Suddenly Northampton's not such a nice place

A decent young Labour Councillor Gareth Eales published a straightforward appeal for compassion for the refugees .
Nothing unusual you might think with such a crisis facing so many millions of innocent people,fleeing not as a section of the press might imply as 'economic migrants' but simply folk terrified of the violence in their country.
Of course the world has seen it before,perhaps not on the scale its happening but then several countries from Syria through Iraq to Afghanistan are in perpetual turmoil.For a variety of reasons millions of people are in dreadful camps ior are risking everything to flee in unsafe boats ,victims of poverty,malnutrition,torture,imprisonment,unemployment,disease and even people smugglers.
hard to imagine such horrors in the 21st century.
Gareth publishes a thoughtful plea and what happens?
It would appear Northampton,a town I love and a community whose quiet Midland pragmatism I have enjoyed has become a snakepit of Katy Hopkins clones.
Hundreds of vile comments have appeared on Facebook and the Chronicle & Echo website threatening gareth and his family.Filthy depraved racists and their ilk have embarked on a crusade of vilification and hatred that has gone beyond anything I have seen or experienced in over 40 years of local politics.
I am sure that much of this is orchestrated by far right groups like 'Britain First', and appropriate name,one that they share with Father Coughlin's  notorious fascist outfit 'America First' in the 1930's.

The great Woody Guthrie in a song said of them:
"They say America First but they mean America Last!"

What this bunch do is to denigrate this town's once proud record of being a haven for people fleeing persecution from all over the world.In my time on the Borough Council we were always able,in our small provincial way to offer support to people in distress.I can immediately call to mind the Chilean refugees after Pinochet's coup in 1973, the Vietnamese Boat People and the Bosnian people fleeing that horrible civil war.there were of course in that period others too.
The common factor that united them all was that they lost everything, that they were desperate and that they all contributed massively to the host community.
Some of the older people were able to return to their home when the crisis was over, I vividly recall a wonderful elderly Chilean couple,Don Cisternas and his wife Mina.Don Cisternas 'crime' had been to be a member of the Communist Party and his 'activity' was to be chairman of his village tractor fund!
For that they were forced to flee in old age half way across the world to a land where they didn't speak a word of English,with no family,no possessions,nothing.
We made them welcome as best we could but the other Chilean families were so kind and generous to the elderly couple and treated them with great respect and allowed them to function as creative senior citizens whilst they were here.
All the other families re-built their lives as best they could, worked in a variety of jobs, paid their taxes and played a part in the wider community.Their children went to school here,and many went on to university and now have key roles in a variety of professions.
What was true of the Chilean community was true of all the other refugee groups.They were not and are not 'scroungers' or 'benefit cheats' or whatever other epithets the mindless Sun readers think appropriate!

I think what shocked me most was not the crass ignorance of Gareth's critics, or the massive hypocrisy they displayed-imagine this, they are all so compassionate about homeless people and overcrowded families and low paid workers-all the groups that they have been vilifying as -oh let me guess 'scroungers' and ' benefit cheats' for so long.
Suddenly compassion is for 'British people' only but do I detect in that only a certain sort of  'British person'= you know -white!

These people remind me of the description the late great Phil Ochs offered in his song about the disgraceful racist government,judiciary and white supremacists of Mississippi in the 1960's

"Mississippi find some other country to be part of."
That's how I feel about some Northamptonians!

I bet the Labour party never knew it had so many friends !

All my experience in the Labour Party led me to one conclusion-what we needed most was a mass party,ideally of young idealistic people who wanted to change the world.You know like the young peop0le who came back after WW2 and wanted to end the squalor and ugliness of the preceding Tory decades-a world to win!
Over the last few weeks the Labour Party has tripled in size and can be almost called a mass party once again.
However it would appear that its the wrong mass!
A bit like the wrong leaves on the eail or the wrong weapons of mass destruction !
Not long ago we were told that Labour needed to attract people who had voted for other parties, Lib-Dems,Scot-nats,Green party, even Tories and UKIP supporters.We needed to build another big tent.
But now it seems what the Labour Party hierarchy meant was a not really so big a tent and one that could be trusted to vote like docile sheep for the next available mediocrity that sounded like the last available mediocrity and going back through a long line of mediocrities
Why does the Kinnock conference speech about generations of pig ignorant Kinnock's spring to mind?
now it is true that some mischievous Tories with a few bob to spare may have invested three quid (I bet they weren't members of Unite!) and its possible that the 'hard left' have infiltrated the party ranks.
But lets get this in some sort of perspective.
it is possible that a bunch of Tories have signed up-maybe the same Tory donors who have bunged Yvette Coopers' campaign £75K( or don't we talk about that!)
And maybe the 'far left' have mobilised all their supporters to join- well that's probably a few hundred at bes.Anyone who knows the nature of the left groups in this country knows two things, that there are not too many of them and the possibility of getting them to agree to any coherent joint strategy makes herding cats simle!
So what we really have is a large number of people who really desire change,who have seen mass movements emerge in Greece,Spain and Italy and especially Scotland and want to be part of that movement.

