In the present febrile climate of suicidal terrorism, readers of Ledbury's local newspaper might have missed a heart beat when they read last week's headline: 'So shocked as armed police guard parades'.
 
News that Ledbury's Remembrance ceremony 'may' have been attended by anti-terror police marksmen was direfully received by town mayor, Debbie Baker: 'I can't tell you how shocked I am... The idea of armed police is mind-boggling. It really is, and it shows the times we are in right now.'
 
Not even faraway Ledbury is safe from the shooters and bombers it seems. As shuddering Cllr Bob Barnes noted: 'We could become a soft target, and where the lone wolves are operating we do not know.'
 
If true, this report would indeed be shocking. Except it wasn't. The only shock was that so much could be made of so little. Exchanging newsworthiness for truthfulness, the story had been confected by local journalist Gary Bills-Geddes. To be 100% clear, there have been no armed police on the streets of Ledbury. The story was a fiction.
 
That Andrew Warmington had attended a West Mercia Police seminar on crime priorities began a flight of journalistic fancy which ended with a front page sensation worthy of a right-wing red-top.
 
'During this seminar,' Andrew later explained, 'the Chief Constable listed seven key concerns in crime terms for the region as a whole, giving them in descending order of importance. In fourth place was terrorism and he told the councillors present that armed police had been on guard at Remembrance Day parades at unspecified places in the region. Next thing I know, this is front page news.'
 
Consistent with the Ledbury Reporter's flourishing 'post-truth' credentials, when challenged, Mr Bills-Geddes excused himself airily: 'Cllr Warmington's report was merely the starting point for a series of questions we've been asking West Mercia police all week.'
 
The police are sensibly reluctant to divulge operationally sensitive information but after days of pestering by the Reporter, finally conceded that 'armed officers were available to be deployed to any incidents in the Ledbury area during Armed Forces Day should they have been required.' They were not required. Ergo, there was no deployment of armed police.
 
Mr B-G said this news arrived after the print deadline. But hey! Why spike a good story by waiting for a fact-check? Come on, there are papers to be flogged.

​May or did: Take your pick.
 
Gary is an experienced wordsmith. In his opening paragraph, he made sure to insert that important little caveat word: may.
 
The Daily Express does this when it runs one of its 'snowstorm Armageddon set to batter Britain' stories. 'Forecasters say the UK could be in for the storm of the century'. It's called wriggle-room. When the snowstorm doesn't materialise, those Express hacks can't be accused of exaggeration or distortion. We didn't say it definitely would, just could, runs the well rehearsed script...
 
Deputy editor of the Ledbury Reporter, John Wilson predictably wriggled in his reply to Cllr Warmington's complaint: 'Our report does not say armed police attended parades in Ledbury'. It says they ‘may’ have. If the police tell us categorically that there were no armed police at either Remembrance Day or Armed Forces Day in Ledbury we will publish it.'
 
That, Mr Wilson is never going to happen, as you well know. The police would never be so irresponsible to confirm or deny to would-be attackers any of their anti-terror manouevres, past or future.
 
Mr Wilson claims his readers are not 'dupes'. Quite so: the troubling question is that if it's on the front page with such an emphatic headline, the hushed seriousness of Gary's copy lending dead weight, bolstered with quotes from the Town Council's would-be top brass, and backed up with a portentous reference to 'talks with police chiefs' (another fiction), why wouldn't readers think it was authentic?  If it wasn't true, or in any way doubtful, the question is: why print it at all?
 
Try the 'duck test': if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
 
Who cares?
 
2016 will be remembered as the year of Post Truth. In the UK, the Brexit campaign was exposed as lying in its claim that millions of Turkish nationals were about to flood into the UK. It promised a weekly £350 million injection into the NHS if we left the EU.  Who cared that none of this was true, except the bleeding heart 'libtards' and 'bremoaners'? After June 16, the material was simply removed from the official Vote Leave web site, and it ceased to exist. There, nothing to see. Donald Trump repeated the trick before the US election with so many falsities it is difficult to know where to start.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary voted 'post-truth' as its Word of the Year. It is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
 
Back in the seventies, one of my favourite novelists, Muriel Spark, caught the spirit of the post-truth age even before it existed: 'It's not true', says one of her characters in Not To Disturb, 'but that's not to say it isn't right'.
 
