Still No Justice For The 21 – 49 Years On
Today marks the 49th anniversary of the Birmingham Pub Bombings, H&D Editor Mark Cotterill writes. I can still remember – as a 14-year-old – being at school assembly the Friday morning after the bombing, and our Head Master (Mr Tyson) trying to explain to us what had happened.
Some of our overseas readers – and maybe even some of our younger UK-based readers – may well ask “What happened on the evening of Thursday November 21st, 1974 in Birmingham city centre?” and “what is Justice for the 21 campaign?” – or J4T21, as it’s more commonly known.
Let me try to explain very briefly. J4T21 is all about the Birmingham Pub Bombings, which happened on November 21st, 1974. The Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town pubs, were blown up by an active service unit of the Provisional IRA, which left 21 Brummies dead, and 182 injured (one of whom I later got to know while living in Torquay in the 1980s).
Neither the PIRA nor their political wing Sinn Fein (which now sits in Government in Northern Ireland) ever officially admitted responsibility for the pub bombings, although a former senior officer of the PIRA confessed to their involvement in 2014. In 2017, one of the alleged perpetrators, Michael Hayes, also claimed that the intention of the bombings had not been to harm civilians, and that their deaths had been caused by an unintentional delay in delivering an advance telephone warning to security services.
The Birmingham pub bombings were one of the deadliest acts of “The Troubles” (as the civil war in Northern Ireland was often referred to during the 1970s and ’80s by mainstream media journalists) and the deadliest act of terrorism to occur in England between the Second World War and the July 2005 London bombings, known as “7/7”, carried out by UK-born Islamic terrorists.
Families of those killed in the bombings have been fighting for forty-nine years for justice with no assistance from the establishment or any form of legal aid. They are dedicated to getting justice for their loved ones and will continue to campaign until the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Paddy Joe Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power, and Johnny Walker, known as the “Birmingham Six” were all convicted of the bombings and sentenced to life imprisonment in August 1975. However, their convictions were quashed, and they were released in August 1991, having served over sixteen years each for a crime they did not commit.
The “Birmingham Six” were on their way back to Belfast when they were arrested at the port of Heysham (in Lancashire), just hours after the bombing. They always denied being members of the IRA, although it was widely believed by many in or close to Birmingham’s Irish community that they were part of the IRA’s Birmingham unit.
One such person who was very close to that community was the late Jock Spooner, who drove a taxi in Birmingham and drank in the local Irish clubs. Jock (who was an H&D Patron) told me that he was told “by people in the know” that the pub bombings were carried out by the IRA’s Coventry unit – not the Birmingham unit, who were more interested in boozing than bombing. However as far as he was aware nobody from the Coventry IRA was ever arrested – let alone charged.
Jock had no reason to lie, as although he was the local NF branch chairman at the time, he also supported a “United Ireland”. However, Jock would always clarify that he had no time for IRA/Sinn Fein and would have been happy to see them all wiped out at the hands of the SAS!
49 years on, still no justice for the 21.
Check out the J4T21 website at – https://justice4the21.co.uk/
Tories abandon the ‘Red Wall’
This week’s government reshuffle is far more important than the usual parliamentary manoeuvres. In effect it signals the end of the Conservative Party’s attempt to rebrand itself as the voice of White workers.
After British voters backed Brexit in 2016, the governing party’s first reaction was to abandon its experiment with extreme social liberalism. Under Prime Minister David Cameron (Tory leader from 2005-2016) and his right-hand man George Osborne, the Tories combined economic austerity with an unprecedented and overt friendliness towards racial and sexual minorities. They sought in effect to become the natural home of black transsexual stockbrokers, and they were surprised when in the Brexit referendum, White working class voters refused to follow their lead.
This was scrapped by Cameron’s replacement in 2016, Theresa May, who was instinctively a traditional Tory Anglican, though with much of the woolly-mindedness that this implies.
Mrs May had opposed Brexit, and she tried unsuccessfully to implement a Brexit-lite, thus losing support on both sides of the argument. Moreover, as her staff soon discovered, she had a deep-rooted personal detestation for the louche style of the Cameron-Osborne regime. She loathed their history of drug-taking, their arrogant sense of public-school entitlement, and their contempt for ordinary people.
