Government launches “Immigrants, go home” campaign
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Hrothgar wrote:The 'game' or 'test' is ridiculous and thoroughly disingenuous. It does not present racial categories and is deliberately designed to confuse people and, in doing so, undermine any sense of racial identity in the minds of the suggestible.
Sorry you didn't find it useful to identity who your grandchildren should and should not be allowed to play with and later choose as sexual partners. The good news is that they will probably make up their own minds, as they should. The last laugh will be on you.
Steve Colborn,Could you tell me where in the public record I can find the documents that will tell me how Tony Benn set up the SPG while he was Postmaster General; or how he used the SPG to snatch strikers while he was Secretary of State for Industry or Energy? I would think not. However, you would be able to find documents in the public record showing Thatcher ordering her ministers to unleash the forces of the state on the miners; or of pursuing economic policies, questionable even within the narrow confines of orthodox bourgeois economic theory, which she knew would create mass unemployment and probably very little else.Benn for you is the same as Thatcher because of the system they were both a part of. That is a perfectly legitimate position to take. It’s a rather blunt analysis, and not one particularly well designed to influence the opinions of others (something I thought we, as socialists, should be eager to do), but fair enough. However, making Benn the personification of a particularly skewed and factually flawed history of the post-war Labour Party so that you can cite “evidence” of him being equal to Thatcher is either lazy or intellectually dishonest. By the way, your question about my political affiliations didn’t upset me at all. I just didn’t really see what relevance it bore to the subject of my post. I am an autonomist by inclination, and somebody struggling to find common ground between post-Marx Marxist theory and the history of working class practice by intellectual predilection.
I can refer you to when Benn deployed armed police against pickets around 1976/77. Under Harold Wilson powers were introducd to provide a separate Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary [now the Civil Nuclear Constabulary] with arms. There's about 650 of them, still carrying guns.Benn was then the energy minister in charge of nuclear power and there was an unofficial strike at Windscale. "The Civil Contingencies Unit at the Cabinet Office had prepared a plan "to break the strike with troops, thus leaving Tony Benn as a sort of latter-day Churchill" (The Times, 29 May 1980).He justified his actions in terms of "national security".But i agree with you. Comparing someone to Hitler should not be taken lightlysee blog posthttp://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/09/hitler-lives.html
Listen right dweenlander. You are entitled to your freedom of speech but you are just a complete idiot. Of course Benn is the same as Thatcher, I have given you clear evidence with both shutting down coal mines in the interests of the capitalist class but to the detriment of the working class. You seriously think someone such as Blair is not as bad as Hitler, wow you have a lot to learn. So starting a war in Iraq killing over a million innocent people isn't bad. You are an idiot, shame on you and saying the stuff you have said you have blood on your hands. You are just a bullshit opportunist who supports reformism as it benefits the opportunist scum like yourself. killing over a million people is as bad as killing 11 million people, as killing anyone who is innocent is bad let alone 5 people or 5 million people.
In the Labour Government of 1974–1979 Benn was in the Cabinet, initially as Secretary of State for Industry, before being made Secretary of State for Energy. Are you seriously trying to say that good old Tony shared no responsibility for the anti working class actions of the Labour government? Maybe he fell asleep when these issues were being discussed! or perhaps was reading War and Peace?In the Labour government of 64/70 he served as Postmaster General then as Minister of technology. Are you saying that during this time, he was not complicit in the closure of over 200 pits? Quite a few in the area I live in, County Durham.During the Miners strike of 84, which I spent some time on the picket line, coming from a town, Seaham, which had 3 pits within 1 square mile, I never heard of Benn exhorting his party to come out fully on the side of the miners, nor use his position as a Labour Grandee, to appear in the media, to counter the anti miner propaganda of the Tories or the capitalist media, both TV and print.I am not making Benn the personification of anything, what I am trying to do, is show to people on the left, that Benn was not the affable friend of the workers they and he, seem to be purporting him to be. Steve Colborn.
