This afternoon racist vlogger Ethan Winstanley posted a piece on his YouTube channel reporting the registration at the Electoral Commission of a party calling itself the Muslim Party of Great Britain. This was illustrated by a copy of the registration form. The party stated that it was set up to represent ‘all minority of Britain’ (sic) and to tackle the problems that ‘lingure’ in the great country of Great Britain. Winstanley noted that its exclusive focus on ethnic minorities excluded the White majority, and wondered what this would mean for Whites when we become a minority in fifty years’ time.
I’ve been looking for a bit more information about this group. So far all l’ve found was an article by Beachcomber in yesterday’s (27th October 2023) Daily Express, which quotes the above and expresses some scepticism about its chances of success with the remark ‘good luck with that.’ Winstanley, in his piece was frightened by the prospect that this organisation would enjoy explosive success and growth. I’d be surprised if this happens, given that there have been attempts to establish Islamic parties before. I remember when, way back in 1989, the Beeb reported the foundation of the Islamic Party of Britain. This lasted up until 2006. According to Wikipedia:
‘The Islamic Party of Britain is a defunct political party in the United Kingdom that was active from its formation in 1989[1] until 2006. The IPB was opposed to both capitalism and communism. David Musa Pidcock, a Sheffield man who converted from Roman Catholicism to Islam while working as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, founded and led the party.[1] The IPB published a quarterly magazine entitled Common Sense.
The party entered the 1992 general election, standing three unsuccessful candidates in the constituencies of Bradford, a city with a large Muslim minority, and one in a London constituency, Streatham.
Founding
The Islamic Party of Britain was founded in September 1989 by Muslims who had grown dissatisfied with the Labour Party, a party that has traditionally gained the support of Muslims in Britain. Many Muslims were unhappy with the atheism of Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, and wanted a party that would cater specifically for the needs of Muslims. Many also felt that both Labour and the Conservatives had not done enough to help Muslims in the controversy over Salman Rushdie‘s book The Satanic Verses.[2]
Performance
The Islamic Party never achieved a seat in either house of Parliament. Pidcock represented the party in the 1990 Bradford North by-election, earning 800 votes (2.2%), finishing fourth from ten candidates.[3]
At the 1992 general election, the party stood candidates in each of the three constituencies in the City of Bradford. All finished in last place, with leader Pidcock in Bradford West performing best, on 471 votes (0.96%).[4] It also stood a candidate in Streatham, coming fifth of seven candidates.[5] ‘
This looks like an attempt by someone to exploit the collapse of Muslim support for the Labour party caused by Starmer refusing to apologise for the Israeli state’s war crimes in Gaza, an attitude that is causing division in the Labour party. 29 local councillors have so far resigned, Richard Burgon is preparing an early day motion calling for a ceasefire, Sadiq Khan has called for a ceasefire and Mick Lynch of the RMT has challenged Starmer to call for a ceasefire. Clearly the founders of the new Muslim party hope to fill this vacuum. My guess is that they’ll find it very difficult. New parties have to do a lot of campaigning for years before they get anywhere near to national relevance. UKIP is an example of this. I think they spent 10 years campaigning before their breakthrough into national politics, and even then their impact was much less significant than would appear from Farage’s propaganda and the excited media coverage at the time.
The party’s establishment is ominous, however, in that it marks the arrival, or attempted arrival of the sectarian politics of Muslim countries such as Pakistan and countries with a sizable Muslim population such as Bangladesh. If the party does have any kind of success, it will lead to further divisions in Britain along racial and religious lines and possibly lead to the kind of conflict and violence that has erupted in India and which was seen earlier this year in rioting between Hindus and Muslims. Of course, it’s also possible that the party will vanish as quickly as it’s been set up, depending on whether the Labour party is able to win back Muslim support and integrate them into mainstream, secular politics.
Kernow Damo posted another brilliant video yesterday about Starmer’s latest embarrassment in his mishandling of the conflict in Gaza. Damo’s video begins by pointing out that the right over here and the right-wing media overwhelmingly supports Israel. Rishi Sunak has expressed his support for the country, which really should surprise absolutely no-one. So has Keir Starmer, who has refused to apologise for his comments endorsing Israeli war crimes as Israel defending itself, and denying that he ever made such comments. Even though they’re on numerous internet videos for all to see. He even told a group of Muslim Labourites that he wasn’t going to apologise, which must have been a slap in the face to them.
