Donald Trump: Plutocrat Unbound, by Ian Oakley

One of the great joys of the summer of 2015 has been Donald Trump’s domination of the American political scene.

While President Obama has been getting on with the difficult job of trying to govern, whether it is with his openings to Iran or Cuba, or with grappling with the Republicans in Congress, Trump has been providing the entertainment with his bid for the Republican nomination for President in 2016.

The great thing about ‘The Donald’ is that he is exactly the candidate that the modern Republican Party deserves.

The Republican Party is a party that was smashed by George W Bush’s Presidency and rebuilt on the back of Tea Party outrage. It is now a collection of warring interest groups.

The big business wing wants free trade and mass immigration to keep profits up and wages down. The Tea Party insurgents what protection and no immigration to keep jobs from being exported and wages up.

The one thing that unites them is a hatred for President Obama, with his attempts to give poorer people healthcare and with his support for tackling climate change.

Along with a Republican Party that enjoys fighting itself, almost as much as it enjoys denouncing Obama and Hillary Clinton, you have a media market that is polarised with partisan cable news channels and websites, and a political culture where everyone takes offence at everything.

So if a candidate for any major office makes a joke about something, or seeks to engage on difficult issues like race or religion, they are denounced by a Twitter ‘victim’ group, and that is then picked up by the partisan cable media.

This produces candidates as bland as beige cardigans. It fuels both the phoney media outrage, and a public distrust of do-nothing politicians.

Into this mess comes Donald Trump. The billionaire property developer and reality TV star who says exactly what he wants, when he wants, and about what he wants.

The first thing he did was show up most American political commentators as talking nonsense.

Many of them said he would not run; he ran. Most said that his comments on Mexicans would destroy his campaign; his poll numbers went up.Most said that his comments on John McCain would definitely destroy his campaign; his poll numbers went up. Most said his fight with Fox news was suicide; Fox News backed down (they need him for the ratings, and he delivers).

The American public is so tired of a political class that won’t say boo to a goose, that they are loving Trump’s crazed version of straight talking.

Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s own worst nightmare, because he is the living embodiment of what that party has become. 

The Republican Establishment worships the rich, and Trump is a billionaire. The Tea Party hates illegal immigration, and Trump will build a wall.

In truth the Republican Establishment would love to get rid of Trump, as they want a candidate such as  Jeb Bush, who will pretend to care about Latinos and the poor, who will get elected, and who will then get on with cutting taxes, with reducing regulation, and with keeping the illegal immigrants coming.

Unfortunately for them, the normal way to get rid of a candidate – cut off their rich donors – won’t work with Trump, as he can fund his own campaign.

The more that Establishment types attack Trump, the more that it feeds his support among the Tea Party wing.

The Trump campaign will probably come to a sticky end at some point next year.

But in his exposure of the uselessness of the commentator class, in his exposure of the awfulness of today’s Republican Party, and in his highlighting the issue of illegal immigration – a major concern of ordinary Americans – he has done the United States body politic a favour.

Assange and the Value of WikiLeaks: Subverting Illusions, by Norman Solomon

Three years after Ecuador’s government granted political asylum to Julian Assange in its small ground-floor London embassy, the founder of WikiLeaks is still there -- beyond the reach of the government whose vice president, Joe Biden, has labeled him “a digital terrorist."

The Obama administration wants Assange in a U.S. prison, so that the only mouse he might ever see would be scurrying across the floor of a solitary-confinement cell.

Above and beyond Assange’s personal freedom, what’s at stake includes the impunity of the United States and its allies to relegate transparency to a mythical concept, with democracy more rhetoric than reality.

From the Vietnam War era to today -- from aerial bombing and torture to ecological disasters and financial scams moving billions of dollars into private pockets -- the high-up secrecy hiding key realities from the public has done vast damage.

No wonder economic and political elites despise WikiLeaks for its disclosures.

During the last five years, since the release of the infamous “Collateral Murder” video, the world has changed in major ways for democratic possibilities, with WikiLeaks as a catalyst.

It’s sadly appropriate that Assange is so deplored and reviled by so many in the upper reaches of governments, huge corporations and mass media.

For such powerful entities, truly informative leaks to the public are plagues that should be eradicated as much as possible.

Notably, in the U.S. mass media, Assange is often grouped together with whistleblowers. He is in fact a journalistic editor and publisher.

In acute contrast to so many at the top of the corporate media and governmental food chains, Assange insists that democracy requires the “consent of the governed” to be informed consent.

While powerful elites work 24/7 to continually gain the uninformed consent of the governed, WikiLeaks has opposite concerns.

Genuine journalistic liberty exists only to the extent that overt or internalized censorship is absent.

Especially in a society such as the United States with enduring press freedoms (the First Amendment is bruised and battered but still on its feet), the ultimate propaganda war zone is between people's ears.

So much has been surrendered, often unwittingly and unknowingly. Waving the white flag at dominant propaganda onslaughts can only help democracy to expire.

Julian Assange has effectively insisted that another media world is possible and the corporate warfare state is unacceptable.

Not coincidentally, the U.S. government wants to capture Assange and put him away, incommunicado, in a prison cell.

*****

Last week, in Sweden, most but not all of the sexual-assault allegations against Assange expired. Still, Assange notes, “I haven't even been charged.”

And Sweden’s government -- while claiming that it is strictly concerned about adhering to its laws -- has refused to limit the legal scope to its own judicial process.

As the BBC reports, “Assange sought asylum three years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden, fearing he would then be sent to the U.S. and put on trial for releasing secret American documents.”

Closely aligned with Washington, the Swedish government refuses to promise that it would not turn Assange over to the U.S. government for extradition.

“Julian Assange has spent more time incarcerated in the small rooms of the embassy, with no access to fresh air or exercise and contrary to international law, than he could ever spend in a Swedish prison on these allegations,” says one of his lawyers, Helena Kennedy.

*****

While government leaders have ample reasons to want to impale his image on a media spike and put him in prison for decades, many corporate titans -- including venerated innovator billionaires of Silicon Valley -- are not much more kindly disposed.

The extent of their relentless commitments to anti-democratic greed has been brilliantly deconstructed in Assange's 2014 book “When Google Met WikiLeaks.”

“Google's geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy agenda of the world’s largest superpower,” Assange wrote.

“As Google's search and internet service monopoly grows, and as it enlarges its industrial surveillance cone to cover the majority of the world’s population, rapidly dominating the mobile phone market and racing to extend internet access in the global south, Google is steadily becoming the internet for many people.

“Its influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history.”

As for courage -- which too often is the stuff of mystifying legends about heroes on pedestals -- Assange’s observations might help us to grasp how it can gradually be summoned from within ourselves.

Worth pondering:

“Courage is not the absence of fear. Only fools have no fear. Rather, courage is the intellectual mastery of fear by understanding the true risks and opportunities of the situation and keeping those things in balance.”

Assange added:

“It is not simply having prejudice about what the risks are, but actually testing them.

“There are all sorts of myths that go around about what can be done and what cannot be done. It’s important to test. You don’t test by jumping off a bridge.

“You test by jumping off a footstool, and then jumping off something a bit higher, and a bit higher.”

While visiting him last fall and a couple of months ago, I found Assange no less insightful during informal conversations.

This is a dangerous person, in words and deeds -- dangerous to the overlapping agendas of large corporations and governments in service to each other -- dangerous to those who constantly make a killing from war, vast inequities and plunder of the planet.

Norman Solomon is the executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. He is a co-founder of RootsAction.org.

