Another Attack on Labour Democracy as Starmer Bans Anti-Monarchist Group from Affiliating to Constituency Labour Parties

The Guardian posted a piece yesterday reporting that our shambolic, authoritarian leader in the Labour party has purged yet another group. Starmer seems to be trying to steal some of the Tories’ clothes as the leader of a patriotic party. Under Maggie Thatcher, the Tories draped themselves in all the imagery of traditional British patriotism – Union flags, references to Maggie’s hero, Winston Churchill and the Second World War. The 1987 Conservative general election film featured black and white footage of Spitfires zooming around while an excited voice declared ‘It’s great, to be great again’. Except she didn’t make us great. She nearly wrecked the country economically and institutionally while declaring she was. Starmer’s clearly seen how that worked, and wants to do it for the Labour party. Hence photos of him stood with a Union flag parked in a corner somewhere.

Now he’s passed another internal regulation preventing constituency Labour parties from affiliating to the anti-monarchist group, Republic. He justified this by stating that he was a patriot, and that was why he believed in a series of left-wing policies. Well, for now, at least, until he’s told otherwise by Murdoch or his donors. But the same could be said of Republic. Patriotism could be construed as wanting the very best for one’s country. If you adopt that point of view, then Republic are patriots in that they believe the country can be improved by ditching the monarchy.

But who are Republic anyway?

I admit, I’m a royalist, and so I don’t know anything about republican and anti-monarchist movements. The last such organisation I heard about was MAM – the Movement Against the Monarchy, who came and protested the Maundy Thursday service in which the Queen dispensed Maundy money several years ago at Bristol cathedral. I hadn’t even heard of Republic until Starmer acted and the Groan reported the issue. My guess Starmer is afraid that Labour would get embroiled in any controversy that flares up about the planned anti-monarchist demonstrations at the coronation tomorrow if it’s found that these organisations are connected to the Labour party in some way. But it’s still an attack on Labour grassroots democracy.

I realise many people, especially the older generation, strongly object to anti-monarchist demonstrations. This was especially true of the older generation who fought and served in the Second World War. Several of Mum’s older friends had done so, and had the privilege of receiving the Maundy money from Her Maj several decades ago. They were bitterly disgusted by the demonstration by MAM. But democracy says you tolerate opposing viewpoints. You might find Republic deeply offensive, but that shouldn’t deny individual parties the right to affiliate them. That’s their business, not Starmer’s. Although he did justify it by saying it was just putting into action regulations passed two years ago preventing local Labour parties from affiliating to organisations proscribed by the NEC. And boy, is there a list! It includes Jewish Voice for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, pro-Palestinian groups and so on. Any group that gives David Evans a fit of the vapours and causes Thatcherite apparatchiks to clutch their pearls.

There have always been anti-monarchists in the Labour party. When Clement Attlee and the great Labour government of 1948 came to power, the saw themselves in the tradition of a long series of working class radicals like Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, which argued against the monarchy and aristocracy and supported the American Revolution. Back in the 1980s there was Willie Hamilton, who hated the monarchy as well as much of the British establishment. I remember all the jokes about him. On one of the Saturday morning radio panel shows, the contestants were asked to guess what was happening from a sound clue. You heard a swishing sound, then a scream. The panel’s fun answer was ‘the Queen knighting Willie Hamilton’. I haven’t heard of Republic, I haven’t heard of anyone affiliating to Republic, and I haven’t heard of anyone being put off voting Labour by Republic. I guess some of the radical London councils may have, but they’ve hardly caused a national panic.

This is Starmer trying to turn the Labour party into the Tories Mark 2. It’s more proof that he’s an authoritarian who’s totally unfit to rule. If does this in Labour, what will he do in government?

Jeremy Bentham’s Radical Political Beliefs

Jeremy Bentham was a British 19th century philosopher. He was the inventor of Utilitarianism, a moral philosophy that states that something is good if it creates the greatest happiness for the greatest number. This, however, fails as it neglects the fact that some things are inherently good or evil even though they may be popular. One of the examples of this would be a case where a mob demands the execution of a wrongly accused man. It is still wrong to execute an innocent person, even if this is massively popular and demanded by the majority of people. Bentham was also interested in prison reform and design. In his view, prisons should be laid out so that the prisoners and their activities were all under surveillance from a central hub, the panopticon. This constant surveillance would, he believed, lead to prisoners acquiring the habit of behaving decently and legally and so reform their characters ready for release back into society. Modern critics consider it a chilling, totalitarian surveillance society in miniature. Another of his ideas is truly bonkers. He believed that people – presumably members of the aristocracy and people accustomed to public service and social prominence – should preserve their ancestors after death through mummification and embalming, and put them on display as ‘autoicons’. The intention behind this bizarre idea is that people, surrounded by their dead relatives and antecedents, would then feel themselves encouraged to emulate their virtues. Bentham had himself preserved, and is on display in a glass case at Oxford University, except for his head, which is a waxwork. His real head is in a case somewhere, and not displayed.

