the only Jew in the village

Ben Coleman is Labour councillor for Fulham Broadway in the constituency of Chelsea and Fulham. A fellow ward councillor is Alan De'Ath, who is Labour parliamentary candidate for the Chelsea and Fulham constituency. More than 20 years ago Ben Coleman was shortlisted for selection as Labour candidate in Reading East. The shortlist was four. Three were men, and Ben was the only non-local. He made quite a good impression on party members, and picked up some nominations, and plenty of votes, among the more affluent wards and branches - the northern fringe of the constituency is on the edge of the Berkshire celebrity belt and contains several prestigious private schools, while in the south there are many low-income families in present and former council housing -  but ultimately he was unsuccessful. They selected me, and I won the seat for Labour in 1997 and held it with an increased majority in 2001, standing down in 2005 when a group within Reading Labour Party decided they would prefer a Tory MP to a Labour MP who would do the bidding neither of then Reading West MP Martin Salter nor of Reading Borough Council's Labour group. The seat has remained Tory, and MP Rob Wilson is likely to be re-elected with an increased majority on 8 June.

But back in 1995 Ben was sent on his way with good wishes and the belief that he would soon find a parliamentary seat which would suit his talent and ambitions. It hasn't happened, and I have no idea why. I have not followed Ben's career in recent years, though I had heard that he was a councillor in London. Quite a long time ago then Swindon Labour MP Julia Drown, who described herself as a friend of Ben Coleman's, said to me she had not thought, although she liked Ben, that he was the right candidate for Reading East. I got the impression that she thought he didn't have the common touch in sufficient measure, but I could have misunderstood. Whatever.

I am indebted to the eagle-eyed Harry Phibbs for his recent alert to a speech made by Ben Coleman in October 2016, apparently following an account by a fellow councillor of harassment that councillor had experienced outside a synagogue. In that speech Ben Coleman was highly critical of the anti-extremism Prevent strategy, introduced by the last Labour government (how long ago it seems!) and still in place today. He followed criticism by fellow councillor and now parliamentary candidate Alan De'Ath of Prevent as "Islamophobic", and also used the following words:

 “Sometimes people in the Jewish community think they are the only Jew in the village."

 For good measure he then said that concerns about anti-semitism in the Labour Party were “overblown”.

Well, I don't know. This stuff undoubtedly goes down well with those around JC. But with the electorate?

everybody hates the Jews

as the great Tom Lehrer once sang. Does Jeremy Corbyn? I think not, not personally. I think perhaps he is rather simple-minded on these matters. America, bad. Therefore, Israel, bad. Therefore, enemies of either one, good. I think it really is that simple. And it is for too many Labour Party members. Lack of thought results in howling denunciations of Israel "the apartheid state". That is Jeremy Corbyn's electorate for now. He doesn't need to pretend that he's not in bed with Jew-haters, because too many Labour Party members, and the "anti-politics" younger people many of whom have signed up as Labour supporters, have no problem with Jew-haters. Not because they are Jew-haters, but because they hate America. But Jeremy is not an idiot. He knows that if/when he wins he will have to face the Tories at the ballot box. They will not hesitate to throw the Jew-hating, terrorist-loving and dodgy associates in his face. So, he's equivocating on his support for those who thought the 9/11 slaughter was a good thing - oh but hang on, are they the same people who think it was all done by Jews, because Everybody Knows thousands of Jews stayed away from work at the World Trade Centre on 9/11 - it all gets so confusing - let's just put it down to What Everybody Knows.

What Everybody Knows. There is far too much of this around. Everybody Knows that Gaza is a prison camp. Er, no it's not. Everybody Knows that Hamas was democratically elected there. Er, no, they took power by throwing the other lot out of windows. Everybody Knows that Gaza is cruelly blockaded by Israel, starving its people. Er, no, Gaza is blockaded by Egypt.

