Starting as we mean to go on. Take the class war back to the enemy.

Statement from Not A Dinner Party on the student Siege of Tory HQ at Millbank Tower.

THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING

Six months in to the ConDem government and their open declaration of war on the poor, the disabled, the working class and indeed everyone who isn't responsible for the crisis of finance capitalism (ie imperialism) and the first major protest in London ends up exactly where it should, with thousands of students laying siege to the tory Party HQ. The best possible start to what has to be a sustained campaign of militant resistance to what in reality is a very weak and divided government, but one with the arrogance of being formed directly and unapologeticly from the most priviliged and callous section of the ruling-class, people who beleive it is their birth right to rule and their ancestral right to privilige at the expense of all else.

Todays action is a lesson is the direction the anti-cuts movement has to take if it is to be successful. While the tories are hell-bent on taking us back to the 80s excesses of Thatcherism, we cannot afford to repeat the mistakes that the Left and the Labour Movement made then. Waiting for Labour is of course out of the question. The ConDem regime is after all continuing a program that was initiated and laid out by the last government. Labour's only concern is not that the tories are going too far, but that they are doing it too fast. So far there has barely been a peep out of the Labour Party and nor will there be. But you can bet they will be falling over themselves to denounce any and all effective militant resistance to the cuts.

And nor can we follow the same lefty routine of marching from A-B inb town centres, demonstrations and rallies that do nothing but annoy weekend shoppers and are completely ignored by both the media and of course by the government - safety valves for an innefectual and impotant "Left".

This struggle needs to take on board the example of the protests that have rocked Greece and France. And it needs to learn from our enemies. Over the last year the fascist English Defence League has built a mass street movement that can mobilise thousands - and done so largely through utuilising social-media specifically Facebook. Using such sources the far-right have been able to very successfully spread their message, organise at short notice and make contacts and develop new networks amongst tens of thousands - and that influnce extends well beyond those singed up on their Facebook pages - the rumours and claims they put out spread like a virus and are picked up and repeated by millions. There is no reason at all why militant progressives cannot utilise similar methods.

In the early months and years of the Blair New Labour administration, another section of the Right, this time essentially the extra-parliamentary wing of the tory party, mobilised tens of thousands through the Countryside Alliance, not just in demonstrations and protests but also in motorway blockades. Likewise the rightist Fuel Tax Protests effectively shut down the country's fuel distribution network with illegal blockades of fuel refinaries, storage facilities and motorways, and maintained huge public support even while petrol stations ran dry, shop shelves emptied and schools and hospitals were threatened with closure.

These actions were most often illegal. 18 years of the Thatcher offensive against the organised working class left the trade union movement crippled by laws that effectively outlawed any effective industrial struggle or shows of solidarity. Not only did New Labour not rescind these laws, they added to them with the most draconian "anti-terror" legislation that has essentially given the state the legal means to criminalise and shut down any form of protest. But this has not deterred the Right. It did not deter the Countryside Alliance, the anti-Fuel Tax protesters and it certainly hasnt hinderd the EDL. But you will be hard pressed to find any Union leader (with one or two possible exceptions) who would for a second ever contemplate risking sequestration, crippling fines and imprisonment for calling for and leading any effective fightback.

So it is a given that really any form of protest, no matter how seemingly innocent or mundane, is "illegal" now. And it is also a given that the old methods of protest have failed. They didnt stop Thatcher in the 1980s - the only "traditonal" force that came close was the Miners - and the price of their defeat was their complete destruction, as a Union, as an industry and as a community. And if two million marching through London couldnt influence a Labour government to think twice about engaging in an illegal war, then what makes anyone beleive any number marching, whistleing, dancing, wearing costunmes, banging srums and shrieking the same old tired slogans, will have any influence on a tory government that regards such people as the scum of the earth anyway?

The one victory we did have was over the Poll Tax, it was an attack on ordinary people every bit as callous and cynical as what we are seeing now. And the protest succeeded because it went outside and beyond the usual forms. It involved ordinary people who organised themselves and based their action on what they felt was possible and effective in the area they were and with the numbers they had. While most people know of the legendary Battle Of Trafalgar Square of 1990, something that will most likely be eclipsed inthe coming struggle, what most people who werent around at the time dont know of is the hundreds of protests that took place outside scores of town halls often involving thousands of people, and very often ending with council chambers being stormed. Bailiffs offices were trashed, Conservative Clubs attacked and for the first time in years, there was a sense of panic amongst the politicians and a real sense that would could win amongst the people. Millions refused to pay, the Poll Tax was dropped and Thatcher forced from office.

