The Lyrical Terrorist versus Sturmgeist89
Pity Samina Malik, the young woman who will live for the rest of her life with the consequences of a terrorism conviction simply for being a suburban shopgirl who committed her fantasies on the internet. Scribbling doggerel in praise of al Qa’eda on the back of WH Smith receipts will do no more to bring [...]
Queen’s Speech: post-ideological politics
Brown bottled a November election not because he was scared of losing to the Tories, but because he needed more time to set out his ‘vision of change for Britain’. Well, that’s what he said at the time, anyway. Yet the most damning criticism most commentators have come up with after yesterday’s Queen’s Speech – [...]
Should unions be able to exclude political activists?
Among the measures announced in the Queen’s Speech today is an Employment Bill that will reportedly enable trade unions to expel members on grounds of their allegiance to a political party. It comes after the European Court of Human Rights earlier this year overruled British legislation, dating from 1992, that prevented train drivers’ union Aslef [...]
Nigel Hastilow: racist catchphrase bingo
Enoch was right. British jobs for British workers. Listening to speeches from mainstream politicians right now is becoming uncomfortably close to playing 1970s racist catchphrase bingo. At this rate, it cannot now be long before one of the Lib Dem leadership contenders reminds us that there is no black in the Union Jack. House! Nigel [...]
SWP source: Rees not in control?
This just in from an SWPer with serious working class implantation, who tells me that the SWP actually did not want the Tower Hamlets Gang of Four councillors to resign the whip: I’ve no reason to believe it was orchestrated … SWP “Leninist discipline” is such that the two councillors who joined the SWP could [...]
Respect: Tower Hamlets Deep Throat says …
I’ve just had a second email from a source with an intimate knowledge of the ins and out of Tower Hamlets politics, containing further information about talks between the SWP-sponsored Continuity Respect group on Tower Hamlets council and the local Liberal Democrats. Like all journos, I like nothing more than a good tip-off, so many [...]
When Trot groups implode
Even my seven-year-old realises that playing the ‘it wasn’t me, dad’ card is a spectacularly dumb move if I actually catch her pulling her kid sister’s hair. Not that Daddy’s Little Princesses fight very often, you understand. They are good girls. Respect national secretary John Rees, on the other hand, is not only not the [...]
How the First International fell to pieces
The year was 1872, and the factional cleavages inside the International Working Mens’ Association – a broad non-party coalition that included revolutionary socialists from different traditions, one or two British trade union leaders and politicised members of a controversial religious minority – could no longer be hidden. It was pretty damn obvious that the IWMA [...]