What is truth anyway? When I was young and worked in advertising, I had a cigar-chewing old school boss who told me that 'what people believe is as good as the truth.' He was either a cynic or a genius. Or both.
 
Philosophers discuss the nature of truth a great deal. It's called epistemology. What can we ever know for certain? Is there an objective reality out there? If there is, can we ever know it? In the past, scientists would say yes, there are immutable truths and laws that govern nature; now in the realm of quantum mechanics, even they are not so sure. Social scientists are more troubled still by definitive truth claims.
 
Politicians, ideologues, advertisers and some journalists, have snatched the clothes of such sceptical post-modernist thought and refashioned them as propaganda, spin and political smear. It is how you win elections these days - and sell newspapers. You say what you need to.
 
Perhaps 'post-truth' is just a euphemism for lies. Guardian writer, Jonathan Freedland believes so: 'We’ve been calling this “post-truth politics” but I now worry that the phrase is far too gentle, suggesting society has simply reached some new phase in its development. It lets off the guilty too lightly. What Trump is doing is not “engaging in post-truth politics”. He’s lying. Worse still, Trump and those like him not only lie: they imply that the truth doesn’t matter, showing a blithe indifference to whether what they say is grounded in reality or evidence.'
 
Not everyone believes the bullshit - but enough do to stink up the proverbial army blanket. Social psychologists have found that people believe information, however implausible, which confirms their pre-existing world view. Objective evidence, however compelling, which challenges people's existing beliefs tends to be ignored or distrusted. Such confirmation bias distorts all our thinking.
 
It is hard to change people's minds, once they are made up, especially by appealing to rationality. The key is to tap into emotions. The Vote Remain campaign learned this hard lesson to the cost of the UK economy. Faced with a blizzard of technical analysis warning against Brexit, Michael Gove said: 'I think we've had enough of experts'.
 
Easier by far is to reinforce existing prejudices and cherished totems, to stir up latent feelings of fear, anger and frustration. This is why 'take back control' was such a potent campaign message during the referendum among those who already felt left behind, belittled and disregarded by a perceived 'elite'. Trump said 'Let's make America great again', understanding clearly that a great white lumpenprotelariat was similarly angry and aggrieved. These weren't just clever slogans; they were appeals to profound ideological values.

Muriel Spark again had it just right: '“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”' 

Irresponsible
 
And so to Ledbury and its weapons grade Remembrance parade. Why am I expounding on this story?
 
The subtext of the Reporter's news reports and editorials is worth exploring. Are they genuinely bias-free, impartial and objective in their treatment of local political topics as you might expect from a local weekly? Are 'my group', as John Wilson accuses, 'attacking the Ledbury Reporter on baseless of grounds for [our] own purposes'. Is it paranoia? Or is there something more lurking uneasily beneath the surface narrative?
 
Why did they run this story? The generous explanation would be that there was nothing else splashy enough for the front page.
 
Protestations from John Wilson belie this view however. 'We were not sensationalist,' he said angrily, 'we were not alarmist, we informed Ledbury people about something they should know about, and I don’t give a jot if you don’t like the way we have worded it.' Ouch.
 
The point is, it was deliberately crafted. It was something Ledbury should know about - but what exactly?
 
This armed police story is of a piece with Buntingate, another travesty of politically spun misinformation. It is reaching out to the nationalists and nativists in our community, just like the Daily Mail and Breitbart does. It is carefully calibrated to erode our confidence and create fear of the other. The 'lone wolves' we are talking about are not right-wing fanatics like Anders Breivik or Jo Cox's killer, Thomas Mair, but rather the religious extremists who are poisoning our way of life: the Islamists, Jihadis, Moslems. Perhaps they are refugees as Nigel Farage claims.
 
Was the real intention to remind everyone that nothing in our society - even honouring our war dead - is sacred anymore?  That we abandon our traditional ways and our patriotic, conservative leaders at our peril? That we are under attack from hateful, disruptive forces right here in our midst? I may be wrong, but I catch a whiff of town council politics here.
 
If this were an isolated blemish on an otherwise peerless record of editorial integrity, I might be more charitable. Unfortunately the pattern is clear.
 
In this instance the emotive headline, the quotes sought from the rampant thought leaders of Ledbury's patriotic tendency (but not from Cllr Warmington himself), the weasel words and the mashing up of everything red, white and blue, was cynical, mendacious and socially divisive.