The man from Cornwall also points out that though aid is being allowed into Gaza, its supply is obviously endangered by the fact that there is no ceasefire. Without it, the aid convoy is just another target. This is one of the reasons why a ceasefire is absolutely imperative. Starmer hasn’t called for one, and probably won’t unless given instructions by Biden. But the other opposition parties such as the Lib Dems and SNP do want a ceasefire. And so does a portion of the Labour party. Richard Burgon, of the Socialist Group of Labour MPs, has prepared a petition calling for an early day motion for a ceasefire. 95 MPs have signed it, 31 of whom are Labour MPs. This includes a senior, front bench Muslim MP, who is risking his position by going against his leader’s position. And in London, elected mayor Sadiq Khan has called for a ceasefire.
Khan’s declaration notes that many Brits have relatives and friends in Gaza, and are left in anguish and worry for them. This is obviously true. London’s a world city, with a sizable Muslim and Middle Eastern population. Besides which, one of the local councillors interviewed on the news was a British Palestinian woman from Oxford. Khan goes on to make a very solid case for the ceasefire.
Damo states he has issues with Khan as he comes from the same side of the party as Starmer, but this time he’s done the right thing. Indeed he has. He’s shown far more moral fibre than Starrmer. And Damo wonders if some of Starmer’s support for Israel isn’t ‘bought and paid for’. Again, a good question. The 100 per cent Zionist Starmer has got a lot of donations from pro-Israel groups and lobbyists such as Trevor Chinn. His admired predecessor, Blair, also had the same after attending a gathering at the Jewish embassy. It was this money that enabled Blair to be independent of the unions, despite them funding his election to parliament in the first place. I’m sure Starmer’s Zionism is genuine, but yes, monetary considerations are no doubt part of it, especially as he’s done his best to drive ordinary people and their subscriptions away from the Labour party.
And Khan’s call for a ceasefire looks like a serious challenge Starmer’s authority. Starmer’s incompetence and arrogance over Gaza is haemorrhaging Muslim support from the party. 70 per cent of Muslims used to support Labour. Now it’s down to four. And 29 councillors have now resigned. London is the country’s capital and, as said, a world city with a global presence. Khan’s welcome defiance of Starmer therefore is a real challenge to Starmer’s leadership and his presumed right to rule. I wouldn’t be surprised if Khan had his eye on the Labour leadership and wanted to become PM, just as Boris wanted to run the country after he ran London. Various right-wingers were moaning about Khan wanting to be a global politicians while he couldn’t cut down the violence in the capital because he was too busy messing around with clean air zones.
But Khan is still right about a ceasefire, and has shown up Starmer’s lack of moral leadership.
I got this message from the pro-democracy organisation yesterday, following the extreme hot spells we’ve been having. It notes that the government and Labour are moving away from enacting policies to combat climate change with potentially catastrophic results for the planet and humanity. This is despite the fact that the majority of Brits are worried about the issue. And despite the rants and vandalism of Sadiq Khan’s ULEZ scheme and its cameras, most Londoners actually support it. Which is precisely what you won’t here on GB News.
‘Dear David,
This weekend has been an absolute scorcher. In London, Sadiq Khan issued an emergency weather response on Thursday due to a long string of blazingly hot days, which are likely to shatter previously held records for both the most consecutive days over 30ºC in September, and the most days over 30ºC in September overall. The new records are not likely to stand for long.
Earlier this year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) noted in an annual report that “the choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years.” In a similar vein, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) found in its 2022 Global Assessment Report that “current societal, political and economic choices” are “push[ing] the planet towards its existential and ecosystem limits.” The question that those of us concerned about democracy can’t help but ask is: who really gets to make those crucial choices today, and therefore who determines our course of action?
The IPCC emphasises that government actions at all levels, from the local to the national to the international, will determine the future not just of our country or region, but of the world as a whole. The integrity of the global food system, the rate of extreme weather events, the stability of our ecosystems, and so much more will depend on the choices our leaders make right now. And right now, those choices aren’t being made democratically – we’re all going to pay the price for that.
74% of British adults now express serious concern about climate change, and yet the government is utterly failing to take even its own unambitious climate goals seriously. The views of lobbyists for oil giants and investment firms take precedence over all others. Our political system fails to reflect our perspectives and ideas properly, and the nation’s ambitions are failing to translate into actual policy.
