In or out of Parliament, in local, national and international arenas, Labour MP for Blackburn Jack Straw never fails to deliver racism and bigotry. His most recent outbursts include his attacking the ConDem government for being compelled by the European Court to finally implement votes for some serving prisoners and using the occasion of the conviction of two Asian men for sex offences involving young women to claim that this type of targeted sexual abuse is indicative of a ‘specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men… who target vulnerable young white girls’.
Straw held senior Cabinet positions throughout Labour’s time in office. He was Home Secretary in 2000 when 58 Chinese immigrants died in the back of a lorry trying to get past punitive immigration laws he was responsible for introducing, moving to the Foreign Office in time to preside over the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq. Among his other crimes, Straw allowed murderous Chilean dictator General Pinochet to escape extradition, vetoed publication of documents that could have proved the illegality of the Iraq war, refused to call for the US torture camp in illegally occupied Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be closed and lied about British government collusion in illegal rendition and torture.
As Justice Minister, Straw presided over a massively overcrowded prison system and an immigration service which boasted of deporting one person every eight minutes. Since Labour lost the general election in 2010, Straw has never hesitated to attack the ConDem government – not for its vicious ‘slash and burn’ agenda of cuts and attacks on the working class, but for being too soft on crime and not committed enough to maintaining Labour’s punishment agenda of ASBOs, control orders and mass imprisonment. This should come as no surprise to those who remember his previous stint as an opposition spokesman, during which he condemned vicious Tory Home Secretary Michael Howard as soft and declared that if Labour were elected he would get rid of car window-cleaning ‘squeegee merchants’, graffiti artists, beggars, drunks, and addicts, and ‘reclaim the streets for the law- abiding public citizen’.
Straw has also never been afraid to attack or insult his own constituents. In 1998 he boasted to FRFI supporters campaigning in Blackburn against poverty wages: ‘I get £89,000 [plus expenses]. I’m worth it – you’re not.’ Nor does he care if his attacks incite racist violence. In 2007 he wrote in his local newspaper about his objections to Muslim women wearing the full veil, or niqab. Almost immediately, attacks on Muslims escalated throughout Britain with assaults on women with veils, beatings, intimidation, gang violence and petrol bombings of mosques. In the wake of his latest comments about sexual predators, the National Front has announced a march through Bradford ‘to protest against the Asian paedophile criminal grooming gangs who are preying upon our underage White female children’.
Sadiq Khan MP – hypocrite
Lining up with Straw to attack the government in relation to prisoners’ votes is hypocrite Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Sadiq Khan – yes the same Sadiq Khan who was a partner in human rights law firm Christian Khan and who, quite rightly, complained when Woodhill prison bugged his visits to his imprisoned constituent and old school friend, Babar Ahmed.
Nicki Jameson
