BNP national demo in Keighley

[rebel warrior]

What to say.

How are:

John Cryer MP
Leroy Logan
Metrpolitan Black Police Association Chair
Rev W Martin Smyth MP

these days?

I am sure they are happy to know that you, Searchlight and Cumbrian Dragon are all getting on marvellously.

 

[butchersapron]

I am sure they are happy to know that you, Searchlight and Cumbrian Dragon are all getting on marvellously.

In the UAF with you then? Well i'm not a member - all the above are though.

Happy the comrade eh?

 

[butchersapron]

Come on chappy!

 

[past caring]

Damned if you do, damned if you don't... seems to be the situation.

I still say you don't have to alienate the white communities, if, as the cops reported, white men as well as Asians were charged with sex traffic/child abuse offences, why not publicise that with counter-leafletting.

Nobody seems to have bothered, that's the thing.

Both sides are now so entrenched - bearing in mind there was Hamas graffitti as long ago as 1997 in some areas... seems like it's too much of a risk politically for anyone to step up and take some stock.

Meanwhile, the BNP are convincing lower class low income white families that they're helpless, nobody wants to listen.

Maybe they're right.

Fucking shame.

A sensible post.

It's possible pk, that the police were telling the truth, that white men were involved too - although it's perhaps interesting to note that in the piece you quote no numbers are mentioned; the quote from the Mirror could be strictly "accurate" whilst out of a group of, say, fifty men, only two of them were white....

It seems to me, though, that the real problem here is that the left is unable to even countenance the possibility that the paedos were Asian, whilst their victims were white - and that anyone who is prepared to at least say it's worth examining automatically has a racist or BNP agenda. The weight of the evidence so far suggests there might be something to the BNP's claims.

To oppose the BNP demo in such circumstances - simply because it is a BNP demo - whilst at the same time doing absolutely nothing to establish the actual facts (and more importantly, having the guts to face reality and do something about it, regardless of the ethnic background of the perps) is a fucking gift to the BNP.

 

[Chuck Wilson]

The BNP are strong in West Yorkshire because there have been un-addressed issues around racism allowed to fester for year after year. As Pk said, the rumors started following the riots in 2001. The left has failed on doing consistent, effective anti-racist work in these communities. The BNP wouldn't be able to use these partially substansiated rumors to stoke publicity if that issue had been tackled.

Piss poor anlysis of why the BNP 'are strong' in West Yorkshire. Whether or not we are really at the 11th hour of the equvalent of a fascist coup in this area ( and I must say that the situation seems to worsen with every Red Hippy post) the question is why hasn't the left adopted the same community based tactics as the BNP instead of being obsessed with Iraq and globalisation. Funnily enough achieving something locally might have been more achievable that campaigning for the instant withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. Who was it that said the real enemy is at home?

 

[cockneyrebel]

I remember people on U75 saying that this was a hoax and they doubted very much that the BNP would return to the streets. I guess this means they were wrong.

It seems to me, though, that the real problem here is that the left is unable to even countenance the possibility that the paedos were Asian, whilst their victims were white - and that anyone who is prepared to at least say it's worth examining automatically has a racist or BNP agenda. The weight of the evidence so far suggests there might be something to the BNP's claims.

Say it's true, and it was mainly Asian nonces and white victims. Surely the point is to show how fucking ridiculous the BNP agenda is. What are the national statistics for child abusers? Are they disproportionate in terms of ethnicity? Because I'm sure that when I last saw them they were overwhelmingly disproportionate in terms of men, and were slightly disproportionate in terms of white men. Should this be made into a point? It's a joke. Should people start demonstrating against men because they are overwhelmingly responsible for child abuse?

If there are nonce rings going on, then that needs dealing with. But for sick fucks like the BNP to try and make out they care about this kind of issue (while their leader supported an organisation who hearded 100,000s of children into gas chambers) is, again, a joke.

The fact that people will protest against the BNP, whatever their agenda. If the BNP were protesting for more social housing, against nonces, or a better NHS, it doesn't matter. They should be exposed for what they are at every turn if possible (anti-working class fascists), and that includes having counter demonstrations.

And a genuine question for being like BA. What do you think the answer is if you write off a counter demonstration. There are AF members in Bradford and Leeds and there is an anarcho "social centre" scene. What do you think should be done? What are the AF members in the area doing to stop the growing influence of the BNP?

As far as I know the AF member on U75 who lives near the area is going to the demo.

 

[hibee]

I would counter the absolute bollocks "rebel" "warrior" is talking, but butchers and chuck have said everything I would have said far more eloquently than I could have managed.

 

[cockneyrebel]

But that's not much of an answer. Other than saying rebel warrior is talking bollox, what would you actually do? And as the AF actually has members in the area it's not like this is just a theoretical discussion.

