Dawn Butler: here’s an MP who actually cares about her constituents’ lives, suffering appalling treatment – and a lack of overt support from her party’s leadership.
Labour’s Dawn Butler has been forced to close her constituency office due to a torrent of racist abuse and vandalism that escalated after she voiced her support for Black Lives Matter.
It seems bricks have been hurled through the windows of the office on High Road, Willesden, and staff have been attacked inside. She said the continual security risk, alongside spiralling rent costs, forced her to close the office.
But she assured residents that her constituency work is continuing as normal.
Quoted in the Evening Standard, she said:
“I continue to receive on an almost daily basis threats of violence and death threats.
My staff have been attacked in the office, verbally assaulted coming and going from work, bricks have been thrown through the windows and the frontage has been smashed.
I have had to work extensively with police and security staff to simply try and create a safe working environment for my employees. Many of these incidents were not made public in order to not encourage copycat attacks.
The Standard reported that Ms Butler had reported a torrent of racist abuse to police after she spoke in support of Black Lives Matter:
One email reportedly sent to her said “There will come a time when you can’t breath[e], and we will all be happy,” while another allegedly said: “Come the revolution you will be one of the first.”
Supporters of Ms Butler were quick to offer their support.
Her party leader was less keen. Keir Starmer had to be prompted before he would say anything:
Has Keir Starmer literally made no public comment about Black MP Dawn Butler being forced to close her constituency office due to racist violence?
That can’t be right. Has he really ignored this?
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) July 9, 2020
He still waited nearly 24 hours after the closure became public knowledge before he voiced his own lukewarm support. And he’s been called out on it:
Very nice words Keir. Thank you.
Just a couple of questions.
If her voice is so vital, why’d you kick her out the shadow cabinet?
And why did you promote the likes of Wes Streeting and Jess Phillips, who openly abuse BAME MPs and members? https://t.co/E9jTpuwgXN
— Kerry-Anne Mendoza 🏳️🌈🏴 (@TheMendozaWoman) July 9, 2020
Racists will see Starmer’s reluctance as tacit support for their attacks – and who can say they’re mistaken in that?
The new New Labour leader has shown a spectacular failure to understand the issue of racism, both within his party and in the UK as a whole.
Or perhaps he really is a racist himself.
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Dawn Butler: here’s an MP who actually cares about her constituents’ lives.
Labour’s Dawn Butler is the kind of MP we should be supporting, not shooting down.
She represents a constituency that is suffering a higher coronavirus-related fatality rate than most and she doesn’t want anything to happen that will worsen the situation.
So she was, obviously, dismayed by Boris Johnson’s speech on Sunday (May 10), calling on everybody who cannot work from home to get back into the workplace.
She voiced her opinion on Jeremy Vine’s TV show: “He is sending people out to catch the virus.” I agree with that.
She wasn’t saying he intended it; for all we know, Johnson really is so mind-pummellingly stupid that he thinks it’s possible to avoid catching Covid-19, even under the conditions he has allowed. She was just voicing her opinion of what his speech means (and mine).
Unfortunately, shows like Vine’s tend to be populated by (in This Writer’s opinion) fatuous rentamouths and on this particular occasion, Iain Dale was present.
Dale, a Tory political commentator, blogger and failed Parliamentary candidate, has only one claim to fame: that he received a police caution for a scuffle on the Brighton seafront in 2013:
I just saw the clip of Iain Dale attempting to tone-shame Dawn Butler into not critiquing Johnson for his deathly mismanagement. You’d never think this sanctimonious weasle-penis is the same Iain Dale who got a police caution for this act of criticism:-https://t.co/7uYDKsNDaa
— Helen the Zen 🏴 (@helenmallam) May 13, 2020
A Manchester pensioner named Stuart Holmes had been displaying a banner protesting against nuclear power behind an author Dale published during a breakfast TV interview, so Dale tried to remove him physically – and ended up having to accept a police caution.
Fortunately Ms Butler was well up for putting him down: “Yes, [the prime minister] is sending people out to catch the virus when he’s telling people to go back to work without the proper infrastructure in place.
