Norfolk Unity

Unabridged from The Observer

Tories caught up in new immigration storm

Conservative leader and home affairs spokesman appear on leaflet saying ‘floodgates’ have been opened to immigrants

David Cameron’s Tories were accused last night of dog-whistle politics after the Conservative leader appeared on the front of flyers saying the floodgates had been opened to mass immigration. Critics say the flyers are alarmist and misleading because they imply limits could be imposed on entrants from EU countries such as Poland.

Last night, the party’s frontbench was forced to distance itself from the hard-hitting material, which was put out under the name of Cameron’s home affairs spokesman, Andrew Rosindell. It bears a picture of both men, says that immigration has caused a population explosion, and declares “we simply cannot go on like this”.

Circulated in Rosindell’s Romford constituency, it also suggests that the Tories would impose new transitional controls on the right of nationals of the new EU member states to work in the UK. Such controls already exist for Bulgaria and Romania, but retrospective limits on other eastern European states, such as Poland and the Czech Republic, would be illegal under EU law.

The material came to light as Cameron prepared for a crucial speech to the Tory spring conference in Brighton today, at which he will try to reverse a slump in party morale caused by growing uncertainty over the party’s direction and a fall in its opinion-poll ratings with just weeks to go before a general election.

The reference to “floodgates” being opened has echoes of Margaret Thatcher’s controversial reference in 1979 to Asian immigrants “swamping” the country – condemned at the time as evidence of her party’s anti-immigrant bias.

Phil Woolas, minister for immigration, said last night: “It is deeply irresponsible for David Cameron’s shadow home office minister to be appearing on material using this sort of dog-whistle politics. Of course, we need effective immigration policies – which is why we introduced the points-based system – but making misleading claims like this is dangerous and wrong.”

The Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said: “These flyers play to people’s worst fears in an alarmist and inflammatory manner. The local Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves and I hope the national party will disassociate itself from this.”

The pamphlet, which features two Conservatives of Asian ethnicity, also declares that “foreign criminals should be removed from Britain” and features pictures of “hate preachers” Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri Muhammad.

Rosindell said last night: “I did not write or approve this councillors’ flyer. Immigration is an important issue but, as David Cameron has made clear, we must be careful with both the facts and the language we use. This flyer falls short on both counts, and I shall be pointing that out to the councillors.” However, the material stated that it was “promoted” by the MP.

Meanwhile, Loanna Morrison, the Conservative prospective parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who is black, posted a controversial piece on the political blog, Conservativehome. “Britain is full, declares Nick Griffin at every opportunity, and he is right,” she wrote.

In a broadcast on YouTube yesterday Cameron, who is under heavy pressure from parts of his party to focus on immigration and tax cuts, insisted he would not lurch to the right to try to win votes. “It’s for us to be both modern and radical. Not to go back to the old ways and not to play it safe.” Last night, the Tory right mounted a fresh demand for drastic tax cuts which Cameron is unlikely to be able to deliver. Tory MEP Daniel Hannan hosted an event called the Brighton Tea Party, named after the Tea Party movement in the US, which has gathered huge public opposition to high taxation.

There was also alarming news for Cameron as a new Ipsos MORI poll for the Observer showed more people (29%) believed that Labour “stands for the things you believe in” than the Tories (27%). More people also thought of themselves as Labour (32%) than Conservative (30%), with 15% backing the Liberal Democrats. Earlier this week, Ipsos MORI showed the overall Tory lead had slipped to just 5% among people certain to vote.Cameron’s aides played down the idea that immigration would be at the heart of the party’s election campaign but the leader is likely to sound a patriotic note in today’s speech. “It is an election wer have a patriotic duty to win because this country is in such a mess we have to sort it out,” he will say. Yesterday the shadow chancellor George Osborne confirmed that there would be an emergency budget within 50 days of a new conservative government and he would cut business taxes.

For the party’s grassroots immigration is key and they want to build on comments made by Cameron last month. He promised the party would drastically reduce net immigration levels by imposing a cap – to prevent the population rising above 70m.

The Tory leader would not specify a number but said he wanted to see the level at the “tens of thousands” of the early 1990s. Then net immigration was around 50,000 compared to 160,000 in 2008.

Tim Montgomerie, editor of Conservativehome, said it was a popular message: “I have spoken to someone senior in central office who said more and more people were asking to put immigration on leaflets, and they were being allowed to do so.”

