Tag: restore-britain

Farage Not Welcome!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

Here’s my weekly comment column sent to the Plymouth Herald for publication on 20th October – the same day as Nigel Farage was speaking to 300 loyal RUKs at Plymouth’s arena (which holds 2,500!),  My article was sent to lawyers and declined – only the second time I’ve been cut in a full three years of weekly columns. The Herald published pages of interview with Farage, allowing his bile full publicity. The question is why? I will not fall into conspiracy theories and editorial alliances, but instead observe that local newspapers are extremely afraid of litigation, probably because of cost rather than reputational damage, used as a tool by those with power to bully and cajole. Ironically the UK press is probably more constrained than in the USA. Of course, with 85% of all media owned by billionaires, there’s little chance of either unbiased or objective investigative journalism. I have raised the simple issue of the lack of space for any commentary or statements to the Left of the Labour Party, leaving all socialist commentary and ideas strictly curtailed if not invisible. Yet socialists number in our millions here, and socialist movements across the USA and Europe are growing is scale and activity very fast. Given Britain’s political history its more than ironic, isn’t it, and a signal of an increasingly authoritarian right wing society. We must protest, and we did on the day!

I’ve added below a similar comment, probably defamatory by comparison with mine, published in London by an associate, as an example of the differences in editorial control. And a picture of our 100+ people protest outside the Farage rally. Anyway, here’s the unpublished article. See what you think.

The moment you believe that every criticism is a lie, that each alternative view is nonsense, that every allegation is false, all rational inquiry is gone. Such is the closed mind of the bigot.

The bigot is obstinate and unreasoning, laid rigid in a coffin of narrow-minded opinion, buried by intolerance.

Racism is a form of bigotry. Racism is the opinion that humans can be divided into separate races with human traits and capacities that produce inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism is an idea with no scientific fact to back it up. Politicians use racism, so-called “anti-woke” bigotry, sexism and prejudice to bolster their personal power and control.

Racism is having a renaissance, being made respectable by political groups furthering their own self-interest by spreading fear and loathing of “others”. For example, the idea that some human beings are “illegal” is broadcast so loudly that it is being stated as “fact”.

No human being is illegal. Those attacking “the illegals” are focussed upon people arriving on boats without a visa or prior agreement to enter the UK. The Law says the process is illegal, not the person.

The person risking a small boat to get into Britain is seeking asylum from conditions they faced elsewhere that, frankly, anyone with ability would seek to flee from. You would. But, unlike most other countries – States who have taken-in and accepted far more asylum seekers than has Britain – there is no legal route here for a person to claim asylum before they are in the country.

The Tories passed the Nationality and Borders Act in 2022, stating that if a person is in danger in their country of origin or residence and want the UK to grant them international protection, they can only claim asylum once they are in the UK. It is not possible to claim asylum from outside the UK. Most people in peril have no choice but to enter the UK without permission. There is no legal route.

Any reasonable human being would agree that the law should be changed in order to allow asylum seekers a “safe route” to apply. This would end the flow of boats and the business of those profiteering from human suffering and death by drowning.

Instead, the chancers and ideologues of the far-Right are using the situation they themselves have created to win power and influence and personal wealth. It is no coincidence that most of the prominent Tory MPs who pushed that law back in 2022 are now prominent members of Reform UK. They created the “enemy” around which they could organise reactionary opinion, hoping to regain the votes the Tories lost through their avarice and incompetence when in government.

These established racists have produced a false demon that they cannot easily control. The fascist gangs are on the streets. All Farage can do is up-the-racism! Farage’s party is intensifying the bigotry as it faces more competition from the fascist parties, promising the end of asylum altogether. Restore Britain, Rupert Lowe’s far-Right breakaway from Reform UK, is soaking up votes from Farage by promoting hatred of Muslims and Black people.

The racist Reform candidates displayed on ITV, screaming to deport all Asian people from Britain and training up white men to drag Muslims from their homes are competing with Restore Britain for credentials as the true British Fascists. The fascist street thugs, the Blackshirt bigots are baying for blood. They must be exposed and put down.

Nigel Farage is in-league with them, challenging for leadership of an authoritarian establishment based upon white male supremacy. He should not be welcome in Plymouth!


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Fascists Use Democracy to End Democracy

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (8.9.26), calling for mobilisation against the far-Right racists and fascists. Plymouth now has two elected Councillors representing Restore Britain. They have to be challenged. And the thugs have called a march and rally in Plymouth Hoe on Saturday 19th September – they have to be stopped! Stand Up To Racism, while you still can.

