On 29th March 2018 Sam Matthews,
whose title is Head of Disputes, wrote to Marianne Tellier, an autistic member
of the Labour Party, to inform her that she was administratively
suspended.  This is the same Matthews who
suspended Carl Sergeant, a Labour Minister in the Welsh Government.  Shortly after being suspended, having been given
no reason for his suspension despite a letter from his solicitors, Carl
Sergeant took his own life.  Given the
callous way that Matthews has treated victims of Labour’s witchhunt it is
difficult to understand why he has not been suspended for gross misconduct.

It is part of the atmosphere of fear and the intolerance
of political debate in the Labour Party, to say nothing of the chilling effect
of the false allegations of anti-Semitism, that any mention of the Nazis
immediately brings accusations of anti-Semitism.  Especially if the person concerned is a
supporter of the Palestinians.

When I grew up it was common amongst claimants
to call the DHSS (Department Health & Social Security) as the DWP was then,
the SS.  We didn’t literally mean that
those who ran Britain’s social security system were Nazis but that their
attitude to the unemployed bore a similarity to fascist ideas of the work shy.

Likewise the students in Paris in May 1968
when they were confronting the riot police chanted CRS-SS.  No doubt Matthews and his fellow witch
hunters consider that too was anti-Semitic!

The phrase that someone was a ‘little Hitler’ also used to be common.  It was part of an anti-fascist culture.  Today, with Zionists defining anti-racists as
anti-Semites, such comparison are considered ‘anti-Semitic’.  This of course is from people who openly support
a state where ethnic cleansing is official government policy.

Marianne committed the cardinal offence of
comparing the policy of the DWP under the hated Ian Duncan Smith, to that of
the Nazis’ with their slogan ‘work makes you
free.’ She retweeted an image of the Job Centre Plus sign replaced by Arbeit Macht Frei. This  image is common amongst disability campaigning
groups but is deemed ‘anti-Semitic’
by the political terrorists of the Jewish Labour Movement.

Apart from anything else it would seem that
Matthews and his fellow apparatchiks are also suffering from a sense of humour
failure. They don’t seem to understand the power of irony or exaggeration when
making a political point.  These
humourless creatures, whose sole activity is monitoring what others say for any
signs of deviance, forget that campaigning groups or political activists use
all sorts of rhetorical devices when constructing an argument including
analogies with the Nazis. Satire is something that is entirely beyond them.

At the entrance to Nazi concentration camps there
was a sign Arbeit Macht Frei, (Work Makes
You Free). The assumption of the tiny minds that run Labour’s witch-hunt is
that any comparison of this slogan with anything today is anti-Semitic.  Thus the whole Nazi and fascist period is
completely divorced from the circumstances in which it grew up.

Presumably Fawlty  Towers, Basil and Manuel would have been condemned
as anti-Semitic for the phrase ‘Don’t
mention the War.’ 

I visited Sachsenhausen
concentration camp in the early 1990’s. 
It was the second concentration camp after Dachau and opened in 1936. It
is situated to the north of Berlin. It didn’t house Jewish prisoners primarily
but socialists, communists and other political prisoners.  It housed Pastor Martin Niemöller of the Confessing
Church.

In fact IDS did say, without a trace of irony,
that ‘work makes you free.’ Far-Right
US academic Laurence Mead, who IDS brought over to Britain to advise him on ‘reforming’
the benefits system complained of the allusion to the Nazis.
Mead whined that.

The ideas behind the Work Capability
Assessment that New Labour introduced and IDS refined and its implementation by
private firms like ATOS does indeed bear comparison to the Nazi treatment of
the disabled.  Although the disabled were
not exterminated as happened in the T-4 (Euthanasia campaign) the attitudes,
that they are a burden are not dissimilar. 
There is also no doubt that the policies of the DWP, presided over by
IDS, led to the deaths of thousands of disabled people.  The stories of cancer victims and other
severely ill people being labelled as fit for work are legion. See Thousands
have died after being found fit for work, DWP figures show

IDS
was once leader of the Tory Party before MPs removed him as a liability. The  vice-president of his campaign team in Wales
was  Edgar
Griffin  –  the father of BNP leader Nick Griffin. Edgar
later said
the reason he was not a member of the BNP was because it was “too moderate” for him.

