Could it be the end for Copland?

IT's almost a year since I went to a quiz night in Wembley, and teamed up with a trio of teachers. While we didn't win, I learned from them an interesting piece of information, namely that the former head of Copland School where they taught was to appear in court with five associates on charges of fraud and money-laundering.

Since the long-running affair at Copland had at one stage seen the suspension of the teachers held responsible for whistleblowing, and the school and its pupils are suffering from lack of funds, one could hardly accuse my informants of being vindictive when they nodded satisfaction that the head and his team looked like facing custodial sentences.

But this month, as teachers throughout the country joined action to defend their pensions, the news from the court and from Copland school was a bit of an education.

First,  the knighted "superhead” Sir Alan Davies and five former colleagues walked free from court on October 3, when prosecutors dropped charges that they had plotted to defraud Brent Council of £2.7m in bonuses.

Davies, 65, had been accused of authorising illegal  payments over six years while he was headmaster of Copland School in Wembley. He was said to have received more than £900,000 in “inappropriate payments” himself.

But the conspiracy charge against him and five other senior figures was dropped. Instead he pleaded guilty to six counts of false accounting between April 2007 and June 2009.

Judge Deborah Taylor sentenced him to 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years.

“I take into account your achievements but your dishonesty represents a very great fall from grace,” she said. He had failed to ensure transparent management at the school and had lied to protect himself. “What sort of message does that send out as head of a school when you resorted to lies?”

Davies has admitted tampering with dates on payroll forms but insisted the cash was honestly paid to and received by him. He was also acquitted of a further count of money laundering for allegedly flushing more than £270,000 of dirty money raked in from the scam from a NatWest bank account into a Spanish account in May 2008.

Davies’ alleged co-conspirators were formally cleared.They included Dr Richard Evans, 55, a former deputy head and education advisor to PM David Cameron, who had been accused of pocketing £600,000.

Also in the dock were the former chair of governors, Dr Indravadan Patel, 73, the former school bursar, Columbus Udokoro, 62, HR manager Michelle McKenzie, 53, and ex-vice chair of governors, Martin Day, were also accused of being involved in the alleged fraud on Brent Council.

Brent Council may now seek compensation through the civil courts.


Copland school was placed under "special measures" this year after an Ofsted report said it was  inadequate in almost all areas.  Headmaster Graeme Plunkett who took over in September 2010was reportedly told he would have to go. 

Teachers and students at Copland may have wondered whether Mr. Plunkett was taking blame for problems not of his making. Among the criticisms outlined by Ofsted was the state of the school building which it said provided an “unacceptable environment for learning.”

A Copland school student directly confronted David Cameron on the neglected state of the school buildings.


Dilapidated classrooms at Copland were due to be rebuilt with money from the Building Schools for the Future fund, but Tory Education minister Michael Gove scrapped that programme. Copland was the only local authority controlled secondary school in the borough but within weeks it was announced it would be converted to an academy.

Many fear Copland's  future has been settled, and it hasn't any.    

Now a correspondent calling theirself 'Mistleflower' has written in the blog Wembley Matters on October 16  drawing attention to further developments:

The cull in the summer resulted in the end in Copland losing around  60 staff, most taking ‘voluntary’ redundancy either because they were desperate to get away from the last regime’s shambolic mismanagement or they saw the way the wind was blowing with the new one (cut Copland to the bone, close it down, flog it off). Many of the teachers who left were happy, like myself, to do supply teaching rather than stay.

I now hear that Phase 2 of the process has begun. Around 50  support staff have been informed that 32 of them are to be made redundant. These include such people as library staff, pastoral support workers, science technicians, mentoring staff, caretakers, ICT technicians and, ( in the week that ex-Copland footballer Raheem Sterling was included in Roy Hodgson’s England squad for the World Cup qualifier), the football coach. Apart from the obviously essential nature of their work, people like these liaise with parents at difficult times, help motivate students, keep them on track and generally promote the social cohesion which is at the heart of any school community. ( Those wielding the axe might need  to look up those two words ‘heart’ and ‘community’).

As in July, in all of this, agreed procedures are being ignored, possibly illegally.

Phase 3, it has apparently already been announced, will take the axe to the Teaching Assistants, the staff who provide in-class support for children with special learning, language or emotional needs, ( Every Child Matters is soooo last century).

After that? Well, what remains of the place is still sitting in a very nice location and the few staff who remain can maybe get jobs helping to clear the site for the next Carpet Warehouse. One way or another, it looks like it will be an Absolute Return for someone, but clearly  not for the current kids and staff at Copland.

I don't know how much it will cost Brent to try and recover some of its money. Maybe I will meet up again with my teacher friends on Monday when I go to another quiz match - one of a series being held by the Save Preston Library campaigners, who fought Brent council over the closure of their local library, another affect of government austerity and the council's cuts.

If not there, then maybe some teachers will come to the public meeting which Brent Trade Union Council is holding on Thursday evening at the Methodist Church in Harlesden. Guest speaker is Kingsley Abrams, a member of the Unite union national executive, speaking on the fight against Austerity. Kingsley made his name as a Labour councillor in Lambeth, by refusing to vote for cuts. That lost him the Labour whip. But it could win him the Labour nomination for the Brent Central parliamentary constituency. And if Brent Labour party has the sense and spirit to nominate him he could get in.  But that's a big if, mind. 