One MP admitted the issue was becoming a salient one. “In 2001 it wasn’t registering at all. This time it is cropping up regularly on the doorstep,” he said.

Yesterday, a Whitehall source said the Romford leaflet showed Cameron was losing an internal battle in the party and warned: “If either party decide to push the button on immigration then the only beneficiary will be Nick Griffin and the BNP.”

The Observer

Unedited from the Daily Mail

Labour’s hypocrisy over migrants: How the party is trying to woo voters with tactics that would shame the BNP

The carefully-worded letters all send the same sympathetic messages to local ‘white families’ about the difficulties caused by the record rise in immigration. Soothing words of comfort are combined with powerful pledges of action to ease the pressure on jobs, school places and council housing.

‘There is a great deal of worry about the pressure on schools, doctors’ surgeries and housing allocations,’ reads one of them. ‘I want you to help me keep the pressure up on the Government in relation to reforming and updating our immigration and citizenship rules and laws.’

Stirring stuff indeed. So which party do you think is promising to fight the Government on these policy failings? The Conservatives? UKIP, perhaps?

No, with astonishing hypocrisy, these pledges come from the Labour Party itself. For the authors are senior Labour MPs who fear losing their seats as a result of the political fall-out from the mass immigration policy that they gladly helped to implement.

Dozens of these letters from sitting Labour MPs have been passed to the Daily Mail – and the authors all have one thing in common. They are fighting for their political lives because of the threat posed by the odious, far-Right British National Party.

They include Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary and key ally of Gordon Brown, and Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister who is fighting a seat in the East End of London.

Some of the leaflets sent out to constituents include dubious immigration questionnaires and promises that local people will be put first in the jobs queue. Labour’s hypocrisy has come to light only days after the scale of Labour’s deliberate plan to create a multicultural Britain through mass immigration was revealed.

A draft Cabinet Office report, uncovered by a Freedom of Information request, showed how, in 2000, Labour ministers deliberately plotted to open the floodgates to new migrants to achieve the party’s ’social objectives’. Traditionally, new immigrants vote for Left-wing parties.

The document also revealed how those who dared to question this policy would be branded ‘racists’.

Today, however, on the cusp of a General Election, many Labour MPs have realised that their secret plan has backfired spectacularly. As a result of mass immigration, many of their core white working-class voters complain that they feel like second-class citizens in their own communities, and believe that immigrants are given unfair precedence for jobs and public services.

As a result, Labour MPs in marginal seats or with a BNP threat are desperately scrambling to play the race card in a shameless attempt to be seen as acting tough on immigration after all.

One of the MPs at the heart of the new get-tough policy on immigration in constituency backyards is Mr Balls, who is the Prime Minister’s closest political friend. Mr Balls has been at the centre of Cabinet decision-making over the past decade and will have been only too well aware of Labour’s encouragement of a multicultural Britain.

Mr Balls, a front-runner to succeed Mr Brown as Labour leader, has held two public meetings and produced direct mail and questionnaires on the immigration issue in his newly-created Morley and Outwood constituency.

Significantly, the Schools Secretary’s Yorkshire constituency is a fertile breeding ground for the BNP, which already has one BNP councillor and hundreds of members registered locally.

In his recent constituency newsletter, Mr Balls wrote: ‘I want to have a conversation with you about immigration. What we really need is proper discussion about the difficulties and benefits that immigration can bring to our country.’

He admitted that there were ‘concerns about jobs in our area’, and asked: ‘Do you support updating our immigration laws so that: migrants who want to settle here must speak English? A probationary period should be passed before they are able to claim state benefits?’

It is a similar story in Barking – the East London constituency where BNP leader Nick Griffin is fighting the Culture Minister Margaret Hodge.

With one of the highest rates of immigration in Britain, Barking has seen a massive social upheaval as a result of Labour’s policy, with many local families struggling to come to terms with the sheer number of new arrivals from abroad.

Yet in a two-page letter to constituents, Mrs Hodge paints herself as being tough on immigration, saying that it can be ‘very unsettling’ for ‘predominantly white’ and ‘traditional East End families’. She adds: ‘I respect your concerns about the pace of change. It is wrong for others to dismiss these out of hand and rest assured that you do have my support on this.’

