Hypocrite Amber Rudd Demands Chris Williamson’s Constituency Labour Party Be Investigated for Anti-Semitism

More staggering hypocrisy from Amber Rudd. She’s in today’s I newspaper for the fourth of March, 2019, demanding that Jeremy Corbyn investigate Chris Williamson’s constituency Labour party for anti-Semitism. She claimed that in it, Jews had been abused and taunted. What a pack of lies! Jewish members of the party up and down the country have come forward, like Haim Bresheeth and the members of Jewish Voice for Labour, to say that they’ve been members of the Labour party and have never suffered anti-Semitism. The article does, however, betray the real reason for her accusing them of hating Jews: some of them have had the temerity to demand that he be reinstated. I’m not a member of the Labour party, but I have joined them in signing a petition on Change.org calling for Williamson’s reinstatement.

It seems here that Rudd is simply following the tactics of Luciana Berger, who wanted Liverpool Wavertree CLP suspended or expelled in toto as anti-Semites, because they wanted to deselect her. They weren’t anti-Semitic. They were just sick of her not representing them, but instead following the Blairite line of supporting the rich and demanding Tory policies. And Berger’s and Rudd’s attitude is very much like the way Brecht described the East German government when the sent the tanks in against their people when they protested against the Stalinist tyranny. He quipped that they saw the people as in the wrong, and demanded their dissolution. It’s become one of the classic quotes against Stalinism and authoritarian Communism. But it exactly fits the Tories and Blairites.

It’s also massively hypocritical coming from Rudd and the Tories because of the massive racism in their party. I’ve put up a couple of pieces discussing the revelations by other bloggers of the colossal racism in the Tory ranks, particularly on the internet groups supporting Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg. These have demanded the deportation of British people of colour, vilified Blacks and other ethnic minorities, demanded that Muslims be barred from politics, promoted stupid, racist and false conspiracy theories about Jews plotting to destroy White Europe, wanted Muslims banned from political activism or holding posts in government, local and nation; and ranted about demolishing mosques, shooting and bombing Muslims and other immigrants, and urged their members to prepare for civil war. The percentage of real anti-Semites in the Labour party is 3.6. The percentage of anti-Semites in the Tories is 3.9. But the amount of racism against other ethnic minorities is much higher.

Which is obvious when you consider Tweezer’s ‘hostile environment’ policy against immigration, the shameful Windrush deportations and the vans and posters May put up calling for illegal immigrants to hand themselves in and others to report them.

The real, vicious, dangerous, murderous racism is in the Tories. And Rudd herself and her mistress May clearly support it by doing nothing to weed it out, all the while baying hypocritically about anti-Semitism in Labour.

 

A Security Card To Track Workers’ Movements in the Orwellian Office

It seems employers will seize any opportunity or technological development to spy on their workers. Yesterday the I carried a story about a tech company, that had developed a chip, carried in a security card, that would allow employers to monitor the whereabouts of their workers as moved through their building. It would help them see if they were spending too long in the loos or otherwise wasting time.

This is very much like something out of some of the nightmarish futures portrayed in cyberpunk SF. In Jack Womack’s novels of a parallel Earth in which central authority has collapsed along with Christianity – Ambient, Heathern, Random Acts of Mindless Violence and Elvissey – power is held by an oppressive industrial conglomerate. This corporation makes sure its staff stays at their desks through the simple expedient of shackling them there in stocks.

And we’re getting closer to that nightmare future all the time. I’ve mentioned the book on the terrible way office workers are treated in America, White Collar Sweatshop, before on this blog. One of the elements of modern American office life that was draining any kind of joy from clerical work was the constant surveillance.

And it’s being done over here to call centre workers. According to Private Eye, the weirdo Barclay Twins also tried to inflict it on their hacks in the Torygraph. The Gruesome Twosome had motion detectors put up around the hacks’ desks, so they could tell when they were walking about and not sat behind them making up stories about how wonderful capitalism and the Tories were, and how Corbyn was an evil Communist anti-Semite. This was a step too far for the galley slaves on the sinking rag. They revolted, and the vile pair had to take them down.

Britain really is becoming a totalitarian, Orwellian society, where we are monitored all the time. In 1984, the TVs watch you, to make sure you’re doing what Big Brother’s government wants. Now there are fears that private companies are collecting personal data on individuals from the internet, in order to target them better for advertising. And this is apart from the expansion of state surveillance under the Snooper’s Charter, and the travesty of the Secret Courts, in which you may not know what you’re accused of, nor the evidence against you, or who the witnesses and accusers are, or have members of the press and the public present, if the authorities deem all this is endangers ‘national security’.

