“What’s my vision for Britain? My philosophy? My approach?
Today I want to answer that question very directly.” Theresa May
Who am I? And what on earth am I doing here?
Let me be clear. Each time I stand up to speak
as your Prime Minister, the church organist at Midsomer
kills again: the village florist gets it savagely
across the back of the head with a cast iron frying pan
that’s been in the family since seventeen seventy six;
or her lover, the sexton, turns up strip-jack-naked
at the bottom of the better variety of slurry pit…
In my Britain the brothels that serve
next year’s Conservative Party conference
will only employ girls with ‘Best of British’ tattooed
tastefully across their lower backs. Trust me,
when all the relevant members of my cabinet
have had their faces sat on for a fee
by Staffordshire’s finest, the British people will see
we, as a government, are ready to grasp
this once in a generation chance for change.
I will glue our United Kingdom back together,
and never let divisive nationalists,
with the exception of those here amongst us today,
tear us asunder. To this end,
the children of Dundee and Kirkcaldy
will be made recite every morning before Latin
the collected works of Rudyard Kipling;
and every homeowner south of Rickmansworth
on a salary over thrice the national average
will be given a toy Glaswegian each
with a tiny can of Irn Bru preinstalled, courtesy
of the new Department of Citizenship & Ethnic Integrity.
We are not just a party for the big people,
the sort who know what’s in the compromising photographs
the average person must never be allowed see;
we also rely on the votes of those many millions
of little people who believe in
what the big people have in store for them.
Come with me as we rise
to meet this challenge and take
each of them – be they gay
or straight, white or a bit yellow,
complete slap head or hairy all over –
coldly by the gullet
and give them the shaking
we know they deserve.
The appointment of Ms Abbott, a close ally, supporter and one-time girlfriend of fellow north London MP Mr Corbyn, was seen as a particularly provocative move.
She moves from Shadow Health Secretary to replace Andy Burnham who has stood down to focus on his campaign to be elected Greater Manchester Mayor next year.
One anonymous Labour MP commented: “Diane Abbott is now in charge of our response to security, terror and immigration. Do they want anyone to vote for us again?”
Another branded her “incompetent” while former Labour HQ official Jo Green Tweeted: “Labour’s top three are Corbyn, (Shadow Chancellor John) McDonnell and Diane Abbott. Electoral suicide awaits.”
Last week, Ms Abbott told a Labour conference meeting that voters backing limits on European Union immigration simply “want to see less foreign-looking people on their streets”.
In fact it is a very smart move. The senior leadership of the shadow cabinet is now in hands of those who are loyal to trajectory of the party, as now twice endorsed by the membership.
Like McDonnell and Corbyn himself, Diane Abbott has historically been a figure outside of the golden circle of the Westminster elite, and the last year has clearly required adjustments from all of them, in response to their greater responsibility. However, over the last few months she as done extremely well as shadow health secretary, and she is accomplished in front of the television camera.
But most significantly, a time when the Conservative Party is seeking to polarize British politics over the issues of race and immigration, hoping to seek the shift the centre ground on the issue as a smokescreen for their problems over Brexit, then Abbott’s appointment is the clearest signal that Labour will not follow them down that path.
Let us be clear, the wisdom of the centre-right in the party that Labour should not drift too far way from the Conservatives over policy simply doesn’t work when politics is in flux. The economic prescriptions which the three defeated candidates in last year’s leadership elections were triangulated around George Osborne’s policies, and would – in logical terms – be to the right of the current government.
Triangulation is part of a tired process that the electorate is disillusioned with. What is more, the chaos in UKIP and the opaqueness of what Thereas May’s government actually believes in, shows that all political parties are struggling to position themselves in a dramatically altered political landscape.
