However there are others, and they are the (mostly Labour) politicians who scrupulously avoided the violence but whipped it up, and as “collateral damage”  ruined Edward Woolard’s life.  Among the guilty men are Aaron Porter who put out literature for the demonstration saying there will be a “riot” and calling for a “Demo-lition”.

To get some flavour of the Ipswich Labour Party there was John Cook who said during the demo “Challenge to Nick Clegg: Come outside and say that! Tuition fees”.  This is the former councillor and agent for Ipswich Labour Party who has some undefined role in the Ipswich Labour Party now.

Now I’m sure that Edward Woolard didn’t ruin his life because he followed John Cook’s Twitter account, but it was the stupid over-excited “by any means necessary” rhetoric that did drive him to do this.  People like John Cook have responsibilities.  I have no doubt that John Cook would do nothing in this sort of event, just encourage others and if something did happen explain it as a “joke”.  The weasel.

That he would encourage students, who would otherwise have a far more glittering career than his so far, to ruin their lives gives you the full measure of the man.  If Labour allow him to stand as councillor that will give the full measure of the Ipswich Labour Party.  Resentful, bitter and not too bright failures, and that’s before we get to John Cook.

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• Protester admits Millbank disorder (mirror.co.uk)
• The protester who ‘threw fire extinguisher at police’ in student tuition fees riot (dailymail.co.uk)

"Right after you comrades". Incitement to violence by the NUS. From Guido Fawkes.

So John Cook says on Twitter “Challenge to Nick Clegg: Come outside and say that! Tuition fees, #demo2010#pmqs” and is, as far as we know, unmolested for threatening physical violence to the deputy Prime Minister (I know it’s not a serious threat, in John’s current physical condition he’d lose to Nick Clegg – in fact he’d be out fought by a toothless declawed cat).  However Paul Chambers has lost an appeal after being convicted on anti-terrorism charge for “threatening” to blow up Robin Hood airport and Gareth Compton has been questioned under caution for calling for the stoning of Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a prosecution egged on by liberal journalists.

This was a specious lead.  I don’t want John Cook in prison, no matter how foul and thuggish his utterances are.  There are two reasons I wanted to bring this up.

Firstly it’s not yet clear whether “John” is “4NorwichNrth” or “4Ipswich”.  His loyalties seem divided, as I predicted they would be.

Secondly, and more importantly, the links between Labour and the riots should not be underestimated.  The NUS is run by a coterie of student politicians who, like go on to become Labour MPs.  Just ask Jack Straw, Phil “send ‘em home” Woolas, Stephen Twigg, Lorna Fitzsimmons and Jim Murphy (who in my Labour Student days I remember being told was very, very thick – and in Labour student politics there’s not exactly a high bar).  Those names were on the top of my head, I’m sure Google would find a clutch more.

The NUS leadership, chock full of Labour would be politicians, has approved literature calling for a “Demo-lition” and a “riot” yet when their rhetoric comes real, encouraged by NUS stewards, the NUS president simply says that he abhors the violence and that’s it.  No questioning of him or his executive for bussing in 50,000 students (telling the police it would be 15,000) and then calling for a “riot” in their literature.  In Parliament he is defended by thuggish Labour MPs like Ed Balls.

Yet in the meantime there are a number of lesser, poorly connected students, who’ve been encouraged into this criminal behaviour.  Their pictures are blasted over the internet and many of them will probably end up with criminal records.  In some cases their life will be  ruined due to this Student Grant type posturing of these want to be MPs.  Is there any sympathy for this human tragedy, and any anger against the pathetic people such as Aaron Porter and John Cook (4NorwichNrth) who whipped them up and then slink away saying “we didn’t mean THAT”?  Of course the vandals should be investigated, but so should the NUS leadership.

No.  In Parliament the sympathy is for the student leaders, with Ed Balls talking about “a small minority of thugs” while missing out on the NUS leadership calling for a “riot”.

It’s time for the Labour leadership to suspend all NUS NEC members from the party and to launch an investigation.  While they’re at it, people who are publicly identified with the party and who endorsed student violence, even if its a rather pathetic tweet, should also be suspended and investigated.  If Labour do that then we know that they are serious at dealing with physical violence against their opponents.

