English/Welsh/Scottish "Defence" leagues...and their Nazi supporters

nuf said? Hat tip Harry's Place

"THE PROBLEM with the Socialist Workers Party"

"THE PROBLEM with the Socialist Workers Party, the old joke goes, is that hardly any of its members are workers, even fewer are socialists and none of them knows how to party".

The Guardian, March 29, 1991

Hat tip thingy Harry's Place
 
(Special day tomorrow folks!)
 
:)

Big Brother Monitors Placa De George Orwell

Life imitating art? Hat tip Harry's Place

Boxing Day Review of Blogs

For once I am fairly up-to-date on what is being posted on my “favourite” blogs. So here is a quick review of some of the stuff I found interesting in the last week or so.

Topically I found Jack of Kent “fisking” of the Christmas Story to be pretty convincing. In “An Atheist looks at Christmas” he sets out to demolish there being any historical basis whatsoever to the biblical Christmas Story. Despite having a similar approach to organised religion as Jack I found myself surprisingly disappointed at what he had found.

Harry’s Place had two very good posts IMO (I would say that wouldn’t I) here and here.

While former Labour and Tory Newham Councillor “Big Bad Mikey” who I have just barred from posting comments on this blog is bemoaning his lot and trying to tell the world how ‘orrible I have been to him! Check out "I Love Newham Labour".

Tom Harris MP co-incidentally “says it as it is” about Mr Very Angry bloggers and newspaper letter writers.

Stronger Unions have been posting a Union advent each day this month on all the advantages of trade unionism.

Check out the picture of a Ghost of Christmas Past at trade union history site Country Standard.

Will Straw in Left Foot Forward argues persuasively that Labour needs a new electoral policy. While I agree we need a new policy I am not sure that writing off the aspirational working class is necessarily it?

Finally the Higher Rate Tax Payers Avoidance Alliance are asked to repay the estimated £150k plus of tax they have fiddled.

BNP=NAZI Painting by Numbers

Hat-tip thingy to an ace post here on Harry’s Place about how Nick Griffin and the BNP are not just right wing nationalists who just don’t like immigrants. In reality they are Nazi's (followers of Germany National Socialism) and fascists who admire, defend and promote Adolf Hitler and want to replicate his regime in our own country. They are really a Hitler Worshiping Cult.

Now, this not mean that we should just right off the million odd voters who voted for the BNP at the last European union’s election and also to simply keep calling the BNP Nazi’s (not matter how accurately) by itself is not enough. But we need to let people know on the doorstep that the BNP is a foreign, anti British, unpatriotic, extremist rabble led by convicted criminals and violent hooligans. Check out this shortened version of the Harry’s Place 10 examples of how BNP leaders are apologists for Hitler:

1.Nick Griffin leads 500 NF Nazi saluting thugs to the Cenotaph in December 1986
2.Griffin has described the Nazis as “a movement that aimed to give a voice to the deepest aspirations of a nation”.
3.In 1996 Griffin picketed Coventry Cathedral in protest at a service being held to commemorate the Nazis’ destruction of Coventry in the Second World War
4.Griffin has described British RAF pilots as war criminals and murderers.
5.Griffith edited The Rune that claimed that Churchill was a tool of the Jews who deliberately prolonged the war against Nazi Germany in order to lead Europe down a road to “racial suicide.”
6. Griffin is a notorious Holocaust denier... I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie and latter witch-hysteria.”
7. Griffin’s chief lieutenant between 1999 and 2007, Tony Lecomber, branded Winston Churchill “a drunken, warmongering slob”.
8. Griffin proclaimed on the front cover of The Rune: “SS Special! Sick of Vera Lynn? See pages 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, & 88″. The last number was not a page number at all; “8″ denotes the eighth letter of the alphabet “H” and in fascist parlance “HH” means “Heil Hitler”.
9. Mark Collett the BNP’s director of publicity, said of Winston Churchill: “Churchill was a f***ing c**t who led us into a pointless war with other whites [ie the Nazis] standing up for their race”.
10. “There is a strong, direct link from Oswald Mosley to me,” Griffin boasted.

Last year I was at a Labour Party street stall in Stratford when we had a discussion with a young white woman who flippantly said if she was black she wouldn’t mind the BNP getting into power since they would give her a plane ticket to the West Indies. A black British Labour Party member present who happened to be born and bred in East London responded by saying “look love - if the BNP ever got in power they wouldn’t send people like me on a holiday – they would stick us in camps and gas us”.

Nuff said.

Why the Clown left the SWP Circus

Comrade Mercader has drawn my attention to the Harry’s Place post on Comedian Mark Steel’s book “What’s Going On?”. Mark left the SWP “rabble” last year after being a member since 1978 and in this book he explains why.

Check out here for a early ultra analysis of Mark and SWP bonker madness.

Apparently Galloway's antics on Big Brother was the final straw. Who said there was no good at all in the "Gorgeous One"!

Enjoy!

A bloggers life

Hat tip thingy Harry’s Place – from the xkcd.com.

Disclaimer
This cartoon is of course a work of artistic fiction and bears no intentional resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead. Any such apparent similarities are purely co-incidental.

Harry’s Place: Big Day Out

This is from “Harry’s Place” – An account of a guided tour last Sunday with local historian David Rosenberg, around the “radical Jewish East End”. Posted by Mira Vogel.

It looks like I missed a treat!