Wednesday 23rd October

The Fight Against Austerity

Speaker: Kingsley Abrams   National Executive member, Unite the union, and Lambeth Labour Councillor

7.30 p.m., Harlesden Methodist Church Hall, 25 High Street Harlesden,  London, NW10 4NE
 

More on that WHO report

LAST month the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a long-awaited report summarising the findings of an investigation into congenital birth defects in Iraq which many people had expected would point to a link between their prevalence and the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by US and allied forces.

To the surprise of those who had awaited it, this 'summary report' finds:

"The rates for spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects found in the study are consistent with or even lower than international estimates. The study provides no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq."

Although critics have suggested there were odd features to this report, Jaffar Hussain, WHO's Head of Mission in Iraq, said it was based on survey techniques that are "renowned worldwide" and that the study was peer reviewed "extensively" by international experts.

Writing in the Guardiant this week ,Dr.Nafeez Ahmed reminds us of the Iraqi Health Ministry officials who told the BBC there would be "damning evidence" of the links between depleted uranium use and birth defects.

"For years, medical doctors in Iraq have reported "a high level of birth defects." Other peer-reviewed studies have documented a dramatic increase in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the aftermath of US military bombardment. In Fallujah, doctors are witnessing a "massive unprecedented number" of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects. Analysis of pre-2003 data compared to now showed that "the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births - 13 times the rate found in Europe."

Nafeez Ahmed quotes  Dr. Keith Bavistock of the Department of Environmental Science, University of Eastern Finland,  a retired WHO expert on radiation and health who says the WHO 'summary document' is  "disappointing."

"This document is not of scientific quality. It wouldn't pass peer review in one of the worst journals. One of the biggest methodological problems, among many, is that the document does not even attempt to look at existing medical records in Iraqi hospitals - these are proper clinical records which document the diagnoses of the relevant cases being actually discovered by Iraqi doctors. These medics collecting clinical records are reporting higher birth defects than the study acknowledges. Instead, the document focuses on interviews with mothers as a basis for diagnosis, many of whom are traumatised in this environment, their memories unreliable, and are not qualified to make diagnosis."

Asked whether there was reason to believe the WHO report had been politically compromised, Dr. Baverstock  said:

"The way this document has been produced is extremely suspicious. There are question marks about the role of the US and UK, who have a conflict of interest in this sort of study due to compensation issues that might arise from findings determining a link between higher birth defects and DU. I can say that the US and UK have been very reluctant to disclose the locations of DU deployment, which might throw further light on this correlation."

Dr.Ahmed says this has happened before:
"In 2001, Baverstock was on the editorial board for a WHO research project clearing the US and UK of responsibility for environmental health hazards involved in DU deployment. His detailed editorial recommendations accounting for new research proving uranium's nature as as a genotoxin (capable of changing DNA) were ignored and overruled:

"My editorial changes were suppressed, even though some of the research was from Department of Defense studies looking at subjects who had ingested DU from friendly fire, clearly proving that DU was genutoxic."

Baverstock then co-authored his own scientific paper on the subject arguing for plausibility of the link between DU and high rates of birth defects in Iraq, but said that WHO blocked publication of the study"because they didn't like its conclusions."

"The extent to which scientific principles are being bent to fit politically convenient conclusions is alarming", said Baverstock.

The British medical journal, The Lancet, reports that despite the study's claims, a "scientific standard of peer review... may not have been fully achieved."

One scientist named as a peer-reviewer for the project, Simon Cousens, professor of epidemiology and statistics at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), told The Lancet that he "attended a relatively brief meeting of around one and a half hours, so just gave some comments on an early presentation of the results. I wouldn't classify that as thorough peer review."

Nafeez Ahmad also contrasts the WHO findings with those of a Japanese-based human rights network which investigated recorded birth defects at a major hospital in Fallujah for the year 2012, confirmed first hand birth defect incidences over a one-month period in 2013, and interviewed doctors and parents of children born with birth defects. The report concluded there was:

"... an extraordinary situation of congenital birth defects in both nature and quantity. The investigation demonstrated a significant rise of these health consequences in the period following the war... An overview of scientific literature relating to the effects of uranium and heavy metals associated with munitions used in the 2003 Iraq War and occupation, together with potential exposure pathways, strongly suggest that environmental contamination resulting from combat during the Iraq War may be playing a significant role in the observed rate of birth defects."

The report criticised both the UN and the WHO for approaches that are "insufficient to meet the needs of the issues within their mandate."

Hans von Sponeck, former UN assistant secretary general and UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq,says it would justify public skepticism:

"The brevity of this report is unacceptable", he told me:

"Everybody was expecting a proper, professional scientific paper, with properly scrutinised and checkable empirical data. Although I would be guarded about jumping to conclusions, WHO cannot be surprised if people ask questions about whether the body is giving into bilateral political pressures."

Von Sponeck said that US political pressure on WHO had scuppered previous investigations into the impact of DU on Iraq:

"I served in Baghdad and was confronted with the reality of the environmental impact of DU. In 2001, I saw in Geneva how a WHO mission to conduct on-spot assessments in Basra and southern Iraq, where depleted uranium had led to devastating environmental health problems, was aborted under US political pressure."

Asked whether such political pressure on the UN body could explain the unscientific nature of the latest report, Von Sponeck said "It would not be surprising if such US pressure has continued".

"There is definitive evidence of an alarming rise in birth defects, leukaemia, cancer and other carcinogenic diseases in Iraq after the war. Looking at the stark difference between previous descriptions of the WHO study's findings and this new report, it seems that someone, somewhere clumsily decided that they would not release these damning findings, but instead obscure them."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/oct/13/world-health-organisation-iraq-war-depleted-uranium

Newport Pride

NEWPORT'S HERITAGE.   Lost but not forgotten, part of Kenneth Budd's mural commemorating events of 1839.


