Paul Embery, trade unionist, writer and author of Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, joins spiked’s editor for the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. They discuss the left’s embrace of woke politics, and its rejection of the working class, national democracy and free speech.
Archiv: Paul Embery
There has been literally not a word on this from the ‘internationalist’ TUC. Our fellow workers are engaged in mass strike action just a few miles across the Channel, and the voice of the British trade union movement is silent. Totally shameful.
‘If Labour is to ever win back the traditional working-class, it must stop treating them as though they were some kind of embarrassing elderly relative.’ My @UnHerd take on Labour’s implosion.
Seeing a lot of tweets from Labour activists saying, “We just need to fight harder next time.” No. Labour did not get smashed for want of effort by activists. It got smashed because it lost the trust of the working-class. Until this is admitted, we cannot move forward.
This was Polly Toynbee in the Guardian earlier this year, ridiculing the idea that the northern heartlands would abandon Labour. These chattering class metro-liberals were allowed to dictate Labour policy on Brexit and so much else. Look where it got us.
Can we listen to @PaulEmbery and @BrendanChilton now?
The post-war Labour government gave us full employment; the NHS; modern welfare state; public ownership of railways, electric, gas, coal and steel; and built a million new homes. All when the country‘s back was broken. Never let it be said that we can‘t afford a decent society.
“Open borders? That’s a Right-wing proposal that would make everybody in America poorer… You’re doing away with the concept of the nation state” — Bernie Sanders
‘The left has turned its back on the working class’
Paul Embery talks to Brendan O’Neill about Brexit, democracy and the scourge of wokeness.
Labour Leave fringe event – 2019, Brighton
With John Mills, Brendan Chilton, Austin Mitchell, Graham Stringer MP and Paul Embery.
Our political class is unfit for purpose. Self-obsessed, virtue-signalling, emotionally incontinent, fixated on things that are irrelevant to normal people. The past hysterical 24 hours have exposed them for what they are. They deserve to be swept away.
The Blue Labour Fringe: Join Maurice Glasman and Paul Embery discussing Labour, Brexit, democracy, justice, and the future of radical politics.
Date and Time:
Sun, 22 September 2019
15:00 – 16:00 BST
Location:
Old Ship Hotel
Brighton
BN1 1NR
United Kingdom
Maurice Glasman and I will be speaking at the Blue Labour fringe meeting at 3.00pm on Sunday in Brighton. Come along.
Poll by Opinium for Sunday’s Observer: Con 37% Lab 22% Lib Dem 17% Brexit 12% Green 4% Second referendum strategy failing dismally for Labour. Heartland vote ebbing away. All utterly predictable. When will the middle-class liberals and Toytown revolutionaries start listening?
Labour’s Brexit shambles: The Party‘s laughable strategy is alienating all its voters
Having been a Labour party member for the best part of a quarter of a century, I want my party to win the next election. So I take no pleasure in saying that Labour’s current strategy (such as it is) around Brexit is a half-baked, shambolic mess.
Once again @PaulEmbery speaks for millions of disillusioned labour voters-soon to be ex Labour voters Labour‘s Brexit shambles @unherd
I suspect that the decision to suspend parliament will be met with either support or indifference by most people up and down the country. Many MPs have been trying to subvert democracy for three years. This is where their antics have led us. People just want the thing sorted.
#LeaveMeansLeaveMarch #BrexitMarch #BrexitBetrayal Paul Embery, „We need civil disobedience.“ (Leave Means Leave March)
Paul Embery @ Leave Means Leave March, 29th March.
The scandal of Paul Embery’s sacking
Paul Embery has spent 20 years as a dedicated trade-union official, fighting for better rights, conditions and pay for firefighters with the Fire Brigades Union. But today he revealed that he has been kicked off the union’s national executive and banned from office for two years.
Why? Because he delivered a pro-Brexit speech at the Leave Means Leave rally outside parliament on the day we were supposed to leave the EU.
