Labour MP Dawn Butler put a BBC presenter in his place on Monday morning after he speculatively tried to ‘make excuses’ for the Met Police’s ‘racial profiling’ in an incident in which officers stopped a car in which Butler and a black friend were travelling on Sunday, using the bizarre excuse that they thought the vehicle was registered in North Yorkshire.
Butler’s decision to go public with video of the incident led to a torrent of right-wing racist abuse on social media – and Butler was clearly in no mood to suffer fools gladly after the presenter speculated that the police might have been looking for a similar vehicle in relation to a crime – and her opinion of the question couldn’t have been much clearer:
In spite of the torrent of abuse toward Ms Butler after she released video of the ‘stop and search’ incident, Labour leader Keir Starmer was silent until mid-afternoon on Monday, when he tweeted a watery message of support – five hours after Butler’s appearance on the BBC – so perhaps she was not inclined to take prisoners when her interviewer decided to invent reasons why the police might not have been targeting her and her friend for ‘driving while black’.
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The whataboutery misogynistic and outright racist comments flying around after this yesterday was sickening, sadly not unexpected, I opposed some and had to mute notifications as others started piling on doubling down on anything and everything Dawn had said. Hartley Brewer ramped it up again with all her pack of vile followers posting vile comment after vile comment, my admiration for Dawn, Diane Clive etc has grown how the hell they cope with it I really don’t know
I just went on to youtube and typed >dawn butler racial profiling< into their search engine, and the video has been posted on there by SIX different people. So anyway, I clicked on the last of the six so as to read through the comments, and despite only being posted four hours ago, it already has 330 comments (at the time of writing), just about ALL of them slagging her off. BUT, two of the comments (out of the fifty or so that I read), said that the person driving the car was white. And I have little doubt that the shills have been repeating this falsehood over and over again, and their reason for dissembling it is for the obvious reason – ie well if the person driving the car was white, then the police's decision to pull the car over COULDN'T possibly have had anythig to do with racial profiling! Here are the comments I'm referring to:
Liar, the driver was white.
Create racial division for the black vote, it works in America that's Dawns agenda, Dawn wasn't driving, the person driving the car was a white man…….
Anyway, the latest posting by Jonathan Cook is a MUST read. It’s pretty long, about 15-20 minutes, but well worth taking the time:
‘How the Guardian betrayed not only Corbyn but the last vestiges of British democracy’
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-08-10/how-the-guardian-betrayed-not-only-corbyn-but-the-last-vestiges-of-british-democracy/
PS I just scrolled further down the youtube list of results, and the video has been uploaded on there 32 times altogether, with hundreds of thousands of views between them, and thousands of comments, the vast majority of which are no doubt putting her down and slagging her off. Thirty-two times! Astonishing!
So what to do with media
3 strikes and your out of business, unlimited fines and regulated by Prince Harry, Hugh Grant and Hacked Off would be a star, alongside Leveson 2,3 and 4
Blank sheet of paper, what constitutes a ‘Free Press’ because it does not exist in this country, anti democratic, prosecute through historic ‘hate crimes’
Jonathan Cook is a first rate journalist not a presstitute as the vast majority of the MSM and State Broadcaster who are merely stenographers for the establishment propagandistic narrative of the day. It’s not hard to see why he and Pilger etc are suppressed from printing their articles in the MSM, they tell the truth something the knight of the realm and the right wing apparatchiks in the Labour Party, who are controlled by the establishment, don’t believe in.
The stuff on Covid-19 from 4:00 onwards is pretty fair…
I’m not a gambler but I’d give odds (whatever that means) that neither that presenter or any of his BBC colleagues, on interviewing any one of Labour’s many accusers on so-called ‘antisemitic’ incidents has EVER asked “Is it possible you might have been mistaken and that no offence was meant?”
Actually I fucking guarantee it.
