#apsana begum

[ianchisnall]

Only 3 MPs spoke about Domestic Abuse and Public Life

Only 3 MPs spoke about Domestic Abuse and Public Life

To be clear the opportunity for the debate was only for half an hour and it was to take place in Westminster Hall and so there was only a modest number of MPs that could have participated. However even so it would have been much more positive if some of the other MPs could have added their words to the debate so that we would have known who else was taking part in the session. The first person…

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#Apsana Begum #Domestic Abuse #Kate Kniverton #Sarah Dines

[convertgrapeling]

Watching British politicians suddenly rushing to condemn Islamophobia after the last 9 years, the constant false accusations of antisemitism thrown at Muslims for no good reason, the demonisation of pro-Palestine protesters, the dehumanisation of Muslims in Palestine, the resounding silence when Apsana Begum begged her party for help, the constant whispering about "Islamist plots," the moral panic about Starmer possibly being in the same room as someone who boycotts Israeli dates, the shrugging about Boris Johnson's letterbox comments, the dehumanisation of Shamima Begum and her baby, the scapegoating over grooming scandals, the refusal to condemn Islamophobia within Hindutva fascism, the comments about Labour "shaking off the fleas" as they lost Muslim voters... it makes me wonder if someone has crunched some numbers and realised that neither party can afford to lose any more support after all. Because this is a funny time to suddenly start giving a shit otherwise.

#uk politics #Islamophobia

[probablyasocialecologist]

Driven by both ideology and resentment at having their political careers disrupted, the current Labour leadership and party machinery are taking pains to ensure that the next set of MPs are selected from the same professional-managerial backgrounds that most of the PLP come from. Prospective candidates are those which are unlikely to rock the boat and demand substantial reform, with swathes of London-based councillors in comms jobs now returning to the ‘red wall’ seats they left decades ago, lured by the promise of a £80k a year job (plus expenses). The leadership has engaged in what must be one of the largest membership purges ever seen in a nominally democratic political party.

The liberal press have supported this project with an astonishing omertà. From 2015-19, the pages of the Daily Mirror, the Guardian and the Huffington Post were packed to the brim with stories about internal Labour Party processes and detailed analysis of the Facebook posts liked by local branch officers. Today, similar stories are largely ignored by the same outlets, with seemingly only Michael Crick taking an interest in how future members of the legislature are selected. Even when an independent report, led by Martin Forde KC, identified deliberate electoral sabotage attempts committed by the party and its officials, as well as a deeply racist party culture, the findings barely generated a day’s worth of coverage. MPs who claim to be anti-racists and feminists have suddenly lost their voices, as exemplified by the deathly silence over the treatment of Apsana Begum MP, who is being deliberately targeted by her former abuser through the internal procedures of the Labour Party.

Internally then, the last three years have seen the inheritors to the New Labour project re-establish their positions within the party. These MPs and officials were the people who fought a bitter internal war within the party under Corbyn’s leadership, and the entrenching of these factional positions has allowed them to avoid any reflection on the popularity or viability of their own deeply neoliberal ideological positions. Their years in the wilderness were not spent developing any new ideas. Far from it. When you listen to Rachel Reeves or Wes Streeting speak, they explicitly recycle the terms and logics from the era when they cut their political teeth: ‘magic money tree’, ‘tough on the causes of crime’, etc. Their policy programme, to the extent that we know what it is, picks up where New Labour left off: re-regulating energy, expanding home ownership, increasing private involvement in healthcare, reviving Mandelson’s ‘partnership with business’, and attempting to roll out a corporate-friendly industrial strategy focused on doing, at most, the bare minimum required by the ecological crisis, which they failed to do last time they were in office. Labour’s pitch is that they are best placed to revive the comatose neoliberal patient, to improve economic growth and professionalism in government. Positioning themselves in such a way has won them support from the sections of the professional-managerial class which deserted Labour in 2019. What remains to be seen is if their approach can cohere popular support, or even just sufficient votes from a beleaguered working-age public to get them over the line in the next election.

Gareth Fearn, Neoliberalism in a Coma

#Keir Starmer #labour party #uk politics #centrism

[ukrfeminism]

A Labour MP is taking time away from work after suffering from “a sustained campaign of misogynistic harassment and abuse”.

Apsana Begum, MP for Poplar and Limehouse, posted a statement on Twitter on Wednesday night that said she attended hospital on June 12 and was subsequently signed off work by her GP.

