Shadow Chancellor wants ‘direct action’ against Tory MPs
SHADOW Chancellor John McDonnell last night faced fresh questions over his active support f or vi olence and intimidation.
It came after it emerged that he had said Tory MPs should not be allowed to ‘show their face anywhere’ without being subjected to ‘direct action’.
In a string of incendiary speeches since 2010, Mr McDonnell has described Conservatives as ‘social criminals’, and threatened to ‘confront’ anyone deemed to be opponents of the working class by occupying their homes and offices.
The hard-Left politician also believes the coalition government was an ‘elected dictatorship’ and once urged activists to ‘target’ journalists who do not cover the ‘right’ stories.
As recently as last year, he backed illegal action to bring down elected governments, saying: ‘We used to call it insurrection, but we’re polite now and we call it direct action.’
Leader of the House Chris Grayling said Mr McDonnell should either explain his support for insurrection or be sacked.
The Shadow Chancellor’s class-war rants are just the latest to emerge from members of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s top team.
Andrew Fisher, Mr Corbyn’s new political adviser, boasted on a website how he had ‘burst through’ police lines as part of a 200- strong group taking part in a student tuition-fee riot in Westminster in 2010. He also ‘hurled abuse’ at the police.
Speaking about the riot, Mr Fisher said: ‘Hundreds of people were enjoying the role reversal of the police being penned in and scared. I felt elated.’
And John Ross, an economic adviser of the new leader, once said: ‘The ruling class must know they will be killed if they do not allow a takeover by the workers. If we aren’t armed there will be a bloodbath.’
Further examples of Mr McDonnell’s incendiary comments over the past five years emerged yesterday.
In 2011, at a ‘Right to Protest’ rally, Mr McDonnell praised rioters who had ‘kicked the ****’ out of the Conservative Party’s headquarters at Millbank Tower in Westminster.
He defended Ed Woollard, a student jailed for 32 months for throwing a fire extinguisher at police from the building’s seventh-floor roof.
Mr McDonnell said: ‘That kid didn’t deserve 36 months. Actually, he’s not the criminal. The real criminals are the ones that are cutting the education services and increasing the fees… We’ve got to encourage direct action in any form it can possibly take.’
At a ‘Coalition of Resistance Delegates’ conference in September 2011, Mr McDonnell said: ‘Any institution or any individual that attacks our class, we will come for you with direct action.