However, the Utilitarians were behind the early 19th century hygiene reforms that cleaned up Britain’s cities by demanding proper sewage and the removal of waste from the streets to improve the inhabitants’ lives and health. And he was also a very much a political radical. He outlined his democratic views in Democracy – A Fragment. He believed that people weren’t naturally virtuous and public spirited, and that they acted primarily in their own interest. This meant that those governing also acted in their own interest, which was to expand their power against everyone else. They could only be kept in line through democracy and all adults possessing the vote. And he meant all adults. The franchise should be extended to include not just all adult men, but also women. He also wanted the abolition of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the disestablishment of the Church of England. This was in the 1820s, and it was nearly a century before British women acquired the right to vote. As for the abolition of the monarchy, the Lords and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church, Tony Benn was reviled as a Communist for advocating them, plus nuclear disarmament in the 1980s. They’re not policies I support, though the House of Lords needs radical reform as at the moment it has more members than the ruling general assembly of the Chinese Communist Party. But I am impressed with his staunch advocacy of democracy, especially at a time when many would have regarded it almost as seditious because of the excesses of the French Revolution.

And unfortunately he does have a point about the corruption of the governing class. We’ve seen it in the way the Tory administrations of the past eleven years have passed endless laws to benefit their class at the expense of Britain’s working people, and themselves personally. As when one of their number decided to relax the planning laws while angling for a lucrative property deal in London.

There have been voices on the internet claiming that democracy is in crisis and that people are giving up on it. If that’s the case, then it’s because we don’t have enough democracy in Britain. Last year we saw three prime ministers come and go, but were not allowed to elect any of them. It’s high time this changed.

More democracy, Tories out!

Happy Queen’s Jubilee Everyone!

I expect the readers of this blog may have differing views about the monarchy, so I’ll just say that I hope my readers are enjoying the Bank Holiday. We had visitors yesterday, and I’m sure many other people are also taking the opportunity to catch up with family and friends. Down here in south Bristol, we also had a nice bit of sunshine, but it’s now clouded over and I’ve been told we can expect rain this weekend. So basically, enjoy the weather while it lasts.

And down with Johnson!

Conservative Guest on GB News Says Prince Andrew Should Renounce Royal Titles and Army Connections and Disappear

Oh dear, things are not going well for Prince Andrew and his fight against the allegation that he had sex with an underage girl enslaved as a prostitute by his mate, Jeffrey Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell, another of Epstein’s close friends, has also been found guilty of child trafficking. I believe the woman, although 17 at the time, is nevertheless considered underage as in American law the age of consent is 18, rather than 16 over here. And whether it’s consensual or not,, I think it’s considered ‘statutory rape of a minor’. It may well be that Andrew isn’t guilty, just like Peter Mandelson, who also turns up in Epstein’s little black book. But as Mike has pointed out over at Vox Political, he’s undermining the monarchy by behaving as if he were. He has repeatedly tried to get the case thrown out of court, declared that a photograph of him with the girl is a fake, and claimed that at the time in question he was eating at Pizza Hut in Reading with his daughters. Does anybody really believe this claim? I can’t remember what I was doing on specific dates years ago, and I have trouble believing that his lordship would eat at a popular, downmarket place like Pizza Hut. It might be true, and there’s nothing wrong with the Hut. I’ve dined there with friends myself. But it just doesn’t seem to fit with Andy’s place as a member of the aristocracy. You expect he’d eat somewhere are little more exclusive. And nobody else seems to remember him there, despite the fact that the place would be alive with security guards and the mere presence of the man and his daughters would be a massive occasion and surprise.

And some Conservatives are getting sick and tired of his evasions and denials. I found a video today by GB News in which a very establishment guest, Rafe Heydel-Mankoo, described as a broadcaster and royal commenter, argued that Andrew should renounce his royal titles and army offices and links, and disappear for the sake of the monarchy. He believes that Andrew may be prepared to do this, as he served in the Falklands War and so has had the ideolog of service that animates both the British monarchy and the armed forces. When asked where he could possibly disappear to, Heydel-Mankoo suggests Scotland. This might help reinforce the union. His interviewer, someone called Brazier, replies that it could instead push them even further to independence. He’s got a point. I got the distinct impression that the monarchy is particularly unpopular over the border. Some of this may well go back to the Jacobites, but it may also be simply caused by the fact that they’re perceived as distant from Scotland and its affairs, despite the Bowes-Lyons family’s personal estates in Scotland and Her Maj spending her hols at Balmoral.