And with the corporate media now panicking that no-one’s watching the Beeb and other news broadcasters because of their horrendous pro-Tory bias, perhaps it won’t be too long before some bright spark at a right-wing, corporate thinktank decides that we really ought to be monitored to make sure we’re watching the required amount of TV per day. Just like in the Robert Rankin comic SF/Fantasy novel, Armageddon – The Musical.

As for how evil the corporate masters of Womack’s fictional world is, the Southern businessman whose drawling pronunciation of ‘Heathen’ provides the title of the second book in the sequence, Heathern, organises shooting parties where the quarry is Black, Asian and Mexican children.

So far our captain of industry aren’t that despicable. Not just yet. On the other had, we do have IDS and Esther McVile to thank for the genocide of the disabled. This is their warped welfare policy, in which the goal is to throw as many desperate and needy people of government support as possible, even if it kills them. According to an official report, this has resulted in the deaths of 120,000 people.

They’re killing people, but doing so without alarming the sensitivities of all the ‘aspirant’ middle class folks, who vote for them. No gas chambers or SS-style murder clinics, as under Aktion T4. They just through them off benefit, have the Heil and the rest of the baying Tory press vilify them as frauds and scroungers, and leave them to starve to death.

But we can put actually physically shooting the poor for sport past them? Toby Young is an ardent supporter of eugenics with a hatred of the working class and nothing but sneers and contempt for ‘diversity’ and feminism. He also wrote that he masturbates to images of starving Africans. And his oppo Ben Bradley wanted the cops to play ‘splat the chav’ during the 2012 London riots. It might be a bit of stretch, but I can imagine both these charmers writing stupid pieces about how shooting chavs and the rest of the disadvantaged would be a nice day’s sport.

Canadian Socialist Leader Denounces Trump, Calls for Stronger Action from Trudeau

This is a short clip from Sam Seder’s Majority Report showing Thomas Mulcair, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban in no uncertain terms in parliament. Mr Mulcair states that on his side of the House, there is no doubt about condemning singling people out because of their religion, discrimination against people based on their religion, executive orders and government by decree. He states he thought he would never see the day. But there is no doubt what happens if you do not stand up against such racist, Fascist behaviour. He states that his party is not afraid to stand up and be counted, and call a spade a spade. It’s time to say ‘No’ to Donald Trump, yes to human rights, and for the government of Canada to stand up to these racist policies.

To which the programme’s host, Sam Seder, adds merely ‘Save us a couple of places up there.’

The New Democrats are, very roughly, the Canadian equivalent of the Labour party over here. They were formed as a Socialist party in the 1960s. Despite the conservative dress fitting parliament, for a long time the party did have something of the ’60s ‘flower power’ hanging around it, or so I’ve read. It therefore comes as no surprise that Mr. Mulcair and his party heartily condemns Trump and his racism.

Of course, this is quite apart from the fact that Canada is multicultural democracy and that this week the threat of domestic right-wing racist terrorism was horrifically made very real by Alexandre Bissionette’s attack on a mosque which left 6 six dead and 17 wounded. Bissionette was previously unknown to the police, but he was on the internet, where he ranted against feminism and supported Trump.

Around the world, statesmen and political leaders are denouncing Trump’s Muslim ban, while Theresa May remains silent. Their unequivocal condemnation of Trump’s racism shows her up as the coward she is through her unwillingness to do the same.

Private Eye on Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and the Resurgence of the Aristocracy

One of the reviews in the collection of pieces from Private Eye’s literary column, Lord Gnome’s Literary Companion, is of Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd’s The Field Book of Country Houses and their Owners: Family Seats of the British Isles from 1988. Massingberd’s a true, blue-blooded aristo, who wrote a ‘Heritage’ column in the Torygraph. In the book, he made it very clear that he stood for a return of the aristocracy, their power and prestige, after years of Socialism as a ‘social restoration’ under Maggie Thatcher. It’s a view that Private Eye took issue with, and put the boot in accordingly.

Despite being nearly thirty years old now, the review’s still relevant. Cameron is a toff leading a cabinet of toffs – George Osborne, the scion of the baronet of Ballymoney, Nick Clegg, and IDS, who is himself a great landowner, even if he isn’t a member of the titled aristocracy. It is a government that has consistently defended and promoted the interests and power of the rich against those of the poor, and made very sure that the rest of us are kept under their heel.