 

[red_hippy]

But that's not much of an answer. Other than saying rebel warrior is talking bollox, what would you actually do? And as the AF actually has members in the area it's not like this is just a theoretical discussion.

No its not, and AF members in Bradford are definetley going to Keighley, spoke to one of them on tuesday.

 

[cockneyrebel]

No its not, and AF members in Bradford are definetley going to Keighley, spoke to one of them on tuesday.

You better have a word butchers. You don't want the AF to be part of the problem as well do you.

 

[Boo]

There are enough sources quoted on the thread to evidence the fact that's it's far from rumour - I've even heard the local MP admitting the problem on R4.

It seems to have escaped your notice that the BNP are strong in West Yorkshire for precisely this kind of reason - they are prepared to take up the issue (or at least be seeing to) whilst they left buries its collective head in the sand. Fucking shower.....

The BNP do not take up issues! They try to exploit them for their own gain and to try and spread their influence - which basically means a rise in racial tension, violence against asian and black people and riots. Look at Burnley - the BNP did fuck all on the council. How is 'the left' burying it's head? People have different opinions on the paedophile rumours and will have different responses - the main thing is that we stop the BNP! Like others have said on here, lots of people will want to stop the BNP stirring up trouble in their area-it bigger than 'the left'.

 

[Boo]

No, of course i don't think that - i was trying to highlight the trap that UAF and associated idiots are walking into. They'll do more damage with this stuff than the BNP could alone. Talk about isolating a community and calling it's members liars and racists (antiwhite and pro-paedo) - that's how you build against the far right is it RW?

You idiot. You are equating the BNP with white people in Keighley. It's the BNP who are liars and racists, how is that 'anti white'?

 

[red_hippy]

The BNP do not take up issues! They try to exploit them for their own gain and to try and spread their influence - which basically means a rise in racial tension, violence against asian and black people and riots.

Thank you... somebody who understands the need to actually defend the community in Keighley against the BNP, and isn't prepared to second that to stories from a Labour MP, some journo, or the fascists themselves.

 

[where to]

rebel warrior - you are falling right into their trap, hook line and sinker.

to be honest probably the thing that could be done would be to join their demonstration with a big swastika flag to discredit them.

 

[cockneyrebel]

join their demonstration with a big swastika flag to discredit them.

 

[LLETSA]

The BNP do not take up issues! They try to exploit them for their own gain and to try and spread their influence -

It is sometimes enough to be seen to be taking up issues (as PC has pointed out). That the BNP actually does very little about the issues it campaigns on can ultimately only be countered by pro-working class organisations that take up many of the same concerns and prove in practice that there are answers to these problems.

Easier said than done, but that is the only way that a grass roots alternative to the BNP can be built. Relying on 'exposing the Nazis' does not, as we have already seen, prevent the BNP's progress towards replacing the labour movement as the main political identification of a not insignificant minority of the white working class.

 

[cockneyrebel]

I agree that a significant political alternative needs to be built.

You would place your hopes in the IWCA. I'm yet to be convinced and outside Oxford and Islington the IWCA doesn't seem to have much going on. Indeed I doubt the IWCA is any bigger than Workers Power.

I'd say that a new workers party, coming out of the TUs is a better option. The conference the RMT is holding in the new year could potentially be a platform for this. However even small groups like Workers Power can have a part to play in this, and it was a Workers Power member in the RMT who was the driving force behind getting the national conference to pass a resolution saying such a conference was needed. But I'd say a national alternative is the only thing that will prove a real answer, along with doing local work.

But the left can also oppose the BNP here and now. And taking them on when they turn to street demonstrations is one way of doing this.

As said above their stance on child abuse in Keighley can easily be shown up for the sick joke that it is. As Boo points out, you can't mix up the BNP with the local white working class population, who overwhelming propably have very little time for the BNP at all.

 

[hibee]

But that's not much of an answer. Other than saying rebel warrior is talking bollox, what would you actually do? And as the AF actually has members in the area it's not like this is just a theoretical discussion.

I refer the honourable gentleman to what I said way back on this thread.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Which is? I can't work out what you're saying in terms of an alternative.

All I can see is that you're saying people are stuck in the 1930s, and street marches is not the main issue. You're not actually giving any alternatives.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

And I suppose you come face to face with fascists all the time do you Taxamo? ...do you bollocks, come up to Leeds or Bradford and have a drink in one of the pubs thats full of nazi scum, they'd chew you up and spit you out before the door could hit you on the arse.

