Protest Against Israeli Killings of Peace Activists

From the BBC:

More than 10 people have been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army says.

Armed forces boarded the vessels overnight, clashing with some of the 600 protesters on board.

The exact location of the interception is unclear. Israel had warned the ships not to enter its territorial waters.

The ships are carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid to try to break a long-standing Israeli-led blockade.

Israel says its forces were attacked by activists when they got on board.

"The people on the boats were very, very violent toward the soldiers," Israeli military spokeswoman Lt Col Avital Leibovich was quoted as saying by AFP news agency.

Organisers of the flotilla said at least 30 people were wounded in the incident.

An Israeli government minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, was reported as expressing regret for "all the fatalities".

Turkey, one of whose charities is a main organiser of the flotilla, said it "strongly condemn[ed] these inhumane practices of Israel", AFP said.

Turkish TV pictures taken on board the Turkish ship leading the flotilla appeared to show Israeli soldiers fighting to control passengers.

The footage showed a number of people, apparently injured, lying on the ground. It is not clear whether the fighting is continuing.

Full report here. You can follow this Twitter feed and website for news as it happens.

There's is a protest outside Downing Street TODAY at 2pm.

8:45 update: The Israelis' chief spokesman has just been on BBC News defending the action in his usual pugnacious manner. He is arguing the commandos were attacked first and claims the footage of the raid shows this - completely ignoring that these commandos were heavily armed and boarding a ship they knew contained nothing more than peace activists.

This is where he tried to muddy the waters. Despite knowing the humanitarian nature of the flotilla he tried claiming the Israeli government was "unclear" about whether the ships were carrying weaponry. If they had nothing to hide then why didn't they put in at an Israeli port?

These look like the main lines of argument apologists will be pursuing over the next few days.

Footage here and here.

Birthday Song Meme

Last night's Eurovision has left me in a musical mood, which is a perfect excuse for yet another music-related meme. This one is pretty simple: what was number one in the week you were born? You can find a list of every single song to have scaled the heady heights of chart success here.

Tragically the Great British public were out buying this monstrosity when I appeared on the scene:



Bah, I missed Donna Summer's I Feel Love by a measly four months.

What was your birthday song? I hereby tag Jim, Anna, Louise, Dave and Paul, Darren, Red Maria, and Splinty. If you're not tagged feel free to have a go. It beats blogging about David Laws.

Andrew Gamble on the Election

A couple of weeks ago Andrew Gamble visited Keele to speak about the general election results and what it means for mainstream politics.

He began by asking if he thought the result was as expected? One one count, it was. The spread betting turned out to be inaccurate but the exit poll many commentators sneered at on election night was spot on. The opinion polls were largely on the money too. What was entirely unexpected by the commentariat was the Tories' decision to go for a coalition as opposed to a minority government. Gamble included himself in this group: he thought coalition was unlikely because they had only previously happened under the special circumstances of war. The 1918-22 coalition was really a Lloyd George premiership supported by the Tories, and similarly 1931 wasn't a true coalition: it was basically a Tory government with Liberal and Labour ministers. Hence from the standpoint of British political history the present coalition is breaking new ground.

Coalition government offers certain advantages to both parties. For Cameron the alliance with the LibDems solves a number of problems. He can sideline the Tory right, drop manifesto commitments he didn't really want (such as the pledge to cut inheritance tax), and with the LibDems in the treasury the political damage from his cuts programme doesn't fall entirely on him. It has the further advantage of allowing Cameron to position himself as a modern, liberal Tory and dilute the hard euroscepticism and xenophobia still endemic in his party.

For Clegg the prize was getting LibDems in the cabinet for the first time since the war, ensuring his position in the annals of British politics. He can now set about dismantling its reputation as the party of perennial opposition and demonstrate the advantages of coalition politics - one that ensures the LibDems will be a contender in future elections. He will also preside over the implementation of LibDem policies, not least the referendum on the Alternative Vote.

