Monday, October 05, 2009

Tories Support Latvian Fatherland (and Waffen SS?) Party.

Check out Rachel Reeves post on Labour list about Cameron and the Tories shameful association with the Latvian “Fatherland and for Freedom Party”. If the name alone was not enough we find that this party supports commemorations of 2nd World War Latvians who fought in Nazi waffen SS.

What on earth is going on here? I did hear last month Conservative Party Chair, Eric Pickles, completely inappropriate jocular references on the Today programme to this SS unit as just being conscripts. Yeah.

Does he dispute the allegations that this unit (a 1/3 were volunteers) were actively involved in the mass murder of Latvian Jews during the occupation? Yes or No?

This is all just to be honest pretty shameful. We can disagree on many things but all democratic parties should share a common platform of total opposition to Nazism (and any association) in all its shapes and sizes.

Cameron has dug himself and the Tories into a stinking 'orrible hole and needs to get the hell out of it (ASAP). Such an association demeans the whole democratic process.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

This farce illustrates the depths that Cameron duck and dive to in order to "position" himself on the EU.

For years the Tories were happy members of the EPP (European People's Party) which included other Conservatives and Christian Democrats (some of who's predecessors actually opposed the Nazis )

Now, to please extreme rghtwingers in his own party otherwise unhappy with his "touch -feely " but dis-honest makeover of the Tory Party Cameron pulls out of the EPP and links up with an adhoc rag bag of extreme right wingers and Nazi sympathisers.

Anonymous said...

Your are desperate John aren't you!

If your not careful you'll get sued again for overdoing things.

Naughty, Naughty boy that you are

Anonymous said...

Dear Jonh,
strongly suggest you to be more careful and to write down an author and source of the photo
as well as to find out what exactly is seen on the photo.
Good luck!

Anonymous said...

John are you having a laugh..

John Gray said...

Hi anons

apologies I should have put a link in to the picture.

Check out http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/world/ss-veterans-march-in-latvia-to-remember-nazi-troops

The Tories new friends in Europe support this Waffen SS remembrance event. Nuff said?

Anonymous said...

Didnt Churchill support the fascist Franco
and Lord Halifax and members of the Royal family Hitler

The Daily Mail the British Union of Fascists

who called for the hanging of Nelson Mandela

why yes the Young Conservatives

Mike Law said...

In an attempt at some kind of balance on this blog you may want to read This

John Gray said...

Hi Mike

Check out this response to ToryBear

Are you serious? This is the best you can do? The PES has 184 MEPs, of which you have managed to find a grand total of 3 questionable characters. The group also contains some of the most prominent mainstream leftwing parties in the EU.

By contrast, the Tories' ECR group is a mere 55 members strong, is totally isolated from the mainstream rightwing parties of Europe, and contains a high proportion of extremists. The second largest contingent in the bloc, after the Tories themselves, is the Polish Law and Justice Party, at 15 MEPs.

Unlike the PES or EPP, the ECR does not merely have extremists at the margins: it is dominated by them, and led by one (who also, incidentally, has an unfortunate habit of repeatedly misstating his past record, and then being found out). And why is that? Well, it is because the Tories designed the group that way.

The ECR only exists because the Conservatives created it. They decided that they wanted this group, they went to the ends of the earth to form it, and now they are acutely responsible for the fact that it is a rump of bigots. I can more than understand that you are desperate not to acknowledge all this, but nonetheless.

(also only one of them is still an MEP - one too many mind)

Mike Law said...

Hi John,

And there is this further on:

"Another question for the Labour Party is why they continue to sit alongside the Slovak Social Democrats (SMER), who share power with the far-right Slovak National Party of Jan Slota - an anti-Hungarian, anti-Roma, anti-gay party, led by a man who unashamedly admires Jozef Tiso, the wartime ruler of fascist Slovakia.

If a party allied to the Conservatives were to form a coalition government with such a party, all hell would break loose - and rightly so. Why the silence here? Labour should surely be pressing for SMER to be suspended from the Socialist group until it pulls out of this unholy alliance and the media should be pressing them on the issue.

Then there's Radu Mazare of Romania's Social Democratic Party (another Labour ally) who dressed up as a Nazi at a fashion show, and was strongly criticised for it by Jewish groups. Had a member of one of the parties in David Cameron's new grouping behaved like this there would have been a feeding frenzy from Labour and its media friends.

Then there are Labour's Bulgarian allies, the Socialist Party, whose leader (Sergei Stanishev) denounced Bulgaria's first gay pride march, saying that he did not approve of "the manifestations and demonstrations of such orientations". Michel Kaminski was criticised for being homophobic, what about Mr Stanishev?"

Personally, I think the Tories have made a mistake in their choice of fellow travellers on the EU; my view is that they should stand alone... I have major concerns with regard to the way the EU is organised and the general direction it seems to heading in as an organisation.

Mike Law said...

