Blair plea to Muslim leaders at No 10 meeting

[BOZG]

At last week's cabinet meeting, Mr Blair likened Islamic extremism to the Trotskyist Militant Tendency that infiltrated Labour in the 80s, and argued it was only when the party recognised the depth of the infiltration that a tough counter-strategy was implemented. The prime minister is said to be aware that new ways will have to be found to communicate with younger Muslims, including some relatively wealthy and well-educated males who have become alienated from British culture.


Full article from the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1531358,00.html)

[BOZG]

Socialist Party press release in response:

BLAIR'S DESPERATE SLURS AGAINST MILITANT ARE AN OUTRAGE
Press statement from the Socialist Party

The Socialist Party, formerly Militant tendency, has slammed Tony Blair's disgraceful slurs, allegedly made at a meeting of the Cabinet last week, comparing Islamic extremism to Militant's role in the Labour Party in the 1980s.

Responding to Blair's alleged remarks, featured in a report on page 5 of today's Guardian, Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe said today:

"At last week's cabinet meeting, Tony Blair, "likened Islamic extremism to the Trotskyist Militant Tendency". Blair's remarks are an outrageous slur. Militant Tendency, now the Socialist Party, has always condemned terrorism; both the terrorism of individuals and groups both in Britain, Ireland and internationally, and the state terrorism of the US and British governments that is estimated to have resulted in the death of 100,000 civilians in Iraq.

"It does not bode well for civil liberties in the wake of 7/7 that the prime minister is prepared to malign socialists who have consistently opposed his neo-liberal, warmongering policies by equating them with terrorists.

"To the nightmare of terrorism, the Socialist Party has always counterposed mass working class action as the only means to bring about fundamental change - to bring an end to this capitalist system which increasingly means poverty, inequality and national oppression."





http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/2005/401/index.html?id=nppress.htm (Blair's desperate slurs against Militant are an outrage)

[Camarada]

Blair can go fuck himself.

It's a shame that what used to be a socialist party (labour) is now a right-wing imperialist party ..

[viva le revolution]

That statement from a supposedly left-wing party kind of says it all.

[Toussaint]

Lucky you are, in England... In France, a far-right politician, De Villiers linked muslims with terrorism and the "revolutionary" parties, like LO or LCR could not say a word about it, they cannot, for most of them are themselves engaged in a war against Islam and muslims. For the deep pleasure of the french colonialist, imperialist and racist ruling class.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 10:41 AM
"It does not bode well for civil liberties in the wake of 7/7 that the prime minister is prepared to malign socialists who have consistently opposed his neo-liberal, warmongering policies by equating them with terrorists."
Well, yeah.

It also tips his hand a bit, indicating who the ultimate target of the "war on terrorism" is...working people. It's kinda like Bush's statement that the enemy is "people from the wrong side of the tracks."

(I dunno if that American idiom's clear to everyone...in a lot of towns in the U.S., the Black community, or the poorest neighborhood, has traditionally been on the other side of the railroad tracks from the rest of the town...)

[mo7amEd]

well said by the socialist party...