But this government, for all of its Thatcherite arrogance and contempt, is actually very weak and very divided. It can be beaten. But the struggle needs to get "personal". Would 1 thousand people marching through a town centre make any impact? How about a thousand people marching on the constituency office of the local tory or Liberal Party? A thousand marching on the surgery of a MP? A thousand marching on the home of a MP? A thousand taking over the council chamber when they annouce their cuts.

There is no doubt that the anger and militancy of todays protest has sent a ripple of shock and anxiety through many amongst the enemy tonight. After only 6 months in power, and the first major protest in London against their policies, they have already witnessed a minor taste of the real, deep and growing anger that is ready to explode.

And by taking their anger directly to the HQ of the enemy they wil have acheived more than a hundred town centre marches from park A to park B to listen to Union and Labour hypocrites proclaim platitudes and promises they have no means or intention to fulfill.

If this government inlficts pain and fear - then those responsible, those who enforce it and support it, from top to bottom, must be made to understand what pain and fear really means.

Political Response to Economic Crisis in Ireland

Political Response to Economic Crisis in Ireland

Sinn Féin offers a better way

By Nicky Dempsey
SOCIALIST ACTION

Sinn Féin has published its response to the Dublin government’s threatened plans to cut public spending once more in its Budget for 2011, There Is A Better Way. The Fianna Fail/ Green coalition in government has outlined planned further cuts totalling €6bn in both capital and current spending, including welfare payments to the poor. This would bring the total level of ‘fiscal tightening’ to €20.6bn since the end of 2008, which is now equivalent to 13.1% of GDP. For comparison the British government’s current plans – among the most draconian of any major European country- amount to 9.2% of GDP.

The Sinn Féin response stands in stark contrast to the bourgeois parties across Europe who have used the recession and ensuing fiscal crisis to launch an attack on the social welfare gains built up since WWII. The SF policy has three key components. First, is to shift the burden of taxation from the poor to a rich in a series of measures including higher income and wealth taxes for higher earners and the rich. Secondly, reform of the tax system in what the party calls a ‘financial stimulus’ to redistribute incomes towards the poor and low-paid. But the largest component of the policy is a €7.5bn government investment package in infrastructure and other areas such as early childcare, which is estimated to create 160,000 jobs. This would go some way to addressing the collapse in investment which more than accounts for the entirety of the Irish recession.

The other major parties in Ireland have all signed up to the policies of the Dublin government in the South while Sinn Féin is the only party to consistently oppose the same agenda of the British government in the North of Ireland. In Dublin, the FF-led government had been hoping to co-opt the other parties, Fine Gael and Labour, into explicitly supporting their further attacks on the living standards of workers and the poor. Given that both actually propose very similar measures (with Labour simply calling for a ‘rebalancing’ of the measures towards tax increases), there was actually the basis for a de facto grand 4-party coalition, including the junior coalition partners the Greens.

However, FF’s slump in the polls, down to 18% in one poll in October, from 41.6% in the 2007 general election, made the nominal opposition parties more cautious. The caution turned to outright hostility for purely electoral considerations as the government has been forced by High Court order to hold a long-postponed by-election in Donegal, with others to follow in the New Year. The legal case was itself a victory for Sinn Féin, with the other parties content to allow the government to continue in office despite dwindling parliamentary and popular support. The consequence is that the government is likely to fall early next year and may well call an early general election. Neither Fine Gael nor Labour saw any electoral advantage in propping up Fianna Fail, even while they agree on the substance of further cuts.

Saving The Nation

Fianna Fail, which styles itself ‘The Republican Party’, made the appeal to other parties to support its Budget on the grounds that a failure to act would lead to a ‘loss of sovereignty’ as the ECB/EU/IMF are waiting in the wings to impose further, even more drastic cuts. In fact the government’s own policy now makes this outcome more than possible. Financing through the bond markets is no longer possible as long-term interest rates approach 8%, compared to just over 2% for Germany. While the ‘austerity’ policy has led to a collapse in economic activity and a widening of the public sector deficit, a uniquely generous bailout of bank bondholders means that respected commentators believe the cost to taxpayers will be approximately €76bn, more than 8 times the size of cuts threatened in this December’s Budget and equivalent to €17,000 for every woman, man and child in the State.

The effect of the guarantee is to provide an enormous transfer of taxpayer funds to bail out primarily German, British and French banks, the main holders of debt in Irish banks. While the EU and ECB have insisted on this when burdening Greek workers and the poor with increased debts, the Dublin government initiated this policy itself. The only conceivable explanation is that by bailing out the bondholders, the latter will not foreclose on the banks and their property speculator customers. These two groups, bankers and property speculators, are the political core of the Fianna Fail alliance, even though for historical reasons, its electoral support derived from urban workers.