No i try not to drink in pubs full of fascists and your right, i don't come into contact with them day to day. I'm not going into it here, i'm not trying aggrandise myself, i believe that what the UAF has planned is a) incensive to the problem if they are going to put out that leaflet that calls it a myth b) will not directly oppose the BNP march anyway. They will have a 'counter demonstratiuon elsewhere, or line up on the route of the march and chant 'nazi' at the BNP marchers and possibly some local mums.

If you think i am advocating doing nothing please send me a PM. I am advocating not making the situation worse - by telling people that what they can see is in fact a 'rascist myth'. Also if the BNP actually have mummies marching i think there are better times to counter them.

However i understand why you are angry, you are right - i do sound like an armchair man, and no, i am not from bradford or leeds - i am from london as you probably know cos... You know me. You also know i wouldn't last one slap, nay, one nipple cripple in a pub full BNP bods, and i am not saying otherwise. Please read what i have said carefully. I did not come to this position out of blind hatred of the SWP, i am well aware Wokers Power and other groups will be there.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Wokers Power

Are they a cooking group?

 

[LLETSA]

I agree that a significant political alternative needs to be built.

You would place your hopes in the IWCA. I'm yet to be convinced and outside Oxford and Islington the IWCA doesn't seem to have much going on. Indeed I doubt the IWCA is any bigger than Workers Power.

I'd say that a new workers party, coming out of the TUs is a better option. The conference the RMT is holding in the new year could potentially be a platform for this. However even small groups like Workers Power can have a part to play in this, and it was a Workers Power member in the RMT who was the driving force behind getting the national conference to pass a resolution saying such a conference was needed. But I'd say a national alternative is the only thing that will prove a real answer, along with doing local work.

But the left can also oppose the BNP here and now. And taking them on when they turn to street demonstrations is one way of doing this.

As said above their stance on child abuse in Keighley can easily be shown up for the sick joke that it is. As Boo points out, you can't mix up the BNP with the local white working class population, who overwhelming propably have very little time for the BNP at all.

The size of the IWCA is irrelevant to the argument. The importance of what the IWCA represents is in the fact that it gathers all its support among the working class, including, crucially, the very same kind of white working class voters who have little or no time for the left and are susceptible to the propaganda of the BNP. Nowhere have I said that only the IWCA could or should do this kind of work, by the way.

Talk of a new workers' party is just so much of the same old same old. The old left is dead in the water, both organisationally and ideologically. At best, it would inevitably be run by the tiny minority of bureaucrats willing to jump off the New Labour gravy train (and their numbers would dwindle if Brown gets the leadership anyway), talking the time-honoured language of the
past, hankering after a social democracy the conditions for which have disappeared. What is attractive about this to grouplets like WP is that they would be able to fulfil their role of 'exposing' these 'sell-out' leaders ( a subconcious psychological need), while going through the tired motions of 'fighting for a revolutionary platform,' or some such failed notion from the past. The beauty of the type of politics the IWCA represents is that there is no blueprint; it has the potential to develope through responding to changing conditions.

Would you say that 8000 BNP votes in the General Election is entirely insignificant, by the way? I'd say that to get that kind of support a certain chord must have been struck.

 

[cockneyrebel]

I know you are fond of talking about "the old left" but I really don't want to go over all that again.

In terms of the IWCA, its size does have some relevance. It's been around a few years now and the fact that its membership is probably around the same size as Workers Power suggests that its resonance in the working class might not be that great, to put it mildly. As does the fact that it hasn't moved outside of Oxford and Islington.

And as for the "beauty" of IWCA politics. Sorry but it's all been done before and is just as tired as any other tactic or ideology.

I know your views on a new workers party, so again there is no point going over the same old ground. I think a union like the RMT could be a catalyst for a new workers party that could gain significant support in the working class. You don't.

Anyway, it's Friday afternoon, and this has all been done before. So although I know you have your own subconscious need to rave on about the old left I really can't be bothered.

 

[LLETSA]

Say it's true, and it was mainly Asian nonces and white victims. Surely the point is to show how fucking ridiculous the BNP agenda is. What are the national statistics for child abusers? Are they disproportionate in terms of ethnicity? Because I'm sure that when I last saw them they were overwhelmingly disproportionate in terms of men, and were slightly disproportionate in terms of white men. Should this be made into a point? It's a joke. Should people start demonstrating against men because they are overwhelmingly responsible for child abuse?

This is entirely typical of what the left has become. Rather than address a given local situation, the left sticks its had in the sand and talks in generalisations. That what you are saying is true undermines this statement not at all, because, as pointed out elsewhere, the BNP have definitely struck a chord with this, and it can only be countered by sticking closely to the facts of what has been going on in Keighly.