TWO rival demonstrations kept apart by police took place outside Lunar House, in Croydon, the headquarters of the UK Border Agency, on Saturday. About 20 British National Party supporters hoping to boost their far-Right party by blaming immigrants for the country's problems were opposed by four times that number of trade unionists mobilised by Croydon Trade Union Council.

Two different demonstrations far apart across the country but separated only by geography took place on Saturday and Sunday, in Newport, Gwent and Kensington, London, respectively. In the second demonstration people were protesting outside the Daily Mail office over that Tory paper's attack on Labour leader Ed Miliband which smeared his late father Ralph Miliband's views, calling him the "Man who hated Britain". Half the demonstrators carried placards proudly saying they were "Hated by the Daily Mail", while the other half's placards simply said "We hate the Daily Mail!"

Leaving my friends to argue which was the more appropriate slogan (a debate which Jonathan Swift would have enjoyed recording better than I can), I remain focused on the Mail's defence for its "hated Britain" headline, claiming that despite serving in the Royal Navy during the war, Ralph Miliband retained "nothing but hatred for the values, traditions and institutions — including our great schools, the Church, the Army and even the Sunday papers — that made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his family flourished."


You could not make it up.

There is another narrative about those to whom we owe our freedom, and the traditions they have bequeathed us, and it was because they know and value their history that the people in Newport, Gwent, were demonstrating on Saturday.  

In 1832, after huge agitation which had grown throughout Britain, Parliament passed the Reform Act, which extended the vote to the property-owning middle class, but left working people outside with nothing. Feeling used and betrayed, the awakened working class and those who wanted radical change and democracy started to organise in support of a 6-point charter aimed at making parliament work for the people. But parliament, used to serving vested interests under the Crown resisted. The Chartists' petition, signed by 1,280,958 people, and brought to London to be carried in procession on May 7, 1839, was delivered to parliament after the Whitsun recess on June 14. But on July 12, when it was moved by the Birmingham MP Attwood, to be considered by a committee of the whole House, the motion was rejected by 235 votes to 46.   

The Chartists had tried doing things the constitutional way and been answered. They had to discuss what to do next. The government and its spies were watching, and preparing. "The spirit of revolution is strong and increasing," General Sir Charles Napier warned the Home Secretary Lord Russell on 16 July, 1839. There was trouble in Newcastle and Birmingham, and three days of fighting around Bolton. In August the miners of the North East began what they hoped would become a general strike. But on September 14 the Chartists' national convention broke up having reversed its support for a "National Holiday", as delegates called their strike plan.

In Monmouthshire, where more than 15,000 people had signed the petition, including over 1,000 women, people were angry over the arrest of a Chartist called Henry Vincent, who had been charged with making "inflammatory speeches" and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment by the Monmouth Assizes.  

Wales had already seen an earlier rising at Merthyr, and the miners and ironworkers, hardened by their own work conditions and struggles, were in no mood for passivity. In Newport, too, while wealth accumulated for a few, there was desperate poverty. John Frost, a Newport councillor and magistrate who was forced to stand down as mayor after attending the Chartist Convention, toured Wales urging people not to break the law with acts of violence. He called instead for people to march on Newport for a mass protest demanding the release of Henry Vincent.

Whatever Frost intended, this was not destined to be a peaceful protest. As the Chartists set out, Frost leading a column from the west, Zephaniah Williams leading those from Blackwood to the north-west, and William Jones bringing up a column from Pontypool to the north, they were joined by many miners who had armed themselves as best they could expecting a clash. On the other hand witnesses who saw the marchers pass remarked on the number with crutches or artificial limbs, a reminder of the dangerous conditions in the mines. Altogether as many as 5,000 people may have taken part in the march, including an entire chapel congregation that joined them on the Sunday morning. But not all made it into Newport.

Meanwhile the authorities in Newport had been preparing. The Mayor had sworn in 500 Special Constables and asked for more troops to be sent. There were about 60 soldiers stationed in Newport already, and he gathered 32 soldiers of the Nottinghamshire Foot in the Westgate Hotel where Vincent and other Chartist prisoners were being held.

By the time the marchers arrived in the town they were exhausted and bedraggled after their overnight marching and soaking in rain. Seeing the police and specials outside the hotel, and hearing that more Chartists had been arrested, the first marchers tried to rush it, but according to a witness they were "no match for the police and specials, armed with their staves of office. They accordingly withdrew for a few moments to procure whatever they could lay their hands on in the form of weapons - guns, staves, pikes, hay forks, sickles, and even spades were hastily seized by the excited and turbulent mob!

"Some of the women who had joined the crowd kept instigating the men to attack the hotel - one old virago vowing that she would fight till she was knee-deep in blood, sooner than the Cockneys should take their prisoners out of the town. She, with others of her sex, gathered large heaps of stones, which they subsequently used in defacing and injuring the building which contained the prisoners. When the mob had thus armed themselves, the word 'Forward!' was given, and as soon as they were within hearing of the police, they imperatively demanded the release of their friends, which demand was of course refused".
Though the angry crowd did storm the hotel, and briefly got into the building to try and free their comrades, they were soon forced to retreat by the trained and better armed soldiers. By the time the fighting ended a couple of dozen Chartists had been shot and killed, and more than 50 were wounded. The others withdrew from Newport. This was the last rising of its kind in Great Britain, though it was not the end of the Chartists.