LBC’s James O’Brien did a superb job of placing the anti-immigration narrative of the Tories, unleashed at their first post-Brexit party conference in Birmingham, into its rightful and very worrying context. Simply put, we have entered a politics that bear a striking resemblance to that which Europe lived through in the 1930s, when in similar conditions of economic depression, austerity, and the ensuing assault on workers’ wages, conditions, and living standards, the politics of race and ultra nationalism were able to achieve mainstream legitimacy and traction.
If, by now, there is anybody on the left who still believes Brexit somehow enhances the prospect of a more just, equitable, and progressive society coming to pass, they are not only delusional but also mendacious. Those who sided with Farage and company — and here George Galloway with his obscene appearance at that now notorious UKIP anti-EU rally, where he baldly proclaimed, ‘Left-right, left right, all the way to victory,” springs to mind — in making the case for “taking the country” back should be hanging their heads in shame over the reality of Brexit, as opposed to the theoretical and doctrinal wonderland they inhabited while campaigning for it.
The warnings issued by those who saw further and deeper, that Brexit would unleash a tidal wave of right wing consciousness across the country, such as that which followed the Falklands War, were blithely ignored – even contemptuously dismissed – by people who should know better. The result is that we now have a Tory Prime Minister embracing the politics of anti-immigration and xenophobia in a move designed to curry favour with an indigenous white working class that has been persuaded that dwindling public services, low pay, and job insecurity is a product of immigration rather than inequality and Tory austerity.
With her speech — which followed on from an even more reactionary effort by her Home Secretary, Amber Rudd — Theresa May has drawn a clear dividing line in British society on the question of immigration and the status of migrants. In other words, you either stand in solidarity with migrants or you stand against them. Any nuanced middle ground left available to stand on when it comes to this question has now disappeared
Much of the responsibility for this state of affairs, the ability for such nakedly and brutal xenophobia to take root, lies with the left. As Ben Chu wrote in The Independent:
The academic evidence we have is very clear that immigration does not undermine average UK living standards, but actually enhances them. Some researchers have found that there is a negative impact on the wages of unskilled natives — but only a mild one. Overall the impact is positive.
Yet some on the liberal left, despite acknowledging this evidence, are moving to the view that telling people that they’re wrong when they complain of a negative economic impact of immigration is condescending.
Prior to the EU referendum, British society was already being dragged deeper and deeper into a swamp of identity and anti-politics. Seen in this light, Brexit marks an all-too regressive and reactionary culmination; tantamount to the reassertion of far right nostrums not only on free movement, but also on all immigration, minorities (particularly Muslims), and multiculturalism.
The reason such a vile and toxic mix has been able to gain the traction it undoubtedly has is austerity and the unleashing of the class war it describes and has informed. It has led to the collapse of the political centre ground, not only in Britain but all across Europe and the US, where Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency has served to elevate the same xenophobic and reactionary politics to mainstream legitimacy as Brexit. The space vacated by this collapse has been largely filled by the right and far right rather than the left. In sum, the right is currently winning the battle of ideas with the result the triumphalist re-branding of the Tories as a patriotic defender of British workers against their foreign counterparts and interlopers, coming over here to steal British jobs and push down the wages of British workers.
Jeremy Corbyn’s response to May’s conference speech, while of course welcome, was an exercise in attacking the Brexit horse after it has bolted. He and his team failed to understand the danger Brexit posed during the EU referendum campaign, else why was his campaign so lacklustre and woefully dispassionate?
The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, who is the only party to leader to have emerged from the wreckage of Brexit with any credit, again proved her mettle when in response to May’s conference speech, she opined:
Theresa May’s vision of Brexit Britain is a deeply ugly one — a country where people are judged not by their ability or their contribution to the common good, but by their birthplace or by their passport. It is a vision the Scottish Government wants no part of, and one which we will never subscribe to.
The British people in 2016 are sleepwalking, just as people in Germany and elsewhere in the 1930s sleepwalked, into a sewer of right wing demagoguery and racism. Nobody should make the mistake in thinking it can’t happen here.
Even for those of us who have a positive assessment of George Galloway’s political career, it has been hard to get the image of him pretending to be a cat fed by Rula Lenska out of our heads.