Several recent examples highlight the growing divide between the public will and government policy:
This week, the government auction for offshore wind was described as the “biggest policy failure in decades”, after prices were set too low and the government failed to secure any investments. There is huge public support for wind power in the UK, but those in power don’t seem to care.
The government is turning London’s Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) into a new front in the culture war. Recent by-election campaigns have taken a strong anti-ULEZ stance on the basis that attempting to reduce carbon emissions is restricting people’s freedom. In reality, a majority of Londoners supported expanding ULEZ.
Both Labour and the Conservatives are now wrestling with the nation’s original Net Zero targets. What was once a consensus on fighting climate change is now increasingly up for debate, and Britain’s two major political parties are increasingly backing away from tangible measures to reduce emissions. That’s despite the fact that the UK has unusually high support for green measures among the general population.
If we don’t start making different choices, things are only going to get worse. Unfortunately, everyday people like us are being excluded from the big political debates, unable to have our say on the decisions being made about all of our futures. Despite the picture the government wants to paint, a majority of people do want to see more action on climate change – we need to reform and revitalise our democratic system so that their voices can be heard.
We know what that reform looks like. It means a more proportional voting system. It means an end to the elite lobbying clubs and donor groups that dominate Westminster. It means accountability for MPs and Ministers with conflicts of interest. We’ve got it all outlined in our upcoming report, which we’re very excited to share with you next week.
A few months ago I posted a petition on 38 Degrees to get Bristol city council to take the bus service back under its control, either through municipalisation or a franchising scheme. This followed demands from local councillors in Bristol and Keynsham, a nearby town between Bristol and Bath. And also because my part of Bristol has had its bus service slashed into nonexistence.
It seems I was ahead of the curve. I don’t think many people signed my petition, but the news website Bristollive reported yesterday that a new group in Bristol had been launched, Reclaim Our Buses, who had held a demonstration on College Green last Friday, July 7th. The article by Alex Seabrook ran
‘New petition launches demanding buses in Bristol be brought under public control
Campaigners are urging the metro mayor to investigate franchising and take back control of the region’s bus network
A new petition has launched demanding buses in Bristol and the wider area be brought back under public control. Hundreds of people signed the petition within hours of it launching and organisers hope it will provide evidence of the “huge public support” for bus franchising.
Campaigners said that recent bus cuts have left elderly and disabled people in Ashton Vale stranded, children struggling to get to school in Winterbourne, and vulnerable people unable to access vital services. Reclaim Our Buses is calling for public control of the bus network. It comes as Bristol Live is running a campaign for better buses in the city.
They are urging Dan Norris, the West of EnglandLabour metro mayor, to formally begin a legal process exploring how franchising could work in Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset. Mr Norris said the option was “on the table” and his combined authority has helped train up dozens of new bus drivers this year….
Many of the bus routes which were cut earlier this year were subsidised by local councils. Some routes make a profit for the companies which operate the buses, while others cost more money to run than they bring in through fares.
Due to rapidly rising costs, councils in the West of England chose not to increase their subsidies to match inflation, so several subsidised routes were withdrawn. With franchising, income from busy and popular routes could be kept back and spent on these subsidies.
Another reason for recent bus cuts was the sudden shortage of drivers. This began when Britain left the European Union, creating a lack of lorry drivers. Many bus drivers then switched to driving lorries, with much higher salaries, creating a knock on effect. In Bristol, First cut the frequency of many routes last autumn, before increasing them again this spring.
n a statement, Mr Norris said: “Creating a thriving, reliable bus network for passengers is a big priority for me. I’ve always said franchising is on the table. But it’s not a magic bullet. The biggest issue we and other regions have been facing on the buses is the severe bus driver shortage — that includes Greater Manchester, which has franchising.
“Although we are gripping this — training dozens of drivers this year alone. And I’m proud to have introduced new and innovative solutions to our bus challenges like my Birthday Bus scheme to get more people using public transport, which will mean more money to make further improvements to the bus network.”
Ms Carvalho said: “Under franchising, you can incorporate employment and standards into the contracts with the bus companies. And that’s a key difference with the system that we have now and the franchising system, in a way that would benefit bus drivers. Unite, who represents bus drivers, has backed this petition because they can see that this is a long term solution to the current crisis in bus services.
“In London where they have had a franchising system forever, there is much higher retention of bus drivers. If people have good working conditions, it’s just basic common sense that they’re more likely to stay in the job and it will become a more attractive employment offer.”