Mrs May’s tragedy was that while many of her instincts were “right-wing”, she also had many of the hang-ups of her generation: she sought to be both traditionally English and genuinely “anti-racist”. And needless to say she is utterly devoted to Zionism (in stark contrast to an earlier generation of traditional Tories, even in the “moderate” faction, such as Lord Carrington and Sir Ian Gilmour).
These contradictions eventually destroyed Mrs May’s government, and it was under her successor Boris Johnson that the Cameron approach was utterly scrapped. Instead of economic austerity, Johnson promised that Brexit would bring a totally new Conservative policy of “levelling-up”, i.e. investment in those impoverished areas of the North and Midlands that had swung the referendum in his favour.
And combined with this policy reversal, Johnson and his allies made noises (at least) indicating a new social conservatism, especially as regards immigration and related issues such as crime and housing.
In December 2019 this transformation of the Tories into a quasi-nationalist party produced a landslide election victory. Johnson’s party made historic inroads into previously safe Labour constituencies, breaking down what journalists had dubbed the “Red Wall”.
Most importantly, where Mrs May had equivocated, Johnson delivered what seemed to most voters to be an acceptable form of Brexit (with the tragic exception of a weak and treacherous policy on the Northern Ireland border question).
Even after the various scandals that destroyed Johnson’s government, he seems to have maintained a level of popularity in these “Red Wall” areas that has eluded his successors. In 2002 the Tories lurched towards a very different “right-wing” approach on economics, adopting American-style policies that would have had a disastrous effect on working-class voters, during the short-lived Truss premiership.
And then they opted for a Prime Minister straight out of the Goldman Sachs training manual. Rishi Sunak, the son of Indian immigrants who is married to the daughter of one of India’s wealthiest men, tried unconvincingly to be the voice of both multiracial plutocrats and indigenous proletarians. He has been an electoral failure since his first day in office.
As nemesis approached (with a General Election due by January 2025 at the absolute latest) Sunak attempted the “dog whistle” politics of “culture wars” – weird though this always seemed, when three of the four most senior posts in his government have been held by non-Whites.
One of those weird non-White “nationalists” was the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, who provoked the current crisis by taking an extreme line against pro-Palestinian demonstrators. So extreme, in fact, that it brought the Home Secretary into conflict with the Metropolitan Police.
No doubt part of Braverman’s motive for picking this fight is that (though herself the daughter of ethnic Indian immigrants) she is married to a Jewish businessman. But another motive is surely that Braverman is seeking to put herself in pole position as the “right wing” candidate for the Conservative Party leadership, after Sunak’s inevitable defeat in about a year’s time.
And how did Sunak respond to this challenge? On Monday morning he sacked Braverman, and after moving James Cleverly (another son of immigrants, in his case Africans) to the Home Office, made the extraordinary decision to bring back former Prime Minister David Cameron as Foreign Secretary.
Cameron left active politics in 2016 immediately following his defeat over Brexit. Like Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, he has returned after a seven-year absence.
This lurch into the past represents the Conservative Party’s abandonment of Johnson’s “Red Wall” strategy. Sunak’s Tories will now be openly focused on retaining their traditional affluent supporters, and regaining those who deserted them over Brexit. That will inevitably mean scrapping even a pretence of sharing the concerns of the White working-class.
A couple of careerist “right-wingers” (Esther McVey and Dame Andrea Leadsom) have returned to the lower ranks of government, in a token effort by Sunak to appease the “right”.
But the truth is that this is a recapture of the Tory Party by the Goldman Sachs brigade – the people with whom Sunak has always been most at home.
For real British nationalists, this begins a period of historic opportunity. As regular H&D readers will know, our movement is in a shambolic state. The British Democrats are the only electorally-focused representatives of traditional British nationalism, and they only function in a few areas of the country.
During the coming weeks and months, H&D will examine the strategies that British nationalists and our European counterparts are adopting in response to the present crisis.
They shall not grow old
On this day in 1918 – at the 11th hour of the 11th day – the guns fell silent following Europe’s true Holocaust. The war between European brothers that began in 1914 was over.
