A Black Lives Matter group formally applied to become a political party in the United Kingdom on Monday, confirming suspicions that the far-left movement indeed has political aspirations in Britain, despite claims that the movement was non-partisan.
On October 26th, an application was filed with the Electoral Commission for Black Lives Matter to become a fully-fledged political party throughout the entire UK should the commission accept the request. The group will need to file a party constitution, pay £150, and submit any logos before being accepted.
In response to the move, political commentator and former teacher Calvin Robinson — who is himself mixed race and has suffered racist abuse in the past for failing to hold left-wing political positions — told Breitbart London: “There surely can no longer be any doubt, Black Lives Matter is a political movement with a political agenda. Anyone who still protests under that banner must be subscribing to their anti-British principles.”
Former Brexit Party MEP Martin Daubney added on social media: “Many of us who said this was their aim were dismissed as extremists, but it was inevitable all along!”
The Black Lives Matter movement saw a resurgence in the UK following the death of George Floyd in America, staging mass protests across the country, with many devolving into violent confrontations with police. The group was also behind a widespread iconoclastic campaign to tear down and deface statues honouring British historical figures.
In June, at the height of the furore and chaos, Brexit Leader Nigel Farage described Black Lives Matter as “a dangerous, Marxist organisation, hell-bent on anarchy, and we need to wake up, get some facts into our heads, and understand what it is we’re fighting.”
A spokesman for the Black Lives Matter affiliate in Britain (UKBLM) denied any connection or knowledge of the group that filed to become a political party, telling the Daily Mail: “We has absolutely no connection, affiliations or other and no individual or group has informed or made us aware of their intentions of forming a political party under the name of Black Lives Matter. It is not us.”
“We are operating as non-political, non-partisan, non-violence Black Lives Matter platform. Some content published on this website may have political elements by the nature of a society and state governed under a system of democracy; however we operate in a humanitarian capacity and concern before all else,” the spokesman added.
In the UK, there are many splinter Black Lives Matter groups, and the leadership of UKBLM has remained anonymous, meaning that another faction in the country may be behind the party application without the spokesman who talked to the Daily Mail even being aware.
In June, a self-described black radical protester addressed a “conspiracy about Black Lives Matter UK”, saying: “They are real, they are black, and they are in support of all black life”.
She claimed that “our organisation has been in contact with them”, adding that BLMUK is “facilitating the protests but cannot reveal themselves, because there is a great threat from police interception and right-wing interception.”
A common feature of Black Lives Matter protests in London has been the consistent demonisation of Britain, the United States, and Western Civilisation as a whole.
In a telling example of this, a leftist speaker in a Che Guevara t-shirt at a BLM rally in August asked the crowd: “Are you loyal to Britain?”
The BLM activists all chanted back “No!” in reply.
“Good, I hope not, because the backbone of our country — what made it an imperialist country was the blood of black people. That’s how Britain was built,” he explained, adding: “We only have contempt for the state, contempt for the police, and contempt for the ideology that formed Britain.”
There has also been a strain of anti-white racism at BLM demonstrations in the British capital.
In a protest in July, a mixed-race LGBT activist said that it was necessary to view issues facing black people as well as LGBT issues through the leftist prism of intersectionality, which he said: “means recognising that there is one common enemy: the white man. The systems that they use are capitalism, patriarchy, and fascism.”
“All of these groups of people, the issues they face, it all comes from the same people: white men. So we need to get rid of them,” he said, adding: “kill the rich”.
The move by the BLM group to register as a political party in the UK will likely put pressure on the left-wing Labour Party, which has attempted to move to the political centre since the ousting of ageing socialist Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the party.
Corbyn’s replacement as leader, Sir Keir Starmer, initially backed the BLM protests, even going so far as to photograph himself ‘taking the knee‘ in the Houses of Parliament.
Starmer later backtracked, however, saying that he rejected the Black Lives Matter organisation’s goals, in particular, their call to defund the police.
In July, at a protest in Hyde Park, a BLM activist was seen leading the demonstrators in a chant of “Fuck Keir Starmer!”
“Labour has done nothing, people. They barely do anything. They don’t really care about us. We need to take our vote somewhere else,” the leftist activist proclaimed.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here: @KurtZindulka
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