By Ahm Reelyoanraright, Our Labour Party Correspondent
A new front opened up yesterday in the UK-wide civil war over the selection of a new Labour candidate for Falkirk.
Unite the union (that is, the union itself as opposed to "unite the union" the campaign for a different union altogether) threatened to shut down Grangemouth refinery, which could create shortages of oil and petrol.
The threat to the people, businesses, security and drivers of the UK came after the union was cleared by police of criminal activity, but their leader - Stepehen Deans - was sacked anyway by the Grangemouth refinery.
Labour had been forced to call in the police after a shadowy group calling themselves “workers” were found breaking into their Falkirk offices and signing themselves up for the party.
Leader, Ed Miliband, said, "You see, we had this influx of what we, in New Labour, like to call plebs. We are the party for hard working families. That means people who have become, at the very least, middle class through hard work and preferably moved to the suburbs around London. These people were greasy, smelly, spoke oddly and would be very offputting to a floating voter in Surrey. Many were not even related to existing party members! It is believed these "workers" were being signed up by Unite with the express intention of indulging in democratic acts such as voting for candidates. Such practices cannot be condoned or allowed in UK politics."
However, leader of the workers and Unite union boss Ken McKrusty said, “We, the workers, are quite upset by this. The Labour party have been banging on for years now about how pro-union they are, so we thought they’d be in favour of us bringing in more members. Now we find they only like certain kinds of unions, ones they are “better together” with, due to rewards of ermine and fine lifestyles. Of course, we in the union leadership understand perfectly the pull of such fine lifestyles: that’s why we want a piece of it and it’s unfair we have been denied.”
Lord Lenton-Crosby-Fraud, the noted international banker who has donated £20,000,000 to the Tory party despite living in Switzerland said of the scandal, “It is a scandal.
"Labour have clearly lost control of the proletariat and cannot now be trusted with running your…I mean our fine country." Writing in the Telepgraph, he went on to say that the scandal has thrown a stark light on some of the deeply entrenched, old fashioned and undemocratic ideas within elements of the left. For example, the out of date and idiotic notion that an MPs job is to represent their constituents in Westminster. "This is fanciful nonsense", he said. "An MPs job is to represent the interests of Westminster and those who pay millions to its parties against the plebs. This is why it is vital the correct faction of the London Labour "leadership" takes control of the rabble Falkirk and other areas have become, to ensure - especially in the run up to next years stupid referendum - that Westminster's voice is as strong and dominant as possible"”
The firm running Grangemouth refinery, Ineos later re-instated Deans after the threat to halt oil refining was made, an act which was siezed on by the Tories as capitulation. "Appeasement did not work with Hitler and it will not work with the unions," Tory MP for Chiswick Godwin Slaw said. "Labour must stand shoulder to shoulder with the Ineos management in defeating industrial terrorism. The unions must be smashed and beaten with as much ferocity and heavy armoury as Lady Thatcher brought to the job." He then excused himself on the grounds of a desperate urge to visit a lavatory.
The war was ignited after Labour MP for Falkirk Eric Joyce was forced to leave the party over drunken behavoiur and fighting. Commenting he said, "This whole thing is becoming a farce. In my day, if you had a row over selection, you took your jackets off, went outside and settled it the good, old fashioned West of Scotland Labour way. That way, you have the right candidate who is then able to go to Westminster and get on with the important job of punching Tory MPs and threatening natz with a dooing."
Johann Lamont was unavailable for comment. As was everyone else in Labour's Scotlandshire subsidiary.
A background to Falkirk for UK media who don’t know anything about it
Falkirk sits in between Edinburgh and Glasgow on the site of the old Antonine wall. This is a bit like Hardian’s wall but less famous for being in Scotlandshire. It is testament to how tough the Roman empire found it to conquer the barbarians in places like Falkirk.
In AD 82 Agricola had conquered southern Britain, and moved up into Caledonia (now Scotlandshire) to defeat the Picts, led by the warrior Calgacus. However, he found it difficult to hold the northern areas due to barbarian, anti-Roman separatists who stupidly spurned being part of the greatest union and empire the world has ever seen. And the bloody unions who kept going on about fair pay and holidays. So in AD 122, the Emperor Hadrian ordered a wall to be built, primarily to prove to the Natz that “building Hadrian’s wall” hadn’t just been scaremongering, as well as to provide work for those unions who did support him.
However, in AD 138 the Emperor Antonine decided to have another shot and managed to move the final frontier of the great Roman Empire forward a few miles, before having to build another wall stretching 37 miles across central Scotlandshire. It was once believed this was due to the Picts but in fact historians now believe it was mostly to deal with factional in-fighting that had broken out within his forces, and partly to wall in a particularly vocal faction of the Legionnaires Union. From this point onward, places like Falkirk, Bearsden and Auchendavy became battlegrounds on the frontier of the Roman Empire, with those on the northern side shut off from civilization entirely, trading only insults with the Roman foreigners south of the border who had been their family only days before.
To this day the landscape around Falkirk still bears many of the scars of this time, and many of the local Labour party are direct descendents from the tribal factions that grew up around that time, often still viewing people who live in different parts of Falkirk as “foreigners”
Daily Mash : The Labour-Falkirk controversy explained
Sky News : Falkirk Row : Milliband Hits Out At McCluskey
Herald: Trade union threatened to shut Grangemouth oil refinery
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