Today as every year – both on 11th November (originally known as Armistice Day), and on the following Sunday (Remembrance Sunday) – we remember the fallen.
And this year, ten years after his death, we at H&D remember our great friend and comrade Ralph Hebden, Royal Marine Commando and dedicated racial nationalist, who died during a training accident in Scotland in March 2013 at the age of 32.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
Labour’s multicultural crisis!
Though it still seems very likely that Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer will become Prime Minister in about a year’s time, the latest crisis in Palestine has raised problems that are rooted in Labour’s historical commitments to both Zionism and the UK’s multiracial society.
For most of its history, the Labour Party has been pro-Zionist – with the partial exceptions of the Attlee government that presided over a war against Jewish terrorists from 1945-48, and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the party during 2015-20.
Successive Labour leaders (ever since Attlee’s government saw the first large-scale West Indian immigration) have become ever more committed to the vision of multiracialism and multiculturalism.
Until the 1980s it never occurred to any politician that Islam and in particular solidarity with fellow Muslims in Palestine would become a factor in British politics. Even racial nationalists during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s emphasised other reasons why non-European races and cultures didn’t belong here. Religion was rarely taken seriously as a political division (apart from Protestant v Catholic divisions in Ulster and some British cities).
But now significant numbers of Muslim councillors and MPs (as well as some pro-Palestinian, non-Muslim Labourites, usually either from the Corbynite left-wing or worried about Muslim voters in their areas) are rebelling against their leader’s support for Israel.
Starmer seems determined to distance himself from Corbyn and take Labour back to the Tony Blair era (or even the era of Harold Wilson, who from 1963-76 was the most pro-Zionist Labour leader in the party’s history).
Yet the brutality of Israel’s assault on Gaza has shocked some Muslim councillors so much that they have quit the party.
Much of the trouble has come in areas of Lancashire that are well-known to the H&D team from the 2000s when racial nationalism flourished in some racial flashpoint areas.
The leader of Burnley council has quit Labour together with ten colleagues, instantly removing Labour’s control of the council. For now they are in an independent group, and the council’s future direction is uncertain.
Councillors have also quit Labour In nearby Pendle, while in Blackburn (where H&D editor Mark Cotterill was once a councillor) there have been defections from both the Tories and Labour.
Yesterday three members of Haringey council in North London (this time non-Muslim Corbynists) joined the exodus.
For now it seems obvious that Starmer will stick with his pro-Zionist policy whatever happens. But if Israeli policy becomes even more brutal, he will start to come under pressure from more mainstream voices in his party, and the split will widen.
The tragedy in all this of course is that while Muslim councillors are prepared to speak for their brothers and sisters in Gaza, there is no racial nationalist party of any size able to speak for indigenous Britons.
30 years on: Remember the victims of the Shankill bombing
Thirty years ago today, IRA terrorists killed nine local residents, including two children, by exploding a bomb inside Frizzell’s fish shop on Shankill Road, Belfast.
Frizzell’s was one of those family-owned shops that are fast disappearing from the UK’s high streets (where it’s now unusual to find a specialist fishmonger, or indeed any store owned by a local family rather than by a big chain or immigrants).
Opened by Alan Frizzell in 1966, it was at the heart of the Shankill community for 27 years until it was destroyed by the IRA bomb, which was partly intended to murder senior officers of the Loyalist UDA who regularly met in a room above the shop. (They failed in this intention because the bomb exploded prematurely.)
By bombing Frizzell’s, the IRA also knew that they would kill and maim large numbers of civilians, including children, just as they had done eight months earlier when they exploded a bomb outside a McDonald’s in Warrington, Cheshire, killing two young children. The Warrington bombing (like the bombing of the Harrods department store in London) was almost certainly carried out in cooperation with the IRA’s militant left-wing allies in England, who organised ‘Anti-Fascist Action’.
Today we remember the victims of the Shankill bombing and all the Ulstermen and Britons who were killed by the IRA and other republican murderers.
And in remembering, we also resolve that we shall never surrender to the IRA’s subversive agenda of breaking up the United Kingdom. Quis separabit.
Tory slump continues: civic nationalists still struggling for relevance
Yesterday’s parliamentary by-elections showed Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government heading for a 1997-style landslide defeat. Despite this Tory collapse, civic nationalist parties are nowhere near the level of support that they enjoyed in the pre-Brexit era.
