The Brexiteers solution to the backstop? Starve the Irish into submission

Throwing Anglo-Irish relations under the banjaxed Brexit bus has caused untold hurt and harm. Anna Soubry’s apology to the Irish people yesterday, though welcome, cannot assuage the damage that Tory Brexit has caused.

Nestled between bog and gorse, infused with the ubiquitous aroma of burning peat, is my family home in the West of Ireland. The Connaught landscape is dotted with almost indiscernible white crosses on high, inaccessible land. The un-consecrated burial grounds where famine victims, like my ancestors, were buried.

When Priti Patel threatened to starve Irish people into Brexit submission, she picked at a scab that has taken centuries to heal. My family’s reaction echoed that of the nation, as the tearful emojis flooded my Whatsapp threads this week.

Over 1 million people starved and another 1 million emigrated on "coffin ships" to escape starvation. In 1847, when the potato crop failed for two consecutive years, the famished Irish, whose land was appropriated under British rule, were evicted by their absentee English landlords. Instead of providing relief, Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to HM Treasury, continued to export food from Ireland, abandoning the poor to the ravages of the free market.

The scars of the famine run deep and are immortalised in the balled, “The fields of Athenry”. If you’ve ever walked into a pub in Ireland with a trad session in full flow, you’ll have sung along to the haunting chorus. Even if you can’t discern the lyrics, there’s a melancholy that descends the room as we close our eyes and sing the saddest song in homage to our ancestors.

Note to Tory Brexiters: There is no context in which it is ever acceptable to threaten, hint or joke about using food as a weapon against the Irish. Or anyone.

Meanwhile, also this week, the Belfast Telegraph published a survey which revealed that 65% in Northern Ireland would now vote Remain -(a dramatic increase on the 57% in 2016) and 60% think a united Ireland is more likely after Brexit. 

As a (protestant) friend of mine from Belfast said, “Theresa May bangs on about the will of the English people, ignoring entirely the will of the Scottish and Northern Irish people who voted to Remain in the EU”. 

Who could’ve imagined that a united Ireland would be delivered, albeit accidentally, by a hapless Tory government.  

UN condemns child poverty in UK as "a social calamity and economic disaster"

“The state does not have your back any longer. You are on your own”.

Those were just some of the UN’s scathing criticisms of the Tory's “punitive” austerity agenda. Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, spent 2 weeks in the UK and met people driven to the indignity of using food banks.

In his Channel 4 interview (see below), he was visibly angered by the fact that the UK is one of the 5^th richest company in the world, yet the level of child poverty in this country is a “social calamity and economic disaster”. He lambasted the fact that the Tories could eradicate poverty, if it wanted to but that it chose not to. Austerity, he said, was a choice and the poorest in society were paying for it.

When asked how the government responded to his damning findings, professor Alston said, “They’re in denial”. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

https://www.channel4.com/news/un-expert-says-austerity-has-condemned-millions-to-poverty

The BBC did its best to bury this report on the day it was published. If it wasn’t for Channel 4 showing footage of Professor’s Alston’s tour of Britain, followed up with extensive coverage of his findings, it wouldn’t have seen the light of day.

Meanwhile, Labour's John McDonnell gave a heartfelt interview about the impact of austerity on his constituents, wherein he explained that, whilst he works with Tories and is polite and constructive, he can never forgive them for what they’ve done to the poor & vulnerable. Professor Brian Cox was offended by this & took McDonnell to task. So, let’s just recap, Brian:

Fourteen million people are living in poverty. 1.5 million in destitution. There has been a 169% rise in homelessness and 700% rise in food banks. Some 120,000 deaths have been linked to austerity yet, the richest 5% increased their wealth by 40% in last 5 years….

Seriously Brian. What planet are you on?

Ryanair's failure to condemn racist rant is tantamount to condoning it. In Brexitland racism is all the rage!

From today, passengers booking flights on Ryanair will be able to request not to be seated next to a racist. For just £110 (one way) customers can avoid the perils of the random seating option, which is free, but could result in you being racially abused and having to move in order to placate the racist.

Or, you could boycott Ryanair and fly with an airline that doesn’t condone racism. For the avoidance of doubt, failure to condemn the racist abuse of a grieving disabled pensioner is tantamount to condoning it, which leaves the company exposed should a legal case be brought against them.

Ryanair’s defunct 1990’s style PR mantra that, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” (there is - the PR "guru" Max Clifford), combined with O’Leary's obnoxious pugnacity, have turned the brand into the VHS of the aviation industry. Old fashioned, unreliable and stuck in a time warp.

On becoming aware of the scandal, Ryanair should have killed the story by acting quickly to condemn the racist abuse of Delsie Gayle. By outlining race related policies and reassuring passengers that training will be stepped up to prevent further incidents of hate crime on their flights. Opting for radio silence just exposes the ineptitude of the all-white, male dominated Ryanair board. 