Earlier this month, Mrs Hodge even suggested that migrants should be forced to ‘earn’ the right to benefits and council housing over several years. She warned that British values of tolerance were under threat because of an increasing sense of ‘unfairness’ over immigration.

Yet at no time has she accepted responsibility for her part in creating these problems, through her own Government’s bitterly controversial ’social objectives’. Only now that her seat is under threat has she seen fit to speak out.

In Wakefield, West Yorkshire, the Government whip Mary Creagh has produced similar leaflets and surveys on immigration. ‘One issue comes up time and time again,’ she writes, ‘immigration, and in particular its impact on local communities and the Wakefield job market.’

It is a desperate response to the fact that the BNP captured 13 per cent of the vote in her area at the European elections – and may build on that support at the General Election.

In an echo of Mr Brown’s doomed slogan ‘British jobs for British workers’, Ms Creagh asks her constituents whether: ‘Jobs should be advertised first to people in Wakefield before being opened up to overseas workers’ – a statement that would almost certainly fall foul of race relations legislation.

Such concerns have also preoccupied Gisela Stuart, the former junior health minister, who is defending a wafer-thin majority in Birmingham Edgbaston.

She carried out a recent survey which invited responses to the proposition: ‘Migrants should have to pay into a fund to support communities experiencing significant change as a result of immigration.’

Or how about Tom Watson, the West Bromwich East MP and another close ally of the Prime Minister, who has also been busy posing as being tough on immigration? (Nick Griffin and other leading BNP figures took part in a St George’s Day parade through West Bromwich which was attended by 20,000 people).

In a recent direct mail and survey about immigration, Watson declared: ‘Most people told me that they were concerned about the level of immigration. More surveys were returned than on any other subject I have asked you about in the past. There is a great deal of worry about the pressure on schools, doctors’ surgeries and housing allocations.

‘Also unsurprisingly, a lot of people also mentioned the issue of protecting local jobs. I want you to help me keep the pressure up on the Government in relation to reforming and updating our immigration and citizenship rules and laws.’

In Burton, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth has gone even further, actively campaigning to portray the Tories as the party that is soft on immigration.

Defending a majority of just 1,421 – smaller than the number of BNP votes in her constituency at the 2005 election – Ms Smeeth has highlighted how London’s Conservative Mayor Boris Johnson is ‘campaigning for an amnesty for illegal immigrants’.

Such breathtaking hypocrisy from the party that has presided over the biggest influx of immigrants in British history has shocked even seasoned immigration campaigners.

Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, says: ‘It would seem that some Labour MPs are singing to an entirely different hymn sheet from the rest of the Government. We have been pressing the Government on these issues for years. It appears to be only the onset of a General Election that has caused some of them to respond – even if it is in a surreptitious manner.’

Shown the evidence of Labour’s new electioneering tactic, Lord Carlile, QC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, accused the MPs involved of willfully stirring up resentment and prejudice against immigrants.

He says: ‘I don’t think that any candidate should demean him or herself by grovelling on the ground occupied by Nick Griffin and the BNP. We need a sensible debate, and a true analysis of the effect of immigration issues on the economy, benefits and the work place. But pandering to and encouraging prejudice is a very bad idea.’

Lord Ouseley, the former chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, is similarly appalled by these 11th-hour demands for action from vulnerable MPs.

‘Where have they been for the past ten years while this is going on? It is only because it has become such a high-profile issue and they fear they are losing support that they are now raising it. No wonder people are so cynical.

‘They were too busy at Westminster to worry about the threat from the BNP. Yet their constituents have been worried about this issue for years. They are trying to shut the door now that the horse has well and truly bolted.

‘The voters these MPs are trying to reach out to will not fall for this. They feel alienated because they have seen a government that is more interested in wealth and celebrity and has allowed the financial sector to bring the whole edifice crashing down.’

One thing is certain: however offensive, it seems that Mr Balls and his fellow vulnerable MPs will stop at nothing to cling on to their jobs and perks.

Daily Mail

On platform one at Bolton train station in England a mob of about 100 men punch the air in unison as a chant – “Muslim bombers, off our streets!” – goes up. Their voices echo loudly, and as more men suddenly appear, startled passengers move aside. The protesters wave St George’s Cross flags – the red and white English national emblem – and raise placards. Some wear balaclavas, others black-hooded tops. There is an air of menace.