She said: “For the duration of my time as a Member of Parliament, I have been subjected to a sustained campaign of misogynistic abuse and harassment.

“As a survivor of domestic abuse, it has been particularly painful and difficult. This abusive campaign has had a significant effect on my mental and physical health.

Ms Begum, who was part of the 2019 intake of MPs, added that her staff and office will still be open to help people in her east London constituency while she is off sick.

Her absence from work means that she will not be able to take any part in Labour’s trigger ballot process. This is when local party and affiliate branches decide if the sitting MP will contest the next general election or if there should be a new selection process.

Ms Begum added: “I am very concerned by the wider circumstances surrounding the trigger ballot process. This has included complaints of alleged rule-breaking and alleged misogynistic intimidation.”

She said it is important the Labour Party investigates these claims and warned that the intimidation she has faced “will be all too familiar to women, socialists, and those from ethnic backgrounds.”

The east London MP was supported by a number of her Laboour colleagues. Ian Bryne MP wrote on Twitter: “The bravery shown by Apsana over the last 3 years of relentless attacks is remarkable but sickening it’s continuing. 

“I hope the party realise they have a duty of care and act to protect my friend and colleague.”

And former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “Apsana is a strong good woman. Appalling treatment. My full support.”

Ms Begum first spoke of being a victim of domestic violence after being cleared of fraud charges in July last year.

[mariacallous]

This month marks a year since news broke of the parties in Downing Street. With hindsight, this revelation was to be the fulcrum on which the prospects of the Conservatives, and therefore Labour, turned. What seemed inconceivable 12 months ago is now looking inevitable. Labour is going to win the next general election.

But for a victory so longed for, it feels like one unaccompanied by a sense of hope. Instead, the message from Labour HQ seems reminiscent of a military government that has taken control after an unruly revolution – order must be restored. But at what cost?

The first step on the path to power for the party was to eject the losing left from its ranks. Candidates report being blocked over the most tenuous of transgressions. One candidate was disqualified for liking tweets. There are also other disturbing reports of leaking of party members’ contact details to anointed candidates before others, and leftwing MPs such as Apsana Begum being abandoned by party leadership to face personally motivated deselection campaigns. This engineering of selections isn’t a necessary evil: it is a voluntary one that denies party members and the public their democratic right to vote for a range of candidates. What is emerging is a party that has traded principle for power.

An extension of this purge has been to eradicate anything deemed too “radical” from the party’s policy offerings. The role that Labour has sketched for itself as a grownup party that brings “stability” could not be less suited to the times. Challenging the status quo is what people are in the mood for after the pandemic, the cost of living crisis and the energy crisis. Instead of focusing on investment in a frail public realm, the party is singing the same tune of fiscal prudence as the Tories. It is distancing itself from angry, desperate strikers, just as the nation rises in historic organised objection to the status quo. Labour wants your votes and your funding, but not your dreams, your fears, your appeals for your future. In fact, anything that looks too close to the popular exuberance of solidarity is to be avoided, because that also looks too close to the prospect of change.Labour is not on the picket lines, in spirit or in body, but is addressing business leaders: at an event last week, Keir Starmer refused to commit to repealing the government’s proposed anti-strike laws, making sure the prawn cocktails of the gathered company went down a bit easier.

This aversion to meaningful change looks even more jarring when you compare Labour with its peers in Europe and the US. Joe Biden has moved closer to climate activism and tax justice, as well as higher public spending through the post-Covid economic recovery programme. The German Social Democratic party came to power after calling for a higher minimum wage and higher investment in upgrading public services. Even France is passing ambitious climate laws, banning some short-haul domestic flights. As the space expands for higher public spending, higher taxation and more investment in infrastructure, Labour is busy reassuring the financial services sector that it won’t be “soaked” with higher taxes.

Some of Labour’s retreat, both in outward ambition and internal standards, is the result of trauma inflicted by its defeat in 2019, by a decade’s rule by a Conservative party that seemed impossible to dislodge, and by a rightwing press that has so ruthlessly savaged successive Labour leaders. In order to win, the party has reverted to its safe space: 1997. The result is a limited and anachronistic policy offering, further constrained by the fact that the solutions to the crisis Labour will inherit involve some form of redistribution of power and wealth, nationalisation, stronger regulation, higher taxation and opening up of borders. All things that Labour recoils from in its fear of being painted as ideological.