Re-legalising Caste-based Discrimination, by Meena Varma

Caste remains a sticky subject. In the UK, Caste discrimination is experienced amongst the South Asian diaspora – whether they are Sikh, Hindu, Muslim or Christian.

To people outside of those societies the discrimination is not obvious – only by looking at behaviour closely is it discernible. But to those who are the victims of caste discrimination it is a blight on their lives.

Be it the sudden block to promotion at work, the arbitrary refusal of a care worker to bathe your elderly relative, or your child at school bullied and taunted for being a Dalit – and ‘untouchable’.

Dalits, whether they live in South Asia or here in the UK are still seen as ‘lesser humans’.

UK Dalit organisations, including the Dalit Solidarity Network UK, have campaigned since 2007 for the inclusion of ‘caste’ as a discriminatory factor in what was then the UK’s Single Equalities Bill – now the Equality Act 2010 – where huge gains were, momentarily, made.

As a result of a meeting in February 2010 in the House of Lords, where national, regional and local Dalit organisations came together with one voice, an amendment was included in the Equality Act 2010 allowing for the introduction of secondary legislation as soon as evidence of caste discrimination comes to light.

Consequently, research into caste discrimination in the UK was commissioned by the then Labour Government from the National Institute for Economic and Social research.

Their report was published in December of that year, confirming the existence of caste-based discrimination in the UK.

The report recommended “extending the definition of race to include caste would provide further, explicit protection.”

Indeed, in 2012 the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination recommended to the United Kingdom in its review:  “that the Minister responsible in the State party invoke section 9(5)(a) of order to provide remedies for victims of this form of discrimination.”

In April 2013 the Government tabled an extraordinary last minute amendment in the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill to convert the existing power in Clause 9(5)(a) of the Equality Act into a duty to include caste as an aspect of race for the purposes of the Equality Act.

Gains were being made to finally legislate against caste-based discrimination here in the UK.

In July 2013 the Government introduced a timetable which set out a series of steps including a public consultation leading to the commencement of caste legislation in the summer 2015.

While an initial stage of research was conducted by the Equality and Human Rights Commission that included a socio-legal review and a stakeholders consultation (published in February 2014), the next scheduled stage of the process, to issue a formal public consultation in spring 2014, was never conducted, resulting in the reforms being made to the bill stagnating.

There are two likely reasons this consultation was not issued.

First, the Equality and Human Rights Commission [EHRC] withdrew from its second phase of research to establish a baseline data into the extent of caste discrimination due to concerns it might be difficult to commission successfully and that “people could find [collecting data on caste] intrusive and it could have a detrimental effect on good relations in affected communities if not conducted with appropriate sensitivity.”

However Ministers then approved a feasibility study to be conducted into if, and how, it might be possible to estimate the extent of caste-based discrimination in Britain.

The report was due in November 2014. It has yet to be published.

Secondly, the employment tribunal case, Tirkey v Chandok. In this case, the Claimant was a woman whose caste was described as Adivasi (or Scheduled Tribe).

The Claimant claimed that her employers had treated her badly and in a demeaning manner, in part, because of her caste.

The employer sought to strike out the part of her claim related to discrimination by reason of her caste on the basis that caste is not a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

The ET decision was appealed to the Employment Appeal Tribunal.

Its judgement in December 2014 concluded that, depending on the specific circumstances of an individual case, caste-based discrimination could already be unlawful under existing discrimination law, namely the ‘ethnic origin’ limb of the EA’s race provision, but not necessarily so.

Caste remains a contentious issue. So much so, that caste was appropriated for party gains in the final run ups to the General Elections.

Much to the delight of the pro-legislation lobby the LibDems included a pledge to implement the much delayed caste legislation in their Election Manifesto:

To tackle the racial discrimination faced by Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people we will…… Outlaw caste discrimination.

When asked for its position on the issue, the Labour Party stated:

In 2013 Labour voted for Cross-bench amendments in the House of Lords clarifying the law in relation to caste discrimination… We did so because we believe individuals have the right to protection against discrimination on the basis of their caste or perceived caste, in the same way that they do on the basis of race or gender.

Playing the Caste Card: Anti-caste Legislation Manoeuvres in Harrow East

Harrow East is one of the most economically and culturally diverse in the capital, with around a third of the electorate Gujarati Hindus and a large Jewish population. Caste is therefore an important political issue in this area.

Conservative Bob Blackman stood against Labour rival Uma Kumaran and Liberal Democrat candidate Ross Barlow for the position of local MP.

With a turnout of just under 70% to the poles, Tory Bob Blackman managed to double his majority, taking 50% of the vote to cement a majority of 4,757.

His unprecedented support may have been related to the controversial leaflets produced by multi-faith group Dharma Sewa Purvapaksha, claiming to speak for Hindus, Jains and Sikhs.

They urged people to vote for Bob Blackman over Ms Kumaran (Labour) and Ross Barlow (Liberal Democrat) due to their party’s support of laws banning caste discrimination.

Bob Blackman, while distancing himself from the leaflets, voted against legislation to criminalise caste-based discrimination in the Commons.

Uma Kumaran condemned the leaflet as “gutter politics”, adding:

“It saddens me that my faith is being used against me.

“In Harrow we’re proud of our diversity and this divisive leaflet seeks to tarnish what we’ve all worked so hard to build. I will represent the whole of Harrow East.

“It needs an MP who will unite our community rather than divide it.”

Yet Dharma Sewa Purvapaksha is not alone in its appropriation of caste as a means to sway voters.

The Hindu Forum of Great Britain, the National Council of Hindu Temples (NCHTUK) has published letters and articles clearly urging its members to vote Conservative.

An NCHTUK letter said: “British Hindus, Sikhs & Jains voting for Labour is now like Turkeys voting for Christmas”.

They were reported to the Charity Commission and after initiating an investigation, the organisations removed the letters and documents from their websites and the investigation was dropped.

According to the Dharma Sewa Purvapaksha, Patrick Forbes, a member of the Conservatives’ policy unit, told the DSP that his party was against discrimination of any kind.

But he said the party would “not take any further action to include caste within the provisions of the Equality Act” because it believes there are sufficient legal solutions to caste discrimination already in place.

Subsequent correspondence from the Conservative Party stated that Patrick Forbes never issued an official statement and was misquoted.

Since Parliament resumed, Bob Blackman MP wasted no time in calling for repeal of the legislation – despite denying any knowledge of the ‘Hindu’ call to arms in his constituency.

His question to the Minister on June 11th:

“In the last Parliament, the other place passed unwanted, ill-thought-out laws on caste discrimination, causing a great deal of concern in the Hindu community. The Government have said that they do not intend to enact those unwanted laws. May we have a statement on when the Government will repeal them?”

For the Government, Chris Grayling MP responded:

“I understand my hon. Friend’s concern, and I know that the matter has greatly concerned the community in his constituency. I will ensure that those concerns are drawn to the attention of the Department for Communities and Local Government, and I will ask the Department to respond to him.”

So where does that leave us?

It appears that the efforts to stall the caste legislation have indeed come from the very top of the Conservative Party.

Whether that is due to a word from a funder or the fear of upsetting Mr Modi’s India where the motto of ‘Make in India’ is a rallying cry to many UK and other international businesses.

Nonetheless, Her Majesty’s Government is under a statutory duty to introduce caste as an aspect of race into the Equality Act.

Ministers need to complete their stated programme of consultation with a view to the commencement of the Act as a matter of urgency.

It is two years since Parliament made its view clear on this issue. This was a provision that was voted for by MPs and Peers of all parties and of no parties.

Recent case law developments have ruled that, dependent on the facts of any individual case, in some circumstances claims of caste-based discrimination can be made through the existing ethnic origins element.