Poor Ed Balls should have seen this coming. Enjoy.
The Thomas Helliker lecture.
Organised by the White Horse Trades Union Council.
In the memory of Thomas Helliker, the Trowbridge Martyr 1784 – 1803
22 October 2016
10.00 – 3.30pm.
Free entry – The Cause, 42 The Causeway, Chippenham, Wilts. SN15 3DD
A day of discussion about Civil Liberties
Speakers include leading authors, journalists, campaigners, union activists
Phil Chamberlain – Blacklisted – The full story
W Stephen Gilbert – Jeremy Corbyn: Accidental Hero
Ray Packham – Working in and for Palestine
Paul Dobson – Venezuela: the truth behind the headlines
Phil Chamberlain – blacklisting
We are in particular delighted to be joined by Phil Chamberlain, co-author of the explosive book “Blacklisted” which reveals the full story of how major corporations maintained an unlawful blacklist which prevented a number of people, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, from gaining employment, often for years.
Thomas Helliker
The anniversary of Helliker’s death, March 22nd, is celebrated each year by a wreath laying at St James Church in Trowbridge. White Horse ( Wilts) trades council is now also reviving the practice of holding a memorial lecture each year.
Thomas Helliker is an important figure in Wiltshire and working class history. In the early nineteenth century the introduction of machinery into the woollen trade impoverished thousands of workers; the best organized of the dispossessed workers, and the most opposed to mechanization were the shearmen. Littleton Mill near Semington was allegedly burnt down by a shearman in 1803. For his supposed part in this, a young Trowbridge apprentice, Thomas Helliker was hanged in 1803. Despite Helliker having an alibi from his friend Joseph Warren he was charged and lodged in Salisbury gaol. He refused to give evidence that would clear his name because it would have incriminated the real culprits.
The fact that there has been a rise in anti-Semitic incidents across Europe and elsewhere is simply not a fact which can credibly be disputed. To take just two egregious examples.
In January 2015, an Islamist terrorist, Amedy Coulibaly shot dead four Jewish men at a kosher supermarket in Paris before security forces stormed the building, killing him and freeing the remaining hostages. These men were murdered solely for being Jewish.
In March 2016, six ISIS terrorists were detained in Turkey, associated with a threat to target Jewish schools, nurseries and youth clubs in Europe.
It is entirely reasonable therefore for Jews to be apprehensive of their safety, and in particular for Jewish parents to be concerned about security of the schools where their children are educated.
This is the context by which we should judge recent comments by Jackie Walker, Vice chair of Momentum, and a Labour Party member. The crassness of her comments at a fringe meeting at Labour Party conference questioning why one speaker had raised the issue of enhanced security at Jewish schools is staggering. It is certainly true that anti-Semitism is not the same thing as anti-Zionism; and that a critique of the political project of Zionism, as well as the specific actions of the Israeli state, is compatible with robust rejection of all forms of anti-Judaic prejudice. However, it is also true that the political and social roots of Zionism arise from the oppression, and persecution of Jews. Seemingly, the anti-Zionism of Jackie Walker has extended into seeking to belittle the experience of Jews facing hatred.
Her comments about the Holocaust were equally offensive. Speaking at the event discussing antisemitism at the Labour Party conference, Walker asked: “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who’ve experienced Holocaust?”
Now, as Joe Mulhall has written, , factually Walker is ill-informed because Holocaust Memorial day already does just that:
Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) commemorates the Holocaust, victims of Nazi persecution and the subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. Even the most cursory of glance at the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust website would reveal this information on the home page.
But it was not only ignorant, but deeply offensive. Not dissimilar to bursting into a funeral and demanding that the grieving congregation should think about all dead people, not just their own recently departed friend or relative.
