From Nicky Campbell’s good mate….

As Jews are once again being purged from Europe just for being Jewish, and the BBC looks on apparently with the feeling that they get what was coming to them, many people point out a few problems arising from mass immigration that the BBC is all too often not just reluctant to debate but actively seeks to hide and dismiss….denying and silencing truth.

The final image of Dr Jacob Bronowski, in his “Ascent of Man”, standing in the mud at Auschwitz is implanted in my brain. He wept and said that Auschwitz and, by implication, all the other hell-holes constructed by Man, is the unavoidable destination reached by the denial and silencing of truth.

And no…Muslims are not the ‘new Jews of Europe’.  An irony that the BBC recently tried to invoke the Holocaust to defend Muslim immigrants and to label opponents of mass migration as something akin to the Nazis….whilst at the same time ignoring the real ‘Jews of Europe’.

There’s the Truth, and there’s the Truth as reported, or not reported, by the BBC…as Rod Liddle points out…

In Sweden there are riots…almost all the people doing the rioting were, to adapt Nick Robinson’s phrase, people of non-Swedish orign.  These were…are..race riots.

It was not the ordinary Swedes rising up against the oppressive Swedish state; it was immigrants.  Come on James – why not tell us the truth?’

From Boris Johnson:

To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.

The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?

It is time that we started to insist that the Muslim Council of Great Britain, and all the preachers in all the mosques, extremist or moderate, began to acculturate themselves more closely to what we think of as British values. We can’t force it on them, but we should begin to demand change in a way that is both friendly and outspoken.

David Goodhart managed to slip this out on the BBC one day:

The gulf between conservative Islam and secular liberal Britain is larger than with any comparable large group….for those of us who value an open, liberal society it is time to explain why it is superior to the alternatives.

He told us that…

Some claim that if people understood Islam more everything would be fine, they would be more tolerant, I think quite the contrary….the more they understand about it the more alien they would find it…authoritarian, collectivist, patriarchal, misogynist…..all sorts of things that Britain might have been 100 years ago but isn’t now.

David Coleman, professor of demography at the the University of Oxford, said:

“Many of the consequences of large scale migration are damaging.  We do not need up to 13 million more people by the mid century.   Almost all that increase will be immigrants and their children.  It will not make the UK a happier or richer place.  Crowding and congestion will have entirely negative effects, increasing pressure on schools, hospitals and particulary housing.”

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi gave a speech on the occasion of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad on Jan. 3, when he called for breaking free from texts and ideas that were sacred centuries ago and that have become a source of anxiety for the whole world. In the presence of Tayeb, Sisi said, “How is it possible that the ideologies that we have sanctified for hundreds of years breed feelings of anxiety, danger, murder and destruction in the whole world and nation?”

“Moderate” Muslim Leader says all Muslims are “Radical” and “Extremists”

“Every now and then, every time we have a conference, every time we invite a speaker, they [the media] always come with the same accusations: This speaker supports the death penalty for homosexuals, this speaker supports the death penalty for this crime or this crime or that he is homophobic, that he subjugates women, etcetera. I always try to tell them that it is not that speaker that we are inviting who has these ‘extreme radical views,’ as you say. These are general views that every Muslim actually has.

Every Muslim believes in these things. Just because they are not telling you about it, or just because they are not out there in the media, doesn’t mean that they don’t believe in them.”

The measured and rational Charles Moore in the Telegraph voices some of his concerns about this influx of Muslims to Western Europe:

Nothing has changed in 25 years to ease my concerns about Islam

It seemed to me that most Muslim leaders saw their role not in integrating Muslims in Britain, but in asserting difference and increasing their muscle. Many favoured sharia law trumping British law. They would not support Muslim membership of the Armed Forces if those forces were deployed against Muslim countries. They wanted it to be illegal to attack Islam, let alone denigrate its prophet; and they waged constant “lawfare” to try to silence their critics. They tended, I thought, to see the advance of their cause as a zero-sum game in which the authorities had to cede more ground (sometimes it is literally a matter of territory) to Muslims.

