Archive for the ‘East Anglia’ Category
Jimas Gets Police to Threaten Tendance Coatesy.
I have just had an unpleasant visit from the Police.
Apparently it follows a “complaint” from Ipswich-based Islamists, Jimas.
The details of the complaint were not given.
But they apparently centre on this Blog, posts on this organisation (notably a dossier sent to me by somebody close to Harry’s Place) and, it is claimed “E-Mails.”
What they are specifically I do not know.
It all took place, believe or not, well over a year ago, when and what, they did not see fit to elaborate much upon.
But is was claimed that I had a met a leading member of Jimas – completely untrue – to discuss matters.
It was also said that E-Mails from somebody calling themselves The Usual Suspects, were at issue.
I am not the “Usual Suspects” and it is a slander to suggest that I am.
Equally I repeat: I have never met anybody from Jimas.
As for the political attacks on Jimas (and other Islamists) on the Blog Tendance Coatesy, I wonder if it is the business of Suffolk police to act on these matters.
One could say that this is a case of political intervention way beyond their remit.
As for Jimas, well, rest assured that your attempts to ‘get’ me are not appreciated.
Particularly the claim – wholly made-up – that I ‘met’ with them.
As this Blog has an international readership I wonder what people in other countries think of this.
UKIP: UK Now Has Real Far-Right Populist Politics.
French Left’s Dilemma After Front National Breakthrough in 1984.
Like Cabu’s Grand Duduche you start by feeling that you don’t want to have anything to do with anybody who voted UKIP.
This came to me when the BBC’s Look East showed a chippie in Great Yarmouth. That town elected UKIP Councillors to Norfolk County Council. The chip-shop owner was vociferous in his UKIP support, as were many others in the seaside resort.
I like Yarmouth chips. They sell them with a choice of sauces. Inspired by Belgium custom you can get mayonnaise and curry, amongst other flavours.
I will make a point of not going to Yarmouth for my annual day-trip.
The party now has 15 councillors in Norfolk and scored 23.47% of the county vote - Conservative 32.6pc, Labour 22.75pc, Liberal Democrat 10.97pc, Green 6.55pc, Independent 3.27pc, Christian People’s Alliance 0.13pc, United People’s Party 0.02p
They got a councillor in Ipswich too, in Whitehouse and Whitton.
I will not feel comfortable in the company of anybody who backed James Crossley, or those , 20% of the electorate across town (and they didn’t stand in 2 divisions) who voted for them in Ipswich.
But that’s a reaction, not a strategy.
A Strategy?
We need clarity on how to deal with UKIP.
For a long time people on the left have been convinced that the threat from the far-right came from the BNP and the English Defence League.
Principally that there was a “massive surge” in hostility towards Muslims.
This view was reinforced by a whole industry of speculation about the Islamic ‘Other’.
This was always a skewed analysis: there is a little evidence that the masses were ready to engage in a wholesale attack on Muslims.
‘Islamophobia’ was also used by those who took this line to denigrate those who backed the secularists, feminists and trade unionists who, after the Arab Spring, have had to face right-wing Islamist governments.
Now we have a party that has focused on an ‘Other’ that is lot closer to home: the Eastern European hordes from Bulgaria and Romania.
Standing in, of course, for the ‘foreigners‘ already here.
In place of abstract ruminations about the Other, we had better look at an older anti-racist idea: scapegoating.
This is not a vote of the ignored’ working class’s expressing their real needs.
It is the result of a conscious attempt to deflect people’s anger at austerity, stagnating wages, and mounting personal debt, onto an easy target.
Foreigners, we know, are not the only thing UKIP are about.
They want to make life easier for British capitalists, they attack trade unions and the poor, and their cultural views are a mix of Norman Tebbit, Jeremy Clarkson and the US Tea Party.
They are dyed-in-the-wool free-marketeers.
UKIP councillors will no doubt often make fools of themselves.
But we cannot count on their ability to self-destruct.
We, the left, need to attack them where they are weak: are they for austerity or are they against it?
What will they do to help working people defend their rights?
Will they support the Living Wage?
Will the fight against tax breaks for companies and the rich?
Will they back the NHS?
Internationalism.
Before anything else the Left should shout, loudly, its internationalism!
Against hatred between the peoples!
For European unity of the peoples, the workers and the poor!
For a European Social Republic: level wages and benefits upwards!
Down with the Xenophobes!
Down with UKIP!
Suffolk Elections, Labour Gains but County (and Country) now has its own Front National, UKIP.
Tory Judy Terry is Out: The Heavens Cry their Joy!
Suffolk Election Results leave the Tories in Charge.
Conservative 39
Green 1
Independent 2
Labour 12
Labour and Co-operative 3
Liberal Democrat 7
UK Independence Party 9
This is a good result for Labour and their candidates who have worked really hard, year in and year out, on the County Council (where they were only 4 till today) and have fought against austerity and privatisation tooth-and-nail.
It is a good result for the labour movement more widely as Suffolk Labour Parties have worked closely with the union and left campaigners against the Tory-led Council cutters and floggers-off.
One result brought great joy to the progressive Suffolk masses: the defeat of Judy Terry in Rushmere (figures and intro from Ipswich Spy).
“The Conservatives have LOST the Rushmere Division, previously held by Cabinet Member Judy Terry, to Labour’s Sandra Gage.
Ellis, Peter (UKIP) 401
Gage, Sandra (Labour) 1117
Jackson, Dale (Ind) 34
Jones, Garath (Lib Dem) 90
Terry, Judy (Con) 628
Wilmot, Kirsty (Green) 94″
As a County Council Cabinet member she has pushed through the privatisation agenda, notably creating a so-called Industrial and Provident Society (private ‘charity’) for the Library service. This has caused great damage.