But that stereotype of Labour was created by its enemies. By deciding that victory is only possible on the terms of its opponents, the party’s aim is to transform itself rather than the country. Starmer is crystallising into a strongman who has taken on this role with relish. He is rewarded for his authoritarianism by members of a media and business establishment happy to see Labour dispense with the romance of hope and change, and instead embrace the terms of their miserable arranged marriage with reality. Vested interests are happy to see Labour accept that, for millions of people, things will still be tough after a Labour win, but that’s the price of a Labour win.

The bloodless calculus of a centrist ruling class is that acceptable collateral damage is the best we can hope for. There will be no passion or pledges, only grownup acceptance of structures we cannot change. “The British people are conservative at heart, you see,” I am told, in the same tone that after 2010 I was told that Arabs are simply not ready for democracy.

The tragedy is that it doesn’t have to be like this. Labour can win on its own terms if it chooses to believe that it is fit for power because it is Labour. There is space for both competence and compassion. There is room to make the case for decent pay for a day’s work, investment in childcare, hospitals and care homes, an innovative education system, dismantling privatised utilities that gouge both employees and customers, human decency towards those, both here and overseas, without a home. These are not radical notions, but basic expectations of an incoming government after 12 years that have vividly demonstrated the jeopardies of frugality.

If victory means that Labour is winnowed down to a shape acceptable to the very rapacious interests it is meant to challenge, is it a victory at all – or a climb on to a winner’s podium built on a staircase of defeats?

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

As Skwawkbox covered yesterday, the BBC published analysis on the levels of 'toxic' Twitter messages received by MPs - in an article that completely excluded the Black and Asian women who receive the vast majority of social media and other abuse, including the most foul racism.

Instead, the BBC claimed that those receiving 'toxic' tweets were overwhelmingly white.

But access to the 'algorithm' the BBC used for its project covering a couple of weeks of Twitter traffic has revealed glaring apparent inconsistencies and illogicalities in what the system considers abusive. As Jeevan Rai pointed out, the innocent Black Lives Matter slogan was considered ten times 'more likely to be toxic' than the response often used in response by racists that 'All lives matter':

In short, the system appears to perpetuate the same gross distortions perpetrated by the so-called 'mainstream' media over the past seven years and more, in which the right's bleating about any kind of challenge is amplified by the media, while the foulest abuse toward the left and especially toward ethnic minority left-wingers is ignored entirely or else actively covered up.

This project apparently took the BBC eight months to carry out and led to the publishing of a result so diametrically opposed to obvious reality that it is laughable - or it would be, were it not such a serious matter to wipe out and ignore the horrific and sustained abuse suffered by MPs of colour and especially women like Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler, Claudia Webbe, Zarah Sultana and Apsana Begum.

#uk media #bbc

[harpianews]

Apsana Begum: Labor MP requires responsibility of look after abuse survivors

Apsana Begum: Labor MP requires responsibility of look after abuse survivors

Apsana Begum spoke about her experiences throughout a debate at Westminster Hall. With inputs from BBC

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[whatsonmedia]

Apsana Begum: Not be Silenced!

Apsana Begum is the first hijab- parliamentarian of Labour party. She has said that she refused to be silenced by her party after accusing the Labour leadership of abandoning her. She has accused her local Labour-led council and ex-husband of "sustained campaign of misogynistic abuse". In the closing rally of The World Transformed festival in Liverpool she claimed that, " the level of inhumanity towards me has been chilling". Nelson Mandela said, "freedom cannot be achieved unless women have been emancipated from all kinds of oppression." Oppression can be of any form, but in modern world women needs to know about their rights and take stand for themselves. The Kurdish woman, killed by the so-called moral police brings to question, "are women really free?" Why is she Being Targeted? Ma. begum, a survivor of domestic abuse, criticized the party's decision to refuse to pause an ongoing trigger ballot in her despite her ill-health. She says, "I am being targeted because I speak against Islamophobia and institutional racism". Further she adds that, "and ultimately I'm being targeted because I still hold onto that hope of a socialist vision". Jeremy Corbyn tweet on her support Her Speech Apsana Begum She gave a defiant closing message to the socialist Campaign Group where she said, "I don't know what future will hold, but I want to make this very very clear: this socialist, Muslim working-class woman will not be silenced". She being a working-class woman has nothing to loosed except her chains. She is fierce and bold in her approach towards any form of oppression and abuse. Party's Role Nadia Whittome has accused the leadership of failing to :step in when it had power and duty to do so and protect her". She further said that "attacks of left" must be stopped and Jeremy Corbyn must be restored as the whip of the party. Keir Starmer has been championing the left. His tribute to Queen has gained lot of criticism on the inaugural day of The World Transformed. Party has not supported her instead has asked her to face ballot. Begum has also accused the party for practice of factionalism. The Labour party which stands as the symbol of people's party and against capitalism and pro-socialist, practicing all the evil has put their stakes on risk. Women have always been oppressed but the working0class women has been "doubly oppressed". Begum's speech reminds us that women are not weak or not the "otherized" gender which needs men's assistance. Read the full article