There are a number of dangers that lie in wait that threaten to derail the coalition government. The first is the Tory right. Many Tories kept mum before and during the election for entirely pragmatic reasons. They had the disagreements and were displeased with the direction the Tory party were heading, but knew to keep a lid on things for electoral expediency. They wanted to see Labour form a progressive coalition with the LibDems and others because when it would (inevitably) fall apart the electorate would punish them by voting for the Tories in droves and return them with a healthy majority. For this scenario to be thwarted by their leader in favour of coalition has left them seething. If that wasn't bad enough, the five cabinet posts and 20 ministerial positions reserved for the LibDems will have put some careerist noses seriously out of joint. But even more unforgivable has been Cameron's compromises over key policy shibboleths, especially on tax cutting. Who could have forseen a Tory government committed to raising the rate of capital gains tax? The move to an early reform of the Lords, the AV referendum concession, fixed terms, and the 55% no confidence threshold have poured more oil on the blazing back benches.

The second risk to the Tories are the consequences of the coalition succeeding and seeing out the full term. By moving the Tories more toward the liberal centre the LibDems could be partially absorbed but at the same time leave their right flank exposed. This presents the likes of UKIP and the BNP an opportunity as the Tories have traditionally mopped up the xenophobic hard right vote. With an opening of this political space some in the party might be tempted to jump ship to UKIP or a yet to be formed populist outfit, gradually whittling down the coalition's majority.

The third is the risk the LibDems face. There has been little in the way of an organised rebellion in its ranks so far. Vince Cable might not look comfortable with his Tory mates, and Charles Kennedy has grumbled away in think pieces but it's steady as she goes. However, seeing as the coalition will become unpopular very quickly how will the LibDems cope under the extra pressure and scrutiny? As we've seen these last couple of days, David Laws departure was very swift after his expenses scandal came to light. Could this be the shape of things to come? Another problem for the LibDems is that historically, previous associations with the Tories have led them being absorbed. The 1895-1912 Liberal Unionists and the 1931-68 National Liberal splits have met this fate - could Clegg lead the bulk of his party into a liberal Tory party, especially if the latter's rebranding succeeds and presents more of a liberal face in the LibDem's heartlands?

What about Labour? Gamble felt there was palpable relief in Labour's ranks, especially after post-TV debate polling put Labour behind the LibDems. However that there wasn't a total wipe out obscures the real dangers it faces. First, the number of seats gained do not reflect the slump in the vote - only the arithmetic of first past the post saved its bacon. Second with Cameron's pledge to cut the number of MPs by 60, you can bet the boundary commission's recommendations won't fall too heavily on Tory seats. This will create more marginals and make it difficult for Labour to win outright in the future.

Another problem for Labour is the geographic concentration of its support - it remains disproportionately weak in England. For it to win back the marginals New Labour won in 1997 some serious thinking needs to be done. But that won't be assisted by a leadership contest comprising of men all from a very similar background without much in the way of policy difference between them.

By way of a conclusion, Gamble noted a number of issues that will dominate the next five years. The first is the deficit. Associated with this will be a major defence review, which inevitably will downgrade Britain's capacity to project its power (as well as invite rebellion on the part of Tory back benchers). The union will come under strain too. Between them the coalition won 36% of the Scottish vote, but given Cameron's comments about the dependency the economies of the north, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on the public sector, pushing through cuts there could be fuel for the nationalist fire.

The one thing Gamble didn't mention was how much the 'new politics' is business as usual. He talked about the periods 1976-92 and 92-08 as Tory and Labour hegemonies, but these were times marked by consensus around the subordination of society to market imperatives. Regardless of what realignment the coalition brings about in Westminster (if any), policy wise the platforms of all three parties are determined to make the working class pay for the crisis by cutting public sector employment, services, welfare benefits, and raising national insurance and VAT. But working class people are not responsible for the crisis. Commentators who flag up easily available credit to explain the crash overlook the reckless business practices of the banks, practices that cannot be separated from the short termism of making billions for their share holders. This is not to forget the role governments have played in engineering regimes whereby business is cut free from any social obligation, giving capital free reign to roam the planet for profitable opportunities.

The transformation of the banking crisis into a crisis of public finance will inevitably produce a wave of opposition up and down the country. The scenes from Greece could easily be repeated on British streets. But what remains unclear is how this will work its way through politics. Will a resurgence of the labour movement push Labour more to the left? Can dissatisfaction work to exacerbate political divisions in the LibDems and the Tories? Will small, marginal forces to Labour's left and the Tories' right benefit from the struggles and social dislocations to come?

Crop Trashing and Social Movement Theory

In a working paper given at Keele on Tuesday, Brian Doherty and Graeme Hayes presented an analysis of the apparently similar crop trashing movements in Britain and France. While the actions undertaken are the same - the destruction of genetically modified crops - their justifications are very different and pose a number of questions for the sociology of social movements.