Have they learned nothing from the court case 10 years ago, where 5 black men (the only black passengers on the flight) were ejected from a Ryanair plane because one white passenger complained to the captain that the calypso musicians looked suspicious? Even when censured by the courts, Ryanair refused to apologise.

Watching the heart breaking ITV interview with Ms Gayle, I was struck when she said that she has travelled by plane for over 53 years and had never experienced anything like that before. This vile, flagrant racist rant was accompanied with a threat of physical violence and comes at a time when Brexit race hate attacks are at epidemic proportions.

Not everyone who voted for Brexit was racist but I'm pretty certain the racists voted for Brexit. That’s an important distinction, borne out by the UN special rapporteur on racism in May. “The environment leading up to the referendum, the environment during the referendum, and the environment after the referendum has made racial and ethnic minorities more vulnerable to racial discrimination and intolerance,” she said.

Liz Fekete, director of the institute of Race Relations believes that the referendum debate and result emboldened a lot of people. They felt justified. They thought they could say racist things in public. They lost their shame. “Let's be honest. Racism is mainstream. Anti-immigration is mainstream in our political culture. We have had a political rhetoric around immigration with ministers talking about creating a hostile environment for undocumented workers”.

I cried when I heard the EU referendum result. I was still crying when I got to the school gates when another mother asked me if I was okay. When I told her that I felt like an unwelcome immigrant for the first time in over twenty years of living here, she said, “We didn’t vote to keep people like you out! We don’t see you as an immigrant, Tess!”.

An awkward conversation ensued about what type of immigrant she thought she was voting to lock out of the country and how dark the tone of the skin to qualify for deportation. Then,  Demented with grief (the loss of hope to hate) - more so than anger - I went straight home and ordered a T-shirt online, with the words, “This is what an immigrant looks like,” emblazoned across my chest. I wore it standing at the school gates every day for a week. I still wear it now (though not every day. I only have the one...). It's my way of rebelling against the everyday racism that thrives in the toxic Tory swamp of Brexitland.

The burgeoning evidence that the EU referendum unleashed an tsunami of far right bigotry is borne out by the daily race hate attacks directed, not against immigrants like me, but those of a darker hue. Women of colour have been disproportionately targeted, often in front of their children.

A friend of mine said she went from never being racially abused in her life to being targeted on a regular basis, since Brexit.  In a recent incident she was told that “British people” voted for P***s like her to leave. To which she replied, “No, you voted for the white foreigners to leave. Us P***s get to stay!” She jokes about her repertoire of acerbic ripostes but I don't laugh. My heart hurts with all this hate.

Instead of containing the monster that Brexit unleashed, the right wing/mainstream media is feeding it. The BBC’s decision to portray Tommy Robinson as a martyr, silenced by the media - before giving him a 20 minute platform to incite hatred, together with the decision to platform alt right, racist, former Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, were either recklessly ill-judged or deliberate attempts to stir the already simmering pot of racial tensions. 

Journalism is supposed to be about speaking truth to power, not baiting the powerless and calling it “balance”. Shame on Ryanair, shame on the Tories & shame on the BBC. 

The Labour Party conference: A government in waiting

From Emily Thornberry to Diane Abbott, Labour oozed talent, ideas & competence at this years conference. As I said to Sky news after Jeremy Corbyn's speech, "If I were Theresa May, I'd be shakin (no "g") in my Jimmy Choos.

The press scrum right in front of me. They were tripping over themselves to get shots of JC.

Hugh Grant looked decidedly hacked off at the..... "Hacked Off fringe event" re Islamophobia in the MSM. He totally blanked the Telegraph reporter who pleaded with him to do an interview. I asked her in the meeting if she could put in a good word for me with her bosses. "As a human rights, socialist journalist, it's been a life long ambition to write for the Telegraph" I said. "How do you rate my chances"? That was the ice breaker. My main question was "As a journalist, how do you feel about the Telegraph's recent cartoon depicting Labour Party members as rabid dogs, with an image of Mohammed wagging the dog's tail"? In fairness to her, she gave a brilliant answer, "I'm only in the job a few weeks"! The audience laughed with her,  I welcomed her & it was good natured. In the Labour Party we challenge wrongs without attacking individuals. That's the gentler kinder politics I signed up to.

If you watch nothing else today, watch this incredibly powerful video that tells a stroy, captures the mood of the nation and inspires - all in 4 minutes. "Our Town" has had more than 1 million views within 48 hours.

Chuka Umunna should be attacking the Tories, not falsely accusing Labour of institutional racism

With Labour ahead in the polls and the Tories on the ropes, a Blairite sabotage attempt was predictable. The failed coup of 2016 wasn’t because they believed Jeremy Corbyn couldn’t win, it was because they feared he could. 

