpopular with the public. The press didn’t hold back on using these negative briefings against Blair and Brown when they did it, in order to make them look personally unpleasant and untrustworthy. Which they were.
Starmer is damaging the Labour party. I wish the poll result were the reverse. I wish Labour was surging ahead of the Tories, and it was Starmer behind Boris. It is no more than he deserves.
The Tories are doing it again, trying to deport Caribbean immigrants back to countries from which they emigrated so long ago they may only have the dimmest memories of them. If they remember them at all. It’s like May’s attempted deportation of the Windrush migrants, people who were, or should have been, legally entitled to remain here. But the documentation allowing them to say had somehow been destroyed. Now Johnson wishes to deport 50 similar migrants back to Jamaica and the Caribbean. The difference is that these people are all supposed to be guilty of serious offences, such as manslaughter, rape, violent crime and dealing class A drugs. But they’ve all served their prison sentences, and the law firm representing one of them says that they are “potential victims of trafficking, groomed as children by drugs gangs running county lines networks and later pursued in the criminal justice system as serious offenders”. The deportations come suspiciously before the publication of the ‘lessons learned’ review of the Winrush Scandal. More than 170 MPs, led by labour’s Nadia Whittome, have signed a letter demanding the cancellation of the flight.
The Appeal Court has also ruled that the deportations may not go ahead until it is confirmed that they have all had advice from the lawyers. But it’s a good question whether the Tories will pay any attention to this. Boris Johnson does not seem to have much regard for the rule of law when it suits his interest.
Yesterday, Diane Abbott wrote a piece in the I laying out the issues involved and forcefully showing why these deportations are unjust in a piece ‘Windrush: reigniting the scandal’. She wrote
The planned deportation of 50 Jamaican-born British residents to Jamaica has caused uproar among the black community and many campaign groups. it is widely considered to have strong racial overtones and recalls the injustices of the Windrush scandal.
The 50 people involved are all convicted offenders. Judges have always had the power to direct that criminals be deported at the end of the sentence, but that is when they are dealing with an individual case – with all the facts and personal circumstances in front of them. These deportations are different and relatively arbitrary. They are solely tied to the length of the original sentence – No 10 has said that all 50 have sentences of over 12 months – with no consideration of personal circumstance. The potential deportees have already served an appropriate sentence. There have been assurances that none of these deportees are members of the Windrush cohort, but it is not clear whether any are the children or grandchildren of Windrush victims. If so, their eligibility to apply for British citizenship may have been compromised by the confusion over their relatives’ immigration status.
The Government’s 2016 review into the welfare in detention of vulnerable persons suggested that it should not be deporting people who came to this country as children. The Windrush: Lessons Learned review reportedly says the same thing.
The Government wants to deport people back to Jamaica, when they may have no memory of the country because they came here so long ago. Many of them will have no support in Jamaica or they may no longer have family and friends there.
The people the Home Office proposes to deport have been held effectively incommunicado because of problems with the mobile phone signal in the area of the detention centres. So it is not clear that the potential deportees will have had all the appropriate legal advice. Campaigners are asking that, at the very least, these deportations are halted until the Windrush review has been published and studied.
The Windrush scandal was traumatising for Britain’s black community. It is very important that Britain’s diverse communities see that we are all entitled to fairness and due process.
Abbott is probably the most reviled woman in parliament, no matter what the Blairite ladies were saying about the misogyny they’d supposedly received from Corbyn’s supporters. The Tories and their lackey press hate her as a left-wing firebrand and an anti-racist activist. But here she shows herself cautious – she doesn’t actually call the deportations racist, although I’m sure that is very much how it appears to her as well as others. I’m also aware that most people don’t have much sympathy for the perpetrators of serious crimes. But that’s evidently what Johnson was hoping for when he selected these people for deportation. He hoped that their criminal records would mean that either no-one was bothered, or he could depend on the right-wing press on presenting it as good, British justice. And needless to say, those criticising it would once again be presented as foul liberals siding with crims because they just happen not to be White. But Abbott and the other MPs and campaigners are right. This looks very unjust. It does look like Windrush Mk 2. And if it goes ahead, it will mean that Johnson and the Tories will be bolder the next time about deporting people. And that will mean people, who are innocent any crime or serious wrongdoing, with the exception that they were born outside this country, or are the wrong colour.
And after Johnson finds out how far he can get away with victimising Blacks, he’ll start doing it to everyone, regardless of the colour of their skin. That’s another reason why he has to be stopped, apart from the obvious racism.
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