Good for Dawn Butler. Cressida Dick wont have it that there is rascism in the police force. Yes there is. They are prejudice agaist black people. People who are poor and other groups. If you live in a nice area and white the police dont regard you with suspicion. If your black or poor or anything other than well off and white your a suspect. Cressida Dick needs to get her head out of the sand.
That the same Dick in charge of the assassination of Charles De Menezes?
It’s as simple as that. Black people are fair game and are treated differently. It’s institutional racism. Nothing’s changed since the Lawrence enquiry. Cressida Dick’s responses to recent incident s have been lamentable, and only confirm that racism in the police is not only endemic, but goes right to the top.
………No the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry & the subsequent McPherson Report changed many things & became the criteria of accusations behind ‘anti-Semitism’, as racism is in the eye of the ‘victim’. The Labour Party is anti-Semitic because I say it is.
What stands out in the Labour party is how easy it is for right wing nuts to get nominated for positions, particularly MP’s and Councillors, how quickly did Blair put his people in at every level of the movement
But what is more depressing is how soft the left is, when we had the chance we went for unity with the Quislings and Bad Actors, I still can’t name a single individual who has what it takes to get the job done
If I gave one of them a shovel they would want it to be friends with the earth, instead of using it to dig the graves of those who lost us the 2017 GE
Yes. Appeasement under the banner of ‘inclusivity’ is always appeasement, and tends to be essentially weak. There are exceptions, such as Mandela’s accommodation with the white racist conservatives, but they WANTED to work something out. The Blairites in the Labour Party only ever wanted to bury the left, and one way and another they’ve managed it, playing by different rules where ‘love and peace’ didn’t figure at all.
(by the way, my blog: https://lovesexwomenmenpoliticspoetrylifedeath.wordpress.com/ )
Erm… Doug… are you a different Doug to the Doug who constantly tries to persuade those of us who are quitting (precisely so we won’t be funding those Quislings and Bad Actors) that we should stay?
“…when we had the chance…” But DID we? The right held all the power positions but one and all but 30 of the MP’s. In the country we were in a majority but in the party administration and the PLP the right had a massive majority – and the ear of the MSM. And they still do.
When we got a chance to vote we voted for Jeremy, but when we lost on mandatory reselection I guessed it was pretty much over.
David McNiven
The numbers have changed, 3 major unions up for grabs, internal report is a game changer, class action could give us our day in court, my comments beg the question if war criminal can do it why can’t we
And I’m asking for a name of the person who has leadership qualities JC lacked
JC got us here, we need to finish the job from inside the tent
The British heirarchy, as probably the ruling class in most Western countries, is full of it. They can’t help it. They have a sense of entitlement which comes from centuries of getting their own way; getting away with sexism, racism, paedophilia and hatred of anything democratic.
The police just follow orders, as they always have, no matter how unfair or barbaric. Just paid toadies of the ruling class, the ‘Govt army’ will be used to impose the will and desires of the ruling class. The police would march us off to concentration camps if ordered. My grandad used to say. ‘you can be a man, or you can be a policeman’.
The people in Parliament, apart from some very good exceptions, despise democracy and democratic intitutions. They use brute force, they lie and abuse in the way they’ve always done, just like the police.
‘Shall I bash him boss?’ sez the meaty copper in any given situation. Just following orders y’see, like most politicians obeying ‘the whip’. If Parliament could change the balance of power in society then the ruling class would abolish that business house which is currently costing untold millions to refurbish. As it is, it’s a great little earner; Ker-ching!
Most prominent journalists are the same or they wouldn’t be in their positions. They obediently print or state what they think their paymasters would want them to say, which is normally, ‘make it short, make it sweet and make it up’.
Friends in high places, family connections and the ol’ school tie network mean that the establishment is isolating itself; working class youth don’t even bother listening to them anymore, at all. Great. Those that don’t tell the truth lose credibility very quickly these days.