These are some of the most violent soccer hooligans in Britain and today they have joined in an unprecedented show of strength. Standing shoulder to shoulder are notorious gangs such as Cardiff City’s Soul Crew, Bolton Wanderers’ Cuckoo Boys and Luton Town’s Men In Gear: a remarkable gathering given that on a match day these men would be fighting each other. Today they are not here for football; it is politics that has drawn them. Their destination is Manchester to support a protest by the newly formed English Defence League.

The police are here in force, too. “Take that mask off,” barks a sergeant to one young man. The man does so immediately but retorts: “Why are they allowed to wear burqas in public but we’re not allowed to cover our faces?” The sergeant snaps back: “Just do what you’re told.”

Says a man with a West Country accent standing next to me: “It’s always the fu–in’ same these days. One rule for them and another for us. I’m sick of this fu–in’ country.” He draws on a cigarette before flicking it to the ground in disgust. He starts to complain again, but when the public address system announces the arrival of the train to Manchester Piccadilly, he raises his hands above his head and starts another football favourite: “Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves …”

His companions join in singing, and as the train comes to a halt beside the platform the crowd surges forward. The carriages are almost full, so the men pack into aisles followed by police speaking into radios. A group of young men drinking beer at a table eye the protesters warily, but one protester wearing a baseball cap notices their fear and reassures them. “It’s all right lads, nothing to worry about. We’re protesting against radical Islam. Come and join us,” he says, and as the train draws nearer to Manchester, the singing starts again. “Eng-e-land, Eng-e-land, Eng-e-land …” the men sing rowdily.

The English Defence League is in town.

The league seemed to spring from nowhere last year, but since its formation the far right movement has held 20 large protests in Britain’s cities. Although it claims to be a peaceful group, violence has erupted at most league demonstrations, with its supporters fighting on the streets against Muslim youths and a group called Unite Against Fascism, an umbrella organisation consisting of mainly students and trade unionists and formed in 2003 to oppose the far right. Nearly 200 people have been arrested, weapons have been seized and city centres have been brought to a standstill.

Britain has not witnessed such street violence for many years, and although both sides blame each other for the trouble, there are fears that the league – despite its official multiracial stance – has become a ready-made army for neo-Nazis who for years have operated underground.

All mainstream political parties in Britain have criticised the league. Communities Secretary John Denham compared the group to Oswald Mosley’s Union of British Fascists, which ran amok in the 1930s.

Now, with tinderbox northern towns such as Bradford and Oldham – both of which witnessed race riots in 2001 – among the league’s stated targets for this year, a countrywide police team set up to combat domestic extremism, the National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit, has been investigating the movement.

I had met members of the league for the first time in a derelict building in Luton, near London, three weeks before the Manchester rally. They had agreed to talk on the condition that I did not identify them. Eleven men turned up. All wore balaclavas and most had black league hoodies with “Luton Division” on the back. A man using the pseudonym Tommy Robinson did most of the talking and explained the movement’s background.

“For more than a decade now, there’s been tension in Luton between Muslim youths and whites. We all get on fine – black, white, Indian, Chinese – everyone does, in fact, apart from some Muslim youths who’ve become extremely radicalised since the first Gulf War. Preachers of hate such as Anjem Choudary have been recruiting for radical Islamist groups in Luton for years. Our government does nothing, so we decided we’d start protesting against radical Islam, and it grew from there,” he said.

With Islam Europe’s fastest-growing religion – Muslim populations are projected to expand rapidly in coming decades – the group’s fear that traditional British culture is under threat have been exacerbated.

Robinson could barely conceal his anger as he described radical Muslims protesting as the Royal Anglican regiment paraded through the town on its return from Afghanistan last May. Following the incident, he and others set up a group called United People of Luton. After linking up with a Birmingham-based group called British Citizens Against Muslim Extremists and a group calling itself Casuals United, they realised there was potential for a national movement. Robinson said members wore balaclavas to protect their identities because league members had been targeted by Muslim extremists.

But although the league publicly espouses peaceful protest, there is growing concern over its secrecy and quasi-paramilitary appearance – as well as some of its membership. According to the international anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, far-right British National Party activists and other fascist extremists are at the core of the league. The respected publication’s allegations have been backed by a former league member called Paul Ray who claimed that the group had been hijacked by the anti-immigration British National Party (which last week extended a warm welcome to Australian anti-immigration campaigner and one-time politician Pauline Hanson, after she announced plans to live in England).