Can anyone in the Labour Party seriously suggest that the SNP knocked out 40 Labour MP's on a right wing programme?
What happened in Scotland was not about the charisma of Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond ,  it was a recognition that austerity was destroying the fabric of their country and the Labour Party stood for absolutely nothing.
Who on earth would vote for Murphy and Alexander and the other numpties who were offering merely a shade less austerity than Cameron and Osborne.

Now of course all we have his the hysteria of the British press and the wheeling out of what are euphemistically called 'Labour grandees' on a daily basis to rubbish Jeremy Corbyn and his thousands of new young supporters.
I thought it was scraping the barrel with Blair,Mandelson,Danzuck, Blunkett and the rest, but the ramblings of Baroness Boothroyd probably reached a new low.Who can they pull out next ?
Expect to hear any day from Herbert Morrison or Ernie Bevin-or possibly the wise words of J Ramsay McDonald-that doyen of all things traditional Labour Party.
The machinations and gerrymandering of party officials will get worse and more sinister in the next three weeks,expect more people to be barred after they have cast their vote-and how does that work in a secret ballot?
We are told that they will comb the canvass returns to see how people voted.Having canvassed for almost 40 years I can assure anyone that canvass returns are as close to fiction as any novel by jeffery Archer (actually they're better than any fiction by Jeffery Archer) and anyway-I thought the whole point of the electorally concerned Labour Party was to win people back to the party, especially if in the past they voted elsewhere.
Seems an odd way to encourage them to support the Labour Party:
"Oh you voted Green in nineteen oatcake-your barred!"
I hope that Jeremy Corbyn wins and the Labour Party moves into a new trajectory, my great fear is that the forces of reaction, those fat cats who want to be in a meaningless shadow cabinet (you know the ones that Tim Farron is encouraging to join him and his 7 dwarves to become the 'real' opposition)
I(f they win then all the enthusiasm of the past few weeks will be lost, those new members will vanish like the summer snow,who wants a four year war of attrition in constituency after constituency.
I've been there and it is soul destroying.
In my lifetime the best thing that ever happened in the Labour Party when the SDP decamped .It is possible that the left will be in a much stronger position than it was in 1981,but Corbyn will have two major handicaps-the PLP and the Party organisatio0n.
  

Now is thev time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.....maybe!

I'm in danger of becoming optimistic again about the future of the Labour Party.It is still a fairly difficult thing to come to terms with, but after the excitement and style that has engulfed young people in Scotland, Greece and Spain,couple the real enthusiasm for radical change actually happen here?
Even tiny stirrings in Vermont, where  Bernie Saunders the self professed socialist State Senator has entered the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination-and hold your breath-may be in the lead on Iowa and maybe even in New Hampshire!

