Quote of the Day

Peter Briffa :

"One of the main reasons I like living in East London is because there is absolutely no prospect of accidentally bumping into Billy Bragg."

Quote of the Day

I thought the Bard of Burton Bradstock Barking called himself a socialist ?

"Everyone else in London benefits from multiculturalism and cheap labour..."

I can't remember when keeping wages low was an admitted benefit for a self-styled leftie. Even Jon Cruddas, while supporting mass immigration, dislikes the way it drives down wages - he just doesn't dislike it enough to actually do anything about it :

"... immigration has been used as an informal reserve army of cheap labour. People see this at their workplace, feel it in their pocket and see it in their community - and therefore perceive it as a critical component of their own relative impoverishment.

Objectively, the social wage of many of my constituents is in decline. House prices rise inexorably, and public service improvements fail to match local population expansion. At work, their conditions, in real terms, are in decline through the unregulated use of cheap migrant labour."

(via)

Laban The Far-Right Extremist

Or, They Flee From Me That Sometime Did Me Seek.

I noticed a couple of months back that I'd fallen off Clive Davis's Speccie blogroll.

Serves you damn well right, Laban, I thought. He's been posting there for months and you're still linking to his old site. And have you considered the possibility that what you're posting just isn't good enough ?

I did leave a comment at the site, but alas I never found out why I'd gone. Pity. I'd been flattered to have such a fine writer reading my stuff.

But when I lost the link from Harry's Place I was more concerned. Along with Norman Geras and Jackie Danicki, Harry was one of the first bloggers to link to me back in 2003. And on a purely selfish-stats note, I must have had 20,000+ visitors via HP. After Google image search (mostly people looking for Helen Mirren's spectacular staircase entrance in 'Savage Messiah') it's my top referrer.

So I wrote to one of the HP crew asking why I'd fallen off the list, and was told that it was 'probably' to do with having links to some far-right sites - perhaps Majority Rights or Nationalist News - both of which I link to because they link to me (although MR has a history - I originally linked because John Jay Ray wrote there - he was then removed by the MR crew because of his pro-Israel views and because he didn't see the hand of the Zionist Menace in everything - so it's a bit of a hangover). I'm on record as saying that I'd link to Satan himself for a link back, although I think I'd draw the line at, say, a blogger who was a convicted and unrepentant killer.

That explanation made sense - but I asked why now, when I'd linked for ages to such sites. Was there a battle going on I was unaware of (apart from the usual Stopper/Euston mullarkey)? Were the boys at Lenin's Tomb or Socialist Unity writing nasty stuff about the company HP kept, and doing the degrees of separation ? Were the advertisers twitched ?

I asked - but answer came there none. Cast into the dustbin of blogging history with nary an explanation. OK, it's not exactly a neck-shot in the corridors of the Lubiyanka - but a man still likes to know the evidence against him. I wrote a couple of weeks ago, so a reply seems unlikely. It is I suppose possible that they're as lazy as I am and as poor correspondents - but all of them ?

So I thought I'd try and work it out. And while I'm not sure if it has any bearing at all, I did find this blog post by a Charlie Pottins.

Another hate attack reported by Searchlight also has an internet connection, apparently. In the early hours of June 9 a fire gutted the offices of Positive East, a charity helping people affected by HIV and Aids. It is being treated as arson.

Searchlight notes that the charity was based in a private house, with no outward sign of its purpose. It also notes that Mark Santos, who runs the charity, was a Labour candidate in Hainault ward, in the London Borough of Redbridge, in May. Julian Leppert of the BNP was elected in Hainault.

As Searchlight points out, the local charity and Mark Santos were the subject of an attack on the blog site run by a mysterious person calling himself "Laban Tall", after a character in Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.

He objected to the aids charity receiving funding from local taxpayers.

Mr Pottins first drags a few implications across the trail :

"... for someone who claims to be engaged in agriculture in Puddletown, Dorset, "Laban Tall" obviously keeps a close watch on people and politics in suburban Essex. At least on those who may have upset the BNP. But whoever his eyes and ears are, we can't accuse him of having a hand in anything someone does there, nor of himself having BNP sympathies ..."

then calls on Norman Geras to "out" this mysterious person. Charming.

Apart from that, he seems quite a sensible chap - his blog's actually not a bad read.

He's referring to this post, a slightly tongue-in-cheek response (if Mr Pottins or Searchlight call it an 'attack' they need to get out more) to claims here and there that the ordinary people of Essex had reacted with revulsion to BNP gains at local elections. My "close watch on people and politics in suburban Essex" consisted of typing "BNP -paribas" into Google News - and the point of the post - if any - was to show that the only evidence for said wave was a few letters by the usual suspects - Labour candidates and anti-fascist activists.