This, along with three other propaganda pieces in this week's Reporter (discussion to follow), are dog whistle political stories, oozing with populist venom and surreptitious intent.
 
There are those like Bob Barnes who might be 'reassured' by - or even thrill to - the idea of a paramilitary police force on the blameless streets of our obscure little town.
 
Less comfortable would be any visiting or local Moslem families who might venture to show their faces at a future Remembrance ceremony in our town. If I were them, I would not dare.

 
As expected, the louts from the far right didn’t materialise in town on Saturday (21 May), but this doesn’t mean the threat to democracy and free speech has gone from the streets of Ledbury. A more insidious authoritarian movement is taking root in the town, not among the more rabid elements of social media as might be supposed, but centred within Ledbury Town Council itself.
 
There is a conspiracy to purge the Council of dissenters. Some councillors appear to be waging a concerted campaign of denigration against their critics. Yes, they are telling lies, but the old guard are also busily manipulating the levers of power to firm their grip on power. The aim is to eliminate from Ledbury Town Council dissident voices, any trace of resistance. By also creating such a hostile environment, it is clear that no decent-minded person would in future contemplate standing for election. If all goes according to plan, at the next poll, there will be few candidates willing to stand for Council, just the old faces, allowing the old rotten borough practice of co-option to return with a vengeance. Neat isn't it?
 
In Ledbury, as in other politically stricken towns (such as Berwick, Frodsham, Peterlee, Tewkesbury), local democracy is being nicely snuffed out by a ruthless clique of legally sanctioned hoodlums. Town and parish councils are truly laws unto themselves: there is no oversight, no ombudsman, no higher authority to which you can appeal. Resistance is not tolerated. They are fertile territory for power freaks, narcissists and right-wing authoritarians.
 
As 'banned' Ledbury Town Councillor Andrew Harrison pointed out at last week's Annual Council Meeting (12 May 2016), our Council is a morally bankrupt institution.
 
If you express an opinion which is contrary to the majority view, and which offends elements of extreme right wing nationalists, you are now liable to be reported for bringing the council into disrepute. Even as an elected councillor, you are not allowed to state your opinion within a council debate, it seems. [i]
 
Minutes, the bedrock of legal constitutional practice, are subject to manipulation, distortion and omission of key facts which present a false account of proceedings. [ii]
 
Scrutiny by elected members is regarded at best as trouble-making, but if persistent, is subject to accusations of bullying and harassment leading to ‘banning’ (as has happened to Andrew Harrison and Liz Harvey).[iii]
 
When some elected councillors with alternative opinions attempt to put their side of things, they are told to be quiet, while others, with more palatable views, are given free rein to read out pre-written statements, wander off topic and be generally offensive or inflammatory whenever they wish. [iv]
 
The Ledbury Town Council establishment takes a very relaxed attitude to the application of its standing orders and financial regulations, either ignoring them completely or, if this proves inconvenient, chucking them aside and coming up with new rules that better suit its purposes. Meantime, some of the rules of operation are scrupulously observed, generally those that disallow discussion or are controlling in nature.[v]
 
At the head of this league table of democratic contempt is the matter of council resolutions, when a vote is taken to do something: these decisions are theoretically inviolate, as legally binding as a court judgement. But in the deceitful world of Ledbury Town Council, they are, if required, completely ignored by councillors (and sometimes staff). [vi]
 
Taken in the round, Ledbury Town Council is a corrupt institution. It has members who are motivated by greed for power, personal self-interest and covert political objectives. It is a place where objectivity, fairness and respect as core ethical values are entirely missing. Anything goes.
 
Political scientists draw a distinction between dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. The former are characterised by the rule of a single figure, or a small ‘junta’; they are totalitarian in the sense that there is no freedom of speech or expression, while democratic institutions and an independent judiciary are suppressed.
 
Ledbury is not a dictatorship – despite the increasing power and influence that has accreted to the cultish figure of the Mayor in recent years under Annette Crowe and Bob Barnes, abetted by the local press.
 
Life under an authoritarian administration is rarely much more agreeable even if it appears less overtly vicious than a dictatorship. There exists superficially a plural system to which the trappings of democracy are paid lip service with elections, legislative debate, and the toleration of dissent – up to a point.
 
In places like Russia, Zimbabwe, and Turkey however, the odds are stacked against alternative voices. There are prosecutions for defaming the government or the church, trumped up charges against opposition politicians, redrawing of the legislative framework to outlaw criticism and there is collusion with a supine press which presents one-sided reportage. Sound familiar? 
 