Their welfare reforms, and the massive curtailment of workers’ rights under the Tories have meant that people with a job now live in fear of being laid off, while those fortunately enough to get jobseekers allowance are effectively treated as helots – state slaves – by the self-described ‘creators of wealth’, who then compete for gaining their free labour on workfare.

It’s a restoration of the old feudal order of serfdom, but under the guise of preparing the unemployed for the labour market, and making them sturdy, self-reliant individuals. As the business leaders imagine themselves to be, all the while they’re demanding more tax breaks and subsidies from the government.

And UKIP are no alternative. They’re further to the Right than the Tories and Lib Dems. The vice-chairman of the Kippers in Wales was a member of the Traditional Britain group. These stand for the restoration of the feudal order, the destruction of the welfare state, the privatisation of the NHS, no immigration and positive no Muslims.

The Eye’s review, then, is a pretty prescient description of the attitudes and motives behind this government, nearly three decades later.

Nob Value

Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd has one great qualification for his line of work. When the toffs he writes about – Cruwys of Cruwys Morchard, Dymoke of Scrivelsby, Fetherstonehaugh-Frampton of Moreton, Houison Craufurd of Craufurdland, Foljambe of Osberton, Steuart Forthringham of Murthly – hear that he is on his way, they must feel pleasantly reassured. For Montgomery-Massivesnob is the only hack in the business with a name as ludicrous as theirs.

It has been the making of him. Massivesnob is no detached architecture critic or social historian. He is himself of the class he portrays: his articles are themselves exhibits in the show, if not the main turn. It is useless to wonder whether or not he realizes that this is why the Telegraph employs him. So much reflection is not in the nature of a nob.

Massivesnob writes a column in the Torygraph called ‘Heritage’. This is the persuasive sales word of our time, signifying anything old and agreeable which might form the basis of a day trip. We have even been encouraged to think that there is such a thing as, contradiction in terms, a ‘national heritage’. Somehow we have accepted that being herded around big houses, behind ropes, by self-important matrons means that we are ourselves the true legatees of the aristocracy.

Massivesnob, quite rightly, has no time for this confidence trick. When he says ‘heritage’ he means it: the inheritance of a name and of a house together, by a private family. He has conducted a long campaign to disabuse us of our belief in a ‘national heritage’ and to reassert the rights of the squirearchy. (His insistence on this has, doubtless, been a reaction to his own family house having been made over to the National Trust before his birth.) And he is admirably purist. These reprinted articles from the pre-lifestyle Field are not about great houses – or interesting people. True squires, they have no other distinction than their success at transmission.

That Massivesnob is now in demand to write similar pieces as a ‘Heritage’ column in a national newspaper says something about the times. For years he snuffled away at family trees as the editor of Burke’s Peerage, scribbling too for the country magazines. he joined the Torygraph as obituaries editor. But now his pieces have become more than antiquarian. Hymns to private property are apropos. The landed are richer than they have ever been in their lives – and even council-house buyers are beginning to feel happier about family seats.

Not that any of this is made explicit. Massivesnob’s appearances in print are winningly slapstick. His own ancestors invariably feature – usually his feminist great-grandmother, who tragically turned the family pub, the Massingberd Arms, into a temperance house. And his ‘robust digestion’ also stars, as he caps each visit by putting himself outside ‘a couple of jumbo cold bangers and a glass of iced lemon tea’, or a large helping of treacle tart. The words ‘ravishing’, ‘luscious’, ‘exquisite’ and ‘engagingly feudal’ exhaust his adjectival resource. Two obsessions recur: Lincolnshire, ‘the still undiscovered Lincolnshire’, and cricket, as played between the big house and the village.

The appearance of this buffoon must be entrancing to the proprietors of what he enthusiastically calls ‘the dimmer sort of seat’. Here is someone who sincerely thinks nothing in the world so fine as ‘the proud distinction of being, say, Fulford of Fulford, Fursdon of Fursdon, Kelly of Kelly or Spurway of Spurway’, who, quite fantastically, is as gratified as they are themselves by their own existence.

Any further qualities are beside the point, though squirearchical accomplishments are loyally applauded. Burrell of Knepp Castle’s appointments ‘have included the chairmanship of the North West Sussex Water Board’; Staunton of Staunton is ‘an enthusiastic beagler’; Sir Anthony Milbank of Barningham is ‘an enthusiastic Gun and enjoys fishing’; while Robert Scrysoure Steuart Forthringham of Pourie and Murthly is a wizard with a bow and arrow.