Then there is Casuals United. The group came to the fore about the time the English Defence League was formed. An unprecedented alliance of football hooligans, it was the brainchild of Jeff Marsh, a member of Cardiff City’s Soul Crew who has been convicted three times for violent offences. This included a two-year jail sentence for stabbing Manchester United fans. Marsh has now taken a back seat, so the public face of Casuals United is fellow Welshman and Soul Crew member Mickey Smith. Casuals United makes full use of modern communications and uses social networking websites such as Facebook to organise the 50 or so gangs that are recruiting members around Britain.

The league and Casuals United claim to be separate, but the link becomes clear after I meet Joel Titus. Titus, 18, an Arsenal fan with a club tattoo on his right calf who runs the league’s youth division. He refuses to speak about the the group’s relationship with Casuals United. But a text I later receive from him before a protest in London reads: “Right lads, the ‘unofficial’ meet for the 31st (London) is going to be 12 o’clock at The Hole In the Wall pub just outside Waterloo station. I will be there just before that. Remember lads, were [sic] going as Casuals United and if you could obtain a poppy to wear, it would make us look good, even if we are kicking off. lol. Cheers lads. Joel ‘Arsenal’ Titus.”

In London that day, fighting erupted though not between the league and its original targets, radical preacher Anjem Choudary and his extremist followers in the now-outlawed Islamist group Islam4UK – their planned march was cancelled over fears of violence. The league’s ruckus was with neo-Nazi group Combat 18. An account on neo-Nazi website Stormfront said 400 nationalists turned up in London to demonstrate against Islam4UK’s march to Downing Street and that fighting began afterwards when members of the English Defence League started singing anti-German songs in a pub. “We ended up kicking off with about 50 to 60 EDL, who were throwing fire extinguishers, pint glasses, bottles, and various other things,” a neo-Nazi posted.

Other neo-Nazi groups, including the British People’s Party and the British Freedom Fighters, have also participated in league protests, despite their opposition to the league’s multiracial position.

The league’s credentials as a peaceful protest group are further undermined by postings by its own supporters on Facebook. Ahead of a rally in Leeds, comments were made about Muslims, including one by a supporter called Aiden Hirst: “Kill every single 1 of the f—ers.”

Threats are not just aimed at Muslims. Photographs and addresses of critics are also passed between league members online, and journalists have been sent death threats in the form of “EDL fatwas”.

The high command of the league is much more astute than Titus or Smith and distances itself from violence. In a Covent Garden pub I meet a computer expert from London called Alan Lake who runs a website called Four Freedoms. Last summer he contacted the league and offered to fund and advise the movement.

His aim, he says, is to unite the “thinkers” and those prepared to take to the streets. He describes this marriage as “the perfect storm coming together”, adding that street violence is not desirable but perhaps inevitable. “There are issues when you are dealing with football thugs – but what can we do?”

He strongly criticises fascist organisations, however, and says that one of his conditions for backing the movement is that it does not associate with far-right groups. “There are different groups infiltrating and trying to cause rifts by one means or another, or trying to waylay the organisation to different agendas. The intention is to exclude those groups and individuals.”

But while some league leaders may oppose fascism, there are others who seem to have no problem with extremism. At a recent league protest in Swansea, Wales, skinheads chanted British National Party slogans and raised Nazi salutes. In Northern Ireland, according to Searchlight , loyalists have started an Ulster Defence League, backed by the former paramilitary group the Ulster Defence Association, while in Scotland, the hooligan Inter City Firm attached to Rangers football club helped set up a Scottish Defence League, which planned a rally in Edinburgh last week. But thousands of supporters of rival anti-fascist groups outnumbered the Scottish Defence League. Hundreds of police were used to provide a buffer between the two groups.

The English city of Stoke witnessed a big English Defence League protest in January when about 1500 supporters and 600 police officers turned out – by far the largest gathering to date. Violence erupted again and 17 people were arrested and four policemen injured. Football hooligans from Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers fought each other, despite being fellow league supporters. A video on YouTube showed vehicles being attacked and a police officer being kicked by a mob after he fell to the ground.

The fear of many is that the perfect storm is coming together for the far right.