And solidarity with women and gays in the Middle East? Don't look for that from Jeremy. His policy statement "Working With Women" says it all in its title. We, that is us Chaps, look for ways to "work with" those silly girls so they don't get all uppity and hormonal and start crying and stuff.

Everybody Knows. As so often, Lenny has the best words.

la quenelle

is a kind of cylindrical dumpling, speciality of the Lyon region of France, made with fish, semolina, vegetables or other ingredients. It's also, British football fans now know, the name for a Jew-hating salute. I've posted about the French comedian Dieudonne (the man responsible for "popularising" the gesture in France) before, when he was due to perform in Strasbourg. I noted in that post that Marine Le Pen, leader of the racist Front National party, was delighted for him to be godfather to one of her children, and if you look at a picture of him you can see why. Did Nicolas Anelka think nobody would recognise the gesture he made in front of the TV cameras? Or does he not care? The latter, I suspect - he wanted publicity to revive a flagging career. Well, this stuff is not something to play with. You can see why here. Now I didn't know what the quenelle gesture was until a few months ago, and I have never seen anyone doing it in real life - I hope not to - but in those pictures (follow the link above) you can see people doing it all over the world in front of Jew-related street names or buildings. Did no one stop them? Did no one protest? Would you if you saw it? Do you think people are going to think it's funny to do it in public? It has been said here in France that some British humour would be a better way of dealing with this than the "fevered" response in some sections of French commentary, politicians and media getting in on it all over. Well. Humour as a weapon against the Jew-haters. The cabarets of 1930s Berlin were so effective against the Nazis, were they not? In Lyon, where the quenelle gesture has been seen often in recent times, six young Jewish men are to go on trial for attempting to take vigilante ("justicier") action.

Should the quenelle gesture be banned? Was Anelka attempting to incite racial hatred? Dieudonne himself is likely to be charged, not for the first time, with incitement to racial hatred following remarks he made about a journalist on France Inter who challenged him. The journalist's name is Cohen.

Still think you can control them?

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?

'March 1939, The British Guarantee to Poland', Simon Newman.

Neville Chamberlain

This book is the author's PhD thesis and was published in 1976. It has been out of print for many years. I met the author at a party in December, and, just for fun, bought the book on my phone while we were talking. Naturally it came from a second-hand dealer, so he didn't make anything on the deal.  I didn't get round to looking at it for a while, but when I did I was fascinated. It is a kind of apologia for Neville Chamberlain, and you don't see much of THAT these days. He says Britain could have avoided war with Germany, either by containment or by capitulation. He doesn't use the latter word, but calls it "granting her requirements wholesale". (When did countries stop being called "she", I wonder? Not in 1976, clearly. Faintly distasteful, I find it.) He refers to "Britain's continued interest in maintaining the independence of the central and south-eastern European states, an interest which most historians do not generally concede". No, it appears they do not. And what actually happened to those central and south-east European states, hein? Other historians, including a pair called Gilbert and Gott, who I do not think were artists in suits pratting around with their own turds, and from whom Newman quotes extensively, call it thus: "Chamberlain's policy was to allow Germany a free hand in eastern Europe". That went well, then.

not the historians Gilbert and Gott

Newman says it is not true that most of the Foreign Office were against Chamberlain's appeasement policy. Halifax, as Foreign Secretary, although he was loyal, was no pacifist. He had written to his father in 1918, about Germany, "It goes much against the grain not to burn some of their towns." That's my boy, though I'd like to think I wouldn't have said that in 1918. Halifax was a High Anglican, who saw the Nazis as a threat to Christian civilisation (he wasn't far wrong there), whose biographer wrote that he saw any war which might come as a "crusade". The Government became unpopular on foreign policy in the late 1930s. However, the appearance of this was deceptive, as it usually is. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you? Labour under Tony Blair won the 2005 election easily, despite the cry-baby "Not In My Name" nonsense. My own doorstep verdict at the time was about a quarter for the action in Iraq, about a quarter against, and the rest didn't care. No Guardianista would believe me, because none of them talked to anyone except other Guardianistas at their dinner parties. In December 1938 there was a by-election in Kinross andWest Perthshire, fought by the Duchess of Atholl specifically on the issue of her opposition to Chamberlain's foreign policy. She lost, rather comprehensively.

