This screen capture is extremely worrying:
Next weekend Brighton Pavillion Labour Party will be selecting their prospective parliamentary candidate for the next general election. One of the front runners is the extremist anti-Islam bigot, Anne Marie Waters. She recently spoke at the Oxford Union, arguing that “Islam is not a religion of peace”, which brought her the glowing endorsement from the English Defence League website. The EDL London division has previously tweeted their admiration for Anne Marie Waters.
Even more alarmingly, Anne Marie Waters, has now also received endorsement from the militant “counter-Jihad” blog called “Gates of Vienna”, which carries the writings of “Fjordman”, one of the intellectual inspirations for Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik. Fjordman advocates the forcible deportation of Muslims from Europe. Remember that on Channel Four, Anne Marie Waters herself argued that Muslims should leave the UK.
The Gates of Vienna website says:
“I’ve never encountered Anne-Marie Waters before, but I like the cut of her jib in this Oxford Union debate.”
If Anne Marie Waters is selected as a Labour PPC for a winnable seat, then it will drag the party into appalling conflict. Let us hope that the CLP members in Brighton Pavillion see sense.
(incidently, the rot is spreading and in Croydon Central’s selection, Catriona Ogilvy, is herself boasting the support of Anne Marie Waters.)
No they’re on the brink of picking Anee Marie waters
Is anyone who’s scared abut Islamic xterm isms, ani semeticism, homophobia, or sexism, an extreme bigot,or is anyone wo actually pro Israel, called bigoted by someone who’s bigoted in their own right.
So one EDL member( members spbeing anyone who can join their Facebook page) has put an admirable comment of Anne Marie and this makes her bad?
This from Andy Newman wo regularly puts tributes to Stalin and Chairman Mao?
I was appalled by this woman’s speech and the lack of understanding. She points out that there are ‘hundreds of millions of peaceful muslims’ but that doesn’t mean that Islam itself is peaceful. She goes on to say that peaceful Muslims interpret verses of the Koran almost beyond recognition. I wonder if she’s read the Judeo Christian bible? In the bible people are told they can beat their children and are told to stone their wayward sons to death. (Deuteronomy 21: 18-21) I could give many more examples. My point is that modern Christians (and I’m one) and Muslims would never dream of following these parts of either the Bible or the Koran. It seems pretty unfair to pick on Islam and Muslims when Christianity is…well…guilty of the same thing. But then I guess if you pick on Christians it’s not as ‘sexy’ these days and doesn’t get you noticed does it.
Actually Brighton Pavilion members are on the brink of selecting Purna Sen – a hugely talented, highly regarded local Brighton member of Indian ethnic origin, who has cross-Party support. See http://purna4pavilion.org.uk/
I agree, however, that the prejudice, intolerance and ignorance expressed by Anne Marie Waters in her publicly available C4 video from only February this year should have precluded her from approval to stand for any Labour candidacy. The views expressed can only damage Labour and should call her membership of the Party into question. Those who haven’t seen it will be appalled when they watch http://www.4thought.tv/themes/can-immigration-save-religion-in-britain/anne-marie-waters
Anne Marie Waters appears not to know that Islam was widely practiced in Europe between the 8th and 15th centuries. She also explicitly dismisses the right to freedom of religion and implicitly dismisses the right to freedom of speech as she insists that people must either accept the UK’s established practices or leave the country. Clearly she views immigrants as second class citizens as these strictures are only applied to them.
The Labour Party NEC must be required to explain how Anne Marie Waters got this far. Members of Brighton Pavilion CLP will turn out on Saturday to ensure that she gets no further. As has been repeatedly shown, racists are not welcome in Brighton & Hove.
“So one EDL member (members being anyone who can join their Facebook page) has put an admirable comment of Anne Marie and this makes her bad?”
No, what happened was that her Oxford Union speech was posted in the videos section of the EDL website, as the screenshot at the top of this post shows. That amounts to official endorsement by the EDL, I would say.
In addition, you can find a large number of EDL supporters expressing their enthusiastic approval of AMW’s speech on the EDL London Division’s Facebook page: http://tinyurl.com/qa85tbn
What is happening to the Labour Party? They hound good Labour Party people like George Galloway out of the Labour Party because of his principled stand on the Iraq war; yet allow racists like Ann-Marie Waters not only membershp,but allow her to be considered as a Parliamentary Prospective Candidate(Surely a progressive constituency L.P. like Brighton, Pavilion. wouldn’t even let such a rightwing bigot like Waters through the door of a selection conference, let alone enter the process.