At the league protest I attended in Manchester, 48 people were arrested during street violence, including supporters of Unite Against Fascism, which has also attracted a minority intent on violence. In the aftermath, the Bolton Interfaith Council, echoing the concerns of many, issued a stark warning that race relations were under threat in Britain.

Billy Briggs writing in The Age (Australia)

Billy Briggs is a Britain-based freelance writer.

Half way through Woody Allen’s film Manhattan, the Allen character attends a lavish New York party. The talk is of American neo-Nazis marching in New Jersey and a prominent “satirical piece in the Times” poking fun at these tin-pot fascists. Allen argues for a direct confrontation: “bricks and baseball bats really get to the point”. The joke is, of course, that it is hard to imagine anyone wielding a baseball bat with less effect than Woody Allen.

Anthony Julius, on the other hand, is a different matter. In his long introduction to Trials of the Diaspora, he acknowledges that he has placed himself across the “path” of anti-Semitism: “I was there”. His personal brushes with it are recounted at some length to indicate his “motivation” in writing this history. He focuses on the time when he took on the Royal establishment as the Princess of Wales’s divorce lawyer with resulting sneers in the media.

Such combativeness is to be welcomed when it has Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, as its target. He reminds the reader that Griffin, given the oxygen of publicity by the BBC, is a “Holocaust denier and an admirer of David Irving”. Julius has already had one “major set-piece fight with a Holocaust denier” and is clearly itching for another. He successfully defended the US historian Deborah Lipstadt after Irving brought a libel case against both her and Penguin Books. Irving rightly suffered an ignominious defeat and was bankrupted.

Such are Julius’s credentials for writing this history of English anti-Semitism. As the author of a controversial book on TS Eliot and anti-Semitism, he has already engaged with one major literary figure. But Trials of the Diaspora is of a different order. It is a veritable baseball bat of a book, and written with a strong sense of “common plight” or “solidarity” with Anglo-Jews.

The book is, therefore, more than a mere history. It divides up the topic into Medieval (up to the General Expulsion of Jews in 1290), Modern (from the 1660s to the 1960s) and Contemporary (post-1967), with the literature chapter covering all three periods. But the book also has two chapters on “Enmities” and “Defamations”, a chapter on English “mentalités”, and two final chapters on “Anti-Zionisms [sic]” which are more polemic than history.

So what purports to be a “history of anti-Semitism in England” actually has only two bona fide historical chapters (on the Medieval and Modern eras). This may be a sensible way to proceed, as Julius tends to cherry-pick the work of professional historians. As an accomplished lawyer, he is more concerned with making cases (which can verge on axe-grinding) than giving a rounded account of the record.

He also tends to read history backwards as if the extremities of medieval anti-Semitism inform contemporary inequities. Does the medieval boycott of Anglo-Jewry speak to those anti-Zionists who wish to boycott Israel, for example? Trials of the Diaspora identifies four different kinds of anti-Semitism with a specific “English provenance”. The first is a “radical anti-Semitism of defamation, expropriation, murder and expulsion” in medieval England. After the expulsion of Jewry, literary anti-Semitism from Chaucer to Shakespeare and Dickens enabled “the Jew” to be “continuously present” in English culture. The Prioress’s Tale, The Merchant of Venice and Oliver Twist particularly serve this function.

With the Readmission of Jews in 1655, under Oliver Cromwell, a modern, everyday anti-Semitism of “insult and partial exclusion” was prevalent until the 1960s. In the contemporary period, a “new anti-Zionism” treats Zionism and the state of Israel as “illegitimate Jewish enterprises”; this has “renewed anti-Semitism, and given it a future”. This last claim is the most contentious in the book.

Julius argues that anti-Semitism is unlike other racisms, as it has to be “explained”. The first part of the book, therefore, spends an inordinate amount of time categorising different kinds of anti-Semites and anti-Semitisms (I counted 22 sub-categories in Chapter One). He rightly notes that there is “no essence of anti-Semitism” and, instead, characterises his subject as a “repertoire of attitudes, myths and defamations” at any one time.

It is this “discursive swamp” that Julius the lawyer attempts to order and compartmentalise. By the end of such labyrinthine classifications, however, he seems to throw up his hands and defines anti-Semitism merely as beliefs about “Jews or Jewish projects” that are “false, hostile and injurious”. This form of “evil” can be grouped under three headings: “blood libel, the conspiracy libel, and the economic libel”.