misguided or malevolent? You decide

The whole book seems to be an attempt to rebut an earlier book called 'The Appeasers' by the said Gilbert and Gott. Did you know that in 1939 the Anglo-German Payments Agreement was still funding German rearmament? Nor me. It's all very readable, to a non-historian like me who is nonetheless interested in history and world events. Chamberlain told the Commons in March 1939, after the annexation of Czechoslovakia, that appeasement had failed and that the "spirit of Munich" had been violated. Quaintness, looked at from the 21st century: when an article appeared in the Nazi paper 'Volkischer Beobachter' denying that Germany had issued an ultimatum to Romania, Halifax as Foreign Secretary "suppressed the distribution of the report inside and outside the Foreign Office". Imagine trying that one now.

The book is chiefly about the process which led to the British guarantee to Poland, which was spun very successfully to the public at the time as a noble thing. Foreign Office papers of the time say "the value of Poland lay not in the capacity of her army to launch an an offensive against Germany, which was virtually non-existent, but in her capacity to absorb German divisions." Cynical, but true. And wise. Did Chamberlain understand this stuff?

Britain feared a German-Polish deal: they had reason to, as Poland had gone into alliance with Germany in the Sudeten crisis in "demanding the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia".

Gdansk, picture tripadvisor

Danzig (present-day Gdansk, in Poland, a fine city) was at the time a free city under the Treaty of Versailles, under the protection of the League of Nations. The League had a commissioner resident in Danzig, who could do nothing to halt or oppose Nazification and enactment of anti-Jewish laws there. There was even a British representative in Danzig, by the name of Gerald Shepherd, who wrote "Halifax now wanted Polish adherence to an anti-German coalition at all costs." And then he wrote "By encouraging the Poles to reject German terms for a settlement of Danzig, the British increased the likelihood that Hitler would resort to force in order to break the deadlock." So it was decided to plant a parliamentary question and put unequivocal support for Poland in the answer. Tactics don't change.

Newman's line is that you can't say appeasement never worked, because it was never really tried. And that the British guarantee to Poland was not deterrence, but a deliberate challenge. Interesting.

Perhaps people who are cleverer at history than I am might like to give their views in the comments. They'd be really welcome. Jew-hating will not, however, get in, and there's plenty of it around, especially on the Guardianista left, as any fule kno. The cry-baby bully-boys (TM Julie Burchill) who have been active in recent months will also be welcome to leave their comments. But their tactics are more extra-blog and personal, hein?

the mask slips

though it wasn't much of a mask really, was it. What i wonder though is - would Georgie have debated with an Israeli Arab? An Israeli Christian Arab? Or ...

Personally, I don't recognise the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but it's an area of land in which people live. I have even been there and eaten lunch in a restaurant there. Why would I not debate the issue of Cyprus, or anything else, with someone from that place? With a passport that says they belong to that place? Just asking...

had enough, I really have

David Ward MP, a LibDemologist of whom I had never heard until yesterday, has referred to Auschwitz in the same sentence as "the Jews" whom he holds responsible for what is happening to "the Palestinians" - and I don't think he was referring to the Palestinians murdered by Syrian troops in a refugee camp recently. The Normster takes this odious Jew-hating to task far better than I can, so please read him. His chief point (and mine) is that any parallel with Auschwitz, where at least a million people were murdered because they were Jews, is false, because those who were killed at Auschwitz had not taken up arms against Germany. There was no political conflict going on, as there is today in Israel/Palestine. It was attempted genocide. Norm's other point, which is perhaps harder to defend, is that it is only Israel which is accused in this way, namely compared to the Nazis, and any action taken by its military is compared to the Holocaust. I'm not sure that's true, or that it is helpful to the argument even if it is. Norm speculates that Ward may simply be a political fool (and why else would he be a LibDem, say I) or that he may know perfectly well what he is doing, and knows that there is a constituency out there for Jew-hating. There always is. That doesn't make it right, and arguably doesn't win you any votes either. But the stupid left is certainly out there in Ward's support, one creature I follow tweeting ominously this morning "the lobby is strong". What can he mean?