Mind you, on the other hand why am I surprised. Been away for a few weeks, return home to find that Milliband(much to my surprise) has ran the white flag up to Crosby/Cameron and the Ramsay MacDonald/Philip Snowden/Peirre Lavall/Menshevik faction of the Lab. Party i.e. Blunkett, Reid, Mandelsohn, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Douglas Alexander aka the New Labour usual suspects, over the Unite/Falkirk situation, which I believe will prove to be an overblown red herring that Cameron/Osbourne/Crosby have exploited as a very useful diversion from their unravelling class war policies.
I notice that the title that appears on this article has been changed from the original one that appears on the so called “Socialist Unity” website. The original (and still current) title was “Is Brighton Pavillion on the edge of the abyss”, alarmist enough I would have thought, but now for some reason they are apparently selecting an extremist bigot?
The evidence? An EDL Face Page endorsement, not put there by Ms Waters and no doubt to her horror.
But such circu,stansial evidence is quite daming for witch hunter Andy Newman, after all his endorsement of a certain hate preacher, Quadari who says:
“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption…The last punishment was carried out by [Adolf] Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them – even though they exaggerated this issue – he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them…Allah Willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
Andy Newman is not an anti-Semite, but I do wonder who is the real extremist and the real bigot of this witch hunt?
It certainly isn’t Ms Waters.
Socialist Unity panders to the far left, and has an agenda that doesn’t fit belong in the Labour Party.
I agree with Howard, as for Francis Gerard Allen asking about a george Galloway, he called British troops wolves, said they should be attacked, that’s why he rightly kicked out, the only real question was did it take so long,
Howard Fuller you are a liar. I have never “endorsed” Qaradi, and i have myself criticised his apparent anti-Semitism.
Further up in this thread John Reid also entirely falsely claims that I have praised Stalin!
Andy Newman you protest too much. You excused him as a product of conservatism within his community and quoted his sayings. You are an apologist. Full stop.
“Apparent anti-Semitism”? Looks quite open to me Mr Newman.
That’s why I quoted his remarks about the holocaust. You can find more here
http://howiescorner.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/andy-newman-renews-his-witch-hunt.html.
Anne Marie Waters is not the extremist here, Andy Newman is.
Hitler ate sugar. That’s what claims of EDL endorsement amount to.
At no point in the much mentioned C4 video does AMW call for the expulsion of muslim immigrants, or anything of the sort.
Howard, what I did by as you say – quoting his sayings – was try to contextualise an understanding of a complex and influential Muslim cleric; that is clearly not an “endorsement” . This is necessary due to a campaign of mis information about Qaradawi that undermines recognition of what an important figure he is in his opposition to extreme Salafism, and the significance of his advocacy of womens’ rights .
The anti-semitism of the quote is only “apparent ” in the sense I do not speak Arabic, and therefore rely upon the translation of others. You will recall that I myself have raised as more than questionable the pedantic distinction of why Qaradawi supports terrorism against Israel but opposes other terrorism on principle.
Sadly anti semitism is widespread in the Middle East.
She believes in secularism and universalism, including equality before the law for muslim women, not just for white women. The fact that the british left regards this as racist shows how deep into postmodern Americanised identity politics it has sunk. I have great hope and respect for the left in the muslim world, which the western left attacks, and who bravely fight for the things the western left used to believe in. But the western left today is approaching a completely lost cause. The left in the UK can align itself with religious reactionaries because they’ve never had to live under them. Waters is a lesbian woman from catholic Ireland, so her perspective is not so privileged.
“She believes in secularism and universalism, including equality before the law for muslim women, not just for white women.”
On her blogs on the Huffingdon post there’s an awful lot of waffle about Jews and Israel … http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/anne-marie-waters/islamic-extremism-on-campus_b_2863393.html
Given such issues occupy such a large area of her mind I wonder just how secular she really is.
“They hound good Labour Party people like George Galloway out of the Labour Party”
Galloway’s a twit. Ask him the most simple question on twitter and count the seconds till he blocks you after calling you names. It beats me that 150,000 followers have yet to figure this out.
But surely the people of Brighton Pavilion not able to again pick whom they want. If they decide to have a racist then sadly we have to accept it, because this is what the people the members have decided, no different from being in my area and our choice being rejected so we have to have a Labour party stalwart who was Tonies Great pal while the long standing people we picked were rejected.
Choices of the people.
I agree Robert about ,whoever the local Labour party select is a case for them,and if they select a racist we’ll have to accept it, after all ,the local Labour parties of Hackney and Tottenham ,selected ,Racist in 1987″ and we had to accept that, yes, I have been campaigning for and a member of the party since then,
islam is not a race