Battling Blustering Boris

Well, he's done it again. Boris has diverted us from the true issues of the Brexit debate, and he's got us all talking about the bearpit antics in the House of Commons yesterday. The news broadcasts, the talk shows this morning were absolutely buzzing with angry pundits and phone-in callers. Boris, seen above in one more of his humorous escapades, has been lambasted for accusing Paula Sheriff MP and others of "humbug". Jeremy Corbyn has described Boris's conduct "disgraceful" (which it was - but...) and he faces censure from many MPs, including some Conservatives, over his claim that the best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox, MP, is by facilitating Brexit. As has been pointed out, the late Jo Cox was a passionate Remainer, but Johnson must have been aware of that.

I admit that what we saw yesterday was less than edifying. Quite what commentators from abroad made of it is not something I care to think about. Unfortunately, these events merely reflect what is happening in society as a whole. The fact is that UK society is polarised over the Brexit issue  with both sides giving way to irrationality. Instead of discussing, we shout. Instead of seeking resolution or compromise, we resort to abuse.

As we know, cooler heads from all sides are calling for restrained behaviour and the moderation of political language in the House of Commons in order to avoid what we saw yesterday. In the case of MPs, they should behave in a calmer fashion for the benefit of their own health. Barry Sheerman MP is a case in point. During his (albeit justified) outburst against the Attorney General,he seemed to be on the verge of having a heart attack.

Having said that, I understand why Mr Sheerman lost his temper; the accusations of Geoffrey Cox, that the whole of the opposition was steeped in immorality, were simply outrageous. He said, according to The Independent:
"Mr Cox warned MPs they have "no moral right" to sit on the green benches of the House of Commons".
When it comes to immoral behaviour, Cox must know that his party leader is hardly a paragon of virtue, either. Labour MPs reacted with fury to this statement of Mr Cox, which I suspect is exactly what he wanted. Perhaps that's why he is smiling in the photo below?

One very serious matter that was highlighted yesterday was the threats of violence made on a regular basis to MPs of all parties. Paula Sheriff, MP, spoke emotionally about this issue, as did Jess Phillips, MP. Ms Phillips' office has since been attacked and she has received death threats. Boris has refused to attend parliament today in order to apologise for his comment about the late Jo Cox. Jeremy Corbyn has correctly said, according to the Daily Mirror:

"It is extremely disappointing that the Prime Minister has not respected this House by attending today. The Prime Minister’s language and demeanour yesterday was frankly nothing short of disgraceful...To dismiss concerns from MPs about the death threats they receive, and to dismiss concerns that the language used by the PM is being repeated in those death threats is reprehensible".

I have no quarrel with this, but I think we should examine Boris' words yesterday as part of a strategy. Significantly, the extreme right in Britain have applauded Johnson's words of yesterday. Is he trying to outdo the likes of Britain First and the Brexit Party by his use of terms such as humbug, treachery, etc? I think we should ponder this coldly and analytically.

However emotional we may feel about Boris and his statements, I think we should look back to the parliamentary performance of another Tory prime minister: Margaret Thatcher. The leader of the opposition Labour Party in Parliament at that time was Neil Kinnock. He was regularly worsted in debate by Mrs T. because she found it easy to get him to become irate and lose his self-control. The TV programme, "Weekend World", sent Stephen Fry, a then up-and-coming comedian, to analyse Kinnock's performance. Fry identified Kinnock's mistake as losing his temper and reacting over-emotionally to Mrs T's pronouncements. Instead, Fry advocated that Kinnock stay calm and ridicule Thatcher's statements and speeches - to become proactive, rather than reactive. Both Fry and Kinnock denied any collusion, but Kinnock's debating style in the House changed in just such a way almost immediately. Not that it won Kinnock a general election.

Perhaps all opposition parties in Parliament could learn from this. Instead of getting worked up at Johnson's (probably deliberate) provocative language, they could try satire and wit. After all, there is plenty to ridicule Boris about. And it would be better for the health of MPs of all parties to stay cool, calm and collected in debate. 