This subservience to European finance is the flip-side to the government’s prostrate position before the interests of US industrial and commercial capital. This is codified in the lowest corporate tax rate in the OECD area, 12.5% compared to 39% for the US and Japan, 30% for Germany, as well the indulgence of myriad schemes, which reduce the effective rate of tax to below 2%.

The policy response to the crisis, to enrich these foreign capitals by depleting the resources of the workers and the poor failed to reckon on the finite level of the latter, and the voracious appetites of the former. Usually, in a Western European economy of the standard type, the domestic bourgeoisie, crushed by the impositions on its own activities and the damage done to its domestic markets would rise up and remove such a government. But Ireland is not a standard type of Western European economy. While one quarter of the country remains a direct colony of Britain, the remainder retains the distorted social structure of the recent colony. Most especially, outside of the dominant layers in banking and property speculation, the bulk of the Irish bourgeois class is comprised of globally insignificant capitals, with owners of fast food outlets, bookmakers and publicans to the fore in IBEC, the main employers’ federation. There are literally only a handful of Irish-owned companies that compete in global markets.

So, when in 2009, policy in the advanced capitalist countries was focused on measures to boost domestic demand, tax breaks, employmentsubsidies and so on to ensure the survival of indigenous capitalism, no such measures were adopted by the Dublin government. Lacking any significant capitalists that compete in world markets, there was no purpose to such a policy and the first resort was to attack wages and social welfare spending. This has only now become popular elsewhere once the survival of domestic capitals has been ensured.

This is why the Sinn Féin policy is so significant. Perhaps uniquely in Western Europe, the party has adopted a policy of increased investment which can only be conducted by state or state-linked bodies (in this case, the National Pension Reserve Fund). And, uniquely in Western Europe, this is not a programme that entails saving sections of big capital. As elsewhere it would require an enduring leadership role for the state in the economy. But it would immediately lead to the state becoming the dominant force in the domestic economy, albeit one that would require a new partnership with foreign capital, on both a more productive and equal footing.

The policy is also gaining ground. A string of popular campaigning organisations, such as Social Justice Ireland and Community Platform have tentatively moved in the same direction, while the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has adopted pro-investment stance, but contradictorily pins its hopes on the government persuading the private sector to initiate the investments. No doubt these contradictions will be resolved in course of the struggles over the next period.

Fall of ex-minister exposes Labour’s fascist election strategy

By Yvonne Ridley
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=229930
TERHRAN TIMES

So, former British Government minister Phil Woolas has finally been rumbled for playing the race and religion cards in a political game which has fuelled Islamaphobia in the UK.

Two high court judges have ordered that his election as MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth is “void”. Woolas was brought before the court on accusations of stirring up racial hatred and seizing on anti-Muslim sentiment in Oldham by claiming that his rival endorsed a Muslim campaign to remove him.

His campaign aimed to “make white folks angry” at his opponent, the Liberal Democrat’s Elwyn Watkins, as part of a desperate bid to retain his seat in the run up to the May 2010 general election. Whipping up hysteria and rhetoric that could make him a Tea Party candidate in America, Woolas is now barred from the House of Commons and ordered to pay £5,000 and costs to Mr. Watkins.

He says he will seek a judicial review but it’s not looking good -- as he stands there exposed for what he is, Labour has put a barge pole’s distance between themselves and the disgraced politician. The Westminster Village is said to be reeling in a state of shock… but why? I exposed the political scumbag way back on February 18 2008. Actually, my exact words to describe the government minister at the time were “an odious, rancid, little creep.”

This is what I wrote: “One of the biggest Islamophobes sitting in Government is Phil Woolas, who deserves further scrutiny in this column. He was the minister for race relations in the autumn of 2006 when he intervened in the row over the classroom assistant Aisha Azmi by calling for her to be fired. Aisha was the girl who work a nikab over her face whenever a male colleague entered the room, but by the time he and the media had finished you would have thought Aisha spent her entire teaching days in a full face veil. This is the MP who during the last General Election stamped the Union Jack emblem on his campaign literature and highlighted 'anti-white racism' as a vital issue in his Oldham constituency. His mates told him it was political suicide and that he would lose his marginal seat but in fact his votes increased and sent the anoraks in Labour’s spin machine into statistical overdrive. They realized then they didn’t need to try and win back the disaffected Muslims who ditched Labour over Iraq and Afghanistan. So instead of trying to bring them back into the fold, these cynical politicians opted instead to stir up racial tension as a means of appealing directly to the white working-class vote”.

The full column is here: http://yvonneridley.org/yvonne-ridley/articles/you -can-only-demand-to-be-treated-as-an-equal-if-you- act-like-one-5.html

The Woolas shock election victory after the disastrous Iraq war was achieved by using the race and religion card -- his politics of hate was a winning formula and Tony Blair’s backroom strategists loved it… once they’d recovered from the shock, for the truth is they had written off Woolas as a political casualty of the 2003 war since he was based in a marginal constituency with a large Muslim community.

