I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Let Richard Seymour Sleep Soundly In His Bed

Back in the late 1980s, I traveled to the old Ayresome Park ground to see Manchester United lose 1-0 at Middlesbrough. The game was awful and the experience miserable - as soon as you left the coach the police forced the visiting fans into the ground, and it actually seemed colder inside than outside. About the only thing I remember of the game was noticing the Falklands War veteran Simon Weston on the terraces with the United fans. I looked over once, and then decided someone who has had severe facial burns probably does not want people staring at him all day.

Simon Weston is back in the news after making a minor intervention in the Labour leadership debate, arguing that Jeremy Corbyn could lose the Falklands Islands to Argentina, via some form of joint sovereignty. This would be a very difficult thing for a Corbyn government to do, not least because the islands display unanimity in the view they wish to remain British. Given the suffering they experienced during the Argentinian invasion and occupation in 1982, there is no love lost for their former enemies.

Weston's comments seemed to particularly infuriate some of Jeremy Corbyn's cyber army, including the prominent socialist writer Richard Seymour, who blogs as Leninology, and contributes to the Guardian's Comment is Free. According to Seymour, no one cares what Simon Weston thinks, and if he knew anything, he would 'still have his face'. Nice sentiments (captured below in a screenshot by James Bloodworth):

Stay classy, 'Lenin'. pic.twitter.com/bdHD2bPMEm

— James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) August 30, 2015

In Richard Seymour's world, a working class man who joins the armed forces at a young age, and receives serious injury fighting a fascist military dictatorship occupying a peaceful British territory, is to be condemned as knowing nothing. He is then mocked with regards to the injury he received. How far some contemporary socialists stand from the class they claim to represent.
It is apparently a myth that George Orwell ever wrote “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” But let Richard Seymour sleep soundly in his bed tonight - the real world will carry on without him. And his ideas.

Hamza Tzortzis, Segregation and ..... Ashley Madison

Perhaps the most high profile Islamist organisation on UK campuses in recent years has been iERA, the Islamic Education and Research Academy, headed by Hamza Tzortzis. It was iERA who caused the extremely damaging argument about segregation by Muslim students at universities, when, back in 2013 they attempted to segregate men and women onto separate sides of the room during a public meeting at UCL.

In a worrying sign of their attitude, at the time iERA pictured its male rota of speakers on their website, but portrayed the females as faceless hijabs - an indication no doubt, of their role in iERA's vision for our society. Today the same approach applies, with the men on iERA's 'Meet Our Speakers' page featured in all their glory, the women, listed last, recorded only by their names. Welcome to British Islam?

News emerges though, that Hamza Tzortzis may not always be so keen to keep women at a distance. In a sheepish post on his Facebook page, iERA's leader reports that his name, address and bank details appear in the leaks from the Ashley Madison site - a website dedicated to enabling no strings sex for married men and married women seeking an affair. This, we are told is an 'obvious case of fraud' even though he had carried on paying for membership of the site over several months. So busy was Mr Tzortzis doing Allah's work on campus, he neglected to notice his bank statements recorded regular fraudulent payments to a dating site with the by-line 'Life is short. Have an affair.' Easily done!

It is certainly possible however to think that the great man is hedging his bets a little, when he declares:

"My whereabouts and activities, both private and public are traceable and recorded, and there is without any doubt that I have not pursued such immoral acts that the site promotes (this includes permissible acts, for instance the endeavour to find another halal wife [who can also be a non-Muslim] who wanted to be with a married man, which is allowed in Islam)."

With the demise of the News of the World, that familiar staple of our Sunday reading, the tabloid sex scandal, could have become a thing of the past. For reasons of nostalgia, it is comforting to see that conservative religion and its inherent hypocrisy can still provide a chortle or two over our Sunday morning cornflakes. Those iERA tried to separate into different halves of the room at UCL in 2013 will certainly afford themselves a wry smile.
But simply laughing at groups like iERA is not enough - as the Council of Ex-Muslims illustrated in their report 'Evangelising Hate - the Islamic Education and Research Academy' - iERA present some real problems and dangers. Lets laugh at them now, but make sure that they are not the one's laughing tomorrow.

Libraries Need........ Books

Once children were considered to be in poverty - be it absolute or cultural - if they had no access to books. But now, access to books is increasingly considered old fashioned or unnecessary, for both children and adults.

It is not cuts which have undermined or destroyed public libraries. Birmingham's new library cost an astonishing £189 million, a project of breathtaking ego and waste. Instead it is the faddish approach to knowledge and naivete towards new technology which have turned library after library into a pale shadow of their former selves.