Even the Mirror is dubious about Muslim agitprop…

WE MUST NOT GIVE IN TO MUSLIM BLACKMAIL

AS the country vexes itself over how to deal with the radicalisation of British-born Muslim youths, it’s revealing to know some of their leaders believe they have the answer.

The introduction of Sharia Law in Britain along with important religious days in the Muslim calendar becoming public holidays for followers of the faith should do the trick, or so claims the secretary general of the Union of Muslim Organisations in the UK and Ireland.

As Dr Syed Aziz Pasha says: “If you give us religious rights we will be in a better position to convince young people that they are being treated equally along with other citizens.”

This sounds perilously close to blackmail. Thus far the British people have shown exemplary tolerance in the face of terrorist threats.

There are enough wedges between us without introducing more in the form of Sharia Law or Muslim Bank holidays.

Nor should we feel it necessary to beat ourselves up because willing recruits, who happen to be born here, have signed up to become human bombs.

Some people, John Reid reminded us last week “just don’t get” the seriousness of the threat facing the West.

What will it take to understand? Ten planes destroyed and thousands of innocents dead while the family of the perpetrators weep into the cameras and say, “he wouldn’t do a thing like that”.

Oh yes he would. And believe me, he will.

Definitely a discussion people should be having about the consequences of mass migration from Muslim countries into a western, secular and democratic Europe.

On the other hand we could just have pictures of women and children crying at razor-wire topped fences and dead babies on beaches as the preferred narrrative as well as the labelling of anyone who dares to criticise that approach as racist nazis.

Your choice…oh no…it’s not…it’s the BBC  that gets to choose the narrative…..

The BBC, paying lip-service to the issue, does a body swerve around the problem by adopting the usual stance that it is not Islam but Islamism that is the problem and that of course it is ‘moderate’ Muslims who will suffer the ‘backlash’, that problem that the BBC is really concerned about rather than the activities that are the cause of any such ‘backlash’….

Across western Europe, liberally-minded societies are beginning to divide over how best to deal with radical Islamism and its impact on their countries, while governments agonise over the potential for a backlash against Muslims living in Europe.

Today, mainstream Muslim organisations in the UK and France have unequivocally condemned the killings, saying that terrorism is an affront to Islam.

But the potential backlash, including support for far right parties and groups, may well hurt ordinary Muslims more than anyone else, leaving the authorities and religious leaders in western Europe wondering how to confront violence in the name of religion without victimizing minorities or being accused of ‘Islamophobia’.

Muslims themselves hate the term ‘Moderate’ as it implies they don’t follow the true Islam and all its teachings…“Are you saying I’m only 50% Muslim? When someone says to me ‘you’re moderate’ it suggests to me they’re saying ‘you’re not fully Muslim’.”

Stop Saying “Moderate Muslims.” You’re Only Empowering Islamophobes.

 

Can we drop the term ‘moderate Muslim’? It’s meaningless

 

In fact, there is only One Prophet Muhammad, and there is only One Allah, and there is only One Quran, and there is amongst Muslims only One Islam, hence there can be Only One Muslim. A Moderate Muslim is an oxymoron because there is no such thing as a “Moderate Islam.” A Cultural Muslim

 

Turkey’s PM Erdogan: The term “moderate Islam” is ugly and offensive — Islam is Islam

 

And of course Iqbal Sacranie, when head of the Muslim Council of Britain, stated that ‘There is no such thing as moderate or extreme Islam, there is just Islam.’

Islamists and normal, moderate Muslims?  The difference isn’t in the beliefs but in the way they try to impose them upon society.

The BBC weren’t so quiet  and in denial when it came to a Christian birthrate:

A Womb is a Weapon

First broadcast:

Saturday 18 May 2013

Across the world, and increasingly in Europe and the UK, a unique Christian evangelical movement is growing.

