RIP Darcus Howe

I was sorry to read today of the death of Darcus Howe, aged only 74. He was one of the great activists for black rights of his (very big) generation. Like most of that generation he had been a collective activist, and was an intellectual. Things have changed a bit in recent years. I wouldn't presume to say much about the politics of race, in Britain or anywhere else, but I'd like to say that I read the New Statesman for many years, and was always stimulated, often entertained, and sometimes educated, by Darcus Howe's weekly column in that organ.

At a certain point around the year 2000 Darcus Howe began to cooperate and work with Blue Sky, an arts and cultural organisation based in Reading. I had some concerns about this organisation, not especially about its activities as such but about the transparency of its funding, and relayed those concerns, not publicly but to Reading Borough Council, which supported Blue Sky at times and in various ways at the time. I had no issue at all with the work Darcus Howe was doing with them.

For context, there was a shooting in 2002 from outside a Reading nightclub, The Matrix (since closed) which put a member of club staff in hospital for months. Following this, Blue Sky hosted a debate on guns, in Reading, presided over or spoken at by Darcus Howe, to which I was invited as the then constituency MP. I accepted the invitation but subsequently had to give apologies, for reasons I cannot now remember but which had nothing to do with the merits of the event. Another Reading MP, Martin Salter, got wind of the event and did attend. This was his first recorded interest in any issues of interest to Reading's black communities, despite the fact that the vast majority of those communities lived in his constituency of Reading West, which is not where the shooting took place. Mr Salter had a word with Darcus Howe, whose next New Statesman column informed his readers that I had refused to attend the event as I disapproved of Blue Sky and its work on guns and race. Darcus Howe went on effectively to call me a racist. You will not find the article on the New Statesman website, not surprisingly. However, once I had contacted libel lawyers Peter Carter-Ruck and Partners Darcus Howe published this column, which ended thus:

Further to last week's column, I wish to make it clear that Jane Griffiths MP did not express reservations about Blue Sky Arts's guns debate in Reading. On the contrary, Ms Griffiths accepted an invitation to attend. I apologise to her for my error.

An apology and costs.

I happened to meet Darcus Howe at Labour Party Conference later that year, and he treated the matter with dignity and humour. I just wanted to place that on record.

fisking the Salter

well, he should keep quiet about things that don't concern him if he doesn't like it. Now he has instructed His Master's Voice, aka the Reading Evening Post, to publish the following. A little light fisking is, I think, in order.

the body language is hilarious
 

Former Reading West MP Martin Salter has launched an attack on his successor Alok Sharma for being a “party political clone”. Pots and kettles, anyone?
The former Labour MP, who stepped down and then tried to un-step-down when he realised the seat was not necessarily lost for Labour despite his having spent most of his time in Reading East while an MP before the last General Election in 2010 in which Conservative Alok Sharma won the seat, has written to his former constituents what, all 70K plus of them? with a second-class stamp at - oh, you do the math. The Angling Trust must be paying him better than their website indicates if he's got around 40K to spend on postage saying: “I fought long and hard for my constituents and you recognised that with your support at three General Elections for which I’m profoundly grateful.
“I had hoped that my Conservative successor, Alok Sharma, would do as he promised and put local people before his party interests and his own career.
“Sadly, he has turned out to be a big disappointment and has spent five years toeing the party line so he can occupy a minor role in government as a bag carrier for a junior minister. Pots and kettles, again. At least Alok Sharma has kept the job. When Salter got his first taste of life as a ministerial bag-carrier, he lasted five weeks before being sacked
“ Reading West deserves better than this and I know that Vicky Victoria Groulef, a business woman who seems to be a sound candidate. She ought to stop having her picture taken with Salter if she knows what's good for her will be an MP that puts you and your families first and who will fight day and night for the best deal for her constituency irrespective of party politics.” She won't, you know, for the simple reason that she would be deselected if she did

Mr Salter went on: “When I stepped down as MP five years ago, I had hoped my Conservative successor would continue the tradition hollow laugh of putting the people of Reading West before the wishes of the party whips which Mr Salter did not do, voting precisely as the whips instructed him to do on Iraq, which was not to vote at all. Yep, a noble tradition of abstention and cowardice. Don't go there Victoria

Mr Salter still lives in Reading West, was a Reading Borough councillor and deputy leader of the council before becoming an MP, and currently works for the Angling Trust as campaigns co-ordinator. gushes the Post. How about coming up with a reason for publishing this muck produced by a nobody and a has-been, or better still, investigating who paid for the 70,000 letters we are informed have been sent to people in Reading West?

update: the Reading Chronicle says (so it must be true), the following:

Martin Salter, Reading West MP from 1997 to 2010, launched the scathing attack in a letter which is to be sent out to all 73,000 constituents.