If they don’t, they are endorsing it – just like John Cook did.

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• Don’t arrest me! It’s only a tweet (guardian.co.uk)
• Labour ‘had to act’ over Woolas (bbc.co.uk)
• Phil Woolas to launch legal challenge next week (telegraph.co.uk)
• John Rentoul: Lies, damned lies, and Phil Woolas (independent.co.uk)
• We don’t need the law to tackle Twitter bigots (newstatesman.com)
• Tory councillor Gareth Compton arrested over Twitter ‘stoning’ tweet about Yasmin Alibai-Brown (telegraph.co.uk)
• Labour’s neanderthal tendencies (newstatesman.com)

From the Labour Party website, how the Ipswich Labour Party voted on first preferences:

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Of course there’s the lie that Ben Gummer (or Benedict as they keep on calling him) does not have a constituency office – saying that his lack of a shop front means that there’s no office at all.  I can almost understand them trying to scare their own voters due to poor turnout, but lying to their own membership?  Doesn’t show a healthy street presence if they need to do that.

Their main point seems to be about the leadership election.  From the pictures and the tone it seems that there is an Ed Balls supporter is editing it, and sure enough John Cook is the main contact on the leaflet.  I wonder what happened to his undying love for Norwich North?  Surely it can’t be the 4,000 Tory majority?

But there’s an interesting note about the candidate selection which is Saturday 18th September in the Ipswich Labour Club, 33 Silent Street.  It’s closed to all but paid up members, but members from outside Bridge are perfectly entitled to select Phil Smart, I’m sorry decide the Labour candidate for Bridge.  Anyway, this is the order in which the seats will be selected:

• Gainsborough
• Gipping
• Westgate
• Priory Heath
• Bridge
• St John’s
• Sprites
• Whitehouse
• Rushmere
• Alexandra
• Whitton
• Stoke Park

This means that this is the order which they expect to win the seats.  That’s because Labour like to put their council leadership people into seats where they don’t have to campaign or do casework.  They thing that Gainsborough and Gipping are ultra safe, but then they have Westgate, Priory Heath and Bridge.  We’re safer than Sprites (where a large chunk of the Chantry Estate is).

One thing that drives me to distraction is how Labour thinks that the only thing that the people of Bridge should do is shut up and vote Labour.

I also understand from a Labour mole (no, not that Mole) that he is now the agent for Ipswich.

Surely his first love was Norwich North? For the life of me I can’t understand why a failed Parliamentary candidate would hang around a constituency without a nominated candidate where the incumbent majority is just over half of his old constituency. That’s a real puzzler. Maybe Chris Mole, David Ellesmere or Bryony Rudkin would be able to answer this? I bet they love a bit of competition.

How would you fancy a Norwich season ticket holder as your next MP?

While it’s understandable why Chris Mole would back a public school boy who’s keen to hide his privileged background, it’s a bit of a puzzle with John Cook. John Cook attacked his Tory opponent in Norwich North for hesitating if asked whether she would have been tempted by New Labour in 1997. “She talks a good script, but I don’t know where her politics are coming from.” He added: “I couldn’t ever have been anything other than Labour.”

Now that’s not in itself a wrong thing, although it could explain why they seem to be having an uphill struggle in Ipswich at the moment, but Ed Balls was something “other than Labour” and in fact was a member of the Conservatives when at University, in the middle of the 1980s. He may have claimed in that article to have ridden both horses (politically) but that’s hardly tribal Labour.

Was this overlooked because John Cook is a Norwich season ticket holder and so is Ed Balls? And you wonder why those two lost when Labour candidates with lower majorities in 2005 won.

So who are Ipswich Labour party supporting? Ipswich Labour Party’s strength and abiding weakness is that they have stayed tribal when the rest of the country is far less tribal than it was a generation ago. This is why they didn’t see Ben Gummer’s challenge until it was too late. However it also means that they should be able to keep the whole show on the road and not implode after government as other Constituency Labour Parties seem to be doing.

Ed Balls image as a “no compromise with the voters” candidate should appeal to the Ipswich Labour Party. That is, however, the Ipswich Labour Party’s problem.

