Some Calm and Logic Please on AntiSemitism

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I’ve been reluctant to say too much on Antisemitism in the past because I didn’t have the confidence too and for the fear of getting it wrong and being shot down. In these increasingly worrying times it’s sometimes so much easier to keep your head down. But it’s gotten to the point where I think I can’t stay silent anymore because it’s totally getting out of hand and I feel compelled to say something. So this feels a bit like jumping off the highest diving platform but here goes.
We all know there’s lots of things that have been used by the right wing to smear Jeremy Corbyn with. We’ve all heard it all before, Terrorist Sympathiser, Trot, Stalinist, Czech spy etc. Only one thing has gained any real traction the accusation he’s Anti-Semitic. I have never believed that for a second and indeed there’s no real evidence. In fact if I thought he was I wouldn’t support him. But this smear has been built up and undoubtedly has had an effect. Now in some some circles it’s perceived as fact that Corbyn is AS. He isn’t but it’s started to gain a life of its own and of course it’s relentlessly propagated by the right wing and people who desperately don’t want Corbyn as leader or Prime Minister.
Now recently things have taken an even darker turn and it’s troubling me greatly. But first of all I have to make something clear. I’ve always prided myself as being anti racist. I deplore hatred of people because of there race, religion etc. That I feel I have to say that now says everything about the current climate. Because a climate of fear has been building up amongst some on the left. Its getting to the point where people including me are getting scared to mention Israel and the crimes the Israeli Government commit with regularity against the Palestinians without fear of being labelled Anti- Semitic. This is wrong.
As I’ve said before I’m sure there’s AS in the Labour Party and that’s got to change. There’s no room for it in the party. But we now have accusations of AS being bandied about like confetti not just from Tories but from people in the party too. People’s social media accounts are being trawled through for historic AS posts for example. I think we need to be very careful about this. If someone has put an AS post in the past it doesn’t mean they are necessarily AS. I may have done it too in the past. We need to be better educated about it. But one of the massive problems is that some things aren’t clear cut and different people have different ideas on what constitutes AS in some areas. It’s a minefield.
So it bothers me greatly when we can be quick to judge people. Being labelled AS is a horrible thing and should never be done lightly which I worry it is sometimes. People should have the chance to defend themselves without a lynch mob after them. We have all made mistakes sometimes let’s be honest and be prepared to learn. Obviously if the AS persists they must be investigated under due process but I think it’s wrong to jump on a bandwagon and try and ruin people’s reputations. Everyone deserves a second chance.
Let’s remember as well that we don’t even know when people Tweet or post on Facebook if they are even members of the Labour Party. There are undoubtedly accounts that deliberately cause trouble and stir things up. This is very easy to do.It’s very clear to me that sometimes AS has been weaponised by some to cause the party and in particular cause Corbyn damage.

Now recently the CST report has smeared some innocent good activists who are now tarred with the awful implication that in someway they are AS. I know a lot of these people and I know to that to be completely wrong. No thought or consideration has been taken into account either how this is going to effect their mental health. It’s truly disgusting. Now I’m not going to sit by and let good people get thrown under the bus without defending them. We all know how mud sticks and that a lie or a smear then becomes fact for some people. It’s unacceptable that these people have had there reputations tarnished in this way. This isn’t an engine room of hate but people who want a better society for all. What we have in common is a desire to see Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister.
The CST report claims to be a serious study into AS in the party. And yet they have used hashtags like #GTTO (Get the Tories Out!) as a criteria to brand people who have used it to be somehow a cog in the wheel of an AS engine of hate. As Shaun Lawson says “, the CST have come up with a new definition of antisemitism …The CST appear to be suggesting that you’re ‘antisemitic’ if you’ve:

1. Angrily criticised Rachel Riley …
2. Angrily criticised Tom Watson …
3. Used the hashtag GTTO (Get The Tories Out) …
4. Referred to what al-Jazeera exposed in their film, The Lobby …
5. Criticised Luciana Berger”.

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To my mind that seems to be a new definition of Anti semitism. So an organisation like CST which I had respected has tarred some activists who to me are clearly not Anti-Semitic. Their report has jumped onto the bandwagon that the majority of Corbyn supporters are somehow AS and are stoking the climate of fear which is growing on this subject. Which brings me to my point that everything is getting out of hand.
This is a very emotive and sensitive subject but we need to try and keep some calm and rationale in the discussion about it. This can’t go on like this and I’m worried that this issue is splitting the left. We must stand together as Socialists in denouncing AS whenever we see it and also standing united against the smears. Because if we don’t the winners will be the Tories. Theres so many desperate for a Labour Government who we mustn’t let down. We have got to be tolerant and understanding. So I stand in Solidarity with good Socialists and all victims of AS. Working towards a better society is never going be easy. Stay strong, unite and work together for the many. Solidarity
#EngineOfHope

Climate Emergency Countdown

103_shutterstock_88550854-740pxAt last Climate Change has been in the news recently thanks to Extinction Rebellion and their protests in London and around the country. For this alone they have my support because for far too long it’s an issue that given the chance by the establishment has been swept under the carpet. Also recently it’s been fantastic to see so many young people taking part in the School Climate Strikes around the world.

