Archive for the ‘Anti-Fascism’ Category
Factionalism in the Time of Coranavirus Part 11: Chris Williamson Gets Close to Galloway’s Workers Party.
Getting Close up to Galloway and pro-Brexit ultras of the Workers Party – aka as the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).
Chris Williamson was reported to be organising a ‘grass roots’ event, the ‘Festival of Resistance’ on the 20th of June but we learn from his site, “The Resistance” that,
In view of the ongoing Coronavirus calamity, we have decided to postpone the Festival of Resistance that was planned for the weekend of 20 June this year.
The festival has now been rescheduled for the weekend of 17/18 October in Derby, where we will aim to have an array of excellent speakers, workshops and films.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism asserts that speakers are already lined up,
The Resist Festival is due to feature controversial speakers including the rapper Lowkey, the outspoken academic Noam Chomsky, the activist Max Blumenthal and representatives from the ‘yellow vest’ protests in France.
This is one of his most recent public interventions,
Williamson has some new best friends:
This follows an earlier chum-fest with Galloway in May:
Chris Williamson’s views on the opinions of the Deputy Leader of Galloway’s Workers Party, Joti Brar, (Anti-imperialist, communist, media worker, truthseeker, mum. Workers of the world, unite; we have a world to win! @CPGBML @WorkersPartyGB )are not known.
Here are some of them, “Joti Brar is an active member of the Stalin Society, the website of which contains articles denying Soviet wrongdoing in the Katyn massacre, the Ukrainian Famine (Holodomor), and the Moscow Trials which they blame on the Nazis, dismiss as propaganda, or describe as fair process, respectively.”
Williamson could not stand as the Labour candidate in his Derby North constituency in the 2019 General Election as a result of his active suspension. He resigned from the Labour Party and stood as an independent candidate. He won 635 votes, losing his deposit and coming bottom of the poll.
Spiked Network’s New Front: “Don’t Divide us” Exposing, “racial division being sown in the name of anti-racism. “
Spiked, Brexit Party ex-MEPs, Learned Pundits, Minstrels and Wordsmiths, try to heal divisions over Race.
Some might say it’s odd, a new front set up on the issue of race, that says “don’t divide us” whose three main initiators are: a former Brexit Party MEP and ex-Revolutionary Communist Party stalwart, Claire Fox of the ‘Academy of Ideas’, a one-time Brexit Party candidate and author at Brexit Central, and Spiked, Inaya Folarin Iman, and “anti-woke” glee and mirth-man, and – do we need to say? – Spiked contributor Andrew Doyle.
But it is so…
The Spiked Network (for more on this group see SPIKED FOOTNOTES) has geared into action…
Racial division is being sown in the name of anti-racism
….activists, corporations and institutions seem to have seized the opportunity to exploit Floyd’s death to promote an ideological agenda that threatens to undermine British race relations.
The power of this ideology lies in the fear it inspires in those who would otherwise speak out, whatever their ethnicity. But speak out we must. We must oppose and expose the racial division being sown in the name of anti-racism.
The consequences of this toxic, racialised agenda are counter-productive and serious.
- Under soulless acronyms such as BAME and POC, all ethnic minorities are robbed of individual agency, and assumed to be victims of injustice.
- Free speech is being eroded by a McCarthyite culture of conformity in which to question the new dogma means to risk one’s livelihood and reputation.
- Calls for the wholesale destruction of historical statues, symbols and works of art are fuelling an unhealthy war against the past and stirring up culture wars in the present.
- An obsessive focus on the impact of colonialism threatens to turn history into a morality tale, rather than a complex, three-dimensional understanding of the past.
People will instantly agree that what we need on the issues of race and colonialism, slavery and ethnicity and nationalism, is the kind of complex nuanced debate that this little lot promoted as members of the Brexit Party, united behind the calm, anti-racist, leadership of Nigel Farage.
Or indeed by their on-line magazine Spiked:
Or: ‘The left is turning into a Woke Taliban’
They are surely right to conclude that “We will not be divided – by reactionary racists or culture warriors – who refuse to see us as individuals beyond our skin colour.”
Our ace-reporters are working on this right now, but look at some these tasty anti-division names that have backed this new Spiked Front:
William Clouston, party leader, The Social Democratic Party.
Recent healing Tweet:
Ben Habib, businessman; co-founder, Unlocked; former MEP (Brexit Party, modestly not mentioned…).
Christina Jordan, former MEP, South West England (Also Brexit Party, unmentioned).
Mercy Moroki:
Ed Husain, author The House of Islam: A Global History
Helen Pluckrose, specialist in the appealing sounding “Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship”.
Courtney Hamilton, Writer, (not mentioned: Author at spiked).