And Andy’s problems also don’t stop there. Another news report I found on YouTube, which I didn’t read, claims that the cost of defending himself is disastrously eating into his own personal finances. He has been forced to sell a £32 million chalet in Switzerland.

I don’t know if Andy is guilty. Like everyone else, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know how it works in American law, but over here you’re innocent until proven guilty. But his evasive behaviour, in my view, makes him look guilty and I believe it is undermining the monarchy.

I therefore agree with Mr Heydel-Mankoo that he should disappear, at least for a while. Or he should face his accusers and clear himself, if innocent, in a court of law.

Video of Me Playing the ‘Rights of Man’ Hornpipe

Here’s a bit of British folk music from the radical tradition. I’ve just put up on my YouTube channel a short, six minute video of myself playing, or trying to play, an 18th century hornpipe celebrating The Rights of Man, one of the books of the great 18th century English radical democrat, Tom Paine. He was born the son of a Thetford staymaker, and a supporter of the American Revolution. His pamphlet, Common Sense, was written to defend it, and attacks the institutions of the British monarchy and aristocracy. He was initially a supporter of the French Revolution, but turned against that as a perversion of his principles. The Rights of Man was written as a defence of republicanism. Although it was massively popular with a print run of 200,000 copies, it was denounced by the upper classes up and down Britain and burned on village greens before being finally banned by royal decree. Not surprisingly it still had a huge underground circulation in Scotland and Ireland. Paine eventually emigrated to America where he died. I think he was too radical for the Americans, although The Rights of Man was praised and regarded as highly influential by several American presidents. Unfortunately, his remains weren’t allowed to rest quietly. A fan, John Cobbett, dug them up and brought them back to Blighty. Unfortunately, he went bankrupt and the skeleton was seized as an asset, before it was ruled that it wasn’t. The skeleton disappeared and no-one knows what has happened to it.

I found the sheet music to this, as well as a brief description of Paine’s life and career, which I read out in the video, in Robin Williamson’s English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish Fiddle Tunes (New York: Oak Publications 1976). I play it on a keyboard, but with the setting on violin so that it sounds as it was originally intended to be played. Or as close I can manage it. The arrangement printed in the book is Scots.

Rights of Man Hornpipe – YouTube

History Debunked on the Anachronistic Casting of Black Actors to Play Ann Boleyn and Queen Caroline

One of the complains raised by some members of the right against the demands for more Black presenters and actors on screen is that it represents a form of cultural colonisation. The past is deliberately being re-shaped to suit the multicultural present. The right-wing internet YouTuber, Alex Belfield, has argued that by the Beeb’s standards, Blacks are actually overrepresented on television. At the moment British Black and Asian population constitutes about 13 per cent of the overall population, but form 22 per cent of the presenters, performers and broadcast on the box. It’s why he choose in one of his videos to attack the Beeb for wasting even more license-payers’ money on someone to head a diversity department. He maintained that the problem wasn’t the underrepresentation of Blacks and Asians in front of the camera. It was that they weren’t represented in the ranks of BBC management, which remained very White and middle class.

There are a number of recent and forthcoming adaptations of classic literature, in which Blacks and Asians have been cast in traditionally White roles. And so Blacks have been cast to appear in the children’s classic, The Secret Garden, Philip Pullman’s Fantasy series, His Dark Materials, and Dev Patel, who played the Master in the last series of Dr. Who, appeared in a colour blind, multi-ethnic version of Dickens and is due to star in an adaptation of the medieval story, Gawain and the Green Knight. There’s also a version of the Lord of the Rings planned by the Corporation, in which a third of the cast will be Black or Asian with Lenny Henry.

But this desire to recast White characters with Blacks isn’t confined to fiction. Channel 5 has announced that it has cast a Black actress, Jodie Turner-Smith, to play Ann Boleyn in a three part series about Henry VIII’s second wife. And Netflix has also chosen a Black actress to play Queen Caroline in its regency romance, Bridgerton.

History Debunked’s Simon Webb has posted several videos about this. He was rather incensed by the decision to recast one of the characters in The Secret Garden as Black, and describes how there was some popular criticism of a similar recasting in His Dark Materials. However, he says that left-wingers and progressives answered that by arguing that the role was fiction, and that Pullman never specified what colour the character was.