In the theoretical literature, the dominant perspective on social movement mobilisation remains the political process school. Closely associated with the output of the late Charles Tilly, Sid Tarrow and several other leading scholars in the field political process theory places emphasis on the social structures that determine, condition and facilitate social action. For example, analyses that stress the importance of resource mobilisation and political opportunity structures are examples of the political process school.

For Tarrow and Tilly the structure and character of the state plays a major role in determining the sorts of protest activities social movements engage in. As Britain and France are 'high capacity democracies' it is reasonable to assume that not only are the kinds of opposition they engender are similar, but should they manifest contemporaneously there must be a connection between them, even if it's merely the case of one observing the protest actions of another via news bulletins. The problem for Doherty and Hayes is Tilly and Tarrow overemphasise structure. It's as if the presence of certain structures call forth certain actions, allowing one to assume the roots and character of apparently similar social movements are identical. This is a faulty assumption. In the case of crop trashing it cannot explain why the French movement justifies itself in terms of a civic republicanism, while the British as a distinctly anarchist flavour. This isn't to say Tilly's and Tarrow's privileging of the state and social structure is fundamentally faulty and has nothing to contribute to understanding social movements, but it does suggest it requires significant modification by an account that allows for difference at the macro, meso and micro levels to come into play.

There is a lot of work in social movement theory on protest tactics, but very little explaining why some groups of activists choose some tactics over others. Tilly's chief contribution here is the repertoire of contention, the idea that certain social movements have a toolbox of tactics open to them. For example, the criticism of the SWP's gatecrashing of ACAS last weekend was partly coloured by this form of direct action sitting outside the traditional Trotskyist/far left activist repertoire. Related to this but not reducible to it is that types of protest actions are modular. i.e. Successful tactics are diffused and transferable between different movements. For instance, practically every form of oppositional politics favours demonstrations, leafleting, etc. Hence for Tilly concurrent crop trashing in Britain and France would be an example of choosing a modular action from an environmentalist repertoire of contention that fits similar structural-political circumstances in the two countries.

In France crop trashing is the hallmark of Les Faucheurs Volontaires (The Voluntary Reapers), a formalised organisation of some 7,000 members dedicated to destroying GM crops. Founded in 2003, LVF defines itself as a citizens' insurrection defending French public space, countryside and culture against the encroachment of (American-led) biological neoliberalism. LVF's activists welcome (and sometimes demand) arrest as a means of using the courts to attract media coverage. To maximise its impact crop trashing usually takes place over the summer to take advantage of the French media's silly season.

The British movement is very different. At the head of crop trashing here are the overlapping anarchistic frameworks of GenetiX Snowball and Earth First!. Both are located in the non-violent direct action tradition and are quite prepared to destroy property to achieve its aims. If there are differences between the two networks, GenetiX would prefer arrest and exposure a la LVF, but as a whole both go in for covert actions. The majority considers their numbers are too small to make the publicity tactic effective and as anarchists they see submitting to arrest by a state whose authority they don't recognise as a negation of their principles. So rather than undertaking mass crop trashing, their actions tend to be sporadic and often in the dead of night.

Both movements' actions are facilitated by GM site locations being subject to freedom of information laws, and the 'topographical opportunity' of the difficulty of securing fields.

There are three key differences of interest from the standpoint of social movement theory that problematise the political process approach. First is a paradox between the positions the two movements find themselves in. In UK courts there has been a tendency by juries not to find activists who've destroyed property guilty. In France the price publicity frequently pays is conviction. Hence, at least from the standpoint of rational choice (an ontology that quietly underpins political process theory), both movements are organising in an irrational manner.

Second, opportunities are important for explaining action but unlike Tilly and Tarrow (for whom political opportunities are treated as macro-level phenomena) these exist at the next level down a set of 'sectoral opportunities'. Doherty and Hayes point out that Britain and France have reached an agricultural settlement between farmers and the state. In France this was pluralised after 1986 when a number of groups were allowed to represent farmers as opposed to one big union. For example, the radical anti-GM organisation Confédération Paysanne founded by José Bové contests elections to agricultural bodies, which in turn confers the wider anti-GM movement a legitimacy of coming from within the farmers themselves. Such a sectoral opportunity just isn't open to British activists and there is no practical alliance between farmers' interests and the activists.