The actions of Woolas triggered a new New Labour strategy which sought to encourage columns and online blogs written by aggressive secularists and so-called progressives to make Islam-bashing trendy. It was a poison which began creeping in to newspaper and magazine columns as well.

Those driven by racism also joined in the fun seeing Islamophobia as the last legitimate refuge to peddle their race-fueled hate. Phil Woolas was the man responsible for making Islamaphobia a national sport and while I'm sure he will be repulsed by the activities of the British National Party and the English Defense League they thrived in this atmosphere.

There were a few notable exceptions within the party including London Mayor Ken Livingstone who refused to enter in to political Muslim-baiting and at one point some sections of the media turned on him damaging his own political campaign in the English capital.

Meanwhile in the last General Election Labour ruthlessly deployed the politics of fascism to win popular votes and approval. Using the ‘Woolas’ model they placed the politics of religious identity at the centre of public debate, in the same opportunist way that Jorg Haider's Freedom Party did in Austria and Pim Fortuyn's List Party had previously done in Holland. Geert Wilders went on to take the hate to new levels. The fire of Islamaphobia rages across Europe today. Control orders, the use of secret evidence, tougher anti-terror laws -- all aimed at the Muslim communities -- came to define the Labour government's role in the ill-conceived War on Terror.

This incendiary atmosphere of growing Islamophobic intolerance continued to be ignited by the actions of the then Government minister on Race, Phil Woolas, who cynically drove the bandwagon through Muslim communities at every available opportunity.

He created hysterical headlines about ""Muslim inbreeding"" with his comments about the health risks of cousin marriages among Pakistanis. The way he spoke about the issue was as though some Frankenstein-like creatures were filling the baby wards in maternity hospitals around Oldham, Bradford, Burnley and Birmingham.

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, both stirred the political pot of religion and racism, the latter wading in to Jack Straw’s nikab row with gusto. It seems every Labour minister was scrambling over the backs of others to attack Islam and Muslims.

Meanwhile, the enemies of Islam are still circling in politics and the media. They are trying to force Muslims to adopt an Islam which is servile to the West, a designer Islam that can be picked up and taken off like a pair of Jimmy Choos. What have they got to fear from Muslims in Britain who simply want to uphold family values which were once held so dear in British communities before binge drinking, promiscuity and pill-popping became so commonplace? There is no reason why Muslims can not contribute positively to Britain and elsewhere in the West without diluting their faith. It is not asked of other communities so why single Muslims out for special treatment?

The Commons Speaker, John Bercow will now have to decide whether to wait for further legal proceedings or immediately call a by-election for Oldham East and Saddleworth. The political power is now back with the people of that constituency -- good people of faith and no faith.

I would urge each and every one of them to vote, and vote for the politician who best suits their ideals… someone who is prepared to serve the people and not manipulate voters by trading on fear and hatred.

Hopefully the downfall of Woolas will serve as a salutary warning to all of those who indulged in the fascist politics of race, religion and fear.

20,000 Scots take to streets of Edinburgh to protest against spending cuts

THIS is how you defend Scotland.

20,000 Scots take to streets of Edinburgh to protest against spending cuts Oct 24 2010
Mark Aitken, Sunday Mail

THOUSANDS of Scots marched in protest at Government spending cuts yesterday as Treasury axeman Danny Alexander battled to justify them.

More than 20,000 joined a rally in Edinburgh to oppose the spending review announced by the Con Dem coalition on Wednesday.

Union leaders warned of strike action over the slashing of public services, which will see Scotland lose around £3billion over the next four years.

Up to 50,000 of the 500,000 public service jobs under threat will be lost in Scotland and the same number could go in the private sector.

The Scottish Trades Union Congress organised the rally and general secretary Grahame Smith said: "If members decide that the best way is to take industrial action then they will do that. I'm not saying that as a threat, but as a fact.

"We want to work constructively with employers but if they are not willing to do that then members will take action to protect their rights.

"There is no coordinated campaign of action at the moment. We hope it can be avoided but it's a real possibility."

But Alexander claimed the cuts were fair, despite moderate earners being penalised by changes in child benefit. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said: "The decision we've made on child benefit was right and fair. It's part of ensuring that people with broader shoulders bear the greater share."

STUC president Joy Dunn told the Edinburgh protest: "A line has been drawn in the sand.

"Now is the time for organised co-ordinated industrial action. The fight starts here.

"This cabinet of millionaires know the price of everything but the value of nothing."

Marcher Peter Allison, 40, a staff nurse from Dundee, said: "This protest sends the message that people are prepared to work together against the cuts.