That argument, however, cannot be used to defend the false representation of Boleyn and Caroline as Blacks. He views this as a deliberate attempt to colonise the past so that it resembles what he describes as the ‘bastardised’ multicultural present. It is also not being done in a vacuum. There are Blacks, who believe that Queen Caroline really was Black, as was James I of England/VI of Scotland, and Edward III’s son, Henry, the Black Prince. This recasting of real, historical figures has to be resisted because it is actively falsifying history to make it appear that Blacks had a far greater role in shaping history than they did.

Here’s the video about Ann Boleyn.

Jodie Turner-Smith to play Ann Boleyn – YouTube

The idea that Queen Caroline was Black comes from the fact that she was partly descended from a thirteenth century Spanish Moorish prince. The Moors in Islamic Spain – al-Andalus – were Arabs and Berbers, rather than Black Africans. Caroline herself was so far removed from her Moorish ancestor that any Black ancestry she had wouldn’t have been expressed physically. She was a German princess, and so would have been White in appearance.

A black queen in Netflix’ new series Bridgerton – YouTube

See also:

New, multicultural versions of two classics of English literature – YouTube

TV Diversity Is NOT A Problem 🇬🇧 22% 📺 BBC Give Us Back The £100,000,000! – YouTube

Multi-Racial Casting Already in Theatre

I think there are also a number of other factors driving this trend. Multiracial casting has been around in the theatre for a very long time. I think as far back as the 1990s Black and Asians actors were being cast in traditionally White roles in Shakespeare. I remember an article in the Independent or the I came out a few years ago commenting that such casting was accepted by audiences, even when people of different ethnicities played members of the same family. There was also something of a furore a few years ago when the Black opera singer, Willard White, was cast as Odin in Wagner’s Ring. What seems to be happening is simply that this same process is being extended to film and TV. The Dickens’ adaptation that came out recently not only starred Dev Patel as the central character, but also had members of the same family played by actors of different races. It was made by Armando Iannucci, one of the brains behind the comedy news programme, The Day Today and other shows in the 1990s.

Few Explicitly Black Parts and the Metropolitan Bubble

I also believe that it’s due to the fact that there are too few parts specifically for Black and Asian actors. That’s been the complaint voiced by one of the Black activists pushing for the greater inclusion of Black performers when he was interviewed in the I a little while back. Blacks and Asians are minorities, and generally are under represented in the upper ranks of society. Hence the demand for colour blind casting and that directors should be willing to cast Blacks and Asians. It also seems to me to be also partly a product of the metropolitan bubble in which the media and its chiefs live. Over a third of London’s population is Black and Asian, and I think there’s an automatic assumption that somehow this is true of the rest of Britain. Some Black activists and performers have been really shocked to find that there are large parts of Britain with hardly any people like themselves. Years ago the late Black actor and comedian, Felix Dexter, appeared on the panel in an edition of the News Quiz, which came from Edinburgh. He expressed his surprise that there were areas of Scotland with hardly a Black face to be seen. While undoubtedly true, his surprise struck me as also a tiny bit racist in itself. There was an element of complaint in it, as if it was somehow a defect that these places happened to be nearly all White. It reminded me a bit of the comments by Victorian explorers about going into parts of Black Africa and elsewhere previously untouched by the White man. I’m sure Dexter and those, who share his views would have been horrified by the comparison, but I believe it’s a true one.

Selling Programmes to a Non-White Foreign Audience

I also wonder if it’s also driven by a need to sell these programmes abroad. Blacks constitute something like 10-13 per cent of the American population, and together with Asians constitute 25 per cent of the American population. I’ve no doubt that the Beeb will also be seeking to sell the programmes to Black majority and Asian countries, such as Africa, the Caribbean, India and so on. Hence the decision to cast Black and Asian actors may well come from a desire to appeal to foreign, non-White audiences.

Dangers of the Falsification of History

I wouldn’t have a problem with this, were it not for two reasons. I’m afraid that it really will result in a falsification of history. If it was just a case of TV companies trying to reach new audiences in line with present, multicultural sensibilities, I’d be perfectly happy with it. Provided that the audience understood that what they were seeing was fiction. They they understood that Queen Caroline and Ann Boleyn weren’t really Black, and that Victorian and medieval Britain weren’t as multicultural as today’s London. But I really don’t think they do. And this is going to be a particular problem with some Blacks, who believe that their history has already been appropriated by Whites. This is very much the case with Afro-Centric History and ancient Egypt. All the Black people I’ve met have believed that the ancient Egyptians were Black. This isn’t unreasonable. They portrayed themselves as darker than the other peoples further north and east, like the Minoans and the Semitic peoples of Canaan and the Ancient Near East. Examination of human skeletons from ancient Egyptian tombs show that many were more Black African in appearance than previously assumed, and certainly the sculpture of Queen Ty shows her as being very Black. On the other hand the Egyptians portrayed the African peoples further south, such as those of Nubia, to be much darker than themselves. I also don’t think that the ancient historians, like Herodotus, described them as Black. Herodotus was well aware of Black African peoples and tribes, like the Ethiopians, but he doesn’t describe the Egyptians as one of them, at least, not that I can remember. It isn’t unreasonable by any means to believe the Egyptians were Black, but there’s also room for debate. Unfortunately, I’ve heard some really bonkers conspiracy theories about the supposed White appropriation of the ancient Egyptians. One Black American I knew at college claimed that the reason so many statues from ancient Egypt had chipped or missing noses and lips was because the European archaeologists deliberately removed them in order to hide their African identity. It’s a paranoid, ludicrous idea, though you can’t really blame people for believing it. Black people have historically been abused and exploited, so it’s to be expected that this sense of exploitation, and that they are being deliberately denied a glorious history, should extend to one of the most famous and brilliant of ancient civilisations.