My full article below or expand the picture to read the edited version in print.

We haven’t forgotten fascism. There are routine reminders in this newspaper of the blanket bombing of Plymouth and the heroism of the fight that defeated fascism in the Second World War. Yet now we have two councillors who proclaim themselves members of a fascist party they were not elected to, sat in Plymouth’s Council House. They mimic the racist policies of Hitler and his Nazis.

Restore Britain is a fascist party. The two councillors were not voted-in as fascists but have now declared their true colours, exposing the deceit. Restore Britain is an ethno-nationalist racist party and they know it! Their call for “remigration” – a euphemism for the expulsion of all non-white people – is a racist threat illegal at Law.

The black clad thugs blocking roads in Dover and Portsmouth last weekend are intent on banning the Islamic burqa and niqab whilst themselves wearing full head coverings and masks. The Islamophobia of Restore UK and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka “Tommy Robinson” and his associate Daniel Thoms – aka “Danny Tommo” – are front and centre, whipping-up lies about Muslim invasion and refugees as sexual abusers.

Refugees arriving in boats are a tiny fraction at 0.29% of the population compared with the 70 million people living in Britain, and impossible to be responsible for the low level of wages or the crisis in our Housing, NHS and Education. But the powerlessness of the refugee makes them an easy scapegoat. The fascists are the real threat.

Make no mistake. The “Tommies” are out for power and control. They use fear in their political propaganda and street violence to build support for extreme responses to made-up threats. These are not people who believe in “live and let live”. They are people with pretensions that they have the right, the privilege and the entitlement to tell others how they should live and who they should be. They believe it is they who should determine our beliefs, both political and faith, the relationships we are allowed and identities that must be proscribed.

The majority of us don’t want to be ruled by a militaristic fascist State machine. But times change, the global economic darkening towards deepening war, fuel disruption and price hikes, food shortages caused by climate change and a predictable global banking crash as the AI Bubble bursts are making us fearful, seeking safety. If there is a fascist party in place with its street boot boys terrorising all opposition, the People may acquiesce.

Under fascism the working class will receive nothing but pain. The far-Right financiers and paid-for politicians will censor all talk of opposition and omit to speak of the neighbourhood atrocities perpetrated by the politically empowered criminal street gangs. It’s happening already. And the Police, already institutionally riddled with right-wing culture, will facilitate the Black Shirts just as they did for Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930’s.

The Public Order Act 1936 was designed to stop extremists like Oswald Mosleys Union of Fascists “Blackshirts”. The Act makes it illegal in the UK to wear a uniform in a public place or meeting to show support for a political organisation. Why do police mass in force and the government use all their powers to arrest and incarcerate Just Stop Oil protesters demanding climate action while a paramilitary force terrorise our towns and go home unchecked?

Why won’t authorities or journalists call it out the fascists for what they are? Name it! Because they’re scared? Because they know the fascists use brutal, illegal force and intimidation against their enemies. The entire political class is looking to appease the far-right, not condemn them. This mistaken appeasement – the idea that fascism is a passing aberration – is precisely what allowed Hitler to gain power in the 1930’s.

The far-right extremist AfD has won a majority in East Germany. They are fascists. Their success is largely due to the failure of the Left to address the economic pain experienced by the working class. Fascism is the political management of capitalism through a dictatorial leader, centralised autocracy, exclusive party organisation enforcing ultranationalist militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

Fascism uses democracy to demolish democracy. But this is not a repeat of the twentieth century. Fascism today is a far more class-centric movement organised to sure up the ideology of Capitalism and the power of the super-rich at the expense of everyone else in a period of global economic crisis. Fascism favours the well-off middle classes but offers the working class nothing. Once the Blackshirts have smashed dissent the new fascist rulers will quash them on behalf of the transnational corporations.

The billionaire, Elon Musk, himself ready to use Hitler’s Nazi fascist salute publicly, funds both Restore’s fascist leader Rupert Lowe and the fascist Tommy Robinson. Indeed, the tech billionaires from Peter Thiel to Curtis Yarvin are widely recognised as Techno-fascists, arguing for the end of democracy in favour of a technocratic rich elite running society worldwide.

The global crisis of capitalism is seeing fascism funded as the System’s saviour. Those conned by its promises of salvation will ultimately be disappointed. But it is vital that we rise-up to ensure the defeat of fascism before it can take hold. The Trades Union Congress in the South West supports the organisations of Stand Up To Racism and the Together Alliance against the far-Right to rid our streets and political chambers of the fascist menace. Join us.

