British fascist Mosley post 1945


This 2014 video from Britain is about Sir Oswald Mosley.

From London daily The Morning Star:

Mosley‘s real story

(Sunday 11 March 2007)

Very Deeply Dyed in Black by Graham Macklin
(IB Tauris, £45)

DAVID RENTON discovers the havoc that British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley continued to wreak in Europe after 1940.

Of all the books that have been published on British fascism, few take the story beyond 1940.

One common assumption is that, having been detained under wartime powers, the pre-war leader of the British Union of Fascists Oswald Mosley was so humbled by the experience that he did not dare show his face again for 30 years.

Readers of the Morning Star will have no difficulty in recalling a different history.

After 1945, Mosley did attempt to re-launch his British Union of Fascists under the new name of the Union Movement.

He was sporadically successful, notably in Dalston in 1947-8 and in Notting Hill 10 years later.

In both places, Mosley profited on the back of race hatred, aimed against first the Jews and then black British people.

In Dalston, one of Mosley’s victims was the young playwright Harold Pinter.

Then just a teenage boy, Pinter was set upon by a gang of blackshirts and very badly beaten.

In both Dalston and Notting Hill, Mosley’s party was soon met with resistance.

The routing of the Union Movement in Hackney at the hands of the left and the anti-fascists of the 43 Group taught Mosley that there was little prospect of success in Britain.

He did not admit defeat, however, but took his message to Europe.

German POWs were invited to attend British fascist meetings.

On their return to Germany, they were expected to repay their favour by working to promote Mosley’s books in translation.

One of Mosley’s followers was Fritz Roessler, elected to the German federal parliament in 1949.

Another project that he appears to have funded was an SS-Bruderschaft, set up by Alfred Franke-Gricksch, previously the head of the personnel section of Himmler’s Reich main security office.

In June 1949, Mosley spent a week in Spain, where his sponsor was General Franco‘s brother-in-law Ramon Serrano Suner. Mosley’s books were then translated into Spanish.

By 1950, Mosley was in Italy, as a guest of the fascist MSI.

Mosley’s funds and personal support were given to the nurturing of fascist groups in many countries. Graham Macklin also makes much of Mosley’s role as one of the first of the post-war Holocaust deniers.

Over time, Mosley’s audiences declined. Others reaped the rewards. The tale is sordid, but, in its own fashion, compelling.

Mosley was a man with few remaining talents, but considerable funds, a great advocate of malevolence wherever he went.

Macklin is to be praised for having produced this book, which is a worthy addition to every anti-fascist library.

Oswald’s son Max Mosley: here.

Francis Beckett grew up knowing that his father John Beckett had been a left-wing Labour MP who threw in his lot with Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) before setting up the National Socialist League with William Joyce. While Joyce, under his Lord Haw-Haw guise, broadcast nazi propaganda from Berlin during WWII — he was hanged at its denouement as a traitor — Beckett was interned in Holloway jail alongside Mosley. Throughout this time and beyond the grave Beckett kept his secret, even from family, that he was Jewish: here.

Revelatory exposé of Britain’s nazi acolytes during WWII. From aristocrats to hairdressers, Tim Tate’s book unearths the Hitler followers aiming to undermine the war effort, says TOM KING.

US psychologist Zimbardo says Abu Ghraib not ‘bad apples’, but Bush administration


Bush, Rumsfeld, and war crimes in Iraq, cartoon by Steve Bell

From Associated Press:

‘Psychology Of Evil’ Prof’s Last Stanford Lecture

STANFORD The retiring psychology professor who ran the famed Stanford Prison Experiment savagely criticized the Bush administration’s War on Terror Wednesday and said senior government officials should be tried for crimes against humanity.

In his final lecture at Stanford University, Philip Zimbardo said abuses committed by Army reservists at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison weren’t isolated incidents by rogue soldiers.

Rather, sadism was the inevitable result of U.S. government policies that condone brutality toward enemies, he said.

Individual military personnel those who stripped prisoners and leashed them like dogs are only as culpable as the people who created the overall environment in which the soldiers operated, Zimbardo told undergraduates enrolled in Introductory Psychology.

“Good American soldiers were corrupted by the bad barrel in which they too were imprisoned,” said Zimbardo, 73.