For some, encouraging larger Christian families is part of a project to outbreed other religions, particularly Islam, winning back the world for Christ one baby at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdHg9TADZyA

From the Guardian:

Cranmer in the comments succinctly summarises the BBC’s approach to ‘reporting’ the migrant ‘crisis’…

It’s just the same old cliches rolled out with little or no attempt to provide any insight into what is actually happening. Tabloid TV at its finest. I’m old enough to remember the days when foreign correspondents on television were restricted to a verbal report over a crackly telephone line, accompanied by a still photo of them holding a phone! This was much better because they couldn’t lard on the sentiment or play with our emotions so easily. They were restricted to who, what, why, where, when. This is what the BBC should stick to instead of trying to remake ‘Ghandi’ every bloody night!

Naturally it is not a ‘migrant crisis’ for the BBC, more an opportunity to further the liberal elite’s naive and childish, and very dangerous, social, cultural and political experiment that attempts to force multiculturalism upon societies that don’t want it and won’t accept it without force being applied in some shape or form.  The BBC’s deliberate attempt to hide the consequences for Europe of mass immigration of people who hold views and beliefs that are so at odd with our own is not just a betrayal of its legal obligations to inform and educate but a betrayal of 2,000 years of European history that has resulted in societies that, after much hard fighting and bloodshed, are reaching a level of sophistication, stability, prosperity and peace that is unparalled in history.  All that could be at risk as many predict that we are heading back to the vicious and terrible religious wars that we thought were buried in history.

Here Ed West in the Telegraph reminds us of what is being forced upon us without any debate or consent from the people of Europe…

Muslim immigration: the most radical change in European history

Christopher Caldwell is a mild-mannered Financial Times journalist who over the past decade has covered continental Europe (France especially) and its relationship with Islam in particular.

That Caldwell is so mainstream, well-respected and analytical makes his conclusion all the more devastating – that the mass migration of Africans and Asians into Europe since the Second World War was an unprecedented, economically unnecessary and ill-thought-out plan that has had a profoundly negative impact on our way of life.

Furthermore, he says, the mass importation of Muslims at a time when Europe has lost its own faith and Islam has developed a dangerous and powerful radicalism threatens the very freedom of Europe.

The collapse of Christianity, and the introduction of novel morals such as the belief in sexual freedom and gay equality, totally at odds with both contemporary Muslim culture and European culture of only half a century ago, has made conflict between Europe and the new Europeans even more unavoidable. That is why surveys consistently show Muslims and non-Muslims thinking the other side are “disrespectful” to women, or why a large minority of young British Muslims advocate the death penalty for apostasy or homosexuality.

Can Europe be the same? Clearly not. Can we reach some happy compromise that peacefully integrates such large communities and avoids the conflicts that have plagued such multi-cultural countries in the past? Probably not.

This is a fascinating, earth-shattering account of the most radical change in European history.

 

NCBBC in the comments highlighted this video which demonstrates the dishonesty, the foolishness, the complete failure of politicians to grasp what is going on in Europe and what the future holds.  Merkel completely dismisses any idea that people should think there is a threat to European identity and culture, and in fact suggests that Europe is to blame as many of the Muslim ISIL members have come from Europe…we have apparently bred them so we are at fault.  The reality is that Merkel and her ilk have totally failed to recognise the threat such radical people posed and allowed them to not only keep coming to Germany but to freely practise their fundamentalist beliefs….in other words what she is doing now is merely repeating the errors of the past…brushing the problem under the carpet and hoping for the best….

