Tag: ruk

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 Anyway, here’s the unpublished article.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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Bombing Iran will NOT liberate the People

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (3.3.26), damning the suggestion that bombing women liberates women, anywhere. International Women’s Day on 8th March should see a battle cry rage against Trump’s misogyny, racism, anti-Trans bile and deadly military imperialism. They’re all linked!

Bombing Iran Will Not Liberate the People!

Welfare not Warfare!

The illegal Israeli military mass-bombing of the girls’ school in Minab in the south of Iran killed at least 153 women and girls last Saturday. This cannot claim to be in the interests of the liberation of women in Iran.

The rights of Iranian people have never been on the agenda of Western powers. Women, and men in Iran have protested heroically to change their government towards women’s rights, with death their only answer. The bombing of Iran offers no solution to women’s oppression there or anywhere. War always treats women as targets.

There’s so much hypocrisy spoken about women’s rights that we should all take responsibility for calling it out. We live in a deeply sexist human world. A global system based upon individual power and control vested primarily in super-rich men. The Epstein files show how corruption and sexism are so pervasive and entrenched. Andrew represents the corruption, both financial and sexual, of unaccountable wealth. Trump symbolises white male supremacy. Women’s oppression and capitalist class society are intertwined.

The genocide in Gaza has exposed the brutality of war and the unique impact on women, famine, physical abuse and incarceration impacting menstrual health and pregnancy. We still have a long way to go to win a world free of women’s oppression.

Let’s be clear: women’s oppression encompasses all social, economic, and political spaces causing personal subjugation for simply being a woman. Its is based upon class: wealthy women whilst suffering the indignity of being considered primarily as sexual objects have sufficient agency to combat much of the oppression. They side with the class privilege of wealthy men and collude in the exploitation and oppression of other women as low-paid nannies, personal assistants and cleaners.

Most working class women’s experiences of oppression are internalised into self-blame. Interactions and relationships are all based upon sexism – the portrayal of women as objects to be used, owned and controlled permeate all aspects of women’s lives. The modern capitalist family requires women to fund the domestic budget by working as well as running the home as carer, educator, nurse, chef, bottle-washer and on-call lover.

Next weekend we celebrate International Women’s Day, March 8th, in deteriorating circumstances. The backlash against campaigns for women’s liberation is well-funded and growing. In the name of women’s rights, the far-Right now proclaim themselves the defenders of the “traditional” heterosexual family as the “natural order”, recruiting women to specific roles in political organisations, “Pink Ladies” mobilised to protest outside refugee hostels for traditional women’s roles and heterosexual family values, and to keep white children safe from Black men. Disgusting!

Farage and his Reform UK private business echoes vice President J D Vance in demanding women should have more babies, referring to Musk’s “population apocalypse” of white families in the face of migration, inter-marriage, LGBT+ parents and left-wing “wokism”. The far-Right are reawakening the fascist campaigns of last century, for “children, kitchen and Church”, opposing women’s rights and imposing a woman’s place apart from any self-determination.

International Women’s Day (IWD) has been celebrated for over 100 years, born from mass revolts of young women workers challenging exploitation and the abusive power of the Boss class. Today many companies and businesses use IWD to sell cosmetics and gimmicks to reinforce the cardboard cut-out female rather than address the issues women face.

But IWD has radical roots and is a day to remember those who have fought for women’s liberation – from the Suffragettes in the UK to the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. The women trade unionists and the men who have joined their cause remain clear-eyed – the working class have nothing to gain from women’s oppression. Free domestic labour, tasks still primarily allocated to women, protect the profits of big business not having to pay for the child care and raising of the next generation of the workforce.

And so, women are kept down. One-in-four women in Britain suffer domestic violence and abuse, often sexual, an average for a period of 6 years of their adult life. Rape in this country is lawless, only 3% of alleged cases followed through to a conviction. Child sexual abuse is reportedly on the increase again, the vast majority of cases girls abused inside the family, the majority of families being white. Sexual abuse is not the preserve of the black male refugee but the privileged white misogynist.

The cuts to social welfare, repeated and enforced in order to divert essential funding away from our health and welfare services and into war and military spending, affect women most acutely. Women’s rights depend upon a well-funded Welfare State alongside the ideological struggle for liberation from this system enforcing roles and relationships of power-and-control.

Here in Plymouth, trade unionists are fighting the cuts to health services, including stopping the closure of Plymouth’s Sexual Abuse Referral Centre, reducing the support that women and children receive following rape and abuse. You won’t see the far-Right protesting about that except as a “drain on the tax-payer” and a symbol of the “Nanny State” they want demolished.

For socialists, the challenge to class exploitation has to have the fight against oppression at its heart. We encourage and support the struggle by women against all forms of oppression, including gender stereotyping, role-segregation and being made scapegoats blamed for the imposition of low wages, high child care costs and poor social conditions. Welfare not Warfare! On this International Women’s Day we must remember the struggles of the past and unite for social justice and women’s liberation today!

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