Ken Livingstone

Looking left

A wry look at the ins-and-outs of the left... GALLOWAY FAN CLUB: MEMBERS WANTED Sadly I wasn’t able to pay £100 to attend the CPGB’s “Communist University” summerschool this year, but according to the AWL comrades who attended it was highly entertaining. Those highly principled publishers of the Weekly Worker had organised a debate with us on the general election contest in Bethnal Green and Bow as the plenary session on the Saturday afternoon of their school. Attended by almost 22 people, including several members of the Stalinist Turkish Communist Party, this session was entitled “Galloway...

Looking left

The mayor and the mullah Writing in the Guardian on 4 August, Ken Livingstone, under the cover of discussing the London bombings, once again defended his links with the Islamist preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Qaradawi, readers will recall, is a reactionary bigot (see Writing on the Wall this issue for further evidence). According to Ken, the political division is between those who want to ban Qaradawi from the UK and those who favour treating him as an honoured guest, representative of all Muslims and progressive thinker (his own position). Nothing in between Livingstone argues that Qaradawi’s...

Qaradawi and Ken Livingstone’s dodgy dossier

Ken Livingstone's office has produced a document defending his invitation to the Muslim cleric Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall in July 2004. Al-Qaradawi is a leading spokesperson of the Muslim Brotherhood. According to a briefing written by gay activist group Outrage, using the words of Qaradawi himself, the Livingstone dossier includes factually untrue claims in defence of Dr al-Qaradawi. From Outrage’s briefing: The Mayor claims Dr al-Qaradawi is one of the Muslim scholars who have done the most to combat socially regressive interpretations of Islam on issues such as women’s rights. Dr al...

Ken Livingstone and anti-Semitism (2002)

On 4 March Ken Livingstone wrote a piece in the Guardian explaining where he stands on anti-semitism, what he thinks about the Israeli state, and why criticising the actions of that state is not anti-semitism. I wrote this letter in response. It wasn’t published. Is Ken Livingstone an anti-semite? His motley career includes four years as an upfront editor of Labour Herald, a “Labour left” weekly so dependent on the Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) that it collapsed when that organisation did, in 1985. David Blunkett, Margaret Hodge, and others such were regular Labour Herald contributors...

As we were saying: Ken Livingstone and the Jewish Journalist (2005)

by Sean Matgamna “The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable” was how Oscar Wilde famously described fox-hunting. The unspeakable in full and ridiculous pursuit of the unteachable, describes the strange spectacle of the racist press and the racist Tory Party howling in pursuit of Mayor Ken Livingstone for comparing Evening Standard reporter Oliver Finegold, who happens to be Jewish, to a Nazi concentration camp guard. The Tories and their press set the pace in a vile competition with the Blair government to see which of them can do more to whip up hostility against immigrants and asylum...

And Livingstone scabs

By Chris Reynolds Ken Livingstone's response to the strike on the London Underground should prove, if proof were ever needed, that Livingstone is no kind of principled socialist or indeed any kind of decent political choice for working class people. Let's say this plainly, Livingstone was not making critical remarks about the tactics of the RMT union or urging the RMT to accept a particular pay deal last week. He was advocating RMT members should cross picket lines on 29-30 June - he was urging people to scab. This is a disgrace. This goes against the most important and the most ABC principle...

Tube strike? What tube strike?

Two of Livingstone's top advisors - Redmond O'Neill and John Ross - are members of Socialist Action (a self-styled Trotskyist group). We wondered what that group thought of Livingstone's call to scab. Faz Velmi phoned up NUS executive member and Socialist Action supporter Pete Leary and asked him. The date was Tuesday 6 July i.e a week after the tube strike. Faz: Hi Pete, it's Faz from the AWL. How are you? Pete: Fine thanks. F: Have you got a minute? P: Yes, sure. F: We're doing an article on the tube strike for our paper, and since I know you guys work pretty closely with Livingstone, I was...

European Social Forum: Who put Ken and the SWP in charge?

By Vicki Morris The third European Social Forum will probably be held in London, and probably in autumn this year. Preparations are underway. The timetable is very short for organising a successful ESF, but those who have put together the London "bid" - the SWP principally - have not let that bother them. Indeed, it is to their advantage, seeking to control the event, to railroad the process now, saying "we have to get on with organisation, no time for discussion". They are alienating many grassroots activists. A social forum should be a place where many people meet, and its preparation should...

The life, times and politics of Ken Livingstone

Workers' Liberty London Forum: The life, times and politics of Ken Livingstone A debate Wednesday 28 January 7.30-9.30pm Room 2C, University of London Union, Malet Street, WC1 More details 020 7207 3997

The Blairite Ken

The Greater London Authority and Ken Livingstone are supporting the London ESF. A demonstration of the progressive politics of the London Mayor perhaps? Not quite. John Bloxam examines his record. In June this year Livingstone intervened into a pay dispute on the London Underground to say that members of the RMT union should cross picket lines. He was urging people to scab. This is a disgrace, but one that comes on top of many other disgraces. Ken Livingstone joined the Labour Party at the end of the 60s, at a time when the left was streaming out of the Labour Party in disgust with the Wilson...

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