But I’m very much afraid that once the decision is taken to cast Blacks as real, historical figures, some people will genuinely believe that these figures really were Black, and that those evil Whites have falsified history once more to hide their true racial origins.

There is also the problem that recasting the past so that it appears more multicultural than it really was may also lead to modern audiences not realising just how hard a struggle Blacks and Asians had to gain their freedom. Nearly a year ago now Mr H of the YouTube channel Mr H Reviews raised this objection to the Beeb’s new adaptation of that horror classic, Dracula. The convent to which Harker flees for help and medical treatment in Budapest is shown as multiracial, with many of the nuns Black and Asian. He felt that this was anachronistic, though I’m told by a friend of mine with a greater knowledge of church history that the Roman Catholic convents in the city were staffed with people from the missions to Asia and elsewhere, so it’s possible there would have been Black and Asian nuns there.

In the case of regency Britain and the upper ranks of society, intermarriage between Whites and Blacks wasn’t unknown, but it was rare. A few years ago back in the ’90s Radio 4 did a programme about the Black son of a White planter or British aristocrat, who had a glittering political career as an MP and ended up, I believe, as the sheriff of Monmouthshire. One the other hand, when Major Moody came to write his report in the 1820s on whether Blacks were ready for their emancipation, he argued that they would never be accepted and treated fairly by White society. Part of his argument was that there were so few marriages between Whites and Blacks among the upper classes. Moody’s wife was Black, and so his report and its conclusion that the enslaved population of the British empire weren’t yet ready for their freedom was a real shock. But if Queen Caroline is presented as a Black woman, it obviously contradicts Moody’s own observation. And his observation and the argument it supports shows just how strong racial prejudice was among some sections of the populace in 19th century Britain.

Double Standards on ‘Cultural Appropriation’

My other problem with this is that of the accusation of ‘cultural appropriation’. This only seems to go one way. Black involvement and participation in White culture is actively encouraged and its absence condemned and deplored as a form of racism. But this doesn’t go the other way. When Whites adopt non-White culture, it’s condemned as a form of cultural theft. In the case of those cultures that have been colonised and nearly destroyed by White expansion and imperialism, like the Amerindians and Aboriginal Australians, this is fair enough. But there should surely be no objection to the casting of White actors as Black characters in works by Black and Asian writers and playwrights. Not if it’s done as part of a multi-ethnic cast and avoids the obviously offensive, like blacking up. But I’ve yet to see a White actor cast in a Black part in an adaptation of one of Wole Soyinka’s works, or Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. I therefore feel that Webb has a point when he attacks it as a form of cultural colonisation. Because until Whites are allowed to play Black roles, that’s what it is.

I’m prepared to accept that the portrayal of myths and literary characters on screen is changing as society changes, and that mostly this harmless. Dickens, Shakespeare and medieval classics like Chaucer and Gawain are great tales, and should appeal to everyone, regardless of their colour. But I have grave reservations about the decision to do the same to historical figures.

It might be well intentioned, but too many people may believe it’s fact, and so a mythical, false history created.

‘I’ Newspaper: Police To Investigate British Mercenaries for War Crimes in 1980s

Very interesting piece in yesterday’s I for Tuesday, 1st December 2020 by Margaret Davis. Entitled ‘Investigation of 1980s ‘mercenaries’, it reports that the British mercenary company, the ‘Keenie-Meenies’ are being investigated by the fuzz for war crimes alleged to have been committed in Sri Lanka in the 1980s. The article reads

Police have launched an investigation into alleged war crimes by British mercenaries in Sr Lanka in the 1980s.

The Metropolitan Police confirmed a referral was made to the force in March. Officers from the War Crimes Team carried out a “scoping exercise”before an investigation was launched.

