EDL members fined over rooftop protest

A rooftop protest over the ban on the England football team having embroidered poppies on their shirts has cost two English Defence League members £3,000.

EDL leader Stephen Lennon and member Kevin Carroll flew to Switzerland last Tuesday and 24 hours later managed to get on to the roof of the FIFA headquarters in Zurich. They were demanding England players be allowed to wear poppies on their shirts for their friendly against Spain after the governing body ruled emblems were not allowed because the poppy was seen as a political emblem.

The compromise of allowing the teams to wear black armbands with poppies on was reached after interventions from Prince William and David Cameron. But Mr Lennon claims his protest was the tipping point.

“FIFA changed their mind after two hours of us being up on that roof,” he said. “Everyone’s saying it was David Cameron but it was us.”

The pair were arrested when they came down from the roof after four hours, and were fined £2,300 and had to pay £700 court costs.

“They said our reasons were just but obviously it was against the law,” said Mr Lennon. “They put us in a grimy prison for three days.”

Their spell behind bars meant the pair were not in London on Friday when 170 English Defence Members were arrested at a pub near the Cenotaph because police believed they were headed for the protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral.

Mr Lennon said: “They dragged everyone out of the pub and held them for four hours. There was no trouble. The police said they were preventing a breach of the peace so they arrested everyone, men and women. But no-one was charged with anything, they were all just released after four hours.”

Luton Today

Face of Tory "Become a Councillor" campaign is EDL sympathiser

The face of the Conservative Party’s official “Become a Councillor” campaign is an EDL sympathiser who attended an organising meeting for their controversial Tower Hamlets demonstration, Political Scrapbook can reveal. Cllr Blaine Robin was publicly praised by EDL leader Tommy Robinson for his presence at the meeting in Southend-On-Sea.

The gathering of EDL organisers included leaders of all the group’s so-called “southern divisions” and was designed to build momentum for the action in Tower Hamlets which cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to police and led to sixty arrests for offences including assault on a police office, common assault, drunk and disorderly and affray.

Video footage below shows Tommy Robinson appearing to point to the councillor while saying he was “proud” that he attended the meeting. Robin is prominently featured on the Conservative Party website as part of the Become a Councillor campaign, which encourages people to stand as Tory candidates to “make a difference to their local community”.

“I’m proud that the first politician, I’ve ever met who actually represents his constituents was a man outside … who’s a local politician in Southend [points to person in crowd] … It’s even greater to see that he has heard the free message of the English Defence League not the distorted media attempt [sic]”

While Blaine has denied being an official member of the EDL, the councillor’s sympathies can not be in doubt, having praised the far right group’s “good intentions” on his Facebook page and posted their propaganda on his website. David Cameron has claimed “there’s none sicker than the EDL”.

But it seems that not all Conservative politicians agree.

Political Scrapbook

Thanks to NewsHound and others for the heads-up

My party should end its war on multiculturalism

'Labour isn't burdened with the legacy of Enoch Powell's 1968 speech, which the
Conservatives have never quite shaken off.' Photograph: Channel Four

Tory attacks on multiculturalism send out a confused message – it's time for the party to drop the word from its rhetoric

Theresa May will reply to the home affairs debate at the Conservative conference today in the wake of the publication of The Future of Conservatism, a collection of essays about the party's future edited by David Davis. The hall will resound to familiar Tory calls for stronger immigration controls and longer prisoner sentences. It wouldn't be at all surprising if they were joined by a denunciation of multiculturalism – one which the new Davis-edited book, seen as it doubtless will be as blue meat for the party faithful, will be expected to echo.

For the best part of 10 years, I represented the largest number of Muslim voters of any Conservative MP. During the last parliament, I was the party's spokesman on integration in the Commons. I worked happily with people on the left who took an uncompromising view of Islamist extremism, agreeing with them that since it saw no distinction between religious and secular law it was incompatible with liberal democracy. So my article for Davis's book could reasonably be expected to excoriate the M-word.

I agree with some on the left and most on the right that integration is a good thing and cultural relativism a bad one. For example, female genital mutilation shouldn't be tolerated in Britain simply because it's a cultural custom in parts of Africa and Asia. But I have come to see that the ultimate modernisation for the Conservative party isn't to back gay marriage or promote more women. It's to end the Tory war on multiculturalism. In saying so, my essay for The Future of Conservatism therefore bucks the stereotype, and is based on a simple truth: that multiculturalism means different things to different people.

To some, it means Mohammad Siddique Khan, the British-born 7/7 suicide bomber, a chilling example of what can happen when integration fails (though, blessedly, a very rare one). To others, it means the Notting Hill carnival or Manchester Pride – or the Bible, that meshing of Jewish, Greek and Roman culture. But it's no great mystery to guess what Tory condemnations of multiculturalism mean to many ethic minority voters. When Conservative lips mouth "multiculturalism", they hear multi-racialism – a verbal assault on people of a different ethnicity.

It is no use for the Tory speaker to claim that this is wrong – even though, as it happens, it is – or insist that this isn't what is meant. For this is what is heard, and it's what's heard that matters. In which case, wouldn't the Conservative party be wise to drop the term altogether? No Tory prime minister has ever aped BNP language by promising "British jobs for British workers", as Gordon Brown did, but Labour isn't burdened with the legacy of Enoch Powell's 1968 speech, which the Conservatives have never quite shaken off. All going on and on about multiculturalism achieves is making it even more difficult to do so.

David Cameron knows this only too well. That is why he has been careful only to knock state multiculturalism. But to do so is to build an unstable halfway house. Discussion of what constitutes state and non-state multiculturalism might make an interesting thesis, but it makes a tangled argument. The concept is designed to face two ways at once. To the Tory faithful, it signals opposition to multiculturalism; to ethnic minority voters, only when the state does it. Neither are stupid and both are unpersuaded.

The core Conservative vote is about a third of the electorate. Resistance to the party's message was greatest at the last election in Scotland, among public sector workers – and members of ethnic minorities. The number of the latter is growing faster than that of the majority community. They doubtless contribute significantly to a striking recent poll finding: that 70% of the population would consider voting Labour but only 58% voting Tory. Yet the Conservative message on lower taxes, faith schools and support for marriage might have been crafted for black churchgoers or Britain's young Muslim population, who are set to share a significant part of the tax burden. The reflexive denunciation of multiculturalism is helping to prevent it being heard.

Paul Goodman at Comment is free

Thanks to Zaahid for the heads-up

A Riot Laugh With The EDL!

Crivvens! Britain burns, Dave dithers and Boris bumbles through but luckily the English Defence League are on hand to help! Phew! It’s not really been going too well for the EDL over the last few weeks what with the media fingering them over connections to Norwegian killer Anders Breivik, the continuing fallouts with the Jewish division, the appalling attack on a takeaway joint by Plymouth EDL and the subsequent sacking of Hayley Wells as regional organ grinder which incurred the wrath of the action monkeys of the ‘Combined Ex-Forces’ – regimental motto ‘Don’t panic! Don’t panic!’ And to top it off, after various factions have been sticking their nebs in where they simply weren’t wanted round ‘riot torn’ Britain they ended the week with a pisspoor demo in Wellington.

Poor Do!