However, the timescales were uncomfortable. I wrote about Mr Santos' patriotic fervour in May 2006 - the following month the building where he worked was set on fire. Could one of Laban's readers have been roused to such an act by my incendiary prose ? A worrying thought. And how many more of you twisted firestarters are out there ? Just looking at my posts since I returned from Scotland I realised that Canterbury Cathedral, the Boat and Bridge of Orchy Hotels and the Clachaig Inn may all need to check their fire insurance.

If you're reading this, Keir Whittaker, you're a very naughty reader !

21 Dec 2006

AN HIV sufferer who torched an Aids charity centre was told by a judge he should be commended by the court for owning up to his crime. On Friday Judge Inigo Bing told Keir Whittaker, 33, he deserved the "thanks of the public" for giving himself up to police.

Whittaker broke into the Positive East building in Mildmay Road, Ilford - where he had previously had counselling - and set fire to the curtains. The property was gutted in the arson attack which caused tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage - but fortunately no one was killed or injured. Mark Santos, director of Positive East, said: "This was a tragedy on all levels and clearly not the actions of a well man. The building is under repair and we are thinking about reopening it, but the people of Redbridge have not lost out on our services, we are just providing them in a different way."

Snaresbrook Crown Court heard Whittaker had already been locked up twice for arson attacks and he was given three years for his latest offence. Whittaker had been drinking alcohol and taking drugs on June 9 when he felt "impulsive" and broke into Positive East, starting the fire with a cigarette lighter. He handed himself into Ilford police on July 29 and also admitted stealing petty cash from an ex-lover to spend on booze and drugs.

Martin McCarthy, defending, said: "He went to the HIV centre. They were counselling him. After a consumption of drugs or alcohol, there he was, early in the morning. He says, in desperation, acting impulsively and walking around the area, he broke into the property and set light to it."

Judge Bing told Whittaker: "What is remarkable and unusual in this case, for which you receive the commendation of the court and thanks of the public, is that you gave yourself up to the police and confessed to the crime - because without your confession this crime would not have been solved."

Whittaker, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to arson with intent to endanger life. He will have 138 days already spent in custody knocked off his term.

Quite frankly, a homeless HIV-positive serial arsonist and petty thief - who had already been to the centre - doesn't feel like the profile of a typical reader - and it may be that "serial arsonist" is the key factor here. But you never can tell - so I'd like to make it plain to all of you, as well as Mr Pottins and Searchlight, that I disapprove of setting fire to buildings - or people. If Messrs Searchlight and Pottins would like to campaign with me for much tougher sentences for arsonists no one would be happier than I. And in the meantime, perhaps they'd like to add a wee correction to their posts ?

(One other point - one of the other anti-BNP correspondents I quoted was a Diana Neslen, whose son had previously, according to Mr Pottins, been attacked by a BNP activist. I can see why that kind of thing might make you want to write letters to the paper, but I'm really not sure how I'm meant to have known that - or what I should have done if I had. But I'd also like to make it plain that I utterly reject the political tactic of 'duffing people up in the streets' - and would like to see perpetrators jailed for a very long time. If Mr Pottins wants to look for a Dorset-based political activist who keeps a "close watch on people and politics in suburban Essex" and does believe in that tactic, tell the Searchlight boys to get down to to Burton Bradstock at once.

And a second, slightly worrying point. Defending counsel Martin McCarthy missed a trick by not googling Mr Santos and his centre. With the Searchlight article he could have presented his client as a poor deluded man, led astray by his visits to a "hate site".

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the REAL motivation for this crime must be sought elsewhere. I request an adjournment while we subpoena the relevant Blogger and ISP information to enable us to bring the joint author of this conspiracy - might I say the prime mover - before you"

I might have cause to thank Steve Taylor for his 'Internet for Prisoners' campaign yet.)

Leafy, white and conservative

Billy Bragg is the archetype of all those right-on rebels or PC exemplars who, when the kids come along, up sticks from the vibrant multicultural melting pot of the city to a leafy, conservative area.

The Bard of Barking is touring yet again.

"Coming from Barking as I do, the fact that the BNP are now the main opposition party in the area is a source of deep disappointment."

He's coming from Barking alright, but where's he going ?

Let's compare the average primary school league table results for Barking and Dagenham :


With the results for Burton Bradstock CoE Primary in leafy Dorset, where the most multicultural feature is the occasional Gambian drummer performing at the school.