 

[cockneyrebel]

That what you are saying is true undermines this statement not at all, because, as pointed out elsewhere, the BNP have definitely struck a chord with this, and it can only be countered by sticking closely to the facts of what has been going on in Keighly.

How do you know?

I'm sure the majority of white working class people in Keighley still think the BNP are a joke. The police will deal with child abusers in Keighley as they do with child abusers in other parts of the country. The fact that their record on dealing with this kind of crime is pretty useless is another matter.

It still comes down to the fact that the BNPs "answers" to this are a sick joke. And this should be pointed out. And where is the left, anywhere, saying that if there are child abusers in Keighley the situation shouldn't be dealt with?

Also, as with hibee, you seem to be providing very little answers as to what you think the left in Keighley should do here and now.

Do you think the BNP demonstration should just be ignored by the left?

 

[LLETSA]

I know you are fond of talking about "the old left" but I really don't want to go over all that again.

In terms of the IWCA, its size does have some relevance. It's been around a few years now and the fact that its membership is probably around the same size as Workers Power suggests that its resonance in the working class might not be that great, to put it mildly. As does the fact that it hasn't moved outside of Oxford and Islington.

And as for the "beauty" of IWCA politics. Sorry but it's all been done before and is just as tired as any other tactic or ideology.

I know your views on a new workers party, so again there is no point going over the same old ground. I think a union like the RMT could be a catalyst for a new workers party that could gain significant support in the working class.

Anyway, it's Friday afternoon, and this has all been done before. So although I know you have your own subconscious need to rave on about the old left I really can't be bothered.

So you raise a subject and then can't be bothered pursuing it? And wasn't it you who raised the subject of the IWCA, not me? Others have pointed out your trait of recycling old arguments in the hope that people will have forgotten what an arse-smacking you took the last time around. But there you go.

I haven't the time right now to go into it in any depth, but the difference between IWCA-type politics and the notion of a new workers' party is that, as said already, in the slim chance of it ever coming about, the new party would inevitably be run by bureaucrats; the far-left will no more able to gain control of it than it was in the ILP or the SLP (not that this would be a good thing anyway; the far left would wreck any sizeable organisation it ever got its hands on-its record speaks for itself.) The IWCA, and any similar organisation, on the other hand, has the advantage of being a grass roots organisation that attempts to respond to the immediate concerns of the working class people whose support it attempts to win. And while community campaigning has been done before, it has usually been those whose agenda is driven by ideological dogma; I don't think that is something the IWCA could be accused of. Rather than being sentimentally attached to past failure, it has the potential to develop with the changing situation. The bewilderment with which the far-left greets the fact that there is no IWCA programme for world transformation is only one instance of its dogmatism and inability to grasp the idea that an organisation needs to primarily address the situation it finds itself in and can change as the situation changes

As for membership, these kind of organisations are not going to arise spontaneously. This takes nothing away from the fact that where the IWCA has organised it has, as pointed out, been able to win the support of precisely that constituency so vital to the BNP. The lesson has yet to be learned, I think.

I await your customary reference to the SSP; oh no, I forgot; you can't be bothered going over old ground, can you? (Even if this is precisely what you've been doing, in this thread and others, on and off all day.)

 

[LLETSA]

I'm sure the majority of white working class people in Keighley still think the BNP are a joke.

What of the 8000 who voted for 'em? Keighley's only a small town too.

 

[cockneyrebel]

So you raise a subject and then can't be bothered pursuing it? And wasn't it you who raised the subject of the IWCA, not me? Others have pointed out your trait of recycling old arguments in the hope that people will have forgotten what an arse-smacking you took the last time around. But there you go.

I can't remember the last time I brought up the IWCA and I've hardly gone into a critique of them, just pointed out what a tiny organisation they are. On the other hand some IWCA supporters on here seem to have a worrying obsession with Workers Power. As for "arse smacking" is your subconscious kicking in again?

Have a nice weekend.

 

[LLETSA]

It still comes down to the fact that the BNPs "answers" to this are a sick joke. And this should be pointed out. And where is the left, anywhere, saying that if there are child abusers in Keighley the situation shouldn't be dealt with?

The fact that the BNP's answers are a sick joke is neither here nor there when their vote runs into the thousands.

The left is not saying that child abusers should not be dealt with; what they are doing is shying away from contemplating the possibility that some of these abusers might be Pakistanis.

 

[cockneyrebel]

The left is not saying that child abusers should not be dealt with; what they are doing is shying away from contemplating the possibility that some of these abusers might be Pakistanis.

Who is saying this? Some of the abusers might be Pakistanis. And what?

Leaving aside the tired old arguments about the tired old left you still seem very short on suggestions.

What should the left in the area do about the BNP demo? Are you saying they should just ignore it? If so, what else should be done here and now?