An artists impression of Birmingham's brave new world of learning

Librarian Carol Honey had a superb letter in the i of 18 August 2015 which best described this reckless abandonment of book based learning:

As a librarian and frequent visitor to Birmingham, I looked forward to the opening of the new library with eager anticipation, but when I made my first (and only) visit I could have wept. At the entrance you are greeted by a large cafe, reception and shop - no hint of the type of building you are in. The signage is confused with floors described as 'Knowledge' or 'Discovery'. What is wrong with Fiction, Non-fiction or Reference?
Two huge neon-lit escalators to the first floor were full of schoolchildren chasing each other up and down and screaming loudly. I couldn't blame them, it looked like a shopping mall. When I eventually found the book stock, I was appalled at how poor it was. Disappointed doesn't begin to describe my feelings.

Carol Honey

To Succeed Corbyn Would Have To Leave The EU

Our politics could be about to get really interesting.

Today's business section of the Sunday Telegraph has a hit piece against Jeremy Corbyn, alleging 'Corbyn's policies would reduce Britain to 'Zimbabwe-style ruin'. So far, so standard. But the detail is what makes Peter Spence's article worth reading and re-reading. The title of the online version indicates the underlying nature of the subject matter 'Jeremy Corbyn's 'People's QE' would force Britain into three-year battle with the EU'

After getting in the immediate dig that Corbyn would turn Britain into Zimbabwe, Spence writes:

"Key parts of the Labour leadership frontrunner's plans would fall foul of EU laws intended to avoid runaway inflation, and consign the UK to a three year legal battle with the European Court of Justice"

So, vote Corbyn, vote for what is being styled as 'People's quantitative easing' - and get the European Court of Justice. That is not acceptable. The economic policy of the UK - whether free market, socialist or a thousand shades in-between, is a matter for you and me as British citizens. Not judges overseas.

Rather than focus on the political nature of what he has just outlined, Spence turns to the economic consequences (as you might perhaps expect in the business pages). Economist Tony Yates, and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney are wheeled out to predict the descending of plague and pestilence upon us all. Several paragraphs through, Peter Spence gets political again:

"Mr Corbyn's proposals would clash with Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty. which forbids central banks from printing money to finance government spending. Lawyers warned that a lengthy fight with the EU would be a certainty, and could mean that infrastructure projects end up incomplete."

The Lisbon Treaty, readers may recall, is the one Labour declined to have a referendum on. David Cameron demanded one in opposition, and committed himself to it in 2007, before changing his mind.

Long term tax campaigner Richard Murphy of Tax Research LLP has emerged as somewhat of a guru in recent months on the issue of taxation, and a potential change of economic direction under Mr Corbyn. I do know that some of those behind Notes from the Borderland magazine, who worked with Mr Murphy in the past on the issue of the UK's tax havens, were less than impressed with him, a matter which I am sure NFB will turn to on another occasion. On 'people's quantitative easing', Spence declares:

"Richard Murphy, named as the architect of People's QE, said that some fiddle would be required to get round Article 123."

Syriza tried that type of approach. Brussels said no. And were prepared to destroy Greece in the process. For Corbyn's policies to have a chance of implementation, Britain would either have to leave the European Union, or negotiate some special dispensation to be allowed to develop truly independent economic policies. How likely is that?

If you are wondering why Nigel Farage and UKIP have avoided the Conservative and New Labour attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, it is for a simple reason. You can't have socialism, and the EU. You can't for that matter have capitalism. Only corporatism. And the more Corbyn's supporters learn that, the more people will be questioning exactly what Britain is committed to in the European Union. Many will then be voting No in the forthcoming EU referendum.

Class War, Red Action and The 'Lost Left'

The new issue of the academic journal Twentieth Century Communism has published my paper on how Class War and Red Action responded to the rise of multi-culturalism and identity politics on the wider left. It appears in a special issue 'The Cultural Turn' which considers the development of cultural politics among revolutionaries.

The article is based on a paper I gave to the Communism Specialist Group at the "Communism, Class and the Cultural Turn" conference in Durham in January 2014, and has the very long winded title "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: two responses on the British left to the rise of identity politics - the cases of Class War and Red Action".

Its argument is explained in the following abstract:

The 1980s may be seen as an era where a profound shift occurred on the left. The anti-racist and multi-cultural approach of Ken Livingstone’s GLC, and that of a series of local authorities, was accompanied by a developing women’s movement and the positioning of questions of gender, race and sexuality at the centre of left wing politics. In cultural terms Marxism Today was perhaps the most profound example of this new focus.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This paper focuses on two revolutionary organisations emerging in this period – Class War within the anarchist movement and Red Action in the Marxist tradition. Both developed broad intellectual justifications concerning the overwhelming primacy of class and as such serve as important footnotes in any historiography of twentieth century left politics in the United Kingdom - a 'lost left'.