In this toxic setting, political corruption is rife: nepotism, croneyism, mutual back-scratching for personal advantage and shady deals to do down opponents, up to an including violence. Because the government so effectively controls the channels of mass communication, and by patronage, pulls the strings of the civil service and judges, these regimes cling to power by popular assent. Putin, Mugabe and Erdogan are undeniably popular, and continue to win elections. It doesn’t make them good people or run good governments. The people are spun a line, kept in ignorance. Critics of the regime have their reputations ruined. Dirty tricks do the trick.
 
When there are no rules to which the powerful (and rich) adhere, and when there are no mechanisms to call politicians to account, the door is open to financial corruption. If there’s nobody watching the sweetshop, why wouldn’t people fill their pockets with lollies and bonbons? In dirty politics, you do what you can get away with. Why not?
 
The cancerous nature of authoritarian administration is more than dispiriting. It robs places of their creative vigour and dynamic energy. What’s the point in trying? Advancement happens not by talent or merit, but by knuckling down and playing the game, doing as you’re told, licking sweaty arses.
 
And so to Ledbury. The miserable tarnished crew dodge and scheme their way to looming perdition. We hope. But in the meantime, the casualties are many. Not just the two banned councillors, and those who have resigned or retired in disgust (I am one of a long line over the years), but the decent souls around the town who look on in dismay, the young people sickened by politics, the ratepayers who receive poor value for money, and the enthusiasts for change and action who have their dreams quashed at every turn. Good things happen in Ledbury despite its entourage of costly politicians. Mediocrity rules.
 
Ledbury's authoritarian town council is not just a democratic obscenity, but it is a tragedy for our community.
 
Here's a final thought. I have had some harsh words to say about these people over the years. People ask me, how do I get away with saying such awful things without incurring actions for libel. It's quite simple. I tell the truth. Nothing I say, not a word, is without evidence and justification. Ledbury Town Council is at liberty to sue me for defamation. I challenge them. Do it.
 
Notes...

[i] Cllr Liz Harvey is being reported by Ledbury Town Council for bringing the Council into disrepute. Her offence was to suggest that red, white and blue bunting should not be left up all summer long as it could be construed by some people as a political symbol of the far right, of Loyalist sentiment. Cllr Annette Crowe said that ‘because we’ve had so many complaints about the [bunting issue], and that’s gone into the national newspapers, and the threat from the far right… should not be how a council acts, and I propose that [this] goes forward to Herefordshire Council [as a complaint].
 

[ii] At Ledbury Town Council Standing Committee on 22 December 2015, a resolution was taken to seek alternative clerical support and advice to that being offered by Lynda Wilcox, who was judged not to be impartial and objective in managing the staff complaints process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. Lynda Wilcox was acting as stand-in Clerk to LTC and is the Chief Executive of Herefordshire Council of Local Councils. (She is also the wife of Cllr Brian Wilcox, Conservative Councillor and Chairman of Herefordshire Council, but that's another story...)
 
Minutes of that Standing Committee meeting were presented by Annette Crowe to Full Council on 28 January which omitted the Standing Committee resolution dispensing with Lynda Wilcox (who also wrote the minutes). Annette Crowe presented them as an accurate record, knowing them to be incomplete and misleading.
 
A verbal report was also made by Mayor Annette Crowe to LTC Full Council on 19 January, stating that it had been agreed by Standing Committee that Full Council would henceforth be handling the staff grievances (not Standing Committee). No such discussion took place. Annette Crowe actively misled Ledbury Town Council.
 
At the meeting of 25 February Full Council, Cllr Maria Mackness asked why the minutes of Standing Committee were ‘incomplete’. Mayor Crowe refused to discuss the matter and ordered Cllr Mackness to move on. Minutes of that Full Council meeting  (25 Feb) written by Karen Mitchell, presented on 7 April, omitted Cllr Mackness’s important question. Councillors challenged the accuracy of these minutes (because they were incomplete), and were told by the Clerk that accuracy could only be discussed of what was written, not what had been left out.
 
Mrs Wilcox clerked the Extraordinary Full Council Meeting (5 May) to consider ‘sanctions’ against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey.
 