“I am the MP for Brent and I have a higher death rate than a lot of other MPs,” she said, “so excuse me if I am going to be passionate about this because I want my constituents to survive this pandemic.”
Well said.
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Eddie Large: he didn’t have the coronavirus until he visited hospital to have treatment for heart failure.
I’d say this was conclusive proof that the Tory government’s strategy on testing for coronavirus is a deadly dud, wouldn’t you?
Today I saw on Twitter an announcement that comedian Eddie Large (real name Eddie McGinnis), half of the comedy duo Little & Large, much seen on television during the 70s and 80s, had passed away.
He had been undergoing treatment for heart failure but he died after contracting the coronavirus while staying in hospital:
With a heavy heart I have just found out, (through his son Ryan), that his father Eddie Large has passed away, I worked many times with him and his partner Sid, they were not only a great act, but such fun to be with! Our thoughts and prayers goes to Patsy and Ryan and family xx pic.twitter.com/pRo2Or29YQ
Look at the message from his son Ryan (the image on the right).
It says:
“He had been suffering with heart failure and unfortunately, whilst in hospital, contracted the corona virus, which his heart was sadly not strong enough to fight.”
Minutes later I saw a tweet from MP Dawn Butler, saying her uncle had died after being taken into hospital after a fall. However:
My uncle had a fall he didn't have COVID19. He caught it in hospital and has now sadly died from COVID19.
Just a few weeks ago we buried his only Son. We are devastated as a family but I'm also angry.
Government needs to Test everyone who works in the hospitals without delay!
“As lab capacity is increasing we now can and must further increase staff/index case testing. We want to max-out all available capacity in doing so, and so are now removing the 15 per cent cap immediately.
“We are therefore asking chief executives of trusts that host an NHS lab doing COVID-19 testing personally to ensure that your lab’s capacity is fully used each and every day.”
Clearly, therefore, the capacity of these labs has not been fully used up until now.
Oh, and the total number of deaths per day more than doubled yesterday, to 563. Here’s a doctor’s response:
563 more dead. As dr & writer, I‘m not surprised govt could have locked down earlier but didn’t, could have tested more but didn’t, could have provided protective equipment but didn’t. What I’m amazed by is lack of critical voices in media holding them to account. Fuck this shit
These deaths (and, no doubt, many others that don’t carry such a high profile) are the responsibility of whoever made the decision to restrict testing, whoever decided to limit the number of ventilators, and whoever thought that personal protective equipment wouldn’t be necessary in the modern NHS.
Who are those people?
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The ladies concerned: (from left) Dawn Butler, Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Marsha de Cordova. I bet you can tell them apart. What’s wrong with the BBC and the Evening Standard?
What a fiasco.
First the BBC confused Marsha de Cordova with Dawn Butler.
Then the Evening Standard, trying to report the BBC cock-up, used a photo of Bell Riberio-Addy.
Jesus, in an article reporting on the bbc screw up of mistaking two black female MPs, the evening standard has mistaken two black female MPs. You actually can’t make it up. The media is a shambles
These are media organisations that contributed to the accusations against the Labour Party, and its leader – of racism as part of an unrelenting four-year campaign of propaganda that bore little resemblance to the facts.
So why are we surprised?
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Marie Van Der Zyl: The president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews needs to think before issuing bigoted press releases.
Congratulations are due to Labour deputy leader candidates Dawn Butler and Richard Burgon, who refused to kowtow to the Board of Deputies of British Jews by supporting their frankly anti-Semitic “10 pledges”.
In a hustings on Saturday, both confirmed that they did not support the demands, even though their fellow candidates for the deputy leadership – and all the leadership candidates have.
Ms Butler said she intended to wait until she had seen the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report on antisemitism in the party – and that she would support whatever it said. Personally, This Writer thinks that statement is premature; she should wait to find out what the verdict is before deciding whether it is worth supporting.
Mr Burgon, who has a history of questioning the so-called “witch-hunt”, said he had concerns about some of the demands. He made it clear that he would not support any move to pass investigation of anti-Semitism accusations to any external organisation.
He also said that he did not accept the Board of Deputies’ demand that only Jewish organisations it supported should be consulted on issues relating to all British Jews; all Jewish groups should have a voice. And he said the BOD needed to explain how the IHRA “working” definition of antisemitism could be implemented in the Labour Party without compromising freedom of expression or the rights of Palestinians.