Considering that there has been a bit of a hoo-ha recently on Albion’s fair streets, plod thought it wise to ban the EDL’s Wellington march but could not refuse a static demo. Locals were grateful as the EDL bought a bunch of outsiders into town, the Telford/ Luton match was rescheduled and shops had to fork out to some dodgy company to get boarded up. In case you don’t know, a static demo is when the EDL arrive in a town where they are not wanted armed with carrier bags of Stella to stand in a carpark with no toilets for an hour or two. After shouting a bit and getting out of hand, which the stewards always fail to deal with, plod then escorts them back to their coaches and they are told to go away. This is how ‘Islamic extremism’ has been successfully defeated by the EDL. Not really. At Wellington a diminished EDL stood cluelessly about getting more and more irate then, after chucking bottles at plod, some clever fellow attempted to get in the dog van! Why? As Rochdale proved plod dogs love the taste of EDLers – apparently they’re like kebabs! As usual, the EDL couldn’t help themselves and after a wee bit of argy bargy there were 5 nickings, the silly Billies! As usual the stewards lost control and one female steward ‘scratched the life out of’ another member. As usual, it also kicked off a bit on the train station when plod dished up Section 60s which mean ‘bugger off now, we’ve had enough!’ and there may also have been arrests at Birmingham train station when the Stella and Charlie relationship (the EDL’s royal couple) fully blossomed. Jeff ‘Stabber’ Marsh is currently seething and posting frenzied rebuttals to the scant press reports of the day on his website. Help Ma Boab!

It’s been a bit of week for ‘Cocaine’ Kev Carol, de facto EDL leader now that Tommy has to be in bed by 7. ‘Sir’ Tommy Robinson is currently under bail restrictions so cannot attend demos – though this did not stop him from appearing on Newsnight for some reason – and Cocaine Kev is now calling the shots. He turned up at the London trial of 3 brave EDL warriors who had been arrested for attacking ‘Muslamics’ at Speakers Corner. So much for defending free speech then lads? 1 EDL had also grabbed a policeman’s genitals! Really! There are better ways of asking for dates you know! At Wellington the cocaine cowboy praised the father of one of the 3 guys who had been killed last week for being a ‘good Muslim’ and held a minute’s silence. Apparently South Yorkshire also tried to organise a flash demo yesterday in solidarity but they didn’t get up in time. Shame.

A Bunch of Posses!

The EDL have also been making a perfect nuisance of themselves following last week’s interruptions to the weekly shop. In Eltham a bunch of ‘middle aged men’ – who surely should know better – ended up chanting EDL slogans and fighting with plod. Locals claimed that these characters were outsiders and were not welcome especially after they attacked a bus with some black lads on it and members of the EDL Facebook pages were calling for some ‘nig bashing.’ How 70s! The EDL have claimed that these chaps weren’t members but seeing as how there is no formal membership scheme anyone who says they are EDL is therefore EDL no matter how many times Kev and Tommy deny it. David Cameron condemned the EDL this week by calling them ‘sick’ and the EDL have finally got round to issuing a statement on it. It makes for dull reading. In Enfield, an EDL vigilante posse turned up to be roundly condemned by plod for drinking too much and getting in the way of things. Manchester EDL made a half-arsed attempt to do something but then didn’t. The EDL also claimed to have swept the streets of Cambridge clear of Brigands and then indulged in their favourite pastime of intimidating takeaway joints (like in Plymouth and Leicester).

Following the attack on the Plymouth takeaway 2 weeks back, Hayley Wells was removed as regional organiser for her part in the incident. The EDL leadership of course denied they had anything to do with it but seeing at it was caused by the Plymouth EDL after a Plymouth EDL meet and greet then it was Plymouth EDL wot done it! Hayley got a bit of a Facebook bollocking of Ma Wells for drinking and fighting instead of looking after her children. Hayley’s fiancé is Michael Rafferty, ‘commander’ of the Combined ex-Forces group (they love their little titles don’t they?) and he waltzed off in a tizz after Tommy slagged them all off and they are no longer friends. Hayley ran the EDL Extra on Facebook and she is currently having a pram war with Hel Gower (Tommy’s PA & known fascist) and the toys are flying about! The Combined exForces also features our old mate Billy ‘Bunter’ Baker of the English Nationalists Association –hello Chubs, how’s the diet? – and they are threatening to march on Downing Street on September 3rd. I may be wrong but the only ‘forces’ Bunter Baker has experienced is when he forces another pasty into his toothless maw. The 3rd is also the date of the Tower Hamlets do which Tommy has promised is going to be a ‘bloodbath.’ Yes, but for who?

The EDL have been invited to a Peterborough mosque to discuss issues but we will not be holding our breath. The EDL will not publicly debate with muslims for 3 reasons: that many of the EDL’s arguments are flawed and do not stand up to scrutiny; that the leadership have no one left who is articulate enough to debate in public; and they are unable to distinguish between moderate Muslims and the tiny percentage of Islamic extremists in the UK – as demonstrated by them singing ‘Mohammed /Allah is a pedo’ and assuming ‘moderate Muslims’ will not mind. So all in all a pretty terrible couple of weeks for the EDL: Norway, the Jewish division problems, numerous fallouts, being slagged in Parliament by Mr Dave and ever diminishing demos. Shame. See you on the 3rd!

Malatesta's Blog

Tower Hamlets: why the EDL march should be banned

For many weeks a broad alliance of Tower Hamlets politicians and others has been pressing for a planned march through the borough by the English Defence League to be banned: a recent letter to [the] Guardian seeking this goal was signed by the borough's independent mayor Lutfur Rahman, his opposition Labour group leader Josh Peck, Liberal Democrat councillor Stephanie Eaton, Jewish Council for Racial Equality director Edie Friedman and the borough's two MPs Jim Fitzpatrick and Rushanara Ali; a letter to Home Secretary Theresa May asking her to stop the march was signed by Rahman and supported by local authority leaders from across England, prominent trade unionists, a variety of Jewish and Muslim leaders (including the chair of Whitechapel's London Muslim Centre), the Canary Wharf group, London Citizens and the secretary of the Southern and Eastern TUC LGBT network.

Rushanara Ali raised the matter with David Cameron during last week's Commons debate about the recent riots. There are rational fears that the already incendiary potential of such a march, set for 3 September, could be heightened by any residue of the violent atmosphere that has so recently disfigured London's streets and the discovery that the extremist Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was an admirer of the EDL.

The driving purpose of the EDL is to intimidate Muslims, and, of course, many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets. The letter to May claimed that the EDL plans to "target one of the largest mosques in the country" - a reference to the East London Mosque - and to incite hatred and division. There can be little doubt that any such action by the EDL would greatly foment tensions, risk leading to the street clashes EDL supporters (and some others) crave and leave a poisonous legacy.

The Home Secretary's response will be strongly influenced by the view of the Metropolitan Police. On Friday she prevented an EDL march through Telford planned for the weekend, though a "static meeting" was still held in the town. One consideration for the Met is likely to be whether a static meeting or demonstration would represent a greater threat to public order than one that moves through an area and is then gone.

Another must surely be that with uneasy calm restored in the capital another outbreak of disorder is even more undesirable than usual, no matter how confident senior officers may be of containing it. More prosaic matters, such as the size of London's police overtime bill at a time of budget constraints or the fact that many officers must be very tired, might come into the reckoning too.

I agree with those who think the march should be banned for all the reasons they give and in particular because of the message a ban would send to local people. It would show that the authorities are on the side of those striving to preserve and enhance the largely good community relations in a poor and diverse borough that has suffered from simplistic media mischaracterisations and unwelcome provocations. For example, the East London Mosque and lesbian and gay groups have been engaged in delicate negotiations following the appearance of hate stickers declaring "gay-free" zones in the name of Allah.