On one hand it is argued that the ruling means that ‘caste’ can be subsumed under race and ethnic origins; on the other the ruling was clear that each case must be decided on the individual circumstances - determined by whether the Claimant’s descent can fall within the definition of “ethnic or national origin”.

The uncertainty of case law on this issue makes it imperative for clarity to be given by incorporating caste as an aspect of race in the 2010 Equality Act, as Parliament agreed in 2013.

So as it stands, caste-based discrimination is yet to be outlawed in the UK. Victims and potential victims of this form of discrimination still have no recourse to justice.

And even if the government decides to go down the case law route, it can only do so by going to the Supreme Court, at a cost of many hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Of course, if the Dalit Solidarity Network’s Honorary Chair, Jeremy Corbyn, is elected Labour Leader on September 12th, then we shall finally have a champion at the highest level, to be the voice that Dalits so desperately need in order to protect them from one of the most hidden forms of discrimination in the world today.

Meena Varma is the Director of Dalit Solidarity Network UK.

Jeremy Corbyn and the Revival of the Labour Right, by David Lindsay

I had wanted to support Andy Burnham. But I am disabled, and he did not think me worth voting for. So, Jeremy Corbyn it is, then. The personal is political. What is more, the score between New Labour and the Conservatives now stands at a mere 3-2. The last New Labour victory was 10 years ago, or 15 years before the next General Election. It is time to try something new.

On the scale of public ownership and on the extent of trade union power, Corbyn is well to the right of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. That is not hyperbole. It is fact. As it is that Margaret Thatcher presided over publicly owned railways, and over a 60p top rate of income tax well above that proposed by Corbyn. And as it is that Tony Blair promised to renationalise the railways in the 1997 manifesto and in several speeches leading up to that General Election.

Why would Corbyn’s position not be the centre ground? You can have all the private health insurance that you like. But if you were hit by a car, or if you collapsed in the street with a heart attack, then someone would call 999, and an NHS ambulance would take you to an NHS hospital.

That that call would certainly be made, even by a perfect stranger, is testament to the definition of the United Kingdom’s culture by the social democratic legacy of previous Labour Governments, supremely that which was elected in 1945. Everyone benefits, of all classes and in all areas. Such was always the intention behind it. This is the only British identity that almost anyone alive can remember, or that almost any of the rest would wish to have.

Today, however, it is under threat as never before. Even in the 1980s, nothing came close to the scale of the attack, not merely since the recent General Election, but since that of 2010; under the Liberal Democrats, who never moderated a thing, as much as under the Conservatives. The election of Tim Farron augurs well, as does the vote of all eight Liberal Democrat MPs against the Welfare Reform Bill. But we must not let that recent party of government off the hook for its numerous offences.

Labour grew from many and various roots. Trade union and co-operative. Radical Liberal and Tory populist. Christian Socialist and Social Catholic. Fabian and even, in the space both on Labour’s fringes and on Marxism’s fringes, Marxist, subject to the balancing and moderating influences of the others. Giving the wrong answers does not preclude asking the right questions. Much of the Fabian tradition also gives the wrong answers.

We need a broad alliance between the urban and the rural, the metropolitan and the provincial, the secular and the religious, the socially liberal and the socially conservative. An alliance including all ethnic groups, all social classes, and all parts of the country: One Nation.

Labour has always had a right wing. It always will have. It always should have. People who would prefer the purity of a Stalinist, Trotskyist or Maoist groupuscule have never been short of options. The point is to have a right wing of the Labour Party, and not merely a right wing in the Labour Party. The Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn will achieve that.

Who are the hundreds of thousands who have signed up in order to vote for him? Are there that many Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists in Britain, collectively more numerous than the entire membership of the Conservative Party? Are there that many sad acts who do whatever Toby Young tells them? Of course not.

And if they are not already, then most of these mainstream, moderate centrists will become full members of the Labour Party once the mainstream, moderate and centrist Corbyn is Leader, involving themselves fully in local party activity even where they have to organise it entirely from scratch.

By Christmas, every Constituency Labour Party will contain a majority that had joined specifically because of Jeremy Corbyn. Abstentionist MPs who had thought that you had meal tickets for life, you need to start looking for jobs. Although good luck to most of you with that. Tony Blair used to talk about “literally a new party”, but it is Corbyn who has already created one.

From the Trade Union Bill, to public ownership, to the proper centrality of rail and coal, to foreign policy and wars, to Trident, to civil liberties, to the case against the EU from the very start, Corbyn’s views are the views of Peter Hitchens. Many of them are also shared by Peter Oborne and by several other commentators who could hardly be described as “Loony Left”.

Furthermore, they are popular. For example, the renationalisation of the railways is consistently supported by between 65 and 70 per cent of the population, stable across all parts of the country and across the electoral bases of all parties. There is strong public support for rent controls, and for a mandatory Living Wage properly so called. Defending the NHS is massively popular.

But even if none of those things were the case, a political party does not exist purely in order to follow public opinion. What would be the point of the Labour Party if it did not campaign for such policies as these? Or if it did not vote to defend the best legacy of Blair, his drastic reduction in child poverty?

Figures of such Olympian self-regard as to profess that they “would not serve under Corbyn”, as if they would have been asked, need to be made aware that plenty of people without a Marxist bone in their bodies would be more than happy to do so, and would merrily relieve them of the parliamentary seats that they obviously would not be needing. Any seat that was Labour in 2015 will always be Labour.

Corbyn’s position on Northern Ireland has been that of the Conservative Party since 1993 in principle, and since well before that in practice. There are people in Northern Ireland who dissent from it, but for whom do they vote? With their Confederate, apartheid and Nazi flags, they identify publicly as one Lost Cause among many.

Whereas Corbyn will soon speak at a Sinn Féin-associated cultural festival alongside a Democratic Unionist MP and former Lord Mayor of Belfast who was 13 at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. The most controversial thing about the entire week is the question of whether or not Frankie Boyle will appear.

On the Falkland Islands, I am as fierce as Michael Foot was on the right of the inhabitants to self-determination. But I doubt that much of the British population would share that view in practice if this tiny community a very long way away were to take this country to war for the second time in 40 years.

I was born in St Helena, but the employment of St Helenians on the Falklands is not necessarily conditional on British sovereignty. Believing that having once been invaded qualifies them for every conceivable goodie, the Falkland Islanders are the kind of entitled lot whom Thatcherites would ordinarily despise. Even with the impending airport, St Helena makes do with much less for more people. The treatment of the British community on Ascension Island is a national disgrace. The only strategic interest in the Falkland Islands is in the defence of the Falkland Islands.

Corbyn, Parliament’s doughtiest battler for the Chagossians and a scourge of the tax havens beloved of the Conservative Party’s paymasters, will take a more rounded and balanced view of the Overseas Territories. The Falkland Islanders, among others, will need to up their game from “Because we’re worth it”, never mind “Good old Maggie Thatcher”.

Corbyn once hosted Hamas, with which the Israeli Government negotiates all the time, and Hezbollah, alongside which our Armed Forces are now at war, a war that Corbyn was one of very few MPs to vote against. It was not he who lowered the flag over the Palace of Westminster when King Abdullah died.

Corbyn is in favour of the abolition of the monarchy in Britain, but it is inconceivable that he would ever press that issue. There would simply be rather more immediate calls on his time, and his side would be guaranteed a crushing defeat in any referendum. This question is never asked of those who identify with either or both of Thatcherism and Blairism. Yet the Thatcher and Blair Projects were both incompatible with the monarchy in principle, and, using and used by the Murdoch media, they were both extremely hostile in practice to the Queen and to the Royal Family.