In 2016, a UN report singled out The Sun and The Daily Mail for inciting racial hatred. That Trevor Phillips courted these outlets to attack the Labour leader on Sunday, is shameful. But then this is the man who, as chair of the Equality body, was forced to apologise for propagating "bogus and alarmist" falsehoods that Britain was blighted by race ghettos.

I was involved in rolling out race training with the police in the wake of the MacPherson report. Just when we were making progress, Phillips told the Metropolitan Police board that institutional racism didn’t exist. "Time to move on", so they did and the Met remains institutionally racist as a result. 

It was Labour right winger, Chuka Umunna, who fed the media frenzy by scurrilously labelling fellow members, “attack dogs” and accusing his own party of "Institutional racism". A term that is indelibly linked to the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence. 

Scrutinising Labour against Macpherson’s established parameters, Umunna’s allegation is not substantiated by the evidence. Labour has the most diverse Shadow Cabinet in British history, five of whom are BAME women. Of the 52 BAME MPs elected to parliament in 2017, 32 are Labour. Several seats with a high BAME population, switched from the Tories to Labour, achieving an incredible 11.5% increase in the vote share in the 75 most ethnically diverse areas. 

And then there’s the Labour leader’s record on race. Jeremy Corbyn has literally been on the front line, fighting racism, antisemitism and fascism, his entire life. To accuse him of racism is farcical.

Given that Labour is the natural home for those of us committed to fighting oppression, injustice and racism – in all its forms, it’s not surprising that the Chakrabarti report found that, although there’s much work to do on antisemitism, the Labour Party is not institutionally racist.

  

So where are these “racist" "attack dogs” hiding and who are they?

Is it the junior doctor who worked a double shift, got racially abused on the way home, then donned his rosette to campaign for his Labour candidate? Why? Because he knows that you can’t trust the Tories with the NHS.

Is it the teacher who went into the profession to inspire and educate children but found herself acting as “a shock absorber against the impact of Tory cuts”?

Or, is it arch Corbyn fundamentalist, Chelley Ryan, whose twitter timeline is riddled with this kind of filth,

“To minimise the number of Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is Holocaust denial. 6 million Jews were killed, not 270,000. I am reporting & unfollowing this person and I hope a lot of my followers do the same. These people give Corbyn and us all a bad name. We must call it out!"

These are real people. Labour and Momentum members. I'm appalled that friends who pounded the pavements alongside right wing MPs are now being targeted for abuse - by them. Irrespective of whether the candidate was Left or right wing, Momentum indiscriminately mobilised foot soldiers to knock on doors - in every marginal last year.

The abuse continued on Sunday, when The Telegraph depicted Labour members as a vicious dog with a Muslim pulling its tail. Apart from being deeply offensive, it’s indicative of a moral crisis at the heart of Britain’s political discourse. Wherein denigrating Muslims remains an acceptable form of racism. Have we learned nothing from Jo Cox’s tragic death at the hands of a far right fundamentalist? 

Propping up the Tories

As Tony Blair said when he ousted Larry Whitty from the NEC chair, “All change is the difficult”. Nowadays, General Secretaries are elected (not appointed) and we have moved on from a time when Formula 1 tycoons could hope to buy tobacco advertising exemptions – from a Labour leader.

Although the move away from the corporatisation of New Labour is clearly hard to accept, Tony Blair’s recent attempts to sabotage the party’s democratically elected leader, are unacceptable. No doubt Blair’s unfettered attack on Jeremy Corbyn will have boosted Momentum membership last week but to have given cover for the Tories was unforgivable.

The astonishing admission by Karen Bradley, the Northern Ireland Secretary, that she was clueless about the history and political sensitivities of the region when appointed, went viral on social media. Instead of leading with that news item, Tony Blair, who claims the Good Friday Agreement as his legacy, helped to bury it.

Peace in Northern Ireland is in the balance, thanks to Theresa May’s reckless incompetence, yet Tony Blair, and 36 hours later, Chuka Umunna, turned their guns on their own leader?

It’s akin to a Liverpool player tackling their defender so that Chelsea can score a goal. If you have more in common with the other team (war mongering, de-regulation, austerity, privatisation), either get off the pitch or just go and play for the other side.

The Tories are Cheating & Lying to Get Bonkers Brexit Through Parliament. Elsewhere - On Another Planet - Trump redefines the English language

Lib Dem MP, Jo Swinson, went ballistic this week when she discovered that Tory MP, Brandon Lewis, had voted in a crunch Brexit vote. The problem was that they had a pairing agreement. She was on maternity leave so couldn't vote and he agreed to not vote either.