The book recounts in graphic detail the radical nature of medieval anti-Semitism, which included vicious attacks on Jews throughout England and the self-immolation of the Jews of York in Clifford’s Tower in 1190. The local rabbi killed “60 of the 150 Jewish men and women” in the tower. Such acts culminated in the unprecedented expulsion of medieval Jewry. The “blood libel”, with Jews cast as vile and grotesque child-killers, certainly played its part in inciting violence. But Julius’s belief that the “blood libel” is the “master trope” of English anti-Semitism -from Chaucer to Tom Paulin and Caryl Churchill – is more than a little hyperbolic.

The definition of anti-Semitism as the vilification of “Jewish projects” also skews the book. The only “project” that I can see is the formation of the state of Israel, which is why the history of Zionism and the British Mandate in Palestine is an unusually prominent aspect of the chapter on modern anti-Semitism. These preoccupations have a distorting effect as more conventional anti-Semitic events – such as so-called “Jewish financial scandals” or horrendous but influential potboilers – are downplayed.

In many ways this is three books bundled into one, which results in many internal contradictions. The chapter on “The Mentality of Modern English Anti-Semitism”, by far the most original, stresses the “minor”, “non-lethal” “modest”, “invisible” aspect of the subject. But we are also told that when it comes to anti-Semitism “no other country” has the “density of history”, nor is as “innovative”, as England.

Such contradictions are resolved by stressing the “radical” character of both medieval and contemporary periods (with English literature crudely corralled to illustrate the argument). England’s “gifts to Jew-hatred” are the Jewish expulsion and the “new anti-Zionism”. This is why Julius is unselfconscious about evoking medieval English anti-Semitism in the 21st century.

But the abiding problem with Trials of the Diaspora is that the reader remains unsure whether anti-Semitism is being evoked in this “major” or “minor” key. With the potential for anti-Semitism to go from “bad” to “worse”, even “independent-minded Jews” (who are welcomed at the beginning of the book) are part of the problem.

It is hard for any argument, even one as maximalist as this, to invoke both Nick Griffin and “independent” Anglo-Jews (a rather dubious generalisation) in the same breath. What a pity that Julius did not let the copious historical evidence of genuine anti-Semitism, which is completely overwhelming, speak for itself.

Dark ages: Jews in medieval England

Jews came to England in the wake of the Norman Conquest and by the late 12th century lived in more than 20 communities, the biggest in London. Not confined to ghettos, they did endure periodic pogroms and persecutions, usually as scapegoats in times of crisis. One of the worst massacres took place in 1190 in York, and led to mass suicide in Clifford’s Tower (left). After another wave of violence, Jews were expelled from England in 1290; Oliver Cromwell re-admitted the community in 1655.

Reviewed by Bryan Cheyette in The Independent

Bryan Cheyette is Chair in Modern Literature at the University of Reading

Anti-fascists will be trying to gain support within the town by holding an information stand in Hastings town centre on Saturdays.

Members of Hastings Unite Against Fascism are gearing up to campaign against the British National Party in the forthcoming local and national elections.

And they will be hoping to convince passers-by to join their fight. A spokesman for the group said: “With the elections coming up, we aim to get the ‘Don’t vote BNP’ message across to as many people as possible and a regular stall will help us achieve this.”

The group is also planning to protest outside planned hustings events which include BNP parliamentary hopeful Nick Prince. The spokesman added: “We do not believe anybody should debate with them.”

Members will be in the town centre from 10.30am every Saturday for the forseeable future.

Sussex Express

Exactly 65 years ago today three young Germans went to their deaths following a perfunctory Nazi show trial prosecuted by the notorious Roland Freisler. The three were members of the White Rose, a war-time anti-Nazi resistance group little known outside Germany, even today. In the months and years following those first executions other members of the group, most of them young, idealistic and patriotic, also lost their lives to the vengeful Nazi state.

Read more at Lancaster Unity

A tycoon who starred on TV’s Secret Millionaire is joining the British National Party to RILE them – because he is Asian.

Mo Chaudry, 49, will formally apply today – days after the BNP had to change its whites-only constitution because it breached equality laws. The Pakistan-born businessman, who is worth £60million, admitted last night: “I will not be welcomed with open arms.”

Despite blasting the party as racist, he vowed: “I want to stand up and be counted – and expose the BNP for what they are. I want to antagonise them and attend their meetings, find out what makes them tick.”