Third the difference in how the two movements frame their activities owes a certain something to national peculiarities, in particular the different ways Britain and France has traditionally narrated its relationship to the countryside and food. In France the countryside is conceived as the location of rural (food) culture and is therefore 'peopled' and humanised. In Britain the country is often elided with nature, as a wild place devoid of industry. Could this help explain why the LVF's civic republicanism and the deep(ish) green of GS/EF! is 'appropriate' for crop trashing?

By way of a conclusion these findings cannot be assimilated by the kind of structural analysis Tilly and Tarrow favour. While Britain and France are mature liberal democracies this designation cannot explain the deep differences between the movements hidden by the superficial similarities of both engaging in crop trashing. Nor are they, strictly speaking, acting in an instrumentalist fashion. Without falling into the assumptions associated with identity politics, their actions are as much conditioned by their respective identities as movements.

Mail Group Paper in Made Up Racism Shocker

Like most local newspapers, Stoke's The Sentinel has a tendency to fill its pages with any old crap - cats stuck up trees, dads on charity runs, you get the picture. But since the old media has gone into decline, costs have been cut, churnalism rules the roost, and standards are on a slippery slope (of course, being part of the Daily Mail owned Northcliffe Media Group these were nothing to write home about in the first place).

With this in mind there was more than a whiff of BS when this story made the front page on Monday's edition:

ANGRY mum Sam Fardon says her toddler son was ordered off a bus – because the driver found his England shirt "offensive"!

Two-year-old Dylan Hall was with his mum and baby brother Adam, aged 10 weeks, when they were told to leave the 34A service from Newcastle Bus Station.

Miss Fardon says it was only after other passengers intervened that they were allowed on to the bus.

The 27-year-old, from Trent Vale, left with Dylan, said: "As we got on the bus, my two-year-old son had an England shirt on and the bus driver, who had an Eastern European accent, said he found it offensive.

"He said, 'he won't be wearing that during the World Cup, will he'? I said Dylan would and the bus driver said: 'I find that really offensive'. I couldn't believe it.

"He said we'd have to get off the bus but I argued with him and other passengers backed me up, so he let us on.

"I think it's disgraceful. I had baby Adam with me as well, luckily he wasn't wearing his England baby-grow."

This is just the sort of story the press love. It was picked up by The Mail (of course!), The Mirror, The Sun and dozens of bulletin boards and Facebook groups, including our knuckle headed friends over at Stormfront.

There's one slight problem. The story is completely untrue.

First Buses have put out this press release comprehensively debunking the story. Some might say First was bound to say that - and admittedly AVPS unlikely to take the protestations of any private company at face value. But in mitigation it turns out the "victim", Sam Fardon, has form. In 2004 Fardon was convicted for a series of deceptions that involved pilfering the bank account of a couple of Good Samaritans who took her in.

What she hoped to achieve by starring in a "political correctness gone mad" story is anyone's guess. But for The Sentinel to forgo basic fact checking and produce a puff piece that benefits no one but Stoke BNP is pathetic, sickening, and deserves total condemnation.

Unite Speaker Condemns SWP

What to make of the SWP's response to the barrage of criticism they've faced since Saturday's stunt? Reading this report and subsequent comments is to wade armpit deep through a swamp of willful delusion and tenuous self-justification. We're told critics are engaging in a "hatefest", are falling into "historical irrelevance", etc. etc. In other words, everyone else is wrong, do not matter, and the protest was the best thing since sliced bread.

There is however one point a comrade makes that is reasonable enough: that the response of rank-and-file workers is a useful barometer for evaluating the action. Sure, I bet many were pleased to see Willie Walsh harangued by a phalanx of paper sellers. But relying on praise from striking workers is thin gruel for Leninists - if they know their Lenin. As he notes in What is To Be Done, "Attention must be devoted principally to raising the workers to the level of revolutionaries; it is not at all our task to descend to the level of the “working masses.”" (source). In other words, as socialists the SWP should be aware of the political and strategic context in which their action took place. Before charging into ACAS offices the leadership (central committee members, full-timers and Socialist Worker journalists were all present in the throng outside), our self-styled vanguard of the working class should have taken into account whether it would aid perceptions of the SWP, the strike, and the labour movement. It is significant the SWP's defence has dismissed rather than engaged with criticisms framed in these terms. So much for all those International Socialism articles about Gramsci.