Merkel and her foolish invitation to migrants to flood into Germany in unlimited numbers is at the heart of this migrant crisis, numbers wise….a problem of Germany’s making….however it is one that Germany is forcing upon other countries and then blaming those other countries for not doing the same…it seems Germany does think of itself as the ruler of Europe…

Germany’s foreign minister says it may consider use of “a qualified majority” to force Eastern European countries to accept quotas for migrants

But there is another factor here….Turkey is helping to flood Europe with migrants…

Rapid expansion of Turkish national carrier is in part behind surge in African migrants through the Western Balkans, EU agency says

We know that Gaddafi threatened to swamp Europe with migrants, that mass immigration is a weapon that the Islamic State is using to attack Europe, it is hardly beyond the realms of possibility that the Islamist Erdogan is not happy to flood Europe with migrants who will break down a cohesive and structured EU making it easier for Turkey to influence events and force an entry into the EU as a member state thus opening the door to even more immigration.

Is migration being used as a weapon of war against Europe?  Discuss.

These are momentous times in Europe’s history that presage a future that is increasingly looking to be uncertain and full of conflict.  However such important events and consequences seem to have passed the BBC by, or rather, the BBC chooses to downplay or ignore the growing dangers.  The BBC prefers more to ’emote’ about immigrants apparently than to report the issues surrounding them…H/T Craig at Is the BBC biased?…

Empathy

Many have asked me how they can help these people. The majority, I would say.

But there has also been a sizeable minority of people who are concerned about this great migration. Some have questioned my objectivity.

But I do not think you lose balance just because you care about another human being. Surely, we can empathise with someone while still acknowledging there are difficult questions that need to be answered about how Europe and the rest of the world should deal with this.

‘Difficult questions that need to be answered’?  Don’t make me laugh…the whole thrust of the BBC narrative has been to bury such questions under a torrent of emotive words and pictures intended to induce sympathy and guilt that over-rides commonsense and reality.  The BBC wants to create an atmosphere where any people, especially politicians and media, who are critical of immigration have to think twice about doing so publicly for fear of being labelled at best inhumane and incompassionate and at worse a xenophobic racist or Islamophobe.

You can see an example of the BBC attempts to manipulate opinion in this article which has this eye-catching headline..‘Migrant clashes leave Hungary bitterly divided.’  Curiously if you read the piece you won’t find much evidence of a ‘Hungary bitterly divided’…..just the usual BBC attacks on anyone who has the guts to speak out about the real problem that is part of the immigration crisis...’Csaba Lukacs, the paper’s leader writer, depicts a Hungary under attack from young, stone-throwing Muslim men: “Hungary’s border was besieged by those who think they have the basic human right to march across Europe without documents.’  Can’t say he is wrong when you see the videos from the border….these are people intent on getting into Europe by whatever means possible and if violence is the answer they’ll use that….invasion or migration?

Obviously you’re meant to be shocked by such sentiments but you know that Hungary is the black sheep of the European family….as Hungary’s actions lead to its ‘deepening diplomatic isolation. ‘

The article ends with this…‘The dispute has further polarised an already deeply-divided society.’   Well not really….those who oppose the migrant policy are on the left and in a minority in Hungary.

The BBC is once again trying to confuse the issue and present it as if there is a vast number of people who support uncontrolled immigration when that is palpably untrue.  The very fact that the Hungarian PM is apparently, according to the BBC, trying to out-Jobbik Jobbik says it all….the national consensus must be anti-immigrant….as in the Uk where 77% want controls and reduced immigration.

A view not reflected by BBC reporting….nor are they reporting this from the Mail…

Imam tells Muslim migrants to ‘breed children’ with Europeans to ‘conquer their countries’ and vows: ‘We will trample them underfoot, Allah willing’ 

“Europe has become old and decrepit and needs human reinforcement….they are not motivated by compassion for the Levant, its people and its refugees,” said Ayed, adding, “Soon, we will trample them underfoot, Allah willing.”

“Throughout Europe, all the hearts are enthused with hatred toward Muslims. They wish that we were dead, but they have lost their fertility, so they look for fertility in our midst,” he added.

“We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries!”

Ayed stated that “whether you like it or not,” Americans, Italians, Germans and the French will be forced to take the “refugees”.

