Revenge is sweet

We received a small — but unusual — donation at the NSS this week. It was inside a card that announced on the front: “The Michael Young Fund”. The Fund was apparently established to disburse a small sum of money left by the late Michael Young who died in August 2000, shortly after his 100th birthday.

The message inside the card said: “He was not a good man – quite the opposite. He was strongly anti-Semitic, had a deep-rooted distaste for coloured people, who he feared would pollute the white races, propagated a mean-spirited and unforgiving interpretation of Christianity.

“He paraded these beliefs under the banner of patriotism, was a founder member of the League of Empire Loyalists and claimed, with pride, that he tipped a bucket of offal over Jomo Kenyatta, at that time President of Kenya, a member of the Commonwealth. He corresponded with, and supported financially, Lady Birdwood and John Tyndall of the British National Party as well as various fringe religious movements. He wrote a number of poisonous pamphlets.

“He was wholly self-centred, had no interest in anything beyond his Bible studies and preparation of his meals, neither read a newspaper nor stirred out of his house for the last 10 years of his life. It is hard to find any redeeming feature in the man.

“So, it seemed a nice idea to pass a little of the money he left to some of the individuals and small organisations who try to do some good in the world, and, where possible, to ones he would have disapproved of.”

His ‘mean-spirited and unforgiving interpretation of Christianity’ as well as his political affiliations mean he would have been horrified that any of his money should go to the National Secular Society.

On the back of the card, there is an explanation of how the Fund works: “If you like the idea of making small grants to decent people but don't want to set up your own fund, email a request for some of these cards to anthony@evelynwilliams.com. You can use them yourself or ask us to post on your ‘grant’ if you want to remain anonymous.”

What an excellent and classy way to take revenge on a nasty old man. It's almost enough to make you wish there was an afterlife so his ghost could watch and be tormented by what is being done in his name. That would really be hell.

The National Secular Society

BNP scabbed on the miners

British National Party attempts to befriend the mining communities are in sharp contrast to their attitude during the miners' strike. Then, the racist BNP not only refused to back the strike but called for a return to work and even demanded the Army be brought in to deal with the pickets.

Even worse, a former BNP parliamentary candidate in Yorkshire once led a shadowy group that funded scab miners during the 1984 strike. The Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood (pictured) ran Self-Help, a right-wing pressure group dedicated to smashing trade unions. She went on to stand for the BNP in a general election in Dewsbury in the 1990s.

Birdwood was a life-long racist but she was better known for her rabid antisemitism. Her hatred of Jewish people, who she believed were trying to take over the world, got her prosecuted twice. Her far-right politics led her into alliances with Second World War Nazi collaborators, including people who had fought in the SS. The SS was the organisation that ran the concentration and death camps and carried out the worst Nazi atrocities.

Birdwood saw the miners' strike as a communist plot to take over the country and she set out to break it. She felt that Thatcher was too soft on the miners.

Documents obtained by Searchlight reveal how she set about to smash the strike. Soon after the strike started her group tried to prosecute Arthur Scargill, the miners' leader, for sedition, inciting violence and intimidation of working miners. They were even advised by a leading barrister to hire private detectives to spy on the NUM.

Gathering the evidence was a lengthy and costly business. To speed up the process they decided to buy into a small private mine and seek a confrontation with striking miners. Birdwood found many mine owners willing to help.

"So far we have eleven mine owners ready to negotiate," she gleefully told her supporters in July 1984. Once in control of a pit the group were going to take the NUM to court and seize its funds.

Birdwood eventually bought a share in a Durham mine but she was quickly overtaken by events as others had begun legal action to sequestrate the union's funds. That did not stop Birdwood and she went on to back several other legal actions.

"We are promoting and assisting a number of new applications to the courts for further injunctions, including the action by 16 supporters of the National Working Miners' Committee," her group boasted to supporters in December 1984.

This was not the first time Self Help had backed the Working Miners' Committee.

With the strike nearly over she reflected on a job well done. "By backing Silver Birch's Working Miners Committee we have played some part in the court actions against the NUM."

Birdwood also boasted of putting "certain proposals to the Working Miners' Committee which we hope will lead to them taking the necessary legal action with our financial and political support" to remove Scargill from the leadership of the NUM. However, she was always keen for Self-Help's role to be kept secret.

Birdwood's hatred of the NUM was shared by John Tyndall, then the BNP leader. He even suggested bringing in the Army to deal with striking Yorkshire miners. Even Nick Griffin, who was then in the National Front, has proved time and again that he is no friend of the trade unions and the miners in particular.

Twenty-five years on, the memory of the strike still burns strong. The miners were fighting for their jobs, their children and their communities. The BNP is now trying to gain support in the former mining communities but back in 1984, when it really mattered, it was doing everything it could to undermine the strike.

HOPE not hate

BBC won't remove anti-semitic posting

The BBC is refusing to remove a provocative and anti-Semitic message posted on one of its message boards despite a barrage of complaints. The message was posted on the BBC Radio Web site message board following a discussion about a television program on anti-Semitism that screened on the UK's Channel Four network last week. The offensive message, left by someone using the alias "Iron Naz," reads: "Zionism is a racist ideology where jews [sic] are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud. There is a law called Baba Mezia which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews. Many pro jewish supporters will cringe at this being exposed because they know it exists, yet they keep quiet about it, hey frip, jla and co [the aliases of other people taking part in the discussion]. The Law of Baba Mezia!! Tsk tsk tsk! It's in the Talmud." A number of Jewish community members, including a community organization, appealed to the BBC to remove the posting. They all received a standard response: "We have decided that it does not contravene the House Rules and are going to leave it on the site..."

A BBC Radio spokesman told The Jerusalem Post: "The Radio Five Live message board is a forum of debate and people can express their views, some of which others will strongly disagree with. The complaint was brought to the attention of our moderators who looked into the issue and concluded that the post was not one that merited removal from the site as it was not felt to have breached the message board house rules. A guide to the house rules is found on the Five Live message board. Posts that are removed include ones that are considered likely to disrupt, provoke attack or offend others or are considered racist, homophobic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable." "The BBC obviously no longer recognizes anti-Semitism even when it slaps it in the face," said Mark Gardiner, head of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST), an organization that ensures the safety and security of the Jewish community and monitors anti-Semitic incidents in the UK. "The BBC is a public body, funded by the British tax payer. It has legal obligations and we will pursue them." Gardiner added: "It is bad enough that it is up to readers to police what the BBC publish on their own Web sites, but it is far sadder that this public body should actively refuse to remove the filth, and give no explanation for their actions - or perhaps the BBC agree with the essential element of the posting, that Zionism is a racist ideology where Jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths."

Anti-Semitic attacks using the Talmud were the basis of the classic anti-Semitic publication entitled The Talmud Unmasked, written at the end of the 19th century by Father Justin Praniatis. The anti-Semitic Russian Catholic priest gave evidence at the infamous Menahem Mendel Beilis blood libel trial in Kiev in 1913. Praniatis argued that the Talmud advocated ritual murder, but he was shown by Jewish and Christian scholars to be a charlatan with no knowledge of the Talmud. While Beilis was found innocent, the influence of Praniatis's work has spread beyond Imperial Russia. Today, The Talmud Unmasked is distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers via the Internet. It gained a brief surge of publicity in the UK in the early 1990s as part of a series of anti-Semitic mass mailings led by the notorious dowager Lady Jane Birdwood. She was eventually convicted in 1994 of distributing "threatening, abusive and insulting material" on account of an anti-Semitic compendium, The Longest Hatred, the contents of which included the Talmud material.

Jerusalem Post