The kids must be heading for secondary level by now. My money's on this little place up the road.

BBC Bias - A Random Selection

Short of blogging time - a few notes made in December 2001, when I was posting to the Evening Standard boards.

20/12/2001

Have the BBC learned anything from the last 3 months ?

Not if its recent coverage is anything to go by. A couple of nights ago BBC2 featured a documentary by Bonnie Greer, who started by saying what a patriot she was (she left the US for Britain some years ago) before trawling her immediate family (who to a man or woman thought 'the chickens were coming home to roost') then various Chicagoans for their views. She nodded wisely when people said 'what goes round, comes round', but those who, like the solemn 10 year old boy, said 'these people should be put to death' were pointed out as examples of US 'insularity' and lack of empathy with the Muslim world.

The whole program gave the air of having been put together in that time (it seems so long ago now) when the 'liberal' left was preparing for a global wave of anti-Americanism to be unleashed by the military blunderings of the cowboy in the White House. Markets were crashing, dire predictions were being made of 'another Vietnam', and America was being told to try and work out just why the whole world hated it.

And tonight on Radio 4 news the coverage of Yemen seems to have gone straight back to early October in its defeatism - just substitute 'Yemen' for 'Afghanistan' and rebroadcast. Some polytechnic lecturer was wheeled out to explain why Yemen was so much trickier than Afghanistan for any kind of intervention. Apparently the Yemenis are 'xenophobic' and 'resent foreign armed forces'. And the Brits left 'with their tails between their legs' in 1967. But that's just what they said about the Afghans. And in 1967 I'm pretty sure more than one survivor got back, unlike 1842 when we lost 12,000 (admittedly 9,000 of those were civilians, victims of 'collateral' killing by Robert Fisk's mates).

St George's Day, 2001
Billy Bragg is chosen by 'The World Tonight' as their (sole) guest to discuss 'Englishness'.

March 2002
The Long View - Was Drake a Terrorist ? With Tariq Ali.
Drake equated with Osama Bin Laden.

13/3/2002
'Dumbing Down of BBC' discussion on 'P.M.'. Two guests chosen - Tariq Ali and Bob Holman (the Holy Fool of Easterhouse).

14/03/2002 - World At One
Ann Sloman, BBC political head, discussing the Appeal Court decision against the BBC (re pro-life alliance election broadcast censorship) "There is no liberal elite".

28/5/02 – James Naughtie on R4 “Today” (discussing a Ms Amos' imprisonment for not sending her children to school)
“Her daughters say, surprisingly, (my italics) that prison works ..”

(Interviewing Estelle Morris, Education minister) “We know there are too many women in prison who shouldn’t be there (no response from EM) ... are you saying that prison works ?”

Ms Morris “Yes ...”

19/6/02 – John Humphrys interviewing Ivan Massow on ‘On The Ropes’
H - “are you still a Labour Party member ?”
Massow – “I’m really not sure – I may still be paying the fees .... do you pay by direct debit ?”
Humphrys (seemingly flustered) – “I – I can’t answer that one”

October 2002
BBC R4 Social Affairs correspondent Rita Chakrabati describes the late Baroness Young as ‘a campaigner for so-called ‘family values’’.

Why is Stephen Lawrence always described on R4 news bulletins as “the black teenager Stephen Lawrence”, when Philip Lawrence is not described as ‘the white headmaster’ and Damilola Taylor is not ‘the black schoolboy’ ?

BBC news does not present news as such, but rather events are selectively used to illustrate an ongoing global morality play where the heroes and villains are well known.

Nationalist rioters in N.I. were reported as ‘venting their anger’ after the release of the jailed paratrooper Stephen Clegg ...

Classic example is the reporting of the Indonesian riots preceding the fall of the Suharto regime in May 1998. Those burning cars and buildings in Jakarta were described in bulletins as ‘protesters’ and ‘demonstrators’, and one R4 bulletin described ‘demonstrators’ burning and looting, observing that ‘Chinese areas were particularly targeted’. A remarkably restrained description of racist mob violence, and one which it is impossible to imagine the BBC using if the rioters were, say, white Britons. As reports over the next few days pointed to continuous anti-Chinese violence including mass rape, the tone of reporting changed and the ‘demonstrators’ became ‘rioters’ – which of course they had been from the start.

Happy St. George's Day

For the last three years the BBC has celebrated St. George's Day with the help of patriotic Englishman Billy Bragg - you know, the chap who thinks that people with the wrong politics should be beaten up in the streets to prevent Britain becoming a fascist country. In order to save freedom we had to destroy it.