“Those barrels were designed, crafted, maintained and mismanaged by the bad barrel makers, from the top down in the military and civilian Bush administration.”

The professor blasted President Bush, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials who said that al-Qaida and Taliban captives would be considered “unlawful combatants” rather than “prisoners of war,” a designation that would invoke the Geneva Convention.

He said those officials “should be tried for the crimes against humanity.”

See also here.

And here.

It only takes one dissenting voice to cut through a torrent of hatred. Evidence shows that even a small number of nonconformists can have a disproportionate impact in preventing dangerous forms of groupthink. NICOLAS LALAGUNA reports.

Cartoon on Bush’s tour in Latin America


Bush's tour in Latin America, cartoon

This cartoon from Internet Weekly in the USA is about Bush’s tour in Latin America, and the big demonstrations against it everywhere.

Bush in Colombia: here.

More on Bush in Latin America is here

And here.

And here.

And here.

In Mexico: here.

Poetry and blues and roll


Pink Meltzer

Today, again in cafe De Bonte Koe (The Spotted Cow) a poetry and music afternoon.

Pink Meltzer did the announcing, for the last time.

She read a poem of her own, on a recent referendum on transport in Leiden.

It is not known yet who will replace her.

First on stage, poet Rick van Boekel.

Then, Han Ruijgrok, with poems by Frank Koenegracht.

Then Peter van Leeuwen; and the first time ever of sculptor Jeroen Spijker reading his poems.

Then, the first set of music by Blues and Roll.

They are Sam van Bochove, bas and vocals.

Siebe Postma, guitar, vocals, and mouth organ.

And Bernadette Gallis, bongos percussion.

They were her own bongos, which she has as a music teacher.

Rick van Boekel later also used these bongos for his poems.

This time, contrary to last time, Bernadette did not play standing on high heels.

She also had her keyboard, to play a song which she had composed herself when she was eight years old.

Its first parts sounded a bit like Jelly Roll Morton, later parts had more classical influences.

In later gigs of the band, Bernadette plans to sing as well.

The band has played in Drenthe province, and will play on 22 May in Leiden.

Two of their songs today were in Frisian (native langue of the guitarist).

Among later poets on stage was yours truly, with poems on colour changes in sunlight, a lady bug, an umbrella, seasons, togetherness, and Dutch Princess Mabel.

Then, Peter van den Berg.

Also on stage again, Willem Breddels.

He is far better known for painting than for poetry.

However, already in the 1980s, a poem by him had been published, along with wll known poets like Simon Vinkenoog and Bert Schierbeek, in Schijvers tegen Apartheid (writers against apartheid).

The editor of that book had been Manuel Kneepkens.

UK: conflict Tony Blair-Lord Levy on peerages for money scandal?


Cash for peerages, cartoon

From British daily The Independent:

Levy ‘feels let down and is about to turn on the Labour Party

Recriminations over the cash-for-honours affair threaten to cause irrevocable rift within Tony Blair’s inner circle

By Francis Elliott, Whitehall Editor

Published: 11 March 2007

Lord Levy has fuelled fears he is about to turn on the Labour Party after telling friends he is furious at the lack of public support from senior ministers.

The cash-for-honours investigation increasingly threatens to split Tony Blair’s inner circle asunder in a welter of recrimination.

Friends and family of the two key suspects, Lord Levy and Ruth Turner, fought a battle for public sympathy last week as the show of unity began to unravel.

Now a cabinet minister close to Tony Blair’s chief fundraiser has raised the stakes, telling The Independent on Sunday that Lord Levy “feels badly let down”.

UK: Blair follows Bush also in medical care scandal for war veterans


Blair and health care, cartoonFrom British weekly paper The Observer:

Scandal of treatment for wounded Iraq veterans

· Soldiers ‘denied proper hospital care’
· Letters reveal anguish of families

Ned Temko and Mark Townsend

Sunday March 11, 2007

A shocking picture of neglect and the appalling treatment of wounded British troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan emerged last night in a remarkable series of letters from soldiers’ families obtained by The Observer.

The sheaf of complaints, passed on by deeply alarmed senior military sources, claims that soldiers have been deprived of adequate pain relief and emotional support, and in some cases are unable to sleep because of night time noise in the NHS facilities caring for them.

See also here.

And here.