“We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate. We will say to you: these are our sons. Send them, or we will send our armies to you,” concluded Ayed.

Not long ago we suggested that the BBC’s use of the modest descriptive term of ‘leftwing’ to describe Jeremy Corbyn was doing him a favour as he is to the left, far to the left, of most in the Labour Party.  If there were a Tory MP in a similar position with similarly extreme views he would be described as Far Right….and of course UKIP are usually dismissed as the Far Right and as Nazis by the BBC.  Look at how Enoch Powell, based on one speech, is vilified even now decades after he made that speech and yet Corbyn’s associates, his comments, and indeed some of those whom he has chosen as shadow ministers, should put him in a category of contempt way above that of Enoch Powell.

However others beg, scream and shout, to differ.

Over 50,000 people sign petition saying that the BBC is biased against Jeremy Corbyn

They are asking the BBC to refer to David Cameron as the ‘right-wing Prime Minister’, because they often refer to the leader of the Opposition as ‘left-wing’

The change.org petition was set up by Amanda Drury from Lincoln, and it says in the description:

The Labour Party is leftwing so someone to the left of that must by definition be ‘Far Left’.  Corbyn was not being traduced by the BBC, he was being given favoured status and a makeover by them.  The BBC was presenting him as less extreme than he really is.

It does seem extraordinary that the ‘Left’ are now up in arms about being called ‘left’…what do they have to hide? Do they now think that the nation recognises the ‘left’ as something not to tread in?  Being on the ‘left’ was supposed to be the ‘Red Badge of Courage’ showing you were proudly fighting oppression and inequailty and all that, something to be loudly proclaimed, trumpeted by the believers…. now they’re embarrassed by it?

Perhaps rightly so…Nick Cohen is more than embarrassed by the right-on far left comrades....Why I’ve finally given up on the left.   He says that ‘Left-wing thought has shifted towards movements it would once have denounced as racist, imperialist and fascistic. It is insupportable.’

He could be describing Corbyn couldn’t he?

And, in the run up to the election and subsequent election of Corbyn as leader the fact he was ‘leftwing’ was relevant to the debate….people needed to know where was he on the spectrum of Labour politics compared to the other candidates…who presumably weren’t ‘leftwing’ in the BBC’s eyes.  Now the leadership election is over the BBC will use such a term sparingly, even in its moderate form of ‘leftwing’ rather than the more accurate ‘Far Left’….or perhaps ‘Loony Left’…..the BBC defence?…’The BBC defended their journalists choice of words, commenting choice phrases were employed as a matter of “specific editorial justification” to enhance its audience’s understanding.’

I might suggest describing Corbyn as merely ‘leftwing’ hardly enhances the audience’s understanding as the term is clearly not reflective of his actual beliefs and position on the lefty spectrum.  Left of Yvette Cooper et al maybe, but that would put him to the ‘far left’ of most normal people….the voters.

The BBC however seems to be giving Corbyn a good write up elsewhere, after peviously having studiously ignored his unsavoury connections to terrorist groups et al ….asking if he is the new Attlee and uncritically bringing us suggestions that Miliband didn’t lose because he was too left wing…which of course plays into Corbyn’s own narrative of moving ever more leftward.  Perhaps the BBC should ask a few people instead of possibly academics with vested interests, why they didn’t like Miliband…one, he was clearly not a ‘statesman-like’ leader, two, his party wrecked the economy and looked like they’d continue down the same path and three, he was too far left….intent on imposing state controls on anything that moved with policies that any fule could see would fail spectacularly.

Perhaps the BBC should stick to ‘beige’ in describing Corbyn….A parliamentary revolution in beige, Jeremy Corbyn’s new leader’s navy suit, nowhere to be seen.  

Anyone else bored senseless with the nightly reports filed on the BBC News at Ten by Fergal Keen which are little more than pro-immigrant propaganda? He churns out the same cliches night after night – with the constant narrative that these swarming economic immigrants are lovely people out to make Europe a more vibrant and successful place. Dar Al Islam.