Another gleeman Simon Evans – he sounds a right laugh!
Forward Momentum Slate Wins – Tears for ‘Tribune’, Lavery and Bastani as their ‘Renewal’ faction loses
Tears for ‘Tribune’, Lavery and Bastani as their faction loses..
” Labour MPs such as Ian Lavery, Paula Barker, Sam Tarry and Charlotte Nichols, plus Tribune‘s Ronan Burtenshaw and Novara Media‘s Aaron Bastani, had all signed up to back the Renewal initiative.”
” the candidates selected by FM – said to include key workers, shop stewards and community organisers – were described by the campaign as “representing a break with the current leadership faction”.
It was bitterly contested fight, involving anonymous Twitter feeds attacking some of the Forward Momentum candidates for links with the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty.
Described as a less than edifying bun fight this is the result (on a turn out of 8,580, tiny in comparison with Labour’s growing membership of over 580,00).
Victory for Forward Momentum candidates as Lansman steps down
Labour List. Sienna Rodgers
Forward Momentum candidates have swept to victory by winning all member representative seats in Momentum internal elections that saw co-founder Jon Lansman step down.
Forward Momentum put forward one of the two main slates in the contest. The group pitched itself as ‘anti-continuity’ with a focus on democratising the organisation, and held open primaries to select candidates.
Momentum Renewal was the rival platform, more closely associated with Lansman. It stressed the importance of “left unity” within Labour and being “rooted in working-class communities”.
FM candidates won all 20 places in the members’ section, which gives them a majority on the NCG. Renewal candidates were elected by MPs and councillors to the four office holder posts.
That is, Renewal holds the “4 representatives of Labour public office holders.”
“the candidates selected by FM – said to include key workers, shop stewards and community organisers – were described by the campaign as “representing a break with the current leadership faction”.
The Clarion has a report,
Forward Momentum sweeps election for Momentum NCG
Mohan Sen.
Momentum reform group Forward Momentum has won all 20 seats elected by members on the Momentum National Coordinating Group.
The four seats reserved for and elected by public office holders (MPs and councillors) were all won by conservative left / Stalinist slate Momentum Renewal. It remains to be seen if Momentum Renewal will try to use the ‘fake seats’ on the NCG allotted to various organisations to gain advantage. It will be hard given how comprehensive their defeat is.
(Full results here. Candidates outside the two main slates did poorly.)
This rejection of the conservative, demagogic and witch-hunting campaign Momentum Renewal ran is a good thing for the movement.
It at least opens up possibilities for changing Momentum.
Forward Momentum is a real mixed bag politically, with widely differing perspectives – even on what democratising the organisation means, let alone wider political strategy.
A serious debate about left strategy, demands and campaigning – which didn’t get very far during the campaign – is needed.
It is very positive that two candidates who endorsed Momentum Internationalists‘ socialist platform – Abbie Clark and Ana Oppenheim – were elected on the Forward Momentum slate. We were sorry to see Nadia Whittome MP, who also supported the MI platform, narrowly lose out in the office holders’ section.
Poor old Skwawky thinks he has managed to scramble on board the Forward bandwagon:
So far, (written a bare hour after the results were announced) the losers are keeping their chins up.
Keeping the Flag of the Bolivarian Revolution flying Bastani looks to set to continue his work in heralding the latest act of Maduro, and attacking the Labour leader.
It remains hard to see what role Momentum has today.
From its creation, as a group pledged to support Jeremy Corbyn, engaged in some serious election work in 2017, it has struggled to define its role.
Was it to become a “social movement”, the yeast in amongst the people that gave substance to a British ‘left populism’?
Was it, as it described itself, building socialism “in the community”? A ” a people-powered, vibrant movement”.
The claim that Momentum has been, “Harnessing people-power, technology and networks, we’ve won seats for Labour, changed minds about the solutions to the biggest crises of our time and altered the direction of travel for British politics. Our aim is simple: we’re creating a society for the many, not the few.” looks pretty empty after the 2019 Election Disaster.
Now some of the left seem happier spending their time attacking the popular and respected Labour leader, Keir Starmer.
Flaking away from the Party the self-pitying left seems on the up:
Nobody with morals or self-respect should remain in Labour.
Nobody with any with morals, intellect or self respect should now remain in the Labour Party. Throughout Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the party was constantly sabotaged from within: the plotters praying that electoral defeat would help restore the hegemony of the right wing careerists – and it has. They have won.
And so it goes..
Many will be happy that Momentum has seen a clear out of the loyalists who used Momentum to ensure factional control of Labour Conferences in the interests of the Corridor Clique that thwarted, notably, internationalist opposition to Brexit.
Beyond that there is little to indicate that Momentum has found a new positive direction away from its past factionalism.