Got this from a MEP:

Labour’s European allies:
In the current European Parliament:


Allied to old Warsaw Pact Communists: While the Conservative Party’s allies were imprisoned as dissidents for trying to bring democracy to their countries (e.g. Lech Kaczynski, Sasha Vondra), many of Labour’s allies from those countries were active members of the totalitarian Communist Parties imprisoning them. The majority of the Democratic Left Alliance MEPs (Labour’s Polish sister party, allies in the Party of European Socialists (PES) in the European Parliament) were Communist Party members in the 1980s. Two of their MEPs (Dariusz Rosati and Marek Siwiec) have been named by the official Polish Institute of National Remembrance as collaborators with the Communist secret police (Polish News Bulletin, 20 November 2007). The Czech Social Democrat MEPs also include a number of people who were active Communists in the 1980s.



Allied to people who equivocate about the Holocaust in Romania: Labour’s sister party in Romania, the Romanian Social Democrats, have as their honorary president Ion Iliescu, who twice served as President of Romania. He claimed to an Israeli newspaper (Ha’aretz, 24 July 2003) that there was no Holocaust in ‘Romanian territory’ during the Second World War, a claim denounced as a lie by the Romanian liberal press (e.g. Evenimentul Zilei, 26 Aug. 2003). A mayor of a major Romanian city, Constanta , from the same party recently caused outrage for appearing at a fashion show dressed as a Nazi solder with his similarly attired 15 year old son (BBC News Online, 21 June 2009).


Attacked Romania ’s leading anti-corruption campaigner: on the eve of the European elections the Socialist Group (PES) in the European Parliament, of which Labour are members, attacked Romania ’s leading anti-corruption campaigner, the former justice minister Monica Macovei. They compared her to Nick Griffin as one of the ‘12 terrible candidates’ at the European elections. The PES’s behaviour was denounced by the Economist’s Charlemagne’s notebook: ‘Why are Europe ’s Socialists Defending Corruption?’

http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2009/05/why_are_europes_socialists_def.cfm#more



Allied to a Bulgarian Party that condemns gay pride parades: Bulgaria had its first ever gay pride parade last year. The then Prime Minister and current leader of Labour’s Bulgarian sister party, the ex-communist Bulgarian Socialist Party, Sergey Stanishev, condemned the parade, saying that he did not like ‘the manifestation and demonstration of such orientations’ (Reuters, 28 June 2008).

Mike Law said...

And this (couldn't include on previous post - too many characters):

In the last European Parliament that ended in June 2009 Labour sat with:

Polish Self-Defence (Samoobrona). In the last European Parliament, which ended in June 2009, Labour sat with Samoobrona (Polish Self-Defence). Samoobrona are a populist nationalist left wing party led by Andrzej Lepper. Andrzej Lepper is said to have worked with the anti-Semitic publisher Leszek Bubel (Stephen Roth Centre). He has even praised Hitler. He said ‘At the beginning of his activities, Hitler had a really good programme’ (Zycie Warszawy, quoted in the Financial Times, 15 April 2004). Fortunately, Polish Self-Defence failed to win any seats at the last European election.

9/11 conspiracy theorist. Giulietto Chiesa was an MEP for the Italy of Values party. He is a former member of the Italian Communist Party (profile on the European Parliament website), attacked the Orange Revolution in Kiev (‘I do not believe that it is just a revolution that is happening in Ukraine : what is also taking place is the last stage in the demolition of Russia ’, European Parliament debates, 1 December 2004). He has made a film, Zero, which promotes conspiracy theories around 9/11 and told the Iranian television channel Press TV that the attack was the result of a conspiracy by the American, Saudi and Pakistani secret services. The film was also shown on Russian television on the seventh anniversary of 9/11 (Press TV, 10 September 2008 and Weekly Standard, 13 October 2008). He failed to win re-election to the European Parliament.

John Gray said...

Hi Mike

You are missing the point as usual I'm afraid. This is supposed to be about the Tory official EU Parliamentary alliance with a largely extremist neo-Nazi grouping. I think (not sure now) that you have agreed that this was a mistake.

So have the courage of your convictions and condemn it - full stop.

Mike Law said...

Again, anything that doesn't quite paint the Labour Party as all things good and you stick your head in the sand...

John Gray said...

Hi Mike

Putting aside Party politics for the mo (only). You know what Cameron has done is wrong and that it does call into question his claims of "compassionate conservatism" and support for equality. All for what?

Mike Law said...

Up to a point I agree with you...

However, the same could be said of a Labour Government under both Blair and Brown.

Some of the measures that have been brought in or supported by both, with the backing of an acquiescent PLP, do not fit comfortably with a political body that parades under the guise of Democratic Socialists.

auroranorth said...

when are you going to address the decline of the White population world wide ?

John Gray said...

Hi auronorth

Probably never. I don't comment on racist nonsense and claptrap.

auroranorth said...

since when is the continued existance of a people racism ?

John Gray said...

but that is not your point.

anyway - have you threatened to kill your leader lately?

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H8TEVO1dxQ&feature=related