The genocide against the Jews was historically unique, as of course are all instances of genocide. There are times and places where it is appropriate to discuss the historical comparitors, there are times and places where it is not. The Holocaust by the Nazis against the Jews was of intense ferocity, and it both drew on the deep well of anti-Jewish sentiment in European Christian culture, but also merged this with the modern industrial ruthlessness of European colonialist attitudes to their non-European subject peoples.
Let us be clear, there is not a current and live danger of racist hate crimes against Armenians, Hutus, Herero people or Native Americans on the streets of Britain today. The distinguishing feature that the Nazi anti-Semitism exploited centuries of prejudice, some of it woven into the very cloth of our culture, means that anti-Judaic stereotypes still abound, even among those in left and progressive politics. The rise of anti-Semitism, and concern by Jews for their own safety are live and real issues.
Jackie Walker had already caused controversy over her claims about Jewish funding of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Many on the left defended her. However, her comments were at least ill advised, if we consider that the majority of the slave trade was funded by Christians, and particularly in the early period from the 1680 to 1750s it was often by Quakers.
In Madge Dresser’s excellent work “Slavery Obscured, the Slave Trade in Bristol”, she observes that the later involvement of Quakers in the abolitionist movement obscures “the significant involvement of Quakers in the slave trade and the wider slave economy. Eight of the 20 largest contributors to Bristol’s new Quaker Meeting House built in Quakers Friars in 1747, were by 1755 members of the newly formed Society of Merchants Trading to Africa” – slavers. Dresser lists a number of prominent Quaker slavers, and traders dependent upon the exploitation of slave labour. But in Bristol, the crucible of the slave trade, Jews there were none. Indeed, in 1784 when a Tory candidate was standing for election in Bristol on an abolitionist ticket, he was popularly mocked for his association with stock caricatures of Jews. Crude popular stereotypes that had been used earlier in the century in the political campaign against the naturalisation of Jews were resurrected, conflating circumcission with emasculation, and presenting it as a threat to national virility. These anti-Jewish sentiments were coming from the pro-slavery camp, not the abolitionists.
For Walker to disproportionately stress the involvement of Jews in the slave trade is highly unfortunate, as it intersects with stereotypes of Shylock type ruthlessness. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that her discussion of the role of Jews in the slave trade was not related to the issue of the historical record, and was more related to her attitudes to contemporary Israel.
I don’t know whether Jackie Walker is anti-Semitic. But clearly she has shown lack of judgement in making statements that could legitimately be interpreted as anti-Semitic. What is more at a critical time for the Labour Party she should have had the self-awareness to be open to educating herself about what would and would not be offensive and could be open to interpretation as anti-Semitic.
Together we can make a difference. Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party has a much needed spirit of hope and optimism into politics. Share the goodwill with your family, friends, and workmates by sending them one of these Christmas cards.
Hand made card. Using recycled paper. The cards come in a bio-degradable cellulose sleeve.
20p from each pack sold will be donated to Momentum. Momentum exists to build on the energy and enthusiasm from the Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader campaign to increase participatory democracy, solidarity, and grassroots power and help Labour become the transformative governing party of the 21st century.
The second Labour Party leadership contest in a year has resulted in another Jeremy Corbyn landslide in advance of the party’s annual conference in Liverpool. It means now that the bubble within which thousands of Corbyn supporters have been cocooned from the reality of a country mired in the profound political uncertainty ushered in by Brexit is about to burst.
When the energy expended in campaigning for Corbyn throughout a leadership campaign that had allowed them to suspend disbelief and revel in the buzz of attending mass rallies and meetings at which everyone speaks the same language and shares the same worldview (and quite literally wears the same T-shirt), when all that energy is now diverted to the task of engaging with the general public, as it must, they will encounter a stone wall of indifference, perhaps even hostility, to the passion and idealism that has sustained them over the summer.
Many will inevitably become demoralised in response to the ineffable gulf that exists between life in the Corbynista bubble and the world outside. Others will stay the course, fuelled by an ever-decreasing well of optimism, knowing that giving up on Corbyn means giving up on their belief in a better and more just society.