Thanks for that alanjjohnstone. Indeed it was Benn who had piloted through parliament the legislation arming that constabulary. The instance referred to in The Times was a combination of ministerial ineptitude and civil service machinations. Benn was prevailed upon to use armed units to get liquid nitrogen across the picket line as the power plant was in danger of melt-down. Rather than checking with non-civil service sources, he swallowed what turned out to be a lie and sent in armed units. While your point is well made, he’s still not exactly Thatcher.As to Alex Woodrow, I’m afraid I really don’t know how to engage with such juvenile ranting from a comrade. You are entitled to your opinion, and to the tone in which you choose to express it; but I would urge you to grow up: red-faced invective is neither big nor clever. Passion is great, but without intellectual engagement you just come across as a little bit of a thug.
Steve Colborn,What you appear to be doing is “trying to… show to people on the left, that Benn was not the affable friend of the workers they and he, seem to be purporting him to be” by taking actions by Labour in power for which the best you could claim for Benn was his guilt by virtue of collective cabinet responsibility. Okay, you can go down that road. I think it is intellectually and historically flawed; but okay, if that’s the argument you want to make, fine. What you actually write is that Benn is the equal of Thatcher, and you just can’t get there without making hopelessly sweeping generalizations that lose all intellectual force and coherence.This was the quickest instance I could locate of Benn’s vocal and public support for the strike taken from a speech he gave at the 1984 Militant conference at Wembley: “We meet together in the middle of a titanic and momentous struggle to defend basic trade union and democratic rights and civil liberties. For that is what the miners’ strike is all about.” He marched with miners, miners’ wives and spoke at about 300 gatherings and demonstrations, where he described Thatcher as a “brutal woman… trying to follows policies of barbarism.” His ire was also aimed at both the Labour Party and the TUC for not supporting a strike he felt could have been won.
dweenlander wrote:I would urge you to grow up: red-faced invective is neither big nor clever. Passion is great, but without intellectual engagement you just come across as a little bit of a thug.You trying to say you are better than me?
You keep stating that my words are "intellectually and historically flawed"! I disagree. Collective responsibility, is responsibility nonetheless. As Minister of Air, in the post-war Attlee government, he must have been aware of The Labour Party use of the Emergency Powers Act, which resulted in striking dockers being arrested and locked up year on year, for having the temerity to exercise their "right", to withdraw their labour. So much for WW2 being a fight for freedom and democracy.It is your opinion that my argument is flawed, historically and intellectually and that my argument is based upon wide sweeping generalisations. If that is the cul-de-sac you want to go down, that is your prerogative. If you are happy with it great. By the way, did good ole tone take part in the decision to start the development of Britain's independent nuclear deterrent? Just arskin!Steve Colborn.
dweenlander wrote:I am an autonomist by inclination, and somebody struggling to find common ground between post-Marx Marxist theory and the history of working class practice by intellectual predilection.Post-Marx Marxist theory? Sounds like an interesting subject for another, separate thread.
By the way dweenlander, you say "What you actually write is that Benn is the equal of Thatcher, and you just can’t get there without making hopelessly sweeping generalizations that lose all intellectual force and coherence." If you don't mind, I will write, what I actually write, without anyone telling me what I actually wrote, if that's alright with you! YFS Steve Colborn.
Steve Colborn,You did actually write it. That is the argument you were making. Sorry if that is inconvenient for you.
ALB,Yes, it really is. It relates primarily to the work of post-war Marxist theorists and their often dismissive attitudes towards post-war Marxist historiography which challenged their notion of a revolutionary working class. E.P Thompson’s Poverty of Theory was a particularly bad-tempered, although brilliant, jeremiad aimed at theoreticians in this debate. I am eager to move my analysis and understanding in this area forward, and I would be hugely appreciative of future discussions on this and other areas of theory with you and other comrades.
You've obviously heard of paraphrasing and that is what you have done with my words. Your paraphrasing ain't "my" words. Mere interpretation is not verbatim. The truth is oft times inconvenient, in this instant for you. YFS Steve Colborn.
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