Pairing is an arcane parliamentary tradition invoked if a member cannot vote for reasons of illness or maternity leave, for example. To make it fair, an MP from the other side agrees not to vote either. Except, Mr Lewis reneged on this arrangement, helping Theresa May inch a little bit closer to Brexit Armageddon.

He claimed it was “an honest mistake” but Swinson wasn’t having any of it. “It’s called cheating”, she raged. Or, “lying”!😈

Turns out that Lewis was apparently ordered by chief whip, Julian Smith, to break the pairing, and vote. The Times reported seeing evidence that that had been the case and Theresa May got herself into yet another pickle. Then it emerged that Mr Smith has form when it comes to targeting women on maternity leave. Apparently he had previously “lied” to Tory MP, Andrea Jenkyns, allegedly ordering her to come to London to vote, on multiple occasions, while she was on maternity leave. 

Fortunately, Tory veteran Michael Heseltine, waded into the row and helpfully explained the fundamental flaw that underpins the pairing protocol. “It’s a gentleman’s agreement” he said. Pausing whilst the slower listeners (it was a Radio 4 interview) caught up. There you have it. The gentleman's agreement, like the old boys' club, is strictly men only. Women need not apply, and if you dare? By god, there will be penalties.

Britain, like the Tories, is in the final stages of decrepitude. I can literally hear the bones creaking.

Elsewhere, Trump left our shores, amid contrails of flatulence and fury, to hang out with the man to whom he owes his presidency. Vladimir Putin. During a Press Conference in Helsinki, he dismissed FBI and CIA claims that Russia meddled in Trumps presidential election. Trump said there was no reason why Russia would interfere with the US elections. But, when it all kicked off back home and people in his own party were calling him a traitor, he helpfully clarified that what he meant to say (though it should have been obvs – PEOPLE – jeez – cue rolling, mad eyes) was wouldn’t. Got it? There’s no reason why President Putin wouldn’t interfere in his presidential election! It’s a double negative, apparently 😱

So, integrity, truth and decency in politics have been replaced by stupidity, lies and contempt for democracy -on both sides of the pond. What could possibly go wrong.

I’m off to have a Brexit breakdown at an undisclosed, secure location. On arrival, all gadgets and electronic equipment will be removed so that I won’t be a danger to myself - or others. For the next 5 weeks, I’m pulling the plug and going off grid. 

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this little vid - one of my personal favourites of the 2017 General Election. It's called Liar, Liar. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxN1STgQXW8

The NHS is 70 Today. Happy Birthday!

The NHS is 70 years old today. It was conceived and given birth to, by Labour. Resisted by doctors and blocked 21 times by the Tories, the NHS is Labour’s greatest achievement.

Nye Bevan created the NHS so that everyone, whether rich or poor, could have equal access to healthcare – free at the point of use. He warned at the time that the NHS would last only as long as folk are prepared to fight for it. In its 70 year history, the fight has never been harder and the stakes never been higher.

All around the country, hospitals are being shut, beds cut, services axed, all in readiness for full blown privatisation. The leaner the NHS machine the more attractive it will be to the US capitalists bidding for contracts. Everything from mental health to children services is being outsourced to privateers, whose priority is not patient care. It’s profit. Hiding behind the NHS logo, the NHS itself is being broken up and, brick by brick, it’s being dismantled and destroyed.

To mark the NHS’ 70^th birthday, the National Health Singers, have launched a new single, “Won’t let go”. It’s a kick ass fight back tune that Jeremy Hunt will be hoping flops. For that reason alone it’s worth buying - in a bid to help it on its way to Number 1 in the charts!

See the vid here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paUzAOCw228

Today, I’ll celebrate the heroes - the nurses, doctors, healthcare workers and porters that keep the NHS alive, but I’ll also be mobilising my community against those that are bent on killing it. We must fight - now - against cuts & closures to our vital services. If we don’t, there’ll be nothing left to salvage from the Tory wreckers' rubble. Complacency and apathy are not an option. Future generations will never forgive us if we fail to act now.

Happy 70^th, NHS 💙

Stop Tory Brexit!

This week, more than most, I felt like I was drowning in a cesspit of Tory generated excrement. Just when you think a new low is not possible, the Tories reached new depths of depravity.

By Wednesday, they had blocked upskirting legislation, lied about NHS funding, claiming it would come from a fictionalised “Brexit dividend,” and made sick and pregnant women cross the lobby in wheelchairs, in a bid to force through the doomed EU withdrawal bill. The Tory/DUP democratic heist has put us in the hands of the three musketeers. What could possibly go wrong?

Theresa May called a snap election last year to get a mandate for a hard Brexit. The people’s answer? “Not on your Nellie”! Yet, here we are, a year later, with the Brexit time bomb strapped to our collective chests. This is a Tory suicide mission and they’re bent on taking us all down with them.

