Mike Hirsch
On 11/26/05, www.leninology. blogspot.com <leninology at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Doug H and Travis are right. Peter Tatchell is a Labour Party loyalist
> >first, last and always; any stick to beat the extra-Labour left is fair
> >play. And if Doug Ireland has a fault--and I like him a lot--it's his
> >knee-jerk contempt for third party and hard left efforts here at home. I
> >tend to line up with Ireland on the issues these days, too, but I don't
> >share his biliousness toward those to my left or his need to Trot bait.
> The
> >Socialist Workers Party in Britain may be playing with fire by aligning
> >with
> >the Muslim Arab Brotherhood--and that is no given-- but we're not going
> to
> >know that by the sort of sideshow exercise that Tatchell orchestrated.
> >
> >Mike Hirsch
>
> A few corrections needed here:
>
> 1) Tatchell was once a Labour Party member, but is now a Green Party
> member.
> The Greens have always hated Respect for accruing left-of-Labour votes
> that they feel should naturally be theirs - they call this "splitting the
> vote". Initially it was hoped that the Greens would join the Respect
> coalition and present the biggest possible challenge to Blairism from the
> left in the elections: they declined, indicating that they had a long and
> venerable ideological and electoral tradition. One of their leaders, Dr
> Spencer-Fitzgibbon, went on a ruthless red-baiting spree. On May 5th,
> they
> got their answer. Tatchell, it has to be said, is a controversial figure
> within the Green Party himself - not all Green leaders agreed with his
> witch
> hunt against Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for instance. Yet, two points follow from
> this - one, Tatchell has a sectarian party reason for retailing these
> fabrications about Respect; two, the whole reason Tatchell joined the
> Greens
> and argued against Respect was because of his hostility to Muslims,
> reflected in this latest charade.
>
> 2) The MAB is not 'the Muslim Arab Brotherhood' but the Muslim Association
> of Britain. Associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, their politics vary
> depending on the issue, but they are basically an integralist outfit.
>
> 3) Respect, contrary to Direland's claims, is not 'allied' with the MAB.
> The latter organisation did support Respect in some elections and, but it
> also supported the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and Ken Livingstone.
>
> Of course, you're right about Direland's Trot-baiting. It's never been so
> aggressively displayed as during this episode, but it has certainly been
> present as long as I have known him. It's a real shame, but not an
> unpredictable one.
>
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-- ________________________________________ `And these words shall then become Like oppression's thundered doom Ringing through each heart and brain, Heard again -- again -- again-- `Rise like Lions after slumber In unvanquishable number-- Shake your chains to earth like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you-- Ye are many -- they are few.' --------Shelley, "The Mask of Anarchy: Written on the Occasion of the Massacre at Manchester" [1819] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20051126/46f9e7a8/attachment.htm>