The Brexit Party, Iran and The Kremlin

Last week, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on Iran to release all EU/Iranian dual nationals being held in Iran on a variety of trumped-up charges. One of these unjustly imprisoned detainees is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, about whom I have written several times. There are many others from a number of different nations, all of whom have families back in their countries of residence, wondering if they will ever see their falsely accused loved ones again.
Now, 608 MEPs voted for the resolution, 7 voted against and 46 abstained. Of the abstentions, 29 were MEPs from our very own Brexit Party here in the UK. The party spokesman, Gawain Towler, seen above, was quoted in The Independent:
"It would be incompatible with what we believe, to assume that the EU is the right place or the most effective tool to put pressure on the Iranian government...we could not say...the EU is the right forum for that, so we abstained".
No Brexit MEP offered any better suggestions as to what might be done to help the detainees, nor did they offer any sympathy to them and their families. Understandably, they drew angry criticism from a number of people in the UK. Shappi Khorsandi, the Anglo-Iranian comedian and writer said, again in The Independent:

"It’s a state of mind my instincts usually lead me to but it has been challenged somewhat today by the Brexit Party, who are almost admirable in their steadfast refusal to behave in any way which might display the British sense of decency and fair play we are famous for."

No surprise there for me and many others, but we'll come to that. Of dual nationality herself, she goes on to say:

"It’s chilling, frankly, to know for sure that if I went snowboarding in Iran (as many of my British friends do, there’s good snow in Iran) and was arrested and thrown into prison without committing a crime, the Brexit Party, who claim to stand for “British People” would not consider me British enough to fight for."

No surprise there, either, but others joined in the condemnation of the Brexit menagerie, saying more or less the same thing. David Lammy, MP, said:

 “You (Brexit MEPs) call yourself patriots but you will not stand up for Brits imprisoned abroad. Shame on you."

I fully endorse these criticisms, but I think there is something that is being missed. In my view, the Brexit MEPs were only doing what they have done all along. They are pandering to the section of the electorate that they depend upon most heavily: racists. We like to pretend these people don't exist, but the rise in hate crime since the EU referendum proves that they certainly do. As "good" populists, the Brexit MEPs must be seen as catering for this element in the electorate, and their squalid, weaselling excuse for abstaining, while it may disgust most of us, will certainly have pleased those who think that British people should come first before immigrants who have funny names, have different coloured skins and can speak other languages.

That, actually, doesn't take much working out. Any of us who are unfortunate enough to encounter such people will know what their "views" are.

However, I think that there might be another, hidden, underlying reason for the abstention of the Brexit Little Englanders, and that is financial. The ex-prime minister, Gordon Brown, back in May of this year, raised the question of the source of funds for the Brexit Party. Quoted in the Guardian, Brown stated:

“Arron Banks, the lead funder of Leave.EU and a friend of Nigel Farage, has been under investigation. He has big contacts with Russia,” Brown said. “We don’t know where his money comes from and yet we found out last week he has given £450,000 in payments to support Nigel Farage while Nigel Farage was in a public office in the European parliament who should have been declaring the payments to avoid any conflict of interest.”

If Brown is correct, then it is fair to say that the Brexit MEPs would not want to upset their alleged Russian paymasters. It has been pointed out by a number of commentators that Russia has a keen interest in supporting Brexit. As Nick Cohen says:

"We know that Russia has interfered in elections in North America and Europe. Russia had a direct interest in promoting Brexit because it would destabilise a strategic rival. (Anyone who doubts me need only look at how Brexit has brought Whitehall close to collapse.)"

But it doesn't stop there. As we know, Russia has been very active militarily in support of the Assad regime in Syria. And who has been fighting alongside them?...Iran. Would President Putin be happy if the Brexit Party were criticising his foremost Middle Eastern ally?

Perhaps, then, we can discern another, very different reason for the Brexit Party abstention. Rather than being the British patriots they claim to be, they could well be nothing more than a shower of useful idiots for the Kremlin. 

Conspiracy, Elvis and George Soros

Kirsty MacColl was wrong - Elvis is working in a chip shop, and the photo above proves it. He owns and works in the pictured chippy which is located on Brighton seafront. He is in very good health, and stays looking young by taking long, bracing walks along the seafront and bathing his face in calves' milk. His only worry is that he might be discovered and have to pay back taxes to the US government. His anonymity is guarded by a sinister alliance of the Freemasons, the Women's Institute and George Soros, the multi-billionaire.
Nonsense? Of course it is - but no more ludicrous than the conspiracy theories that have made George Soros a hate figure for the far right in the USA, Turkey, Italy, Hungary and, in nascent form, here in the UK. A BBC TV documentary last night highlighted the horrifying international hate campaign against him by a menagerie of conspiracy nuts, right-wing Republicans, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and a bunch of fascists. The documentary, "Conspiracy Files: the Billionaire Global Mastermind", highlighted the conspiracy theories that the menagerie have cooked up against Soros.
The hate campaign against him in the US began in 2003 because of his opposition to the Iraq war. It rose to the present crescendo when Donald Trump became president. Trump himself has referred disparagingly about Soros. Soros has been blamed for the violence in Charlotteville, Virginia in 2017. The Fash claim that Soros financed the whole thing to discredit Trump. He is also accused of financing the Honduras "caravan" of would-be migrants to the US, and, as the BBC programme says, he is blamed for having been a Nazi collaborator in Hungary during WW2, when Hungary's Jews were being rounded up for dispatch to Auschwitz. As Soros is himself Jewish and was 14 at the time, that is somewhat hard to believe. Worst of all was the attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, 27 October, 2018, when 11 Jewish people were killed. The killer, Robert Bowers, accused Soros of heading a conspiracy to eliminate the white race in order to achieve Jewish domination of a "mongrelised" (multi-cultural) United States. Soros himself, along with some liberal US politicians, has received a (fortunately dud) bomb in the post. Until the bomber, a white supremacist and Trump supporter, was caught, the anti-Soros coalition accused Soros of orchestrating a fake bomb campaign, in order to win public sympathy. The evidence for this claim, predictably, was shown to be either fake or non-existent.