Elsewhere, in the real world, the EU rejected Theresa May’s Northern Ireland back stop. The subject that no-body talked about in the referendum campaign, is now the circle that just can’t be squared. And still May carries on like a demented despot in charge of a runaway train.

The pundits got Brexit wrong. They got the outcome of the 2017 General Election wrong and they are doing it again. In their bubble of groupthink and incompetence, they have completely misjudged the anger out there on the streets. It is palpable for anyone who engages with real people in the real world. Far from getting £350 million a week for the NHS, Brexit is driving the final nail into the coffin. Closures to A&Es and hospital services are being predicated on staff shortages – brought about by the hostile immigration culture and fear generated by Brexit. When we need them most, foreign nurses and doctors are fleeing this country in their droves.

Who’s to blame for Brexit? The Tories and the right wing of the Labour party who, for years, threw immigrants under the bus, accusing us of stealing British people’s jobs, blaming us for the housing shortage and admonishing us for not assimilating into the British way of life, whatever that is.

Having scapegoated immigrants for years, Chuka Umunna, was a bad choice to be the poster boy of the Labour Remain campaign. It’s a bit like putting Trump in charge of UNICEF. Labour’s rhetoric had moved so far to the right, under New Labour (in a bid to woo UKIP voters), that there was a vacuum in political discourse - promoting the benefits of immigration.

As chair of the Labour In campaign, Alan Johnson’s line up of pale, male and stale spokespeople, failed to inspire. Producing the toxic trio (Blair, Brown and Campbell) was a serious strategic error. The idea that the men who presided over the global financial crash could boost trust and credibility to the Remain camp signals the extent to which Alan Johnson, like his Blairite plotters, was in denial about the incendiary legacy of New Labour.

New Labour was part of the problem. Progressive Labour can be part of the solution. That’s why I’ve signed Momentum’s Stop Tory Brexit petition 

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-tory-brexit-momentum-petition which calls for the many to have the final say.

For anyone who hasn't read my angry Independent Brexit articles (there are many), here's one to get you going: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

One year on from Grenfell, survivors remain traumatised & homeless. Deprived of justice & peace

I wrote the blog below shortly after the preventable inferno at Grenfell tower that killed 72 people. Twelve months on, survivors remain traumatised, homeless and without justice. The raw feelings captured in this blog haven't diminished with time so, to mark the one year anniversary, I'm re-telling the story. Undiluted, unedited and unapologetic. 💚💚

The acrid stench infused the air. The landscape, adorned with messages and memorials, struggled to reconcile the veneration of dignified grief and irreverent, visceral anger.

I oscillated between both. Grief hung in the ether like a flammable fume. Volatile, toxic, debilitating. The photos of those whose lives were lost. The prayers, the pleas, the eulogies. The human faces behind the headlines.

Days before, some of the dead and feared dead would have taken the train journey I just took, walked the route I just walked to get there, sat in the park around the corner that I just sat in and exchanged perfunctory pleasantries with the local shop keeper like I just did.

The photo of Isaac caught my eye. He left school at the same time as my little boy that day. He will have had his tea, maybe smearing ketchup on his school jumper, like mine did and went to bed, forgetting to brush his teeth, like mine did. Wrapped in a blanket of love he may have told the spiders lurking in a corner of his room a story, like mine did, before drifting off to sleep clutching his threadbare teddy, like mine did.

The difference between Isaac and my child is, Isaac lived in a tower block with no fire sprinklers, exposed gas pipes, combustible cladding (cheaper than the non-combustible yet aesthetically pleasing variety) and dodgy electrics prone to potentially lethal surges. Illegal? You’d think so, but Tory cuts to legal aid means rights are now only available to those who can afford to buy them. That ruled Grenfell Tower residents out.

Five weeks on and survivors are still homeless and dependent on sporadic, demeaning state handouts. A hundred quid here and a voucher for a hotel there isn’t good enough. Survivors need certainty, security and dignity. That starts with a secure, safe home. Some children don’t know if they’ll be returning to the same school in September because they don’t know where their new home will be. Some survivors say they’ve been told to accept homes without being allowed to see them first. Others say they fear being forcibly rehoused outside the borough. I’ve been told of survivors who’ve been threatened that declining housing they’re offered, however inappropriate, would be deemed as elected homelessness, and would incur benefit penalties.

Even now, survivors are being excluded from key decisions that will impact their future. Security firms were employed, at tax payers expense, to “keep them out” of Kensington and Chelsea’s council meeting on Thursday. Scenes of survivors being kettled into a public gallery, side-lined and silenced, prevented from participating in decisions about their own lives, were a national disgrace. The footage of Tory councillor, Mathew Palmer, mouthing “Don’t let them in” spoke volumes about the Tories’ contempt for humanity, decency and democracy.

