Engage Manchester Public Meeting - September 9th 2007
by hakmao, 22 August 2007
If you are unfortunate enough to live in or near Manchester, you might consider attending Engage’s Manchester public meeting: 7.00 PM, Sunday 9 September, Manchester Maccabi, Bury Old Road, Prestwich.
THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL CAMPAIGN AND CONTEMPORARY ANTISEMITISM
Denis MacShane MP (Chair 2005 All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism)
David Hirsh (Editor, Engage)
Jane Ashworth (Campaigns Director, Engage)
Richard Gold (North West Organiser, Engage)
Philip Spencer (Advisory Editor, Engage)
Panel Discussion
Meeting ends 10.00 PM
ADMISSION BY TICKET ONLY £5 (students free)payable on the night, light refreshments will be provided.
To reserve your ticket email the address behind this link.
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 19:05
Manchester Lalala , Manchester Lalala.
Championey , Championey………..
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 20:09
But life goes on, you know it ain’t easy
You’ve just gotta be strong
If you’re one of the sixteens
And life goes on, you know, you know it ain’t easy
You know you’ll never go wrong
‘Cause you’re all part of the sixteens
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 21:47
All we need now is some bloody Newcastle fan. Is it true the guy that bought them took a look at the wage bill then put them up for sale again? Why didn’t he check the wage bill before buying the club ?
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 22:06
Peacock
Ginola
Ferdinand
Shearer
Albert
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdXlDRxEA4Q
And then there’s this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQVOdgM8BdE
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 22:57
Good old balanced platform then lol
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 23:03
Good old balanced platform then lol
It will be when Psycho’s back from injury/gaol.
Wednesday 22 August 2007 at 23:25
Alright Volty - serious question … why should I or anyone else be in the business of providing balanced/level platforms to anti-Semites?
Thursday 23 August 2007 at 0:30
VP “Good old balanced platform then lol”
It’s an Engage meeting VP so the platform represents this. I went to a Bricup meeting at UCU conference and would you believe it was just as balanced / unbalanced.
In fact VP thinking about it - what a daft comment you made.
Thursday 23 August 2007 at 10:30
Will got another one right then.
Thursday 23 August 2007 at 10:38
Yep — seems i did didn’t I.
VP is just another Sunny Hundal groupie…
Thursday 23 August 2007 at 10:46
Don’t think he gets the actual “doing politics” bit.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 19:01
Yeah Hak - because everyone who’s not in Engage and has an opinion on the Isreali boycott issue (one on which I agree with Engage incidentally) is an anti-semite obviously. Or maybe not, eh?
Willter Mitty. Whatever. Carry on swearing and talking bollocks. You serious left wing intellectual, you.
SP. I think Will needs someone to make him a sandwich. Get to it man.
Richard. Lots of organisations call meetings that platform people who are not members of the organisation which called it, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 20:37
Volty, you glaikit wee numpty, that’s not what I said — but don’t let that ruin a good yarn. Yes, Engage should run their meetings like any other political organisation — such as the Labour Party, Trade Unions, the Swappies, who always invite a representative from the Tories/PNAC or whoever to their branch meetings, just for a bit of balance.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 21:25
VP. Well Dennis Macshane isn’t a member of Engage. We’ve also added another speaker - Fiona Frank from Lancaster who will be speaking isn’t a member of Engage either. It’s going to be chaired by Gita Conn an NUJ member who isn’t a member of Engage. I guess i should have changed the posting which came from the Engage website but i didn’t. And you know what ? Apart from yourself i don’t think anybody realy cares or minds. With 2 weeks to go we’ve got 75 people coming. They want to hear things from an Engage perspective which you don’t realy get in Manchester apart from when i speak. You’re welcome also VP if you want to come. I did try and get some other speakers but they couldn’t come and none of them were Engage.
I still can’t understand why you made the comment. Surely you have better things to write ? I enjoy Shiraz and didn’t expect a comment like this from you.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 21:30
VP “Yeah Hak - because everyone who’s not in Engage and has an opinion on the Isreali boycott issue (one on which I agree with Engage incidentally) is an anti-semite obviously. Or maybe not, eh?”
Nobody is saying that everyone who is not Engage and has an opinion on the Israeli boycott is an antisemite. And i guess you don’t mean it or believe that that’s what people think.
Speakers will be talking about the boycott. They will also be talking about antisemitism which isn’t related to the boycott.