Two hundred people were arrested for their part in the Newport events, and 21 were charged with high treason. John Frost, Zephaniah Williams and William Jones were found guilty on the charge of high treason and sentenced to be hung drawn and quartered. After a nationwide petitioning campaign and, extraordinarily, direct lobbying of the Home Secretary by the Lord Chief Justice, Viscount Melbourne, this was commuted to transportation to Van Diemens Land for life. John Frost was pardoned in 1856 and allowed to return to Britain, receiving a triumphant welcome in Newport, though he settled instead near Bristol, and continued to write articles calling for reform.

 Some years ago, on holiday with friends at
 St.Briavel's Castle, we paid a visit to Newport, and by
the spot on the bank of the River Usk from which the
three Chartists were deported, I took a picture of this
plaque in their memory.
It was originally unveiled by the author Alexander Cordell,
whose novel Rape of the Fair Country was inspired by the
events of the Newport rising. 

But in 1978 a far more impressive and colourful memorial to the Newport Chartists was set up in an underpass, in the form of a 35m (115ft) mural mosaic created by artist Kenneth Budd, using 200,000 pieces of tile and glass to depict the insurrection. It became a favourite of both visitors and local people, who could take their children to see it, and tell them about their stirring history.

Alas now no one can see it, because on Thursday the Newport council's bulldozers brought it down, as part of clearing the way for a £100m shopping centre development. The council had said it would  cost £600,000 to save and move the mural. The Welsh heritage body Cadw declined to list the 1970s mosaic which was in a city centre subway off John Frost Square.

Some 4,000 signatures had been collected to save the mural, to no avail. So on Saturday, mixing sadness and anger, people gathered for a rally in Newport centre and hundreds marched to hand in a letter to sympathetic councillors, and tell the council how they felt about what it had done to Newport's pride.

PHOTOS - Lloyd David Miller http://facebook.com/llomil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_Rising

http://gwentydd.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/newports-chartist-murals/

https://www.facebook.com/events/574464395950610/ 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-24400028

And on a side note:

http://historicalpassages.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Chartist

http://www.walesartsreview.org/port-in-a-storm-a-history-of-one-citys-radicalism/

Books:

David Jones    The Last Rising  OUP (1983)

Ivor Wilkes     South Wales and the Rising of 1839  Gomer (1989)

David Black and Chris Ford   1839: the Chartist Insurrection (2012)

Alexander Cordell - Rape of the Fair Country (novel) Victor Golancz (1959)

History in the Mail

THE Tory Daily Mail has worked wonders, projecting Labour leader Ed Miliband into the limelight in the week of the Tory party conference, lending him not just sympathy but respect, and raising fighting morale both within and beyond the ranks of the Labour Party. None of this was intentional of course, but though it might have served temporarily to divert attention from some of the nasty stuff the Tories are preparing, it has been a bonus to the labour movement on top of Labour's own conference and the massive TUC-backed demonstration for the NHS and against austerity which greeted the Tories on their arrival in Manchester at the weekend.

The Mail has it in for Miliband, it's said, because he dared come out for press regulation after the results of the Leveson inquiry. How dare any elected leader try to interfere with the power of billionaire press barons to  do and say what they like in their idea of "democracy"?  But that's not all.

Miliband's promise to freeze fuel prices, and Labour conference calls to reverse privatisation of the Royal Mail and railways are hardly revolutionary, but along with the emotive issue of healthcare they could help persuade working class voters that Labour is back on their side, and they also appeal to middle class people long disillusioned with privatised utilities and services. The Mail and the Daily Express both ran stories accusing Miliband of wiping millions off share prices, and the Express even carried an "Exclusive" predicting that this would cause power cuts and blackouts in 2015.

But then realising perhaps that readers might be more worried about the prices on their bills than of shares, and fear a freeze on homes this Winter rather than one on prices, the Mail must have decided to go for a "Red" scare instead and the kind of patriotism that is the last refuge of scoundrels.

How to present mild-spoken Miliband, previously depicted as an ineffectual Mr.Bean-like character, as some dangerous fiery red revolutionary inciting class war? The job was entrusted to a Mail hack called Geoffrey Levy, more often turning out little stories about the royals. He seems to have turned to a book about Ed and Dave Miliband's father Ralph, , the Marxist academic, who was brought to this country as a refugee from Nazism, and gleaning from it a remark the teenage Ralph Miliband made in his diary about nationalist Englishmen, produced an article headlined "A Man Who Hated Britain". 

To be fair the article did mention that Ralph Miliband went on to serve in the Royal Navy - he was on a destroyer during the Normandy landings. But understandably it forgot to mention that the Mail's pre-war hero Sir Oswald Mosley had meanwhile served his sentence under Defence Regulation 18B, or to acknowledge that if papers like the Daily Mail, hostile then as now to asylum seekers had  their way, people like the ungrateful Milibands would never have been allowed into this country.

 For a period in the 1930s the Mail ran articles such as that by Tory MP Sir Thomas More headed "The Blackshirts Have What Conservatives Need",(April 25, 1934) and "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" by the newspaper's proprietor, Viscount Rothermere. (July 8,1934). The paper's enthusiasm for Mosley later cooled, whether because of his declining fortunes or their decreasing advertising revenue, But Lord Rothermere (below, left) had a more important hero figure on the Continent.

As he had written in 1933:

" I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful detracters of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia. They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call "Nazi atrocities" which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny."