Solidarity .@PaulEmbery you are a fantastic union official, a voice for working class people and. True democrat. We stand with you in solidarity and support.
WATCH | The late Bob Crow exposes the truth about the anti-democratic EU & demands Brexit on behalf of British workers ? What a far cry from today‘s trade unions, where the likes of @PaulEmbery are barred from office
Support us at https://leave.eu/get-involved
This is absolutely outrageous. Solidarity with you My dear friend and fellow Democrat .@PaulEmbery Its a scandal.
Outrageous
This is a shameful and intolerant decision. Paul has fought hard for better pay and conditions for firefighters for twenty years. Please show your solidarity with Paul Embery.
I am disappointed to report that I have been kicked off the national executive of my union – @fbunational – and banned from office for two years as a consequence of my speech at the ‚Leave Means Leave‘ rally outside parliament in March.
More below.
One of the things you learn after a couple of decades of political activity on the Left is that many who claim to be passionate supporters of freedom of expression don‘t really mean it.
A political party launched less than a week ago is topping a national poll. If you didn‘t see this coming, you haven‘t been paying attention.
“An apology is never enough for the self-appointed censors. Only apologise if you are at fault, not because someone has decided to take offence. The witch-hunters are a threat to free speech and they need to be faced down.” @PaulEmbery on Twittermobs
The trouble with dog-whistles: Paul Embery is the latest victim of the cynical censorship brigade
One of the strange habits of our time is the one in which a self-appointed class roams the land, hands cupped to their ear, hoping to discern something they can identify as a ‘dog-whistle’. I wrote about this habit after Conservative MP Suella Braverman came in for a scolding for using the phrase ‘cultural Marxism’ in a speech.
The labour movement has turned against the working class
Embery: The Labour Party now is increasingly a bourgeois, metropolitan, liberal party. It is obsessed with students and youth. It’s very London-centric – removed almost completely from parts of this country, such as the northern industrial heartlands, where the Labour Party was once a strong presence.
Tony Benn arguing in 1975 against handing over democratic powers to European technocrats. Eloquent, powerful and prescient. This was the best of the Left.
Tonight I learned that you may innocently use two everyday words in a discussion that had nothing to do with Jews, Jewishness or even race at all, but because Stalin used the same words to attack Jews 70 years ago, your comment will be considered anti-Semitic. Utterly insane.
‚A nation is not a home.‘ I fear this encapsulates the divide in our society – between a rootless, cosmopolitan, bohemian middle-class (in this case a bloke who used to sing folk songs on the BBC) and a rooted, communitarian, patriotic working-class.
The PM confirms the UK is now preparing to take part in the European elections. So three years after the electorate voted to leave the EU, we will be sending politicians back there. A failure of statecraft and betrayal of democracy. Our political class deserves to be swept away.
Why does the Left sneer at the traditional working class? Labour alienates this integral element at its peril
When some on the Left argue that the term ‘traditional working-class’ is obscure or divisive or racist and should therefore be ditched, what they are really demonstrating, unintentionally, is their own hidden contempt for this group. They would rather it didn’t exist at all in the form it does.
They think its members are ‘nativist’ and reactionary and – God forbid – voted to leave the European Union. Because, you see, the group-thinkers and virtue-signallers and woke liberals and quasi-Marxists and echo-chamber-dwellers who comprise so much of the modern Left believe themselves to be Inherently Better People than those of us from the more traditional Left.
Some sterling speeches at the #Brexit rally at Westminster yesterday from .@JuliaHB1, .@PeterBoneUK, .@KateHoeyMP, Brendan O‘Neill & others – but one of the most poignant was from .@PaulEmbery who said: „The divide is not Leave v Remain. It is Democracy v anti-democracy“
paul embery speaker brexit March 29th
One of the pleasing things about tonight‘s events outside parliament is that the rally held on Whitehall by the loathsome racist rabble-rouser Tommy Robinson attracted a tiny number of people, and the overwhelming majority stayed with the main event in Parliament Square.
(twelve hours ago)