It’d be good to have more outlets of truth, like this one, and ‘medialens’. Imagine if most people knew just how bad the LP heirachy really is, ‘specially in Wavertree Liverpool. It’d be be really good for supporters of Sqwarkbox to read just how low these groups of careerist individuals can sink to further their own careers after using the same suspended individuals to get themselves elected. No shame or scruples anywhere in sight.
They have no regard for democracy, hate it in fact; just like fascists. I sometimes think, looking at these fuckers, if a Fascist Party was in control, they’d be members of that organisation with well paid positions as they all seem to crave power, and wonga of course, and will sell anyone to achieve this. No principles whatsoever.
Sir Starmer is part of this clique, a member of the establishment, cover up of Saville included, and doesn’t want to upset his natural supporters by attacking racism or the police. His defence of the racists in LP HQ should tell us everything. On current showing, he’s nearer the ‘far right’ than anything Left.
The sychophants possess no principles, and social inadequacy seems to be the other factor binding them together. They remind me of the school snitches and teachers pets!! The same is coming your way soon. Forget justice, laws, rule books. Don’t worry if you can’t read it here. Just find the Wavertree Four on social media.
We believe that the May 29 suspensions of four Constituency Labour Party officers from Liverpool Wavertree CLP (including the chair and secretary) under antisemitism charges are deeply unjust.
The four comrades – Nina Houghton, Kevin Bean, Helen Dickson and Hazuan Hashim – dared to raise political criticisms of their local MP Paula Barker, who had written an article in the Jewish Telegraph, without any prior consultation with the executive officers. She wrote, among other things: “Luciana [Berger] leaving the Labour Party was a shock to many and I find it deeply regrettable that she felt she could no longer stay.” This article was posted on Wavertree CLP’s Facebook page.
Luciana Berger MP, parachuted into the safe Labour seat for the 2010 general election, was one of the most vocal opponents of Jeremy Corbyn, who used her position as MP to publicly undermine and sabotage him at every opportunity. She helped to spread the lie that the Labour Party is overrun by antisemites and thereby fostered the current atmosphere, in which pro-Palestinian campaigners are regularly tarnished and vilified as antisemites – and she particularly singled out the Labour members in her own constituency. In the end she jumped ship and joined the Liberal Democrats, which really could not come as a “shock” to anybody who had followed her political trajectory. Tom Watson declared that she had been “forced out by racist thugs” in her CLP.
Paula, elected with the help of the left, including the Wavertree 4, seemed to support that narrative in her article. The four comrades felt so concerned that they wrote a private letter to Paula, but we understand she simply brushed their concerns aside. Without any decision-making CLP meetings taking place where the comrades could have presented a motion, the four decided to publish their views in the weekly internal CLP bulletin of May 26, which has been functioning as a medium of debate and has been featuring all sorts of local and national events during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The four comrades wrote that, “Paula’s words will most certainly be taken to imply that we, as a CLP, were responsible [for Berger’s departure]. This accusation has been repeated by our political opponents, such as the anti-Corbyn Labour right and the Liberal Democrats on numerous occasions, culminating in Tom Watson’s calumny, under the protective cloak of parliamentary privilege. In the furore that followed, individual officers and members, such as our then chair, were subjected to further abuse and false allegations in the media, all of which were designed to obscure the political differences between Ms Berger and the CLP.”
Clearly, nothing in their letter is even vaguely antisemitic. The four committed the crime of questioning if the local CLP (and the party as a whole) is really overrun by antisemites – that is enough to get you charged with being an anti-Semite yourself!
Of course, members don’t just have the right to criticize their MP – in a truly democratic party it is their duty to do so! These latest suspensions are clearly a serious attack on the right to free speech in the party.
The witch-hunt in Labour started as a campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. The leaked report has proven beyond all doubt what the right in the Labour Party is capable of – they would rather destroy the party than allow it to be taken over by the left. But sadly, the Corbyn leadership, with the help of Momentum, sought to appease these forces rather than fight them, which allowed the witch-hunt to grow and become even more vicious. No wonder that under Keir Starmer it has been expanded once more – now in an attempt to eradicate the entire Labour left. We know of dozens of suspensions in the last couple of weeks alone, some of them based on a single tweet.
