News

UKIP unsure exactly how racist to be
A row erupted among Britain’s premier bigots after their defeat in the Stoke by election last month. Former leader Nigel Farage wanted current leader Paul Nuttall to boot out sole MP Douglas Carswell before he rejoins the Tories. Also, having been so anti-establishment for so long, Nigel was upset that he didn’t receive a knighthood. This is no time to stop organising against them, though. Farage has complained that UKIP wasn’t hardline enough over immigration.

The appointment of Cressida Dick as Metropolitan Police Commissioner will have sent shivers down the spines of many Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) Londoners. Walk past Stockwell underground station and you will understand why. Immediately to the left of the entrance is a mural with the inscription “INNOCENT Jean Charles de Menezes…Shot dead here 22.07.2005 Sadly missed”.

Right wing parties are set for victory during the upcoming parliamentary elections in the Netherlands. Geert Wilders’ far right Freedom Party (PVV) and current prime minister Mark Rutte’s conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) are leading the polls. The projected seats of the four left wing parties combined amount to just 45 out of 150 seats in the latest poll.

Alan Simpson, who has died aged 87, was half of one of the most talented and socially-perceptive comedy-writing partnerships of post-war Britain. He and Ray Galton created two of Britain’s best-loved comedy series, Hancock’s Half Hour and Steptoe and Son.

Alan Simpson was born in Brixton to a working class family, the son of a window-cleaner. He attended Mitcham grammar school but left early to work as a shipping clerk.

There is no doubt that the left were in the driving seat at Brighton and exuded a confidence and assurance born from the unexpectedly favourable election result in June and the subsequent turmoil and implosion of their Tory opponents.

It was particularly refreshing that socialist ideas were common currency and openly debated. What a change from the stage-managed PR presentations of recent years.

There have been protests by anti-racists against the election result in Germany last month. Far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) received 12.6 percent of the vote.

This gave them 94 MPs in the German pariliament. Although one, a former leader, immediately left the party and became an independent.

The MPs include Beatrix Von Storch who found infamy when she supported shooting refugees who approached the border. When defending her comments she said, “The use of firearms against children is not permitted,” but “women are a different matter.”

Students at Seoul National University (SNU), South Korea, have taken control of a campus building for more than 100 days so far against a plan to build a campus extension.

The plans are part of a speculative property development project. The students oppose it because the process has been undemocratic and the plans put making profits before the needs of students and staff.

The action takes place in a broader context of neoliberal restructuring driven by a president who is on the verge of impeachment.

Anti-fascist campaigner Esther Brunstein died last month. She was a survivor of the Holocaust.

She played an active role in the struggle against the far right, speaking at meetings, assemblies, trade unions and workplaces.

Esther was born in Lodz, Poland. She starts her chapter in a book of survivor accounts saying she came from “a very close-knit and enlightened working class family”.

Her parents were active members of the Bund, a socialist political organisation

The world was rocked by a monumental event in January. Not the initiation of the most right wing US government in decades, but the inauguration of the resistance to the sexism, racism and homophobia that Trump represents.

Around the globe 5 million people marched in 670 towns and cities, including 100,000 in London.

The last time the world saw such a scale and breadth of coordinated demonstrations was in February 2003 against the Iraq war.

In the US itself the numbers were even higher this time than they were during the anti-war movement.

1984 hits top spot
George Orwell’s classic book about a dystopian tyranny topped Amazon’s best-sellers chart shortly after members of the Trump administration started saying things like “Alternative facts” and, “Sometimes we disagree with the facts”.