Karin Smyth Pushing Right-Wing Candidates in Bristol South Labour NEC Elections

Tomorrow Bristol South Labour Party is holding its elections for the party’s NEC. If you are a member of that constituency Labour party, please go ahead and register to vote before the meeting begins on Zoom. Registration stops at 6.45 when you should start signing on. It’s a closed meeting, and so people won’t be admitted after it begins at 7.00 pm.

Yesterday evening I and the other constituency party members got an email from our local MP Karin Smyth outlining what she’d been doing in parliament. She’s due to give her report at the meeting. She also told us who she hopes will win our votes for the NEC. And it looks like a pack of Blairites.

‘There are many excellent candidates and I am hoping Paula Sheriff, Theresa Griffin, Liz McInnes, Johanna Baxter, Ann Black, Terry Paul, Luke Akehurst, Gurinder Singh Josan and Shama Tatler will be successful.’

Now I’ll admit my ignorance. I don’t know most of these people, but one name stands out: Luke Akehurst. If you’ve been following Tony Greenstein’s excellent blog, you’ll know that he’s one of the true-Blue Blairites, and a fanatical Zionist. He’s one who has smeared and tried to purge party members as anti-Semites if they supported Jeremy Corbyn or dared to offer the mildest criticisms of Israel. I’m guessing that the others she’s promoting have similar views.

My was one of those smeared and expelled from the party by the NEC, simply because he had the temerity to show that Ken Livingstone was historically correct when he said that Hitler supported Zionism. The Nazi leader signed a short-lived pact with the Zionist organisations in Germany to smuggle German Jewish settlers to Palestine. This was the Ha’avara Agreement, which is recognised history and documented as such in the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. 85 per cent of the initial founding capital for the Jewish state also came from Nazi Germany.

Mike was suspended from the party without being told on the evening before he was due to stand as a councillor in the local elections in his part of Wales. The NEC also went behind his back and told the press before they told him. This included Gabriel Pogrund, a hack with the Sunset Times, who then rang him up for an interview. The Sunset Times then showed its complete absence of any concern for truth by libeling him as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Which he is certainly not, and has never been. These lies were repeated by other newspapers, including the Jewish Chronicle.

Before his expulsion, Mike, like so many other decent, left-wing, genuinely anti-racist members of the Labour party, was subject to a kangaroo court hearing. This was supposed to let him challenge the NEC’s decision, but is really just window dressing designed to put a veneer of justice on what is a flagrantly unjust procedure. The Party then released a statement which again totally ignored and misrepresented what Mike said in his defence. To show how completely uninterested they were in any kind of real justice, one of the members of the hearing said, when asked by Mike if he’d read the parts of his defence in which he showed that he wasn’t an anti-Semite, admitted he hadn’t. He’d been told by someone unnamed not to. And the head of the tribunal wanted to finish early because she needed to catch the train home to Scotland.

Mike is currently suing the Labour Party for breach of contract over his shabby treatment. The hearing is next months, and he’s invited the press. I hope he wins.

Smyth’s support of these scumbags disappoints and infuriates me, but I’m not surprised. She has struck me as something of a Blairite. She was one of those who stayed away when Jeremy Corbyn visited Bristol on the campaign trail next year.

I fully intend to vote for their candidates from the Labour Left if there are any put forward, and I strongly advise others to do the same.

That is if you want a Labour Party that really stands for working people, rather than a nest of Blairite intriguers determined to enforce Tory policies and expel on fake, trumped up charges anyone who opposes them.

Vox Political on More False Claims of Abuse and Intimidation against Corbyn

Mike on Saturday put up another piece on the antics of the Blairites trying to accuse Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters of harassing and intimidating them. On Friday, Paula Sheriff and 43 other female Labour MPs sent a letter to Corbyn demanding that he act against groups that they claimed were intimidating them in his name. They also criticised John McDonnell and other Shadow Ministers for attending rallies were bullying was rife or quietly condoned.