There are many issues out there that we have to sort if we are going to change society. But a fundamental one is Climate Change because we literally can’t go on in the direction we are traveling in because eventually it will kill the off the human race. And time is fast running out, the days when we could tinker around at the edges are long gone.

Don’t get me wrong we can all help. There are small steps we can all do. Use our cars less, travel by plane less, plant a tree in the garden for example. But the situation is so critical now it’s going to take more and Governments and big business have got to do a gigantic amount more and they have proven themselves incapable of doing it. Climate Change has been in the news for over 30 years now and nowhere near enough has been done about it. In fact Climate Scientists have suspected it for a lot longer indeed back to the 1950’s and 1960’s. The big Oil companies heard about it in that time but chose to ignore it and indeed spread misinformation about it. This for me is one of the most important points. Just think about this for a moment. The big Oil companies knew about the possibility of Climate Change from at least the 70’s and probably long before that but the only thing they did was try to convince that there was no truth to it. That is the failure of Capitalism in a nutshell because vested interests always come first even before the planet. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

I say this because it’s the unfettered unregulated Neoliberal Casino Capitalism we have had the last 40 years that has made the problem of Climate Change even worse and made it so difficult in fact  impossible to make the adequate changes we need to help combat it. The urgency of the problem hasn’t been met with the urgency it needs. Because we live in a society where greed and obscene profit are good and everything is looked on in the short term. So specifically the fossil fuel companies and generally Capitalism itself haven’t been able to do the sort of changes necessary because making profit is the number one priority that overrides anything else. The concept of Climate Change itself has been seen as a nuisance in the wheels of finance and big business where making money today is so much more important than what might happen in decades time.

And so unforgivably we have wasted too a large degree the last 30 years. Opportunities have not been took and now it’s obvious to most people there is a problem. And yet we still have Climate deniers and skeptics and they still appear on TV and Radio spouting their rubbish. The most famous of course is the current President of the USA Mr Trump himself but there are others. I liken them to modern day Nero’s because what they are doing is burying their heads in the sand. Of course there’s a very strong reason they chose to ignore the mounting evidence. Because any sort of measure to combat it would interfere with the present system of making vast profits from things that are killing the planet.

This is the crux of why nowhere near enough has been done in the last 30 years. The Climate deniers have spread their lies to delay anything being done so the big global Oil companies can just carry on with business as usual. These people have no conscience or are just so blind they can’t accept what is in front of them. Anything that threatens the current order is ignored and belittled. The Polar caps are melting, the weather around the world is getting more unpredictable and extreme, more floods, more heatwaves and more droughts all having an impact on food production. Not too mention our relentless destruction of the tropical rainforests which are the lungs of the planet and species being killed off every year.

And all for what? More vast profits and new markets and more growth. To me there’s not a greater argument for a different way of doing things, for a new system of living. What we need is Democratic Socialism where people and the planet are put first not excess profit for the few. Where everything is produced for need not profits and where we aren’t all bound by what the big oil companies want. This might all sound like a pipe dream to some but the truth is if we carry on like we are we will end up destroying ourselves. You can’t get more short term than this.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-global-warming-end-human-civilisation-research-a8943531.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true

I’ve always been optimistic that we wouldn’t destroy ourselves. The Human race is very adaptable and basically not self destructive. When people say it’s people who have done the damage I point out yes but it’s the system we are living under that drives the destruction. So now the 1% are so happy with how society works for them they aren’t just going to give it up just like that. That’s the problem we have got not just as a nation but the world and this is where Extinction Rebellion come in and the School Climate Strikes too. Because we are in a environmental crisis, a crisis of the Capitalists making not ordinary people and time is fast running out. That’s why I welcome what they are doing. Some people have been moaning about the disruption they are causing. Well we will get more and more disruption in the coming decades because of Climate Change if we carry on in the manner we are doing.

