Eddie Dempsey  In the past week, Owen Jones surprised me by making me the subject of a blog post in which he attempted to sketch a caricature of me as a peddler of nativist fantasies about a supposed ‘white working class’.

This comes off the back of a series of slurs against me orchestrated by Clive Lewis, who compared me to the fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley (the irony may have been lost on Clive, given Mosley’s well-known support of European unity against ‘dark Africa’), and Novara commentator Ash Sarkar, who withdrew from speaking at a Peoples’ Assembly rally — citing my presence as the sole reason.

Owen’s caricature of me is unfamiliar and unfair. I am an Irish immigrant and a trade unionist. I grew up on the Woodpecker Estate in New Cross, one of the most diverse — and most deprived — estates in Britain. My first political act was to join a demonstration against the Iraq War.

The people I look up to are people like Bob Crow, Jack Dash and Mickey Fenn – Tilbury docker and founder of Anti Fascist Action, who was one of the few dockers to speak out against the 1968 wildcat strike, called in defence of Enoch Powell’s comments on restricting Commonwealth immigration.

Continue reading @ Labour Heartlands.

A Reply To Owen Jones ✑ Keep It Comradely

Eddie Dempsey  In the past week, Owen Jones surprised me by making me the subject of a blog post in which he attempted to sketch a caricature of me as a peddler of nativist fantasies about a supposed ‘white working class’.

This comes off the back of a series of slurs against me orchestrated by Clive Lewis, who compared me to the fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley (the irony may have been lost on Clive, given Mosley’s well-known support of European unity against ‘dark Africa’), and Novara commentator Ash Sarkar, who withdrew from speaking at a Peoples’ Assembly rally — citing my presence as the sole reason.

Owen’s caricature of me is unfamiliar and unfair. I am an Irish immigrant and a trade unionist. I grew up on the Woodpecker Estate in New Cross, one of the most diverse — and most deprived — estates in Britain. My first political act was to join a demonstration against the Iraq War.

The people I look up to are people like Bob Crow, Jack Dash and Mickey Fenn – Tilbury docker and founder of Anti Fascist Action, who was one of the few dockers to speak out against the 1968 wildcat strike, called in defence of Enoch Powell’s comments on restricting Commonwealth immigration.

Continue reading @ Labour Heartlands.

2 comments:

  1. Eddie Dempsey needs to learn that Brexshit is a right-wing English nationalist project backed by shadowy rich backders such as the Koch Brothers who see it as a means of rolling back workers' and consumers' rights gained through the UK's membership of the EU. The Lexshit position which a small minority of labour movement figures advocate is for the birds.

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    1. Brexit might be but we know that is not why so many of the constituencies Eddie refers to don't fit into that bill. There is a very clear Left logic for leaving the EU. I just don't think it can be persuasively argued via Brexit. This is why I am surprised at Eddie supporting Brexit rather than the concept.
      He seems to me to be on the money in describing how the Liberal Left fail in so many areas and he identifies the smear so beloved by liberal-left-woke to smother critique.

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