The hate campaign has spread abroad. In Turkey, President Erdogan has accused Soros of seeking to "shatter" Turkey; the Italian politician, Matteo Salvini, has accused Soros of seeking to flood Italy with illegal migrants. Soros is a philanthropist and has spent millions on welfare and educational projects in his home country of Hungary. but that has not stopped the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Oban, from introducing "Anti-Soros" laws.

Now, the lies about George Soros are absurd and easily refuted. Channel Four, Snopes and Fact Check, as well as last night's BBC documentary and all responsible journalists, repeatedly expose the anti-Soros conspiracy accusations as outrageous and blatantly untrue. The problem, however, is that the people who believe in these conspiracy theories are not rational people. Racists and fascists start with their racism and then look for reasons to justify it. Even when one of their beliefs is proven to be wrong, they carry on believing it anyway. Having said this, we cannot, however much we debunk them, dismiss these people as harmless nutcases. As Time Magazine says:

" In recent years, fringe ideas prompted a gunman to storm a Washington, D.C. pizzeria and may have motivated another to fatally shoot 11 worshippers inside a Pittsburgh synagogue. They are also largely to blame for a worldwide surge in measles cases that has sickened more people in the U.S. in the first half of 2019 than in any full year since 1994."

We must continue to combat these people and their bizarre beliefs.
 The accusation of conspiracy against George Soros and, by implication, against all Jews, is nothing new. The myth of an international Jewish conspiracy has a long and murderous history. At the turn of the 20th century, 1903 to be exact, a truly evil anti-Semitic book was published in Russia. It is thought to have helped inspire a wave of pogroms against Russia's Jews and is beloved of fascists and other Jew-haters even  today: "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion". The book was a forgery, concocted by the Tsarist secret police in Russia for use against Jews and all Russian revolutionaries. Foreshadowing George Soros's vilification, the book claimed to be proof of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world. Although it was exposed numerous times as fraudulent, the Nazis made extensive use of it in their campaign against Europe's Jews. Some of the charges made today against George Soros might almost have been lifted from the pages of "The Protocols". To my disgust, I have learned that this hate-filled tome is for sale on Amazon.
The mention of disgust leads me to the British dimension to the Anti-Soros hate campaign: the statements of our old friend, Nigel Farage. Nigel has dismissed accusations of anti-Semitism, but what are we to make of statements like these? As The Guardian says, Farage:

"Said Soros "wants to break down the fundamental values of our society, and, in the case of Europe, he doesn't want Europe to be based on Christianity".

Claimed the EU was financed and influenced "by the Goldman Sachs and a particular Hungarian called Mr Soros".

Alleged the work of Soros's foundation could amount to "the biggest level of political collusion in history"

These statements of Nigel Farage closely resemble all the other allegations made by the extreme Right. Anyone thinking of voting for the Brexit Party should bear this in mind.


As the politics of the Brexit Party grow uglier, so does Nigel Farage.

Boris de Pfeffel Johnson – master of misdirection

The democracy demo in Liverpool on 2 September 2019

The Trump effect has finally poisoned British politics. We too now have a leader who:

• Has no real convictions and changes his mind to suit what is to his advantage at any given moment.
• Has a record of incompetence, such as when as Foreign Secretary his words ensured Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe's prison sentence in Iran was increased.
• Squanders public money on pet schemes that get nowhere.
• Is openly jingoistic, misogynistic and racist.
• Is a womaniser. Womanisers claim to love women, but womanising is exploitation, i.e. abuse.

