Wednesday 25th January, 7pm: South London Anti-Fascists Group AGM 2012
Wednesday 25th January 2012, 7pm – 9pm
The Bread and Roses Pub, 68 Clapham Manor Street, SW4 6DZ
Speakers confirmed: Read more
The Great Bustard thrives in Britain and Holland (allegedly)
News breaks in Britain this morning that the Great Bustard is once again beginning to thrive in the UK. Meanwhile mainland Europe demonstrates once again how remarkable it is for Britain not to have a strong far-right party in its parliament. In the recent Dutch 2010 general elections, The Eurosceptic Party for Freedom (PVV) led by the Islamophobic Geert Wilders, has more than doubled its seats in the national parliament to become the third largest party and possibly soon in government.
Geert Wilders - a discerning Dutch politician
Geert Wilders first gained notoriety for his film, Fitna which brought international attention and was partially responsible for his temporary ban to the United Kingdom. He was eventually allowed to enter Britain to show Fitna at the UK’s Houses of Parliament and was warmly greeted by Eurosceptic United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and grassroots hooligan group – The English Defence League, He was prosecuted (unsuccessfully) by the Amsterdam Appeals Court for ” the incitement to hatred and discrimination”. Mr Wilders has continued to use his right to freely express himself to be a comforting voice of support regarding the Israel Defence Force’s attack on the Turkish nationals on the Freedom Flotilla.
TMP Editor on Al Jazeera
In the early hours of the morning of 7th May, as the results were coming in for the British General Election 2010. I appeared on Al Jazeera English News Channel to speak on two topics:
- Proportional Representation and what it means for far-right parties like the British National Party
- The Barking “Hodge vs Griffin” results from an anti-fascist perspective, I was billed as “Hope Not Hate” though I asked to be named a representative of “South London Anti-Fascist Group”
My debut on Al Jazeera is below, filmed and uploaded on to YouTube by a good colleague of mine and now on The Multicultural Politic for you to enjoy/lament/laugh at:
Open Thread: I’m an Al Jazeera News’ Election Pundit tonight. What should I say?
Thanks to the debate I had with Margaret Hodge MP for Barking, your friendly neighbourhood blogger and community activist/organiser has been asked to speak the infamous Qatar based news channel: Al Jazeera at 2.30am (British Summer Time/1:30 GMT) tonight/Friday morning.
They have asked me to discuss the local and general election results in Barking & Dagenham which will either show that the British National Party have control of the local authority or not.
BNP Candidate Bob Bailey Kicks Asian Man’s Head
From Sam Tarry at Hope Not Hate
Yesterday, BNP candidate Bob Bailey – the party’s top official in London – viciously attacked a young man in the street.
A camera team caught the attack on video – you need to watch it and then share it with everyone you know.
My friend was just attacked by a local BNP ‘thug’
A personal friend of TMP, Cormac Hollingsworth, who is also a Labour candidate has been attacked by a British National Party supporter whilst campaigning in Bermondsey on Monday 3rd May.
Cormac Hollingsworth was leafleting an estate on Monday evening when he was punched three times in the face and kicked. Meanwhile the attacker kept up a stream of insults and shouted pro-BNP slogans.
Review of Billy Bragg in “Pressure Drop”
By Mark Inger / @BaronBattersea
I’m embarrassed to say that until last week I had never been to The Wellcome Collection, a glorious building on Euston Road housing a museum displaying an unusual mixture of medical artefacts and original artworks. My visit was not to see anything unusual as such, but to see ‘Pressure Drop’, a mix of gig, play and art installation, all held together by the Bard of Barking himself, Billy Bragg.
Written by Mick Gordon, ‘Pressure Drop’ tells the story of a London based white working class family in the run up to the funeral of recently deceased grandfather Ron. The funeral causes the family to take a long hard look at their own lives, in particularly Ron’s son John, laid off from the local ‘plant’ and disenfranchised with England and resentful of immigration to the local area. John’s childhood friend Tony is playing on John’s vulnerability and desperately trying to get him to stand in the local Council elections for a party that we never actually hear the name of, but we can safely assume is a far right outfit based on the BNP.
How Labour legitimises the BNP
A BNP election poster, 10 April 2010. Credit: Getty Images
The BNP gets a staggering amount of press coverage: columnists queue up to prove their liberal credentials by pasting them, while Nick Griffin is rarely off our screens. Yet he’s the leader of a small, poorly financed, internally divided party that is never going to be a major force in a first past the post political system. So what’s going on?
What is going on is the betrayal of the British working class and a political symbiosis disguised as opposition. The Labour Party no longer pretends to represent working class people: it’s far too busy fluffing our spectacularly incompetent city elite. And into their old role are stepping the BNP, promising not only local jobs, services and communities but that they have changed their old racist ways.
The liberal reaction to this is disastrous. I’ve written a play about the rise of the BNP, called A Day at the Racists, during which I debated Margaret Hodge, MP for Barking (where of course Griffin is challenging her). I was shocked at her argument — basically that the BNP are simple racists and therefore any decent person should vote Labour. That kind of patronising disrespect for the legitimate frustrations of her constituents also gives the BNP legitimacy — it makes them seem like they have something important or original to say, something that mainstream society doesn’t want you to hear.
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The EDL and The Islamist Far-Right
From The Commune
Last month the English Defence League announced plans to march in Tower Hamlets, East London, in protest at an Islamist conference planned for June 20th at the Troxy centre. The conference was planned by groups tied to Islamic Forum Europe, among the major Islamist groups in the area.
Anti-racists planned to demonstrate against the EDL: but the SWP-run Unite Against Fascism and its front group United East End insisted this should be on the basis of uncritical support for — and collaboration with — the conference organisers. This meant whitewashing the worst religious fundamentalists and supporting their right to represent the Bengali community in the borough.
Read more