John's Labour blog

My own personal blog. UNISON NEC member for Housing Associations & Charities, HA Convenor, London Regional Council Officer & Chair of its Labour Link Committee. Newham Cllr for West Ham Ward, Vice Chair of Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, Pension trustee, Housing & Safety Practitioner. Centre left and proud member of Labour movement family. Strictly no trolls please. Promoted by Luke Place on behalf of J.Gray, Newham Labour Group, St Luke’s Community Centre, E16 1HS.

Showing posts with label gutter. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Gray’s Anatomy of the Bible – Alan Craig & the Gutter

This is a classic local politics blogging story. Tonight I was canvassing on behalf the Labour Party in the Newham Royal docks by-election when one of my team mentioned that they had read a post about me by Christian People’s Alliance (CPA) Councillor Alan “no to big mosques but yes to big churches” Craig.

In this post Craig said “a friend drew my attention to another Labour Party Biblicist in Newham, albeit a reluctant one. The references are in the blog (http://grayee.blogspot.com/) of local Labour and trade union activist John Gray”. The post was in September last year. Since no-one reads or comments on Craig’s BBB (Bigoted Boring Blog) it wasn’t noticed until recently.

Now Craig is slagging me off good and proper which is his right I suppose. I am to him apparently some sort of "Life from Mars" 1970's "old left" throwback. Which will come as a surprise to my "comrades" in UNISON United Left. But I'm not complaining about this.

Anyway tonight I posted this comment on his post which I await his reply.

Hi Alan

Tonight while out canvassing in Royal Docks a Labour Party comrade told me about this post. It would appear that you as ignorant as you are bigoted. I would be pleased to be compared by anyone else but you to Jack Jones who is a hero who risked his life to fight fascism and was wounded as a young man in the Spanish civil war.

As anyone who has read my blog would realise Arthur Scargill is no hero of mind even if the coal miners are and I did proudly support them on the picket line during the strike. Nick Cohen’s book “What's Left” is on my bookshelf and while I would not agree entirely with everything he writes upon I am a firm supporter like Nick of the Euston Manifestos.

I note that you do not have the courage to actually reference my posts about you. Nor my fears about the suspicion and division that your hypocritical comments about “mega mosques” provokes in our communities. Anyone interested can check my blog out and in the search button type “CPA”.

It’s not really that I think you ought to keep your opinions out of the pulpit - it is that you should keep them out of the gutter.