Each of the by-elections was in a very White constituency, so Labour’s victories owed nothing to ethnic minority support. Mid Bedfordshire is a very affluent collection of villages and small towns, and has never previously elected a Labour MP. Tamworth is more mixed socially (though not racially), with far more working-class voters, and was strongly pro-Brexit. Under its earlier name SE Staffordshire, but with similar boundaries, it fell to Labour at a by-election in 1996 and in the Blair landslide a year later, but at other times has been solidly Tory.
Apart from the Tories, the biggest losers were the United Kingdom Independence Party. UKIP polled 18.5% in Tamworth at the pre-Brexit general election in 2015, but yesterday UKIP candidate Robert Bilcliff managed only 1.7%.
The Heritage Party – a UKIP splinter group that in recent years has specialised in peddling conspiracy theories and anti-vaccination campaigns – had an even more embarrassing result in Mid Bedfordshire, where Heritage candidate Alberto Thomas polled only 0.2%. Just slightly ahead of Mr Thomas with 0.3% was Antonio Vitiello for the English Democrats (a party that has just reached an electoral pact with UKIP).
After these results there are bound to be serious questions as to whether UKIP, the Heritage Party or the English Democrats have any future in electoral politics. The EDs do at least have a rationale for continued existence, as they have the distinctive policy of campaigning for an English Parliament.
The much better-funded Reform UK again proved itself to be (by far) the strongest of the civic nationalist parties, and in Tamworth their candidate Ian Cooper managed to save his deposit, the first Reform UK candidate to achieve this since party leader Richard Tice almost two years ago in Old Bexley & Sidcup.
Mr Cooper polled 5.4% and finished in third place, at last breaking his party’s miserable run of twelve lost deposits.
But it’s important to recognise the following factors:
- Tamworth was a very strongly pro-Brexit constituency;
- The circumstances of this by-election, caused by the resignation of a Tory MP who was found to have made repeated homosexual assaults while drunk, were obviously ideal for a right-of-centre, ‘protest vote’ party.
- The Conservative vote collapsed, but lifelong Tories chose to stay at home and were not inspired by Reform UK’s lukewarm civic nationalism.
- A significant number of voters would have been confused by the Reform UK candidate having the same surname as the Tory candidate – previous research has shown that this type of confusion is always a factor (though only a minor one) when there are two candidates on the ballot paper with the same surname.
It’s not unduly cynical to point out that in each of yesterday’s by-elections, Reform UK just happened to select candidates who had the same name as one of the rival candidates from a major party. In Mid Bedfordshire, Reform UK’s Dave Holland lost his deposit but managed 3.6%, no doubt helped slightly by the non-coincidence that the Liberal Democrat candidate was named Emma Holland-Lindsay.
It’s a shame that Reform UK is so bereft of serious policies and serious ideological inspiration that it resorts to these shabby tricks, but even with the benefit of such ploys it’s becoming obvious that Richard Tice’s party is on the road to nowhere. Reform UK is at most a minor irritant costing the Tories a few hundred votes and will perhaps hand a few extra seats to Labour as Keir Starmer heads for Downing Street next year, but the party has nothing more to offer.
One much smaller party will be reasonably satisfied with their result. Britain First took a big gamble in choosing to stand in Tamworth where their candidate – deputy party leader Ashlea Simon – has no local connections. However, Ms Simon and party leader Paul Golding perceived that Tamworth is strongly pro-Brexit and felt that especially the White working-class section of its electorate might prove receptive to Britain First’s message.
After carrying out a serious and energetic campaign in Tamworth, Ms Simon polled 2.3% and finished in fourth place (ahead of the Greens and Liberal Democrats).
H&D is not especially sympathetic to Britain First’s brand of civic nationalism, with its intense focus on hostility to Islam and its insistence on multi-racialism. But we can see that while this is far from an outstanding result, it is much better than the three previous large scale BF campaigns, at the Rochester & Strood and Wakefield by-elections, and the 2016 London mayoral election.
In short, this was not a great result for Ms Simon, but certainly not a disaster – bearing in mind that the party has far less resources than Reform UK and does not enjoy the regular hype on GB News that is still given to Tice’s party.