What of the SNP, that collection of former Tory candidates, youthful Tory-Nationalist dynasts, and erstwhile speechwriters for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, none of whom is ever asked when he or she mysteriously became a figure of the radical Left? It has done as well as it ever possibly could, and it is therefore no longer any kind of threat to Labour.

Labour is bound to regain a few seats in Scotland, and probably quite a few, because the only way for the SNP is down. For differing but not unconnected reasons, the factually baseless existence of some special relationship between Labour and Scotland has long been a staple of Scottish Labourites, Scottish Nationalists and English Tories.

But Scotland now returns exactly as many Labour MPs as Conservatives or Liberal Democrats, while the Labour Whip is at least informally accepted by three times as many MPs from Northern Ireland, where Labour does not even stand candidates, as from Scotland, with a fourth Northern Irish MP also a kind of Labour supporter. Labour has barely noticed this “loss” of Scotland.

The SNP would only have mattered anywhere outside its increasingly curious fiefdom if there had been a hung Parliament. But there is not. Moreover, it has already proved wholly incapable of dealing with the media scrutiny to which it is unused. It is time to turn that on its disastrous record of running Scotland’s health and education, and on its downright corrupt relationship with Brian Souter over transport policy.

Speaking of transport, if recall elections are introduced, then the rail unions, affiliated and otherwise, need to fund Labour’s petitioning for them, and then winning them, across all 44 Conservative seats in the North of England, three in North Wales, and one, precisely one, in the South of Scotland.

The pre-Blairite right-wing faction Labour First professes to believe that “The unions are an integral part of our party” and to favour “More power for local councillors, not unaccountable community groups and quangos”. Yet it is campaigning for tactical voting against the only candidate who shares those views. Its unbending support for Trident, ostensibly in order to protect vastly fewer jobs than have been allowed to go to the wall elsewhere, now makes it more belligerent than Michael Portillo. Like its hardline neoconservatism, that stance alienates it from at least one MP who is a veteran of the traditional Labour Right.

Even before he becomes Leader, Corbyn needs to announce a bank of independent policy advisors including all MPs who nominated him, all MPs who signed the uncalled Goodman Amendment to the Welfare Reform Bill, all Labour MPs who voted against Second Reading of that Bill, all signatories to this, all signatories to this, all contributors of essays or commendations to this, all non-Labour MPs who voted against war in Syria in 2013, all MPs who voted against war in Iraq in 2014, and all seat-taking MPs from Northern Ireland.

Although not affiliated to the Labour Party since the High Blair Period, the RMT and the FBU remain affiliated to the Labour Representation Committee, which is constitutionally committed to the election of a Labour Government. They ought to undertake to pay all election costs of Labour MPs or candidates in any of those categories, as well as of candidates selected in place of prima donnas who thought that they were indispensable.

The Trial, by Franz Kafka, adapted by Nick Gill, the Young Vic; reviewed by Ian Oakley

The first thing that hits you when you enter the Young Vic for their production of The Trial is the set.

It is not easy to describe, but the best way to think of it is as if the Old Bailey was given a re-design by Ikea, with a conveyor belt thrown in as the stage.

As this suggests you realise you are not going to get a cosy night at the theatre.

The production brings the quality of a fevered dream to Kafka’s story of Joseph K, an everyman who wakes up one day to find himself arrested for an unknown crime, whose life collapses under the pressure of the criminal proceedings.

The setting has been relocated from early twentieth century Prague, to a sort of crazed 1970s Britain, think of The Good Life meets Waiting for Godot and you get the idea.

The nature of Joseph K’s predicament, not knowing what - if anything - he has done wrong and his increasingly desperate attempts to escape from the proceedings are inherently surrealist.

But ultimately, Nick Gill’s adaptation of Kafka’s work builds a barrier with the audience rather than involving us in K’s nightmare journey, so that by the end you don’t really care what is happening you just what the nightmare to end.

I fear this is a function of modern young playwrights realising that to get on in their careers they need to appeal to their peers by dazzling with innovative techniques, such as K’s monologues being in poetical child speak, and the concerns of relating to the audience come second.

Perhaps I am being unfair, but that is certainly what it felt like after two hours.

In having said all that, the cast were excellent, in particular Rory Kinnear as K, who spends the whole production on stage, you can almost see his character physically imploding under the pressure.

Two Months of Laudato Si’, by David Lindsay

Two months ago today saw the publication of Laudato Si’.

Sticking it to the pickiest of all Cafeteria Catholics, the right-wing American and wannabe American ones, is always necessary. Popes have been doing it, at least implicitly, for as long as the terms have been meaningful. But this time, the targets have paid attention. One might call that a climate change.

As ever, bioethical matters and sexual matters, matters of social justice (a term of Papal origin, like the Living Wage) and matters of peace, are presented as an indivisible whole. Such is catholicity.

Of course, it did not take long for the Malthusians to emerge, even though their position provides no possible basis for resisting George Osborne’s spiteful restriction of child tax credits, a measure that they ought to applaud.

Consumption is at its highest where birthrates are at their lowest, just it is anything but counterintuitive that there is the most abortion where there is the most contraception.

But the anti-natal answer to every question is always, “There are too many proles and darkies, and we should be allowed to have completely consequence-free sex with every woman on earth.”

Ever faithful to Marie Stopes, author of extravagant, versified love letters to Hitler. Marie Stopes, who disowned her own son because he married a woman who wore glasses.

Marie Stopes, who campaigned for the compulsory sterilisation of “the C3 population”, of “half-castes” and of “revolutionaries”, among numerous others.

Marie Stopes, who opened dozens of clinics in working-class areas to reduce the number of “undesirables” by persuasion if force were politically impossible.

Yet those clinics now retain the right to “counsel” women considering the abortions that they have a gigantic financial and an immeasurable ideological interest in ensuring go ahead.

They still carry the name of Marie Stopes. Our televisions now carry their adverts. Our 50p stamps have recently carried her image. And we all carry the shame.

As they do across the Atlantic, where tax dollars fund the heirs of Margaret Sanger, whose stated primary objective was always to prevent black babies from being born, the objective still pursued above all others by her successors, so that “Planned Parenthood” would more accurately be called “Planned Genocide”.

The womb, the streets and the battlefield are the locations of the triple genocide to which the American black male, in particular, is now subject.

The Unholy Trinity is completed by Helen Brook, who in February 1980 wrote in The Times that, “From birth till death it is now the privilege of the parental State to take major decisions – objective, unemotional, the State weighs up what is best for the child.”

In 1995, this deranged creature was given the CBE. The Conservative Party was not at that time in coalition with the Liberal Democrats or anyone else.

Femaleness has been classified as in itself a medicable condition by means of the contraceptive pill, which is simply not a medicine at all.

It is, in point of fact, a poison, designed precisely to stop healthy body parts from performing their natural functions, and accordingly attended by all manner of horrific side effects, for no reason except to make women permanently available for the sexual gratification of men.

The feminist backlash against surrogacy and IVF has already begun. This will be next, and it will happen soon.

The World Health Organisation, which is hardly a Vatican puppet, more than acknowledges the unrivalled effectiveness of Natural Family Planning if it is taught and practised properly, a practice only possible by a faithful married couple.

As with the Catholic Church’s uniquely successful approach to the spread of HIV (Africa is awash with condoms, and for what?), who is incapable of the requisite discipline? Women? Black people? The poor? The inhabitants of the developing world? Or just poor black women in the developing world?