Well then, Labour’s John McDonnell used his appearance on BBC “Question Time” to offer a fulsome apology for his pro-IRA comments back in 2003. The BBC seem satisfied with this, honour has been restored and we can all now move on. Except, of course, McDonnell has simply resorted to lying and the BBC let him away with it. His explanation for his comments, made in 2003, was that he (along with Corbyn) were desperate to help ensure the “Peace Process” survived. The FACT of the matter is that this sordid process commenced in 1998 when the Belfast Agreement was ‘signed”. So what the hell was McDonnell doing FIVE YEARS LATER and why was it almost invisible at that time? The BBC know perfectly well that McDonnell’s explanation is flimsy but they have chosen not to go after him any further. In fact, on Question Time, when Timothy Stanley at least TRIED to go after McDonnell a bit more, he was shut up. It’s easy to say sorry when the sorrow is for yourself.

OK, this one is on time and designed to take us all off into the weekend! Here is where to detail the bias.

The Corbyn leadership poses problems for the comrades at the BBC. They know he is vulnerable due to his extremism so they have to be a bit careful not to link themselves too closely BUT they like what he says all the same. I thought their coverage of his PMQ’s debut was incredibly biased. His “revolution” which they were swooning over consisted of him reading out other people’s questions. This had the BBC reaching for epithets. I think we are in for an interesting time ahead. Labour have chosen an extreme Leftist as leader and the BBC do sympathise with a lot of what he says.

Been away so just back and can see the old Open Thread is as overflowing as a Hungarian border check point. Here’s a new thread for you to detail the bias.

John Whittingdale has made a speech about the BBC...He ends with this positive note…

Finally, I want to say something very simple.

The UK television industry is celebrated and loved across the world. It provides a huge number of jobs and generates massive economic activity. It informs and entertains.

The years ahead promise to be tremendously exciting for the industry.

I see it as a huge privilege to be the Government’s television champion at this time.

The Guardian has a run down of the speech and of the appointment of an Ex-Bank of England deputy governor to lead review into BBC regulation…I’ll let you read them at your leisure…but one sentence stood out…

In a speech at the RTS television festival in Cambridge on Thursday, Sharon White, the head of Ofcom, is expected to talk about the huge impact adding BBC governance to her department would make.

Complaints to the BBC dwarf all other broadcasters combined.

Hilary Mantel is infamous for her self-gratifying fantasy that expressed her deeply felt desire to kill Keir Hardie, a man for whom she still feels a ‘boiling detestation’…even more infamous is that the BBC felt the need to broadcast the short story...‘In Hilary Mantel’s mischievous story a knock at the door announces an unexpected visitor who has plans to alter the course of history as we know it. Harriet Walter reads.’  The Left were naturally outraged that such an iconic figure should be treated in this way by the BBC.  Here is a small snippet from the short story….

The gunman kneels, easing into position. He sees what I see, the flat cap crammed onto the unruly bush of wiry hair. He sees it bob like a dog turd in a gutter, he sees it big as the full moon, but dark with ill-omen. On the sill the wasp hovers, suspends itself in still air. One easy wink of the world’s blind eye: ”Rejoice comrades,” he says. ”Fucking rejoice.”

The BBC, which has presumably cemented its credentials as a right-wing instrument of the neo-con, bourgeois Establishment, has flung caution to the wind and decided that the story resonates so strongly with its audience that it deserves to be short-listed for its short story award…..as reported in the Times…

Mantel’s The Assassination of Keir Hardie, published by the Telegraph after the Guardian refused to print it despite paying for exclusive rights to the piece, sees a sniper disguised as an Aga repairman set out to shoot the radical left-wing politician.