Private companies would likely still run many of the services under franchising, which is a separate system than public ownership. Combined authorities were given the legal power to bring in franchising by the government in 2017. The law currently doesn’t allow setting up publicly owned companies, but that could change if Labour wins a general election next year.
A few places in Britain still have publicly owned bus companies, such as Reading, Newport and Nottingham. The Bristol Omnibus Company was publicly owned, until Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government made major reforms to buses in the 1980s, when the former main operator in the city and many others were sold off to private companies.
One issue with the bus network in Bristol is that several companies run services along the same routes, but passengers cannot use a ticket from one company with another. In London and under new plans in Manchester, passengers can use the same ticket regardless of operator, due to public oversight of the network from the mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham.
It’s unclear how much bus franchising would cost the combined authority, according to Ms Carvalho, who added a formal study into the option would include estimated costs. She also said that £8 million was available to spend on providing free bus travel for passengers during the month of their birthday, as well as an earmarked £15 million study into mass transit.
She said: “Franchising saves costs in the long run because it makes the whole system more efficient, because all the routes are integrated, more profitable routes can subsidise the least profitable routes, and it just creates a more efficient system overall. We’re quite baffled at why Dan Norris isn’t taking this forward.’
I think June is Pride month over in the Land of the Free, but there seems to be signs that both in America and over here parts of the gay community are turning against it. Some of this seems to be ordinary gay men and women with gender critical views, who feel that the emphasis Pride and the mainstream gay organisations have placed on transgender people and their issues is both dangerous and excludes ordinary gays. There’s a video of the operations manager of the American gay anti-trans organisation, Gays Against Groomers, tearing up the Pride flag saying that it does not represent them or their community. Gays Against Groomers are concerned about the promotion of the transgender ideology among children and its encouragement of them questioning their gender identity. The gender critical gay YouTubers on this side of the Atlantic have similar issues, but they also feel that organisations like Pride don’t represent them because of their focus on trans people. Barry Wall, the EDIJester, put up a video a few weeks ago going through the programme Manchester Pride had put together for their festival. There were plenty of trans-themed events, but far fewer for ordinary gays. Clive Simpson and Dennis Kavanagh of the ‘Queens Speech’ channel had similar complaints about Sadiq Khan’s ideas for London’s Pride festival. Khan had announced that the focus in his city’s Pride festival would be trans people, which left them as ordinary gays feeling marginalised and alienated. They felt the same about all the mainstream gay organisations, declaring that they had been hollowed out and ruined from within. They no longer represented ordinary gays and lesbians. As organisations set up to represent and protect a specific demographic, they were unique in this. The various anti-racist organisations set up to protect and represent Blacks and Asians, for example, still continue to do so. But to them, the gay organisations no longer represented ordinary gays, although Pride and other organisations were still keen to get their money because of the power of the ‘pink pound’.
There also appears to be a feeling that Pride had been taken over by straight people and a revulsion at the appearance of kink. The pair said that it now seemed to be about straight people with fetishes. They didn’t want to go to it because they said they didn’t want to see people wearing dog masks with their private parts on display. And it seems they’re not alone. They mentioned one particular gay rights activist, who had asked her gay audience if they still went to Pride. Many of them didn’t, again complaining that it was no longer the fun event they remembered from previous years, but had had been taken over by kink.
At the same time, it seems to me that the controversy over drag queen story hour is leading to a general backlash against the LGB community in America. There was a video on YouTube the other day of the citizens of one town, Fairview, criticising their local councillors over a Pride event. They didn’t believe it was suitable for children and objected to a drag show that was going to be a part of it. In fact, the event was 18+, so it was very definitely not aimed at children. And while there are good objections to drag shows for children, adults should have every right to see these shows if they so wish. This local controversy appears to bear out the fears of some gender critical gays that the strong promotion of the transgender issue and ideology would lead to a backlash against all gays, regardless of their own stance on the issue.
I don’t know if this is a growing trend, and if it will result in more people turning their backs on Pride. I’ve come across other posts and videos online by gay people saying that they also find Pride too corporate and actually quite oppressive, now that governments and corporations are using it to promote their inclusiveness and welcoming policies towards gays and trans people. I think this is what happens to most formerly subversive or rebellious movements as they become the new orthodoxy and the source of new rules and official attitudes. And against this there are the number of gays, who continue to support Pride and the other gay organisations and their campaigns on behalf of transpeople.