The
ex-deputy of the British Ku Klux Klan, Bill Binding – who later joined the
Tories – was also a fan of IDS. see Iain
Duncan Smith’s historic links to the  far-right

Marianne Tellier

Marianne is 57 years old and a carer for her 17
year old son who is autistic.  She is
herself autistic.  In other words the
ideal target for Sam Matthews and his bullying henchmen. Marianne was brought
up on a council estate, went to my local comprehensive school.

She was always opposed to social injustice and any
form of racism which is why she supports the Palestinian people. As she wrote ‘I’m certainly not anti-Semitic in any way.” But
in the present atmosphere in the Labour Party anyone who expresses support for
the Palestinians is automatically suspected of ‘anti-Semitism’ whereas someone
on the Right who has never lifted a finger for anti-racist causes is considered
an opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ like for example John Mann MP, who is a bigot
and an anti-Roma racist.

Marianne became involved in feminism as a young
mother, joined the Labour Party and supported the miner’s strike. With the
advent of Blair she left the Party like many of us.

She became a midwife and having had a child who was
autistic she gradually realised that she was also autistic which is why she finds
her suspension so difficult to deal with or come to terms with.  But for scum like Matthews, the disability of
a victim of his witch-hunt is, as far as he is concerned, a bonus.

Marianne’s disparate tweets are a reflection of her
personal history but she became the target of vicious trolls Zionist trolls who
are the associates of ‘gnasher Jew’ and
they focussed on her weaknesses. Having played the role of agent provocateurs they then reported her for things like accusing
them of being supporters of Apartheid (that too is a sign of anti-Semitism!).

Marianne was attacked by Zionist trolls like @Karen_E_Leon,
a friend of @GnasherJew. She called her as an apartheid denier and that’s where
the anti-Semitism allegations began. 

After Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2014 she became
more active on Twitter. With the election to the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn she
rejoined the party and became secretary of her local branch.

As she said ‘If an individual blatantly denies the existence of
apartheid in Israel then that individual is an apartheid denier. David Baddiel
took issue with this and the attack on me escalated.’ David Baddiel himself is someone who has a history of making
racist remarks and disparaging and mocking Black people, including Blacking up.

Marianne was criticised in particular for
retweeting the image of a job centre sign with the words ‘arbeit macht frei’. It is an image that has been widely used by
disability campaign groups for several years.

 ‘It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the Tory
government’s use of this fascist ideology whilst they preside over the needless
deaths of one hundred and twenty thousand poor, vulnerable, ill and disabled
human beings from cuts to benefits and unjust sanctions.”

It takes pretty sick individuals, people like arch-Zionist
Luke Akehurst (who has been booted off his Oxford Labour
Party Executive) to draw the conclusion that comparison between the DWP and the
Nazis is anti-Semitic.

Marianne tweeted the
job centre/arbeit macht frei sign on several occasions over the past year
because ‘We have a government that thinks
those words are worth repeating to poor & disabled people. I abhor the use
of those words in that context. I used it as a response to a ‘work hard-get
nowhere’ meme.  It is a criticism of the
Protestant Work Ethic and a criticism of capitalism in general. I’d like
someone to explain to me exactly what they think is anti-Semitic about my use
of this image. It isn’t anti-Semitic. Quite the opposite.’

It is a sign of the poverty of
intellect of Sam Matthews and those around him that the comparison disabled
people make between the DWP and the All Work Test and the Nazi attitude to the
unemployed is considered anti-Semitic. 
This at a time when the Israeli government is inviting
the anti-Semitic leader of the Hungarian government, Viktor Orban, on a state
visit.

