After the fake Labour anti-Semitism smears, let’s talk about the REAL Tory racism

Last Updated: March 29, 2018By

Bob Blackman.

If someone leaps on a bandwagon against somebody else, it’s usually because they’ve got something to hide – and that is certainly true of the Conservative Party, with regard to racism.

Perhaps the Tories were hoping we’d be too busy looking at Jeremy Corbyn’s fight against trumped-up tales of anti-Semitism to notice.

Too bad.

Let’s start with Boris Johnson – because he’s the most high-profile racist on the Tory front bench. Here’s The Guardian:

Boris Johnson has been urged to apologise after it emerged that he attended the launch of local Tory campaign that has been accused of “dog-whistle racism”.

The foreign secretary was pictured on a visit to Romford market, in east London, last December to help launch the “Keep Havering Safe” campaign before the local elections.

The campaign went on to distribute leaflets claiming that a Labour victory would result in the borough becoming increasingly like an inner-city area with a “massive population” rise and a “crime wave” arriving from central London.

It warned that the influence of London mayor, Sadiq Khan, could lead to the borough ending up “resembling Hackney, Newham, Camden and Barking” rather than “traditional” parts of Essex.

The Conservative party chairman, Brandon Lewis, was also under pressure to intervene in the row after the local election leaflet, which one of the councillors behind it said was signed off by national party headquarters, came to light.

Former Tory minister Nick Boles was among those who criticised the campaign, tweeting: “This leaflet is disgraceful. The individuals responsible should apologise, and withdraw it, or face disciplinary action. We cannot attack Corbyn for indulging antisemitism in Labour and allow messages like this to go unchallenged. @BrandonLewis over to you.”

David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, called the leaflet “one long dog whistle about race”, saying it marked a return to the controversial tactics used against Khan when he defeated Zac Goldsmith to become mayor in May 2016.

Goldsmith was heavily criticised, including by some Conservatives, for repeatedly raising what he said were Khan’s previous links to extreme Muslim figures and for not being sufficiently tough on Islamist terrorism.

Here’s the leaflet:

See, while it’s nothing like the general election campaign of 1963 (“If you desire a COLOURED for your neighbour, vote Labour. If you are already burdened with one, vote Tory”), there is an underlying message that people of minority ethnic groups would flood into the borough, leading to the changes alleged in the leaflet – including, take note, a crime wave.

The claims are unsubstantiated – there is no factual evidence to support them – leading to concerns that the leaflet is exactly the kind of “fake news” for which Theresa May created a special ‘rapid response’ team, not very long ago.

The launch attended by Mr Johnson would, therefore, have been a perfect opportunity for him to start banging on about “piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles” again. Sorry to keep harping back to his use of those words but it never gets old.

Let’s move on. Here’s Aleesha:

https://twitter.com/AdamBernard_HA/status/979121060657410048

I have to admit I didn’t recognise Mr Blackman’s name, so I went searching. Here‘s Tim Fenton, in his Zelo Street blog, to explain:

Harrow East’s Tory MP Bob Blackman, who exploited prejudice against Dalits, sometimes also called Untouchables, in order to secure the backing of the National Council of Hindu Temples in the run-up to last year’s General Election. He was not alone in indulging the racism of the Indian sub-continent to garner votes. But there was more.

Blackman had also hosted a hate preacher in a meeting at the House of Commons. Tapan Ghosh, who is not merely anti-Islam but also anti-Christian, has endorsed Geert Wilders.

Particularly interesting for readers of This Site will be the fact that Mr Blackman is an honorary patron of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, the right-wing, politically-motivated so-called charity that, it seems clear, attacks political targets such as This Writer in order to weaken left-wing politics in the UK.

Mr Fenton writes:

This organisation has assembled within its list ofHonorary Patrons at least six individuals who have either exhibited racist behaviour, used racism for their own ends, or been singularly unwise in their choice of language in areas concerning race.