GB News and the Depress have reported that London mayor Sadiq Khan is facing calls to sack his advisor on Black culture, Kemi Olivia Alemoru. Alemoru’s the former editor of Gal-Dem, and now folded magazine for women and non-binary people of colour. So what were these terribly tweets that she made that have caused such offence? Well, she called Johnson ‘the Grim Reaper’ and wondered why he hadn’t been attacked as others had got a slap for less. She also called the Tory government ‘murderers’ and said “They have stood by idly and let people’s families die taking too much time to make decisions that could save lives, using money to make their friends rich rather than make our pandemic infrastructure robust or useful.” The GB News article about this quotes a Conservative member of the London Assembly, Neil Garratt, as saying “It is quite wrong for Sadiq Khan to appoint someone with extreme and hateful views to a role meant to bring Londoners together”.
Really? ‘Cause I don’t see anything factually incorrect in what she has said. Johnson dithered about imposing the Covid lockdown, listening to stupid eugenicist wibblings about herd immunity instead of what real epidemiologists were telling him. As a result, people caught Covid and died. On other issues, Johnson showed himself far less interested in the actual business of government and more in publicity shots and campaigning. He seemed to be going off to Checkers every weekend during the Covid crisis. And unlike other PMs during national emergencies, he never attended the COBRA meeting about it.
But why stop with Covid? The work capability tests and benefit sanctions have led to untold deaths of the disabled and unemployed, who were thrown off benefits for trivial or utterly fabricated reasons. I remember that c. 2015 people were putting up on their blogs faces of the hundreds who had died, some of them in appalling deprivation and hunger. This included a mentally ill young Black man, who I think had been unable to get himself the insulin he needed for his diabetes. There was also a case of a young woman, who committed suicide with her baby, out of despair after she had her benefit cut off, and an elderly couple who starved to death. As for that vaunted privatisation, that Sunak thinks has done so much for the NHS, a study found that instead it had caused 350+ unnecessary deaths. Quite apart from the chaos caused by massive funding cuts, that left us unable to cope with the pandemic unlike our continental cousins. And Black Brits have been particularly hit by the Tories’ wretched austerity, so Alemoru has undoubtedly seen the greater harm Tories policies have had on the Black community. I despise Critical Race Theory, but Alemoru has a particular right to be angry as a woman of colour.
But could there be anything else that riles the Tories? Well, yes. She’s an admirer of Jeremy Corbyn. She’s supposed to have tweets: A vocal supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, who is rumoured to be pondering throwing his hat in the ring for the London mayor role, Alemoru once tweeted at 1am in November 2019: “I love Corbyn so much”, followed by a post in April 2020 that read: “CORBYN CAN NEVER GO HE LIVES IN MA HEART”. She isn’t alone. Corbyn is an inspiring speaker and people wanted and supported his socialist political agenda. Which is why he was smeared as a Commie, Trotskyite and anti-Semite, and his supporters purged from the Labour party.
And she also committed the heinous sin of dissing Keir Starmer, calling him a scab.
GB News states that she tweeted ‘No one can tell me that @Keir Starmer is not a Tory plant. He’s too s*** to be trying! He’s not trying to be anything to anyone for any reason. I wish he broke the law with that curry.”
She later referred to Starmer as a “SCAB” for sacking Labour MP Sam Tarry from the Shadow Cabinet for joining a strike picket line.’
I’ve thought exactly the same thing about Starmer. He and the Blairites are Thatcherite infiltrators. Various right-wing members of the NEC were on Conservative forums. One of them was even more vitriolic about Corbyn and the left than the Tories. And yes, I do question his support for the strikers. I’ve heard various explanations that, of course the Labour front bench supports the pickets and Sam Tarry shouldn’t have joined the line for various reasons. But Tarry’s sacking still looks like the actions of a Tory scab trying to ingratiate himself with the right.
Back to her comments about killing Johnson, she made it clear that she wasn’t calling for anyone to do it, just wondering why they hadn’t. So she was inciting people to commit a crime, merely expressing an opinion about our massively incompetent, corrupt and egotistical PM.
When reading, remember that GB News is effectively becoming a mouthpiece of the Tory party. It now employs a number of Tory MPs as presenters, including Jacob Reet Snob, as well as Nigel Farage, former UKIP caudillo. I think I’ve also heard rumours that they want to give a post as presenter to Anne Widdecombe and Liz Truss.