Rothermere fully understood one special feature of Nazi policy. As he explained:

 "The German nation, moreover, was rapidly falling under the control of its alien elements. In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were 20 times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine. Three German Ministries only had direct relations with the Press, but in each case the official responsible for conveying news and interpreting policy to the public was a Jew. It is from such abuses that Hitler has freed Germany."

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printArticlePdf/83404381/3?print=n

Hitler responded with a letter appreciating Lord Rothermere's support, and the friendship continued as the Nazis went on to extend the benefits of their rule and methods to neighbouring countries. In a message to Hitler congratulating him on the annexation of Czachoslovakia, Rothermere urged the Fuhrer to carry on further:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1484647/When-Rothermere-urged-Hitler-to-invade-Romania.html

Some people have complained that it's wrong to judge a newspaper by bringing up "an article written eighty years ago", but apparently it is OK to attack the leader of the Labour Party on the basis of what his father confided to his diary when he was 16 years old. 


The Mail's normally outspoken editor Paul Dacre has been a bit quiet so far, or maybe he is otherwise engaged.  His father Peter Dacre performed outstanding service during the War, covering the West End for Express newspapers about the time Ralph Miliband was in the Navy. Doesn't sound like a reserved occupation, but Express owner Lord Beaverbrook was in the government.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/10/did-a-tory-peer-help-daily-mail-editors-father-dodge-the-draft/ 


The present day owner of the Mail and 4th Viscount Rothermere loves Britain to the tune of a £40m neo-Palladian stately home in 220 acres of grounds in Wiltshire, where he spends time with his family, plus a flat in London’s Eaton Square, handy for the Mail's Kensington offices or his seat in the House of Lords, but he is no narrow-minded patriot, also owning a chateau in the Dordogne. This may explain how he manages to claim foreign domicile and therefore exemption from tax on income, including dividends from the Daily Mail and General Trust plc, that he keeps offshore. Just because you love this country and its venerable institutions does not mean you must contribute to their upkeep. Leave that to the mugs on PAYE.

Keeping up the French connection, the Mail has given support to a more recent fascist than the two we've named.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2132611/French-elections-2012-Marine-Le-Pen-responsible-vote-France.html
And to round things off, one man who has written in praise of the attack on the Milibands is the British National Party's Nick Griffin, fresh back from telling his own party conference about  his "peace mission" to Syria.
http://politicalscrapbook.net/2013/10/at-least-someone-supported-the-daily-mail-today-nick-griffin/

Oddly enough, nasty Nick takes the accusation back to Miliband's grandfather Samuel, and this is not the first time one of the Miliband brothers has been attacked this way. In 2007 one of Putin's aide's suggested then incoming Foreign Secretary David Miliband had inherited an anti-Russian gene from his Polish-born grandfather, whom he alleged belonged to an "organisation commanded by Trotsky" -presumably he meant the Red Army!  The Mail back then had no difficulty detecting a whiff of antisemitism about this targeting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-474753/Putin-aides-attack-Milibands-family-bid-undermine-Litvinenko-saga.html

I've never met either of the Miliband brothers, though I wrote to David Miliband on behalf of the Jewish Socialists' Group complaining about the denial of visas to a Palestinian under-19 football team who had been invited to train and play a couple of friendlies in this country. I don't know what the Foreign Secretary thought about my arguments for welcoming such contacts, as he passed the matter on to some Foreign and Commonwealth Office civil servant who stuck to the technicalities of applying for and issuing visas. Well, Miliband was new to the job, and perhaps he did not want to discuss an issue that would not help his position in government.

I was introduced to the Milibands' mother, Ralph Miliband's widow Marion some years ago, oddly enough at a meeting about the Middle East, in Brussels. (Perhaps she would have made a better Foreign Secretary than her son David). She was asking me whether people still read Ralph Miliband's books. It occurred to me afterwards that contrary to Jewish mother stereotypes she had not said anything about her sons, who were already prominent in the Labour Party.

The joke used to be that Ralph Miliband had written books arguing that socialism was nothing to with parliament and the Labour Party, and his two sons had loyally set out to prove the old man right. I see Len McCluskey has used that gag already. http://www.unite4len.co.uk/len-mccluskey-ralph-miliband-lecture/

I missed the chance to meet Ralph back in 1982, when he attended a meeting in County Hall to protest the war in Lebanon, bringing with him the Belgian Jewish scholar Marcel Liebman (author of Leninism Under Lenin). 

Friends who studied under Ralph Miliband at Leeds speak of his "warmth", and "inspiration", saying he was fair and encouraging even when you disagreed with him.  More surprisingly, even a former Thatcher aide is disgusted with the Daily Mail and praises Ralph's integrity:
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/02/thatcher-ally-daily-mail-ralph-miliband-lies

But then, let's face it, this is not really just a row about the Milibands, father and sons, nor the leadership of the Labour Party.  When even Tories like Cameron and Michael Hesseltine are uneasy about what the Mail has done, we may sense it has gone too far, but it has not strayed far from the direction it has always gone.  

Defending its claim that Ralph Miliband "hated Britain", the Mail now says, "... what is blindingly clear from everything he wrote throughout his life is that he had nothing but hatred for the values, traditions and institutions — including our great schools, the Church, the Army and even the Sunday papers — that made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his family flourished."

With the Tory party holding its conference yards from where the Peterloo massacre took place, we might remember with what struggles and sacrifice such freedoms and rights as we still enjoy were really won, and note the British traditions and institutions which are not part of the Daily Mail list, such as our trade unions, our right to protest, our co-operatives and the NHS, and yes, the socialism developed here by Owen and William Morris, and the immigrants Fred Engels and Karl Marx. In other words, the Britain that the Mail hates!