Cllr Harrison questioned why Full Council was being asked to determine the  sanctions against them for bullying, when there had been a council resolution on 19 January which said that the Grievance Panel itself should set the sanctions. Lynda Wilcox said the process was within the terms of reference agreed, and LTC was acting correctly. (It was not).
 
Minutes presented at LTC council meeting 12 May, omitted Cllr Harrison’s important question: again, discussion of the accuracy of minutes was only allowed for what was written, not was left out.
 
Annette Crowe misled councillors on 19 January by not stating that Standing Committee had resolved not to use Lynda Wilcox henceforth because she was prejudiced and compromised.
 
Minutes have been systematically falsified to conceal this fact by Lynda Wilcox, and presented as accurate by Annette Crowe, Mayor.
 
Council took decisions concerning the prosecution of the grievance process which were contrary to council resolutions, unlawful in respect of the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, and outside of ACAS guidelines pertaining to grievance procedures.
 
Had they been provided with a true and accurate record, it most unlikely this process would have unfolded in the way it did.
 

[iii] Cllrs Harrison and Harvey have been found guilty of bullying, harassment and intimidation of the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of Ledbury Town Council. The evidence for this is subject to independent review by the Monitoring Officer of Herefordshire Council so cannot be discussed in detail at this point, but it will soon be in the public arena. Both councillors deny any wrong-doing and contend that they have been systematically blocked from investigating potential financial irregularities, breaches of procedure, lack of staff impartiality, and political conspiracy. 
 

[iv] As an example, during the discussion of the motion to report Cllrs Harvey and Warmington to Herefordshire Council for misconduct, Cllr Harrison attempted to say a few words in their defense (at 7’41” in the film clip). He was stopped by Mayor Debbie Baker. In contrast a few minutes earlier, Cllr Martin Eager (at 4’38”) read out a prewritten statement denouncing Cllr Harvey which had nothing to do with the motion under discussion but was allowed to speak unhindered.
 
Such two-sided treatment is a regular feature of LTC debate: if you agree with the ‘establishment’ you can speak, if not, you are silenced.
 

[v] The most outlandish recent example of this concerns the procedure LTC used to prosecute the grievance complaints against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey. In short, LTC should have referred the complaint to Herefordshire Council for review by the Monitoring Officer. Even if it had been handled in-house, the matter should have been dealt with by the Standing Committee according to Standing Orders. Instead it was given to the 16 councillors who constitute the Full Council. The reason for these hastily cobbled together changes were to load the dice against an innocent verdict by recruiting about a dozen politically hostile councillors into the process: precisely the reason why code of conduct complaints should properly be considered by the Monitoring Officer.
 

[vi] Having got itself into a mess with the grievance process against Cllrs Harrison and Harvey, LTC has twice voted for resolutions which it then has ignored because they would have got in the way of its objective to deliver a guilty verdict. 

Local reporter Gary Bills-Geddes must be thrilled that his bunting story hit the populist jackpot - and made the national tabloid press into the bargain. It's not often a part-time weekly newspaper journalist breaks a story which ends up in the Daily Mail. Somebody's got to do it I guess. Mark Twain said 'never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.
 
That Gary deliberately slanted his story for maximum impact is clear. It's what journalists do. Did he and his colleagues though really intend to unleash a true patriots versus foreigners, us and them crusade against dissident town and county councillor Liz Harvey?
 
Comparing Liz Harvey's words with the way it was reported reveals significant discrepancies. Other elements of the story from the brief Town Council discussion were also left out.
 
In the Ledbury Reporter's extensive coverage, five times the word "foreign" was used in the front page splash and related features, even though Liz Harvey did not utter that word once in her brief address to Ledbury Town Council. This is what Mr Bills-Geddes said in the opening sentence of the story: 'A councillor has voted against red, white and blue... because she fears it will upset foreign visitors.' In a photo caption of Bob Barnes the paper said:  'Cllr Liz Harvey claims the patriotic colours could 'unsettle' foreign visitors to the town.' In an editorial, it twice uses the phrase 'unsettle foreign visitors'. There is a What You Say piece; this too opens with the 'unsettling foreign visitors' phrase.
 
Why did the Reporter keep repeating that phrase 'foreign visitors'? Was it designed as a dog whistle to whip up chauvinistic, even racist sentiments?
 
It worked. Small wonder that the baying mob on Voice of Ledbury said that 'foreign visitors' can go jog on, or less polite words to that effect. The flotsam and jetsam of the fascist fringe are so outraged, they plan to demonstrate in Ledbury.
 