The politics of Tower Hamlets, both in the Town Hall and the wider community, are immensely complex and sometimes fractious. The display of unity against the EDL march in these volatile times is something the government and the Met should nourish by acting to stop the march from taking place.

Dave Hill's London Blog

BNP's opposition to AV exploited by Yes campaigners

BNP leader Nick Griffin is the surprise poster boy for the Yes to AV campaign

Voters keen to distance themselves from the far right are courted by advocates of voting reform

It's that time of the political season when everyone agrees with Nick. But which one?

A year ago, the phrase was coined by Gordon Brown and David Cameron to align themselves with Nick Clegg during the leaders' television debates. Twelve months on, the Liberal Democrats' leader's plunge in popularity means his image has been appropriated by opponents of his plan to adopt the alternative vote for electing MPs.

Now a new Nick has entered the fray. Mr Griffin, the leader of the British National Party and political hate figure, is to feature in a series of posters for the Yes campaign highlighting the BNP's opposition to AV.

The billboards have aligned Mr Griffin with David Cameron, who last week launched his strongest attack yet on replacing first past the post with AV. He said the system of ranking candidates in order of preference was "crazy" and "undemocratic".

The decision to place Mr Griffin at the centre of the next stage of the Yes campaign came after research suggested the BNP's opposition to AV produced overwhelming support for reform. Katie Ghose, chair of the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, said: "We have been speaking to voters across the country. The minute they hear that Nick Griffin is campaigning for a No vote they say Yes. Griffin is voting No and encouraging BNP supporters to do the same. He knows his party has no future with AV."

But the image appeared to be at odds with the politician-free campaign launch yesterday in central London. Instead, comedian Eddie Izzard, writer Rowan Davis, gold medal winner Kriss Akabusi, journalist Martin Bell and fashion designer Amisha Ghadiali lined up to explain why AV would stop MPs from becoming complacent. Greg Dyke, former BBC director-general, said: "Once nominated, you've got a job for life, which is why we've got rather average politicians. AV will begin to change that." More than 100 rallies were held across the country.

Writing in The Independent on Sunday, Mr Clegg hails the vote as an example of long-held Lib Dem policies which are "becoming reality". He adds: "Electoral reform had felt like an unattainable goal for decades: now voters are being given their first chance ever to get rid of the broken system that helped produce the expenses scandal."

The referendum takes place on 5 May, with both sides anxious about the level of public awareness. Under AV, voters rank candidates in order of preference. Those performing least well are eliminated in reverse order with their votes distributed to others until one candidate has 50 per cent of the support.

However, Mr Clegg once described AV as a "miserable little compromise" because it is it not a proportional system. According to a YouGov poll of 2,391 people carried out last week, 19 per cent of people want to see a proportional voting system – STV – while only 16 per cent backed AV.

Lord Alton, a former Lib Dem MP backing the No to AV, Yes to PR campaign, said: "Rejecting AV will make bringing in real reform more likely. If the wrong change is made now, it will be years before the debate will be reopened."

IoS

Are Muslims free to follow Islam in Canary Wharf?

“If a person doesn’t know how to drive properly and crashes his car, it’s not the car’s fault. If people are practising religion in the incorrect way, that’s not the fault of the religion.”

So says Viqas Sheikh, a global treasury senior business analyst who has been working at Citi for five-and-a-half years. For him there is familiar ring to the words spoken by David Cameron in Munich recently.

“It’s simply a regurgitation of what Tony Blair and others have said – it’s nothing new,” he says. “The dangerous thing is the debate that he made about multiculturalism and the relationship he’s drawing to extremist ideology. It is a show of confusion on behalf of the government. They blame it on multiculturalism, but the deep-rooted problem is something else.”

Viqas, 29, was born in the UK and lived in Pakistan between the ages of 10 and 18, before returning here to complete university. He considers himself a British Muslim.

“I don’t think the two [British and Muslim] are incompatible. Then there’s the terms moderate or extremist – I’m neither, I’m a Muslim.”

Author, journalist and former Docklands columnist Kia Abdullah also falls outside this simple binary split of Islam.

“I’m what I call a liberal Muslim,” says Kia. “I don’t wear a headscarf or pray five times a day but at the same time I dress relatively modestly, I don’t drink alcohol or eat haram (forbidden) food and I’m quite conservative when it comes to things like promiscuity.”

She shares Viqas’ sense of concern about the Prime Minister’s sentiments.

“It made me feel deeply uncomfortable,” she adds. “He made some valid points about integration, but criticising multiculturalism as a root cause of forced marriage and radicalisation was ignorant and fatuous.

“Britain is known for respecting private freedoms – freedom to wear what you want, say what you want, live where you want, be who you want. Hindering these freedoms to create a nation of ‘vanilla flavoured’ people is not going to solve our problems. We need better integration, yes, but vilifying multiculturalism will not achieve it.”

Viqas, who did not want to be photographed, says there are no such tensions in his Canary Wharf workplace.

“A lot of companies have a facility for prayer [multi-faith rooms] or provision for halal food. And when you have that facility to be able to fulfil the obligations to be a Muslim – beyond that there shouldn’t be any other hardship in one’s day-to-day life. We make sure there is communication between the faiths and there isn’t that gap, which can give rise to animosity.”

While Viqas’ workplace may be harmonious, he’s aware that things don’t always run so cohesively.

“We don’t have it at Citi, but I do mix with a wide range of people throughout the City who feel that, on the basis of their faith, they have been discriminated against. It may well be that are considered high maintenance or their belief system is considered contrary.”

In the workplace Kia says she has not faced discrimination head-on either.

“I think ‘discrimination’ is too strong a word,” she says. “It’s far more subtle than that. When I worked in a management consultancy, I made most of my contacts by networking at after-work drinks at the local watering hole.

“If I didn’t feel comfortable in this type of environment – and many of my Muslim friends don’t – then my career would certainly have been hindered. I would not suggest that these meetings take place elsewhere, because they are part of British work culture, but I think that companies need to recognise that people from certain demographics are at a disadvantage.”

Viqas does not attend after-work drinks because of his beliefs, but he doesn’t consider this puts him at a disadvantage compared with colleagues.

“I don’t go to bars, and my colleagues respect that – you don’t have to take that extra step,” he says. “There are a number of Muslims in the UK who don’t think the way they live their lives is contrary to anything in the British value system. You won’t necessarily go to the pub on the weekend, but is that absolutely essential to being British?”

Kia believes the majority or Brits are tolerant of these differences and questions Baroness Warsi’s assertion that prejudice against Muslims has passed the ‘dinner-table test’.

“I’m not sure I agree with Baroness Warsi,” she says. “I think there are two main groups that carry prejudice against Muslims: those that identify with the EDL and BNP, and those at the other end of the spectrum who are very privileged and super-educated but who may not have any daily contact with Muslims and hence view them as a frightening entity of ‘other’. I don’t think these groups constitute the majority in this country – or at least I hope they don’t.”

Viqas asserts that problems can stem from a tendency for people to want to “formulate a genre of Muslim”.

“There’s a standard I have to follow in Islam; and I’m not going to change that for the convenience of other people. I don’t want to have impressed on me what I have to believe in – and that’s what David Cameron also did in the speech. It’s patronising.”

