Having returned from my latest travels normal lack of service will be resumed shortly. In the meantime may I draw your attention to this article over at Harry’s Place. Who are reporting that the bastion of free speech and liberty that is “Unite against fascism” have just appointed a new vice chair Azad Ali of the Islamic Forum Europe, proponent of Sharia law, opposer of democracy and Hamas supporter. But hey at least he’s not a fascist! Well probably not, though the links between “Islamic Forum Europe and the far Right South Asian party, Jamaat-e-Islami” Harry’s place mention do make even that questionable.
Can’t find any mention of the “elections” on the UAF site, which given this Report of Unite Against Fascism conference 2012 isn’t terrible surprising:
““Elections”
There has been quite a bit of fuss, including inside the SWP, about the lack of democracy in UAF, and so this year – for the first time since the campaign’s founding in 2003, believe it or not – there were elections for the national committee. However even this small step was largely a formality or, to be blunt, a fake. Rather than a proper open election for a multi-member committee, candidates had to be nominated for a variety of individual positions (chair, vice chair, secretary, assistant secretary, parliamentary officer and so on).
Obviously this will have discouraged people from standing – and, lo and behold, there was only one candidate for each position. (Many of them were nominated by “Love Music Hate Racism” and “One Society Many Cultures” – “organisations” which decide these things how, exactly?) However this was only achieved by excluding Justin Baidoo, a young socialist and trade unionist from South London wishing to challenge SWP full-timer Martin Smith for assistant secretary, on a technicality. (See here.) The chair of his union branch had sent in the nomination, but failed to send in the reaffiliation form. “
P.S. hope you like the new look
I still despair at these morons, simply because of their name – if they are united against fascism why aren’t they against the government??????? What has the BNP or EDL got to do with fascism???????? Wankers!
As a commenter said over on Harry’s place they should possibly change their name to “Unite alongside Fascism”. It’d be nice though if they actually had a coherent definition of fascism, as little of their campaigning seems to have much to do with the usual definition. Mind the government for all their sins don’t fall under the label either. In the UK I suspect there are rather few actual fascists to oppose, apart from possibly the ones associated with their new vice chair.