When a 'social media frenzy' (the Reporter's words) takes place, it's advisable to check the evidence. What Cllr Harvey actually said was: 'There were quite a few poets who came from Ireland who were on the [Poetry Festival] programme. They were really quite unnerved by the red white and blue and actually wondered whether they’d walked into a sort of National Front area because they were used to that in Ireland.'
 
She went on: 'I like the idea of bunting but ... it might be an opportunity to get some brightly coloured bunting that would look lovely in the middle of town but wouldn’t make people unsettled who come here as visitors'. She was responding to a suggestion from Mayor Annette Crowe that the union jack bunting be left up all summer.
 
From these off the cuff remarks, clearly unacceptable in these days of intolerant jingoism, Liz Harvey has been turned into a right wing hate figure, pilloried and threatened online, and now, outrageously according to Mrs Crowe, the cause of the potential fascist demonstration.
 
The Ledbury Reporter was also very selective in its commentary of the ensuing Council discussion. Cllr Tony Bradford, who normally gets full coverage, spoke out strongly against buying bunting for the Queen and said the money should be spent making a donation to the Ledbury Food Bank. At the other end of the argument, Cllr Jayne Roberts made what appeared to be a typically incoherent racist-xenophobic comment: 'Unfortunately', she said, 'the Moslems that come and visit us, the Irish that come and visit us... I'm afraid, it's our Queen...' When the vote came to buy red, white and blue bunting, seven councillors either voted against or abstained, including the Deputy Mayor, Keith Francis. This was over a third of the Council.
 
None of these 'facts' were reported, just Liz Harvey's words and vote. So much for balanced reporting.
 
By the time the tabloids had the story, it had been mangled into a loonie left councillor wanting to 'BAN' the flag for the Queen's birthday. A flower seller and barman, quite clearly fictional creations, were quoted in the piece.
 
One of the few balanced reactions to this hot-air balloon of political puff came from a contributor to the Facebook 'Voice of Ledbury' discussion (itself instigated by Mr Bills-Geddes). He said:
 
'I cannot believe the negativity directed toward one person who said so little, based upon a few published words from one person who should have known better.
 
'I believe that Gary Bills has caused quite the little race-storm, resulting in a public witch-hint against Cllr Harvey by not just writing an article so everyone could read what she said, but also publishing her picture, so everyone could now SEE who said it. Well done. Great job.

'Being a journalist (and I'm guessing a fairly intelligent person), I am convinced that he must have known that the reaction to his article would end like it has - with VOL going all "if they don't like it here they should just go home" and all that uneducated garbage. To me, this is really bad form.

'Whilst I understand that Cllr Harvey may possibly regret saying what she did, it was only (as I understand it) in reaction to a couple of Irish visitors, who inquired as to the nature of the blue/white/red coloured flags.

'Now, in certain parts of Ireland those colours are considered pretty political, so I can totally understand why they asked, and why she put it to the council.'
 
This gentleman might understand why, in a democratic country, people are permitted to put alternative points of view, but clearly our friends in the media do not.
 
We have been warned. When it comes to the flag, Liz Harvey is correct: it is indubitably used as a symbol of far right resistance.  It also seems these days that we may not question the wisdom of patriotic-nationalist imagery festooning our streets on pain of a reactionary backlash, led by the local paper.
 
You keep your mouth shut and your head down. Here's to the future! To democracy and free-speech! Not.  
 

What was that we were saying about Ledbury, draped in nationalist insignia all summer long, could be mistaken for a centre of far-right activism?
 
It seems our local fascist chapter, the Hereford Patriots is organising a rumble in Ledbury on 21 May. On their special Facebook Group, they say it's a: 'demonstration to demand that Cllr Liz Harvey be sacked for her anti-British, politically correct, offensive comments. Various groups attending. All welcome'. It's been advertised nationally throughout far-right networks. Lots of nice-sounding people are coming to say hello. Groups so far who have rsvp'd include the Midlands Infidels, South Coast Resistance, Pie and Mash Squad ("it's going to be a hoot"), March for England, UK Casuals ("30 game lads waiting"), London Patriots, North East Patriots, South West Infidels, Anti-anti-fascist network. "Real handy crew they are aswell" according to Mr Paul Barber commenting on Facebook.
 