Now I’m no Scientist but I think when the United Nations warn we have 12 years left to limit Climate Change catastrophe as they did last year we need to take action. But still Governments and big business aren’t treating it as the emergency it is. And the truth is they can’t properly because they are hamstrung by the inherent flaws in Capitalism itself. It cannot raise to the gigantic challenge that is needed to try and limit the damage. The damage it has caused to a massive degree. They haven’t listened to Climate Scientists and they haven’t listened to the people. So we the people are going to have force the change required from below. This is the biggest challenge to face mankind.  And we are being held back by the system we live under not helped. Extinction rebellion and the School Climate Strikes can’t be the end of the protests. Because if we all are to have a future on the planet they have to be just the beginning.

The “Con” Party by Rick Evans

I first wrote this piece 2 years ago for the 2017 General Election. As it’s still very relevant and likely to be for a very long time I thought I would make it the first piece I would publish on my new blog.

The subject of this piece is the UK Conservative Party, or as I like to call them simply the “Con” Party, which I have always found very apt. I was prompted to write this when my eldest daughter asked me, “If they are as bad as you keep saying, why are they so successful and why do people vote for them?” They are big questions and I think as Socialists we need to try to understand why the political representatives of power and wealth do so well. If we use 1929 as a guide (because it’s from then that both men and women had the vote, the Tories have won 11 General Elections (including Tory led Coalitions) compared to Labour’s 10. In the age of universal suffrage, how has this happened?

To go back in history to the start of Parliament the 2 main Political Parties were the Whigs (who became the Liberals) and the Tories (who sometime in the 1830’s became the Conservative Party). Now both the Whigs and the Tories were undoubtedly parties of Class and privilege who didn’t have to appeal to ordinary people in any way because they didn’t have the vote. This changed slowly with Reform Bills in 1867 and 1884 giving ordinary men the vote for the first time and then later women over 30 from 1918. Now some people today would say well they may have started as a party of class and privilege but that’s not true today because now they are a Party for everyone. For everyone – really? Let’s look at the evidence.

Well first of all, let’s go through some of the most popular acts of Parliament since the 2nd World War. The creation of the NHS was done by the post war Labour Government but did the Conservatives support it? Did they heck, they voted against the formation of the NHS 21 times before the act was passed. Ancient history, you might say but there is no evidence to support they are now in favour of a NHS as it was originally set up. In fact what they are doing is systematically running it down deliberately so they can say it isn’t sustainable or effective, and then they will use that as an excuse to privatise some or even all of it. The NHS has always been hugely popular and the Tories soon realised they would never get elected if they said they were going to do away with it. So now in stealth mode they are trying to make out it’s unaffordable and it has to change. Sneaky? You bet, underhand? Most definitely, it’s what the Tories excel at.

Let’s move to the National Minimum Wage introduced by the Labour Government in 1998, did the Tories agree with this? No they voted against it again, saying that it would cost jobs, an argument which has been proved totally wrong. You might say as well that it’s the Tories who are now introducing the National Living Wage, but really all they are doing is what they do best – trying to con us by confusing the real Living Wage rate with the Minimum Wage.

The Tories have always been lukewarm at best about Comprehensive Education, Mrs Thatcher for one being a ferocious critic of it, and in their hearts they prefer elitist selective education. Likewise they were hardly enthusiastic about the setting up of the ‘Open University’ either; one leading Tory of the time Iain McLeod called it a “blithering nonsense”. I could go on and on but it would get boring. Of course the point I am making here is that all these things benefited ordinary people and the Tories were against, or lukewarm at best. The common thread as well is all these things were introduced by Labour Governments.

You might say, “Well they are just a few isolated things that Labour brought in, surely the Tories would have brought some stuff to benefit us all while in office?” Well let’s have look at some of the things they have done. Ok this is the party that wanted to bring in the poll tax – that unfair tax that said you would pay so much per adult in your house and ignore the value of your house. So in theory you could have 5 adults living in a Terraced House paying more poll tax than 3 adults living in a mansion. Very fair that one, and the public protests at the time brought down Thatcher…Here’s another one, the Bedroom Tax – so if you have a spare bedroom because your kids have moved you are now going to pay more. What the Tories do time and time again is hit the poor and vulnerable while giving the richest Tax breaks, it’s always been their modus operandi. They have completed mass privatisations in the name of efficiency and bringing prices/bills down, but the reality is that it’s just a cash cow for their friends in the city while prices/bills have gone up in real terms. What they are doing is looking after corporate interests but saying they are helping us. See why I call them the “Con” Party? Who can forget how Cameron fought against the European Union’s 100% cap on Bankers Bonuses just after putting a cap on benefits paid to ordinary people in 2012? All in it together? I think not, that is the Tory Party philosophy laid bare in one action.