The Pill, in turn, has wrought havoc by filling our water supply with synthetic oestrogens. If that is not both a social justice and an environmental concern, then I cannot imagine what could be, or what it is instead.

Following logically, maleness itself has also been so classified, leading to the heavy medication of boys purely for being boys, by means of Ritalin and other powerful “treatments” for largely or entirely invented conditions.

The impact of antidepressants on the rise of violent mental illness, especially among young men and teenage boys, also calls for the most unflinching examination.

As, while, we are about it, does the impact of cannabis on the rise of schizophrenia, and by extension also on lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, brain tumours, serial miscarriage, low birth weight, male and female infertility, impotence, and a huge number of other conditions.

We need an approach to climate change which protects and extends secure employment with civilised wages and working conditions, which encourages economic development around the world, which upholds the right of the working classes and of non-white people to have children, which holds down and as far as practicable reduces the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, and which refuses to restrict travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich.

Climate change is supposed to be anthropogenic. The human race makes the weather. The burning of carbon is the foundation of the working class, the foundation of the Left, the foundation of human progress (problematic though that term is), the foundation of civilisation.

We need a celebration of the full compatibility between the highest view of human demographic, economic, intellectual and cultural expansion and development, and the most active concern for the conservation of the natural world and of the treasures bequeathed by such expansion and development in the past.

The problem with the world is not that it has people in it. Which people, exactly? We all know the answer to that. Rather, people produce wealth, material and otherwise. People are wealth, material and otherwise.

The Pope has said nothing that does not confirm and reiterate both these principles and the urgency of their practical application.

Blue Labour, Blue Danger?, by Hani Latif

Since its conception during the dying days of the last Labour government, Blue Labour has developed into a community of interested thinkers.

Like any brashly packaged, attention-grabbing, tribal phenomenon this community is diverse.

Many subscribers are fully committed to its ideas, whatever they interpret them to be. Others see it and its audience as a useful opportunity to strengthen or supplement their brand of Labourism. Others again are convinced only by one or two details of the picture, and are yet to be convinced of the merits of the whole piece.

To summarise, and to do a great disservice, the Blue Labour message is that Labour must rediscover the importance of things that its modernisers thought unnecessary or unhelpful, but which its historical support base hold dear.

To give an example that may conjure up flickers of remembrance for anyone who knocked on doors during the 2015 General Election, being seen to be strong on controlling immigration to this country has not been a policy priority for Labour politicians, but many people who stopped voting for Labour this year see it as crucial.

With immigration and many other issues, it is Labour’s modernisers that have failed to offer a convincing answer as to why their aims have had to trump these people’s concerns, and thus they have alienated the party from the working-class base.

This disconnect has driven on Blue Labour thinkers such as Maurice Glasman and Adrian Pabst (co-editor with Ian Geary of Blue Labour: Forging A New Politics) to collect together those interested in resurrecting the Labour Party’s traditional position on these issues and those interested more explicitly in Labour’s winning elections.

That those behind the Blue Labour movement would hold the movement’s summer get-together in Islington was not lost on the organisers

Of course, quite apart from the, rather unfair, effete image that has developed about this neighbourhood, Islington and its environs are represented in Parliament by the troublemaker de nos jours, Jeremy Corbyn MP and the bête noire of England’s conducteurs des camionnettes blanches, Emily Thornberry MP.

Those two figures were held up pointedly by the attendees as symptoms of a Labour Party that was failing.

Corbyn’s brand of politics may arguably have a coherent message, but it does not appeal to the socially conservative principles of many in the Labour movement.

It is too closely influenced by the Marxist elements that have been ever-present in the party, but have never had real mass appeal.

Thornberry, on the other hand, committed the sin of being seen to sneer at the traditions and the culture of English people.

Blue Labour is a movement that respects people’s patriotism and understands the emotional connection that people have with this sort of iconography.

Blue Labour feels that Labour has lacked empathy when dealing with people who put a love of England above other important factors.

Speaking at the Islington event were Maurice Glasman, the movement’s founder and de facto leader; Dr Adrian Pabst, the post-liberal academic from the University of Kent, who has been a strong contributing voice in the discourse surrounding Blue Labour; Rachel Burgin, Labour’s unsuccessful PPC for Hitchin and Harpenden; and the assembled sympathetic crowd of between 50 and 100 people.

Lord Glasman spoke quite openly and honestly about his displeasure at the state of the Labour Party.

This was a feeling from which one could not easily escape; there were few people in attendance who seemed enthusiastic about any Labour Leadership candidate.

If, in a year or so, we hear the winning candidate claim to be a “champion of Blue Labour values” and to have run as the Blue Labour candidate, then your cynicism will be justified.

The central motif of Lord Glasman’s speech was the words “the common good” and “common good Labour”. 

This buzz-phrase is designed gradually to replace the name “Blue Labour”, which was originally designed to upset the sensibilities of Labour people by presenting a deliberately controversial and jarring image.

With his words, Glasman struck a note of togetherness and solidarity , and pushed for the membership to look at its history, in which Labour was as conservative as it was radical.

He spoke about the great things that the movement has achieved in its last century and why it is essential that it continues to transform and improve lives. It is clear the affection that the man has for his party.

But, in harking back to the figure of Ernie Bevin, he could not resist a dig at today’s confused and impoverished organisation.

What would be his reaction, Glasman asked, if Bevin were around to see Jeremy Corbyn leading the race for Labour leader in 2015?

The room’s deafening answer was Blue Labour.

Bevin, of course, the hammer of the Marxists, the man who got us the A-Bomb “with the bloody Union Jack flying on top of it”, the English (not British) patriot, was a co-founder of the TGWU.

That union does not exist anymore. It is part of Unite.

Lord Glasman seems set to try to build stronger institutional framework for his Blue Labour ideas both inside and outside of Parliament.

Time will tell whether he achieves this, but he expresses his ideas in a very cogent way and, what is more, he has converted  to his cause others who speak and write just as fluently and persuasively.

That is a strong base for any movement and, given that Labour may be out of power for a long time, “common good Labour” may find the time to flourish inside the chamber and in the tea-rooms and bars of the Palace of Westminster as well as in church halls and scout huts from Land’s End to Lerwick.

Ms Burgin’s speech was also very well received in the room. Its central theme, that of religion, and of the continuing importance of religious traditions to the lives of people in her ancestral home of Lowca, West Cumberland, is central to Blue Labour.

Burgin recalled Harold Wilson who remarked that the Labour Party owed more to Methodism than it did to Marxism.

Religion and its assets, which bind communities together while they feel distant from Westminster, also provide for the struggle against poverty where nothing else can.

The Trussell Trust, for example, runs many foodbanks out of churche,s and has an ethos grown out of the Christian tradition.

For Ms Burgin, where Labour has failed to capitalise because of the preferences of its Westminster establishment, Blue Labour must highlight this and work for change.

Burgin’s speech was written in three parts to fit the three themes of Blue Labour: faith, flag and family.

She celebrated the way that the flying of the national flag need not be a divisive image, but can become a focal point for emotional expression within a community.

Ms Burgin spoke about the beneficial love and goodwill that is expressed between people through their families, and argued that Blue Labour’s focus on the family must involve an active state, willing to spend money to create jobs in order to protect families’ traditions and locations.

It was Dr Adrian Pabst who also provided food for thought by highlighting just how far Labour is behind the Conservatives.

George Osborne’s budget stole Labour’s message and made its policies from 2015 look wildly outdated.

The exciting ideas being spoke of by Conservative thinkers, such as the idea of putting workers’ representatives on company boards, shows that in 2020 the Labour Party will be fighting a battle in which the initial position of the Tories cannot be predicted or second-guessed.