The force would not comment further on the inquirty, but it has been reported that a company called Keenie Meenie Services helped train a Sri Lankan police squad called the Space Task Force, which was later accused of serious human rights violations.

The investiative journalist Phil Miller, who has written a book about the firm, is currently in a legal battle with the Foreign Office to get files from the period released.

A spokesman from the Metropolitan Police said: “We can confirm that the Met’s War Crimes Team – part of its Counter Terrorism Command – received a referral in March concerning war crimes alleged to have been committed by British Mercenaries in Sri Lanka during the 1980s.

“The War Crimes Team…. have subsequently launched an investigation. We are not prepared to discuss any further details of what remains an active and ongoing police investigation into this matter.”

Phil Miller’s book has been reviewed in the parapolitics/ conspiracy magazine Lobster, and the ‘Keenie Meenies’ have been the subject of a number of their articles, I believe. They were set up in the 1970s and very well connected. I think the founder, or his son, is friends with one of the princes. They were sent into Sri Lanka as a way of covertly giving military aid to the Sri Lankan government in their war with Tamil Tigers without breaking international law. As for the government wishing to block release of the papers about them and their activities, this seems par for the course. Successive governments also blocked the release of official documents showing the mass murder, torture and abuse of indigenous Kenyans during the Mao Mao uprising. These are documented in the book Africa’s Secret Gulags. It was only a few years ago that these papers were released and the victims able to sue for compensation.

The government blocking the release of these papers is the same government that’s trying to pass legislation to make British squaddies exempt from prosecution for war crimes, so that they can continue to kill, rape and maim innocents, or train those who do, in violation of natural justice and international law.

IPSO and the Press Story about Princess Di’s Warning to Meghan Markle from beyond the Grave

I found another interesting snippet from Private Eye while I was looking through a pile of old copies last night, which adds a slightly different perspective Prince Harry’s decision to prosecute the press.  Harry is rightly angered at the way his and other’s phones were hacked, and it appears that one of the other victims was his mother, Princess Diana. It looks like one of those bearing responsibility for that was Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror and then News of the World when it happened.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/10/prince-harry-says-they-hacked-diana.html

I’m afraid I’ve misplaced the snippet, but if anyone’s really interested, I’ll try to find it again. But it was a report on a later sent to a complainant by IPSO about an article published in one of the newspapers. This claimed that a pair of ‘psychic twins’ had been contacted by the late Lady Di, who had given them warning from her to be given to Meghan Markle. If the Eye’s account is correct, it was deeply tasteless story. I’m not a sceptic regarding life after death and the possibility of the dead contacting the living, but this is right up there with some of the nonsense spread by mediums like the late Doris Stokes in her prime. And the various celebrity mediums, who’ve come out with messages from everybody from Henry VIII, Julius Caesar and Queen Victoria. It’s nonsense. The person, who complained to IPSO about it apparently objected to it because these claims were being reported as fact. IPSO stated that they decided that it had not. The article had included plenty of terms indicating neutrality towards the truth of the twins’ claim, like ‘perhaps’, and indicated that they were only reporting what they claimed through statements like ‘they said’. And so IPSO turned the complaint down.

The article didn’t say, who had complained to IPSO, carefully preserving their anonymity. And it could have been anyone. Princess Di may be over twenty years’ dead, but she still has her fans. Just as Meghan Markle and Harry also have their admirers amongst the general public, quite apart from their personal friends.

I was never a fan of Princess Diana. She did some good as Prince Charles’ consort, notably in her campaign against landmines. But she was also adept at manipulating the press, and her spat with Charles did diminish the general esteem of the monarchy, even if Charles was the adulterer. Nevertheless, she was killed with Dodi Fayed trying to escape the paparazzi press that followed and exploited her.

This story reminds me of comments Robbie Williams made a few years ago on a programme hosted by Jon Ronson on Radio 4. Ronson and Williams were going to a UFO and alien abductions convention in the US. When asked how he got interested in ufology, the 90s singing sensation replied that it was partly due to the rubbish he had suffered from the press about his mother. She was a medium, and so the papers had run endless stories about Williams, his mother and spooks until he was so sick and tired of it that he couldn’t read the papers. It was then that he started getting into UFOs, as something of a diversion. And on the subject of UFOs, Williams sounded remarkably sensible and grounded. When asked about some of the absurdities of the alien abduction phenomenon and Indigo Children – supposedly aliens incarnated as children to guide us here on Earth – he simply replied that he didn’t believe it or disbelieve it.

You can well understand why Williams would be upset with the press stories about himself and his mother. Just as it would be no mystery to anyone if Harry was upset about similar stories about his own mother and wife. Lady Di was certainly no angel, but she was hounded to her death by the papers. And the papers have been attacking Meghan Markle, with more than an undercurrent of racism beneath. How dare this American woman of colour marry a royal! And anyone would be annoyed at the press for hacking their and their family’s phones.