I know its unlikely but there is a small still voice that says after so many false dawns.
When Jeremy entered the race to lead the Labour Party I was pleased by somewhat apprehensive.I remembered the euphoria when Tony Benn stood for the Deputy leadership and the campaign that convulsed the Party then, and the narrowness of Healey's victory.But that was then and this is now.Since that time the Party has changed.Three terms of Blair has ensured that the Party is not even a cocial democratic shadow any more.To put in bluntly it is at best a party of technocrats who believe they can manage capitalism betterv that the Tories and the Lib-Dems. They have swallowed undigested the whole free market ideology and have managed to create a party that doesn't sound like a socialist party,walk like a socialist party, talk like a socialist party and worst of all think like socialist party.
Even the events in Scotland during the GE failed to make an impact=I listened to the candidates for leadership there and they sounded as shallow and bone headed as Jim Murphy did before he was swept away.I still find it hard to believe that Dugdale, the likely winner tweeted on Hiroshima  Day that she was grateful that we had Trident!
And yet JC,despite all the hysteria about him appears to be pulling further ahead!The right are so desperate that they've pulled out Alastair Campbell to rubbish Jeremy. I.I thought bring Blair out of his estate was a desperate shot, and Johnston and Miliband D and Kinnock- but Campbell!
When in doubt they resort to the oldest fear tactic'entryism'.
It seems they never learn, why they even bring out the old warhorses of a different time,Derek Hatton, George Galloway,Dave Nellist and if they could get away with it the corpse of old Leon himself.
Their clai is that  maybe most of the 100,000 + new members are closet trots of one sort or another.Well sweeties can I tell you this, if the 'far left' in this country had over 100,000 clandestine members, the last thing they would do is to join the Labour Party!
Of course it is not a takeover by other parties or even party.There is a genuine desire for radical change, for an anti-austerity programme that means something,for poitical solutions that mean something different, not more of the same but in a different bottle.
So in the absence of actual conspiracies they follow the next route, it's not what you belong to,or where your 'allegiance' lies, it's what you think and say.Mark Serwotka, the outstanding leader of the Civil Servants Union has been denied membership ' because of what he has said or written;.It seems that in the new Model Labour Party even thoughts have to be policed.
" Whilst i have never personally metTony Clarke and John Dickie I know through the local media they are long standing critics of the local Labour Party.Through colleagues in the Labour Party I also know both individuals have a track record of using unfounded rumours to undermine Labour councillors who happen to have a different view or agenda from them."
That is an extract of a letter from Councillor Nazim Choudary to the Regional LP officer George Carr-Williamson in January 2012.
It was part of his response to a complaint against him for assault brought by a young woman.
Strange as it may seem I was in the LP before Choudary was even born and astonishingly I have been a long standing critic of Labour policy and many of those who damaged the party by pushing wrong headed and anti socialist policies for all those decades.But throughout that period of membership I like many others believed that my interests and values were those of the Party I joined.I had no difficulty in agreeing with the statement my union asked me to sign.
I was expelled in 2007 for breaking the rules,although I was supporting the wishes of my ward, but that is of no matters.Like so many others both those who are joining today for the first time or re-joining after a period of disillusionment I hope the Party will go back to the values and principles it once stood for.
And if Jeremy does win there is one thing he must do right away-get rid of the full time apparatchiks who so disfiguew the Labour Party today.And maybe some of tghe careerists too!

You know things are getting bad when they call in Blair!

It seems to me that the leadership of the Abstentionist labour party must be  getting into a blue funk over the leadership election when they drag out the living dead to rubbish Jeremy Corbyn.
Its come to a pretty pass when Blair,Mandelson. Hutton. Milburn, the four arseholes of the apocalypse are wheeled out to save the party they ravished for all those years.
I think perhaps the most crass and sickening manifestation of this dreadful panic was the intervention by the dreadful John Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw.
What is it about the Labour Party in that part of Nottinghamshire.For years they had Joe Ashton, the beloved Sun columnist and frequenter of Northampton massage parlours as their member,only to replace him with Mann.
He managed to issue an open letter to Jeremy accusing him of doing nothing when Council run children's homes were covering up child abuse.As it happens Jeremy did raise the issue with several organisations involved, not least Islington Council, led at the time by one Margaret Hodge,Labour Mp for barking, and also on the Council was another Blairite MP, Stephen Twigg.
Nice one Johnny boy!
But then smear and innuendo is the stock in trade of these so called MP's,none of whom have any idea of what politics, and specifically socialist politics is really about.
The surge of support for JC is paralleled by events in Scotland, and it was an absolute delight to see the SNP take over the Labour front bench last Wednesday when Parliament was discussing of all things giving greater powers to Manchester.
But then what can we expect from a party that abstains on the Welfare Bill debate because they didn't want to appear as,well an opposition!
If they had turned up and behaved like a grown up political opposition they would have defeated the government.After all they had the boc of SNP members. the Lib-Dems ,Plaid,the Green Party MP and even the Democratic Unionists.
For fuck sake! What sort of Labour party is it that can be outflanked on the left by the DUP !
The attacks on JC are as vicious and unprincipled as they were on Tony Benn back in the 1980's.
And its the same old same old warhorses having a go, the Murdoch Press, well indeed every section of the British Press,as well as denizens of the House of Lords, and the now familiar voices of 'respectable' newspaper columnists.
To think that David Aaronovitch ,now favoured son of the Times has joined in-did the great lump learn nothing from his late father and fine Marxist economist Sam ?
Obviously not.
I fear that with the chorus line of Labour 'supporting' millionaires living up to say that they will give the Party no more of their booty, many of the weak willed and weak-minded will panic and vote for Burnham or Cooper.
Dear God they are even pulling out the spectre of Militant to frighten the horses!
It is possible that jeremy will not win, however a bit like the SNP in Scotland this battle may have unleashed forces that the whey faced 'statesmen and women' cannot control.
It may be that the young who are drawn to radical solutions will not get back in their boxes, and rather like events in Scotland,Jeremy's campaign will bring forth many Mhari Black's to challenge the hegemony of the spineless and cowardly!