The fascists from outside the city are invading Plymouth Hoe on September 19th – they must be stopped.

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Racism is Whipped-up on Purpose to Divide Us

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly published Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (4.8.26), responding to the previous day’s outrageous press conference staged by Reform UK detailing the use of naval warships to prevent refugees crossing the English Channel “by all means possible”. They had the audacity to invoke the European Human Rights Charter in defence of their proposed military challenge to asylum seekers, all the while pledging to delete human rights laws the moment they gain office. RUK must be stopped! Prior to their announcement I had planned to publish commemoration of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and the peril we face with continued nuclear proliferation and threats. We have a stall on Saturday 8th challenging the nuclear weapons manufacturer, Babcock, in Plymouth City Centre (Armada Way Piazza, 11-2pm). But that has to wait – the immediate challenge to the far-Right has to remain paramount. Expose the threat of fascist rule.

The full text below, or expand the pic for the published version (much the same):

There can be no such thing as an illegal human being. Our individual actions may break a nation’s laws, and different countries have different laws, making The Law different from universal human conditions. But no-one can be called “an illegal”. 

Those who choose to label others as illegals are dehumanising the person and devaluing life. It suits those who seek power and privilege and status in the pecking order of class society. Creating division through proffering privilege and entitlement does a job for class rule. Identifying a group as unworthy, undeserving or illegitimate has been an overused and ancient ploy of those seeking or wielding power.

So calling refugees “illegals” has a big job to do for the far-Right everywhere. Trump deploys his power through his ICE thugs kicking down doors to seize “illegals” from their beds or workplaces. The neo-Nazi AfD in Germany organise street gangs to burn migrants homes. The far-Right nationalists, Reassemblement National, rabble-rouses for xenophobia and antisemitism. Spanish fascist groups smash-up migrant meeting places. 

In Britain, Reform UK and their fascist breakaway, Restore Britain, utilises all the lessons from the far-Right across the globe to build hatred and division here, targeting Black people seeking refuge by undertaking one of the ostensible perilous sea journeys across the English Channel. 

On the surface, “Stop the Boats” is a very sensible suggestion. No-one should need to risk their life to reach safety. And no-one should profit from another person’s misfortune. But the boat campaign is a cover for ultra-nationalism, white-supremacy and racism. 

The call of reform UK for a “Fortress Britain”, pledging to launch ‘the biggest military operation in the Channel since World War Two’ to end migrant crossings. They picture British warships capsizing small boats and dumping survivors back on “foreign” shores. Engaging the UK military against Africans and Asians is designed to evoke a mythical and fanatical patriotism from a British Empire that was always questioned and can never exist again. 

In truth, they seek power for themselves by blaming and scapegoating the most powerless and stateless of human beings for all the ills of the society. 

Be clear, an immigrant is someone who has crossed a border and can still go home in safety if they choose. A refugee is someone who has crossed a border because home is no longer safe at all. Asylum seekers are simply refugees waiting for that truth to be recognised on paper. 

Confusing, misnaming or bad-mouthing these categories is a purposeful and deceitful lie with the intention of “othering” the “foreigner” and people-of-colour in its broadest racist incarnation. It is the tip of the ice-berg of propaganda aimed at putting a white-supremacist government into power to protect big business and the billionaire financiers of this bile.

The people on boats are homeless and stateless. Those seeking refuge come mainly from countries where UK-based corporations have sold arms for the wars over extraction of fossil fuels or rare metals, wars that have pulverised entire regions. And they escape regions rendered no longer habitable for human communities because of the climate catastrophe scorching and deluging their lands with floods and famine. Should we expect them simply to die, presumably because we view them as lesser humans, inferior to us?

Let them in! Refugees are Welcome Here! 

Britain can afford to help. Our NHS is not in crisis because of migrants – it depends upon them. Our housing is not in crisis because of migrants – rents and mortgages are too high and property speculators only invest in high short-term returns. Our water is not overpriced and rivers wholly polluted because of migration – it’s the avarice of private shareholders! Our low wages are not caused by immigration – Capitalist, large and small, always seek to pay the least to gain the most private income from their business.  

Racism is whipped-up intentionally to divide the working class one from the other and prevent collective opposition to the profiteering, landlordism and exploitation of the ruling class. We should not be fooled. Trade unions will openly expose and challenge racist and fascist organisations targeting Plymouth.

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