| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Just what are the Tories and Junior Tories doing to our borough? | |
| Posted by: | Robin Taylor | |
| Date/Time: | 03/06/09 10:41:00 |
| Phil. The fourth paragraph of your posting indicates to me (and I will choose my words carefully here) that there is a significant part of your thinking that remains unchanged from the old days. Your allegation that the Anti Nazi League received £30k as a grant from Hounslow Council was one that you made frequently in the letters pages of the Brentford Chiswick & Isleworth Times in the 1990s. It was also an allegation that was made by one Warren Glass, who stood as a BNP candidate in Heston East. (In fact, the two of you frequently seemed like a double act in terms of the propoganda that you were issuing). It hardly needs to be said that the allegation was baseless. Your claim that the ANL received this money through a 'front organisation' was also frequntly articulated by you in the Times. (The said front organisation being the Southall Monitoring Group). Yet it hardly needs to be said that the ANL and the SMG were entirely separate (one being a national body concerned with combatting the far right; the other being a local group concerned with counselling the victims of racial attacks). The two bodies did, however, hold a few joint demonstrations. I remember having a beer with my ANL colleagues in the Bulstrode pub (after one of our regular Saturday petitions in Hounslow town centre) and hearing them scream with laughter at the notion that we received £30k from the local authority. The attitude of one of them was "where is all the money we are told that we keep getting, that's what I'd like to know." Still more absurd is your claim that the money was being used by the ANL to conduct "political campaigns" on behalf of the Labour Party. Most ANL members were scathing about the Labour Party. (In fact I was the only person active in Hounslow ANL who was simultaneously a Labour member). As you know, Phil, the £30,000 you refer to was given as a grant to the SMG for the purpose of setting up and administering an emergency helpline for those suffering racial harassment. A worthy cause, surely? Well, evidently not in your eyes because you wrote to the press pouring scorn on the initiative. Let us put the timing of this into perspective. You were a member of the NF from 1977-89; and were then in the fascist ITP from 1989-91. I believe that somewhere you have referred to completely turning your back on the far right in 1991 and immediately becoming a "ferocious anti racist". Well there wasn't much sign of that in the mid-1990s when you were criticising the SMG's emergency helpline. You are wrong to suggest that those of us who were in the ANL were "to all intents and purposes ignoring the activities of the racist BNP in Hanworth, Heston and Feltham." In fact we spent most of our time in the mid-1990s combatting the BNP presence in those areas. Unfortunately, there have been examples of things that you have said and done since then (including a number of bizarre remarks made by you on this forum) which lead people to further question the sincerity of your conversion from the far right. If somebody was to ask me whether I thought you are as bad today as you were when you were in the National Front, I would answer 'No'. If, on the other hand, somebody was to ask me if I think you've completely changed since your days in the National Front, then the answer would also be 'No'. Where, within the boundaries of those two points you really are I cannot gauge for sure. I CAN say that you are a political opponent and not one that I feel I could sincerely be polite to (which is why I will decline your invitation to have a coffee). Leave aside for one moment your scathing criticisms of the ANL and the Labour Party. Why on earth do you criticise "Searchlight" - a highly acclaimed non-party political organisation which has done such a good job of exposing the activities of the far right? And how on earth did you make the "mistake" of posting on this forum a website address for an orgnaisation called "Searchlies" that was full of anti-semitism and holocaust denial? It is things like this that cause people to have their doubts. |