As you might expect the point about rank-and-file workers is followed by glowing reports from picket lines. One group of workers were so grateful they let one SWP'er use their loo! But, embarrassingly, there is one rank-and-file BA worker left less than impressed, and that was the speaker at the SWP's Right to Work conference. On the Unite Broad Left email list, they wrote:

I was very happy to be invited to speak at the Right to Work conf on Saturday but I left before 5pm to catch a train home. I had no idea the conference would end with a call to ransack negotiations across the road, and I utterly condemn it. This will make it very difficult now to get a motion through policy conference next week in support of the aims of Right to Work. It also could set back United Left's wider strategy of working with broad-based movements like Right to Work, something which I argued for and supported in my speech that day. We need allies but not allies who undermine our work in the trade unions. It's our dispute and if we want extra demonstrators to support us we will ask for them [emphases mine].

What a stupid, pointless own goal. Will the SWP ever learn?

Eurovision Preview

The televisual event of the year is almost upon us. Forget the finale of Lost, this summer's last ever Big Brother and that seldom-watched World Cup thingy: there is only one thing that matters, and that's the Eurovision Song Contest.

Without further ado, here's the UK entry: Josh Dubovie with That Sounds Good to Me:



Ok, I've tried to like it for patriotism's sake (long time readers will know Eurovision is the only occasion I swap the workers' standard for the red, white and blue of the union flag), but it's dull. It's duller than dull, it's bland, unimaginative, and nothing more than the aural equivalent of second hand bubble gum. Therefore, with heavy heart, I will be transferring my allegiance this year to a country that's made an effort.

It's been tough. There's the folky, the kooky, the soggy and the awful.

Luckily there's a few stand out entries that grab the attention. Ever wondered what a German singing mockney-stylee sounds like? Then wonder no more! Jena's Satellite firmly parks her panzers on Lily Allen's lawn.

For Lithuania, InCulto's Eastern European Funk edges into political commentary. Check this verse out: Yes sir, we are legal we are, though we are not as legal as you/ No sir, we’re not equal no, though we are both from the EU/ We build your homes and wash your dishes, keep your hands all soft and clean/ But one of these days you’ll realise Eastern Europe is in your genes.

From up the Baltic coast hails the Estonian act, Malcolm Lincoln with Siren. They have the competition's weirdest video, and probably the strangest song too. It reminds me of forgotten alternative '80s tracks you might have once found in a Woolies bargain bin.

In the end I've managed to get it down to four songs. Bringing up the rear of my pop picks is Denmark's Chanée & N'Evergreen's In a Moment Like This. Now the Tories are back in power the cultural ether is resonating with an 80s vibe again - this might win the Danes a few votes on the night.

I also quite like Miro's Angel Si Ti, one of the very few decent dancey numbers in the contest. Bulgaria have played a blinder with this one.

Seems Bosnian entrants - understandably - only ever sing about peace and reconciliation. And this year's Thunder and Lightning, courtesy of Vukašin Brajić is no different. But it's alright and, by Eurovision standards, a bit edgy.

So who will we at AVPS towers be rooting for on the night? Assuming she gets through Tuesday's semi-final, it's this:



That's right, Albania - the so-called stepchild of Europe - receives this blog's weighty endorsement. How can it fail?

Bet tip: Comrades fancying a flutter might like to check out the number of views each video has received on YouTube. Most weigh in between the 170,000-250,000 mark, but Moldova's entry has well over half a million, Turkey's approaching 700k, Serbia nearly 900,000, and Jena's mockney warblings has four and a quarter million views. If I was a betting man I know where I'd be putting my money.

Marxist Blogging and Money

Since completing my PhD I'm in that unenviable position actors like to call "between jobs". And because of the avalanche of cuts the higher education sector is facing over the next few years it's possible I could be in this position for a while. Therefore your humble scribe has started exploring other revenue streams. Becoming an Ebay entrepreneur is one possibility, and trying to land paid writing gigs is another. But there is a third option.

On Wednesday I was at a North Staffs "business breakfast" organised by Carolyn Powell of Bizfizz, which aims to develop networks between local small business people. I got chatting to Matthew from Pin Media, a website building/design start up. We talked about making money from the net and he told me I could make a modest regular income on the numbers AVPS has been getting of late (around 600 uniques a day).