But we will not be silenced! We will continue to oppose attempts to undermine party democracy, censor debate and to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. And we will continue to demand a disciplinary process that is fair, transparent and just – these latest attacks show how overdue that is. This fight back has only just begun- and will continue until the witch-hunt is defeated!
http://www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org/campaigns/reinstate-the-liverpool-wavertree-4/
Yes, it looks like a rerun of a type of Blairite MK2 witch-hunt.
“Asked about the Labour whistleblowers who appeared on Panorama, however, Long-Bailey was willing to criticise the leadership. She said: “I don’t think the party gave the right response. We should not have called out or attacked former members of staff… We should apologise for how we behaved. We should settle any claims that were made.” She also confirmed that she would welcome Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman back into the party, saying what they “have been through was absolutely shocking”.
If only Rebecca Long-Bailey, the left’s candidate, had won the leadership election then things would have been so different.
Ooops wrong link https://labourlist.org/2020/02/how-each-leadership-candidate-fared-in-the-jewish-labour-movement-hustings/
“We should not have called out or attacked former members of staff… We should apologise for how we behaved. We should settle any claims that were made.”
Now THAT’S how you do virtue signalling.
You’re right Steve, if the three candidates weren’t 100% as bad as each other they were too close to call.
Here’s a couple of clips from an article reproduced on JVLs website:
The point bears emphasis, as it underlines the confected character of the “crisis”: the vast majority of antisemitism complaints submitted to the Labour Party’s disciplinary apparatus were not sent by victims following interactions with fellow Party members but comprised social media postings, sometimes going back years, most of which had been dredged up by third parties who went out looking for them. Indeed, according to a report commissioned by the Party’s former General Secretary, Jennie Formby, more than half of all antisemitism complaints and more than a third of all antisemitism cases in 2019 were submitted by a single individual.
In general, the more high-profile the allegation, the less convincing it was. Some low- and mid-level members shared Holocaust denial and Der Stürmer-style cartoons on Facebook. But the antisemitism allegations against Corbyn, former London mayor Ken Livingstone, and Labour Party Executive Director for Strategy and Communications Seumas Milne ranged between tenuous and absurd. To take one prominent example, Corbyn was hounded for having once praised Hamas and Hezbollah, as if this proved he shared their alleged animus toward Jews. But, first, nobody inferred from this praise that Corbyn agreed with those groups’ positions on religion, or women’s rights, or gay rights, or trade unionism. So why make it about antisemitism?
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/jamie-stern-weiner-on-anti-semitism-and-the-british-labour-party/
Here’s another MUST read article that I just came across on Counterfire (about 5 mins):
‘Corbyn’s right to fight back, the Labour right sabotaged him’
Corbyn and the 2017 election committee (which includes former shadow ministers John McDonnell, Jon Trickett and Ian Lavery, and senior aides Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, Andrew Fisher, Andrew Murray and Steve Howell) made their submission to the investigation [re the Leaked Report] public.
The submission makes it painfully clear that had it not been for the sabotage of a small cabal of paid officials, Labour might have won the 2017 general election. The dream of a Corbyn Prime Minister could have been realised but for a “shadow operation” established to conduct a parallel election campaign – a campaign designed to lose.
https://www.counterfire.org/articles/opinion/21508-corbyn-s-right-to-fight-back-the-labour-right-sabotaged-him
Apologies (for so many posts), but I just came across this absolutely brilliant article by Norman Finkelstein (from June 26th) which EVERYONE just has to read. It’s really long, but please, please read it when you have the time:
‘The Sordid Truth about Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat’
http://normanfinkelstein.com/2020/06/26/the-sordid-truth-about-jeremy-corbyns-defeat/
Allan, JVL’s second point is exactly the kind of logical argument that would cause intelligent readers to reconsider their opinions.