Labour must forge its own ideas, and appeal to people in a way that the Tories failed to do.

Blue Labour is, for Dr Pabst, a very important step towards re-establishing an emotional connection with the voters.

Dr Pabst expressed the view that Labour must engage with England.

The debate over the English Parliament and the English Labour Party continues to ruffle feathers. From the audience in Islington, there was remarkable consensus and unity.

The existence of a major problem and the general flavour of the direction needed was not questioned at all.

There was, however, some disagreement about whether Blue Labour should be in favour of an English Parliament, and moreover it remains to be seen what will happen once the organisation develops and the more specific policies are arrived at.

One point which was made several times was the importance of maintaining a clear division between the New Labour wing of the party and Blue Labour, although it was interesting to note that in attendance were a number of recognisable Progress-aligned faces, indicating a broad interest in the movement from other parts of the party.

The audience itself, it was interesting to note, was made up of a surprisingly high number of young people, which potentially suggests that Blue Labour is finding favour amongst the young and has a strong future.

However, the number of women in attendance was very low and Lord Glasman acknowledged the importance of spreading the message of the group to a wider audience.

So, what will become of Blue Labour?

All in all, its fleeting stopover in Islington was thought-provoking and raised important questions about Labour’s direction.

There is little doubt that more will be heard about Blue Labour in the next 10 years as Labour walks the long road back to credibility.

The development of the institutions and direction of Blue Labour or “Common Good Labour” will be of especial interest to many.

It remains to be seen, however, if it will be able to hold out against colonisation by those who see it as just another bolt-on element of their overall plan to make Labour an election winning machine again.

It is possible that this message could deliver a Labour victory but there is something deeper here that must not be fudged.

Blue Labour is a critique of New Labour, not a reformulation of it.

The persistent assertion by some who flirt with Blue Labour that only a return to Blairite fiscal values will win us an election may be unhelpful.

Anyway, let’s see what happens.

Something of a Marker by Society, by Godfrey Bloom

The sixty-fifth birthday is something of a marker by society. It means that you are officially old.

You can,of course, kid yourself it is the new 40, you are in late middle age. But you are not. You have the biblical three score years and ten with perhaps a little interest.

Ten years to go then with a following breeze. After a health scare or two it is natural therefore not morbid to take stock.

The mind is particularly focussed for the military historian like myself who has seen more headstones in memoriam to boys in their twenties than enough.

As I deadhead the roses and mow the lawn, and get about my charity business it is easy to fall into the trap that you might not have made much of a fist of it.

This feeling can be quite strong if you are self critical, most of us are maybe with the exception of professional politicians of whom thankfully I never was.

I am often asked to speak at schools and universities, usually on classical liberalism or Austrian School economics, but the questions afterwards usually reflect anxiety amongst the young about how to be successful.

Well, I suppose it is how you judge success and, as Kipling rightly pointed out, how to judge those two imposters.

I would argue the criterion for judging success is experience.

As a baby boomer, I was lucky not to have to fight in a world war as did my father and grandfather. Indeed I had a very soft and cosy ride liberally laced with opportunity.

Did I blow it? My immediate answer to myself at 65 was yes, Bloom blew it big time. But on reflection, not so.

Certainly, I missed opportunities. But much of that can be put down to the folly of youth. I suppose there is nobody on the planet who has not missed opportunities, and we can't always blame youth.

There is always a natural tendency to anchor on the failures, which are often simply easier to spot. 

A ramble through the good things here because the 'what ifs' of failure are of no interest to anyone and can't even be accurately assessed, they simply give us the conundrum, as Frederick Bastiat, pinpointed of 'the unseen'.

Let me hasten to add these observations are not made in any boastful way most of them were dictated by fate, or luck if you prefer.

So youngsters may take a view on how to judge the imposter, and those of my age might like to reflect on the positive aspects of their lives. 

I was born into a middle class home in 1949, the son of an RAF pilot and WAAF mother. A stable happy marriage which is always a sound base camp for any youngster.

My father and his father were public school educated, but in the 1950s there was simply no money. I was extremely lucky to win a scholarship to one of the old Elizabethan Grammar Schools, an opportunity I certainly blew.

If it wasn't rugby, cricket or tennis I took no part, save the school history society giving me an interest I have never lost.

I drifted into the City, took my professional exams, joined the County of London Yeomanry and played rugger for the old boys.

I was in London in the Swinging Sixties, drove a mini and the girls wore them, life was good and I bought a London flat with a mortgage easily affordable for a young professional man. Very young, actually; 21.

Now the details are in a short autobiography, A Guinea a Minute, but that is not the point of this article at all.

I was dealt by fate a very good hand which I didn't play very well. But did I blow it? Here is where you can make a subjective judgment, old or young.

My experiences are in no chronological order or even importance. Some I suspect will seem of little value.

I have ridden with over a dozen hunts from the Vale of the White Horse to the Isle of Wight and as far north as the Percy in Northumberland.

I make mention of this only because I have therefore seen a very large part of one of the world's most beautiful countries on horseback. Only equalled by river or canal.

In my youth I climbed the three peaks ,Ben Nevis, and nearly all the Lake District fells. I have walked the coastal paths from Dorset to Pembrokeshire and most of Yorkshire.

My wife and I have ridden in Wyoming,Virginia and the South American Pampas, seen the storms in the Drackensburg mountains in January gin and tonic in hand, chartered a yacht off Cape Town cruised up the North West passage to Alaska and from Hong Kong to Japan, bathed on Waikiki Beach, seen both Niagara Falls and Milford Sound, even been shown the Golden Temple by the leading figures of the Sikh religion.

Other experiences include joining the best club in the world, the British Army, and passing out at RMA Sandhurst, admittedly bottom of the class.

I was in Germany with my regiment when the wall came down, and more recently rode shot gun from Kandahar to Camp Bastion in a Chinook.

Away from travel and to sport, I have been deeply involved with both junior rugby and ladies' rugby, mostly but not exclusively at Cambridge University.

A brief foray into politics, as with most backbenchers, achieved nothing very much save perhaps a small but not insignificant part in persuading this government to hold a referendum on self-government.

It could have been worse, as some politicians cause active harm.

I have also been honoured with invitations to speak at many of the most prestigious universities in the world, something always valued very highly, and many of the undergraduates I have met I remain in contact with many years on

People as well as places often inspire. I have had some memorable meetings with a very eclectic range of people, lunch with actors, musicians and sportsmen.

A particular favourite with Fred Truman, still unbelievably full of bounce only a few months before he died. A long lunch à deux with a totally un-luvvy-like Edward Fox, and a pub crawl with an irrepressible genius pianist John Lill.

Yet some of the most inspiring individuals were not the famous, or the great and the good, but tireless workers at local level for the common good, standing up to fight against school bullying, against crime families, and for local environment matters.

Although I mention some of the great vistas of international renown, many are on our own doorstep.

The beach walk from Bamburgh Castle to Seahouses, or the views of the Farne Islands from the Cheviot, or my favourite the sight and sounds of Hawes from the northern fell on a summer's Sunday morning, mists and church bells, as good an experience as any I have had in my life.

So we can all make our own luck without great cost because opportunities are everywhere if we know where to look.

On a personal note, I have been happily married for 30 years.

I see too many families wrecked because couples cannot be bothered to work a bit harder at it, give a little here and there.

You will note that I have made no mention of money. I am long enough in the tooth to know money is important, the oil that smooths the engine of life. But make no mistake, it is well down the list of life's priorities.