Antisemitism is a serious issue VP. Please don’t fool around with it just to score points.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 21:31
Woops - i meant everyone who is NOT in Engage.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 21:33
VP. Just out of interest do you make a habit of criticising other goups when they have a platform only made up of their own members ?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 21:44
Hak - yeah cos that’s obviously what I meant. Of course, organisations do sometimes invite speakers who are neither their mates nor totally opposite, but don’t let’s allow that in the way of a good straw manning.
Richard - on the last point yes, in the sense that I also have a problem with the (not infrequent) situation of the SWP having a platform full of its mates.
I don’t need telling that anti-semitism is a serious issue Richard. However I was responding to Hak’s bizarre insinuation that I was arguing to platform anti-semites. As you’ll see if you read this thread back.
Furthermore, the general tone and tenor is the consequence of a barrel-load of abuse from one particular person, which if you read Shiraz you can’t fail to have missed.
[Advice from editors: grow a skin]
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:01
VP. Nice of you to compare Engage with the SWP. Anybody will be allowed to make contributions , we won’t beat anybody up who is an ex-supporter of Engage, we won’t have racist Jazz musicians playing , we won’t demonise (either Israelis or Palestinians) , we won’t support attacks on civilians in Palestine or Israel.
And as i’ve said there are non Engage speakers. I daresay more than a few people will be coming because they want to hear Dennis Macshane who isn’t Engage.
By the way - who else do you suggest we invite to speak bearing in mind we are hosting a meeting on the boycott and also antisemitism.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:05
VP please do tell where you have objected to other political organisations only having their own members as speakers ?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:28
I didn’t say you were arguing in favour of platforming anti-Semites. Why should Engage be expected to behave any differently from any other political organisation or pressure group — or are they supposed to be held to some ‘higher’ standard?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:32
Who would I invite? Possibly some people from the union lefts who oppose the boycott, maybe if you could rustle up a journo who’s not in Engage, or an MP who’s not a Blairite cipher like Macshane? Just as a few suggestions there.
Richard obviously I object to packed political platforms of all kinds. Now tell me where you’ve ever publicly even acknowledged (still less objected to) one of your blogger associates’ not-infrequent descents into unwarranted and vile abuse of people on the internet?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:36
Hak, yes I think Engage should behave better than the SWP, and be held to a higher political standard. Why? Because it’s right and proper that it should be of a higher standard than the SWP
And if that wasn’t what you were insinuating then why mention it? Without some link to what I was saying, it’s just facile and emotive to have dragged it into the discussion at that point.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:37
What has that to do with Richard? If you have a problem why not engage the person concerned under one of his threads?
Abuse? It works both ways.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:40
I give up. I mentioned the SWP because I was trying not to be sectarian — note that I also mentioned the Labour party and Trade Unions, they were the first organisations to pop into my heid.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:43
VP. So David Hirsh and Phil Spencer aren’t left wing enough for you ? MacShane is Chair of the all Party Parliamentary Enquiry on Anti-Semitism so even if he’s a Blairite he’s pretty qualfied to speak on the subject. Why don’t you judge people on what they say ? Anyway VP it’s probably not your kind of meeting - there’ll be too many middle class people there.
Sounds like you’ve still got a few hang-ups from ur AWL days VP. Welcome to the real world.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:44
VP. I’m not Will by the way.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:46
Richard raised an irrelevant issue and so therefore did I. I’ve been perfectly civil to him throughout.
In terms of vile abuse, it would take blinkers made of lead not to see which direction the traffic started from. Of course on Shiraz, no matter what crap he comes out with, however abusive he is, to whoever, I’ve never censored or edited a word he said. Which is more than can be said for this thread. I just got fed up with pretending that dumb-ass trolling was “witty comment”.
Talk about double fucking standards.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:47
VP “And if that wasn’t what you were insinuating then why mention it?”
Anybody else see the contradiction here.
Hak are you sure this is actualy VP and not some kind of troll masquerading as VP ?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:48
Dave’s a great bloke, and crowds at Engage meetings don’t represent “the real world”, Richard.
And I know you’re not Will. It’s the engagement in intelligent debate and the absence of the phrase “you’re a cunt” that gives it away.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:51
“crowds at Engage meetings don’t represent “the real world”, Richard.”