"People are trying to push the consensus that these cuts have to be made but I think the money can be found elsewhere.

"They say they will ring fence the health service but once the cuts have been made elsewhere, I think we will be next."

Among the marchers in Edinburgh were Scottish Labour leader Iain Gray and SNP Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.

The SNP government last night said the public spending cuts made borrowing powers for Scotland "absolutely essential".

Finance Secretary John Swinney's spokesman said: "We are building economic recovery in Scotland.

"But the UK government's damaging decision to slash our capital budget by a quarter next year threatens to take a wrecking ball to recovery."

Tories back on road to economic disaster
Have the Tories learned nothing from the 1980s and early 90s? Do they not realise that longer dole queues mean higher welfare bills, let alone that the social cost that communities can take years to recover from?

Do they want to add to their tragic litany of economic vandalism over past decades - Linwood, Bathgate, Ravenscraig? Their own figures show that for every extra 100,000 people claiming jobseeker's allowance, the Government needs to spend £400million on benefits.

George Osborne's Office for Budget Responsibility has even estimated that the Government's plans will cost an extra £700million in job seeker's allowance claims.

The Tories and the Lib Dems want you to think there is no other alternative to their plans to cut so deep.

But there is an alternative.

We should deal with the deficit in a fair way. It can't be fair, as the Tory government is doing, to take more money from children - in child benefit and tax credits - than from the banks.

We need an approach based on jobs and growth otherwise it will be impossible to get the deficit down.

Tragically in Scotland we have seen this Tory prescription before. And we know the results.

Full independence will save Scotland from worst of cuts, says Alex Salmond

First minister says 'bad' cuts – expected to lead to a fall of about £4bn in Scottish budget – are attack on compassion, fairness and social justice

Severin Carrell Scotland correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Sunday 17 October 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/oct/17/alex-salmond-scotland-independence-cuts

Alex Salmond says independence would save Scotland's public services and economy from the worst effects of the spending cuts. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA


Alex Salmond today claimed full independence would save Scotland's public services and economy from the worst effects of the "bad" spending cuts due to be unveiled this week.

The first minister said Wednesday's comprehensive spending review – expected to lead to a fall of about £4bn in the Scottish budget – was an attack on the core principles of compassion, fairness and social justice dear to Scottish voters.

He told the Scottish National party's annual conference in Perth that he would "not be a manager of Westminster-directed cuts nor part of parliament which acts as a message boy for decisions made elsewhere".

In a speech that sought to be ambitious in its vision and scope before next May's Scottish elections, Salmond said: "There is no point in being a pocket money parliament when the pocket money stops.

"We are not the helpless agents of globalisation, but free citizens of a wealthy land. We are not slaves to the banking system or vassals to the lords of high finance.

"I do not want independence for its own sake, but for the sake of the people here and now and those to come."

The Scottish secretary, Michael Moore, has predicted that the cuts would take Scotland's funding back to its level in 2005 – about £25bn, a drop of some £4bn – by 2015.

The Scottish government claims that keeping all Scotland's share of North Sea oil and gas would leave it £1bn a year better off.

Salmond's ministers have begun setting out cuts in public services, including a 25% cut in NHS managers, but the first minister's main aim today was to rally his party for the 2011 Scottish parliamentary elections.

After nearly four years in power, the SNP faces a bruising contest. Early opinion polls suggest Labour is poised to regain power at Holyrood and form its own minority government.

Labour – now the only major party at Holyrood which is not in government – will attack the nationalists for breaking a series of pledges at the last Scottish elections, presiding over higher unemployment, NHS job cuts and a collapse in school building.

During the conference, the SNP has pledged to keep the freeze in council tax for a further two years, costing £70m a year.

Salmond announced that up to 6,000 government and NHS workers would get a "living wage" of at least £7.15 an hour – costing around £3m – and Scotland's seven police forces could be merged.

He did not specify a number, but it is thought ministers believe only three forces are needed.

He also announced that Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel prize-winning economist who has been severely critical of George Osborne's spending plans, would now advise the SNP government on the economy.

Campbell Christie, a former head of the Scottish TUC, will lead a commission inquiry into public services. But Salmond has attempted to sidestep a policy by policy confrontation over spending cuts by accusing all his main opponents of preventing Scotland from achieving its full potential – full independence within the European union.

He acknowledged that the SNP had failed to make its case on independence by assuming voters knew what it meant, and reached out to Labour and left of centre Liberal Democrat voters.

"What I mean by independence is the profound right to enjoy the same equality of opportunity, and to live in more equal communities," he said. "What I mean by independence is jobs – to protect and create them.

"Is this a grand dream? Yes. But that is the difference between us and the other parties in this election.