The flag-waving, queen-loving, beer-swilling true patriots are now uniting under a clever little social media codeword: #5W. It stands for Five Words: We Go Where We Want. They say they are 'no longer taking it'.
 
So much for those fabled British values of tolerance, free-speech and respect for others, the Hereford 'patriots' announce: 'Lefties in positions of power who either demand that refugees are put before our people for housing, or who openly attack British ways or patriotism ought to know that we wont (sic) stand for your nonsense and you are going to draw the herd to your town/city'.
 
Herd is a good word for them to use about themselves. It means a collection of animals. They will no doubt be warmly received by some of Ledbury's indigenous racists, right-wingers and raging red-necks.

Will the local 'game lads' who threatened to fire-bomb the half Hungarian family out of the Horsehoe Pub a few years ago because they were flying the Hungarian flag be laying on lashings of half-time lemonade and sandwiches for all their pale-skinned chums?


From Ledbury Town Council a few councillors might also be swelling with patriotic pride as the parade of fluttering red, white and blue flags waves gaily down the Homend in the Spring sunshine. What a delightful tribute to our dear old Monarch and all she stands for. Well done Bob Barnes and Annette Crowe for your inspiring rallying cry last week swaddling yourselves in the Union Jack, sterling work.
 
No article about sincerely felt anti-foreigner sentiment could be complete without nodding in the direction of Cllr Jayne Roberts, veteran Ledbury Town Councillor and ex-Mayor.
 
Contributing at the end of the Council bunting debate (but unreported of course in the Ledbury Reporter) she said: 'Unfortunately, the Moslems who come to visit us, the Irish who come to visit us, I'm afraid, it's our queen'. She didn't get as far as explaining what was unfortunate, apart presumably from being Moslem or Irish.
 
Well known for her intolerance of "the pickers" as she refers to seasonal agricultural workers, Mrs Roberts the other summer had a cheery experience on her way to the office.
 
'Ha ha haygrove artic in hedge at redmarley this morning, wonder what the driver was doing this time?', she quipped on Facebook's Voice of Ledbury (where else?). 'Could it be texting, phoning or eating? this is the second time since xmas that an artic has decided to lie down in the hedge.'
 
While most reasonable people would have stopped to offer assistance and made sure there were no injuries, Mrs Roberts was happy to drive on mirthfully. When she got to work she commented:

'Not surprised as these foreign drivers should not be on our roads as they have no idea how to drive in this country'. What a lovely sentiment.
 
So when all the brave lads arrive in Ledbury, buoyed up with their #5W slogans, they won't be all alone. There will be at least a few people who will welcome their celebration of xenophobic pride. 

When I opened up my copy of the latest Ledbury Reporter and caught site of the front page, I was fortunately at home and able to run to the sink to empty the excessive saliva that had begun pooling in my mouth. While I managed to interrupt an actual attack of sickness, the lingering feeling of queasiness has persisted off and on for several days, every time in fact when I glance at those two faces grinning fatuously like a pair of Britain First supporters.

When every rational line of argument is spent, when you are facing political oblivion or pressure to own up to wrongdoing, when the game is up, there's only one thing for it. Bunting. You know that things have reached the pits when politicians wrap themselves in the flag.
 
Ertswhile enemies now best Council buddies it seems, the two laughing mayors, Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe, have gone better than this: they have literally swagged and festooned themselves in Union Jacks. If you look carefully on the left side of the picture, you will see that Bob Barnes has got his right hand raised in a diagonal posture which for all the world looks like a fascist salute.  Or is it a raised fist or the Red Hand of Ulster? The mind boggles. Thank god the hand is cropped so we are spared the full horror of the image.
 
Flags are potent symbols. They mean lots of things. They are expressions of pride, as when Mo Farrah won his gold at the London Olympics, or of national celebration for the Queen's jubilee, or of sorrow for the fallen: who can forget the heartbreaking site of a sea of tiny flags at the Normandy commemoration each one representing a life lost in the fight against Nazism?