Johnson beat Hunt by 92,153 votes to 46,656. As the total number of registered UK voters in December 2018 was 45,775,800 (source: ONS), this means Johnson will become PM with the support of 0.2% of the electorate. To put it another way, 99.8% of the electorate did not vote for him, and 99.65% had no vote at all.

Here is a telling comparison:

When I was a union rep in the civil service, I represented a member who was facing dismissal having been accused of deliberately misspending public money; the amount involved was a couple of hundred pounds. I managed to save his job only at the final level of appeal when it was eventually accepted that it was a genuine error. The first two decision makers had rejected that argument and had recommended dismissal.

Johnson, on the other hand, squandered £53 million of public money for a bridge that was never even begun. He also misspent more than £300,000 on illegal water cannons which were never used and were eventually scrapped at a huge loss. Despite all of that, he was rewarded with the keys to Number 10. I cannot understand why he has not faced prosecution for massive misuse of public funds. If not prosecuted, then at least barred from holding public office. My member would have lost his job for misspending a tiny percentage of the fortune that Johnson “spaffed against a wall”, to use his own unsavoury phrase.

As prime minister, he is misusing the power to prorogue Parliament, normally just a suspension during which the government prepares its programme for the next Parliamentary session, to prevent MPs holding him to account for his actions over leaving the EU. This is contrary to the Bill of Rights 1689, the foundation stone of our modern constitutional system, which clearly asserts the sovereignty of Parliament over monarch and government. However you voted on leaving the EU, you should be worried by this cavalier approach to our constitution. Furthermore, he has threatened any Tory MPs who vote to block a no-deal exit from the EU with, in effect, the sack.

These two actions demonstrate Johnson's despotic tendencies. He is not a natural democrat, and is prepared to resort to extreme measures to achieve his own aims. Those who voted Leave so that we can “take back control” could not have foreseen that the control would be handed, not to our elected Parliament as we were told, but to just one man, unelected and extremely unscupulous. Proof of the latter is his dismissal of genuine concerns in Ireland that a no-deal exit from the EU could jeopardise the peace process there.

His 'election' was little more than a coup d'état and his reckless misspending of public money has been shrugged off. He has a privileged immunity that ensures his incompetence and arrogant profligacy avoids any kind of scrutiny or investigation. His succession has denied the people any say in who leads the country, which is especially galling because he denounced Brown for succeeding Blair as PM without calling an election.

Stage magicians use a technique called misdirection in which the performers draw the attention of the audience to one thing to distract it from another. Johnson's buffoonery has amused and even endeared him to many people who have failed to see that behind the hesitant waffle, outrageous statements and clownish antics there is a thoroughly cold-hearted, egotistical and unprincipled right-winger who stands only for his own and his cronies' advancement in terms of both status and wealth. Many of us thought we had reached a political nadir with Theresa May, but in a reverse of the New Labour anthem, things can only get worse.

This article follows on from the post immediately before it by Geoff Parry, who kindly asked me to post this on his blog.

Resisting the Coup: Besieging Boris the Bonapartist

I don't attend many demonstrations nowadays, but I felt compelled to attend the London protest yesterday against the proroguing of Parliament. There were rallies all over Britain which, as far as I can tell, were very well attended, attracting both Leave and Remain voters and people such as Bridie Watson of Exeter, about whom the BBC says:
 "NHS pharmacist Bridie Walton, 55, said she had never been to a demonstration before, but joined the protest in Exeter to oppose Mr Johnson's plan".
Boris probably wasn't in 10 Downing Street, but it was exhilarating to join the crowds that peacefully besieged the entrance to his new street of residence. 
Mark Easton of the BBC commented, somewhat disparagingly:
 "It's a far cry from the numbers that we saw marching through Westminster earlier this year. I think we'd probably measure this one in the thousands [in central London]".
Mr Easton should have borne in mind, firstly, that previous rallies have been national mobilisations for a march in one spot: London. The regional rallies drew in the numbers that would otherwise have gathered in Whitehall. Secondly, the rallies were called at short notice, and made full mobilisation in all regions difficult.

I have to admit that the organisation of the event was the best that could be done at short notice, but there were inevitable difficulties. I was in the crowd for well over an hour, but I could not hear (or even see) any of the reported speakers. Nor did I see any of the counter-demonstrators who reportedly turned up, although I did see a minor spat between two men near Westminster Tube Station. Democracy in action...

Among my fellow demonstrators were some genuine DEMONstrators: a group of Satanists in black cloaks. They were displaying a sign which said: "Satan hates dictators", which comes as a surprise. If that's true, Boris had better beware strange sounds in the night - unless it's his girl friend leaving.
One thing that disturbed me a little was the presence of families with small children in buggies among the crowd. I fully support the right of families to take their offspring on marches or orderly pickets, but the crowd was thickening as the afternoon wore on and any violence at the front, or pushing from the back, could have led to the children being placed at risk.