The story was attacked by the Mirror when it was first published in September last year, and then again in December when it was chosen as the BBC’s Book at Bedtime on Radio 4 (“Radio 4 ignores protests to give author’s ‘sick and perverted’ fantasy a coveted broadcast slot,” wrote the paper). Mantel said at the time that “I recognise that this latest nonsense from the Mirror is not about me or my work; it’s a skirmish in a war with a right-leaning BBC.”

Now the BBC has chosen the story from among 438 entries as one of five going forward to compete for its prestigious national short story award, which is presented in partnership with by Booktrust. 

Hilary Mantel has had Keir Hardie in her sights for more than 30 years. Somewhat surreally, Mantel reveals that it was her grandmother who gave her the idea for the story as her grandmother had seen Hardie as he wandered into view around noon on Saturday 6 August 19o6. Mantel’s grandmother’s flat, on a quiet Windsor street lined with cherry trees, overlooked the working man’s club where Hardie was having a pint and a fag. She was just standing by the big sash window in her bedroom when she spotted Hardie “toddling” around the club yard with a rabble of flat-capped mates.

“Immediately your eye measures the distance,” Mantel says her grandmother told her, measuring each syllable, her finger and thumb forming a gun.  Her grandmother said “I thought, if I wasn’t me, if I was someone else, he’d be dead.”

Apparently Mantel’s grandmother had long held a deep loathing for Hardie as she recognised that his type of politics would do untold and long-standing damage to the nation and her own life.  Mantel herself says she feels a ‘boiling detestation’ for Hardie as he made her grandmother’s life, and that of others like her in the coming decades, so miserable.

Mantel’s grandmother, like Hardie, was self-made – her mother was a mill worker and her father left when she was 11. But, Mantel believed, Hardie hated the end result of his self-transformation into a maverick, wild-eyed radical…he wanted to be loved, respected and welcomed into the Establishment, but it wasn’t to be, he was never accepted: “He couldn’t turn himself into a posh politician with the right vowels. If you’re that dissatisfied with yourself you try to fix other people, and if they won’t be fixed you become punitive.’

Hardie had to die or his terrible legacy would be like a running sore throughout British history….he had to be stopped.

I wonder if the BBC would be so keen to make ‘The Assassination Of Keir Hardie’ its ‘Book at Bedtime’ and then short-list it for its Short Story Award?  Possibly not.  It was just before the latest Labour leadership elections that the BBC decided to broadcast a Gordon Brown elegy to Keir Hardie….I wonder why?  Looking at the BBC’s own history of Hardie you might be suspicious that someone at the BBC was trying to suggest, when they broadcast Brown’s hagiography of Hardie, that a maverick radical such as Jeremy Corbyn could be viewed in a similar light and therefore is worthy of the leadership….unusual dress sense, radical politics, anti-monarchy, not good at dealing with internal rivalries and anti-war (all perhaps except the championing of women’s rights)…….

In 1892, Keir Hardie was invited to stand as the Independent Labour Party candidate for West Ham in east London. He won and took his seat in parliament. He marked himself out as a radical both by his dress – he wore a tweed suit when most members of parliament wore more formal dress – and the subjects he advocated, including women’s rights, free schooling and pensions and Indian self-rule. He was heavily criticised for appearing to attack the monarchy, which may have contributed to his defeat in the 1895 election.

After a long battle to win another seat, he was finally elected MP to Merthyr Tydfil in 1900 and was one of only two Labour MPs in parliament. But by 1906 this number had increased to 26. Keir Hardie was elected leader of the party in the House of Commons, but was not very good at dealing with internal rivalries and he resigned from the post in 1908. From then on he devoted his energy to promoting the Labour Party and championing equality, particularly in the cause of women’s suffrage. In 1910, 40 Labour MPs were elected to parliament and Keir Hardie gave up the party leadership to George Barnes.

During the first year of World War One, Keir Hardie was an outspoken pacifist. He died on 26 September 1915 in Glasgow.

And look…Corbyn can sing (croak)…the Red Flag…

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