Or they can be objects of hatred. In Britain, the Union Jack, and more particularly the St George Cross have assumed ugly connotations over the years, unfairly so perhaps. Throughout my youth travelling to and from school in grimy Birmingham, the sight of red, white and blue flags, along with skin-head haircuts provoked in us grammar school boys, a shudder of fear and revulsion. It was the era of the Pub Bombings, and being a catholic school, we were evacuated with bomb threats on a weekly basis, as well as being targets for violence and abuse. At the Longbridge car factory against a back-drop of Union Jacks, there were terrifying mock hangings of Irish men. Anti-Irish hatred was as palpable then as anti-Muslim hatred is now. The flag had been indelibly tainted by the National Front, by extremist politics, by fascism. And I admit, those associations still linger in my mind. The lunatic right continues to appropriate the flag while menacing shoppers on Saturday afternoons and deliberately terrorising BME communities. Across the water, last summer Belfast erupted over the disputed right to fly the Union Jack over City Hall.

I have been driven up the Shankhill Road and visited North Belfast and seen the eerie sight of kirbstones painted red, white and blue, bunting and tattered flags fluttering sadly in the drizzle. In these pitifully deprived neighbourhoods, families save their pennies to have their houses painted from top to bottom as Union Jacks. You'll see a few adolescent boys kicking a can around in the broken glass, perhaps a scrawny dog wandering idly. In such benighted working class communities, tokens of patriotism, unionism, and loyalism, for they are one, are worn defiantly by people against the encroachment of enlightened, secular values, against integration and outsiders, vouchsafed against the decades of hurt and bitterness which has soured their hearts. Something of the same is witnessed in the Republican areas, although without quite the visceral xenophobia of the Loyalist districts.
 
So when Irish visitors, or people from multicultural London or Birmingham, or some black people whose lives have been ravaged by racist thugs brandishing Union flags, when they visit a quaint country town, predominantly a white British town, and see it decked in a profusion of red, white and blue for no apparent reason, they do feel a cultural jolt, a political charge, as do I. It's probably wrong, but there it is. You can't deny your gut instincts. The flag is still controversial. It means something. Is it, as those Irish poets asked, a political statement? Is this a centre for right-wing extremism? They could be forgiven for enquiring, as some of the baying mob against Liz Harvey are undoubtedly motivated by those views. Some of those loud voices on Voice of Ledbury are known right-wing agitators. Perhaps there are one or two of them in Ledbury Town Council judging by the rancid comments of some councillors in recent years.
 
Annette Crowe is outraged at the suggestion that the crass image on the front of the local paper might be seen as a nod to the far right. She asks: 'Any connotation like that, about our town; it's unacceptable. It puts the town in a bad light. Just putting the comments out there is unacceptable.' Is she either extremely naive or is this just more political hay-making, another gambit to get her name in the paper yet again? Is that look of defiant glee genuinely about intense patriotic sentiment or the prosecution of tawdry political opportunism? I hadn't realised that we had disappeared down a worm-hole and wound up in North Korea, where free thought, much less a stated opinion is forbidden.

The Daily Express and Mail, themselves proud fascist sympathisers in the 1930s and still raging against anyone left of Mrs Thatcher, claimed Liz Harvey wanted to 'BAN (their caps) the Union Flag.' Did she really? See the transcript of exactly what she said in the Council meeting here.  More worrying is the fact that Annette Crowe appears keen to ban real concerns people might have about the far right and its imagery permeating our town. Even the mention of it is now 'unacceptable' in Mrs Crowe's dubious judgement.

The question for Mr Barnes and Mrs Crowe is why they would ever think that staring out provocatively draped in rampant nationalist insignia could ever be a good thing, except on a day of national celebration. Even then, good taste surely demands that there are limits. A few 'true patriots' no doubt will be delighted. Most reasonable people will think them tastelessly vulgar. Others with longer memories, finer political sensibilities or first-hand experience of the corrosive effects of nationalist hatred will be disturbed, even worried. 
 
My view, and it's not worth much, is that by all means we should put out the flags and swathe the town in bunting for the old Queen's birthday and 1916 commemoration. Let there be lots of red, white and blue, but there should also, properly be a healthy dose of Commonwealth colour. The 56 nations of the Commonwealth love Elizabeth as much as the Brits; they fought in the First and Second World Wars, one million seven hundred thousand men and women died. Does their contribution, and memory count for nothing in Ledbury?
 
What a kind gesture it would be both to the monarch, and to our friends overseas, that Ledbury celebrates its place in the world and shows that we are not a narrow-minded little town full of patriotic zealots.
 
To Mr B and Mrs C, they should remember Samuel Johnson's words: patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Note: please no comments pulling me up on my use of the Union Jack, rather than the supposedly correct 'Union Flag'. In Britain, it's known universally as the Union Jack whatever the pedantic patriots  say.