Whilst Red Action were to go on and produce some of the most valuable critiques of multi-culturalism to emerge from the left, certainly in the early days of New Labour, the road for Class War was at times a lot more rocky. The concerns which emerged within Class War that its focus on class politics meant it was marginalising issues of race and gender is perhaps a further example of the maxim that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

To order the Twentieth Century Communism journal, follow this link. You can also download the article from my academia.edu page.

Where Corbyn Gets It Right

I am not a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. My opposition is due to the deep relationships he has developed with Muslim Brotherhood leaders in north London over the past decade, including running constituency surgeries out of the Ikhwan's Finsbury Park Mosque. A Corbyn Labour Party would give Islamists the greatest boost they have had in this country since the invasion of Iraq.

But Corbyn has real strengths. In talking politics, and giving straight answers to straight questions, he has presented a clear alternative to the Tweedledee and Tweedledum candidatures of Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall (who she?). I can't help thinking that inside Andy Burnham there is a normal bloke occasionally struggling to get out. But he was long ago eaten up by the New Labour party machine - its now a little too late to be shouting from inside the belly of the beast.

In his refusal to launch counter-attacks when brickbats are thrown, Jeremy Corbyn has risen above the fray. There is something faintly noble in his words to the latest criticism, this time from Yvette Cooper:

"We’ve used this campaign to put forward policy issues on the economy, the environment, arts policy. We’re the one putting forward ideas, so I don’t do personal, I don’t do reaction, I don’t do abuse. Life is too short and it devalues the political process. I think we should try and enhance the democratic life of this country, not reduce it to that level.”

The wheels could yet come off. Those who wish the Corbyn campaign well would be well advised to get him as far away as possible from the Muslim Brotherhood's Middle East Monitor (MEMO) event in London on 22nd August. To appear on the same panel as the anti-Semitic cartoonist Carlos Latuff is a bit much, even in the left's current Islamist friendly climate.

Such problems aside, Corbyn is the only candidate presenting political ideas, and seeking a constructive debate. For that alone he should win.

Gang War Author Peter Walsh, Plus More on Paul Massey

Following the murder of Paul Massey, Russia Today had an interesting interview earlier this month with journalist Peter Walsh, author of the book 'Gang War: The Inside Story of the Manchester Gangs".

 

Walsh comes across as quite balanced, if cautious. He is certainly correct to point to the loyalty Massey inspired in others, but he does not dwell on the reality that the Massey family had enemies in the city. For example his cousin, Constance Howarth was convicted of being the lookout in the failed attempt to murder Salford's David Totton in 2006. The man convicted for being at the centre of that plot, Bobby Spiers, was a director of Paul Massey's security company, PMS.

On Paul Massey's politics, the final post on his twitter feed indicates he was planning to stand again for Mayor of Salford, where (as Walsh contends) he received a decent vote last time. This could have been as an Independent or perhaps with Bez's Reality Party - if Bez got round to registering it with the Electoral Commission. I don't think Massey would have won, but a vote of 10%+ was certainly possible.

Interestingly Paul Massey's twitter feed suggests that he took a different approach to national elections - a 7 May tweet called for a UKIP vote in the imminent general election.

Who should I vote for in the General Election 2015? These 12 questions will help you decide http://t.co/WYF6izLY7b vote ukip pm Salford

— Paul Massey (@paulmassey19601) May 7, 2015

Perhaps a policy of Reality for Salford, UKIP for the country?

Failing to attach Paul Massey to UKIP must be the first time Hope Not Hate have missed an opportunity to attack the party!

Manipulating the News: A Follow Up

I received a lot of positive feedback and support on social media for yesterdays post, on the manipulation of the news in the case of the stabbing of school teacher Vincent Uzomah. 

A few brief updates. Firstly the Guardian's Helen Pidd confirmed that the judge in the case did NOT order any withholding of the ethnicity of the attacker. This confirms that those news outlets who did not report he is a British teenager of Pakistani heritage, opted to do so of their own volition. 

 

@MrPaulStott @chrishanretty the judge specifically allowed reporting of the ethnicity of the offender

— Helen Pidd (@helenpidd) August 11, 2015

Secondly neither Show Racism the Red Card nor the Today Programme replied to me on social media, where I levied the question as to whether their interventions in this story properly reflected events. Laura Pidcock of Show Racism the Red Card also failed to comment, despite being sent a link to these criticisms.

An unexpected development during the course of yesterday was Matthew Weaver of the Guardian, somewhat bizarrely, picking up on Show Racism the Red Card's intervention on Radio 4, and deciding that in and of itself it was worthy of being a news story. Indeed at one point yesterday it was the ninth most read article on the Guardian site. This illustrates the nature of modern media websites - the need to produce endless layers of content that fit readers preconceived ideas means a highly partial and indeed disingenuous discussion on a radio show can, two hours later, become a news item.