Late afternoon last Sunday - which was unbelievably warm and golden - a group of 35 or so Harry’s Place people and their sympathisers strolled companionably through the Radical Jewish East End on a tour led by East End Walks guide David Rosenberg.

We met at Gardiner’s Corner (Gardiners, like so much of the old East End, is no more) where an anti-fascist tram driver had marooned his tram to disrupt Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts during the Battle of Cable Street, October 4th 1936. Above us was an assertive-looking wall-mounted Star of David held aloft by a couple of proud lions with cutlasses. It was the sign of the now-no-more Jewish Daily Post. I’ve been walking up and down Whitechapel High Street for years and never noticed that - that’s why you go on things like this with people like David.

We proceeded to Manningtree Street, former location of the Popular Cafe, local meeting spot and one of many communication points for the Battle. Here David sketched Mosley’s veering political development from Conservative, when at 21 he had been the youngest MP in the Commons, to the disaffection over Ireland which propelled him to stand as an Independent and - via the Fabians, the left of the Independent Labour Party, and his own imaginatively-named New Party - to found the British Union of Fascists in 1932. Despite early support from the Mirror and Daily Mail, in David’s assessment the BUF was defeated by Mosley’s inability to build support as well as its own reputation for thuggery and antisemitism. He noted the debate about whether the antisemitism was a central policy plank or something borne out of desperation. Naturally, Mosley denied any antisemitism - if he targetted Jews, he said, it was because of what they were doing rather than who they were.

Next we heard about the different communities living in the area in the early 1900s - English, Irish, Somali, Chinese and the 120,000 or so Eastern European Jews taking refuge from pogroms back home. David described the difficulties this new community experienced in getting the growing Fascist threat recognised by the more established and prosperous Jewish community which had set up its institutions further west. Since East End Jews couldn’t gain adequate representation in this establishment, they set up a number of specifically East End institutions including the Workers Circle and Jewish People’s Council (David told us the Jewish Chronicle eventually embedded a journalist after which the editorial line shifted somewhat but, along with the Labour Party, the Jewish Board of Deputies still advised staying home on October 4th - a recommendation which was widely ignored).

We sat on railway sleepers opposite dinky Fieldgate Street Synagogue which nestles up against the East London Mosque. Guests from a nearby wedding milled around - it was an exquisite evening, perhaps the last of the year.

At this juncture David drew another of several books out of his bag (I think this one was ‘Our Flag Stays Red’) and introduced us to the radical Jewish East Ender Phil Piratin.

Next was Tower House, former hostel where Stalin stayed in a tiny room while attending an important Russian Communist get-together. Then we went to look at Paragon Mansions where the Communists had managed to blow a hole in Fascist support by organising a highly disciplined, successful and historically important campaign for better housing conditions. We heard how Irish Catholic and Eastern European Jewish women, prominent in the campaign, cooperated on their day-to-day jobs to help each other meet their picket commitments during the rent strikes. Then we moved on to Nelson Street, location of the last synagogue to be built in the East End, and heard about young Charlie Goodman, arrested for shinning up a lampost to urge on the anti-Fascists and, later, veteran of the Spanish Civil War.

Coming to Cable Street we imagined the scene - the mattress barricades, overturned truck and swarms of Irish dockers, Jews and Communists shouting the Spanish Civil War slogan “No Pasaran” as they confronted the Blackshirts and their mounted police escort (brought down by marbles!). And they succeeded - the Fascists didn’t pass. We ended at Dave Binnington’s enormous mural of the Battle, literally and figuratively a riot of people, missiles, banners, chamberpots and their contents, trampling horses and cossack-like policemen. Vandalised by the far right soon after completion in 1982, the mural now has a special easy-clean coating. Round the corner local fighters in the Spanish Civil War are commemorated by a fading plaque.

I’ve missed out a lot but David runs this tour regularly so you can go and see for yourself. My friends and I very much enjoyed the way he mixed historical account, vignette and undogmatic socialist commentary - the characters and their adventures, the connections he made between workers’ solidarity and anti-racism, the oppositions between newcomer and establishment, and the implicit debt of rememberance to those who fought Fascists at Cable Street and in Spain. Particularly impressive was his dignification by the Former Leader of Tower Hamlets Council in a drive-by shout of thanks (unrelated to his tours, but nevertheless).

The walk ended in balmy twilight and on David’s recommendation a good few of us went to eat at Aladin’s on Brick Lane. It was all fun.

You were missed - come with next time

The Last British Revolution – Happy Birthday America

Thanks to Harry’s Place for reminding us all “across the pond” that July 4th should be celebrated in these parts as well!

“Today is the day when the British freed themselves from a despotic monarchy and declared independence.

Unfortunately, they were unable to liberate their homeland of the British Isles, but those Britons willing to stand up to a tyrannical king went on to become “Americans” and created a world superpower, invented the corndog, and gave the world Bob Dylan”.

Tonight, by co-incidence, the Mrs. and I enjoyed a feast of Burgers (venison – low fat), Fries ( Tesco finest oven baked chips) and Baked Beans (Heinz - of course) washed down by loads of cold Beer (okay, okay - actually glasses of Jacobs Creek).

Happy Birthday to all our Revolutionary American Cousins!

The picture above is considered to be the first flag of the United States, the “Grand Union” or “Continental Colours” (properly spelt of course) flag that was in use 1775-1777.