And herein lies the problem – one for which, in parenthesis, Jeremy Corbyn cannot be held personally responsible. It is that the Corbyn phenomenon is a product of deep despair giving way to soaring hope with nothing in-between. It is thus a phenomenon which defies gravity and every other law of physics as it swaps reality for unreality, calling to mind Gramsci’s overused mantra, “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”
People who’ve been on the left for any amount of time live and die by Gramsci’s creed. They simply have to, otherwise it would be impossible to summon the strength and stamina to continually swim against the tide of apathy and anti-politics that is the default political position of millions up and down the country. These are people for whom politics belongs in the same category as a visit to the dentist — something that comes round once every so often and which they prefer to get out of the way as quickly and painlessly as possible. Regardless, this is the core demographic and constituency that has to be won over for Labour or any other party to succeed.
The reputation of opinion polls as a reliable barometer of voting intentions and support for parties and leaders has justifiably taken a battering of late. However it would be foolish to ignore them altogether, given that they are the only measure we have, short of an election, when it comes to the viability of a given leadership. And according to the most recent polls, Corbyn’s prospects of being elected prime minister remain grim.
It is entirely true that the Labour leader has been battered by the right wing and liberal media throughout a second leadership election that, while triggered by Brexit, essentially came about because the majority of the PLP had refused to accept his leadership or mandate since the day he was elected in 2015, and in truth never will. Many, undoubtedly, would prefer Labour to be driven to destruction than succeed with Corbyn at the helm. It is a situation that has fed a hardening of Corbyn’s support, with his supporters understandably enraged at the arrogance of Labour MPs who refuse to accept the party’s own democratic structures and wishes of the overwhelming bulk of the membership when it comes to who the leader should be. Allegations of abuse and bullying and intimidation merely reflect the depth of acrimony between both sides in what had become a zero sum game.
But where Corbyn and his team must shoulder responsibility is over the failure to understand or appreciate the reactionary and racist nature of Brexit; and how if it came to pass it would entrench an unalterable shift to the right in British politics. This lack of understanding was reflected in one of the most dispassionate and lacklustre campaigns ever waged by a party leader, one that has led to credible accusations that he and his team purposely worked to sabotage the Remain campaign.
The wider point is that so much energy has been expended in fighting this leadership battle, in rallying round Corbyn’s leadership against the PLP, it has created a false political reality. This reality, as mentioned, exists not at mass rallies or mass meetings, but on the doorsteps of millions of voters across the country. In Scotland Corbyn’s leadership has completely failed to puncture the SNP’s political dominance, while down south, in large swathes of the country’s former industrial heartlands, it is the right wing of the Tory Party and UKIP that are making the running with their brand of regressive British nationalism.
Brexit confirms that we have entered an era of competing nationalisms north and south of the border, involving the opening up of a political scissors to confirm what many had chosen to deny up until the EU referendum— namely that there is a marked difference in political culture, underpinned by national identity, between Scotland and England. The result is an inclusive and civic nationalism in Scotland that exists in sharp contrast to its exclusive and xenophobic counterpart in England. In between both you have a Corbyn-led Labour Party whose support outside London is restricted by and large to urban centres such as Manchester and Liverpool, where Labour’s roots remain deepest.
This is not to claim that Owen Smith or any other leader would be better placed to improve Labour’s fortunes. The squeeze on Labour as the vehicle of working class political representation had already crashed before Jeremy Corbyn came along. The lack of any strong and effective ideological opposition to austerity post-economic crisis saw the Tories win the battle of ideas on public spending, welfare, and Labour mismanagement of the economy. Allied to UKIP’s narrative about the EU and unlimited mass immigration – a narrative based on a set of untruths, half-truths, and outright lies – and the damage was done.
The result is that rather than anti-austerity it is the politics of anti-immigration that are driving the voting intentions of working people across former Labour heartlands in England and South Wales.
Corbyn and his supporters and are in for a sharp shock.