You can only drink one pint, drive one car, eat one meal at a time. You need enough, but no more than enough.

Although if I won millions on the lottery I would be pleased, indeed amazed as I don't buy any tickets.

I have never changed jobs, moved house or compromised my lifestyle or principles for money, neither have I inherited any.

It may be you are fortunate enough to have a vocation, not given to many of us. I have always envied those in perhaps medicine or teaching where they can be found.

A vocation is wonderfully self-contained, it travels with you permanently through life, it takes away much of the angst in life.

Every morning you know what you have to do, albeit you may not be quite sure how to set about it.

So if you are starting out, then think about what you want.

If you are entering the autumn of your years, then have a think about all those things that have worked out for you. Probably more than you think.

Chesterton and the Jews, by Ann Farmer

Best known for his detective hero Father Brown, G. K. Chesterton’s patriotism and growing sympathy for the poor vied with his appreciation of Jewish family values and his gratitude to the Jewish people for bringing God to the world.

With the rise of Nazism, Chesterton once again became their champion.

Although his Zionist views – as much misunderstood now as then – attracted controversy, he foresaw the perils of a race obsession that knew no boundaries, and his warnings against a resurgent German militarism were heard (or, mostly. not heard) as early as Winston Churchill’s.

He also saw the dangers to the family from both Left and Right; and as the Nazis strove to control family life, his admiration and gratitude for Jewish family values came to the fore.

Chesterton and the Jews peels away post-Holocaust assumptions to reveal his complex feelings for ‘the Jews’ - admiration, fascination and fear – discovering neglected layers of meaning in stories hitherto seen as anti-Semitic.

And with many life-long Jewish friends, Chesterton, prince of paradox, seems never to have suspected that his closest friend – his wife – was in all probability Jewish.

Chesterton and the Jews sets its subject in the context of his times, but also examines his claims to universal relevance as a modern prophet, studying him alongside close friends H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Hilaire Belloc.

Although all had strong opinions on the ‘Jewish question’, Wells and Shaw have emerged from history with their reputations unstained, while Belloc and Chesterton have acquired a reputation for anti-Semitism.

Belloc was self-consciously rational and strove to avoid prejudicing his case by unthinking prejudice; he managed to restrain the excesses of G. K.’s brother Cecil (although Cecil’s wife was harder to restrain), but although G. K. was badly knocked off course by his brother’s death in the closing days of the Great War, and took up the latter’s more aggressive stance on the ‘Jewish question’ almost as a mark of respect, he slowly recovered his sanity on the issue.

His entry into the Catholic Church, itself regarded as irredeemably anti-Semitic by many Jews, actually marked the emergence of a milder, more universalistic Chesterton, characteristically though paradoxically in tune with his nationalistic theory.

Shaw regarded the unlikely union of Chesterton’s and Belloc’s contrasting philosophies as an ungainly pantomime animal, the Chesterbelloc.

The contrast between their differing approach to the ‘Jewish question’ could be summed up by saying that following Cecil’s death at least, Chesterton tried to be anti-Semitic; Belloc tried not to be anti-Semitic; both failed, although after the rise of the Nazis, Belloc like Chesterton spoke out strongly against anti-Semitism.

On the surface they appeared to have the same view of the ‘Jewish question’, but a close study of their writings suggests that while the half-French Belloc feared that the English would become increasingly ‘Jewish’ (in a negative sense) over time, Chesterton feared that by rejecting their Jewishness, Jews would become ever more English (in a negative sense).

Of course, the problem with rebutting the often inaccurate and hyperbolic claims of anti-Semitism against Chesterton can make it appear that there was no problem. This is far from the case, but it was a much more complex problem than might at first appear to post-Holocaust eyes.

Nonetheless, in my desire not to overlook any hint of anti-Semitism I became almost as fanatical in my anti-anti-Semitism as any anti-Semite, and I have stressed that such references, themselves expressed with a nuance that was almost finicky, constitute a mere fraction of a huge outpouring of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and biography.

As to the ChesterShaWells and the ‘Jewish question’, each of its individual parts espoused the cause of the underdog, and this brought Chesterton into conflict with what became known as ‘Jewish finance’, because he had genuine sympathy with the poor, whereas Shaw and Wells were more interested in eradicating poverty by eradicating the poor.

Chesterton was suspicious of bureaucracy and overweening state power, whereas Shaw and Wells were attracted to that supreme, neutral entity, the totalitarian state, by its power for doing good.

Disregarding Acton’s warning about the corrupting power of power, they believed that so long as absolute power was in the right hands it would be wielded with absolute safety – but the right hands must be the strongest hands.

Their advocacy of the extermination of the weak did not cause the Holocaust, but both saw the Dictators as an evolutionary stage to their Utopias; desperately revising their predictions in the light of the latest totalitarian outrage, they became prophets in reverse.

And while Shaw and Wells supported totalitarianism because they saw it implementing some of their cherished ideas, Chesterton rejected fascism despite its potential for implementing his Distributist ideas.

While not planning their Utopias principally to address anti-Semitism, all claimed their Utopias – and in Shaw’s and Wells’s case they were ‘I-topias’ - were the answer to it.

All attacked Nazi anti-Semitism, but when ‘the Jews’ failed to spearhead his revolution Shaw transferred his hopes to the Nazis.

Wells, in the face of the Nazi extermination programme, eventually accepted that Jewish assimilation, a crucial stage on the way to creating his World State, was not an immediate possibility, but he blamed anti-Semitism on the Jewish insistence on remaining ‘separate’.

When tested by anti-Semitism, the I-topias survived. Millions of Jews did not.

Chesterton – the only one of the three who did not live to see the War – responded most realistically to Nazi anti-Semitism, and if the claim to prophet status in the age of Dictators is based on correct analysis of power politics and identification of the biggest threat to Britain, to democracy and to civilization, Chesterton’s claim surpasses that of Wells and Shaw.

The latter saw a separate Jewish people as an existential threat to their Utopias, but Chesterton believed they should not disappear even if they wanted to. Thus, his approach may be seen as equally flawed.

Nevertheless, unlike Shaw’s Shawtocracy of the Strong Man, and Wells’s worldwide expertocracy, Chesterton never abolished free will. When his ‘peasantocracy’ idea was largely rejected, only Chesterton trusted Man as God trusted Man: enough to accept rejection.

None of the three giants was perfect, or a perfect prophet. However, the ‘prophet test’ is not a test of perfection.

Chesterton admitted he was not perfect – no mere human being could be – but he was the only one of the three literary giants of the early twentieth century to reserve a place in his worldview for the Jewish people.

Shaw and Wells failed to see that the killing they advocated could be applied to other categories of human beings, but Chesterton realized that the ‘strong man’ could apply eugenics to anyone he chose.

Far from an historical curiosity, Darwinism is once again influencing the view that certain categories of people are not human persons and thus may be killed.

Indeed, ethicist Peter Singer, who has advocated infanticide for the disabled and who believes that human rights should be conferred on the great apes, has been lavished with praise and national honours.

Unlike Shaw and Wells, Chesterton did not urge the disappearance as the Jewish people as a precursor to his small-property-owning idea.

He maintained that Jewish financial power was in decline, and his belief in democracy and revealed religion, against fashionable evolutionary theories, Utopias and the Superman idea, challenged him on the ever-present yet ever-changing “Jewish question”.

That he met this challenge makes him the best prophet in the age of dictators.

His controversial version of Zionism, feared by some Jews as heralding a return to Medieval ghettos, is capable of a less threatening interpretation. But Chesterton may now be regarded by progressives as a failed prophet on the “Israel problem” in view of his advocacy of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, whose creation and continued existence they blame for provoking violent reaction worldwide.