‘art belongs to it’s audience. To be received &
interpreted by them. I’ve never come across this image being used in any way
other than to criticize our right wing government & capitalist ideology.  If our evil Tory government are using the
words ‘work sets you free’ I feel that we should be shouting it from the
rooftops.  No aspect of this is anti-Semitic.’

Marianne’s local councillors and her
MP, Louise Haigh, have been particularly unsupportive and their criticism has been completely
ill informed.  Marianne was also invited
to apologise by the Chair, of Sheffield Heeley but she declined this since she didn’t feel that
she had said anything she needed to apologise for.

As she said ‘Some
of my tweets may be in ‘poor taste’ but surely taste is in the eye of the
beholder. ‘She has also been told
that her manner is often very direct and to the point but this betrays the
middle class nature of the Labour Party apparatchiks who don’t understand that
this is quite normal in working class communities.  As she says ‘I am also autistic and my communication skills are often lacking.’  Under the regime of Sam Matthews, this too is
a crime.

Comrades in her constituency have been supportive. ‘My constituency comrade, Stuart Gibbins made
this statement at the last constituency meeting.’

 ‘On the
satirical news programme ‘The Day Today’ there was a sketch in which a Jeremy
Paxman type TV anchor man is interviewing the foreign secretaries of Britain
and Australia. To begin with it’s all very amicable with the two politicians
congratulating themselves on a trade agreement that’s beneficial to them both.
Then, the interviewer manufactures a disagreement between them and within
seconds he has forced them into a corner in which there’s only one logical
outcome to what they’ve been coerced into saying, to declare war on each other.   It’s
war, shouts the interviewer and immediately the studio around them begins to be
turned into a war studio.

I’ve been reminded of this sketch a lot recently
with regard to the antisemitism issue in the Labour party. How disturbingly
easy it is for those with power and influence to manufacture an issue, set up a
few straw men and to top it all, succeed in enlisting a substantial portion of
the party they are trying to undermine to do their bidding for them. 

Marianne Tellier, the branch secretary for Park and
Arbourthorne, has been suspended from her role in the party pending an inquiry.
Her misdemeanor? Using satire to highlight the callousness of the government
towards people who are unfit to work. She RE-tweeted a picture of a job centre
sign in which the words had been changed to read ‘ work sets you free ‘, the
slogan on the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp. 

Set aside the question of taste here or the quality
of the satire for a moment and consider who the target was? Emphatically, it
was the Tory government. That much was obvious. 
 Which makes it utterly astounding
that an unnamed senior Labour party official described the tweet as being
antisemitic in EVERY sense. This was not antisemitic in ANY sense. Precisely
the opposite. 

For all those who are prepared to call this
antisemitic I suggest they look up the meaning of the word and think about the
intention of the satire and then try, honestly, to draw even a smidgen of a
correlation between the two. But the accusation has been made and as a result,
a committed party worker has had her life turned upside down and must be
feeling an inkling of the sense of the kind of claustrophobic, impotent dread
that people must feel when they are falsely accused under totalitarian regimes

On the subject of taste you could make a legitimate
point that the picture had the potential to cause distress to those whose
relatives died in the holocaust. That’s possible and no decent human being
could waive that away as an irrelevance. It’s also possible that there will be
a Jewish perspective on this which accepts that the freedom to employ satire is
an intrinsic aspect of living in a free society and that the basics of satire
is exaggeration and that an unwritten rule is that the best satire punches
upwards, not down. The job centre mock up was definitely punching up.

The difference that this indicates demonstrates the
difficulty of the taste issue, which is endlessly problematic and subjective.
It’s not an issue on which you can easily make unequivocal statements. The
arguments surrounding it are nuanced and shaded, which is an inconvenience for
a world that seems to increasingly demand that all argument is reduced to a
thumbs up or a thumbs down, a like, or a dislike.

In the light of all this I would like to think that
in future our spokespeople will be a bit more circumspect if a similar issue
crops up and resist the temptation for a knee-jerk condemnation that has so
disfigured this present case.’

I couldn’t put it better myself!