Making my way back to the tube, I was stopped in my tracks by a child. She was surveying the messages pinned to the street railings and was transfixed by an elaborate picture of a dove. She asked her Dad what the text around it said. “I don’t know love, it’s written in a foreign language”.  I squinted to read it, “It says, Suaimhneas stíoraí da anam, which is Irish for, may your souls rest in peace”.

If the souls that perished in Grenfell are ever to find peace, they must first be afforded truth and then justice. We owe Isaac, and all those who died with him, that much. 

Today is Repeal the 8th day. The Catholic Church has exerted jurisdiction over Irish women's wombs for too long

This piece was published in today's Independent.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/ireland-dublin-repeal-the-eighth-amendment-referendum-crowdfund-travel-abroad-a8368726.html

I was in Dublin during the launch of the abortion referendum, and was completely winded when a man in a T-shirt with a picture of a foetus and the words, “Licence to kill”, verbally attacked me on O’Connell street. It unleashed an avalanche of painful memories.

When I was 16, I had a secret whip 'round to pay for a friend to go to London for an abortion. When drinking neat spirits and taking scalding hot baths didn't terminate her pregnancy, she became suicidal. 

We scraped together enough to pay for the abortion itself and Aine's (not her real name) fare, but it didn’t stretch to accommodation so she slept on the floor at Victoria bus station. She had to make that agonising journey across the Irish Sea, alone.

The image of Aine, so tiny and vulnerable, beneath the giant, forbidding steam ship at Dublin docks - on a dank, drizzly day, still haunts me. She had never been away from home before. I remember feeling ashamed of living in a country that subjected women to such punitive indignity.

This week, I helped fund another teenage girl's voyage across the sea - going in the opposite direction. She's going home today to vote "yes", in a bid to repeal the barbaric 8th amendment, which enshrines misogyny into the Irish constitution.

In 2018, even in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormality, abortion remains illegal in Ireland. Over 170,000 Irish women have travelled to Britain for abortions in the 35 years since the inception of the 8th amendment. Around 12 women and girls take that lonely voyage across the sea, every day, to end their pregnancies.   

But travelling overseas is not an option for everyone. Teenage girls on the estate I grew up on can’t afford to go abroad. Many buy abortion pills online, risking their lives and incurring a custodial sentence.

The anti-choice propagandists are warning that, with “a licence to kill”, there’ll be pop up abortion clinics on every high street, from Bantry to Ballyjamesduff, offering two for the price of one and free subscriptions to Abortion Weekly.

As a therapist, I’ve worked with women who have had abortions and the decision is never taken lightly. Girls in Ireland, having been violently impregnated by rape, face the added trauma of being forced to give birth to their abuser’s baby. In case x, when a 14 year old girl was impregnated by rape and became suicidal, a court injunction was taken out preventing her parents from taking her abroad for an abortion.  

The anti-abortion rhetoric is imbued with the dogma of the Catholic Church, but an institution so mired in paedophilic scandals, is in no position to lecture women on the sanctity of life. Only last year, the remains of almost 800 babies were discovered “dumped” in a septic tank on the grounds of a convent in Galway.

In 2012, the needless death of Savita Halappanavar shamed the nation. She died of blood poisoning after being refused an abortion, even though her baby had a fatal foetal abnormality. “This is a catholic country!”, she was told. A change in the law in 2013, purportedly to allow abortions if the mother’s life is at risk or if she’s suicidal, has proved shockingly inadequate. 

In 2014, a clinically dead woman was kept alive on a life-support machine, against her family’s wishes, to protect the life of her unborn child. Last year, a 14 year old suicidal child was sectioned by her doctor when she sought permission, with her mother’s approval, for an abortion. But, instead of admitting that the girl was being sent to a psychiatric hospital, the doctor told them that she would undergo an abortion. Despite acknowledging the child was suicidal, due to her pregnancy, he denied her the legal right to a termination and tricked her into being sectioned.

Last year, the UN ruled, for the second time, that Ireland's harsh abortion laws violate human rights. A woman carrying a foetus with a fatal abnormality was, it stated, subjected to, “discrimination and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”. The woman had to travel abroad for an abortion, but was forced to leave her foetus’ remains behind. Weeks later, the ashes were delivered by courier. The UN has called for the 8^th amendment to be repealed, to allow women to terminate a pregnancy safely, at home.

The church has exerted undue jurisdiction over women’s wombs - and our lives – for far too long. By repealing the 8^th today, we transfer the deeds back to their rightful owners – the women of Ireland.

Polls are open until 10pm tonight!