When it comes to GB News, the remarks of a Labour MP while grilling the head of Ofcom is right: they offer a choice of opinions – right or far right.’
Mahyar Tousi is another right-wing YouTuber I don’t have much time for, although he isn’t as annoying smug as Michael Heaver. Tousi’s another staunch Brexiteer and strong supporter of the Tories against anything left. But a few days he ago he posted a piece which should raise questions for anyone interested in democracy and free speech, regardless of which side of the political spectrum they’re on. According to Tousi, a group of dissident Iranians had planned to organise a march and demonstration this week in support of the pro-democracy movement in Iran. They hoped to tell the British government to cut all ties with the Islamic Republic because of its treatment of protesters. They wrote to Khan about this, but didn’t receive a reply. Then Khan announced that the area would be occupied by a special event celebrating Eid al-Fitr, the official end of the Ramadan fast. This was despite Ramadan having ended last week, and Khan having already staged an event to mark the occasion. Cutting off ties with Iran is opposed by the British government because it would leave the Brits in Iran without any official assistance if they got into trouble with the authorities. Tousi was also annoyed at Khan’s refusal to meet an Iranian hunger striker, who has been on the streets campaigning for this for about 50 days or so. Although the man is obviously in a poor condition, his life is being looked after by local doctors, who come out to check on him.
Now Sadiq Khan is very much a target of right-wing ire. Much of this is part of the culture wars. The far right see him as a Muslim determined to islamicise the capital and erase its White inhabitants and their traditional culture. This is due to Khan’s decision to rename streets to make them reflect the capital’s more diverse population, the erection of the statue to a leader of an anti-British rebellion in Malawi and the fireworks and lights celebrating Ramadan but not the Christian festival of Easter. Underneath that, the real reason is that Khan’s Labour and the Tories obviously want to get rid of him and replace him with their own candidate.
Tousi’s particularly sensitive to the issue of the Iranian protests. His family are Iranian, and from what he says, I think they came here to escape Khomeini and the new Islamic theocracy. I think it’s why he’s particularly suspicious of Islam and is determined to preserve British democracy, as he sees it, against encroachment from hard-line Islam.
I think the government is right and that cutting diplomatic ties with Iran would be a severe mistake. It would leave Brits in the country vulnerable. On the other hand, given the massive incompetence of Boris Johnson and the Foreign Office in getting Mrs Zaghari-Radcliffe freed, you wonder what help the British government would be at all to anyone falsely imprisoned by the mullahs.
Tousi also criticises the government for its refusal to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organisation. The Revolutionary Guard are the elite soldiers of the Islamic State, there to preserve the Islamic theocracy. Comparisons with the Third Reich are glib, but I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to compare them to the Third Reich’s Waffen SS. Tousi talked about how an expatriate dissident Iranian broadcaster had been forced to move from Britain to America because Britain had not defended it from attempts by the Revolutionary Guard to close it down by attacking and kidnapping its employees. Here I think he has a point. Britain should be able to protect its citizens and resident aliens from such attacks, just as we should have been able to protect Russian dissidents from Putin’s assassins.
It looks to me that there has been a decision to stop the Iranian marchers, but I wonder if it was Khan’s alone. It seems to me that any decision to block it may have been done in conjunction with the government rather than just being Khan’s. Whoever took the decision, it is another attack on democracy and the right to protest.
Which the Conservatives have already done many times already on domestic issues.
Among the various texts and speeches in Alan Bullock’s and Maurice Shock’s The Liberal Tradition from Fox to Keynes is one of Gladstone’s advocating Jewish emancipation. Traditionally Jews, along with Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters had been legally barred from public politics and offices through the Test and Corporation Acts. During the 19th century these legal disabilities were removed so that the members of these religious groups were able to vote and hold public offices, serving as MPs and local councillors. When it came to the Jews, Gladstone made a brilliant speech urging their emancipation and rebutting the various prejudices against them. These were that they hated Christians, had no love for the country and were money-grubbing. Gladstone attacked these by saying that if Jews hated Christians, it was because Christians had persecuted them. If they had no love for their country, it was because their country still only half accepted them. And they were only money-grubbing because banking had been the only profession they had been allowed to pursue. But the Jews were nevertheless a great people, and he compared their glorious past, when they possessed the splendid temple in Jerusalem and merchants fleets plying the seas, when at the time the British were still savages living in mud huts.