In the provinces, one of the best-attended rallies was held in Liverpool. Like Bridie Walton (a good Liverpool name!) in Exeter, it attracted people who have rarely, or perhaps never, attended a political demonstration. One such is my friend, Phil Scott, who took the above photograph. Phil, who holds no partisan pollical views, speaks, I am sure, for many "non-aligned" people who showed up yesterday when he says: 

"I think the Labour party hi-jacked the meeting too much for their own ends, rather than focusing on uniting the anti-Brexit broader church."

To me, and others with political experience, that's no surprise. Realistically speaking,the Labour Party is the largest opposition party, and took the lead in organising yesterday's protests. My best advice to Phil and others who feel like he does is to write to the Labour leadership at local and national level, pointing out the need for a united front against Brexit and/or no deal. To be fair, Jeremy Corbyn has attempted unity on the "no deal" issue.

But what of the great bugbear himself? Well, Boris did not appear yesterday, unsurprisingly. In fact he has become uncharacteristically shy of late. How a man with so much past dishonourable conduct ever became our prime minister is mind boggling, Anyone who wishes to go over his past misdeeds and indiscretions can click on this link and this one.

Instead, I'd like to examine the charge against Boris that was made so vociferously yesterday: that he is a dictator. Well, he has prorogued Parliament, but we should be careful about characterising him as a 21st century version of Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini. He hasn't - so far - made any moves towards eliminating political opponents. 

I can, though, see some vague resemblance to the great dictator of the early 19th century, Napoleon Bonaparte. Simple-minded souls will point out the obvious differences, but there are similarities. Both exhibit the Nietzschean "will to power"; they both have overweening egos; they both circumvent established practice when it suits them. Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of France, while Johnson has flouted so many laws that do not suit him (including moral laws) that Napoleon might almost have regarded him as an acolyte. Perhaps, instead of dignifying Johnson with the title of dictator, we should simply dismiss him as a would-be Bonapartist.
The major difference, of course, is that Napoleon's career ended at Waterloo, 1815. Johnson, when he comes unstuck, will simply leave 10 Downing Street and catch the 18.15 train from Waterloo Station. And I doubt that Abba will write a song about his demise...

Hot Air Emissions: Nigel Farage and the Royals

Well, he's done it again. Nigel Farage has had his ups and downs since he wrote the Christmas Message for this blog in 2016. He's left UKIP now they've shown their true colours, founded a so-called political party and been returned as an MEP, together with a number of fellow Little Englanders. Oh, dear - what a shame he can't keep spouting offensive opinions! You would think that he had enough to do, spearheading the march into the Brexit abyss, without passing pub-loudmouth opinions on the royal family. Is Mr Farage a pub loudmouth? Surely not!
Well, he has certainly upset a lot of people by his recent unguarded remarks about the royals. As we know, he described the late Queen Mother as "...an overweight, chain-smoking gin drinker". He was on a working holiday in Australia when he said it, and I wonder what he was drinking at the time. It might even have been gin.
He derided Prince Charles as "Charlie Boy", and said that he hoped the Queen would live long enough to stop the prince becoming king.
Of particular interest, though, are his comments about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. As "The Sun" says:
"He criticised them for their “irrelevant” environmental and social justice campaigns when asked about their decision to have “two kids, maximum”.Farage also said Prince Harry used to be a “young, brave, boisterous” man who was the “most popular royal of a generation”.But he added that it has now “fallen off a cliff” after he met the 38-year-old American actress."
Now it gets interesting. Yesterday on Jeremy Vine's radio programme, the writer, Yasmine Alibhai-Brown, accused Mr Farage of "coded racism"; Stephen Doughty MP openly accused him of racism. He told "The Mirror":
"With his vile comments about the Royal Family, laced with barely concealed racism, Farage yet again shows his true colours. He's a pound shop fascist who only drapes himself in the British flag when it suits.'
Of these two reactions, I believe that of Mrs Alibhai-Brown to be closer to the truth. When the future wedding of the now Duke and Duchess of Sussex was announced, I believed it to be one in the eye for racists all over the world. I should have known that the racists would not take it without lashing back. The most extreme example of this was the planned terrorist attack on Prince Harry by two neo-Nazis. There is also what appears to be a sustained adverse publicity campaign against Meghan by the right-wing media. I'm not a royal watcher, but she seems to be under constant criticism  for all manner of minor infringements.
These "infringements" are hardly earth-shattering. She has a lavish lifestyle (haven't all the royals?); she has been guest editor of "Vogue" (what's wrong with a hobby?); she has a baby shower (so what?); she is allegedly trying to "celebritify" the royal family (what's new?). None of these activities are atypical of what the royals have already done. Quite rightly, many people have suspected that there are other reasons for this hostility to Meghan from the right-wing British press: she is a commoner; she has been divorced; she is (oh, dear!) an American; she (to use a Victorian racist phrase) has "a touch of the tarbrush", ie. is of mixed race. For me, and hopefully many others, these "outrages" are totally uninteresting and irrelevant. These spiteful attacks upon Meghan are clearly motivated by xenophobia, racism and old fashioned snobbery of the worst kind.
To return to Nigel Farage, I think it wrong to describe him as a racist or fascist, coded or pound shop. I believe Farage to be the same type of political operator as was his idol, Enoch Powell. Powell denied being a racist, as has Farage, yet both have an enthusiastic racist following. This is where Yasmine Alibhai-Brown has a point. Even though both men made no overtly racist statements, and perhaps have held no racist sentiments, the racist elements in our society interpret the public utterances of both Powell and Farage as being sympathetic to them. Please read my recent post as an example.
To finish on a simple human note, rather than a political one, I do hope Harry and Meghan weather the media storm around them at the present time. If they can maintain their happy relationship, that is the best possible way to confound their critics. Like the rest of us, they are entitled to go their own way.