(See this article for a full report – including video.)
Like the knee-jerk bigots they are, the Board of Deputies responded almost immediately – and stupidly.
“It beggars belief that after four and a half years of failure on antisemitism, Richard Burgon and Dawn Butler still think that they know better than the Jewish community how to fight this vile prejudice,” the BoD said in its statement. Trouble is, the Board of Deputies doesn’t represent “the Jewish community” because there isn’t a single, unified Jewish community in the United Kingdom.
Not only that, but neither of them said they knew better – this is falsely attributing words to people who did not speak them.
Oh, and after four and a half years, there is less anti-Semitism in the Labour Party than in the UK at large – and much less than in right-wing parties like the Conservatives. But we never hear the Board of Deputies complaining about that, do we? Because they are predominantly Tories, perhaps? (And don’t try to call this whataboutery; this is a political issue and the politics of BoD members is relevant.)
“No other minority would be treated in this way and this sort of thing is the very reason why Labour is being investigated for institutional antisemitism by the EHRC.” True in part: no other minority is treated the same as Jews, because the Board of Deputies has demanded that they be singled out for special treatment. This may be viewed as anti-Semitic in itself – applying double-standards by treating them differently from any other ethnic group.
And it is hypocritical to use the EHRC investigation against these candidates when one of them – Dawn Butler – specifically said she is waiting for its outcome.
Here’s a link to the tweet. Be sure to read the comments because many of them are scathing.
But don’t just take my word for it.
Jewish Voice for Labour has been a voice of sanity in this affair since the start, and its comment on the “10 pledges” is a damning indictment against the Board of Deputies.
“This organisation, deeply unrepresentative of British Jewry, presumes in effect to dictate to a major political party how it should run its internal affairs,” JVL states.
“Make no mistake – these are not ten requests: they are ten demands and one threat. The threat to each of the candidates for leader of the Labour Party. is in effect. accept our demands or we will attack you as enablers of antisemitism just as we contributed to making Jeremy Corbyn virtually unelectable. This not only brings shame on the Board of Deputies. It also brings danger to Jews living in the UK who will be seen as claiming a privileged place in determining how the country will be governed.” Applying double-standards by demanding that they be treated differently from any other group – see?
“It is deeply regrettable that all the Leadership candidates have succumbed to this blackmail.”
The statement goes on to explain what’s wrong with the “10 pledges”:
“Demand 1 is that all outstanding disciplinary cases should be swiftly concluded with a fixed timescale. That sounds good, but some cases are more complex than others. Those accused of something as serious as antisemitic behaviour must be allowed appropriate time to mount a defence, may need extra time because of serious illness, etc. Justice is complicated. The Board is simplistic. And underlying its attitude is the clear view that the only verdict that will satisfy the Board is ‘guilty’.”
Labour has a historic problem here, in that This Writer’s experience is that the party automatically assumes any accusation made against a member to be proof of that member’s guilt in any case.
“Demand 4 is that prominent offenders who were expelled or who left while under investigation should never be readmitted to membership. Never is a long time. The current Labour rules allow for the possibility of readmission after any offence, depending on behaviour, after a 5-year period. There is no reason, other than malice, that for this sole category of disciplinary finding the possibility of behavioural and attitudinal change should be excluded.
“The aim of this demand is revealed by its inclusion of the word ‘prominent’. How can it be just or appropriate to specify different penalties for people depending on how well known they are or have become? How can it possibly be acceptable to single out people by name? The explanation is that the two people mentioned [Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone] were prominent ‘scalps’ claimed by a political campaign to extend the meaning of antisemitism. This is political vengefulness.”
Indeed.
“Demand 3 is that “Jewish representative bodies” (read, BoD) be given access to details of ongoing disciplinary cases. The confidentiality owed to ongoing investigations into allegations that have not been established to have merit is to be tossed out of the window. It beggars belief: the BoD is demanding the right to information that would give them, and their allies on the right of the Party, the ability to put pressure on how individual cases are determined. Out goes the independence of the judicial process. And what about the breaking of hard-won data protection laws?”