Gladstone is something of a paradoxical figure. He started as a right-wing Anglican before moving left and becoming one of the leading voices for the non-conformist conscience. He also wanted the disestablishment of the Anglican church and Home Rule for Ireland. If he’d been able to get it, this may well have prevented so much violence and bitterness this past century. He believed strongly in political freedom and the Liberals were critics of imperialism, but it was during Gladstone’s tenure as prime minister that the British empire expanded the most.
I felt I should put up a piece about him and his defence of the Jewish people and their freedom, because last year following Black Lives Matter and the current debate over slavery there were a couple of attempts to remove memorials to him. The students at one of the Liverpudlian universities decided to rename one of their halls of residence named after him because his family had got their wealth from slavery. The new hall was instead named after a Black communist woman schoolteacher. I’m sure she was a fine and inspiring lady, but she’s not in the same league as Gladstone. In London, Sadiq Khan’s decision to rename public amenities according to the present ethnic composition of their areas lead to an activist coming into a number of schools in Black and Asian majority areas to urge that the local park, named after Gladstone, should be renamed. Two of the suggestions were ‘BAME Park’ and that it should be renamed after Diane Abbott. Again, as one of Britain’s first Black MPs, she deserves to be memorialised, but again, she isn’t a political titan like Gladstone.
People are not responsible for the actions of their ancestors, and however much we despise the source of his wealth, Gladstone was not only one of Britain’s greatest prime ministers, but one of the 19th century architects of British liberty and democratic institutions. People need to know far more about him, and the other great politicians, rather than having him erased from public memory because of present controversies over the source of their money. Because if people like Gladstone are removed from public memory, so too is their achievement in helping to build a free Britain in which people can express their hatred of slavery and tyranny.
This story has been exercising GB News and History Debunked’s Simon Webb. According to the Torygraph, the leader of Brent council, Mohammed Butt, wishes to rename Gladstone Park in his borough. Apparently the sprogs in the local schools were given a talk on racial inequality and the murder of George Floyd by a ‘racial expert’, before being asked for their views on the park’s name and what they thought should replace it. Suggestions included ‘Rainbow Park’, ‘Diversity Park’, ‘BAME Park’ – which is clearly racist as it very definitely excludes Whites – and ‘Diane Abbott Park’. The move follows similar attempts to rename places named after Gladstone and remove monuments commemorating him elsewhere in Britain, ‘cos his father, Ewart Gladstone, was connected to the slave trade. It’s also part of a general move by Sadiq Khan to rename places in London so that they reflect the capital’s multicultural population.
GB News’ Mercy Muroki, who’s black, was not impressed. She objected to children being used to support what was clearly a decision made by Butt and his cronies. She took as an example of the way young children think her own seven year old. She stated that the child was bright and imaginative, but that you wouldn’t ask him questions like that because he wouldn’t know anything about it, nor who Gladstone was. As for Diane Abbott, she stated that she had many excellent qualities. She had risen from her working class origins to become Britain’s first Black woman MP. Quite. Abbott’s certainly not thick, despite what the Tories say about her, although some of her comments on race certainly have me grinding my teeth. She’s a good role model for Black women and girls looking for a career in politics. But she isn’t in the same league as someone who was four times British Prime Minister.
And this is one of the problems. It’s been claimed by the right that the ‘woke’ left have no awareness nor interest in anything but very recent history. This would seem to bear that out. I dare say that to many modern Brits Gladstone is just a name with no relevance to the present day. But this is a mistake. Gladstone, and his opposite number in the Tories, Disraeli, are two of the 19th century political titans that have shaped modern Britain and the British empire. And Gladstone was hardly any kind of Fascist monster. Rather, it’s been said that he became ‘the voice of the Nonconformist conscience’. I firmly believe that if he had succeeded in granting Ireland home rule, the modern history of Ireland would have been far less bloody.