"We have the vision and we have the means to deliver it ... [I] fight not for flags and anthems, but fairness and compassion. I fight for a generation that is not burdened by the mistakes of this one."

The three main UK parties killed off his bill for a referendum on independence in this parliament and only about 25% of voters currently favour independence.

But the SNP believes the spending cuts will significantly bolster its arguments for autonomy, and plans to make that dispute central to its election campaign.

Iain Gray, the Scottish Labour leader, said: "Alex Salmond is the last man Scotland should listen to on jobs and cuts. [Due] to the Salmond slump, we have lost 50,000 construction jobs and the SNP have also cut 3,000 teachers and 4,000 NHS jobs – all this with a record Scottish budget.

"Now is a time for honesty, tough decisions and protecting and creating jobs. However, Alex Salmond thinks he can get by on election gimmicks, dodge all responsibility and blame someone else for his legacy of failure."

EDL wants taste of Tea Party's Islamophobia

So, the EDL claim they are opposed to foreign influence over our politics and society... and then go running off to take lessons off the yanks. - Real SDL

Friday 15 October 2010
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/96456

Tentative links are developing between supporters of the reactionary Tea Party movement in the US and right-wing fringe groups in Britain opposed to what they call the "Islamification" of Europe.

The movements are not yet formally aligned, but the racist English Defence League (EDL), which insists that Islamic fundamentalism will soon engulf Britain, is busy building bridges with US figures who take a similar anti-Islamic position.

Extreme right-wing British organisations are gravitating towards anti-Islamic groups.

One such is candidate for the California state legislature Rabbi Nachum Shifren, who plans to visit England next week in a trip partly sponsored by the EDL.

The trip was organised by EDL activist Roberta Moore, who has formed a "Jewish division" of the group.

She said that the rabbi would speak at an October 24 rally in London.

"He plans to speak about the dangers of Islamification both in this country and in America," she said.

"We have the same objectives as the groups in the US, and we want to exchange information and work with them."

Nottingham University Professor Matthew Goodwin, an expert on extremist groups in Britain, warned: "We're seeing groups across Europe trying to form a transnational challenge to Islam.

"Going to the US is particularly interesting because the far-right in Britain has never gone that way before.

"It has always gone toward Europe.

"If it does forge strong links to the Tea Party, it would be important because the Tea Party has significant resources."

Rabbi Shifren, who has given anti-Islamic talks at Tea Party events, boasted in an interview that he planned to warn Britons their country is being lost as "fundamentalist Islam" gains strength.

"I see England going down and I want to cry out and do everything I can to prevent that, to work with the EDL," he said.

Ms Moore revealed that the EDL had also reached out to high-profile Islamophobe Pamela Geller.

She is a far-right US activist who runs an organisation called Stop Islamisation of America which is linked with similar groups across the world.

Ms Geller said she supports the English group's approach but had not yet met its leaders or agreed to any joint projects.

However she added: "I share their goal of resisting Islamic supremacism and defending free societies."

English Defence League forges links with America's Tea Party

Members of the English Defence League during a march in London against Islamic fundamentalism. Photograph: Rex

As the far-right group marches in Leicester, details are emerging of growing contacts with extremist US groups in a 'war on Islamification"

Mark Townsend
The Observer,
Sunday 10 October 2010


The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the "Islamification" of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement.

An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.

The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party's growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group's actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.

Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: "I share the EDL's goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west."

Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: "Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff."

Details of the EDL's broadening aspirations came as about 1,000 supporters yesterday gathered to demonstrate in Leicester, which has a significant Muslim population. Home secretary Theresa May banned marches in the city last week but the EDL said its protest would proceed, raising fears of violence. Parts of Leicester were cordoned off to separate a counter-protest from Unite Against Fascism. Officers from 13 forces were on hand to maintain order.

The Tea Party is expected to be an influential force in America's mid-term elections. Last month their candidate Christine O'Donnell romped to the Republican nomination in Delaware, following a stream of populist rightwing candidates who carry the movement's endorsement. Burghart says anti-Islamic tendencies have become far more marked in the grassroots organisation: "As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace."

Another Tea Party-associated grouping, the International Civil Liberties Alliance, which campaigns against Sharia law, confirmed that EDL leaders have made "contacts with members of important organisations within the American counter-jihad movement". A statement said: "It seems now that America and Europe are acting as one, and united we can never fail."

With the Tea Party said to benefit from millions of dollars of funding from conservative foundations, experts warn an alliance between the EDL and extremist elements within the US movement could allow the English group to invest in wider recruitment and activism.

Shifren, a Californian senate candidate, said Britain's Jewish community should rally behind the EDL: "The Jewish community is paralysed with fear, exactly what most radical Muslim agitators want. The people of England are in the forefront of this war – and it is a war. One of the purposes of this visit is to put the kibosh on the notion in the Jewish community that they cannot co-operate with the EDL, which is rubbish."

