Don’t even think about
a tea party in America
Hilary Rose
Page 24known... though on this issue they
have remained unaired for many
years.” They have, have they? Orwell
would have admired the use of the
passive tense there.
In the past few days Tim Parry’s
father, Colin, has said that Fox’s
peerage “offends me and many
others deeply”. In response she is
now quoted as saying that, “Contrary
to what has been reported elsewhere,
I do not support or defend the IRA’s
killing of two young boys in
Warrington in 1993.” Again, note the
tense here. “I do not”, not “I did not”.
And the prime minister? He whocastigated Corbyn over the IRA?
According to No 10 this week Ms
Fox “has addressed her historic
comments about the Troubles”.
Historic comments! Any weasel
would be proud of that euphemism.
So no apology. Not from her and
not from Mr Johnson. No
repentance. No explanation. Into the
House of Lords to become part of
this country’s legislature and collect
her up to £323 daily allowance. In
the week they buried John Hume,
and we were reminded of the
sacrifice and nobility of those who
fought non-violently for peace, this
sticks in the craw. It chokes us. Lord
Lebedev. Baroness Fox. And, saps
that we are, we put up with it.movement. The RCP’s “response to
Warrington” was to support the
attack — “we defend the right of the
Irish people to take whatever
measures are necessary in their
struggle for freedom” — and to decry
the peace movement. They even
attempted to disrupt a
commemoration held that month in
Hyde Park.
That was 27 years ago. It’s not
prehistory. My eldest daughter is the
same age as Johnathan Ball would
have been. But in the years since
then Claire Fox has never regretted,
resiled from or apologised for her
stance at the time. Before her
election last year she merely said
that “I don’t hold those views any
more because there is no war going
on in Ireland any more”. Adding, “my
personal politics and views are wellClaire Fox went from far-left politics to
campaigning for the Brexit Partyliberation struggle. Like any other
liberation movement elsewhere in
the world it has widespread support
within its community.” Including
several of whom (the editorial did
not say) it killed over the years.
The same edition ran an explainer
on the IRA murder that year of Ian
Gow, a Conservative MP and former
aide to Margaret Thatcher. Gow was,
the author suggested, a legitimate
target because he had “played a vital
role in formulating British policy in
Ireland”. Then it advised its readers
that “we must resist all attempts to
whip up a sense of solidarity with
Gow... As long as we identify with
these British warmongers we will
remain under the establishment’s
thumb.” It was essential, in other
words, to take sides in the “Irish war”
with those who had detonated a
bomb under Mr Gow’s car.
The RCP formally disbanded but
some of its members reformed
around their leader, a lecturer called
Frank Furedi, first as Living Marxism
magazine, then LM magazine and
finally Spiked online. Despite
backing the Serbian war criminal
Slobodan Milosevic, arguing that
HIV/Aids was a moral panic and that
climate change was an
environmentalist hoax, its leading
cadres managed some astonishing
successes. Their eloquent
contrarianism brought them
publicity and finally, for those who
backed leaving the EU, becoming
candidates for the Brexit Party.
Last year Ms Fox won a seat as an
MEP. The problem was that her
constituency, North West England,
included the town of Warrington. In
1993 the liberation warriors of the
IRA had exploded a bomb in the
town centre killing two young boys,
Tim Parry and Johnathan Ball. In
the wake of that bombing the Parry
family helped to start a peaceS
ome questions are easier to
answer than others. Like:
what has the billionaire
thrower of expensive parties
and provider of luxury
hospitality Evgeny Lebedev got that
I haven’t got? Apart, that is, from a
seat in the House of Lords?
Mr Lebedev, the son of a former
KGB man who managed to emerge
from the ruins of the Soviet Union
owning quite a bit of it, is, of course,
a newspaper proprietor. If my father
had been a billionaire oligarch
maybe I’d have owned a newspaper
too. Perhaps I would also have
rebuilt a castle in Umbria and invited
Boris Johnson and whoever was his
spouse at the time for weekends
along with other celebrities, and
flown them home at my own
expense. I’m not sure I’d have called
my wolf-cub “Boris”, though. My
poodle possibly.
As it is, the prime minister
managed to visit the Terranova
palazzo in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and,
while foreign secretary, in 2016. And
every time he stood for election, Mr
Lebedev’s organs supported him.
This Gatsby de nos jours is not, as
far as I can tell, a bad man. It’s not
his fault that his main qualification
in life has been his father’s wealth.
But he no more deserves a place in
the British legislature than your
uncle Cedric. He’s got one as a
reward for being a useful chum and
(by the way) his elevation helped to
push the number of peers of theHow low can we go in packing the Lords?
Our parliament and nation deserve better than a socialite with a wealthy father and an ex-Trotskyist and IRA backer
realm above the 800 mark, at a time
when everyone, including the
government, was committed to
reducing them.
But the Lebedev peerage, and its
contribution to inflating the second
chamber, is a relatively minor
hypocrisy compared with
ennoblement of Claire Fox. You may
recall that back in December Mr
Johnson was facing the feeble
electoral challenge of Mr Corbyn.
One of the prime minister’s most
effective lines of attack was the
Labour leader’s history of support for
unpleasant causes. In Maidstone, for
example, Johnson described Corbyn
as “a man who all his political life
has campaigned to break up that
Union and who supported for four
decades the IRA in their campaign
violently to destroy it”. Support for
the Provisionals, even the tacit kind
offered by Mr Corbyn, was a
disqualifier for high office.
But Mr Corbyn was a mild-
mannered peacenik compared withClaire Fox. A member of a Trotskyist
sect, the Revolutionary Communist
Party (RCP), from the early 1980s
until its disbandment in the 1990s,
Ms Fox took the most extreme line
on endorsing the IRA’s “armed
struggle”. The party and its front
organisation, the Irish Freedom
Movement (IFM), stood in solidarity
with republican terrorism.
To give you a flavour of their
views, Irish Freedom, the in-house
journal of the IFM, declared in an
editorial in 1990 that, “the truth of
the matter is that the IRA is a
guerilla army engaged in a nationalIt was seen as essential
to take sides in the ‘Irish
war’ with the bombers
In the week that they
buried John Hume,
this sticks in the craw
Comment
@daaronovitchDavid
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