I therefore have every sympathy for Prince Harry’s decision, and wish him the very best in his suit against the press, particularly Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan. I’m sure that many Conservatives will too. I know one, who hated the Sun despite its right-wing bias, because it had taken every opportunity to exploit and run down the monarchy. It looks like now one of the royals is biting back. 

 

 

Dictator Johnson Unites Country Against Him

On Wednesday there were demonstrations against BoJob’s proroguing of parliament the same day as he, or rather, the West Country’s answer to the Slender Man, Jacob Rees-Mogg, persuaded the Queen to sign his wretched order. Even more followed on Saturday, with people marching up and down the country holding banners and placards, making it very clear what Johnson is: a dictator.

Jeremy Corbyn spoke to protesters in Glasgow denouncing BoJob’s decision. The Labour leader also issued a tweet thanking everyone who had taken to the streets both their and across the country, and pledging the Labour party to oppose BoJob’s attack on British democracy and stop a no-deal Brexit.

In London, demonstrators marched on Buckingham palace to make their feelings very known about the Queen’s decision to give in to his demand to assume authoritarian rule. The were also demonstrations in Hereford, Staffordshire, Nottingham, Oxford, King’s Lynn, where the local radio station for West Norfolk, KLFM 967 came down to cover the demo; and in Trafalgar Square in London.

Please see Mike’s blog for the images peeps posted on Twitter of these demonstrations: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/31/britons-take-to-the-streets-across-the-country-to-stopthecoup/

One of the most sharply observed was the banner at the beginning of Mike’s article, showing BoJob wearing a swastika armband and Nazi officer’s cap, flanked either side by the evil clown from Stephen King’s It, with balloons above them showing his and Rees-Mogg’s heads. This bore the slogan ‘Before 1933 People Thought Hitler Was A Clown Too…’. Yes, they did. One of the characters in Bernardo Bertolucci’s cinematic classic, The Conformist, makes that exact same point. The film’s about a man, who becomes a Fascist assassin after believing he has shot and killed the paedophile, who had attempted to assault him. In one scene, one of the characters reminisces how, when he was in Germany in the 1920s, there was a man, who used to go round the beer halls making speeches and ranting. ‘We all used to laugh at him’, the character recalls, and adds that they used to throw beer glasses at him. He then sombrely concludes ‘That man was Adolf Hitler’. And before he came to power, some Germans used to go to his rallies just for the fun of seeing who he would abuse next. Presumably this was in the same manner that people used to tune in to the genuine comedy character, Alf Garnett, although Garnett was very definitely a satirical attack on racism and the bigotry of working class Conservatism. Another banner made the same comparison with the Nazi machtergreifung: ‘Wake Up, UK! Or Welcome to Germany 1933′. Again, this is another, acute pertinent comparison. Everything Hitler did was constitutional, as was Mussolini’s earlier coup in Italy. Democracy collapsed in those countries because of its weakness, not because of the Fascists’ strength. And they were helped into power by right-wing elites in the political establishment, who believed that including them in a coalition would help them break a parliamentary deadlock and smash the left.

Zelo Street also covered the demonstrations against Johnson’s attempt to become generalissimo. The Sage of Crewe noted that not only were people marching in London, and large provincial cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Nottingham, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Brighton, but they were also occurring in middle ranking towns like Shrewsbury, Bournemouth, Cirencester, Lichfield, Stroud, Colwyn Bay, Clitheroe, Oxford, Swindon, Middlesborough, Exeter, Southampton, Derby, Weston-super-Mare, Falmouth, Bangor, York, Poole, Leamington Spa. Cheltenham Spa, Chester and others. ‘Places that do not usually do protests’. And the protesters are not, whatever BoJob’s focus groups say, going to vote for him.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/08/stop-coup-people-speak.html

I doubt that the demonstrations will personally have much effect on Johnson himself. He’s a typical Tory, and so has absolutely nothing but contempt for popular protest. However, the march on Buckingham Palace may have made an impression on the genuine guardians of the British constitution. The monarchy is supposed to be one of Britain’s central institutions, like parliament. Prime ministers come and go, but the monarchy is a central pillar of the British constitution. And its guardians in the British establishment may not take kindly to Johnson dragging the Queen down with him. There may also be some hope in that it was popular demonstrations and dissatisfaction with an unjust policy – the poll tax – that culminated in the removal of Thatcher. I hope it isn’t long before BoJob goes the same way.