Sounds fine and dandy. But of course, as everyone knows, the left has a set of uncodified but commonly understood ethics when it comes to money. Working for wages is fine. Unearned income from shares or property is less so. And, of course, if you're some sort of workers' representative in unions, council chambers, or parliament, the ideal position is to take no more than the average wage of a skilled worker. We are all mindful of the corrupting role money can play in the workers' movement and so we try and dampen down its corrosive effects as much as possible. And there's also the small matter of fighting the class struggle because we believe in socialism, not because we want to line our pockets.

This ethic is extended to blogging. No one minds comrades hawking their own books because it's a way of getting their politics across. Ditto for clothing. But what about making money from blogging itself? Just as you'd be hard pressed to find many Tory blogs that eschew the delights of Google Adsense and other advertising, the reverse is true of the left. In fact, I can only think of one left blogger who does.

So what to do? Are adverts an absolute and definite no-no for left blogs? Do adverts compromise the integrity of the blogger? Do you find adverts intrusive and distracting? Would you be less likely to regularly read a blog that features them? Are voluntary donations the only way left blogs can ethically raise cash? Are some types of adverts and advertising platforms okay and others beyond the pale? Should lefties deposit their commercial hang ups in the dustbin of history and use their advertising revenue against the capitalist beast?

What do readers think? Have comrades got experience of making money from blogging?

The SWP's Cynical Stunt

Earlier today members of the SWP, "in solidarity with the BA cabin crew" gatecrashed talks between management and Unite at ACAS in Central London. Here's a BBC interview with one of the SWP'ers protesting outside:



There's more footage here of BA chief executive Willie Walsh surrounded by SWP'ers chanting and selling papers.

But the question has to be asked, what were the SWP trying to achieve? It's one thing to protest against bullying management, but quite another to disrupt talks between them and the trade union. Does this action - which is totally unaccountable to cabin crew - help advance the cause of the workers, or will it be seized upon by a union-bashing media to discredit them as wild-eyed throwbacks to the '70s? True, not living near an airport I haven't been to a cabin crew picket line to gauge the mood. But I doubt many workers have been itching for someone to go down ACAS and force the union to abandon negotiations.

Call me cynical (and one cannot help be after watching the SWP's behaviour for a period of time), but this is about promoting the SWP and has little to do with the demands of the workers themselves. Since its split with Respect and having lost ground on the left to the Socialist Party, the SWP have placed more emphasis on narrow party building than was previously the case. That might be more comforting to the leadership and long term members who had their fingers burnt engaging with "the movements", but if it is to build wider influence it has to make its own opportunities. High profile stunts is one such way it can make itself visible to the public at large.

So leaving aside the wishes and interests of cabin crew and the trade union, AND the effects the stunt will have on popular perceptions of the strike, today's action has been an unalloyed success for the SWP. They were catapulted to the top of the news agenda for the first time since ... well ... when has the SWP ever led a news bulletin? The coverage has also positioned them as a dynamic activist force able to throw convention aside to get its message across - a portrayal that will prove attractive to some. And lastly for the comrades involved, well, a few of them will feel a wee more revolutionary tonight than when they woke up this morning.

I'm sorry though, but this is a pretty poor show. The SWP have let down those they profess to defend, and future such antics will find them further marginalised in the labour movement. I'm reminded of Marx's remarks in the Communist Manifesto where he declares communists have no interests separate to those of the working class. Maybe Marx was being naive. Or maybe the SWP's brand of "Marxist" politics have travelled so far from source that any similarity between them and the founders of scientific socialism are entirely coincidental.

When in a Hole ...

Stoke BNP councillor Steve Batkin (appropriately, on the far right of the picture) is known for being a spanner short of a tool box, but you would at least think he'd have learned something about handling the media in his 20 years of BNP membership. Alas, to assume such a thing would be to overestimate the man.

Our Steve got himself pictured with these boneheads from Blood and Honour at the war memorial in Stone during his re-election campaign a couple of years ago. This photo was apparently in the possession of Alby Walker, until recently the darling of Stoke BNP, who passed it on to Nothing British.

In an attempt at damage limitation Batkin was interviewed by Stoke-centric blog Pits 'n' Pots. Unfortunately for him and the BNP, Batkin is yet to learn that you're supposed to dampen down controversy; not fan the flames.

In the third part of the audio interview, Batkin says:

I've always believed about 300,000 people died in the Jewish holocaust, not six million ... there's no way there was that many Jews in Europe at that time who could have sustained that amount of deaths. 

Next time Cllr Batkin finds himself in a hole, will the local fash remember to confiscate his spade?