Because there are two different, opposed Britains, or as another immigrant's son recognised, in a phrase recently adopted but seemingly misunderstood, Two Nations. Or two classes, to be correct.

Many people probably know that it was the Daily Mail which used the so-called Zinoviev Letter to attack Labour, referring to "instructions" given the Socialists by their supposed "Masters" in Moscow. We might also point out that the slogan "For King and Country" which ran at the masthead of the Mail for many years was originally the headline for an editorial attacking the miners and trade unions in 1926. That editorial did not appear because the Mail's printworkers back then refused to print it, and that was how they joined the General Strike.

Conditions have changed, but the sides are the same. Once again our enemies want to denounce opponents as traitors and outlaws, as they wrap their greed for profit in the flag.

Meanwhile, Marion Miliband may like to know that it's an ill wind that blows no good, thanks to whoever took this pic:

Where do the Tories get their ideas?

WORKING PEOPLE were marching outside.Part of demonstration against Tory Austerity and in defence of NHS. Greater Manchester Police said it was biggest demonstration they had ever had, and no arrests were made but it wasn't to be seen on BBC TV.
  Photo from Manchester Evening News. 

"FOR HARD WORKING PEOPLE" read the banner greeting delegates arriving at this year's Tory party conference, in Manchester, echoing something said repeatedly at the Labour Party conference in Brighton. Well, they're a little bit rattled, and not too proud to nick a phrase, or anything else.

True enough, I imagine avoiding tax can be hard work, and so can justifying bankers bonuses. If the 50,000 or more (according to police estimates!) people marching outside against austerity and to defend the NHS disagree and don't recognise the Tories as being for them, there were high metal barriers to shield them from view, and security to stop TV from filming the demonstration.

I don't know whether that really explains how so many people filling the streets of Manchester became invisible on the early evening news (though we got a little glimpse later). Not even HG Wells' imagination could run to that, but it's a free country, so we're told, and where would we be without the media?

What we got was David Cameron saying he is "not going to stand by as people's aspirations to get on the property ladder, and own their own home are trashed". Ninety per cent mortgages. It won't lead to a housing bubble, we're assured. Not that house prices are already out of reach of working people. Nor - apart from a woman from the Institute of Economic Affairs - was anyone so rude as to recall the part played by sub-prime mortgages turned "toxic assets" in bringing on the world financial crisis.

We were given clips of Margaret Thatcher for the faithful, championing the "right to buy", but I suppose  it would have been disrespectful of the dead to blame her for so many Brits being so in debt, remember the words "negative equity", or mention how a big proportion of council homes that were sold have ended up in the hands of private landlords. As for new homes being built, a large percentage are now being sold abroad, not for would-be immigrants, dread the thought, but as an investment. 

Of course when Cameron promises to help people to own their own homes, he does not say anything about the increasing numbers who have not got a home, or those whom the combination of bedroom tax, rising rents and benefit capping are driving from pillar to post.  

 For those already on the pavements, who include a large number of ex-services personnel about whom our politicians and papers care so much, we've seen Redbridge police snatching food and sleeping bags from them, and Westminster council is making it illegal to give them food. The government has criminalised squatting but maybe David Cameron will promise the right to purchase your own bit of pavement and cardboard box.     

  But of course the whole point of the claim to be for "hard working people", to promote marriage, and to support those with "aspirations", is that rather than be angry with the rich who are responsible for the mess we're in, we are supposed to find someone worse off and less respectable than us to take things out on. Which is why Cameron and his crew are expected to announce new measures extending workfare, forcing the unemployed and disabled not only to search for jobs that are not there, but to accept work at less than a living wage, or even unpaid, what amounts to slave labour. Those who are in a job are supposed to feel better that someone is making those lazy b.s work, even if we wake up to find that the employer is getting rid of us because he can not only hire someone cheaper off the dole, but get them free of charge because they have to work for benefit.

There have been setbacks for this drive, companies have dropped out because of resistance and bad publicity, but notwithstanding that old slogan I recall that "Conservative Freedom Works!", it is becoming Conservatives Will Make You Work for Free!", and the government's advisers and septic think tanks are saying Workfare is popular!   

Reading about the so-called Policy Exchange which tends this kind of advice, people ask what it is and where it comes from. Something made me do a search linking 'Policy Exchange' with 'LM' and 'Spiked'. Well you never know. And here is one of the little tales this brought to light. I'll call it

Boris and the Handmaid.


Munira Mirza is an Oldham lass who went to Oxford, and the University of Kent, where she studied under Frank Furedi, the onetime thinker of the Revolutionary Communist Party(RCP), and Living Marxism (LM). A lasting association with this particular strain of "leftism" does not appear to have hindered Munira's career. Quite the contrary.

Today she is the Advisor for Arts and Culture Policy of the Greater London Authority under Boris Johnson's Tory mayorality.

According to her former employer, centre right think tank Policy Exchange, “Munira - author of the Policy Exchange pamphlet Culture Vultures - is not a card-carrying Tory member, but is one of a new generation of thinkers behind David Cameron's makeover of the party that is attracting money and fresh ideas.”
http://www.powerbase.info/index.php/Munira_Mirza

It was soon after Munira Mirza joined Boris Johnson's team that the Cuba Solidarity Campaign was told that its Cuba Fiesta stage event was no longer wanted as part of the Rise festival in London. This festival, a hangover from Ken Livingstone's time, when it used to be called Respect (before George Galloway's party took that name), had been used to promote enjoyment of cultural diversity and good relations between communities, but as Mirza told the Cuban campaign, "it is no longer appropriate to have overtly political organisations involved in the programme or in the community area". When it was learned that "United Against Racism" would be dropped from the festival's publicity, trade unions and others who had taken part previously decided to take their support elsewhere.