[ianchisnall]

Tomorrow a group of MPs will debate Domestic Abuse

Tomorrow a group of MPs will debate Domestic Abuse

It is always very encouraging when a group of MPs set out to promote an important theme within Parliament and particularly for them to work with a team that is not restricted to party politics. Tomorrow a debate is due to take place in Westminster Hall which is not the main premise for debates but it is an opportunity for groups of MPs to hold a publicly released debates. Those of us who are keen…

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#Apsana Begum #Caroline Ansell #Caroline Lucas #Chris Stephens #Domestic Abuse #Kate Kniverton #Kate Osborne #Lloyd Russell-Moyle #Sally-Ann Hart

[vague-humanoid]

[convertgrapeling]

People need to understand what they're advocating when they talk about getting the Tories out "at any cost." It's the guy who ignores domestic abuse concerns and allows his party to be complicit in the abuse because it helps him target a left-wing Muslim woman.

#uk politics

[lasalsainglesa]

🔊🔊 This Saturday is #worldhungerday and Right To Food London is going to Downing Street to protest! Join us! ✊ "For us in London, a global city, our protest on World Hunger Day is for global and local reasons: 🔊 To draw attention to the global fight for the Right To Food, this includes - Breaking the power of global agribusiness - Food sovereignty, or food democracy, with local control of land and food growing - Decent working conditions for land, food and nutrition workers 🔊 To demand London Mayor and City Hall follow the example of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and others to declare London a ‘Right To Food City’ 🔊 City Hall organises universal free school food across London for all primary and secondary children - City Hall organises to allow communities to use the school kitchens. 🔊To demand that London MPs, follow the example of Apsana Begum MP and others to support the call for London to become a Right To Food City.” https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd8zEXNoUDz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

#worldhungerday

[saxafimedianetwork]

United Kingdom Shows Strong Sympathy For The Affected In Hargeisa’s Waaheen Market Fire

In what appears to be the highest tribute the PM @BorisJohnson has yet made to the people of #Somaliland & their resilience in the face of adversity, the PM showed hope that people will overcome this disaster as they did more awesome challenges before. #HargeisaMarketFire

(more…)

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#Apsana Begum #Boris Johnson #David Lammy #Ethiopian-Somaliland Relation #Fire #Gavin Williamson #Hargeisa #Liz Truss #Lizzie Walker #Message Of Solidarity #Mustafa Omer #Preet Kaur Gill #President of the Somali Regional State of Ethiopia #Rushanara Ali #Shabnam Nasimi #Somali Regional State of Ethiopia #Somaliland #Somaliland and United Kingdom relations #Stephen Doughty MP #United Kingdom (UK) #Vicky Ford #Waaheen Market

[amaximumtastemakercollection]

https://twitter.com/HWorsdale/status/1371522354069835780?s=20

#uk politics #from left to right #nadia whittome mp #zarah sultana mp #bell ribeiro-addy mp #apsana begum mp #kill the bill

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

Left-wing Muslim MP battling serious health problems has faced both domestic abuse and horrific treatment by local and national party, but Starmer still hasn’t reached out – but finds time to chat with official who knew Begum was ill but pushed on with trigger process. Read below his track record as Labour leader toward domestic violence victims and Muslim women

Left-wing Muslim MP for Poplar and Limehouse in London Apsana Begum has suffered horrific abuse and persecution from the local and national Labour party as the right has manoeuvred to remove her, leading to a malicious and failed attempt to jail her and bullying of constituents in an effort to unseat her as the party’s candidate, leading an official domestic violence advocate to warn the party that it was acting as an extension of the domestic violence she had suffered. Ms Begum told an audience gathered in Liverpool this week that Keir Starmer had been well aware of what was going on but that his faction had briefed the media against her rather than step in to help.