Clearly the social system that supports such accomplishments must be maintained. As Cookson of Meldon, owner of a measly 5,000 acres, somewhat laboriously explains: ‘If the people of this country wish houses such as Meldon to continue to exist as part of the heritage – especially when the occupants are of the family for whom the house was originally built – then more consideration must be paid to them financially to help keep the system in being.’

Absolutely. And it will be, partly because the National Trust, ostensibly a democratic movement, has transformed public perception of what big estates represent. The houses were the pretty part of the whole social organisation; they are the only part now on view; the system itself is thus glamorized by them. For himself, Massivesnob is quite unembarrassed to state that the fortunes of the Hobhouses of Hadspen were founded on slavery.

Conveniently for the National Trust, those who traipse round the houses, or buy picture-books like this, do so in order to fantasize about themselves as owners, not as scullions. Massivesnob, more lucidly, responded to the ‘euphoria’ of the budget earlier this year with an article looking forward to the return of servants, jovially reminiscing about the days when drunken gamekeepers could be shot.

The ‘heritage’ mania has softened us up for a return to inherited wealth. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd may be a richly Wodehousian figure, but his book, lauding the privately owned, is symptomatic. It is the correlative to Peregrine Worsthorne’s recent articles about the desirability in short of ‘a social restoration’. Come the day, of course, Massivesnob knows where he will be – in his seat again. But the fans of his snufflings seem curiously unaware of where that leaves them: which is sat upon.

Vox Political: Labour to Introduce New Legislation Against Animal Cruelty

Mike over at Vox Political has this story, Labour’s plan to protect animals. Maria Eagle – now there’s a fitting name – has just announced Labour’s six point plan to protect the nation’s wild and domestic animals. These are:

* Defending the hunting ban.
*Banning the use of wild animals in circuses.
* Ending the badger culls.
*Improving the protection of dogs and cats
* Tackling wildlife crime and reducing cruelty on shooting estates.
*Leading the fight against animal cruelty across the world.

Mike’s article lists the policies and describes them in order. He begins

Here’s another terrific Labour Party policy announcement that seems to have been overlooked by the news media: Animal protection.

The policy was announced by Maria Eagle and runs as follows:

1) Labour will protect the Hunting Act
Ten years ago the Labour Party ended the cruel practice of hunting with dogs, because we believe that causing defenceless animals to suffer in the name of sport has no place in a civilised society. But just as we celebrate the Hunting Act, the Tories plan to repeal it. Only Labour can protect the Hunting Act because Labour is the only major party committed to defending it.

2) Labour will ban wild animals in circuses
Travelling circuses are no place for wild animals. Being moved from place to place in cramped and substandard enclosures, forced training and performance, loud noises and crowds of people are the unavoidable distressing realities for animals in circuses. Despite promising to ban the use of wild animals in travelling circuses, the Tory-led Government has failed to do so. The next Labour government will ban this cruel practice.

Mike’s piece is at http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2015/02/22/labours-plan-to-protect-animals/. Read it for a further description of the policy.

These are actually good, sensible policies. Despite the noise made by the Countryside Alliance, as various bloggers have recently revealed, most people in the countryside don’t support fox hunting. I personally know people from a farming background, who are very strongly against it.

As for the use of wild animals in circuses, this has been a scandal for years. The great broadcaster, Ludovic Kennedy, who I remember for hosting the television review programme Did You See ..?, was very clear in his disapproval of circuses that featured performing wild animals. A number of circuses today don’t use them, a movement that began, as I recall, back in the 1990s.

And people naturally love domestic animals, to the point where, shockingly, the amount given to animal charities is actually greater than that for children. Don’t get me wrong on this – I’m not arguing that people should give less for animals, only that children deserve more. Despite this, there are indeed cases of terrible abuse and neglect inflicted on dogs and cats. Clearly, some extra protection is appropriate here.

Mike points out that nothing like this has been put forward by the Tories. Quite the opposite. They have decided to spend taxpayer’s money subsidising grouse shooting. Because of the desperate poverty and near destitution of all the great landowners and their shooting estates north of the border.

Such as, presumably, the former Tory treasurer, Lord McAlpin. Way back in the 1990s he was repeatedly in the pages of Private Eye, because rare birds of prey were turning up poisoned on his estate in the highlands. No-one was prosecuted, and it looks like any investigation was either impeded or very half-hearted.

Mind you, perhaps it’s too much to believe that the Tories will be much interested in protecting animals. After all, they really don’t like humans much, and especially not if they’re poor.

So we can expect more Tory opposition to this, based not on its feasibility, but simply because the Tories will resent what they see as their right to pursue the usual aristocratic sports of hunting and shooting.