A Tale of Two Fantasists and Their Victims

The two men whose faces appear in the photo above are separated in time by more than half a century. The man on the left is Noel Pemberton-Billing (1881-1948); the other is 51-year old Carl Beech (aka "Nick"), who has recently been sentenced to 18 years in prison for making false and malicious allegations against a number of high-profile figures.

Separated by time, background, class and a number of other factors, they have one thing in common: both these men are fantasists who made false but damaging allegations against prominent people. One has been punished and the other got away with his crime, but we will come to that.

Pemberton-Billing was an upwardly-mobile adventurer who became an MP in 1916. After WW1 began in 1914, he became known for his obsession with "enemies within" - Germans, initially, despite being married to a part-German woman, but he attacked Jews as well. He founded a virulently anti-German, anti-Semitic news paper called "The Imperialist", later renamed "The Vigilante". On February 16, 1918, he published a story attacking the Canadian dancer and actress, Maud Allan, who was about to stage a private performance of the Oscar Wilde play, Salome. Billing saw an opportunity."Headstuff" comments here:

" He had been targeting Margot Asquith, wife of the former Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, for some time and he now claimed that Margot and Maud were conducting a lesbian affair orchestrated by German puppetmasters. Furthermore he claimed that they were at the centre of a great conspiracy to enlist the wives of powerful men into what he called, with a typical lack of constraint, the “Cult of the Clitoris”.

He also claimed to know of the existence of a "Black Book" in which were listed the names of 47,000 prominent Britons who were at risk of being blackmailed by the Germans for homosexuality and general depravity.

To cut a long story short (and it's well worth reading about in full), Maud Allan felt compelled to sue, despite the fact that she actually was gay, which Billing and his legal team could have exploited. With the help of mendacious witnesses, who claimed to have seen the non-existent book, and despite the absurd nature of his claims, Billing won his case and was acquitted, to loud applause from the public. Basil Thompson, head of Special Branch, commented:

“Everyone concerned appeared to have been either insane or to have behaved as if he were.”

After the war, Billing's witnesses were discredited and he bowed out of politics, but this did not repair the harm done to the reputation and life of his main victim: Maud Allan.

Maud Allan's career did not survive the acquittal of the man who libelled her. She went into professional decline, eking out a living as a dance teacher and sinking into genteel poverty. She left Britain for the USA, dying in Los Angeles in 1956 at the age of 83. There are several videos about her, and her dancing heyday, on YouTube.

 History does not record the effect of Billing's calumny upon Margot Asquith.

Pemberton-Billing died in obscurity in 1948. The newspapers did not report his death, and only WW1 buffs like me remember him at all - and then with the utmost contempt.

The case of Carl Beech is well known.

As we are aware, this man, using the pseudonym of "Nick", made a number of accusations against public figures, leading to police raids upon their homes and placing these men under intolerable pressure. Unlike Pemberton-Billing, Beech was exposed as a liar when his claims were shown to have no basis in fact. The police, however, have a number of questions to answer, first among which is: why were his lies listened to so readily? Was it because of the criticism levelled at them because of the refusal to listen to the victims of Jimmy Saville? As the BBC says:

"The Met publicly described Beech's allegations at the time as "credible and true", and they were given further publicity by Labour's deputy leader, Tom Watson, and media organisations, including the BBC".