The EDL's website relaunched briefly last week with new US links. Currently shut down for "maintenance", the site featured prominent links to a site called Atlas Shrugs, which is run by Geller, and another US-based site, Jihad Watch, which compiles negative news coverage of Islamic militancy.

In addition, two members of the EDL leadership, a British businessman called Alan Lake who is believed to fund the group and a man known by the alias Kinana, are regular contributors to web forum 4Freedoms. The forum claims to be "organising US activities" and has links to the anti-jihad group, American Congress for Truth, which in turn has supporters within the Tea Party.

Lake is also believed to have been in touch with a number of anti-Islamic Christian evangelical groups in the US. One posting by Lake on 4Freedoms warns that the UK of the future will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves. Lake, believed to be a principal bankroller of the EDL, which claims to be a peaceful, non-racist organisation, is understood to be keen on the possibility of setting up the UK equivalent of the Tea Party. At an event organised by the Taxpayers' Allliance last month, US Tea Party organisers outlined how the movement emerged last year, partly in protest at the US bank bail-out.

Those present included Freedom Works and the Cato Institute, one of the Tea Party's main backers. However, Simon Richards, director of the Gloucestershire-based Freedom Association, which is looking at developing a pseudo-Tea Party movement in the UK, said he was concerned the project could be hijacked by elements such as the EDL. Nick Lowles of anti-fascist organisation Searchlight said: "The EDL is an integral part of an international campaign against Islam. While some are fighting in a cultural and political arena, the EDL are taking it to the streets. The images of the EDL allegedly taking on Muslim fundamentalists on the streets of Britain is also delighting right wing religious organisations in US."

Scottish Republicanism and what it means today

(This article was origianlly published in the Arpil-May, 2010 edition of Sovereign Nation, the newspaper of the 32 Country Soverignty Movement)


For over 300 years the nation of Scotland has been shackled
to the political union of unequals that is the British
state. For centuries prior to this forced union Scotland
fought a gallant series of wars of independence against
English attempts at subjugation and annexation. That her
Sovereignty was betrayed by the parcel of rogues in a
nation which were a supine section of the Scottish landed
nobility cannot be disputed, but the British revisionist
historians who claim that this union was popular in anyway
shape or form couldn't be more wrong.

Riots broke out against the signing of the Act of
union the length and breadth of Scotland, indeed the very signatories
to the union had to meet in secret in a cellar in
Edinburgh - such was their fear of the Scottish peoples reaction.

England achieved its union by bribery and coercion
("the rough wooing" as it was called). The signing of the treaty
was conducted with an English Fleet off the Scottish coast and
an English Army massed at the border - the threat to Scotland
should the traitors not sign the Act of Union could not have
been more explicit.

Like all subjugated peoples the Scottish have had
imposed upon them an official history of the victors that has
sought to obscure any understanding of resistance and rebellion
and that has sought to give them a historical amnesia that
prevents them from challenging the myths of the British state.
Religious sectarianism and all manner of divide and rule has
been used by the Anglo/British state and its mis-educators to
weaken and avoid a united Scottish challenge to their rule.

In such a way the Jacobite Rebellions have been
portrayed as doomed romanticism on behalf of a foppish and
effete King when in fact they had as their foundation a sincere
desire on behalf of their clansmen and others for Scottish
independence. Many a Jacobite sword had inscribed on its
blade for Scotland and no union, in English and in Gaelic.

Even more denied and obscured by the Brits and
their academic mouthpieces is the later struggle of Thomas
Muir, a radical Scottish republican and contemporary of Wolfe
Tone, who led the United Scotsmen and had excellent fraternal
relations and practical solidarity with the United Irishmen.
Just as Wolfe Tone can be said to be the Father of Irish
Republicanism so too can Muir be called the Father of
Scottish Republicanism. The British and their lackeys in the
Scottish establishment worked ceaselessly through lies, force and spies to defeat the plans of the United Scotsmen for revolution
and the re-establishment of Scottish independence
and a Republic in the late 1790s. Muir himself had to flee to
France where he became the first non Frenchman given citizenship
in the French Republic.

The Scottish Radicals of 1820 attempted armed
rebellion and a detachment were captured on route to Carron
where they hoped to seize the cannons of the Brits at the
major cannon producing ironworks there. Hardie and Baird
died on the scaffold and the rest of the leaders were rounded
up and deported to Australia as convicts. In Greenock the
British militia opened fire on the crowd, killing many unarmed
civilians, who had risen in support of the rebellion.