I seem to recall mentioning this myself.
“Demand 2 is the very purest chutzpah. The demand is that processing of all complaints, in effect the whole disciplinary process, be outsourced to an independent provider. This would mean that the Party would lose control of who was entitled to be a member! No autonomous organisation could implement such a scheme, least of all a political party. It strikes at the very heart of the freedom to organise for political change in this country. Parties are voluntary associations of people who come together to achieve shared ends, within national legal constraints. Their freedom of discussion and action and of self-regulation is the very fabric of our democratic processes.
“Demand 5 is headed “Provide no platform for bigotry”. But honesty in advertising would require it to be retitled “No platform for those who disagree with us”. What it says is that when people are going through the out-of-control disciplinary process assured by Demand 2, and while the details of the investigation are being fed to the BoD and its allies as a result of Demand 3, any other members who argues publicly that this treatment is misguided or unjust will themselves be suspended – and indeed perhaps expelled. If enacted this would ensure that no members could challenge unjust or slanted decision-making. Because those that did so would very likely cease to be members.
“Demand 6 – to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) “international definition of antisemitism” with all its subordinate clauses, without qualification – begs many questions. Apart from the fact that the Labour Party has already done precisely this (misguidedly in our view), the IHRA document has proved ineffective in actual disciplinary situations. This is because its definition of antisemitism is so confused and its examples highly contentious, with no rules as to how to resolve the inevitable resulting disagreements as to what is and what is not antisemitic. The document was never drafted as a legally binding document, as countless critics (including Ken Stern, its drafter) have affirmed.
“Demands 7 and 8 both seek to define the “Jewish Community” by excluding many Jews – evidently the wrong sort. The right sort include those who run the Board, and the cadres of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). The JLM it should be pointed out refused to campaign for the great majority of Labour MPs at the recent general election. It does not require its members to be either Jewish or in the Labour Party.
“Demand 7 is that all Labour Party internal training in antisemitism should be carried out by JLM. For two years from 2016 the aggressively pro-Israel JLM did indeed deliver the Labour Party’s antisemitism training. Its course content was both didactic and dogmatic, based on the supposedly revealed truth of the controversial IHRA document. When in 2018 the Labour Party asked them to revise their approach JLM walked away in a huff. Now they want it back, but on their own terms. Demand 7 is that they be given it.
“Demand 8 extends the same monocular approach to the UK’s Jews as a whole. The Labour Party is required to agree to communicate only with ‘mainstream’ Jewish Groups. That is to demand the exclusion of two-thirds of the country’s Jews. Why would they be so afraid that Labour might communicate with the wrong sort of Jews? The Jewish Chronicle had a ready answer when it reported Demand 8 as being ‘to engage with the Jewish community via its “main representative groups and not through fringe organisations” such as Jewish Voice for Labour (emphasis added)’. Are our demands for a pluralistic vision of the Jewish communities in Britain really so much of a threat that contact with them is contamination? For the Board is demanding, in essence, that expression of our views be banned in the Labour Party.
“Oy Vey.”
Let’s just go back to the Board of Deputies’ tweet for the last part of its statement: “In the Deputy Leadership election, members now have a clear choice about whether they want to become a credible party of opposition or waste yet more years fighting the Jewish community about who gets to define our oppression.”
It seems clear that it is the Board of Deputies that is “fighting the Jewish community” – by falsely claiming to be representing it and demanding the exclusion of all others.
But Labour Party members do have a clear choice now.
It is impossible to ensure that nobody votes for the candidates who have misguidedly supported the Board of Deputies’ childish demand.
But what a message it would be, if Dawn Butler and Richard Burgon received more support than any of the other candidates – by a significant margin.
If you are a Labour member, and you want sanity to be brought back to the party, then This Writer would like to appeal to you to abstain from voting for any of the candidates who have supported the Board of Deputies’ pledges.
Use your votes to make a statement that they cannot ignore.
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The latest DWP-related death (to be reported in the newspapers): David O’Mar had collected thousands of football kits, to be given to children in Eastern Europe, before he succumbed to pneumonia after a tribunal said he was fit for work – while he was lying in a hospital bed.