Two years of investigations, and several million pounds, produced no evidence of wrongdoing.

One common factor with the Pemberton-Billing affair, though, is the damage done to the lives of the victims.

Harvey Proctor lost out severely because of Beech's allegations. He lost his job, his home and was target of a good deal of public abuse, so bad that he fled abroad. It is difficult to refute his claim that a thorough investigation would have torpedoed "Nick's" allegations.

Lord Janner's son, Daniel, told "Jewish News":

“It’s hard to underestimate just how appalling these allegations of the most serious kind have been in terms of their effect. Carl Beech manipulated for money and lied about my late father and others, lies of the most horrendous kind."
Lord Janner died in 2015.

Beech, when making his allegations, described Lord Leon Brittan, who also died in 2015, as " a brutal, sadistic and evil man". As Brittan was terminally ill when these allegations surfaced, it is difficult to imagine his feelings, as it is for his family in the light of the verdict against Beech. There are many other victims, and, says "The Spectator", four people have some serious questions to answer. They are Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, Tom Watson, retired detective Kenny MacDonald and Exaro reporter, Mark Conrad ("Beech's most trusted confidant"). Just these four? That's probably an underestimate; perhaps we should ask ourselves why we are so ready to believe that celebrities are engaged in nefarious activities.

So, then, we have two cases with a century between them, both brought about by pathological liars with axes to grind. Both generated an enormous amount of publicity; both led to damaged lives and reputations.

While I have every sympathy for all victims and their families in these two cases, I can't help but think of the many ordinary people who are wrongly accused of crimes (and I've known some!) whose stories are never told.

The fake news operator himself - described by Noel Halifax as "the Nigel Farage of his day".

Amazon and Nazi Literature - Complaints Ignored

In the current edition of "Searchlight", the anti-fascist magazine, there is an article  by Jerry Goldman - "Still on the Shelf". Goldman is writing about what can only be described as an ongoing scandal: the fact that extreme right wing literature is available for sale on Amazon. This is not a new issue. In 2016, I learned that "The Turner Diaries", which inspired fascist terrorists such as David James Copeland, the London nail bomber and the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh and is thought to have influenced the murderer of Jo Cox, Thomas Mair, was being sold on Amazon. It is still available on the Amazon website at £15.99. Complaints about this from individuals and religious organisations have had little, or no effect.

However, I underestimated the extent of extremist literature that Amazon sells, and I have to thank Jerry Goldman for highlighting just how bad the situation is. There are books by Colin Jordan (late and unlamented British Nazi), Arthur Butz (Holocaust denier), Fred Leuchter (David Irving's favourite researcher), Mark Collett (ex- BNP youth leader) and many others. As might be predicted from this, we find David Irving's books on sale, despite his convictions for Holocaust denial. Most disgusting, though, is the presence of books by at least two murderous Nazis who were executed for crimes against humanity in 1946: Alfred Rosenberg, author of "The Track of the Jew Through the Ages" and Julius Streicher, pictured above.

Streicher was a leading Nazi Party member with a special interest in anti-Semitic propaganda. He founded the newspaper, "Der Sturmer", and, sickeningly, wrote several anti-Semitic books for children, one of which is pictured above. It sells for £7.64 on Amazon and has three customer reviews, two of which are commendably hostile and one contemptibly favourable. A Mr Andreas Backman gives the book five stars and describes the book thus: "This is the forbidden truth". No prizes for guessing Mr Backman's political allegiance! Were this not bad enough, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" is sold by Amazon for £8.99 (paperback) and 98p (Kindle edition). Before the advent of Amazon, such literature was hard to come by, being sold by extreme right-wing booksellers linked to outfits such as the National Front or British Movement. Amazon, it seems, has cornered the fascist market, and the Fash don't seem to have any complaints.
As for Amazon, they (predictably), defend their sale of such poisonous material by making it a free speech issue. telling the online magazine, Quartz:
“as a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable."

Amazon, says Quartz, prohibits hate speech:

"They do not allow, for instance, products that promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views. “We’ll also remove listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence,” Amazon’s terms say. Yet these terms “apply to all products except books, music, video and DVD,” arguably the categories most likely to include such content."