"I thought my baby was going to die"! Mother warns health bosses that A&E closures will be the death of people

Meet Sarah. Friend and single mother to 5 children, one with a chronic illness. Under the cover of daily dead cats & Tory chaos, the decimation of our NHS is in full swing.

Click on the link to hear Sarah's heartbreaking story

https://twitter.com/Shropsdefend/status/994295678431059969

Angry about Windrush & austerity? Get out and Vote today!

Are you angry about Windrush? Or, the eight years of austerity that has seen the poor atone for the sins of the rich? Or, the decimation of our NHS? Or, the Brexit shambles? Or, the scandalous rise of homelessness? Or, the injustice of Grenfell, Or, [insert your own list] – Get out and vote today!  

As a therapist, I’m not afraid of anger, which is just as well because I’ve been angry every day for the past eight years. The only people I know who are not angry right now are either very rich (thus inoculated against the ravages of austerity) - or Yoga instructors.

I’ve picked up the pieces of lives crushed by the cruelty of this Tory government. Injustice is hardwired into every sinew of the system, with Human rights now only accessible to those who can afford to buy them.

The hostile environment that spawned the Windrush scandal was no accident. It’s indicative of a culture that has enshrined racist rhetoric into practice. Dawn Butler described May’s hostile environment as the new face of Tory institutional racism, “ever present from Stephen Lawrence to Windrush”. She’s right.

In 2011, Theresa May vowed to get rid of Article 8 (the right to family life) of the European Convention on Human Rights because, she claimed, it “perverted” the removal of “illegal immigrants”. Her competence as Home Secretary was called into question when it emerged that the example she cited, that of a pet cat scuppering deportation, was untrue and appeared to have been lifted, “word for word,” from a speech made by (then) UKIP leader, Nigel Farage. In fact, the case had been mishandled by immigration officials.

The morality of her contempt for the right to family life largely escaped scrutiny and went on to underpin the 2014 immigration Act. It should come as no surprise that this resulted in the Windrush scandal that has seen families ripped apart, denied access to jobs, health care, justice, dignity and hope. Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell anticipated the “unintended” consequences for Commonwealth citizens and voted against it.

Racism has rarely been career limiting in the Tory party. In 2011, Tory Dover councillor, Bob Frost, described people involved in the Tottenham riots as “jungle bunnies”. He lost his job as a Maths teacher, but the Conservative Party only suspended him for two months. The emergence of Oliver Letwin’s sinister racist memo in 2015 did not result in him being sacked as David Cameron’s policy adviser.

Under Theresa May’s leadership, racism has become mainstream Tory policy. Directly (and indirectly) discriminating against black and brown skinned people - with impunity. When Theresa May appointed Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, it seems she deleted the traditional job requirement, “Portfolio of diplomacy” and replaced it with, “Portfolio of racist remarks”.

As Commonwealth leaders gathered in London amidst the Windrush scandal, who better to mollify the mood, than Johnson? Regaling delegates with stories about “flag waving piccaninnies” and “Pangas” with “watermelon smiles”.

If a Labour Politician made even one of those remarks, they would be hounded out of office, and rightly so. Having been suspended for using the racist term “N***** in the woodpile” in July, Anne-Marie Morris had the whip re-instated after only five months. 

At least 12 Tory candidates had to withdraw from the today's elections having been suspended amid accusations of anti-antisemitism, Islamophobia and far right links. One of whom, a former UKIP candidate is alleged to have racially abused Diane Abbott on social media.

Theresa May should not be surprised that her "Go home" buses, hostile immigration environment, the appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Minister and her tolerance of racism generally, has acted as a recruitment sergeant for the far right. As David Lammy said, If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Today is channel your anger into action day. All you have to do is get up, get ready and vote the Tories out of your town! 

#Vote Labour 💓

Brexit is undermining The Good Friday Agreement & peace in Northern Ireland

It's the twentieth anniversary of The Good Friday Agreement today. My piece in Independent Voices below.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-good-friday-agreement-northern-ireland-troubles-violence-ira-border-a8297406.html

You might also like the article below which had 76,000 shares up until December. For some reason the share counter got wiped recently. Not sure it matters, just fecking annoying..

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html

Also this in The New Statesman:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2017/12/island-ireland-wants-move-past-if-brexiteers-will-let-it

The role lies about immigration played in Brexit (Also in the Independent & wow, the share counter on this has also been wiped? 😕:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/now-my-eight-year-old-thinks-he-could-be-deported-because-of-leave-rhetoric-clearly-its-time-to-face-a7095016.html

Irrespective of whether the BBC intended to frame Jeremy Corbyn as a “Russian Stooge”, the risks of that perception should have been apparent and intercepted.