The Conservative Government’s stalling tactics when confronted with questions about benefit-related deaths have at last tarnished the image of Prime Minister David Cameron, along with his ministers at the Department for Work and Pensions.
When Debbie Abrahams, a Labour MP whose own image is refreshingly glowing after she stood up for her principles and voted against the Tory ‘Welfare’ Bill last night, asked an Urgent Question of him in the House of Commons yesterday (Tuesday), Cameron was nowhere to be found, having run like a jackrabbit and left others to face the grilling.
His Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, was present – but refused to respond, despite this being an issue of serious concern to the public.
Instead, he sent his minister for employment, Priti Patel, to the Dispatch Box and confined himself to muttered comments from the sidelines. At one point he could be heard very clearly, whining, “Don’t lecture us about it.”
It was a public relations disaster – and on the very last day before the summer recess, meaning people will remember it.
Ms Abrahams asked the Prime Minister to make a statement on his commitment of June 24, to publish DWP data on the number of people in receipt of Employment and Support Allowance and Incapacity Benefit who have died since November 2011, including those found fit for work – to honour This Writer’s Freedom of Information request on the subject, and answer more than 240,000 petitioners who have supported it.
“I am disappointed that the Prime Minister is not here in person to explain why he has not yet honoured his commitment,” she said.
“When will we see the data published?” she asked of Ms Patel. “When are they being prepared for publication?”
“Will the Minister commit to publishing the actual numbers of deaths?”
She also asked how much the DWP had spent on staff and legal fees in the decision to refuse my FoI request – and now to contest the Information Commissioner’s ruling that my question should be answered.
She called on Duncan Smith to reconsider his decision not to publish the details on any of the DWP’s 49 peer reviews into social security claimants who died, including – importantly – changes brought forward by the department as a result of them.
Finally, she asked what assessment has been undertaken of the potential impact on the health status of those on Incapacity Benefit or Employment and Support Allowance, given the measures introduced in the Welfare Reform and Work Bill.
Ms Patel repeated the platitudes we have heard already – that the information will be published “but before doing so the statistics need to meet the high standards expected”.
She added: “We will publish all aspects of the data that we have been asked to publish.”
Rest assured that this writer will hold her – and the Conservative Government – to that!
She did not say anything about the cost of refusing and appealing against my FoI request, about the 49 peer reviews, or about assessments of the health status of those on IB or ESA – despite being challenged several times by different MPs on the first of these issues in particular.
The tone of Ms Patel’s responses left so much to be desire that it attracted particular comment from – among others – the Father of the House, Gerald Kaufman.
In a room where emotions were already running high, due to the nature of the issue being discussed, she began by demanding: “Would Labour Members like to listen to my response before they start chuntering away?”
Her response was immediately branded “arrogant” by Mr Kaufman and a later claim that the Conservative-led Coalition was the first government to publish statistics on benefit-related deaths was labelled “misleading” by Labour MP Dawn Butler.
It is as though the government deliberately set out to cause upset, as Parliament dissolved for its summer recess.
For the record, the last-published statistics on benefit-related deaths were released in July 2012 and conveyed figures for the period January-November 2011, in which 10,600 ESA claimants died. That’s around one every two or three hours.
As Labour’s Kate Green pointed out: “There is huge disquiet among disabled people, as story after story surfaces in the media about disabled people being found fit for work and dying shortly afterwards—last week another story appeared in the Daily Mirrorabout a disabled man who died two weeks after his assessment.
“The shenanigans in the DWP around the release of the statistics are concerning—and puzzling, if the Department has nothing to hide.”
Mr Kaufman put Ms Patel right in her place when he said: “I say to the junior Minister that she needs to take some lessons from her boss in dealing with questions in this House, because whatever the nature of his replies, he replies with courtesy. She needs to learn about that as well.”
He had already cast doubt on the honesty of the Conservative Government as a whole, remarking witheringly: “I wish my hon. Friend (Debbie Abrahams) every good fortune in awaiting a reply to a letter to the Prime Minister, in view of the fact that in the last five years I have had exactly one letter from him, and that was after I had received a letter from No. 10 signed by somebody who did not exist.”
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