Indeed, in the progressive worldview, Hitler’s ‘sincere’ opposition to Israel could yet be seen as prophetic, while the post-Modern aversion to objective truth, shaped by concerns about the ‘authoritarianism’ that supposedly led to the Holocaust, has itself led to a situation in which Holocaust denial is just another opinion.

It was not necessary to be a prophet in the 1930s to foresee the resurgence of anti-Semitism, that most enduring of hatreds. Indeed, Wells, Shaw and Chesterton all warned of a recurrence if their advice was not heeded.

But even without the lessons of history, they merely had to look around, see what was happening, and project it into the future if, as Ebenezer Scrooge remarked, ‘things did not change’.

Because Chesterton trusted men but distrusted Man, he could see what would happen if things did not change.

Shaw and Wells distrusted men but trusted Man, whom they saw as a eugenically purified and racially homogenized Superman. They denied the Fall of Man, and forgot, as Chesterton warned, that men make mistakes simply because they are men.

The very old-fashioned Chesterton espoused the diversity of Man before it became orthodoxy, but he knew that a diversity of men was needed to restrain the Strong Man and empower the weak.

Democracy depended on diversity of opinion, a democracy built on the Christian belief in free will.

While Shaw and Wells celebrated the Strong Man and were incapable of understanding the deeper meaning of Jack the Giant killer, Chesterton saw only too well the meaning of the Nazi Giant menacing the Jewish people.

G. K. C. died before the War, but gazing through the lens of the Holocaust, many present-day critics would no doubt condemn his writings for anti-Semitism, while falling into the age-old trap of singling out the Jewish state above all others for criticism, and blaming its existence for world unrest.

I do not expect progressive received opinion to regard Chesterton other than with a sneer, but interest in his writings is growing among ordinary people, and the test of a true prophet is whether he can be discovered afresh by each new generation – by people who may never have heard of him, but who now hear him addressing their own concerns, which are the enduring concerns of Man.

Even if not a prophet in the strictest sense, this makes him a man for all seasons.

It is sad that Chesterton is more likely to be recognised and acclaimed in the rest of the world than in his own country. But no prophet ever is recognised and acclaimed his own country, and that may be an indication that he may after all have a claim to prophet status.

More importantly, the progressive elitist classes that he warned about, which once constituted a tiny minority in society, now wield the greatest power, largely through the media.

They are doing exactly what he predicted – creating a progressive I-topia of birth control, abortion and euthanasia.

With the best of intentions, they have succeeded in delivering the medical fascism of eugenics and the neo-colonialism of population control, by re-packaging as rights and choices the old abuses that Hitler imposed on his victims.

Or perhaps, more insidiously, and consequently more dangerously, they will succeed in introducing genetic cleansing of the pre-born – for the avoidance of suffering, naturally.

As Chesterton realised, their intentions are good. But he also knew that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

That realisation constitutes a much greater claim to prophet status.  

Chesterton and the Jews: Friend, Critic, Defender (Angelico Press, June 2015).

Biographical information

Ann Farmer studied for a master’s degree at the Centre for Jewish Christian Relations in Cambridge, England. Publications include Language of Life: Christians Facing the Abortion Challenge (1995); Prophets and Priests: The Hidden Face of the Birth Control Movement (2002); By Their Fruits: Eugenics, Population Control, and the Abortion Campaign (2008); The Five Wounds (2012). She is married with three children and four grandchildren.

Labour at the End of the EU, by David Lindsay

Did no one foresee the catastrophe that the euro has become? Of course they did.

On precisely those grounds, 59 Labour MPs voted against Maastricht at Second Reading, joined by a mere 22 Tories, while 66 Labour MPs voted against Maastricht at Third Reading, still joined by only 41 Tories.

On both occasions, both tellers for the Noes were Labour, Jeremy Corbyn was among the Noes, and five Labour MPs were among the Ayes. Of those five, none is still in the House of Commons, and two are dead.

But the Labour MPs who opposed Maastricht were ignored in favour of the far smaller cast of comedy characters on the Tory benches.

Today, we have to endure the domination of the debate by people who not only supported Maastricht, but were in some cases Cabinet Ministers at the time.

Plus another generation of late night television clowns to make the case against the EU appear ridiculous and lacking in the intellectual ballast that in fact it possesses by the bucket load.

Whatever arrangement with the EU has been renegotiated to the satisfaction of David Cameron will be horrendous from the point of view of British workers and the users of British public services.

But then, the economic, social, cultural and political power of the British working class, whether broadly or narrowly defined, cannot exactly be said to have increased since 1973.

Any more than Britain has fought no further wars since joining a body as successful as NATO or nuclear weapons when it comes to keeping the peace.

We had full employment before we joined the EU. We have never had it since. No job in the real economy is dependent on our membership. Or were trade with, and travel to, the Continent unheard of, because impossible, before our accession to the EU?

Not for nothing did Margaret Thatcher support that accession, oppose withdrawal in the 1975 referendum, and go on, as Prime Minister, to sign an act of integration so large that it could never be equalled, a position from which she never wavered until the tragically public playing out of the early stages of her dementia. Her “No! No! No!” outburst was not part of any planned speech.

Those who bang on about her rebate need to ask themselves where any of that money ever went. In any case, it was no compensation for the loss of powers.

In anticipation of Cameron’s Single European Act on speed, Labour needs to get its retaliation in first. All of the candidates for Leader and Deputy Leader need to demand immediate legislation.

First, pre-emptively disapplying in the United Kingdom any Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, thus effectively strangling the whole wretched scheme in its cradle.

Secondly, restoring the supremacy of United Kingdom over European Union law, using that provision to repatriate industrial and regional policy as Labour has advocated for some time, using it to repatriate agricultural policy (farm subsidies go back to the War, 30 years before we joined the EU, and they are a good idea in themselves, whereas the Common Agricultural Policy most certainly is not), and using it to restore the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights of 200 miles or to the median line.

Thirdly, requiring that all EU legislation, in order to have any effect in this country, be enacted by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or the other of them.

Fourthly, requiring that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meets in public and publishes an Official Report akin to Hansard.

Fifthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament. That would also deal with whatever the problem was supposed to be with the Human Rights Act.

Sixthly, disapplying in the United Kingdom anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been certified as politically acceptable by one or more seat-taking members of the House of Commons.

Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of Stalinists and Trotskyists, of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, of people who believed the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland, and of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.

And seventhly, giving effect to the express will of the House of Commons, for which every Labour MP voted, that the British contribution to the EU Budget be reduced in real terms.

All before Cameron even set off for his renegotiation, never mind held a referendum on that renegotiation’s outcome.

After all, which privatisation did the EU prevent? Which dock, factory, shipyard, steelworks or mine did it save?

If we needed the EU for the employment law that, since we do not have it, the EU is obviously powerless to deliver, then there would be no point or purpose to the British Labour Movement.

Far from preventing wars, the EU has done nothing to prevent numerous on the part of, at some point, most of its member-states.

Not least this member-state, which has been at war for almost the whole of the present century. Whether or not the EU caused those wars, it most certainly did nothing to prevent them.

The EU was a key player in, and it has been a major beneficiary of, the destruction of Yugoslavia, a process that events in Macedonia more than suggest is ongoing even after all these years.

It is now a key player in, and it seeks to be a major beneficiary of, the war in Ukraine, which is the worst on the European Continent since 1945.

That war is a direct consequence of the EU’s expansionist desire to prise a vital buffer state out of neutrality and into the NATO from which the EU is practically indistinguishable.