The Docklands

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Flirting with a bad agenda

The Munich address, in which British Prime Minister David Cameron set his face against ‘multi-culturalism’ and condemned aggressive separatism among British Muslims, was ringingly endorsed by the right-wing columnist Charles Moore. What people needed to grasp, Moore indicated in the Daily Telegraph, was that radical Islam is not just threatening to take control in Egypt. Portraying London as the world capital of Muslim agitators and propagandists, he impressed upon his readers that hegemonic Islamism is also a grave domestic issue.

Even as Moore and Cameron were thus expressing themselves, 3000 members of the far right English Defence League were demonstrating in Luton, the British town that has become identified with Muslim extremists since the occasion two years ago when a Muslim group publicly abused British soldiers who marched through the town following service in Afghanistan, and which more recently was in the news when it emerged that the Stockholm suicide bomber, Taimour Abdul Wahab, had lived there.

Both Moore and Cameron are Conservative Party products of Eton, the venerable educational bastion of the British elite. Last weekend, it seemed as if Eton was making common cause with the British street in a new crusade. Certainly, Cameron’s speech, given as it was at high profile conference on national security and coinciding with one of the biggest anti-Muslim demonstrations Britain has seen, could only lend weight to the EDL’s claim that Islam bothers the British way of life. EDL members are rejoicing that the British prime minister agrees with them. Cameron took care to stress that he was discussing twisted interpretations of Islam. Yet most British people will scarcely trouble themselves over the nuances of his remarks, any more than they will bother their heads with the complexities of the debate about culture and identity raging in the higher reaches of the British media. They will simply conclude it is now official that Britain recklessly allowed itself to become a breeding ground for Muslim fanatics.

Ever since the 7/11 London bombings of 2005, there has been a growing sense that Muslims are Britain’s ‘enemy within’. Cameron’s speech has hugely enhanced the credibility of popular perceptions that Britain is at the mercy of extremists who are determined to Islamise Britain and who are fundamentally hostile to women, gay people and Jews. It must be said that in sharp contrast to the traditional far right, the EDL claims to embrace representatives of all those groups, and there is no cause to doubt it.

In Munich, Cameron was speaking the same language as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has herself denounced multi-culturalism and who presides over a country where xenophobia is resurgent. He was also removing any lingering doubt that his government is soft on Islamism.

Only a month ago, the chairperson of the Conservative Party, the Muslim lawyer Sayeeda Warsi, made a speech warning about the violence that could flow from the rising respectability of Islamophobia in Britain. Warsi’s speech is certain have irked ministerial colleagues of Cameron’s such as Michael Gove, the neo-conservative ideologue who obsesses about the threat posed by radical Islam to Western democracy in general and to Israel in particular. Though Warsi has felt obliged to defend Cameron’s speech, it is hard to believe she is not privately dismayed by it. The fact is that it has utterly eclipsed her message, while leaving Muslims feeling more acutely than ever that they are seen by the rest of Britain as a security problem, guilty until proved innocent.

In many ways, David Cameron was simply reiterating the views of Tony Blair, the British leader who led Britain into two wars against Muslim countries and who has for years wasted no opportunity to denounce radical Islam as the greatest challenge that Britain faces. None of this is to say that extremists are not a genuine cause for alarm in Britain - or that criticism of multi-culturalism is entirely gratuitous.

Yet it is equally cause for concern that the British government has exploited radical Islam for its own cynical purposes. The evidence is overwhelming that, in order to win public support for attacking Iraq, the Blair government gave credence to a mendacious story that Algerian Islamists in north London were manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. In the days before Cameron’s speech, the Guardian published letters wondering if the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War was going to raise questions about the 2003 ‘ricin plot’ 
that never was.

The spectre of Muslims as the ‘enemy within’ has proved a great asset to Britain’s rulers. It has helped to distract attention from the way Israel and its supporters have been indulged by British governments and from unconditional British support of a US foreign policy that is meant to enhance British security yet which has in reality undermined it.

As Cameron assailed multi-culturalism, people all over Britain were protesting against the prospective wholesale closure of public libraries. For Cameron and the free marketeers who dominate his Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government, libraries — along with many other public services — appear eminently expendable. Cameron’s talk of creating a ‘Big Society’, with everybody an active citizen, is coming to be regarded as a mask for an austerity programme far more stringent than Britain’s public finances, however straightened, really justify. As his government decimates state provision, Cameron, for all his trumpeted concern with social cohesion, is in the process of turning Britain into an even more fragmented country than it already is.

Britain’s Muslims are being targeted as scapegoats for the social disarray precipitated by an old Etonian with a suave manner and a hidden agenda.

Neil Berry is a London-based commentator

Khaleej Times

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Q: When does a tabloid become crude propaganda? A: When it starts printing it

The Daily Star patronises its readers by repeatedly publishing lies

Tory chairman Baroness Warsi recently complained that Islamophobic chatter had become acceptable at dinner parties. I hate to break it to you, Baroness, but if they're saying anti-Islamic stuff while you're sitting at the table, imagine what they come out with when you nip off to the loo.

A few weeks later, David Cameron delivered his speech on multiculturalism, and Warsi's notional dinner-mates doubtless nodded in agreement, even though the very word "multiculturalism" has so many definitions it almost requires translation. It's not black and white. Which is ironic.

As a result it was possible to draw almost any conclusion from Cameron's speech, from "segregation is unhelpful" to "send 'em back". Cameron is many things – including an android, probably – but a racist he is not.

So he was doubtless dismayed that his speech went down well with the BNP's Nick Griffin, who interpreted it as a "huge leap for our ideas into the political mainstream". When I read that, my sense of hope took a huge leap into a shit-filled dustbin.

The speech was also welcomed by Tommy Robinson of the English Defence League – and Stephen Lennon of the English Defence League. Who are both the same person, Robinson being Lennon's pseudonym. Mr Robinson-Lennon claims he's opposed only to extremist Muslims, not moderate ones, although how he hopes to tell them apart when he seems unsure of his own name is anyone's guess.

But then certain elements of the EDL seem confused by names in general. Several of them have been heard chanting "Allah, Allah, who the fuck is Allah?" If they don't know who he is, perhaps they ought to read that book they want to ban.

Robinson-Lennon recently appeared on Newsnight, up against Paxman. Not a classic battle of wits, but nonetheless the EDL's man came out on top: while middle-class viewers may have chortled at Robinson-Lennon's relative inarticulacy, others may have seen a member of the establishment sneering at a working-class white guy. Admittedly, Paxman sneers at everybody; he can't catch sight of his own reflection in the back of a spoon without asking who the fuck he thinks he is. But it reinforces the view that the white working classes are marginalised and looked down on by the media.

Not the entire media, mind. Some tabloids do little more but speak up for the white working classes – the Daily Star in particular. Which would be great, if the Daily Star didn't patronise its readers by repeatedly publishing lies.

Sometimes they're daft lies. Take the lie about the company behind Grand Theft Auto planning a game called Grand Theft Rothbury, inspired by the Raoul Moat saga. "We made no attempt to check the accuracy of the story before publication . . . We apologise for publishing a mock-up of the game cover, our own comments on the matter and soliciting critical comments from a grieving family member," read part of the paper's subsequent grovelling apology.

Sometimes they're visual lies. Take the time it Photoshopped a bald scalp and headscarf on to an image of Jade Goody in a wedding dress, to make it look as though she'd posed for the picture during chemotherapy.

