Far-Left mob in bid to use fire deaths to topple Tories
Activists call for Day of Rage after disaster
A FAR-LEFT mob was accused last night of plotting to destabilise Britain in the wake of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Thousands threatened to ‘bring down the Government’ with plans to descend on Parliament during the Queen’s Speech on Wednesday under the banner of a ‘Day of Rage’.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also upped his rhetoric despite the tense atmosphere since the tragedy, which has left at least 58 dead. He called on nearby empty homes belonging to the wealthy in Kensington to be ‘occupied’ to house those left homeless by the fire. He also launched a thinly veiled attack on Theresa May yesterday.
Scotland Yard is watching closely for signs of further violence after hundreds of demonstrators forced their way into Kensington Town Hall on Friday before marching through central London.
Activists warn the conditions are similar to those following the police shooting of gangster Mark Duggan, which sparked five days of riots in the capital in 2011. One protester said he will settle for ‘nothing short of a revolution’, adding: ‘Sometimes all it takes is a spark.’
At the centre of the menacing calls is the Movement for Justice By Any Means Necessary, which accused the authorities of ‘ethnic cleansing’. One poster tells supporters to ‘walk out of school, take the day off, strike’ before joining a march from west London to Westminster to coincide with the Queen’s Speech.
Under the heading ‘class war, no justice, bring down the Government’, it accuses MPs of seizing power through ‘racism’ and ‘antiimmigration bigotry’. Referring to the General Election result, another online poster said: ‘We’ve felt our power. We’ve tasted victory. Now we must escalate our actions to take down this rotten government.’
Militant union leaders are plotting a ‘summer of discontent’ and ‘Red October’ to cause chaos and put Mr Corbyn into No 10. Hardliners linked to Unite, rail guards, teachers and junior doctors told followers last week to prepare for coordinated strikes and protests to bring the country to a halt.
Appearing on ITV’s Peston on Sunday yesterday, Mr Corbyn took a swipe at Mrs May’s reaction to Grenfell, saying some people cared to a ‘deeper extent’ than others.
Asked by host Robert Peston if he would seize properties that have been bought by the wealthy and left empty, he said: ‘Occupy, compulsory purchase it, requisition it, there’s a lot of things you can do.
‘In an emergency, you have to bring all assets to the table to deal with that crisis.’ He also compared the plight of Grenfell victims waiting to be rehomed to hundreds of delayed air passengers who are found hotel rooms every day, adding: ‘It seems to have been beyond the wit of the public services to deal with a crisis facing a relatively small number of people.’
Shadow chancellor John McDonnell backed the calls for requisitioning, telling Sky News he would have done ‘whatever necessary’ to house families.
The rhetoric was in stark contrast to a peaceful outdoor memorial service held in the shadow of the burnt-out tower block yesterday.
Hundreds of mourners linked arms in the street to remember the victims of Wednesday’s tragedy.
On Saturday, Mrs May spent two hours with Grenfell Tower residents at a private meeting in Downing Street. The Rev Mark O’Donoghue, of Christ Church Kensington, said she spoke briefly before listening to their concerns.
He said: ‘The first person spoke about how he’d been rescued from the 19th floor, how he opened his door to a wall of smoke, he could not see his hand. He was led out by an arm he couldn’t see. And I saw the Prime Minister welling up.
‘Somebody began to sob beside her and she just held her hand for the next 20 minutes, which wasn’t quite the caricature that we have of the Prime Minister.’
Tory MPs criticised Mr Corbyn for trying to score ‘political points’ by ‘exploiting’ the disaster.
Andrew Bridgen, MP for North West Leicestershire, said: ‘Corbyn has shown he is willing to trample over the bodies of the Grenfell fire victims in a cynical attempt to
score a political point and push his far-Left political agenda. He seeks to exploit a tragedy.’
George Freeman, Tory MP for Mid Norfolk, wrote online: ‘We need calm leadership. Not rabble rousing.’
Last night, Mrs May announced every household whose home was destroyed by the fire will receive an immediate £500 cash payment and a further £5,000 bank transfer later this week from an emergency fund. She said: ‘My Government will continue to do absolutely everything possible to help all of those affected through the difficult days, weeks, months and years ahead.’
IT was an act of unforgivable cruelty. On Thursday, Education Secretary John Swinney stood up at Holyrood and dashed the hopes of hundreds of parents and children when he announced the Scottish Government would not support the campaign to save St Joseph’s.