Carole Cadwalladr and Channel 4’s exposure of the Cambridge Analytica scandal reminded me of the legendary Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee. Commenting on his role in exposing Watergate, he said,

“The more complicated the issues and the more sophisticated the ways to disguise the truth, the more aggressive our search for truth must be”.

When I advised the broadcast media on editorial ethics, I used this quote – a lot, but never before has the role of the media as honest broker been more crucial to the wellbeing of democracy, than now.

Listening to Cambridge Analytica’s recently sacked boss, Etonian old boy Alexander Nix, boasting about propagating the digital landscape with lies, fear and hate, to win elections, was chilling. To mitigate against these fake news propagandists, actual journalism must be underpinned by facts and unfettered by favour.

While Channel 4 conducted a masterclass in broadcast journalism this week, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, became mired in an unedifying controversy over its handling of Labour’s response to Theresa May’s Russia ultimatum. The choice of backdrop (a red infused picture of Jeremy Corbyn in a hat, as opposed to a suit, in front of the Kremlin) betrayed a crisis in editorial judgement. Irrespective of whether the BBC intended to frame Jeremy Corbyn as a “Russian Stooge”, the risks of that perception should have been apparent and intercepted.

When dealing with a highly charged and politically sensitive incident, such as a chemical attack, licence fee payers expect probity and integrity in the BBC’s handling of it.

Two days before Theresa May issued her ultimatum to Russia, a Survation poll put Labour 7 points ahead of the Tories and showed that 60% of those polled had had enough of austerity, including almost half of Tory voters. The same week, Philip Hammond scrapped free school meals for 1 million children in poverty, Unilever announced it was moving its HQ out of the UK and the Brexit impact assessment was finally published. Summary: Whatever Brexit we get, we’ll be worse off.

Instead of holding the governments’ feet to the flames over any of the above, Newsnight went after the leader of the opposition for daring to do his job. If the Russia ultimatum was a dead cat, it worked. A lot of bad news got buried beneath the bluster.

Analysing media failings in the lead up to the Iraq war in 2016, Ian Birrell wrote, “The initial reporting showed how a supposedly free and fearless press was powerless, vulnerable and gullible in a moment of national crisis concluding”, “…it meekly fell into line with Government propagandists”.

The Economist’s analysis of the Chilcot inquiry revealed: “That lack of caution, combined with a disregard for process bordered on the feckless…The intelligence was not questioned or challenged in the way it should have been, given how much was resting on it”.

MPs should have spoken out and demanded more and better evidence. Instead they put self-interest ahead of the national interest. Many of the same right wing Labour MPs who backed Blair’s reckless war, put self-interests before national interest again this week. Instead of backing Jeremy Corbyn’s sober call for calm and evidence, they were signing a letter blaming Moscow, ‘unequivocally” for the attacks.

Jeremy Corbyn is right to challenge Theresa May. There are few things as perilous as a weak leader trying to appear strong.  If she sees this as her Falklands moment – an opportunity to deflect from her huge unpopularity and domestic failures – she could take us into dangerous territory. This is a time for quelling - not fanning - the flames of hysteria.

The framing of Jeremy Corbyn as a “Russian stooge” by some media outlets is an obvious red herring. He robustly condemned the Salisbury attack but his track record is equally strong. Eight years ago, he signed a Parliamentary Motion accusing Putin’s Russia of corruption and human rights abuses and has called on the government for a UK version of the Magnitsky Act, which allows for financial sanctions. Something the Tories had previously resisted.

It is the Conservative party that has received £3m worth of donations from Russian donors and it was Boris Johnson who accepted £160,000 in exchange for a game of tennis with Lubov Chernukhin, the wife of a former Putin minister. The same woman bid £30,000 to have dinner with Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson. Chernukhin’s husband was Putin’s deputy finance minister. Meanwhile, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s fund management’s firm has profited from a £60m investment in a Russian bank, despite being under EU sanctions since 2014. 

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Our democracy has been hijacked and apostles of hate have stolen our privacy and exploited our vulnerabilities. Now is not the time to be deflected by dead cats and red herrings. The wellbeing of democracy depends on the media pursuing truth with the same determination as those in power seek to obscure and distort it. 

Other articles Tess has written on the media and Jeremy Corbyn:

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-media-must-give-jeremy-corbyn-a-fair-hearing-a6804821.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/suffragettes-died-for-my-right-to-vote-so-dont-tell-me-that-i-shouldnt-vote-for-jeremy-corbyn-10495014.html

On the BBCs crisis of governance:

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-scandals-over-jimmy-savile-and-newsnight-show-the-bbc-can-either-modernise-or-die-having-a-full-8322976.html

On the right wing of the Labour party: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tess-finchlees/jeremy-corbyn_b_10760550.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/dont-think-jeremy-corbyn-is-a-worthy-leader-maybe-its-time-to-leave-the-labour-party-a6773741.html