 

 

 

Backlash against the Queen for Allowing Johnson Dictatorship

Mike’s also put up today a piece about the rising resentment towards the Queen for agreeing to Johnson’s demand to prorogue parliament. The Queen, as our hereditary monarch, is unelected. Boris Johnson is unelected: he was installed by a clique, that happened to form a majority in the Tory party at the time. The Tories are a minuscule part of the British people, and aren’t even the largest political party anymore. They’ve been massively eclipsed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. The only people in this sordid affair, who did have a democratic mandate were our MPs. They have been elected by us, and it is to prevent them continuing to represent the will of their constituents and block Johnson’s no deal Brexit, that the Blonde Beast sought the Queen’s permission to rule without parliament for a set period. He has thus demonstrated his contempt for parliament. And arguably, so has the Queen.

Mike states that the monarchy is now desperately trying to backpeddle from this mess. Nicholas Witchell, the Beeb’s royal correspondent, has said that she has never refused to accept the advice of her ministers, and always follows precedent. Mike also quotes the oleaginous hominid stick insect, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who asked the Queen to do this on BoJob’s behalf, as saying that the Queen now feels ‘Boxed in’. Rees-Mogg said

“She and her advisors, I have little doubt, will be frankly resentful of the way this has been done and will be concerned at the headlines which say ‘Queen suspends Parliament.”

Mike comments

Rightly so – because, as current slang has it, the optics are terrible.

People are saying democracy has been denied by an unelected monarch acting on the wish of an unelected prime minister.

And they know she could have stopped him.

He then follows this with a selection of comments from twitter. These are by the QC Chris Daw, the comedian Nish Kumar, the Labour and Co-op MP for Edmonton, Kate Osamor, and ordinary people like Isobel and Lin#CorbynOutrider.

Chris Daw in his tweet states that the first thing they teach at law school is that it is the Queen in parliament, who is sovereign.

Not the Government, not the Prime Minister, and no, not the public via a referendum.

What has happened today rips up centuries of stable government.

It’s an outrage.

This relationship between crown and parliament has been at the heart of the British constitution since at least the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was set down in the 17th century in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, although this codifies the constitutional view of earlier generations. It is this relationship which has prevented Britain from becoming an absolute, autocratic monarchy, as happened in France.

Isobel’s tweets express the anger and bewilderment of no doubt all too many other Brits, who wonder why the Queen has allowed this to happen. They now see her as rich, remote and isolated from the poverty the Tories have inflicted, content to see the country reduced to a mess. She tweeted

If she is resentful why did she allow it to happen? she knew it would cause a constitutional crisis whilst she carries on with her holiday in Balmoral the country is falling apart because SHE said YES.. she has lost any credibility she hAD she is happy to see UK in a mess.

perhaps the Queen+her family would like to go and live in a Tory Container for the Homeless, shall we demand the Royal Gravy train is cut off – when Boris gives Buck house to Trump.. he will do anything for the fool will she be happy in a Container like the homeless have to be?

I’ll give the Queen the benefit of the doubt here. I really don’t think that she thought that she did have a choice, as Johnson is the leader of the government. But she could have withheld her consent. This reminds me of the time the Australian Tories petitioned he in the ’70s to get rid of the-then Aussie Prime Minister, Gough ‘Wocker’ Whitlam. Because Whitlam was a Labour MP, and was doing too much to empower the working men and women, who have built that great Pacific nation. One of the priests at my local church is rather left-wing, and spent several years out in Oz, working with the poor, homeless and marginalised, including the indigenous people. He said to me one day that he wondered how long it would be, if Corbyn got in, before the Tories petitioned her to do to him what they did to Whitlam. By this example, not long. Not long at all.

Lin#CorbynOutrider tweeted that the Queen didn’t care less until she saw #abolishthe monarchy trending.

Mike concludes

That’s the nub of the matter, isn’t it?

And when this crisis is all over, with Dictator Johnson and his cronies banished to the waste-bin of history, it seems likely the people will want to seek assurances that this can never happen again.

We will need checks and balances to ensure that no unelected head of state can ever again deny us our right to representation.

It seems that, with a few penstrokes, the Queen may have put an end to the British Royalty.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/29/abolishthemonarchy-backlash-against-queen-for-meekly-rubber-stamping-johnsons-parliamentary-shutdown/

Mike’s article was based on a piece in the garden. But the I also published a similar piece about how there was now a backlash against the monarchy. Not just from this, but also from Andrew’s relationship with convicted paedophile Epstein.

The Tories under Cameron and Johnson are wrecking this country. They are actively causing the break up of the UK and riding roughshod over the British unwritten constitution, for their own selfish, personal and party interest. And they and their Yellow enablers in the Lib Dems dare to claim that Corbyn is a threat!