And that serves as a further example of how liberal elites manipulate the news.

The Manipulation of the News

When reporting on matters of race or racism, we cannot even rely on liberal elites to report basic matters of fact. 

Yesterday a 14 year old boy was jailed for 11 years for stabbing his teacher, Vincent Uzomah, in the stomach whilst he was teaching at a secondary school in Bradford. Mr Uzomah had told the boy off for playing with his mobile phone. Mr Uzomah, who is black, was racially abused by the boy, who is British of Pakistani heritage, during the incident. The lad later boasted about it on Facebook, receiving 69 'Likes' for his actions. 

Listening to the BBC radio 4 coverage of the sentencing yesterday evening, there was no mention of the attacker's ethnicity, although plenty of the fact that this was a racist attack. An approach which was continued in the BBC and Channel 4 news internet coverage. Many following such 'analysis' would simply have assumed this was another case of a white racist lashing out at someone from an ethnic minority. That impression would certainly have been absorbed by the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme this morning. Here a discussion ensued between Laura Pidcock of anti-racist group Show Racism the Red Card and Sagheer Azfal, a supply teacher who reported he had experienced racism from pupils at secondary schools. 

Here, the Today Programme seemed to be attempting to bowl a googly from a fast bowler's run-up. If a black man is stabbed by a British-Pakistani racist, it seems a little strange to ask a British Asian to talk about their experiences of racism? Would a report on a black person stabbed by a white racist bring in the comments of a white teacher with negative experiences of some black children? I dare the BBC to try it........Whilst Laura Pidcock eagerly presented a series of familiar left complaints, for example about alleged racism in the media coverage of migrants, there was no attempt by anyone to comment on the elephant in the room - that poor old Mr Uzomah's attacker was not a white racist at all. 

In the media coverage I have seen in the past eighteen  hours, Helen Pidd, the rather impressive Northern editor of the Guardian, is one of the few journalists with the backbone to report the racist aspect of this case fully, both on social media and on the Guardian's website yesterday. I have asked both Show Racism the Red Card and the Today Programme if their comments this morning fully reflect the nature of this incident. I don't expect a reply.

For liberal elites - and BBC journalists and educational groups working in schools such as the government funded Show Racism the Red Card are textbook examples of liberal elites who form and shape opinion - cases like the stabbing of Vincent Uzomah are pre-determined. The problem is racism, and racism is about white people saying critical things about or doing nasty things to black people. If a case emerges that undermines this script, the details are subtly disguised so the expected impressions can still be digested by the general public. That is why we are not told the attacker's ethnic heritage. To reinforce wider political concerns, activists like Laura Pidcock are brought in to attach media coverage of benefit claimants and asylum seekers in Calais to a specific attack, and for additional absorption of the core message, an actual victim of white racism, Sagheer Azfal, used. 

And that, in one simple case, is how liberal elites manipulate the news. 

British Jihadism: The Detail and the Denial

I am reliably informed that apart from your examiners, nobody ever reads your PhD. In the unlikely circumstances that someone wants to battle through 99, 000+ words on British jihadism, you can download my doctorate via academia.edu here. The abstract below gives an overview of my arguments, approach and some of the detail which I hope makes the thesis unique. 

Since the early 1990s British Islamists have been fighting, killing and dying in a succession of conflicts across the world, beginning with the Bosnian Civil War of 1992-95. A decade later this violence reached the United Kingdom, with a series of deadly attacks on the London transport system in July 2005, the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. 

This thesis provides a historiography of the involvement of Britons in global and domestic jihadist struggles at home and abroad across three decades. It catalogues and records their actions, and bring into a central document the names and affiliations of both British Islamist combatants, and those from jihadist organisations who have settled in this country. The ever increasing number of Britons travelling to the Islamic State does not come as a surprise when the scale of past involvement in such causes is considered. 
This thesis deconstructs the religious objectives intrinsic to these trends, and emphasises that in British Jihadism it is the goal, as much as the message, which is religious. 

The reluctance of British Muslim representative organisations to address early examples of these developments, the ‘denial’ – is analysed herein. The development of a religious terrorism which often targets women and minority groups may have been expected to face critical examination from academics, in particular from within the critical terrorism studies school. Regrettably such rigour is found to be lacking. Indeed it is within the academy that some of the most sustained attempts to deny any religious influences behind contemporary terrorism have been found. Detailed feminist critiques of Islamist practice are deployed to advocate a new approach – one that leads to a critical terrorist studies which critiques not just government responses to terrorism, but terrorist actors also.