With the BNP moribund, the NF barely functioning as an electoral party, neither PA nor the Homeland Party yet being registered, and the British Democrats yet to take off as a significant force at the ballot box, Mr Golding and Ms Simon will be regarded by some H&D readers as the next best thing to having a real racial nationalist party.
However, for some of us the lesson of this week’s by-elections is that all forms of civic nationalism are failing – not only failing to offer principled opposition to the zeitgeist, but also failing in their own terms at even the shabbiest and most ‘pragmatic’ level of politics.
The 4.6% polled at yesterday’s Mid Bedfordshire by-election by a local parish councillor standing as an independent parliamentary candidate – and the low turnouts in both constituencies (especially Tamworth) – show the extent of public disillusionment with the mainstream parties. Some form of nationalist party ought to be capable of getting its act together and mobilising this disillusionment, even with only a fraction of the funds that have been wasted on UKIP, Reform UK and various pro-Brexit splinter parties.
Politicised policing in the UK
Home Secretary Suella Braverman – who was being applauded by some racial nationalists only a week ago after a speech about immigration – has wasted no time in seeking to politicise the response of UK police officers to the developing war in Palestine.
Braverman is the daughter of Indian immigrants who moved to Britain during the 1960s. She is married to a Jewish businessman, Rael Braverman.
And she has obvious ambitions to succeed her fellow Indian Rishi Sunak as the UK’s Prime Minister.
Today Braverman abandoned any pretence that her party is interested in a just and lasting Middle East peace settlement.
Writing to Chief Constables across England and Wales, Braverman reminded them that support for Hamas is a criminal offence under the Terrorism Act, which means that even wearing certain symbols can lead to a jail sentence in the UK. (See Saturday’s H&D article written within hours of Hamas breaching Israeli security.)
But she went further. In a blatant attempt to silence political debate, Braverman now seeks to criminalise one of the slogans most widely heard on pro-Palestinian demonstrations. She told Chief Constables:
“It is not just explicit pro-Hamas symbols and chants that are cause for concern. I would encourage police to consider whether chants such as ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ should be understood as an expression of a violent desire to see Israel erased from the world, and whether its use in certain contexts may amount to a racially aggravated section 5 public order offence.”
Braverman even suggests that displaying a Palestinian flag at a demonstration should in some circumstances be regarded as a criminal offence.
Perhaps most significantly, the Home Secretary used this letter to suggest to Chief Constables that (for the first time in the UK) possession of a swastika symbol should be treated as a criminal offence, in the context of a pro-Palestinian demonstration.
In most cases, H&D readers would probably deprecate the use of swastikas at such events, as they are almost always used by leftwing anti-Zionists in the context of suggesting an equivalence between National Socialism and Zionism. Nevertheless, the Home Secretary’s suggestion – that simple possession of a swastika symbol should be a criminal offence – is a dangerous development and one which should be resisted by all legal means.
Our readers will not be surprised to see that Braverman highlighted the “close collaboration” between English and Welsh police forces and the ultra-Zionist lobby group Community Security Trust (CST).
CST grew out of the violent anti-fascist 62 Group which specialised in physical attacks on British nationalists during the 1960s. CST’s founder Gerald Ronson was in charge of finances for the 62 Group, working alongside its “field commander” Cyril Paskin and its intelligence chief Gerry Gable, who is now the editor and publisher of Searchlight. Gable and two other 62 Group operatives were convicted for an illegal entry into the home of historian David Irving, where they aimed to steal documents.
Paskin, Ronson, and Gable planned many acts of political thuggery. One of the last 62 Group operations was in November 1971, when the 62 Group attacked a conference in a Brighton Hotel organised by the Northern League, an academic racial nationalist group. Paskin and others received suspended prison sentences for affray.
Some years earlier, Gerald Ronson was convicted of a politically motivated assault on a member of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement.
During the mid-1960s, the 62 Group evolved into a more politically focused group called JACOB, which in turn evolved into CST. The development of JACOB was advised by Monica Medicks, an Israeli intelligence officer who had previously been a member of the anti-British terrorist group Irgun.