A terrible beauty is born?

A few weeks ago I wrote Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership election off as a bad job.I was perhaps too hasty and worse still I may have been wrong.
It would appear that JC (interesting initials when you come to think of them) may have a lot more going for him.There appears to be mounting fury amongst the Blairistas and dire warnings in the Murdoch Press.
Of course it could all be flannel and old tosh to scare the Mondeo men and Worcester women to death and to strengthen the paws of the three other dwarves!
I'm not surprised the Tories are gloating and indeed I have suggested elsewhere that Lord Ashcroft, if he really wanted to cause havoc and unleash the weasels of war the best thing he could do with his millions is buy a few thousand Tory supporters a three quid membership package of the Labour Party.
Whichever numbskull in the LP hierarchy suggested that wheeze should be included in Cameron's list  of new peers immediately.
But it might,it just might,suggest that lurking in the much diminished ranks of ordinary party members there is still a serious and heartfelt desire for real change and real fight.
maybe the collective woms of compromise have looked at Scotland and seen the shallow nature of the Labour party up there and have decided that to continue to support this bunch of careerist mediocrities is no longer worth a candle.
Who knows?
Without a paper of its own, they even snuffed out Labour Weekly decades ago, then they snuffed out conference and then they have been systematically snuffing out wards and constituencies all over the place.
It would seem that the only purpose members who aren't millionaires can offer is being leaflet distributors at election time or 'listening posts' for any passing celebrity careerist.
Perhaps members are at last getting it-without a vision and a purpose what's the point of the Labour Party?
When the acting leader thinks its a good idea to abstain on the Tories proposed welfare cuts, and Chuka Thingy thinks the only point of the party is to get people like him elected!
They remind me of Groucho's remark:
"If you don't like my principles,here's some others!"
Suppose JC wins what will happen/Well fairly obviously the PLP will be in uproar and many will leave immediately in a huff to form the SDP Mark 2.They could even complete the real Blair project and merge with the Liberals, and perhaps become the Liberal-democratic-social -mountebank party!They would of course take with them their rich backers,a handful of the living dead in the Lords(I expect Lord Sugar of Rubbish would rejoin) and some trade unions whose leaders  want a retirement berth on the red leather benches.
But we perhaps can suppose that some MP's would listen to party members and realise that the purposeof an opposition in Westminster is to,well,oppose.
A group of left Labour MP's aligned with the SNP as an anti-austerity bloc could really bollox up the Tories and the 'moderates' for the next four years.
And who knows, the people of this country might realise it's better to fight on their feet than capitulate on their knees.
And who knows, a 'terrible beauty ' might be born.
just imagine how redoubtable a large parliamentary grouping might be with Mhari Black leading it alongside JC himself.
    

Who writes the hostory?

Today the people of Greece will vote in a referendum  that in the words of an Athenian will determine whether the country starves quickly or a bit slower.Either way the Government and people of Greece are being used as an example to the other peoples of Europe:
"Do not defy the power of the market,do not think that you can defy austerity-we will crush you like a butterfly on a wheel"
And who will do the crushing? Why the international financiers,the bankers,the IMF and the governments of the powerful European states, you know the ones-those that had their debts written off after WW2, because their governments were compliant 'democracies'.

Of course these governments of financial rectitude and their pure driven snow bankers never did anything underhand or corrupt did they?
Consider therefore the case of a guy Akis Tsochatopulos,.a former Greek defence minister who is currently serving a 20 year stretch in chokey for bribery and corruption, and who was bribing and corrupting this mainstream Greek politician,why a German arms dealer called Ferrostaal,who flogged the Greek government a bunch of submarines and Akis creamed off quite a bit for himself.