The women behind the letter gave no evidence that the people involved in such campaigns against them were supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, or even members of the Labour party. As for their claims of bullying and intimidation, Corbyn himself has been making appeals for reconciliation. The personal attacks and criticisms come from the Blairites – Owen Smith, Angela Eagle and the Blairistas. And their tactics of abuse and misrepresentation have become so bad, that the Corbyn camp has drawn guidelines urging their supporters to have nothing to do with the Blairites, because they will mock and attempt to twist their words so as to misrepresent them.

Mike states that he can confirm these tactics are being used, because people have tried it on him. As for their demands, Mike reports that Corbyn is quite happy to hold meetings with women in the Parliamentary Labour party. He has also already issued statements condemning threatening behaviour. As for bullying at rallies, Mike states very clearly that it is difficult for him to control some of it, when it does not come from his camp but the Blairites themselves. Such as that ‘Eradicate Blairite Scum’ T-shirt, produced by Anna Phillips, of the Blairite pressure group, Progress, and her pet PR stunt organiser, Lewis Parker. This was the occasion where a threatening slogan was used on a T-shirt, as Madam Sheriff claims. Mike asks rhetorically whether those responsible for the T-shirt have come forward. Obviously, they haven’t, nor are they likely to.

See Mike’s article at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/07/23/is-there-any-evidence-at-all-to-connect-threats-of-abuse-to-labour-mps-with-jeremy-corbyn/

All this reminds me of the tactics Mussolini used to try and justify Italian imperialism on the international stage. The Fascists claimed that Italy was a ‘proletarian nation’ that was being discriminated against by the other European powers, who were preventing it from acquiring the empire it so richly deserved. Apart from Ethiopia, and North Africa, Musso also had his eye on Nice in France, Greece and Albania. Before he finally launched his invasion of the last two, the Duce made a number of inflammatory speeches claiming that Italy has a right to them. When the Great Powers, France and Britain, told him precisely where he could go, he then made a series of new speeches complaining about how poor Italy was being bullied by France and Britain. Even though the ranting and aggressive militarism was all coming from him.

So it is with the Blairites. In fact, there is something very childish about the way they behave. It all reminds me very strongly of school bullies. You know, the type that liked to punch people from behind, and then run away screaming for miss the moment they were accused. Or would issue a stream of insults, challenging you to a fight, but demand that you should hit them first, so they could say you started it. And if you weren’t drawn, they’d then start yelling that you were obviously a coward and afraid of them. It’s all at that level.

And several of their demands actually look to me like a way of trying to close down democratic debate through the back door. Let’s take their demand that people should stop demonstrating in front of constituency offices, because they and their staff feel threatened. The most logical place for a demonstration against an unsatisfactory politician is in front of their office. Now this should be done without personal threats or abuse. But it should be a perfectly legitimate form of the right to demonstrate. It only becomes harassment if threats and insults are made. I would argue that demonstrations, simply as demonstrations, only constitute harassment if they are made outside the person’s home, or that of other members of their family. The Blairite ladies are here using the precise logic that has seen Cameron’s government crack down on the right of the public to hold demonstrations. These can now be banned by the local authorities if they feel they constitute a ‘nuisance’. Not if they may lead to public order problems, like possible rioting or fighting, but simply ‘nuisance’. It’s part of the same desire to find ‘soft’ reasons for limiting public expressions of disapproval, and so maintain the image of overwhelming public support.

And I don’t take seriously the Blairite’s claims that there is somehow a culture of misogyny under Corbyn. A year or so ago he was being ridiculed for suggesting segregated, women-only railway carriages might be a solution to the problem of sexual assaults and rape against women on the trains. His opponents rightly pointed out that wasn’t the answer, and that women should be safe regardless of where they were. Absolutely. But Corbyn’s answer, although extreme, showed that he took the issue very seriously indeed. In many ways, it reminded me of the controversies over Ken Livingstone’s GLC over the way they funded radical feminist, gay and anti-racist groups.

This is yet another bullying attempt by the Blairites to play the victim and smear their opponents. All such antics are doing is revealing quite how childish and bullying Smiff, Sheriff and the Blairites are.