Sometimes the lies appear on its front page, in a way that might alter a reader's view of Muslims. When not furiously recounting whichever grotesquely offensive stunt professional button-pushing irritant Anjem Choudary's come up with this week – stories which are not lies – it gets worked up over other "Muslim outrages" with little or no basis in fact. Take the story "MUSLIM-ONLY PUBLIC LOOS: Council wastes YOUR money on hole-in-the-ground toilets". Weeks after that appeared, the Star admitted that "the loos may be used by non-Muslims and were paid for by the developer".

And sometimes it doesn't quite lie, but misrepresents by omission. Take the story on 8 February "WE'LL STAND UP AND FIGHT FOR BRITAIN'S BRAVE WAR HEROES", in which it is reported that "The English Defence League is planning a huge march after two Muslim councillors snubbed a British war hero given the George Cross". It refers to an incident in Birmingham where two Respect party councillors remained seated while more than 100 other politicians gave a soldier a standing ovation. Nowhere in the article does the Star mention that there were many other Muslim councillors (Tory, LibDem and Labour) present at the same event – all of whom did stand and applaud.

In other words, the Daily Star is either grossly irresponsible in its sloppy representation of the facts, or engaging in overt anti-Muslim propaganda.

Who can blame a reader who, after reading such a skewed version of events, is gripped with anti- Muslim fervour?

On the same page was a phone poll: DO YOU AGREE WITH THE EDL POLICIES? 98% of the respondents did. If I read the Star every day, and believed it, I'd join the EDL too.

Not that you have to be a dedicated reader to be exposed to its influence. Just pop into WH Smith's. There they are, those headlines, the steady drip-drip-drip: MUSLIM-ONLY LOOS and BBC PUTS MUSLIMS BEFORE YOU and MUSLIM SICKOS' MADDIE KIDNAP SHOCK (No, I haven't made that one up). Drip drip drip. Bullshit or exaggeration masquerading as fact. And to what aim?

On 9 February the Star ran a front-page headline claiming ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE TO BECOME POLITICAL PARTY. Even that turned out to be dubious – their leader had merely said "we aren't ruling it out". Inside, another phone poll asked whether readers would vote for the EDL. 99% said yes.

Do they believe what they read in the Daily Star?

I believe this is a wonderful country. All of it. The people are inherently decent and fair-minded. All of them. We should resist crude attempts at division, wherever they come from. Because we deserve better. All of us.

Charlie Brooker in The Guardian

Clumsy Cameron gets it wrong in the quest to create a new social cohesion

As part of a research project a couple of years ago, I spent some time in Northern Ireland interviewing members of the Orange Order about how they understood issues of citizenship, identity and community. In a cold Orange Hall in Armagh one Saturday morning, I held a focus group with a group of brethren who clinically exposed the fault-lines of Gordon Brown's Britishness narrative. One lodge member's contribution stood out though, highlighting the pitfalls of political leaders' attempts to promote a common citizenship and national identity within a plural, multi-national state.

When asked to define Britishness, he responded: "It's like nailing jelly to the wall. It is an idea that's out there – it's not defined and that is part of its strength. And it is not defined because if you define it then people will find something that they will react against."

David Cameron's speech in Germany on the failure of multiculturalism showed that the Prime Minister has not yet learnt to master nailing jelly to the wall either. There was little new in a speech which emphasised the muddled thinking within the coalition on this sensitive issue. Cameron has consistently criticised the failure of the state to encourage integration of Muslims in particular since becoming leader of the Conservative Party. It is ironic however that although Cameron derided Gordon Brown for promoting Britishness, he drew on a similar framework that prioritises British values to encourage specific communities to integrate. Moreover, his denigration of state multiculturalism was out of date. Government policy has for some time sought to build social cohesion through the development of intra-community initiatives.

His critique also lacked any evidential foundations – most surveys suggest the majority of Muslims and other ethnic minority communities subscribe to some form of British identity and the values that inform our democracy.

It also highlighted the paucity of original thinking on such issues within the coalition. The few vague policy proposals posited were reheated from the previous Labour government. There is little new about "making sure that immigrants speak the language of their new home and ensuring that people are educated in the elements of a common culture and curriculum".

The faith of politicians in the mercurial properties of school history to inculcate a common British identity and issues of extremism is misguided. There is little evidence to support the idea that school history alone effectively inculcates of a common British national culture and identity in schools or that it will somehow preclude many of the global causes of extremism. All of the 7/7 bombers were taught some form of British history during their time at school but this did not stop them from turning to extremist violence.

Cameron clearly does not understand that identity politics in the UK are often divisive and politically unrewarding. Such speeches may be grounded in genuine concern about social cohesion and potential of violent extremism. But they often merely feed bigotry for those who seek to conflate extremist Islam and Islam as a religion.

Focusing on the Islamic extremists (as well others) on a day when the English Defence League was holding its largest ever demonstration was, at best, short-sighted.

His linking of extremism with immigration potentially re-demonises the Muslim community at a time when tensions were slowly subsiding. Support for the BNP has fragmented recently and the EDL remains peripheral to mainstream politics. Moreover Cameron appears to be contradicting Sayeeda Warsi, the Tory chairman, who argued recently that Islamophobia was still rife in British society. Conservative thinking on this important issue is clearly divided.

Cameron also overlooks the impact of the spending cuts. As the state withdraws, it is unlikely that the Big Society will provide opportunities for inter-community participation. With fewer common community resources such as libraries, many communities in all likelihood fall back on established networks that emphasise segregation.

The extent to which a two-month period of National Citizen Service will have the capacity to redress years of racism, segregation and other forms of social exclusion is unclear, particularly as the scheme will involve such small numbers of young people. Government cuts to other youth initiatives will have a much greater detrimental effect on the ability of young people from different communities to interact and thus foster understanding and shared appreciation of our multicultural society.

Perhaps the weakest element of Cameron's argument is his claim that pro-democracy demonstrators in Tunis and Cairo were motivated by an ascription to Western values. This is deeply flawed and somewhat colonial, discarding the possibility that the actions of those seeking reform in either country were a product of their own national circumstances or values.

It also highlights Cameron's myopic view that the reformed democracies in the Middle East will be founded on Western liberal democracy.

Cameron's concerns are genuine and there is a need for British society to continue to negotiate what are our shared values are and how we build connected multicultural communities. But his speech was ill-judged, poorly-timed and indicates a lack of political maturity.

Moreover, it ultimately contradicted his own thesis that a common Britishness is developmental, organic and should not be manipulated by the state. It will do little more than stimulate inter-community tensions without providing any sustainable solutions to the issues of violent extremism in this country.

Dr Andrew Mycock is a politics lecturer at the University of Huddersfield.

Yorkshire Post

Calls for Cameron to ban EDL as they announce Birmingham protest

The English Defence League (EDL) has announced a demonstration in the city next month – prompting a city councillor to call on the Prime Minister to ban the group.

Coun Tariq Khan (Lib Dem, Washwood Heath) said Mr Cameron should target all forms of extremism including the EDL.

Following a protest in Luton on Saturday, the group announced on its Facebook page a demonstration in Birmingham on March 19. Its last demo in the city in August 2009 erupted into violence as members clashed with those from anti-fascist groups.

Coun Khan said the police, local authorities and the government should put a stop to the movement once and for all for the sake of community cohesion. He said: “The authorities need to put their foot down and say enough is enough. They (the EDL) are a bunch of trouble makers who have nothing better to do.’’

