Labours cuckoo in the nest

Regular readers will recall that I raised the alarm when Andy Newman was selected as Labour Party prospective candidate for Chippenham. Newman, a supporter of the Chinese Communist Party, Hamas and self appointed cheerleader for Yusuf Quaradawi (an anti-Semitic Islamist cleric) is not the sort of individual needed in a modern Labour Party.

The days of Stalinism may be on the wain, but his and Socialist Unity's continued support for Putin, Assad and their British "lickspittle" George Galloway detracts from the concept of modern social democracy. Even more so as the latter is a member of a political party in opposition to Labour.

Socialist Unity's connections with Galloway are all to apparent as this toadying video from RT (the Government controlled TV station shows as Galloway "interviews" the odious John Wight, Newman's co-thinker at SU:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZwHHRIwUKM (appalling stuff)

In his latest missive he renews his attack on Anne Marie Waters, a secularist he helped drive out of the Labour Party (see here). Newman writes:

Regular readers may recall that I raised the alarm when anti-Islam activist, Anne Marie Waters, was seeking the selection to be Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Brighton Pavilion. Sadly this led to Nick Cohen writing a rather ill judged article for the Spectator, where he stood up for Anne Marie:

[Andy Newman] has campaigned against Anne Marie Waters of One Law for All , which opposes the imposition of Sharia law in the UK. In other words, he has put himself on the wrong side of the struggle between religion and women’s rights.

Nick Cohen was not alone in taking a dim view of Newman's seemingly unrelenting "misalliances" with various opponents of secularism. The fact that Anne Marie has joined UKIP is a disappointment to me and I have written to her saying so, but it does not detract from the fact that her work (along with that of others such as Maryam Namzie) on standing up for women's rights, campaigning against FGM and more is important for those of us campaigning for a more just and equal world.

As a freethinker I am prepared to listen to people from across the political spectrum about the various issues that concern me. I have a lot of time for individuals like Andrew Coates and Jim Denham despite their formal adherence to Marxism. 

Likewise I can appreciate the views of Anne Marie and Maryam on specific issues without supporting either UKIP or the Worker Communist Party of Iran which they respectively belong to.

Democracy is a broad church, but some like Newman along with Wight , Galloway and others in the SWP and Socialist Party are so obviously enemies of free speech and democracy they do need to be opposed.

And oppose them I will, both on-line and in my union!