Of course borrowing money and allowing corrupt arms dealers to get their paws on public money is not new.The national debt started in England with Henry V111 when he wanted to buy a few boats to fight the French.
So here's the deal, corrupt Greek governments, of Centre Right or Centre left buy tons of military hardware from Germany and other European 'allies',and of course the dear old USofA,they discover the cost of all those subs,fighter planes,tanks and what have you, plus the middlemen's cuts get obscenely high and then the debtors come knocking on the Greek peoples door asking for repayment.
Merkel wants her money that was used to pay her dodgy arms dealers!-and who pays?
Not the corrupt politicians of Greece but the pensioners and the young and the unemployed and the sick!
Whilst billionaire's yachts drift at anchor off the Greek islands-the people need to be austere.

It is interesting that many of the people who now suffer are the sons,daughters and grandchildren of the men and women of Greece who fought the Nazis to a standstill in the resistance,whilst the Greek elite were cosying up to the fascists.
And the colonels who led a military coup to destroy Greek democracy 
I am reminded of a song from Ewan McColl's Festival of Fools, a warning to the leaders of the junta from the young of Greece:
"We are the young ones,
The readers the writers,the copiers,
We are the young and small,
And we are the writing on your wall!"
If ever a song was prophetic, it was written when the Greek Queen Fredrika ,a fascist sympathiser was visiting London and Greek students were arrested for protesting about her visit.
They were the mothers and fathers of the young in the streets of Athens today, and indeed they are the writing on the wall.

  

The Labour party leadership=I have a solution!

Both my regular readers will know I have been agonisng over the Labour party leadership.Should I try to make a one vote difference?It's a conundrum a bit like the great 'Daddy or chips' debate of yesteryear.
Things have changed a little since my earlier blog.The arrival of Jeremy Corbyn, an MP I have always respected has somewhat changed things,but really only somewhat.
My heart says ,like so many other good socialists currently outside the party that at last there is a candidate who speaks the language of socialism not of bloody aspiration.
I am sorely tempted!
But I fear that it is my heart that is speaking to me in beguiling terms and not my jead.
I know all the arguments-thye stronger the vote for Jeremy the more likely the party will listen and change its ways.
It is an opportunity for the case to be put to thousands if not millions,the anti austerity,the anti Trident,the pro- welfare,the pro -union....all the causes that we believe are central to a socialist transformation of society.
I can hear my old comrades,the Lore lei voices of temptation to swallow hard and join the great cause and get back within the people's party!
But as I'm on a roll with my cliches I cannot forget that the leopard really doesn't change its spots  and if I stop and think for just a few moments then the head rules again.
I have quite recently seen how shallow the Labour party has become.Northampton Labour party is a shining example of how shallow the whole enterprise has become.The recent de selection of Winston Strachan, a good and decent Borough Councillor in Castle ward was once again an example of the hollowing out of the party.
Career moves are the only aspirations left in the Labour party-bugger any ideology or indeed anything that reflects principles!
Now I'm not saying Corbyn lacks principles,far from it, but I fear he,like the few genuine socialists  left are being used as a fig leaf to cover the monstrous vacuum at the heart of the Labour party.
His candidature is being used in a cynical way to demonstrate how 'broad; and tolereant the party is.But as his nomination went in some of those who signed it were busily yelling that they had no intention of voting for him.
Some like the London 'running dogs' did it to pretend to the left leaning London membership that they were really really leftish-strange that they all appear to be seeking the Mayoral nominatuion!
And then there is the scrawled signature of Frank Field.Given that he is the nearest thing in the Labour party to a Tory,apart from Kate Hoey,his endorsement should never have been contemplated.
Added to the shoddy practice of a bunch of opportunists there is the other ploy by a bunch of Blairites who are pushing that if a candidate wins that they don't much like, then within a few montghs a secret vote o0f the PLP can ditch the leader, and the PLP alone will select the new leader-probably one Miliband D.The leader over the water!

Then of course there is the well thought out plan that with two tier membership,full paid up members and 'supporters' it will be easy to throw the whole process into chaps.If I was a millionaire Tory backer the best thing to do would be to distrute £3 's to Tory supporters and flood the Labour party with Tory supporters who would be instructed to vote for.....?
I( have a simple solution, my first choice woukld be Nicola Sturgeon to lead the Labour party, but as she already has a growing wello disciplined and principled party anyway she is out of contention.
So there is only one obvious candidatem, who speaks with directrness and clarity, who can address the really big issue in the counrty the way it is being tavckled in Greece and Spain.A candidate not tainted with either decades of failure on the front or back bench, a candiadate who is young and charismatic.
It's obvious really, forget the dreary hustings, I watched some of the first one and felt sorry for the people of Nuneaton.
There is really only one candidate who can ignite the people of this country-Charlotte Church to be the next Labour Leader.