Mr Cameron caused controversy on Saturday when he criticised state multiculturalism and signalled a tough stance on Islamic extremism. Coun Kan said: ‘‘David Cameron said it’s time to clamp down on Islamic extremism. I say, clamp down on the EDL. Let’s have some consistency.’’

Mr Cameron’s comments came as the EDL held a major demonstration in Luton, prompting accusations that he was playing into the hands of the far-right by targetting Islamic extremists.

Birmingham Mail

David Cameron boards the EDL bandwagon

Bungling David Cameron was last night accused of “stoking the fires” of race hate just hours before a thuggish far right march.

The Prime Minister pledged to make Britain “a lot less” tolerant towards Islamic extremists who whip up hatred against the West. But the Tory leader was slammed by religious leaders for “vilifying” Muslims and boosting support for the far-right English Defence League who saw thousands of supporters gather for a hate-filled rally yesterday in Luton, Beds.

Tensions simmered as around 3,000 EDL members marched through the town, which was largely boarded up and ­barricaded by police for the event. Around 1,000 officers from 14 different forces monitored the protest in an operation that cost more than £800,000. There were skirmishes during the march, 19 people were treated for injuries and police said eight people werearrested, “mostly for possession of offensive weapons and assault”.

EDL leader Stephen Lennon, 26, told the Daily Star Sunday: “It is no coincidence Cameron made this speech the day the EDL held its biggest-ever march. We are a phenomenon and we have support in every town and city. For the past two years we have been highlighting the evils of militant Islam and the effect it has on our country. And we are getting more support. Cameron’s seen this tide turning against these extremists living in our towns and has jumped on the bandwagon. But he’s a politician and is all talk. He doesn’t care. And he is wrong. Multi- culturalism does work in this country. Christians, blacks, Polish, Jews, Sikhs, and people from every other background in the world live in harmony here. It’s those who follow militant Islam that cannot live side by side with us.”

Later Sabby Dhalu, from Muslim pressure group One Society Many Cultures, slammed Mr Cameron saying: “Vilifying Muslim communities on the day when they are being targeted by the EDL in Luton could not be more grotesque.”

Among the crowd, chants of: “We want our country back”, “Muslim bombers off our streets” and “No surrender to the Taliban” rang out along the parade route. One protester calling himself Dave, from Wolverhampton, said: “We want these Islam ­extremists and terrorists out. You can take your mosques and f**k off.”

The parade was led by 30 women EDL members in a bid to show people the group is not just made up of thugs.

Just 200 yards away from the EDL protests, local Muslims demonstrated against the far-right group. Imran Khan, 26, said: “If police weren’t here and the EDL came on to our streets we’d join together and fight them. And EDL blood will be spilled.”

Hundreds of United Against Fascism members also staged a protest. Sadiq Khan, 40, Shadow Justice Secretary, said ahead of the Prime Minister’s speech in Munich that he was “writing propaganda for the EDL”.

But Conservative Party chairman Baroness Warsi, 39, hit back and said: “For Sadiq Khan to smear the Prime Minister as a right-wing extremist is outrageous and irresponsible.”

Sunday Star

I don't know whats worse - a paedo or a BNP teacher

Tory leader David Cameron's pledge to change the law should he become Prime Minister to ensure that members of the racist British National Party are unable to become teachers, is a vote winner for black parents like myself. The surprise, as the head of the teacher's union the NASUWT told me the other day, is that it was a Tory leader and not a Labour prime minister who took the stand.

It wasn't that hard getting Cameron's vow. All I did was ask him whether he would allow any of his children to be taught by school staff who not only negated their existence, but denied their rights to citizenship. Responding to my question at his 'meet the black folk' hustings in south London recently, the Tory leader took a few moments of rhetoric before realising that he had to make that promise there and then because gathered around him were the great and the good of the black middle-classes.

The black middle-classes are the very people he needs to attract to beat Prime Minister Brown at the polls. And for the middle-classes the issue of who your children are taught by, is of paramount importance.

BNP members are banned from joining the police force, the military and the prison service. The idea that they would be acceptable in schools suggests that we protect prisoner's rights against racists better than we protect school children. All children, white or non-white, need to be protected from racists - in the just the same as they are protected from paedophiles. And I don’t know which is worst a BNP or a paedophile teacher.

Labour don't get it. They don't get why a black parent would take such an extreme view. They don't understand that when you make sacrifices for your children's education that it is demoralising to hear the Labour Education Secretary Ed Balls, capitulate to the recommendation by a former chief inspector of schools that it is okay for the BNP to be teachers. That has lost Labour mine and other black votes. Which black parent is going to vote for a political party which says we'll let racists teach your kids?

Mr Balls, would you allow your children to be taught by someone who negates their very existence and denies their rights to citizenship? We need to know before May 6. And after that we need to make sure that Cameron doesn't back down from his promise if he is the incumbent at 10 Downing Street.

VOICE Online

Heads should be able to fire BNP teachers, says David Cameron

Tory leader's attempt to reach out to black voters continues at event in south-east London

The Conservatives would take steps to prevent British National party members becoming teachers, David Cameron said last night. The Tory leader made the pledge at an event in Peckham, south-east London, where he was attempting to reach out to black voters. He said being a member of the BNP and a teacher was "completely incompatible" and headteachers should be given more rights when it came to hiring and firing staff. Ministers last week ruled out banning members of the BNP from the teaching profession.

Cameron, who spent more than an hour taking questions, received the loudest applause of the evening when he said: "Any good headteacher would not have a member of the BNP within a hundred miles of a school. They should be able to fire someone for that reason."

The Tory leader also pledged to stop police using terrorism laws to search people not suspected of terror-related offences. He told those gathered at the Harris Academy that he did not believe people voted on issues that only affected their own race.

"I generally believe in a one-nation Conservative party, a one-nation Britain," he said. But he acknowledged that "for a long time" there were reasons why black people would hold back from supporting the Conservative party.

"Because they would say, 'OK, you stand for one nation. But I don't see other people like me in your party.' If you look at black Britain today, the Conservative party have come a long way," the Tory leader said. He added that the Tories had taken a "huge step" forward.

The event followed an article by Cameron published in the Guardian yesterday in which he pledged to help black people start businesses. One audience member noted that Cameron had ventured into Harriet Harman's constituency in coming to the academy. "No bulletproof vest," the Conservative leader quipped in reference to an occasion when the Labour deputy leader toured Peckham in body armour.

Questions from the floor varied from the NHS and carers to stop-and-search and immigration. Cameron received a warm reception for most of his answers but was heckled by one man at the end.

"You're no Tony Blair, mate," the man shouted.

"I'm glad I'm not," Cameron retorted.

Guardian

Special Appeal: The David Loony Fighting Fund!

Fellow Patriots;

The time has come, as a party of GREAT BRITISH PATRIOTS, to come to the aid of one of our number!

Mr DAVID LOONY, who stood as a candidate for Suffolk in the recent European election (that I WON), has been arrested and committed to trial on various TRUMPED – UP CHARGES by the LIBLABCON ELITE, following orders issued from the SECRET BUNKER of the CHIEF MARXIST RABBLEROUSER HIMSELF, David Cameron.

I have met the charming Mr Loony on several occasions. He has his eccentricities (he once introduced me to “my wife and my sister” - and there was only one woman there!), but they're GREAT, BRITISH eccentricities!

Mr Loony has, for many years, lived a quiet, simple life of farming, with his meagre income supplemented by a small business constructing and exporting fine, handcrafted, BRITISH, guillotines, gibbets, gallows and electric chairs to many of our most respected Commonwealth neighbours – Rhodesia, Liberia and Somalia among them.