This year it's all gone quiet on the BBC front - no essays from historians worried about the impact of the Crusades, no worries about lumpen racists, no feature on the Today website.

Just a couple of stories about an East Anglian pub and a factory that's giving the staff the day off. Alas the pub website (link from the BBC story) doesn't seem to be up.

Google UK has a lovely graphic though.

Inshallah we'll make it up to the top end of Gloucestershire tonight, where the beautiful town of Tewkesbury will be flag-decked and a dragon may be slain in a riverside meadow come 7.15 or so. Maybe followed by an English beer ..

St George And The BBC

this was sent to BBC online in 2002 in response to the essay by the BBC's Voice Of England - Billy Bragg. I wonder how they will celebrate today ?)


'Twas the feast of St George, 2001, 10.30 at night, and in my country hovel life was good. Some red wine and garlic bread (traditional English fayre), a good book, Radio 4 murmuring gently. "And for St George's Day, a special guest talks about England and what it means to be English".

Who could it be, I wondered - Peter Hitchens perhaps, or Simon Heffer of the Daily Mail who has advocated English self-rule - maybe Sir Patrick Moore, whose knighthood was long delayed because of his English nationalism (he was I believe a member of the English National Party during the 1970s/80s).

"And here in the studio we have Billy Bragg !"

I almost fell off my chair (may have been the wine) as the Bard of Barking held forth, turning out to be so proud of his Englishness that he felt English about once every three days, otherwise feeling European or a citizen of the world.

(For foreign surfers, Billy Bragg is a singer and poet of far-left views - not perhaps the first name that would spring to mind when the words 'English patriot' are pronounced. Some of his songs are quite memorable but George Brassens or Jacques Brel he ain't - nor Tom Waits or Randy Newman neither. Like many anti-racists who've made some money, he has left the multicultural city and chosen to live in a leafy, white and conservative area - in his case Dorset).

I did wonder as this year's St George's approached how the BBC could top that this year. Tariq Ali perhaps, or Peter Tatchell ?

And as the day approaches, a sighting shot on St George - the BBC News site announces "St George comes under fire". A Simon Pipe recorded that 'some critics say St George's Day is best ignored.' Well, one critic to be precise - the historian Professor Ronald Hutton, who believes that "It would be a sure sign of a loss of nerve" if we celebrated St George's day. An alternative voice (you know how keen the BBC are on diversity) comes from Chris Doyle, of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, who says toasting St George is "deeply insensitive" - after all, the Crusades were only seven hundred years ago. (note : why is it that 'harking back to the past' is obnoxious to liberals when we praise the glories and great deeds of the British, but such a good thing when we berate ourselves for (perceived) past sins ?)

And this year ? He's back ! The voice of England has an essay on the BBC website, looking to a future 'where anyone, of any race, will be happy to call themselves English'. What, even passing tourists ? Even the French ? The Scots ? Martin McGuinness ? If everyone can be English, then why should anyone wish to be ?

The site says "Billy Bragg is proud to be English, but not everyone who lives in England feels the same way. For millions of his fellow countrymen and women, English patriotism reeks of racism."


That's bad news - the BBCs chief political correspondent Andrew Marr helped draw up the notorious "British=racist" Runnymede Trust report a couple of years ago, now English=racist as well !

And what does Billy Bragg think are the defining characteristics of Englishness ? He thinks we need a debate, and only then can we see "the common elements that give us, the English, a sense of belonging". This contradicts his earlier assertion that "everyone has their own, personal definition". His definition includes the writing of William Blake and George Orwell.


In 1941, when my parents generation - the last heroic generation of Britons, the generation described by Peter Mandelson and Clive Soley in a Labour Party document as 'racist and xenophobic' - while this generation was fighting Hitler prior to electing Labour in the 1945 landslide, George Orwell wrote his essay "The Lion and the Unicorn".

In it he wrote of the English left-wing intelligentsia as follows :

"In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman, and that it is a duty to sneer at every English institution ....It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during 'God Save The King' than of stealing from a poor-box."


Times have moved on, and the ideas of this 'island of dissident thought' are now those of our ruling elite.

And the BBCs negative, carping coverage of the feast of St George, patron Saint of England, shows only too well that Orwell spoke truth.

The Essay

St George in the 21st Century

The death of the Queen Mother marks the beginning of the end of the British monarchy as we have known it all our lives. Crowned Queen Empress in 1937, she was our last surviving link with imperial Britain and her death heralds the passing of the generation that fought valiantly and suffered greatly during the Second World War.