Vox Political: Six MPs Explain Why They’re Voting against Bombing Syria

Mike over at Vox Political has posted six individual pieces about Labour MPs, who are against bombing Syria, in which they give their reasons for opposing the government’s policy.

They are

Cat Smith, the MP for Lancaster and Fleetwood,

Cat Smith: Labour’s Lancaster and Fleetwood MP will not support air strikes

Jo Stevens, the MP for Cardiff Central

Cardiff Central MP will vote against air strikes in Syria

Matthew Pennycook, the MP for Greenwich and Woolwich

Greenwich and Woolwich MP weighs in against air strikes in Syria

Paula Sheriff, the MP for Dewsbury and Mirfield

Paula Sheriff: Labour’s Dewsbury and Mirfield MP opposes air strikes

John Mann. Mann has criticised Corbyn about the way he handled setting out Labour’s policy, putting his own beliefs ahead of everyone else’s. But he is also going to vote against bombing Syria.

John Mann is a Corbyn critic – but like Corbyn he opposes air strikes in Syria

And Keir Starmer, the Labour MP for Holbourne and St. Pancras, formerly Director of Public Prosecutions

Former DPP Keir Starmer is no pacifist – but he won’t support air strikes in Syria

These give various reasons for not supporting Cameron’s decision. These include the lack of UN and international support, concern for the ordinary people caught up in the bombing and the further destabilisation that will occur, and the belief that bombing alone will not solve the problem. Starmer in particular makes it clear that Cameron’s statement that there are 70,000 fighters already in Syria willing to take our side is wholly unrealistic.

Mike has also written another long piece observing that the media seems desperate to make Labour seem responsible for Britain’s bombing of Syria, if this goes ahead, despite Corbyn and the majority of Labour members opposing it.

Syria: Have the UK news media ever been as desperate to convince the public of a lie?

This bias is shared not just by newspapers like the Metro, but also by the Beeb’s own Newsnight programme. The narrative being spun here is that if some Labour MPs do vote with the government, the bombing will be due to division in the Labour party. Mike observes that they’re desperate for a war and more blood spilt, but want to blame it on the Labour party instead of with the government.

I can’t say I’m surprised at the tactic. When Thatcher and Major were in power, the constant refrain from the Tories was that Labour was divided by factionalism, and hence a shambolic mess that shouldn’t be in power. Quite different from the confident and monolithic Tories, whipped into line by Maggie. This changed with the control-freakery of New Labour, but now that Cameron has emerged from the Left of the party – actually, the traditional centre ground before Bliar took it to the right – they’ve simply dusted off and revived that bit of Tory rhetoric. They’ve also remembered how unpopular the invasion of Iraq was, and how deeply Bliar and his crew have been resented for that. And so they’re determined to pin this on Corbyn’s Labour. Even though they’ve been loudly denouncing Corbyn for being somehow unpatriotic and openly supporting terrorism from the IRA to Osama bin Laden.

It’s unsurprising that most of the Tory media are against Labour. It’s also almost to be expected that Newsnight would follow suit. The Beeb is currently fending off Tory plans to strip it of the licence fee, or privatise it. Their response has been to roll over and adopt a fawningly pro-government position in the hope that it will somehow appease them. It won’t.

It’s also a strategy by which the media can hide their own volte face in supporting the bombing. Nearly a decade and a half ago, many Conservative MPs opposed the invasion of Iraq, and various Tory rags like the Spectator also took an anti-War line. Now they’re pro-war, in contrast to the grassroots of the Labour party, which is opposed to it. But it’s clearly an uncomfortable position. After all, Private Eye and other consistent critics of humbug by the great and good make a point of showing up cases where MPs and the media have changed their opinions when it’s been convenient. Their support for bombing now could cause people to question whether their opposition to the Iraq invasion came from genuine conviction, or simply because this time the calls for military action came from the Labour party. So they have to pass responsibility for bombing onto Labour, in order to avoid criticising their favoured party, the Tories, or appearing to contradict themselves by supporting military action in circumstances similar to Bliar’s invasion of Iraq.