Steward This

In the wee small hours of this morning, this person, of whom I had never heard, took it upon himself to demand various details of my political views, all of which he could in any case have gleaned from following links on my profile page, or in at least one case merely from looking at my profile picture. He made these demands on behalf of some committee of shop stewards, which clearly sees this policing as within its remit. (If it matters, I am not currently a member of any trade union, although that is on the To Do list.) Facebook users, do let him know what you think of this.

It was something to do with the BNP, and was really quite beyond hysterical. Perhaps he had been drinking, or taking drugs, or both? But even so, while the tiniest amount of research would have indicated that I applaud and fully share the utmost hostility towards that organisation, I do have to wonder, and have wondered to him, whether he and his committee adopt the same correct approach towards, for example, Stalinists, or Trotskyists, or anarchists, or Islamists. I have received no satisfactory answer. Facebook users, over to you.

These are the people who keep me out of CND and the Stop The War Coalition. The former was once headed by a Monsignor and its case in unanswerable in terms of just war theology. The latter, if not quite called into being, as Jubilee 2000 was, by John Paul II, nevertheless had him as the principal global voice of its position, and the Catholic Church as the principal organisational voice in this and every other participating country, arguably even including Iraq herself.

But I and many others cannot be associated with the gulag-denying groupies of North Korea or with the supporters of the Castros' Cuba, the country to which I would move if I wanted a government that persecuted homosexuality, as surely as, if I wanted a state certain of whose citizens were required by ethnicity to live under Sharia law, then I would move to Israel. We cannot be associated with those who want Sharia law here, or polygamy, or face-covering (not head-covering, but face-covering), or animal sacrifice, or triumphalistic domes and minarets. We cannot be associated with those who maintain the Trotskyist distinction without a difference.

I for one can see no reason why, if such elements are welcome in the Stop The War Coalition, then the BNP should not be. It, too, is opposed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, it has reasons of its own for that opposition, reasons unrelated and indeed inimical to those of the rest of us in the anti-war majority. But the same is true of the Stalinists, the Islamists, the Trotskyists.

Initially due to Stephen Hughes and his advocacy of an EU in which national institutions disappeared, leaving only EU and regional ones, I have never voted Labour in a European Election. So yes, I have voted for the SLP, hoping that those who were simply Old Labour Left would drive out, or at least contain, the sectarian fringe; in the end, the opposite seems to have happened. Yes, I have voted for Respect, hoping that the Old Labour Catholic George Galloway would be able to free himself of those less salubrious in his new-found entourage; beginning with the SWP, that process is ongoing.

And yes, I voted for No2EU - Yes To Democracy, seeing in the presence of Peter Shore's old agent, of leaders of the Visteon and the Lindsey oil refinery workers, and of the immediate past Leader of the Liberal Party, the signs that the next stage in the movement's re-emergence would indeed be free of those more obviously associated with Bob Crow. (They, along with the silly name and the abstentionist stance, were why I did not seek to become a No2EU - Yes To Democracy candidate, although I very seriously considered it. Had they received one tenth of the coverage lavished on the BNP, then who knows what might have happened?)

But there is no sign of anything remotely approaching such a shift elsewhere. Instead, there remains a perfect mirror image of the economically neoliberal, geopolitically neoconservative alliance between, on the one hand, the old hired help of the Soviet Union and the Fourth International, and, on the other hand, the old hired help of apartheid South Africa and Pinochet's Chile. A perfect local franchise of the EU's subjection of us to the legislative will of all manner of unsavoury headcases. A perfect enlargement of the microcosmic carve-up between the DUP and Sinn Fein, now collapsing before our very eyes.

Which will be the next to collapse? The control of certain internal Welsh matters by a coalition including those who dream of an all-white, all-Welsh-speaking, sectarian Leftist Wales? The control of certain internal Scottish matters by a bizarre, yet undeniably modish, coalition of Islamists, sectarian Leftists, and those who dream of an all-white, all-Protestant Scotland? The Moscow-and-Pretoria "centre ground" consensus at Westminster? The Molotov-Ribbentrop EU?

I know why I despise the BNP and why its despises me, just as I know why I have the same relationship with various other phenomena, here and in several other parts of the world, that also keep tabs on me, and I on them, via Facebook, Twitter, both, and more. I also know that none of this is any business of some committee of shop stewards. And that that committee is almost certainly in no position to comment about the BNP, being hand-in-glove with several of those other phenomena. Undoubtedly, its nocturnal, virtual-reality enforcer declines to assure me otherwise. Facebook users, will he assure you? Do let me know.