You might not have heard of this primary school in Milngavie, Dunbartonshire, but it is part of the fabric of that community and has been living under sentence of death for three years.
St Joseph’s is a good school with a fine reputation and so the local council decided to ‘amalgamate’ it with another primary in Bearsden. How snivelling, how cowardly is that verb ‘amalgamate’. It’s a memo word – an officials’ euphemism because ‘close down a well-liked school and disrupt the education of its pupils’ is too unpalatable when committed to black and white.
Parents were opposed. The Catholic Church was opposed. A consultation found 87 per cent of the community opposed. Once again the bureaucracy, that anonymous army generously salaried to determine our best interests for us, decided that it knew best. In shuttering St Joseph’s, East Dunbartonshire Council was closing the only Catholic primary school in Milngavie.
Tenacious
The parents could have opted for an easy life and swallowed their medicine but their children’s education was at stake and they resolved to fight back. They put pressure on the Scottish Government and forced ministers to ‘call in’ the council’s decision – only for St Andrew’s House to take the side of the local authority.
But these tenacious mums and dads refused to back down and, with the 2015 General Election in the offing, shamed Nicola Sturgeon into meeting them and hearing their case. They didn’t simply complain and throw their hands up at the injustice of it all. They had a plan. If the council wasn’t willing to run their children’s school, they would.
They brought together community leaders, business bosses and faith representatives and devised a proposal for St Joseph’s to ‘opt out’ of local authority control. If successful, it would mark the first appearance of a free school in Scotland but they were careful to avoid anything that sounded too daring – the SNP wants to tear up 300 years of history and set up a separate state but don’t suggest anything as outrageous as letting parents and communities run their local schools.
After holding out hope for two years that they might allow St Joseph’s doors to remain open under this innovative model, the Scottish Government snatched it all away, with Mr Swinney spouting some cold, heartless jargon about ‘support frameworks’.
How padlocking a popular school and herding pupils to the next town constituted ‘support’ was not explained. Mr Swinney is one of the more thoughtful SNP ministers and he is better than this cowardly capitulation to the EIS.
The EIS teachers’ union and the rest of the educational establishment are a curious breed of radical, fighting to conserve a failing status quo while loudly asserting their stance as ‘progressive’.
The St Joseph’s parents are disheartened but not defeated. Parent council chairman Helen Williams says: ‘We are very disappointed that the Scottish Government is not supporting our proposals to keep St Joseph’s in Milngavie. After sitting on our proposals for more than two years, it would have been nice to get a phone call from John Swinney himself instead of an anonymous civil servant.
‘The Education Secretary ought to know that he won’t improve education by allowing good schools to close. All we were asking for was a pilot to prove that a community-led school could work successfully. This is a lost opportunity for everyone and time is running out.’ They are not giving up and vow to fight on. They deserve the backing and goodwill of every parent in the land. They should not find themselves in this position, mendicants begging remote officials for the precious right to give their children the best start in life.
Politicians have been letting us down a lot of late. Theresa May is nominally the Prime Minister and yet she leaves our 91-year-old Queen to comfort survivors of the Grenfell Tower tragedy while she hides behind police lines.
Mrs May is in the final days of a short, brutal premiership but the least she could do is bow out with dignity; her failure to rise to the moment suggests she was always the wrong person for the job.
Agitating
The Parliamentary Labour Party, which fought for two years to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader, has rallied round him at the first, unexpected sniff of electoral advantage. The Scottish Government has wasted the past five years agitating for independence while school standards and healthcare provision slide and the economy slumps. The founding mission of the SNP and the political ambitions of Nicola Sturgeon trump the most basic duty, the only thing we really ask of politicians – good governance.
When government governs well, it can bring us together and give us the opportunity to make the most of our lives. North and south of the Border – and indeed around the world – government has lost its way, held back by ideological zealotry and ministerial mediocrity.
Until they can get their house in order, politicians should step out of the way and let us run our own lives. That starts with giving parents like those of St Joseph’s the choice to do what is right by their children but it shouldn’t stop there.
Libertarian fantasies are a dead end; there is such a thing as society and we have mutual responsibilities and shared aspirations that government can help us achieve.
We need politicians equal to that task but they are few and far between today. As long as we’re stuck with the current crop, the best thing they could do is leave us alone to get on with it – at least that way they won’t keep letting us down.