So, tell us, who's paying for this bilious self-serving pyramid of piffle to be mailed on behalf of a clapped-out former politician whose career ended in ignominious failure? Huh?

anyone notice there's an election coming? it's time to kick a teacher

aaaand here we go again! It's election time, so I thought I would cast an eye into the pit of darkness that is Reading, UK. Well, a pit of darkness politically, anyway, otherwise it's an OK town, and one I was pleased to live in for 21 years, still the longest I have lived anywhere. My children went to the excellent E.P. Collier primary school there, and went on to the comprehensive school north of the Thames called Highdown. I thought the school was OK, but neither of them did. My older one had left by the time Tim Royle took over as head. He was excellent in my view, and I was very pleased to be able to introduce him to the then Education Secretary David Blunkett back at the end of the 1990s. Later (I do not say the two events are connected) Tim Royle became a national leader in education, and the school improved a lot under his leadership. Well, there were those who did not like that, and Tim Royle found himself accused of fraud. Fortunately the charges were thrown out, but the darkness remains. Tim Royle was not the first head teacher of that school to be pushed out and accused of misdeeds. When that happens (a previous head this happened to, Alan Furley, is now dead, and the things that were said at his funeral (I was there) would make your hair curl) there is dark muttering in Reading Labour Party (a number of teachers are Labour Party members, and one former Highdown teacher, Jan Gavin, is a councillor) from those who claim to know all about What Has Really Been Going On. You'd think, wouldn't you, that if councillors had real concerns about what was happening at a school they would investigate and try and do something about it, in the interests of the pupils and of education in the town? No, it doesn't work like that. So, only a few people at the heart of Reading Labour Party know why two head teachers have been variously attacked, dismissed, and dragged through the courts on trivial and trumped-up charges. I think they should tell us.

will the real John Howarth...

he's in the USA, he tells us, so it's not easy to write a post on his blog. What, don't they have teh internetz over there? Srsly? He's going to have to do better if he wants to travel between the South-East of England, Brussels and Strasbourg on a regular basis. They talk foreign in some of those places too. You can't feed coins into a call-box to file your copy any more. Did you know the 1980s were over, John? Ah.

Apparently things are very bad in Syria, he tells us. But he's with Ed Miliband. Who said he'd back the Government today and then changed his mind. So which position does Mr H back? Air strikes are a bad thing, he says. But the Syrian people need peace. Sometimes when bombs fall civilians get killed, he informs us illuminatingly. Hmm, with insights like these, let's stand down the whole cohort of advisers to the leaders of the free world. Running with the hare and hunting with the hounds, positively Salteresque. That got Salter sacked from the only quasi-government position he held in 13 years as an MP despite 13 years of grovelling and toadying for one. Not an example for you to follow, John.

This is pitiful stuff. How would you vote if you were in the Commons John? Like Salter did on Iraq in 2003, trumpeting that he was against the war and then abstaining? A rebel in Reading and a weasel in Westminster? We expect better from our MEPs. Some of them are quite sophisticated politicians who, you know, know stuff about stuff and talk foreign lingos and read books with no pictures in them and everything. Press releases copied out by the Reading Evening Post - this is not the politics of Europe, Mr Howarth.

Could do better. Must try harder. Pitiful.

Robert Fisk is a charlatan

well, we all knew that anyway. I made the mistake early this morning of clicking on a link in a tweet, thus opening the horrid prospect of an article in some LibDem-front rag or other by the sainted Fisk. He says that there should be no strikes on Syria, because al-Qaeda are against Assad too. Excuse me, is that logic? Or gibberish? You decide. Children have been gassed, but some Hezbollah chappies were gassed too, somewhere else, but with the same gas, so it's er, OK to gas the children? Apparently some Very Bad Things are happening in Iran (although Fisk is on record as saying that's just fine and Iran should be Left Alone to carry on stringing up gay people - to give him more time to make up anti-Israel rants, I suppose). When is this mendacious ideologue going to be given the boot? From everywhere?

bish bash bosh Basher's back!

he chose this picture of himself!

Basher McKenzie is about to throw his hat into the ring for the Labour candidature in Reading East.  Srsly.  Yep, that Basher, pictured left.  Park ward - couldn't get elected.  Kentwood ward - messed it up and lost.  Henley parliamentary - Labour's worst result ever (that campaign masterminded by one M. Salter, according to Salter - in his place I'd have kept quiet).  Select him if you want to, peeps, but he has a track record in public and private life, one of threatening behaviour and violent attacks on others.  He has also behaved inappropriately sexually, in public, towards a Reading Borough councillor.  He verbally abused a woman attending a public meeting, calling her "Wokingham scum".  Part of the Reading East constituency is in Wokingham borough.  If he is selected perhaps those of his putative constituents who live in that borough will remember what he thinks of Wokingham residents.

Just sayin'...

ps - he puts photographs of used condoms on the photo part of his website.  Nice.

the Reading constituencies start the process

We are informed that the Reading constituencies are about to choose their Labour candidates.  It's been in the Reading Chronicle, so it must be true.  There is a big picture of someone called Richard Garvie, who uses a dangler in his statement ("As a party, Reading East is important to us" - no, Reading East is not a party, dumbo, who edits your stuff, John Howarth?), and who is described as a "community campaigner", which is political-speak for "can't get elected", and the headline is barely literate, but hey, that's the Chronicle for you, n'est-ce pas, editor Sally Stevens, never were much cop, were you?  Nice long sentence, don't you think?

Where was I?  Ah yes, the Reading constituencies.  We already know that the Reading West constituency will be girls only, and that the Reading boys have been lining up one Rachel Eden, who has demonstrated that she will shut up and do as she is told, the only criteria for candidature.  Someone from Buckinghamshire called Victoria Groulef is also mentioned.  More to follow on her

Reading East will not be girls only, so naturally it is to be a white-boys-only shortlist, we are told.  There is one white boy who is not Richard Garvie, Matt Rodda or Richard Davies, all three of whom are mentioned by the Chronicle Arsewipe, whose name has not yet featured, but who has been shamelessly touting for the candidature for a long time now.  I'll leave you to guess who that is.  Sometimes the party members in Reading East can surprise you.  Sometimes they choose a surprising candidate. 

Only one person has ever won Reading East for Labour.

couldn't resist

I know everyone else has done this, but wtf - easy mistake to make, northern place, lots of brown people