Craig Murray reports on the Stop the War Coalition’s shambolic slide into obscurity:
On Saturday I was invited to address Stop The War’s annual conference. This has shrunk down to what I might call a hard left core, with the other groups that used to be a prominent part of the coalition almost completely evaporated. The most obvious sign of this was the near complete absence of Muslims. But the christians, pacifists, environmentalists and others had mostly gone too. It is probably true that the Hard Left are the ones I am least at home with.
My speech centred on the recent fake bomb scare in the North West, and the relief it had temporarily provided the government from terrible headlines over the death of Ian Tomlinson and over Jacqui Smith’s expense claims. I threw in the following line because a speech needs jokes, and because I like to tease the left sometimes:
“You know, I make no claim to being politically correct. So I can say that, if I were married to Jacqui Smith, I would probably use a lot of porn too.”
Most of the hall laughed, but the feminists got most upset and started to interject. Points of order followed. When I had finished, a speaker from the floor said that my speech was such an important denunciation of the attack on civil liberties in the UK, that it should be copied to DVD and given out on tube stations. Then someone stood up and demanded that I withdraw my comments on Jacqui Smith.
I stayed and listened to an interesting talk on Iraq by Sami Ramidani, but when I left I was harangued on the stairs by a young woman who made Jacqui Smith look positively alluring. She told me I was a sexist disgrace. She seemed very proud of being the Chair of Glasgow Stop the War. I expect it too has a rapidly declining membership.
Anyway, the Stop the War Coalition has now put up videos of its conference keynote speakers on its website, but not including me. I shall take it I am not wanted in future.
I am unsurprised that few Muslims are now involved in the STWC. The Islamist groups are somewhat embattled these days. And the bulk of British Muslims are evidently unimpressed by the set of twitchy misfits that populate the higher levels of Trotdom.
Of course, the leadership of the STWC believes that by touring around representatives of the most vicious of genocidally racist terrorist groups, they’ll enthuse and engage British Muslims.
I’m pleased to see that it is essentially only Stalinists and Trotskyites who are energised by that strategy.
PS: This whole judging women by their shaggability thing – glass houses, eh?