Muslim Mo, who made his fortune from water parks, appeared on Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire in December. He handed out cash to worthy causes in the Asian community of Leeds.

The dad of three, from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffs, said: “I live near Stoke, which is becoming a BNP stronghold – and don’t want it being known as a racist city.”

The Sun

Anti-terror chiefs have warned against the growing threat from Nazi fanatics hell-bent on unleashing a new wave of bloody mayhem on Britain’s streets. The hardcore racists have vowed to WIPE OUT non-whites and set up a FOURTH REICH, echoing Hitler’s evil empire.

Security forces monitoring the underground group and campaigners against racism say the extremists are a REAL danger and must be STOPPED.

The Blood and Honour group – which takes its name from the Hitler Youth slogan – already claims to have branches in 18 countries with 19 cells in Britain alone. It spreads its chilling ideology through secret meetings, internet messages and broadcasts and white-power CDs. Followers are incited to “take our country back by force or arms” and told they must “fight or die”.

The movement is exposed in a terrifying report by the Centre for Social Cohesion think-tank and the Nothing British group which campaigns against racism. It has handed a 53-page dossier to the police.

Patrick Mercer, MP, chair of the House of Commons anti-terror sub-committee, believes the group must be crushed. He said: “There is no room for complacency. These characters have the potential to inflict a lot of damage and create a lot of fear.”

And Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones – Shadow Security Minister and former chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee – has written to Home Secretary Alan Johnson about the group. She said: “This report suggest Blood and Honour is distributing material which encourages hatred and acts of terror. I’d like to know what action can be taken under the Terrorism Act.”

Blood and Honour evolved from the far-right music scene and is more extreme than other far-right organisations, rejecting involvement in the political process as practised by other groups such as the BNP. “We must build an underground cell system of dedicated fighters, trained and fanatical in the beliefs of National Socialism,” it states. “As time is running out for the White World we therefore must fight or die.”

It glorifies terrorism against minorities and CDs sold by the group include Ovens Again – a sickening reference to the Holocaust. Album covers show a dead black victim of a mob lynching and piles of dead bodies at a Nazi concentration camp.

The group has already been linked to convicted terrorists including Neil Lewington, jailed last year after turning his bedroom into a bomb factory.
An expert witness at his trial said Blood and Honour material played a central role in his radicalisation.

Last year West Yorkshire Chief Constable Sir Norman Bettison warned of “a growing right wing threat” after cops seized hundreds of weapons and bombs from a suspected neo-Nazi cell.

James Bethell, director of Nothing British said: “It is important that we remain vigilant towards people with an ideological commitment to creating violence between people of different races. In 2001 security services tracked young Islamist radicals at outward bound camps that seemed harmless at the time. Four years later, some of those men had become terrorists who sought to kill innocent civilians on July 7 and 21, 2005.

“We must not make the same mistake again.”

News of the World

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) has launched a new website, http://www.reportingthebnp.org/, in a bid to inform reporters about the political tactics of the British National Party (BNP) in the run-up to the general election.

The NUJ said:

Reporting the BNP gives information on what the BNP actually stands for, with detailed facts and arguments to counter the far-right organisations’ unfounded claims.

“Challenging the fascist politics of hate is a job for every fair-minded person in our society, not just a task for committed activists. NUJ members are proud to play our part in exposing the myths on which modern Nazis seek to gain power,” said NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear.

The launch of the site comes just ahead of the protest scheduled for Tuesday, in which journalists will come together for the EXPOSE campaign: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist and broadcaster; Mehdi Hasan, political senior editor for the New Statesman; Sunny Hundal, editor of the Liberal Conspiracy blog; and Peter Hain, secretary of state for Wales are among the figures speaking.

Supporters of of EXPOSE also wrote a letter to the Guardian this week outlining some of the reasons for the campaign:

The assault on the Times’s investigations editor Dominic Kennedy on Sunday (Report, 16 February) reveals the methods the BNP will employ to prevent the party’s activities being reported. Intimidation and violence are part of the BNP leadership’s stock in trade. The BNP cites “free speech” to demand access to the mainstream media – yet the party is an enemy of free speech. The BNP’s inflammatory rhetoric about immigration cannot be taken at face value. It abuses free speech to incite racial and religious hatred. A robust approach to covering the BNP is therefore essential.

Journalism.co.uk