What she and the King represented in those dark years was a sense of Britishness born out of the stark reality that, in the face of Nazi invasion, the fates of England, Scotland and Wales were the same.

What ? So there was no sense of Britishness before 1940 ? When was "Rule Britannia" written ? Where did Victorian imperialism come from ? Linda Colley asserted in her book "Britons" that the idea of Britishness was an eighteenth century invention, now BB moves its genesis to 1940. A ridiculous assertion.


It's no coincidence that the arch Euro-sceptic Margaret Thatcher is so fond of harking back to the 1940s (is she ? I thought she liked the Victorians), for it was then that the contemporary British identity was forged (Does he really believe this ?). We emerged a mono-cultural people who identified strongly with the monarchy, the Union Jack and the Empire. See above - what nonsense ! We 'emerged' monocultural, did we ? What did we enter WWII as ?

However, the notion of three countries with one united destiny no longer rings true. The Scots, in voting recently for their own parliament, made a psychological break with the British Empire and set their sights on the future (why the future ? Scots and Welsh independence is looking to the past), daring the Welsh to follow and leaving the English to scratch their heads in puzzlement.

Have you ever wondered what will happen if Scotland decides to become independent someday? Well, England will be independent too. How true. Specialist subject - the bleeding obvious.

Like it or not, these issues of identity will come to the fore in the inevitable euro referendum. Those in England who believe that there are votes to be won in stirring up xenophobia (ah ! the evil forces of the Right) will exploit the ambiguity that exists between being British and being English in the hope of generating a mood of English nationalism that can be converted into votes at the following general election. I'm not sure what this sentence means. But presumably English nationalist votes are a Bad Thing - unlike Scottish, Welsh and (especially) Irish nationalist votes.

For those of us on the progressive side of the political spectrum, this will present a new challenge. In the past we have favoured an internationalist, multi-cultural approach to identity. In other words, we have continually denigrated the idea of Englishness. Yet, by refusing to put forward any alternative notions of what it can mean to be English, we have made it easy for the racists to claim Englishness as their own. A bit of a travesty of truth, this. How about 'hitherto, we on the left have considered all manifestations of Englishness to be racist - now that Englishness shows signs of revival, we wish to get back on (and be in control of) the bandwagon. Hence this essay.'

Consequently, when the subject of English identity comes up, it is the violent, swaggering football hooligan who first comes to mind and the flag of St George, most often seen, not flying from a flag pole but stuck to the back of a white mini-van, becomes a symbol of intimidation.

The death of the Queen Mum, Scotland's new aspirations and the debate over the euro all give us the opportunity to ask who we are, now, rather than continually hark back to who we were.

The England that most of us live in is a diverse society that cannot simply be shoe-horned into one mono-cultural pigeonhole. Furthermore, jumping to a conclusion on the definition of Englishness is pointless as inevitably it will be narrow and many will feel excluded.

Surely what we need to do is each re-evaluate what it is to be English in the 21st Century and so establish the foundations of a collective sense of Englishness. Only then can we take a step back from this big picture and see the common elements that give us, the English, a sense of belonging. The second true statement in the 'essay'.

However, this cannot be achieved simply by promoting multi-culturalism at the expense of the host culture (what perception ! Who exactly thought it could ? Mr Bragg seems to be having a private argument with some other far-left group here). Multi-culturalism can be used as a get-out clause by politicians who are only prepared to pay lip service to notions such as equality and diversity. If chicken tikka marsala really is the most popular dish in the country then multi-culturalism is Englishness and vice versa. A remarkable theory - and marsala is a heavy Sicilian wine. The polka was all the rage in the early nineteenth century but I'm not sure that made us particularly Polish.

This is not to say that England is a country without racial prejudices (don't worry, I'm sure none of us could ever get that idea from your writings). Black football players still have to suffer shameful abuse from racist fans. But ask yourself this - does Emile Heskey only become an Englishman when he pulls on his England shirt or is he still an Englishman when he goes home to his family after the game?

If you believe the latter, then the implication is that Englishness is less about ethnicity and more to do with the space we occupy together today; that where you are is more important than were you are from. So anyone physically situated in England is English ! Tell that to a Scot ! No more St Patrick's celebrations for Ken Livingstone to subsidise, no more India Day ceremony, no Burns Night or St. David's south or east of the border.

This doesn't mean that we all have to celebrate St George's Day with a rose in our lapel (I understand that, but could you tell us what it DOES mean ?), but at a time when the sun is setting on the mono-cultural British identity, it does offer us a basis on which to construct an inclusive English identity for the third millennium.