And there are other events and figures from further back in our history that also deserve to be remembered, but may also be lost if the attitude persists that the only people worth remembering are those of the near present. Magna Carta is celebrated as the first check on royal power and the beginning of English liberty. An Anglo-Norman phrase from about the time declared that the country was ‘the commune of England, where each man had his view’. But there’s also the British Civil War, which commenced a long process of political speculation as writers and politicians attempted to formulate ideas about the ideal state, correct forms of government, the rights of the individual and political and religious tolerance. Carl Benjamin of the Lotus Eaters harks back to John Locke, who laid the foundations for liberal, democratic government, but there were many others. Socialists and the Labour party have looked to the Levellers and Diggers, and their plans for an expansion of the franchise, the creation of state education, hospitals and almshouses for the elderly and in the case of the Diggers the establishment of a Christian communist utopia. The Glorious Revolution finally established the supremacy of parliament over the crown, and the Bill of Rights that followed is another key document in the development of British political liberty. Then in the 18th century there’s Edmund Burke and his classic foundational text of modern Conservatism, Reflections on the Revolution in France and Thomas Paine’s defence of the American and French Revolutions, Common Sense and The Rights of Man. And this is before you get to the bitter political struggles and leading politicians of the 19th century. Now no-one is suggesting that these figures and events should somehow be erased from commemoration or official British history. The commemoration of the Glorious Revolution and the accession of William of Orange to the throne was played down, however, particularly in Northern Ireland in the 1980s because of fears that it would spark further sectarian violence. But I am afraid that the mentality that demands that Gladstone be cancelled because of his personal family history may expand to demand the removal of other important British political figures, merely because someone feels they don’t properly represent the values of modern Britain.
I am also afraid Khan’s decision to have places renamed according to the area’s modern ethnic composition will also prove divisive. There’s been a movement of Whites away from inner city areas, which have become increasingly dominated by Blacks and Asians, dubbed ‘White flight’. Many of these area’s Black and Asian inhabitants are genuinely upset by this. A BBC documentary discussing this a few years ago in the case of the dwindling White population of the East End featured an imam, who said he regretted that his son would never meet a White person from the area. Part of the reason for this exodus is that many Whites no longer feel a proper part of those areas. They feel outsiders, and so move away to areas with a higher proportion of Whites. Predictably, those Whites who’ve said that they feel like foreigners in these areas because of their colour have been attacked as racist, but they’re simply expressing the same kind of sentiments many Blacks have when moving into a majority White area.
A few years ago there was a similar bit of controversy when the Heil ran a story about the Bangladeshi part of the Smoke renaming itself ‘Banglatown’ and having the street names written in both the Latin and Indian scripts. I think part of the idea was to raise the area’s profile by making it into a piece of local colour that would make it stand out. ‘Banglatown’ was a nickname given to the area by the storm troopers of the NF/ BNP, and its adoption as an official name may have been an attempt to reclaim it as source of pride by the Bangladeshi community, in the same way that some Blacks have tried reclaiming the ‘N’ word and some gays ‘Fag’. This move predated Khan’s tenure of the elected mayoralty by some years. However, it cause outrage because it was felt, understandably, that Bangladeshi identity was being privileged and British culture erased. And this latest move by Khan and Butt may be set to be similarly controversial and divisive.
Not to mention that it’s a gift to the Tories, who are trying to make the most of the culture war because of the increasingly grotty state of Britain after over a decade of Tory misrule makes it difficult for them to claim that Brits are materially better off.
Here’s another very interesting snippet from Jonathan A.C. Brown’s Slavery & Islam. It’s in a passage about the right of rulers,, under Islamic rule, to overrule a strict interpretation of the sharia under specific circumstances. In this instance, it’s the judges’ and the states’ attempt to prevent and punish domestic violence. The passage reads
‘Another was the practice in Marrakesh of judges assigning a social senior guarantor to a husband accused of beating his wife. Normally the couple would be placed under observation by a trusted neighbour or, if the husband were found guilty, he would owe his wife compensation and/;or the marriage would be dissolved. This additional requirement of the guarantor aimed at holding a further threat over the husband’s head: his fear of disgracing his patron if he reoffended.’ (pp.226).
Violence against women has been a major issue since the murder of Sarah Everard and the incel gunman in Cornwall who killed five people, including his own mother and a female toddler and her grandfather. Sadiq Khan has raised right-wing hackles by calling for lessons on misogyny and sexism to be taught in schools. One of the negative images of Islam is that it’s a very masculine, misogynist faith in which women are terrorised by male violence. The Asian funsters of Goodness Gracious Me took the mick out of that stereotype over a decade or so ago in a sketch which showed a very ordinary Muslim father standing in his garden stroking a belt while the voiceover talked about the threat of violence he presented to his daughter. It was obviously meant as a caricature of the stereotype. There are problems in Islam regarding women’s rights, as there are just about everywhere. But it is interesting that the Muslim jurists of that part of Morocco at least were determined to act against domestic violence.
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