HOW, I ask you, can this LOVEABLE, BIG – HEARTED, GREAT BRITISH PATRIOT, be harassed and hounded THROUGH THE COURTS, for doing NO MORE than holding A LOVE OF NATION within his STOUT YEOMAN HEART?!

That, and pursuing a HARMLESS PASTIME of collecting “firearms”.

Since WHEN, I ask you, has a gallows – manufacturing Suffolk farmer with a small collection of unregistered pistols, rifles and shotguns constituted a threat to ANYONE?!

The fact that Mr Loony also enjoys passing his time in the construction of ENTIRELY HARMLESS, NOVELTY, EXPLOSIVE DEVICES merely serves to underline the VICIOUS VICTIMISATION he is being subjected to!

In order to fight this, we need your money.

NOW!!

We need to raise SEVERAL THOUSAND POUNDS in order to pay for the finest legal defence – there are some cases that EVEN THE GREAT LEE BARNES LLB HONS would find difficult!

Send your money NOW to the “David Loony Fighting Fund”.

Make cheques payable to me, as it'll save time.

And I FAITHFULLY PLEDGE that we won't drop him like a hot spud if it all goes pear-shaped.

From the brilliant Not the blog of Nick Griffin MEP

Politics could be banned from Wyre's facilities

Political parties could be banned from using Wyre Council's public facilities after a British National Party rally sparked public protests.

Wyre Council leader, Russell Forsyth, says the authority was powerless to stop the BNP meeting, held at the Frank Townend centre in Cleveleys last month. The meeting, held before the Jubilee by-election, saw more than 60 people launch a furious protest outside the venue.

Council bosses say they had to approve the use of the public building for the meeting.

Coun Forsyth, said: "Much as one might fundamentally oppose the aims of the BNP, the booking was accepted on the basis that it was a private meeting. The council's conditions for hire do not currently exclude any particular individual, party or organisation from using facilities. There is also a right for any election candidate to use public facilities. Any refusal to the BNP could have been superseded by the right of the candidate to hold a meeting anyway."

All party action has now been called for on the issue.

Coun Forsyth raised the possibility of taking action to prevent all political parties from using public facilities but said doing would stop visits like a recent trip to the borough from Tory leader David Cameron, who held a public meeting at the Marine Hall in Fleetwood. Margaret Thatcher also visited Wyre and held a public meeting during her time in power.

"Naturally, following the protests that came because of that meeting, we must do something," Coun Forsyth said.

"But we have to be aware that if we take action against one particular party action against all political parties using public facilities. I feel we should look very carefully at this situation prior to the general election."

Coun Forsyth pledged any future action on the situation would be decided by "the many and not the few" indicating he wanted the issue to be decided on a cross-party basis and not the council's cabinet.

The BNP defended its use of the hall as it is a legitimate political party.

Blackpool Gazette

Global anti-Semitism demands a united response

The recent desecration of a Jewish cemetery in south Ottawa should be a wake-up call. The beast of anti-Semitism is back.

In Europe, politicians who deny the Holocaust or trivialize the massacre of Jews are elected to the European Parliament. The Swedish left-wing paper, Aftonbladet, recently published an article claiming that Israeli soldiers kidnap and kill Palestinians to extract and sell their organs. This is the blood libel first put into circulation in the middle ages in England by anti-Jewish priests.

Another of the old anti-Semitic stereotypes is that of the secret cabal or lobby manipulating events behind the scenes to the profit and interest of Jews. A U.S.-based website called "Uncle Semite" has just published a 19-volume "catalogue of Jewish names" with 220,000 listed so that they can be sent anti-Semitic e-mails.

In Britain, the leader of the anti-Jewish [British] National Party has been elected to the European Parliament. There, alongside openly anti-Semitic MEPs from Hungary, France, Belgium and Italy, he enjoys parliamentary immunities and lavish allowances and expenses to spend peddling his poison.

Or take the Hungarian MP, Oszkar Molnar, who speaks for the main opposition party, Fidez. He said Hungary was under threat from "global capital -- Jewish capital if you like -- which wants to devour the entire world, especially Hungary." His party is set to win power next year and his anti-Jewish remarks have been defended by the party leadership.

Then there are the difficulties of Britain's Conservative Party. Its leader, David Cameron supports Israel and is a sincere friend of Britain's Jewish community. But his hardline anti-EU associates have made an alliance in Europe with oddball Latvian politicians who celebrate the Waffen SS conscripts from Latvia despite the widespread massacres of Jews in the country during the war. British members of the European Parliament are led by a Polish politician, Michal Kaminski, who was formerly a member of a neo-Nazi party as a young man and has said Jews should apologize for killing Poles in the Second World War.

It is as if Europe's nerve-endings on anti-Semitism have atrophied and a new tolerance of what a few years ago was politics beyond the pale is now the norm. At the same time global anti-Semitism has the endorsement of state leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and is propagated throughout Europe by a network of Wahabi mosques and preachers financed by Saudi Arabia. Egypt recently tried to install its Culture Minister, Farouk Hosni, as head of Unesco despite his call to burn Israeli books at Cairo University. He was defeated but only by a handful of votes and nation after nation at Unesco were ready to vote for a man with his record as the UN's education and culture supreme.

Dislike of Israel has permitted dislike of Jews to become tolerated politics again. Of course to criticize Israel is not anti-Semitic. But Jews in Canada, Britain or elsewhere in the world should not be made to feel that their beliefs and affinities can face a new anti-Semitism when other forms of racism are combatted.

That is why the initiative of the Canadian Parliament to set up its own commission of inquiry into anti-Semitism, which will begin hearings today, is to be welcomed.

I have the honour of representing the British House of Commons after I chaired a similar commission of inquiry which reported in 2006. There was no doubt after our evidence sessions and visits outside of London that British Jews faced levels of anti-Semitic pressure that was not acceptable in a modern democracy. Girls frightened to wear a Star of David chain, boys jostled on their way home from school if they sported a kippa were minor incidents, if frightening enough for students. Worse were the attacks on rabbis or Hasidic students and the organized network of anti-Semitic Islamist ideologues making university life a misery for Jewish students if they did not bow to the anti-Israel hate of Hamas and Hezbollah.

Now is time for a fightback. Government departments, editors, university leaders, diplomats and all decent politicians have to wake up to the return of organized anti-Semitism in too many of the world's democracies. Canada is showing a lead in North America but the struggle against 21st-century anti-Semitism has to be global or it will fail.

Denis MacShane, a British MP, was No. 2 at the Foreign Office under Tony Blair. He chaired the British House of Commons Commission of Inquiry into Anti-Semitism. He will be talking about his new book "Globalising Hatred: the new Antisemitism" in Ottawa and Toronto.

Denis MacShane
Ottawa Citizen

Kaminski admits wearing 'fascist' symbol

Michal KaminskI, the Polish MEP at the centre of the controversy over David Cameron’s European alliances has admitted he wore the symbol of a totalitarion group, claims he had previously denied.

In an interview with the JC, Mr Kaminski was asked if he had ever said he was proud to wear the Chrobry Sword [pictured, left], the symbol of the National Radical Camp (ONR). Formed in 1934, the extreme rightwing, nationalist ONR- Falanga was largely a student movement, but practised violent anti-Semitism including attacks on Jewish students, buildings and businesses, organised boycotts of Jewish businesses and attacks on left wing groups. The group used the medieval symbol of the Mieczyk Chrobrego – the Chrobry sword. Mr KaminskI categorically denied knowledge of wearing the Chrobry sword symbol.