Hi James

Just reading your blog, John Cook is no Town fan, Iain Dale made the same assumption when he was chosen as candidate http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2009/11/norwich-north-labour-party-gives-up-on.html but John is a season ticket holding Norwich city fan, which should at least garner him some sympathy from blues supporters in Ipswich

Clive

Compare that polite tone to Comrade Alasdair Ross, a man that parents pay thousands of pounds a year to teach their children good manners:

James
Need to check your facts, J Cook is a Norwich fan, Norwich born and a City season ticket holder. John supervised the ITFC Trust elections as a neutral and as an expert on election counts, that is why his name is on the Trust page. By John doing it, we (the Trust) saved a considerable amount of cash that could be used for the benefit of fans.

Of course John Cook was neutral and Alasdair Ross was a succesful candidate. Oh well. It’s a small cosy circle in the Ipswich Labour Party.

Comrade Ross didn’t tell us if John Cook has sold his home, because that’s where he’ll consider his roots to be, whatever he says on his election leaflet – he wasn’t exactly keen to put his support for Norwich on his Ipswich leaflets. A mortgage is a bigger financial commitment than a season ticket. Even in Norwich.

I also note that Comrade Ross didn’t defend John Cook’s IQ. But even a private school rugby coach knows when he shouldn’t fight.

It looks like he’ll be moving back to Ipswich soon, which is a shame as his temporary defection to Norwich raised the average IQ of both towns.

http://www.davidosler.com/2010/01/hewitt_hoon_and_hubris.html#comment-40564

Ipswich’s very own Andrew Coates manages to fit in quite a few little allegations:

- Ipswich Labour, led by John Cook the Norwich North candidate (the “full-time Secretary-Agent”) is busy building links and working closely with the “hard left”
- The Ipswich Buses campaign is a front for a hard left campaign
- Sandy Martin (“Comrade Sandy Martin” no less) was elected as leader of the Suffolk Labour county council group (all four of them) because of non-Comrade Bryony Rudkin’s Blairite deviation

John Cook is definately left wing enough to be comfortable in a BBC editorial meeting but I suspect that he won’t welcome Andrew Coates blowing the cover on that non-existent plot.  Chris Mole, who’s the minister in charge of bus privatisation, could stop the bus privatisation in its tracks, but he won’t.  Ipswich Labour councillors, including the alleged Brezhnevites of Cook and Martin, could force him to block it, but they won’t.

They know that if Labour gets in they will have to privatise it in some shape (which is why they are saying it’s not the right time) and that currently it makes a great signature magnet and vote propellant.  I’m not saying this as a condemnation as I know that all parties do this.

The Ipswich Buses campaign is a way of getting some last gasp of life from the grass roots, no more, no less.

I can’t claim any insight into the machinations of the Suffolk Labour group of four, but whatever they may tell their former comrade about their Leninist sympathies I somehow think that the fact that Sandy Martin comfortably won a marginal seat in the face of a concerted Tory campaign while Bryony Rudkin almost lost one of Labour’s safest county seat in the face of one Tory leaflet (I was her Tory opponent and I spent most of election day in Sandy Martin’s seat) probably had more to do with it.

I know who I’d want to lead me.

Why the contrasting fortunes?  Sandy Martin is a good local campaigner and he’s loved for it.  If he was a right wing Tory or a dripping wet Liberal doing the same sort of assiduous work he’d win with the same ease. 

Bryony Rudkin may have other qualities, but she’s not interested in being a ward councillor and everyone knows it.  In four county council elections, she’s never sought re-election in any ward, and when she tried to to represent substantially the same ward as she represented in the borough she got the second worse Labour result on the night (after Gainsborough – and no one saw that coming).  Not only that her previous ward, the rock solid Chantry elected a Tory for the first time since the estate was built.  If I were Andrew Coates I’d be asking why Labour lets her float around safe wards like a butterfly making safe seats marginal.  Obviously not much sympathy for his revolution in the self-destructive Labour machine.

There may be some pseudo-Marxist plot to get rid of all traces of the Blairite deviation from Suffolk County Council, but just perhaps it may be that Labour councillors recognise that they’re better off with a leader who wins marginal seats than one who almost loses safe ones.