Starmer, meanwhile, has remained silent – not even tweeting to congratulate Begum on her acquittal in the malicious court case, although he found time to tweet about athletics and to congratulate Boris Johnson on yet another pregnancy.

And Skwawkbox understands that at no point has Mr Starmer bothered even to reach out to Apsana Begum – but he did find time to talk to the person who oversaw the process intended to remove her, Asra Anjum, the Procedures Secretary for the trigger ballot.

Ms Anjum, who is said by locals to be close to the clique surrounding Begum’s ex-husband and publicly gave him partial credit for her election as constituency party (CLP) secretary, was a social worker who was found by Social Work England to have dishonestly recorded social work visits that she never made. According to the same organisation, she is no longer registered to practise after her registration lapsed upon her failure to complete the required ‘Continuous Professional Development’.

Ms Anjum remains a Labour party officer – and Starmer was happy to pose for a series of pictures with her at the party’s conference in Liverpool this week, as a tweet by Ms Anjum boasted:

As procedures secretary, a message from Asra Anjum to Apsana Begum sent on 19 June last year proves that she was aware of Begum’s illness – and ploughed on with the trigger process regardless. The message read:

Dear Apsana, I’m sorry to hear you’re unwell. Kindly be informed that on review of our affiliation records we understand that ASLEF, Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Irish Society are affiliated to our CLP, Poplar and Limehouse. The secretaries for the above respective unions have been notified of the trigger ballot process. The requisite paperwork along with the ballot has been emailed. Apologies for the inconvenience this may have caused. I wish you speedy recovery and good health.

The Al Jazeera ‘Labour Files’ programme broadcast over the past week – and resolutely ignored by the rest of the so-called ‘mainstream’ media – proved the horrific extent of anti-Black and anti-Muslim racism of the Labour right and the lengths to which the party will go to victimise and remove those whom the ruling faction finds inconvenient.

In addition, a series of exclusives by Skwawkbox and the tribunal case brought by whistleblower Elaina Cohen against right-wing MP Khalid Mahmood demonstrated that Keir Starmer and Labour general secretary David Evans were repeatedly informed of Ms Cohen’s warnings that domestic violence victims were being criminally and horrifically abused by Mahmood’s employee and alleged loved – yet did nothing, leaving Mahmood on Starmer’s front bench and used parliamentary resources to pursue Cohen before sacking her unfairly. She turned down a six-figure settlement offer in order to pursue the case and ensure the abuse was on record.

Despite the gravity of the abuse allegations, which were accepted by Mahmood in the tribunal case without challenge, that scandal too has been almost entirely ignored by the ‘MSM’ and Keir Starmer has never answered requests for comment and continues to claim to be a champion of domestic violence victims – like Apsana Begum and the women Elaina Cohen sought to protect.

Asra Anjum was approached for comment.

#uk labour party #uk politics #ukpol #kier starmer #labour right wing

[politicalsci]

This is the list of 34 Labour MPs who defied Keir Starmer and voted against the Tories’ Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill tonight. The Bill makes it legal for the state to authorise murder, torture, and sexual violence against British citizens. 27 of the Labour MPs are members of the Socialist Campaign Group (including Diane Abbott, Rebecca Long-Bailey, Jeremy Corbyn, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell).

Diane Abbott

Tahir Ali

Paula Barker

Apsana Begum

Olivia Blake

Richard Burgon

Dawn Butler

Ian Byrne

Dan Carden

Jeremy Corbyn

Geraint Davies

Mary Foy

Barry Gardiner

Margaret Greenwood

Rachel Hopkins

Kim Johnson

Ian Lavery

Clive Lewis

Tony Lloyd

Rebecca Long-Bailey

John McDonnell

Ian Mearns

Navendu Mishra

Grahame Morris

Kate Osamor

Kate Osborne

Sarah Owen

Bell Ribeiro-Addy

Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Zarah Sultana

Jon Trickett

Mick Whitley

Nadia Whittome

Beth Winter

#politics #uk politics #keir starmer #spy cops bill #jeremy corbyn #human rights #british politics #labour party #covert human intelligence sources bill #chis bill #britpol