In the Highlands and Gaeltacht resistance broke out sporadically
against the near genocide of the clearances and the latter
parts of the 19th century saw land grabs and the simmering
Crofters War. Michael Davitt was instrumental in helping
organise the Highland Land League. By the late 19th Century
following An Gorta Mor, Scotland saw an influx of Irishmen
and women as a direct result of the genocidal policies of the
Anglo/British state. Combining with the hundreds of thousands
of cleared from their land, Gaels of the Highlands who
had been forced into the urban industrial central belt, particularly
around Glasgow, fired an angry working class with rightful
grievance and a sense of injustice against the British state
and its ruling class. Thus they emerged with an innate dslike,
distrust and hatred for the Anglo/British state and a strong
desire for Irish and indeed Scottish independence. Out of this
working class came two of the greatest Republican socialists.
In Edinburgh was James Connolly and in Glasgow John
MacLean. They took the fight for independence and the
republic of the workers to a new plane of struggle.

Whilst Connolly was organising Irish workers and small farmers
for revolution in Ireland, MacLean was developing the
forces for revolution in Glasgow and on Clydeside. MacLean
broke with the British left due to their supine acceptance of the
imperialist slaughter of WW1 and came out for a Scottish
Workers Republic. In 1919 English soldiers and tanks were
placed in Glasgow in order to quell the growing rebellion that
was known as the Red Clydeside. He himself was jailed for sedition on a number of occasions and his popularity amongst the workers of Glasgow and Scotland can be
gauged by the 200,000 who came out to meet him from the train on his release from Peterhead Gaol.

Despite the best efforts of the unionist Labour quislings
in Scotland and their masters in London, the question of
independence runs throughout modern Scottish history. It
truly is the elephant in the room on all political matters in
Scotland. Recently the twin tectonic plates of independence
and unionism have collided and the attempt by the Brits to
"kill independence stone dead through devolution" has done
nothing of the sort. In fact devolution has merely whetted the
appetite for independence in Scotland and the one party state
hegemony of the unionist Labour Party, which stretches over
50 years, has been broken with the election in 2007 of the
first Scottish National Party Government. As republicans we
can confidently say that the SNP whilst being a constitutional
nationalist party, has at its base thousands of republican separatist
members and supporters and indeed even amongst its
elected representatives a good few solid republicans and
republican socialists. Salmond himself was once a member
of the expelled republican socialist 79 Group.

From our perspective and given the political terrain
and conditions the SNP is the credible democratic electoral
challenge to unionism and the British state. Whilst we maintain
a revolutionary republican perspective towards independence
we should urge all Scots and Irish Republicans living
in Scotland to support the SNP in elections and campaign
and vote in any upcoming referendum put forward by the
SNP for full Scottish independence.

The anti colonial and anti imperialism of the struggle
for Irish independence and Scottish independence and
the fact that both struggles and nations have so much commonality
against English dominion mean that the 32 CSM in
Scotland and our Vol Charles Carrigan Cumann have not
neglected to fully engage in the struggle for Scottish independence
alongside our support and solidarity for our comrades
and their struggle for Irish sovereignty, independence
and the 32 County Republic.

The 32CSM have worked alongside and supported
efforts by the Scottish Republican Socialist Movement including
attending the John MacLean March and Rally in Glasgow
and the Anti Sectarianism march and rally at Glencoe. We will
continue this work for a Scottish Republic which we believe
could be the closest ally for the 32 County Irish Republic.
Whichever nation first gains a victory against Anglo/British
imperialism and their continued denial of our national sovereignties
will have a profound effect on the struggle in the
other. Not least because of the crisis it will create in the false
identity of British unionism that exists in both Ireland and
Scotland.

The REAL Scottish Defence League has been created to counter the insideous attempts by the fascist English Defence League to spread their poison in our proudly progressive land.

The REAL Scottish Defence League beleives there should be NO PLATFORM for racism, fascism and sectarianism in Scotland. The Real SDL stands in defence of Scotland's proud traditions of tolerance, egalitarianism and our history of standing up for the oppressed and fighting for liberty and social justice for all.

We stand in the tradition of Wallace, Burns, MacLean and Connolly.

We stand for an independent, republican and democratic Scotland where all our citizens, of whatever religion, race or birthplace, can stand as one united people.

This website will be used to promote causes and movements that stand in those traditions, that stand and oppose fascism, racism and sectarianism and fight for the liberty and prosperity of all our people and in solidarity with other progressive movements, nations and peoples around the world.

We will publish news and information on the activities of the enemies of the Scottish people, particularly the EDL, BNP, loyalists, tories and any others who try to attack the rights and livliehoods of our people.

In particular we stand against the traitors in the phony so called "Scottish Defence League" who are no more than fascist puppets of a foreign movement, the EDL and BNP.

Black, white, asian, muslim, protestant, catholic, athiest; all our people united to defend the REAL Scotland.