But Boris' handmaid had set out her ideas beforehand, in a paper arguing that promotion of multiculturalism and emphasis on diversity actually strengthened racial divisions. This was published in 2004 by the Institute of Ideas - an outfit headed by Claire Fox, a former leading member of the RCP and co-publisher of LM magazine. Criticisng the Race Relations Amendment Acts and its requirement on bodies to promote good relations and diversity policies, she also  argued against any special conditions for minorities, and any measures to outlaw religious incitement, treat racially motivated crime differently, or interfere with the "free speech" of such as the BNP.  The Institute of Ideas is particularly keen on free speech. Claire Fox has been a guest on the BBC's "Moral Maze" and "Question Time". 
In 2007, Munira Mirza was one of the authors of Living Apart Together, British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism in 2007, published by the Policy Exchange, of which she had become  an Associate Research Fellow and for whom she also worked as a fundraiser, having the title Development Director.  Unlike the Institute of Ideas, which shared the old RCP offices with Spiked, the Policy Exchange has always shared offices with conservative think tank CChange (active 2001-2007), of which Dougie Smith, her now husband, was the co-ordinator.  ,

As we've said, Mirza does not seem to have had much trouble combining her links to the "Left" and Right. (But then Claire Fox has said these two terms no longer mean anything). Her association with Spiked!, which enables former RCP types esconsed in the Tory media to keep up their 'radical' pretensions, will have brought her in contact with Brendan O'Neill. In 2006 they co-founded the Manifesto Club, an organisation "with the aim of challenging cultural trends that restrain and stifle people's aspirations and initiative" . Brendan O'Neill too has opposed efforts to counter racism, in sport and other fields,

The report Mirza co-authored for the Policy Exchange, ‘Living Apart together’ included references to work from Josie Appleton, Andrew Calcutt, Kenan Malik and Brendan O'Neill. The last two are both former members of the RCP,  O'Neill, who writes for the Daily Telegraph, has been a supporter of the government's "welfare reform", criticising those who drew attention to the deaths of disabled people who had been passed "fit for work" and lost benefits.

Munira Mirza's husband Dougie Smith, is a former vice Chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students, and ex-Cameron speechwriter. In this intertwining of libertarian spirits we are reminded of the coincidence remarked in west London, of former RCP general secretary Kate Davies at the Notting Hill Housing Trust, and her partner becoming housing director with Hammersmith and Fulham council, where former FCS figure Harry Phibbs is a prominent councillor.


http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/notting-hill-but-not-much-trust.html

http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/life-and-death-is-not-game.html 

The Violence at Khalet Al-Makhoul

 

 

” ‘They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,’ ” French diplomat Marion Castaing said.” ‘This is how international law is being respected here,’

 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/20/us-palestinians-israel-eu-hamlet-idUSBRE98J0GK20130920

THE pictures went around the world. European Union (EU) diplomats attempting to deliver emergency humanitarian aid, dragged from their vehicles by armed troops, who confiscated badly needed blankets and other supplies.

Not in some hidden corner of Africa, or forgotten Latin American dictatorship, but in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank, and by the troops of the supposedly civilised State of Israel, which boasts that it is "the only democracy in the Middle East", claims to uphold international law, and expects not just fair but privileged treatment by the European Union.

Here is the report of what happened on Friday, September 20:


(Reuters) - Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving away with its contents.

"They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity," French diplomat Marion Castaing said. "This is how international law is being respected here," she said, covered with dust.

The Israeli army and police declined to comment.

Locals said Khirbet Al-Makhul was home to about 120 people. The army demolished their ramshackle houses, stables and a kindergarten on Monday after Israel's high court ruled that they did not have proper building permits.

Despite losing their property, the inhabitants have refused to leave the land, where, they say, their families have lived for generations along with their flocks of sheep.

Israeli soldiers stopped the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) delivering emergency aid on Tuesday and on Wednesday IRCS staff managed to put up some tents but the army forced them to take the shelters down.

Diplomats from France, Britain, Spain, Ireland, Australia and the European Union's political office, turned up on Friday with more supplies. As soon as they arrived, about a dozen Israeli army jeeps converged on them, and soldiers told them not to unload their truck.

"It's shocking and outrageous. We will report these actions to our governments," said one EU diplomat, who declined to be named because he did not have authorization to talk to the media.
"(Our presence here) is a clear matter of international humanitarian law. By the Geneva Convention, an occupying power needs to see to the needs of people under occupation. These people aren't being protected," he said.

In scuffles between soldiers and locals, several villagers were detained and an elderly Palestinian man fainted and was taken for medical treatment to a nearby ambulance.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement that Makhul was the third Bedouin community to be demolished by the Israelis in the West Bank and adjacent Jerusalem municipality since August.

Palestinians have accused the Israeli authorities of progressively taking their historical grazing lands, either earmarking it for military use or handing it over to the Israelis whose settlements dot the West Bank.

