When the Revolutionary Communist Party was running Boris Johnson's Number 10 Policy Unit, then some of us thought, "Well, if they can make it, then anyone can, including us." But even that scarcely compared to the rise of Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly.
O'Neill is the anointee of the IRA Army Council, on which Sinn Féin, simply by being Sinn Féin, believes the authority of the Second Dáil to have devolved, thereby making it the sovereign body throughout Ireland. That is what "As an Irish Republican" means. It does not just mean being in favour of a United Ireland. Those seven overwhelmingly Belfast-based veterans of the Provisional IRA are not messing about. As the largest party in both parts of Ireland, Sinn Féin has a pointed lack of contested internal elections, or of lively policy debates on the floor of its Ard Fheis, much less of occasional hecklers.
So important as to have been twice co-opted to the Assembly for very different constituencies, Little-Pengelly is the daughter of Noel Little of the Paris Three, procurers of arms from apartheid South Africa for Ulster Resistance, at whose founding rally both Peter Robinson and the late Ian Paisley spoke, and which has never declared a ceasefire, much less decommissioned any weapons.
In 2017, Little-Pengelly's election as the MP for the decidedly improbable seat of Belfast South was an example of having to be only the First Past the Post. She owed it to the concerted efforts of the local Loyalist paramilitary organisations, to which she extended barely coded thanks in her acceptance speech. It is highly unusual for a married woman from her background to continue to use her maiden name, even in hyphenated form. But Noel Little's daughter does so. She lost her seat in 2019, meaning that throughout her time in Parliament, the Government had an overall majority of one. Throughout that time, she was that majority. Countries are sanctioned for less.
Truly the sister of the Liberal Democrats, the Alliance Party has facilitated this in return for plum portfolios, and for quango positions galore, thereby providing the cover of niceness, centrism, moderation, and all that. Let us all learn the lesson. If such an alliance is necessary, then so be it, provided that there is a clear and low limit on policy influence. Meanwhile, and give this a moment to sink in, a Sinn Féin First Minister now faces a Leader of the Opposition from the SDLP. Let us see scrutiny from a Social Democratic and Labour perspective.
Thankfully, then, Northern Ireland will never produce cry-baby MPs. Those are hardly the victims in Gaza, and from my own point of view, unless you have had hands around your throat in an attack planned in a Cabinet Minister's office, or something comparable such as a shot fired at you, then make way for someone who has earned his spurs. A death threat will not do. You rank with me only if you have had an attempt on your life. Sir Stephen Timms voted for a ceasefire.
The story goes that the people who are still pursuing me put a hit on me in prison, but the hitman took such a liking to me that he gave them their money back. I do not know that for a fact, though. Whereas I do know about the time that the right-wing Labour machine, Her Then Majesty's Then Government, physically tried to murder me. Match that, or hold your tongue in the presence of your betters.
Jo Cox, you say? No lone wolf, Thomas Mair was a very well-known and longstanding activist in the network that rioted at the Cenotaph last Armistice Day, injuring nine Police Officers, as had always been the intention from the decision to go equipped with bladed articles but not with firearms. Failure to vote for an armistice was an endorsement of that riot, and thus of the subculture that staged it, the only people who wish to attend a march in imitation of one led by Marine Le Pen.
There is no political difference between that subculture and the right-wing Labour machine; between Mair and Cox, with her deep roots in the NGO sector. Centrism and right-wing populism are both con tricks, designed to sell the same extreme and unpopular economic and foreign policies to different audiences by pretending to wage a culture war. In reality, the average Guardian writer or Labour MP leads a much more conventional life than many a counterpart on the Conservative benches or the Telegraph. And hegemony belongs to the social and cultural purpose of neoliberalism and basis of neoconservatism.
But when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair’s Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. If Michelle O'Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly can make it, then anyone can. Including us.
Emma doesn’t like it when people bring up her dad’s criminal record. The guns brought into the North by him were used in at least 70 murders. They were handed out apparently by Willie Frazer a victims campaigner only in Northern Ireland could someone complicit in 70 murders pose as a victim. Of course the Party founder Dr Paisley bought the explosives used in Northern Ireland’s first loyalist bombing campaign.
ReplyDeletePeople do not choose their parents, of course, but she has remained politically close to her father; you will of course know that he campaigns for her. And I say again that Ulster Resistance has never declared a ceasefire. Such a politician is married to the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Justice in Northern Ireland.
DeleteThomas Mair took an interest in Northern Ireland, writing for SA Patriot in Exile about the killing of Loyalist paramilitaries. He did not approve.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. SA stands for South Africa, and it is the magazine of the Springbok Club, in which Mair was highly active. He also had very close ties to the National Alliance and National Vanguard run out of Hillsboro, West Virginia. He had been a member of the National Front and of the BNP, there are lots of photographs of him at their and the EDL's events, and of course he infamously shouted "Britain First".
DeleteNational Fronts come and BNPs go, EDLs come and Britain Firsts go, but certain institutional and organisational manifestations of the Far Right are perennial. Mair's was the Springbok Club, which is run by the people who also run the London Swinton Circle. And that, in turn, had been addressed by Liam Fox (born 1961) and by Owen Paterson (born 1956) as recently as 2014. Ah, those old 1980s Tory Boys, in their Hang Mandela T-shirts and all the rest of it. Wherever did they all end up?
In the Thatcher and, to a lesser extent, Major years, there were Ministers who were members of the Western Goals Institute or the Monday Club. Those crossed over, via such things as the League of Saint George, to overt neo-Nazism on the Continent, to the Ku Klux Klan, to apartheid South Africa, to Ian Smith's Rhodesia, to the juntas of Latin America, to Marcos and Suharto, to the Duvaliers, and so on.
Nick Griffin's father, Edgar, was a Vice-President of Iain Duncan Smith's Leadership Campaign. He answered what was listed as one of its official telephone numbers (in his house) with the words "British National Party".
The Finance and Infrastructure Ministers are both Sinn Fein now. "Let us see scrutiny from a Social Democratic and Labour perspective" you rightly say.
ReplyDeleteA shrewd move on the part of the DUP, since of course this will all have been arranged in advance. Sinn Féin will now be directly to blame for the cuts.
DeleteIt has evaded that responsibility for far too long. Looking back, the sentimentality about Sinn Féin was a sign of the deeper weakness in the Corbyn Project. Sinn Féin had been in government for many years by then, and what was there to show for it economically?
Supporters of various far-right organisations in West Yorkshire confirm, however, that Mair was never part of the local scene, and anti-fascist campaign groups say he had never crossed their radar. “He’s not on any of our lists,” a spokesman for one such group said, before adding quickly: “Not that we keep any lists, you understand.” Nor had he ever come to the attention of the police. He had no previous convictions. Speaking after the verdict Det Sup Nick Wallen, from West Yorkshire Police, said Mair had never had so much as a conversation with the police.
ReplyDeleteHe described him as a “loner in the truest sense of the word.”
There you have it. He had no “contacts” with the Far Right or anyone else. A loner indeed.
As is often the case in any field, the really big players rarely or never bother with the local scene. Mair was internationally important. Three continents, in fact. Of course he didn't go to a pub meeting in wherever it was that he happened to live.
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