Unlike Suella Braverman and the Conservative Party, Heritage and Destiny supports the interests of Britons and Europeans rather than Israelis.
European nationalists have different views on the Middle East. But our movements – and future nationalist governments in Europe – will act in the interests of Europeans and will never prostrate ourselves as the uncritical tools of international Zionist lobbies. Especially not lobbies with a long record of anti-European, anti-nationalist violence.
Both Braverman and her political opponent Jeremy Corbyn are playing games with the issues of “racism” and “anti-semitism”. Corbyn persistently lies about the historical events of Cable Street in 1936 (where Jews and Communists fought London police in an effort to obstruct a march by Mosley’s supporters), and as we recently reported, he took the extraordinary step of writing to Braverman to pressure the Home Secretary into banning our European correspondent Isabel Peralta from entering the UK.
And now we see Braverman herself seeking to criminalise anti-Zionism and extend the UK’s criminal law into other areas of previously legitimate political debate.
H&D will of course try to stay within the law at all times. But Braverman is playing a dangerous game: her present trajectory is likely to force a confrontation in which not only British nationalists, but people of various political persuasions critical of Israel are dragged into court. If this happens, she can expect to be fought at every level, from the streets of Britain to the European Courts.
Will Labour save the Union?!?
A few minutes ago Labour won a huge victory in the Rutherglen & Hamilton West parliamentary by-election, caused by a successful recall petition against the disgraced SNP MP Margaret Ferrier, who had breached pandemic regulations.
This is a constituency on the outskirts of Glasgow, and was one of many that swung heavily to the SNP in 2015. Labour briefly took it back with a tiny majority in 2017, before losing again to the SNP in 2019.
Given the circumstances of the previous MP’s departure, no-one was surprised by Labour’s win, but what was remarkable was its scale: a swing of more than 20%, with Labour taking 58.6% of the vote (up from 34.5% four years ago).
With the collapse in the Conservative Party’s vote – losing their deposit on only 3.9% after polling 15% here in 2019 – it’s perhaps surprising that Reform UK made no impact at all, taking only 1.3% (almost identical to the UKIP vote in 2019). This was the second bad result in 24 hours for Reform UK: they managed only 6.3% in a local council by-election in Tamworth, where their candidate is also standing in the forthcoming Tamworth parliamentary by-election and there has been intense activity in recent weeks promoting him. UKIP also fielded their parliamentary candidate in this local Tamworth by-election and polled only 1.6%.
Back in Rutherglen, Niall Fraser from the Scottish Family Party fought an energetic campaign, opposing the absurd wokeness of the SNP and Labour on gender issues, but took only 319 votes (1.0%).
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this by-election result is that it is yet another signal of the end of SNP hegemony. Until the last year or two, many H&D readers might have been excused for being pessimistic about the future of the Union. But the SNP’s many crises look as though they might prove terminal for the cause of Scottish ‘independence’.
Another hopeful sign this week was a statement by Labour’s leader Sir Keir Starmer that he could not envisage circumstances where he would call a referendum in Northern Ireland on the future of the Union.
Of course H&D will continue to oppose Starmer and his party on almost all of their policies, and we can expect that (like the Tories) Labour will pursue policies that betray Ulster by stealth.
But that doesn’t stop us welcoming the total defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and his gang of IRA sympathisers, who had they somehow entered Downing Street would have betrayed Ulster to the IRA as well as abandoning our fellow Europeans to Vladimir Putin’s horde of barbarians.
The SNP are a less gruesome band of traitors, but their total defeat is again something to celebrate. One small step towards the renewal of the United Kingdom, which will of course also require the defeat of the other old gang parties!
The Rudolf Hess memorial, the Asian Marxist lawyer, and subversion in Spain – a strange tale of the new ‘European’ left
Edinburgh’s extradition court has been the scene of a drama played out across several episodes, demonstrating certain common factors among Europe’s enemies, and the deep historical roots of a challenge facing all European patriots.
H&D‘s assistant editor – writing at the Real History blog – today explains the strange story of the Rudolf Hess memorial stone, an Asian Marxist lawyer, and subversion in Spain – an extraordinary tale of the new ‘European’ left.