[On Bob Blackman:] This less than distinguished Honorary Patron endorsed a figure – Tapan Ghosh – who “praised the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Burma, and said Muslims should be forced to leave their religion if they come to a western country”. Yet the CAA has no problem with Blackman’s presence.

The article goes on to report that Mr Blackman shared an anti-Muslim story on his Facebook page, Muslim Somali sex gang say raping white British children “part of their culture”’ from a site calling itself Hardcore News.

Mr Fenton ends in the (forlorn?) hope that CAA chair Gideon Falter will address this “minor inconsistency” in the approach of some of his honorary patrons to racism. This Writer doubts it.

After all, the CAA is thoroughly Islamophobic from top to bottom, claiming that British Muslims are highly anti-Semitic. To Mr Falter, it seems, they are just another target for his aggression.

Perhaps he should give up the pretence and join the Conservative Party. Ah, but would the CAA then lose its undeserved charity status?


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5 Comments

  1. NMac March 29, 2018 at 1:43 pm - Reply

    I remember the Tory leaflets of the 1960s which were openly and blatantly racist and deeply offensive. High profile Tories like the odious Enoch Powell never hid their obnoxious racist bigotry. I strongly suspect that it has never gone away in the Tory party, and the Tory racists now feel they can emerge from their grubby holes and once again spout their hatred and bile.

  2. Moses March 30, 2018 at 8:20 am - Reply

    I don’t understand why you Labour people… sorry, you’ve been booted out of the Labour party haven’t you, Mike… well… why left-wing people hate and revile Jewish people. I just don’t get it. Most of us are just ordinary folk, of modest means, trying to raise our families and get by.

    Why do you hate us?

    I just don’t get it.

    • Mike Sivier March 30, 2018 at 3:10 pm - Reply

      I don’t hate and revile Jewish people. Labour (as a party) doesn’t either – and no, I haven’t been “booted out”.

      In fact, I agree entirely with you: Jewish people are people, the same as anybody else.

      If you check the articles on This Site, you’ll see that your assumptions about me are mistaken. As for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, I have always stated – and it’s a view echoed by the party leadership – that there are anti-Semites in the party; like all mass organisations, some members hold aberrant views. They aren’t organised and their views are not representative of the Labour Party.

    • Zippi March 30, 2018 at 7:03 pm - Reply

      Who DOES hate Jews? This is what I don’t understand. All that we seem to hear about is Jews and anti-Semitism, these days. How many people can tell that somebody is Jewish? I bet that most of the people who you know to be Jewish you only do so because somebody told you. None of this makes sense to me but I tell you that the sooner that we dispense with the concept of anti-Semitism, the easier that it will be for Jews. Why are Jews, seemingly, disproportionately the subject of abuse and discrimination? Why are Jews set aside from the rest of humanity? Who decided that that should be so? Have you never asked any these questions? Why should ANYBODY hate Jews, unless, some Body is engineering some kind of social exclusion, in order to perpetuate the targeting of Jews. Most people don’t know who is Jewish and who is not and of those who do, majority doesn’t care, really. So, why is all of this such a big deal? Regarding the recent mural furore; this was painted in 2012 so, why is it news? The image is NOT racist, it is anti BANKER! Do some digging; I tell you, you don’t have to dig far so, again, why is this a thing, when it is SO easy to find out the truth? This should worry you; that something is being twisted and weaponised, people are getting carried away by the ensuing media storm, without knowing the facts, when they are so easy to find. Have you bothered to find out? Do you ask questions, or do you accept everything at face value? Furthermore, why are our people so eager to condemn, publicly, without knowing the facts? Why has Jeremy Corbyn apologised for failing to condemn a mural that was NOT racist? Why is he, now, making Jews a special case? What makes them different from everybody else? Why are they being made to be different from everybody else? The longer that we treat Jews are different, alien, other, the longer this will persist.

      • Mike Sivier March 31, 2018 at 3:19 am - Reply

        Excellent points.
        At the end of the day, we’re all people.

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