He told the JC: “No, I never wear it. I don’t even know which symbol you are referring to.”

But Mr KaminskI later issued a clarification, where he admitted he had worn the badge. He said: "I did wear the sword, which was used around a millennia ago to crown Polish Kings, on my lapel on occasions. After 1989 it was used as one of the symbols of the Christian National Union and many Conservative politicians would wear it, including politicians now in the Civic Platform.

“In recent years it has been taken as a symbol by the Far Right. Although it is not the same, there are similarities with how the BNP in Britain has taken the Union Jack as their symbol. When I felt the symbol started having this meaning I stopped wearing it and I asked the rest of my party to stop too.”

He added: “I acknowledge that it is possible that my pronunciation was unclear, so I am happy to clarify his position on this controversial symbol."

JC

Cameron's unsavoury European ally

The Polish MEP Michał Kamiński is an antisemite, homophobe and nationalist. But David Cameron is courting him

Michał Kamiński, the Polish MEP and leader of the European Conservative and Reformist grouping in the European parliament, has been invited to attend the Conservative party conference. His opposition to the Lisbon treaty has led British Conservative MEPs to view him, and the Law and Order Party (PiS) that he represents, as natural allies.

But the picture is far from simple. In eastern Europe the road from communism to democracy has been a difficult one. While it has brought freedom, that freedom has at times meant the freedom to hate. Kamiński has impeccable anti-communist credentials. He has experience both as a parliamentarian and adviser to the Polish president. He has an equally strong record as an antisemite, homophobe and Polish nationalist. His politics fit as easily into the Polish as they do into the European context. He is at ease with both constituencies.

In the last years of communism in the 1980s, Kamiński belonged to the Narodowe Odrodzenie Polski (National Rebirth of Poland – NOP), a youth nationalist organisation that took as its inspiration the ideology of Roman Dmowski. At the same time, NOP declared its ideological proximity to the Falanga, a fascist youth organisation established under the umbrella of the National Democratic movement in the late 1930s. Dmowski and the Falanga were committed to a Polish state on racial principles, where the Jewish community would not have a place.

During the first years after the fall of communism, NOP openly proclaimed its determination to establish a national state. In its fight against the perceived evils of western influence, NOP mobilised skinhead groups that became notorious for attacking leftwing parties and the opposition. In the 1990s Kamiński moved on to became a deputy for the Nationalist Christian ZChN party. More recently, he has assumed the role of presidential advisor, since he is believed to be a smooth and well-connected operator in the Polish and European political scenes.

Fortunately for those who are trying to understand the man, he has left a good record of his political activism. A consistent element of his pronouncements has been his desire to defend Poland's interests against its enemies and critics. In 2001, when the leftwing president Aleksander Kwaśniewski made an official apology for atrocities committed by Poles against Jews in the town of Jedwabne in 1941, Kamiński made a public declaration in defence of those who felt that Poles had nothing to feel ashamed of. Likewise, his electoral call for "Poland for Poles" could have only one meaning in the Polish context: that non-Catholics had no place in post-communist Poland. In 2005, Kamiński publicly used a particularly vulgar phrase to describe homosexuals when interviewed on television about the then mayor of Warsaw's refusal to give permission for a gay pride march.

When Kamiński wants to be seen as a European statesman, his earlier pronouncements are quoted against him. His response has been to refuse to engage with his critics. The reason for this disdain lies in his confidence that what he has said – and the values to which he very likely still subscribes – cannot injure his political base in Poland. In a country where no politician, clergyman or activist has been prosecuted for antisemitic pronouncements, even though these are neither few nor discreet, what Kamiński has to say on the Jewish question is widely condoned. To the horror of those Poles who had hoped for a process of reconciliation between Jews and non-Jews after the debates on Jedwabne, an attempt was made last year to prosecute Jan Gross, the author of a book about Jedwabne and a more recent book on antisemitism after the war, for slandering Poland.

Tolerance of sexual diversity, meanwhile, is not something most Poles understand or want to understand. Since sexuality is seen through the prism of the Polish woman's duty to bear children for the nation, the rights of individuals and pleas for tolerance fall on deaf ears. Kamiński's contempt for homosexuals is matched by the contempt of the ruling Polish centre-right for women and their right to assert control over their bodies.

If Kamiński is made to feel politically comfortable in Strasbourg and at the Conservative party conference, it will confirm his conviction that good use can be made of him and the Polish PiS grouping because of their opposition to the Lisbon treaty. Kamiński's friends have previously threatened to refuse to co-operate with other conservatives when Kamiński was not elected as vice-president of the European parliament for the Conservative and Reformist bloc. If they withdrew now, the bloc would be very close to dissolution, because parliamentary rules require a grouping to bring together MEPs from 7 countries.

Kamiński's previous visit to the United Kingdom was in 1999, when he led a delegation to comfort General Pinochet, pending his extradition to Spain. Kamiński gave the ailing general a replica of the Black Madonna icon. Both men were apparently deeply moved and Kamiński declared this to be the most uplifting moment of his entire life. One wonders if his meeting with David Cameron will have the same impact.

Comment is free

Lee Barnes talks bollocks again

Yes, I know he always talks bollocks and that it's hardly original to have a go at the BNP's pet lunatic trainee lawyer, but on this occasion Barnes seems to have excelled himself. What has him foaming at the mouth on this occasion is the news that the Conservative Party has received a pile of readies from billionaire Alan Howard.

Actually, it's not such an enormous amount for the hedge-fund billionaire, considering that last year his charitable trust spent £1.6m on holocaust education and other bits and pieces - certainly less than £50,000 spread over more than two years - so we're wondering what all the fuss is about. If it ain't the money, presumably it's the fact that this particular billionaire is Jewish, which has annoyed Barnes so much that he has almost overdosed on the vitriol. The title of the piece says it all really.

'Zionist Capitalist Buys the Conservative Party'

Presumably, Barnes has to point out that Howard is Jewish to stop any anti-semitic waverers in the BNP moving to the Tories as they sense a Cameron victory in the offing at the General Election next year. We've heard on a number of occasions that Griffin and the band of idiots that run the party are getting increasingly nervous at the idea of the Conservatives forming a government, seeing a lot of the less ideologically sound recent intake of members defecting in droves to a party that might actually have some real power and that may have some idea of how to use it.

That the nerves are showing is clear. When agitated, Barnes does what all frightened idiots do - he starts hurling crude and almost incoherent abuse. For newer readers, it's worth bearing in mind that Lee Barnes is the acknowledged legal spokesman for the BNP, a party that claims it is the height of morality, integrity and sanity.

'Looks like the old whore Cameron will be dropping his britches, poking his arse into the air, smearing vaseline on his ring bit and then smiling whilst he takes it up the Gary Glitter for Israel.'

Lovely. We've had cause to note Barnes' deep interest in gay sex before and have naturally wondered if he is in fact gay. Not that we care but his party prefers to keep the gay imagery hidden away where it can't frighten the horses rather than posting it on a publicy-accessible blog. However, the ever-egomaniacal Barnes puts us right via a post in the comments section at Harry's Place.

'I prefer to remain distant sex god to the gayers, an everest yet to be climbed, an inaccesible icon of male sexuality, the source of constant lust to both sexes due to my unattainability.'

Yeah, whatever you say, Lee, you fruitloop.