Visit this site after 12th October for an update direct from the extradition court in Edinburgh, where the fate of Vincent Reynouard will be decided. Click here to subscribe to H&D so that you can learn the full story in our November edition, and obtain the two-part interview with Vincent Reynouard in issues 115 and 116 of H&D.
Jeremy Corbyn – the terrorists’ friend – attacks H&D and Isabel Peralta
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has launched an extraordinary attack on Heritage and Destiny, calling for our meetings to be banned. In a letter to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Corbyn has targeted our European correspondent Isabel Peralta, demanding that she should be refused entry to the United Kingdom.
Isabel has never been convicted of any crime, but has twice been detained and questioned by UK Border Force, abusing their powers under the Terrorism Act.
Anyone interested in real terrorism should be looking not at Heritage & Destiny and Isabel Peralta, but at the close allies of Jeremy Corbyn, who has for decades been known as terrorism’s best friend in Parliament.
From 1985 to 1989 Corbyn was national secretary and later president of the notoriously violent group Anti-Fascist Action. AFA’s terrorist core – Red Action – held its meetings in Corbyn’s constituency office in Islington, north London, and provided security for Corbyn and for one of his closest political allies, IRA godfather Gerry Adams.
Even Corbyn’s own party has often been embarrassed by his especially close ties to the IRA. In 1984 Corbyn was reprimanded by Labour’s chief whip for taking IRA terrorists on a tour of Parliament. In 1987 Corbyn tried to appoint a notorious Irish republican sympathiser and anarchist, Ronan Bennett, as his parliamentary research assistant, but the authorities refused on security grounds to give Bennett a House of Commons pass.
Two of Corbyn’s comrades in Anti-Fascist Action and Red Action – Patrick Hayes (AFA London organiser) and Jan Taylor – were given long jail sentences for bombing the Harrods store in London on behalf of the IRA. Their fellow AFA activist, Liam Heffernan, was jailed for stealing explosives on behalf of another republican terrorist gang, the INLA.
A senior police officer later told the Sunday Times that Corbyn “knew they were open supporters of terrorism and he supported them”.
There has never been any suggestion that Corbyn was personally involved in specific acts of terrorism, but for decades police and security services monitored his close connections with terrorists and their active supporters. They were especially concerned that terrorists invited into Westminster premises by Corbyn had been able to familiarise themselves with the layout and security of the Houses of Parliament.
In 1985, Corbyn was the keynote speaker at Red Action’s national meeting. He maintained close ties for years to Red Action, a group whose journal openly stated: “both as an organisation and as individuals we support the activities of the Provisional IRA and the INLA unconditionally and uncritically.”
Some of the paymasters of “anti-fascism” will be embarrassed by the fact that Jeremy Corbyn is now championing their cause. In addition to his support for the IRA, Corbyn has frequently been accused of “anti-semitism”, for example over his praise for a mural that promoted allegedly “anti-semitic tropes”.
H&D has been contacted by several Londoners appalled by Corbyn’s consistent association with terrorists and their propagandists. We have been offered premises in Corbyn’s Islington constituency to hold our next meeting, and we are discussing several options for this event.
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn’s murderous friends and allies, Isabel Peralta – the young Spanish activist whom Corbyn has so disgracefully targeted – has never committed any offence against UK law. In reply to Corbyn’s attack, Isabel writes:
“I honestly find it hard to believe that my mere presence in a country is so dangerous that even one of the main English politicians, former leader of the second-largest political force in England, writes to the Home Secretary asking for me to be banned. I find it difficult to believe that someone who has not committed any crime and has never been convicted is ostracised or exiled from several European countries. But it is like this. Our fanaticism moves mountains and our enemies have more faith in our triumph than we do ourselves.
“One does not fear a madman, one does not take seriously a merely anachronistic or atavistic enemy. There is fear of a revolution. We are a revolution, a living, organic idea, destined to be proudly implemented throughout Europe.”
Let there be no doubt: H&D will continue to expose the truth about Jeremy Corbyn and his crazed Marxist and Irish Republican friends. We shall continue to fight for the true Europe. And we shall contest (at whatever level proves necessary) any attempt to intimidate or exclude our comrade and European correspondent Isabel Peralta.