Realy ? How many ENgage meetings have you been to ?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:52
Yes, she’s sure it’s me. And if you can’t see the obvious issue with the following (a paraphrase) then I despair:
“this looks imbalanced” (incidentally this makes the initial comment look more serious than it was)
“why should we platform anti-semites”
“but I wasn’t saying you should platform anti-semites”
“I know”
“Well why say it then”
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:56
Not a heckuva lot of Engage meetings Richard, but I know more than one person who has. Let’s agree that the UK isn’t actually made up primarily of centre-left middle class academics and ex-student trots. ;)
Friday 24 August 2007 at 22:59
OK. Have a good weekend VP. I’m off now. I’ve emailed a few AWLers about the meeting and hope they come.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:01
BTW VP. The report on Workers Liberty a month or two ago was ridiculous - obviously Sean isn’t educating one of the pups.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:03
So do I. They might add a little political diversity. You have a nice weekend too.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:05
I thought the report was very funny. And almost certainly accurate - hence the ire about it.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:10
No, just because I know you aren’t an anti-Semite doesn’t mean that others are not — in other words my comment about no-platforming was not directed at you, you Pab sectarian numpty. Who needs to grow a skin?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:12
I turned up later than Sasha and Sasha could have got in on time but he was too busy leafleting. He had his say without any problems. I like the way he refered to the boycotters as “comrades”. His dig about there being a lot of posh people there was hardly dialectical and portrayed a certain stereotype - ever heard about how parts of the left used to talk about Jewish capitalists ? By the way , antisemitism doesn’t often differentiate between different classes amongst Jewish people - it’s the only way in which it’s non disciminatory.
I don’t think any of the AWlers that i know would have written such an article.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:16
“So do I. They might add a little political diversity.”
Well i guess that quite a few of them read Shiraz so feel free to post details of the meetingon Shiraz. In the interest of diversity by the way.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:21
Richard; uh-huh. So pointing out (no doubt correctly) that a meeting had a largely middle class audience carries parallels to talking about Jewish Capitalists, does it? You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I don’t even bother replying to that.
Hak, so why else bring it up in that context? You were talking to me, not “someone else”. If not that insinuation, then what were you saying?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:23
Richard, if you’d like Jim, TWP and I to put something up to advertise the meeting then there’s no problem with that. We’ll even do it without dip-shit editing of comments, unlike what’s been done to mine in this thread.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:24
Ham and pease pudding then.
Right up! That OK Will?
Dim twat arnt’ye VP
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:25
Wow, it’s the world’s only surviving personality donor. How’s tricks?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:26
VP. Does it not make you slightly uneasy when the report of the meeting says “The audience was mostly quite old, very posh”
It didn’t seem very posh to me. I wonder what made him think that ?
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:35
Dunno, but what I would suggest is that he’s neither posh nor anti-semitic. Which suggests that the meeting was probably a bit posh. Which carries no hidden meaning.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:35
Here’s the link VP
http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=1268
I’m very happy for as wide a range of people as possible to attend. I think it’s also important that AWL people and other people on the left who are against the boycott and against the antisemitism of Respect and the SWP turn up as it will show the Jewish community members that turn up that there are people who care about the problem of antisemitism on the left and that the left should not be discounted.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:36
We’re also happy if boycott supporters turn up.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:38
Good - I hope it’s as diverse as you’d like it to be.
Friday 24 August 2007 at 23:43
I didn’t mean to imply he was antisemitic. I think he was probably trying to take a third position and that was his priority. As i say i don’t think that people associated with AWL that i’ve met in Manchester would have written the article in the way he did. And i don’t think that you would have either VP.
Saturday 25 August 2007 at 0:41
We’ll even do it without dip-shit editing of comments, unlike what’s been done to mine in this thread.
Eh?
Saturday 25 August 2007 at 6:36
Sorry Hak, that was me. I put in Tim Worstall style comment at the end of one of his comments:
[Advice from editors: grow a skin]
I did not edit his comment at all. Precious thing.
Saturday 25 August 2007 at 7:35
Who is the Voltaires Prick character?
Never been a fan of the AWL. Marginally better than most of what passes for the “left” in this country but I wish they’d stop prattling on about all that “third camp” bollocks. For fucks sake, take a shit or get off the toilet.
I also see that VP has a link to Spiked Online on his blog. What a cunt.
Sunday 26 August 2007 at 9:12
See, stuff like that is just such quality. The wit, the incisive cut and thrust of verbal pugilism…