Lexit and Brexit collaboration-what did the Morning Star know?
Update (19 July 2018) — Nick Wright (CPB) has said that Brian Denny left the CPB some time ago as their Party held to the view that members should not work with Tories during the EU Referendum. It doesn’t get away with the fact that Denny was working with Tories and others in anti-EU propaganda while not only being a member of the CPB but also Foreign Editor of the Morning Star. Also, the CPB restriction on “not working with Tories” hasn’t stopped the Morning Star from continuing to give uncritical support to the Trade Unionists Against the EU despite their well-publicised links and funding from Arron Banks. See the end of the article for more details.
I’ve amended the article so Denny is referred to a “former” leading CPB member.
There has always been a tendency on the Lexit left to happily work with anti-EU Conservatives (and more recently Ukippers) to “Get Britain Out”. The main Lexit tendency within Labour has historically been associated with the Bennite left and its allies around the Morning Star (a newspaper which reflects the views of the Communist Party of Britain (CPB)).
One long standing Lexiter is “former” leading Communist Party of Britain member Brian Denny (also from the RMT union who also backed Brexit). He has written extensively on the need to get out on the CPB’s website (“Trade Unionists need to take the lead against the EU” 14 Aug 2015) and was a co-ordinator for NO2EU (Lexit electoral alliance), organiser for the (“Eurosceptic Labour Movement”) Campaign Against Euro-Federalism (CAEF) and a founder of Trade Unionists Against the EU (TUAEU).
In October 2015, the CAEF announced its affiliation to Leave.EU who were later to produce some of the most memorably, vicious anti-immigrant posters and leaflets during the EU Referendum.
Leave.EU released a press release with a welcoming quote from Arron Banks and Richard Tice.
Denny (“former" CPB) and Banks (Ukip) worked together to maximise the Leave vote. Here’s an extract from Arron Banks’s “Bad Boys of Brexit” (28 Jan 2016) where Banks saw Labour voters as key to winning and the need to fund an anti — TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) leaflet produced by Trade Unionists Against the EU (TUAEU).
And who did Banks deal with regarding this funding? Another extract from “Bad Boys…” (31 Jan 2016) -
Arron Banks is currently under investigation by the Electoral Commission for funding of Trade Unionists Against the EU (£54,000) and other organisations. Some more background to this can be found here and here.
The questions which comes to my mind are, what did the Communist Party of Britain know about the alliance between one of their “former” leading members and Arron Banks’s Leave.EU? What did the Morning Star know? Did they approve of it or turn a blind eye?
Anyway, as has happened in the past when the Far Left and the Far Right have collaborated, it has usually ended up to the agenda of the latter. In the case of Brexit, that has certainly been the case with the UK’s two main political parties both adopting very stong anti-EU and anti-immigration policies to such an extent that hundreds of thousands of jobs are at risk.
Maybe I’m wrong, though. Perhaps the Morning Star believe these job losses are a small price to pay for its vision of “popular sovereignty” and a Prime Minister Corbyn having to deal with the fall-out.
Update (19 July 2018)
Andrew Coates wrote about this story on his blog with links to here.
In the comments Nick Wright (CPB) wrote -
This was my reply to him -
Thank you to Nick Wright for stating that Brian Denny “is not a member of the Communist Party and has not been for many years”. I also thank him for writing that the CPB insisted “that its members do not campaign with Tories or appear with them in the campaign to vote no to the bosses’ EU.”
A couple of points in reply-
1) The article Denny wrote on the CPB site (“Trade Unionists need to take the lead against the EU”) was written on 14 August 2015. It was only the following month that he announced that CAEF had affiliated to Banks’s Leave.EU. I can only assume he was a CPB member when he wrote the former. Was he still a member of the CPB when CAEF formed its alliance with Banks, I wonder?
2) CAEF is a founder of and is affiliated to TEAM (which is an all Europe anti-EU grouping aka the Anti-Maastricht Alliance). The other British affiliates they work with are the Campaign for an Independent Britain (CIB) and the Bruges Group. The CIB is another of these “non-political” anti-EU groups who have a few token Labourites but are mainly right wing Tories and Ukippers (eg they boast of co-operation with the Taxpayers Alliance). CIB also say that CAEF was one of their founder members, btw. The Bruges Group are a Thatcherite think tank.
3) In 11 June 2016, CAEF and TUAEU (both backed by the Morning Star) took part in the TEAM anti-EU counter-summit where speakers included David Campbell-Bannerman (Tory MEP, ex-Ukip) representing Vote.Leave.
4) While the CPB may have taken a tactical decision for their members not to work with Tories during the EU Referendum campaign, it doesn’t mean that their members have not done so in the past. As well as the examples above, Denny also wrote a glowing review of the “Anti-Maastricht Alliance” anti-Euro pamphlet when he was Foreign Editor of the Morning Star.
In the end, as has been pointed out in the comments, the CPB and the Morning Star have still been more than happy to promote TUAEU despite the well-publicised links (and funding) between them and Arron Banks.
