Toxic Political Associates

The national media continues to fume on about Jeremy Corbyn’s past associates of dubious distinction, studiously avoiding Corbyn’s intimate connection to Tony Blair, a man who should certainly be tried for war crimes.

In stark contrast to many politicians, Corbyn has always opposed racism in all its forms. For example, in early 2010 he addressed a protest in London (that I attended) that opposed the English Defence League’s march on Parliament.

These street-fighting thugs (the EDL) were in town to support the showing of an anti-Islamic propaganda spiel in the Houses of Lords – a viewing that had been arranged by Tory peer Baroness Cox and the then leader of UKIP, Eton-educated Lord Pearson of Rannoch.

However, the main attraction of this event revolved around the invitation of the controversial Dutch MP Geert Wilders, a prominent racist and Islamophobe who in 2013 went on to form the European Freedom Alliance with French National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

Shortly after the formation of this alliance, UKIP leader Nigel Farage had argued that UKIP would not join Wilders alliance because the National Front has “anti-Semitism and general prejudice in its DNA”.

But just last June Mr. Farage’s Europe of Freedom and Democracy group (which operates within the European Parliament) allowed Joëlle Bergeron to join, an individual who had played a leading role at the French National Front for some forty years from its founding in 1972 until 2014.

Several months later, extreme right-wing Polish MEP, Robert Iwaszkiewicz  then joined Farage’s cosy gang, despite the fact that the leader of his Party believes that the public should “not see the disabled on television”; says there is no proof that Hitler knew about the Holocaust; and that Mussolini sent Jewish citizens to German concentration camps, because he “was trying to protect Jews”!

None of this is too surprising, but what is shocking is that not a single member of Leicester’s 52 Labour councillors is openly speaking out in the media to oppose the intensifying smear campaign being waged against Jeremy Corbyn.

This letter was emailed to the Leicester Mercury mailbox on 21st August.