Sadly most of the electorate will never read it and are incapable of recognising logic anyway. Most seem only responsive to simple soundbites. The Tories understand that – even May’s embarrassingly insipid attempts took hold.
That’s one reason I’m not democracy’s greatest fan.
It would make me cringe to go the Blair route and do nothing but focus-group soundbites but it did prove effective.
It’d be nice to think there being two ‘centre right’ parties, Tory and Labour, both competing on soundbites, might give a new socialist party the opportunity to stand out by offering reasoned argument – but I’m not that hopeful.
What we need is a better electorate.
Very impressive, well done Dawn on how you have handed and are continuation to handle the racism.
The very line of questioning taken by the BBC presenter further evidences that institutional racism ( in the BBC ) and it’s quite clear to see .
Its clear cut to me , police see 2 black people in posh BMW and bang the built in racism prevalent in that institution plays it’s part in their mind set and decision making process , ” get em checked out ” as they are suspicious ……
She is absolutely right , its not the individuals that need to be fixed its the whole bloody system and mind set , individuals can be sorted later and either , as with smoking in public , re-educated that’s it actually lethal to ones health and you no longer do it , or they can be removed from duties if unwilling to accept that fact , it’s how they police is the issue.
I admire her calm resolve and determination despite the unpleasant and crass level of questioning and implied criticism of the BBC presenter , who in his unbalanced line simply re-enforces the beliefs of the racists in the pubic domain , that its all the black persons problem and they have a chip on their shoulder !
Re the comments from the potential London Mayoral candidate , he is nothing more than a political opportunist trying to make a useless and undermining point, that in fact damages / demeans and belittles the huge problem that coloured people face . He should be utterly ashamed and never allowed anywhere near the leavers of power !
It is a great pity that she is not Labour Deputy Leader , yet another mistake by Labour and it’s membership in not promoting this very capable person to a position of power. Where she could , no doubt, have done do a whole lot of commendable work within the party , instead of that utterly disappointing failure we have now squatting in that office ,,, who is a waste of space imo .
There is has such a great pool of talent on the Left in so small a band of MPs , why on earth they are still sticking with a party that is now lead by such an unimpressive and weak leader I don’t understand . They could very easily form the core of a really true socialist party that would imo wipe the floor with the lie that the Labour party has now become.
Black Lives do and will continue to Matter Starmer and it’s not just a fucking “Moment” … you prick !
@Rob, it is a pity that Dawn Butler isn’t standing for London’s Mayor. She has by far more political acumen that Sadiq.
I agree Maria ,, imo Sadiq was another political opportunist jumping on the back of Corbyn to ride Corbyns popularity to help ensure his election as Mayor , then repays Corbyn with ,,, lets just say lack of any positive support , in fact some of his comments have been derisory .
Mind you they both knock that dumb useful idiot Tory wanna be candidate for six .
An absolute moron. Silent about Windrush, Islamaphobia, Grenfell, on and on. Who votes for all of these politicians. Party affiliations are irrelevant, even when they are silent they are incoherent. I think he is a leader in the field of lgbt+ cycle lanes but silent on any real structural improvements for vulnerable members of society. Gotta get that Ermine.
Funny that, I can watch the 2 minute video clip of this interview on Twitter but on Skwawkbox the 7 minute version refuses to load and the screen goes black. I wonder whatever can be happening…
The standard BBC interview technique has been appalling for years. It comes across as, so, confrontational.
No point in trying to pin-point when that, first, happened. Better to correct it, immediately.
cc BoD, JLM, CST, CAA, Starmpfer
With a camera phone in every pocket why is there not a scrap of video evidence of Labour’s ‘institutional antisemitism’?
Excellent rhetorical question David McNiven.
what is so so damning is that if you are a black or bame+person is that you will be treated differently and so you become more unsure of yourself-as if you are a freak-what ever you say-say nothing and demand a solicitor
And well done Dawn!