Something else which lays the Tory Party philosophy in bare terms is their relentless attacks on Trade Unions. While they were in office from 1979-1997 they introduced 6 pieces of anti-union legislation. If that wasn’t enough they brought in the Trade Union Act in 2016 restricting the rights of organised workers even more. The Tories believe the Unions have too much power and want their corporate friends to hold all the cards. We have the most draconian Union laws in Europe. Now just ask yourself a simple question what do Trade Unions do? Their role in a nutshell is to look after their members interests by improving their pay and conditions. That’s ordinary people like me and you. So what are the Conservatives doing? They are looking after their own interests by improving profit margins for their corporate friends. The Tories don’t believe in ordinary workers being well paid, they’d have us on just enough to only survive to pay them their next rent instalment.

Now you might say if they are as bad as I am are saying they would never get elected. That is an excellent point, and there’s no simple answer to it but I will try to explain why they do so well. For one, they do give us ordinary folk some crumbs because if they did give us absolutely nothing even they would find that hard to put a spin on it. One classic example is the selling of Council Houses, a very damaging but from their perspective, clever policy. By giving huge reductions ordinary people were able to buy their own homes and this one policy alone must have given them countless votes at election time. It was indeed Thatcher’s flagship policy but let’s look at what has happened. Thatcher refused Councils the money to build replacement homes so over time the Council Housing stock has depleted greatly, leading in part to the Housing crisis we have now. Also we now have ex Council Houses being rented out at extortionate figures, another example of the Tory philosophy of transferring Public wealth to Private hands to increase Private Profit. This is classic Toryism only looking at the short term economic gains, and not the wider public interest.

It’s often said that the Tories are the party that can be trusted with the economy, that they make it strong by looking after all our interests. Well that’s not really the full story at all – what they are doing is looking after the interests of their rich friends, regardless of the effects on the rest of us. Take the last few years, we are in such an economic mess we need austerity they say. We all have to take this bad medicine if we are to recover as a country. Here you have to give it to them, they have played a blinder. We didn’t have to do all the cutbacks they have gleefully done but they have used the opportunity of the economic crash 2007-08 to pursue their ideological vision of an even more reduced public sector. Austerity is a political choice not an economic necessity, but in selling this lie they have been immeasurably helped by their friends in the media. Let’s be honest, most Tories don’t want a Public Sector because they believe Private is best in pretty much all cases. They don’t really believe in good, well-run public services run for the benefit of us all because they believe only ruthless pursuit of the profit motive leads to positive outcomes in anything. It’s an ideological vision that they relentlessly pursue. As the late great Tony Benn said, the Conservatives know the price of everything but the value of nothing.
When Theresa May became PM she made a remarkable speech which included these lines:
“The mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting injustices. The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.”
What is remarkable about this is she doesn’t believe a word of it. But this leads me to something else – they lie. I say they use a cloaking device to disguise their real intentions. They have been doing it for years, and with millions spent on Public Relations, Marketing and private education, are brilliant at it. The great Nye Bevan, creator of the NHS, said this about the Tories:
“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century.”

This is still true in the 21st Century. So, although they would now claim to be the party of everyone, their actions prove they are still the party of Class, Privilege, Corporate Power and the Establishment. They will only ever feed us crumbs to keep getting elected. Of course, as I mentioned, they are helped tremendously by their friends in the media. Most of the so called “free press” is owned by a tiny handful of billionaires like Rupert Murdoch, for example. People like him have no interest in publishing objective political or social articles. They want to keep things as they are, with power and wealth for the tiny few maintained via a rigged economy and political system where money talks – a truly Conservative position. So let’s think about this again, most of the press is owned by a tiny number of insanely wealthy people who want to keep things as they are. Just think about what that means for your search for the truth.

So, when it’s said we have a free press, it pretty much means we have a Conservative press. Now the Tories are clever and slippery and can’t be trusted. We aren’t on a level playing field and things are stacked in the Conservatives’ favour. They have zero interest in creating a fairer society but will use whatever language it takes to get elected. They have the big money behind them and use it in a way to try and manipulate us all. They have been doing this very successfully for over 100 years. So, when at the start I said I called them the “Con” Party, can you see why? Their only interest in ordinary people is getting votes out of them, exploiting their labour for profit, and sending them off to die in wars fought for private gain. Fair, in their eyes, means more opportunities for them and their rich friends to make more money off the backs of the poor. I’m going to leave you with another quote from Labour Legend Nye Bevan, never a true word has been spoken.
“Honest politics and Tory Politics are contradictions in terms. Lying is a necessary part of a Tory’s political equipment, for it’s essential for him to conceal his real intentions from the people. This is partly the reason for his success in keeping power.”

– Rick Evans
First published in the Morning Star
28/05/17