Overall Labour made gains in urban districts, notably Ipswich, which has more in common with parts of London (including the ‘inner city’) than rural Suffolk.
In my own ward there was a very a good result (I campaigned for Mandy – Labour),
Labour have GAINED the St Helen’s Division from the Liberal Democrats, who were pushed into last place, with UKIP second, two votes ahead of the Tories, and the Green’s in fourth.
Gaylard, Mandy (Labour) 900
Lockington, Tim (Lib Dem) 155
Parkinson, Katherine (Con) 359
Tinney, Mark (UKIP) 361
Wilmot, Tom (Green) 201
There was also a by-election,
“Alexandra Ward By-Election – Ipswich BC – Labour Gain
Labour have taken the Borough Council by election in Alexandra, a gain from the Liberal Democrats. Turnout was 27.6%.
Cook, John (Labour) 772
Cotterell, Stephen (UKIP) 279
Phillips, Edward (Con) 274
Toye, Kenneth (Lib Dem) 126
Wilmot, Thomas (Green) 193
Rejected 7
“So the Liberal Democrats have gone from first to last in what was a bastion of Liberal Democrat power in the town – just three years ago they held all three Borough Council seats, plus the County Council seat. It means the Liberal Democrats are reduced to just three councillors on Ipswich Borough Council.” So says the Spy.
In fact it was not so much as a Liberal Bastion but a freak base, created by boundary changes, and a protest vote against the Labour government, which was always going to go back to Labour when real politics kicked in.
The worst result is in Whitehouse and Whitton where UKIP slipped in.
9 UKIP councillors on the County Council is a disaster.
They did well elsewhere though not enough to win.
Note that in the area I live (St Helen’s/Alexandra, which cover the town centre and is largely working class or employee, and highly ‘mixed’, including a substantial migrant worker population) UKIP came above the Liberals and even the Tories with hardly any local activists whatsoever.
Or indeed none...
Their vote comes from a ‘virtual’ campaign of leafleting, and the full-time agitation of the far-right daily press, the Mail, the Express and the Sun.
They beat poor old Kevin in his vain attempt to win Chantry for the Tory (Holy Roller) Party.
UKIP put the Tories into 4th and 5th (no guessing which Tory came 5th) and the Liberals, way out on the margins at Monster Raving levels of support. (Algar, Kevin (Con) 1043 Armitage, Helen (Labour) 2169 Broom, Barry (Green) 404 Cenci, Nadia (Con) 1096 Fletcher, Julie (Lib Dem) 243 Gardiner, Peter (Labour) 2051 McHardy, Stuart (Lib Dem) 146
Newton, Robert (UKIP) 1301)
Across the County UKIP have pushed the Liberals out to the fringes (7 seats) and are not far behind Labour.
Campaigning on an openly racist basis, against the threat of Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, they join a sorry list of European far-right populist parties.
The left has long shouted about the menace of the tiny and irrelevant English Defence League.
Dealing with UKIP is going to be a lot harder than shouting ‘nasty Nazis’ at them.
But this is a start,
UKIP Campaign in Ipswich on Hatred of Foreigners.
Cat Herdsman.
“Massive Threat to Our Local Services.
No it’s not the cuts, austerity, or the recession.
UKIP leaflets distributed in Ipswich over the weekend begin by stating,
Within a year, 29 million Romanians and Bulgarians will gain the right to live, work and draw benefits here.
Only UKIP is taking seriously his massive threat to out local housing, schools, health and council services.
Ipswich Spy downplays UKIP’s potential here.
Certainly after reading press reports over the weekend we come away with the – justified – view that a bigger gaggle of cranks, nutters, racists and venomous right-wing extremists would be hard to find.
The Spy points out that,
Locally UKIP don’t have a branch in Ipswich. They have branches all over the Eastern Region, but none in Ipswich. The UKIP agent is from the Bury St Edmunds branch, although he was the UKIP candidate here in Ipswich at the last General Election and he lives in Stowmarket. So they don’t have the huge numbers of activists the Liberal Democrats could boast before they came into Government.
One could add that their candidate, Mark Tinney (for St Helen’s) has a shaky grasp on what local councils do.
His main policy plank is to “try to reduce parking charges and extended free parking in the town centre”.
These are County Council elections.
Parking is the responsibility of the Borough Council.
His other ideas are more police visibility and encouraging ”more business for Ipswich”.
We suspect that nobody will read this part of the leaflet.
They will alight on the ‘threat’ of hordes of Bulgarians and Romanians descending on Ipswich.
We consider, based on what Ipswich people say, that they will have more of an echo than Ipswich Spy thinks.
Informed people may well ‘ridicule” UKIP’s claims.
But the Tories and the right-wing media have relentlessly pursued the line that migrant workers are a ‘menace’.
They have continually attacked ‘Europe’, the EU’s social policies, the ‘regulation’, the ‘bureaucracy’ and the ‘waste’.
It’s no good bleating about what a bunch of odd-balls UKIP are.
They have feathered the UKIP nest.
Much of the Left too has failed to stand up for Europe.
Sections of the organised left have attacked the EU to such a point that they fail to distinguish between the free-market policies of the present Commission (backed by all the major states, and only feebly challenged by the French left government), and the potential of a Continent-wide union of the peoples.
If they want to get rid of the European Union what would they replace it with?
Many on the left go very quiet at this point.
Do they seriously think an “Independent” Socialist Britain or an “independent” Socialist Scotland would come about from leaving the EU?
To challenge the hatred and division spread by UKIP and the Tories, we need the politics of internationalism.
Unity between the peoples, between the working classes and the poor, across Europe.
For this we stand for a European Social Republic!
People’s Assembly Against Austerity, Ipswich and District.
A People’s Assembly Against Austerity group is being set up in Ipswich, Suffolk.