Besides this, as Jerry Goldman points out, Amazon has "some of the toughest lawyers in the world." Anyone seeking to tackle Amazon on this matter in the courts will need very deep pockets. So, the far Right can continue to direct their followers who want to read more of their vile propaganda to the Amazon website, and there's nothing that we can do to stop them.
Or perhaps there is...
In his article, Goldman says that:
"Although Amazon removed such books (see above) from its online store in countries where Holocaust denial is illegal, they remain available to shoppers in Britain".
That being the case, it points to a need for the UK to fall into line with the rest of Europe by making Holocaust denial illegal, thus putting an end to Amazon's sale of all such material. However, as we now have one of the most right-wing governments in living memory, that does not look likely.

The best place for neo-Nazi and racist literature.

The Empire Snaps Back: Ann Widdecombe and a Racist Pensioner

I have never felt ashamed of being British, but some recent events have made me feel  decidedly embarrassed. I knew that the Brexit MEPs would act in peculiar ways, but not in the way they did at the opening of the European parliament recently. Nigel Farage, of course, is a regular performer at such events; he did the same with UKIP MPs in 2014. The Brexit menagerie were objecting to the playing of the EU anthem, making themselves, and, by association, Britain and all British people look ridiculous. Sadly, the Brexit MEPs were quite unrepentant. Anne Widdecombe, the retired pantomime dame, commented:

"What we did was symbolic. We didn't make a noise, we didn't disrupt anything… we just turned around to say 'we reject this."

Ms Widdecombe went on to say that they had received "volumes of support" on social media. We have heard about this "popular support" many times before, and I think we need to look at the nature of that support and its ugly connotations. Two apparently unrelated recent events exemplify this: one being Ann Widdecombe's ridiculous but significant "slavery" speech and the other the court appearance of a 74-year-old white Bermondsey man for racist abuse.

Ms Widdecombe's now-notorious speech stands as an example of how to stir up populist fire - fire which might consume the instigator, as seen in the picture above. She has some peculiar ideas, as we know from her recent statements about how science might "produce an answer" to homosexuality. Her ideas about the EC are equally bizarre. She was quoted by the Guardian as saying:

“There is a pattern consistent throughout history of oppressed people turning on their oppressors, slaves against their owners, the peasantry against the feudal barons, colonies against empires, and that is why Britain is leaving … It doesn’t matter which language you use, we are leaving and we are pleased to be going. Nous allons [sic], wir gehen, we are off!”

Like, hopefully, many other reasonably sane people, I am amazed that a supposedly responsible public representative could make such patently absurd comments. No wonder she was described as a competitor for Nigel Farage as chief clown at the European parliament. The Guardian quoted Martin Horwood, a LibDem MEP, as saying:

 “If Ann Widdecombe had any grip on reality, she would have the sense to look at her own record on oppressing women and minorities when she defended shackling pregnant women and opposed repealing section 28."

As dismal as Widdecombe's record is on these issues, Horwood is mistaken when he says that she has no grip on reality. On the contrary, for all the rubbish she talks, Widdecombe knows exactly what she is doing; she is well aware of whom she is trying to reach. Her speeches are not meant to impress all of us, but rather the bigoted, unreasoning, xenophobic, racist element in British society who labour under the paranoid belief that they are being "got at" by foreigners. Now, I don't mean to suggest that Alexandra Phillips, Brexit MEP for the South East, is a bigoted, unreasoning, xenophobic racist, and I know that many Brexit supporters emphatically deny being any of those things. But, as has been said many times: not all Brexit supporters are racists, but all racists are Brexit supporters who would surely agree with Ms Phillips' comment on Widdecombe's speech:

“Tears in my eyes. She represents the ignored majority. Brave and principled. Our Ann.”

One member of the "ignored majority" is the man pictured below: 74-years old John Keogh, of Bermondsey.

Mr Keogh was recently fined £600 at Croydon Magistrates' Court for racially abusing a black female member of staff at a branch of Coral Bookmakers on Peckham High Street. Among other choice remarks, he called the woman a "F---ing N---er" and adopted an aggressive attitude, causing her to fear for her safety. Of particular interest here, however, is that he also told the woman: "When Brexit comes, you will be gone". Mr Keogh, you see, is one of Alexandra Phillips' "ignored majority". He would also undoubtedly endorse Ann Widdecombe's "slavery" speech. As has been noted before, racists drew encouragement from the EC referendum result. At no time have Messrs Farage, Widdecombe, Phillips and their dreary tribe said that they will forcibly repatriate ethnic or religious minorities, but, as can be seen from Keogh's remark, and the undeniable rise in hate crime, racists think that will happen. Widdecombe and Phillips would obviously (no choice!) condemn Keogh's crime, but, from a political point of view, all three have much in common.

John and Ann: united as Brexit supporters!