Norm has not suggested, as far as I know, that Ward should have the whip withdrawn, or that he should be deselected, forced to resign as an MP, whatever. My experience was that anyone facing deselection as a Labour MP might save themselves by indulging in a little light Jew-hating. Jew-hatred was certainly used by Reading Labour Party senior figures in some of their publicity material when I was in that situation some years ago. To the disgust of many, not including the self-hating Jew Martin Salter, who put his name to the hate speech I can still remember. About the LibDems, I wouldn't know.

No. Ward has spoken out. Let him continue to do so. Let his constituents decide if they want to re-elect him in 2015 or so. If the LibDem whips (seems like an oxymoron) have any sense they will let him hang himself with his own rope. Freedom of expression is more important than anyone's delicate sensibilities. Even if that freedom is used for Jew-hating hate speech.

Oh yes.

grossly offensive

Steve Bell, Guardian today

this cartoon, because of the references it makes, is grossly offensive to me.  But I publish it anyway.  Those who complain to the management when I publish something on my blog that they don't like may complain about this Jew-hating shite and have me hauled in.  Anyone?  Anyone? *sound of tumbleweed*

the Gaza you won't see in the Guardian

inside the prison camp

thanks to CiFWatch for this and other pictures taken inside Gaza.  Which the Guardian will never show because they persist in the lie that Gaza is a "concentration camp".  Here are some families doing their shopping, in a supermarket, with, you know, stuff on the shelves.  Oh and Gaza is ruled by Hamas, who are a bunch of Jew-hating terrorists.  Just saying.

ten years since something that never happened

namely the Jenin "massacre" as it was called at the time, on the West Bank.  Which, as anyone who follows events in that region knows, did not happen.  But which would be thought to have happened by anyone who gets their information about the world from the Guardian.  Which said it happened.  A guest post on Harry's Place makes a timely reminder that that organ is not the best place through which to understand the world.  It is worth a read.  Oh and when I mention something like this I don't usually tweet the post.  You've only got to look at the comments on the Guardian's Comment is Free to understand why.

in mourning this morning

after the killings apparently by the same person, of three soldiers (of north African and Caribbean heritage) and a young rabbi and his two children at a Jewish school in south-west France.  Le Monde puts it this way:

Après qu'un raciste a abattu ses militaires, tué ses enfants, la France saigne. Chacun peut répéter ces mots de notre président, ne serait-il pas son candidat : "La haine ne peut pas gagner. La République est beaucoup plus forte."


election campaigning has stopped for a time, and Sarkozy and Hollande attended a Jewish memorial ceremony yesterday.  But what now?

Jenny Tonge

is someone I always liked when we were in the House of Commons together.  Not so her views.  Jew-hater.  Well, she's not the only one, and there are plenty of them in the Labour Party.  She was sacked by Menzies Campbell as the party's health spokesman, for Jew-hating remarks, and now she has made some more of them and has resigned from the party altogether.  As she is a LibDem, I would ask - why bother?  It's not a proper party anyway, it's a kind of franchise organisation.  But she has, and I think her decision is an honourable one.  If Jew-hating is not part of the LibDems' policy platform (how could anyone tell?) and she is a Jew-hater, she should resign.  Well, she has, and now a spokesman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews  expresses dismay that someone who holds such "vile" views should be a member of the House of Lords.  There I part company with him.  I believe the second chamber should be elected, but that aside, people should not be members of it on the basis of the views they hold.  And a cross-bencher, which Tonge now is,  has no party line.  People may be offended by the views Tonge expressed, but being offensive is very much to be supported.  Hein?