Our Campaign to support Ken Livingstone was blocked by 38 Degrees who will not support campaigns within political parties. So we have posted it here at the ABC website instead. We are concerned about the way that the BBC published an article last week about why America entered World War One, which omitted this important information. We must not let political correctness allow people to rewrite history. 

To: The Labour Party

Stop Persecuting Ken Livingstone

Campaign created by

Simon Collyer

We want critics to stop implying Ken Livingstone is anti-semitic, who is merely stating information that is widely understood to be factually correct. Mr Livingstone has argued that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis collaborated with the Zionists as the German government sought to remove the Jews from Germany. That Hitler 'went mad' says Livingstone, and that led to the Holocaust. In fact the UK had been asked to take one million Jewish refugees, but that request had to be refused as it would have destabilized the UK.

Why is this important?

It is important that history is not distorted by people with a specific political agenda. Stating that facts that are true, or widely believed to be true by Ken Livingstone is not racial hatred - even if the minority of people do not like the outcome, or the impression it creates. We must all stand against racial hatred, but we must also stand equally vigorously on the side of those who speak the truth.

The Jews approached the Western Powers in London in 1916, with an offer, arguing they could persuade the Americans into the war so the ‘Bloody Stalemate’ on the Western Front could be broken. Prior to WW1, the Jews had been prevented from entering many professions in Europe, but they were very prominent in the arts. Many Jews fled pogroms in Russia (persecuted by the Cossacks) and they became founders of the emerging US motion picture industry in the US [Hollywood]. In 1916 in the middle of World War One, a Jewish delegation approached the British in London and they said there was a was a way to break the stalemate on the Western Front, by bringing the Americans into the war. This was on the promise of their own future homeland in Palestine, a territory the British had already promised to the Arabs. The British and French were carving up the Middle East an area that had been dominated by the Ottoman Empire, (aligned with Germany WW1) but that nation was now in decline and called he 'sick man of Europe'. The Turks had a large Navy and that was a potential threat to the Suez Canal and the trade route to India.

A letter was supplied called the Balfour Declaration, dated 2 November 1917, from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

Edward Bernays (Nephew of Freud the Psychologist) worked as a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda in the USA. What is today called 'perception management'. His skills were one factor in changing public opinion that allowed the President Woodrow Wilson to reverse his position and for the US to enter the war, despite the fact a large percentage of the population were of German decent. People against the war were described in propaganda as ‘isolationists’ in a pejorative sense. The US entered the war and made a very significant impact in 1918. This US involvement led to a humiliating defeat for Germany. Her people were saddled with huge reparations (the Versailles Treaty 28 Jun 1919 – 21 Jan 1920). The US has other reasons for entering the war. The sinking of the Lusitania, a passenger ship with US citizens on board, that was later claimed to have had [six] millions of rounds of ammunition in her hold.

The Jews were blamed for Germany's loss by the military dictatorship led by The Kaiser (now in exile) and General Ludendorff who ran the later stages of the war, under aging Bismarck as a militarily dictator. The Jews may have made a potentially substantive mistake (with hindsight) after declaring ‘economic war’ on Germany in 1933 at a conference in Amsterdam.

The Jews started a worldwide boycott of German good just as the Great Depression really took hold and international investment was withdrawn from Germany. Stores like Woolworth's in the US were boycotted and their Germany stock even thrown in the Hudson River. Major American companies had invested heavily in Germany and a pro-German Governor of the Bank of England Montagu Norman, 1st Baron Norman was helping German interests well into the early part of WW2 (1941). President Roosevelt wrote to Churchill expressing his concerns about this. The Nazi Party enjoyed support from the politically prominent British upper-classes, collectively known as the Cliveden Set though this tapered-off as war started and the threat of being imprisoned as a sympathizer grew as public opinion hardened. The Germans had imprisoned trade unionists and suppressed workers’ rights. Many saw Germany as a counter to the communists in Russia and they were willing to either overlook, or did not appreciate, what an evil regime the National Socialist German Workers' Party had created.

Churchill whose mother was from a Jewish family noted there were Jews who shared different beliefs and opinions. Some saw Judaism as a system of religious beliefs only, others - the Zionists were ultra-nationalists who saw the Jewish faith as more than a religion. The Nazis wanted to expel the Jews and other people deemed to be undesirable and they were willing to cooperate with the Zionists.

Ken Livingstone deserves support. Some might not like what he has to saw but others admire the fact he is prepared to say it.

Supplied by the ABC:  http://www.abcorg.net

How it will be delivered

We intend to publish the results on our website.