Israelis and Palestinians resumed direct peace talks last month after a three-year hiatus. Palestinian officials have expressed serious doubts about the prospects of a breakthrough.
"What the Israelis are doing is not helpful to the negotiations. Under any circumstances, talks or not, they're obligated to respect international law," the unnamed EU diplomat said.
(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Louise Ireland)


The Israeli troops who manhandled EU diplomats at Makhoul might have embarrassed Israel's representatives in Brussels and its supporters, insofar as they embarrass that easily. But they were not just unruly soldiers or raw conscripts flustered ("provoked" in the words of the IDF) by a difficult situation. They were carrying out their government's policy, and implementing consistent brutality.
   
Makhoul is one of a group of hamlets in the northern Jordan valley, part of what has been designated "Area C".  Israeli government propagandists here say the area was allocated to Israeli control under the Oslo agreement, as though that temporary arrangement for five years, made 20 years ago, was meant to give them permanent rule. They say the village has been ruled illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court, as though the people there are invading newcomers, like the illegal Israeli settlers.  But the people of Makhoul and neighbouring villages were established there on their land long ago, before the Israeli state existed, let alone the occupation.

And not even the shabby and threadbare Oslo Agreement which Israel cites when it suits provided for blatant ethnic cleansing, which is being practiced. 

http://www.smh.com.au/world/israeli-forces-manhandle-eu-diplomats-seize-west-bank-aid-20130921-2u65f.html

  Here, from an Israeli who knows and does not mind telling the truth, is the background to what was happening:

DON'T SAY YOU DIDN'T KNOW #381 by Amos Gvirtz, (kibbutznik and long time peace activist, writing a weekly column):

The IDF was sent to evict the inhabitants of Khalet Al-Makhoul in the occupied Jordan Valley. The village existed long before the occupation started in 1967, when it was demolished the first time. The question is how to send soldiers to perpetrate a war crime, without them understanding that that is what they are being required to do …

One way is to devise a “legal” pretext. Probably the IDF lawyers realise it’s impossible to physically expel people, so the military acts in ways that are acceptable only to an Israeli court, in order to set up a situation in which it’s feasible to evict people. First, the area was declared a closed military zone. Next, residence permits were issued for two year periods. At a certain point, those permits were no longer given out. The Palestinian planning and building committees were cancelled and that authority was given to the IDF. At this point, the IDF has not authorised any construction plan, not a single one, so all construction has to be carried out “illegally.” Then, there’s no problem, at the next stage, in issuing demolition orders.

So the village has been demolished a few times over the years. On 16th September, 2013, all tents and shacks were demolished, and the residents were forbidden to erect tents or build homes or constructions of any kind. Under pretext of a “closed military zone,” the army confiscated trucks bringing humanitarian relief to the villagers, and prevented entry to international humanitarian organisations such as the Red Cross. The villagers, including women and children, are there in the scorching sun, without any relief aid or roof over their heads.

The army wants to force the Palestinian residents out in order to implement a plan to expel the Palestinians from the West Bank’s Jordan Valley. “Willing transfer”…

Questions & queries: amosg@shefayim.org.il

 

http://www.poica.org/editor/case_studies/jvdemolitions.jpg

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/09/jordan-valley-khirbet-makhoul-palestine.html 

War of Shadows, and Weapons Stories

TRUTH, it's been said, is the first casualty of war. And we might add that presenting what's said as truth can bring another casualty, in credibility.

On September 5, in a posting saying that the use of sarin gas in Syria was a crime, whoever committed it, I quoted an article which said Syrians in Ghouta were accusing Saudi-backed rebels of using chemical weapons in the conflict.

"...the following article does merit attention, even if we cannot vouch for its reliability", I said.
  http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/syrian-tragedy-whoever-guilty.html

The article, which had appeared on a site called Mint Press News on August 29, was bylined as from two journalists, Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh.
 http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/

Alas, though we still cannot say whether the article was true, two things have cast doubt on the author's reliability (apart from the fact that the Russians, who might have been expected to welcome the report, and according to some were behind it, appear to have put it aside by deciding to concentrate on getting the Syrian government to register and hand over control of its chemical weapons.

First, Dale Gavlak, who has worked for Associated Press, and was supposed to be one of the authors, has denied having anything to do with the story. "Yahya Ababneh is the sole reporter and author," she said.
http://www.al-bab.com/blog/2013/september/yahya-ababneh-exposed.htm#sthash.mNHaJqzt.Fgv5gmKu.dpbs

This was not quite the whole truth, apparently.  It seems Gavlak had recommended the story to Mint Press, having received it in Arabic, and maybe they credited her in the byline thinking that her name as an established freelance with AP would give it more credence.   After the story had circulated for a week or so and some journalists began questioning elements of it, Gavlak dissociated herself from it, leaving them looking bad.

And what of Yahya Ababneh, the man who got the scoop?  Well, his credibility is looking less since Guardian  writer and Comment is Free editor Brian Whitaker has posited that Ababneh and a man called Yan Barakat, a Jordanian journalist who has written for the Jerusalem Post, a right-wing Israeli paper, are one and the same.


One does not need to start building conspiracy theories or attributing allegiances to journalists who may just have an eye for a good story and use their creativity to provide what different editors need. Having more than one name and identity presumably helps their flexibility.

My fellow blogger Richard Silverstein has more to say on this.
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/09/23/jordanian-journalist-who-fabricated-syrian-rebel-chemical-weapons-story-likely-fabricated-jerusalem-post-story-as-well/ 

For my part, I am still not ready to throw away the story about Saudi-supplied chemical weapons as being entirely disproved or untrue.

But for the sake of my own credibility and conscience I think it only right to acknowledge that some doubts have been cast on the reliability of the author of this report.