Author: Yvonne Ridley

You cannot trust Labour You cannot trust Labour is the statement ringing around the country and echoed by the Independent Newcastle candidate Yvonne Ridley. Renowned British journalist, author and politician Yvonne Ridley has announced she intends to stand as an independent candidate in Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West in the upcoming general election.  In a new series – In Conversation With Yvonne Ridley: Confessions of a Candidate – Ridley shares her first-hand experiences, challenges and insights on what it takes to launch a successful campaign outside the traditional party system.   Episode 2 – coming live tonight Friday 31st May…

This was a sensational victory for Scottish feminists, in fact for feminists everywhere including the Alba Party’s women’s convenor Dr Yvonne Ridley.

‘I was just a crazy kid from a snooker club.’

Time for the Toon Army to use the terraces as their platform to voice disapproval over the unsavoury activities

How English racist fans will destroy the Union and how talking the knee was ridiculed by the Priti Patel – simple racism in football has to stop, Like Tyrone Mings said on Twitter

Samira believes Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, Israel’s Mossad, the US and other Western intelligence agencies as well as Saudi and Jordanian intelligence had all tried to kill her husband.
She spent her life dedicated to the Ummah above authoritarian Arab and Muslim states.

Time for a revolution, it is in the air! Women are angry, grieving and outraged by police and government attempts to patronise us like needy, insecure children. Feminism interrupted, we ain’t having it anymore, the suffragettes are coming for you! And this time it’s not just the misogynistic-fuelled Westminster Government or the disgraced Metropolitan Police in the firing line; north of the English border the Scottish Government and Police Scotland are just as culpable. They have all tried to coerce and push us online, yet some of those brave souls who dared to resist and hold vigils in person for…

SREBRENICA: Justice delayed and denied … but not forgotten  By Yvonne Ridley I’m a quick reader. Someone who usually races through pages at a fast rate but I really struggled with Kadir Habibovic’s personal story. As he navigates his way through one of Europe’s darkest periods of the 20th century, I found myself unable to keep up with the pace. Not only was it breathtaking, painful and from the realms of a dystopian nightmare, this Muslim man from Srebrenica tells a story that brings shame to humanity. The reason I struggled to read the pages was not because of the…

Why we must all watch this shocking video By Yvonne Ridley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-OSgtcgdZo This is the video the leaders of the Syrian rebel group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham did not want you to watch. In its desperation to stop the truth of its own torture activities being made public, HTS stripped bare the only independent media TV studios in rebel-held Syria. The Sunni Islamist militants, who are the ruling group in Idlib province, had already arrested On The Ground News (OGN) founder and journalist Bilal Abdul Kareem two weeks ago. He has been held without charge or trial and not been given…

PAWS FOR THOUGHT: Dogs and Islam with Yvonne Ridley Egypt’s grand mufti has declared that pet dogs are permissible for Muslims. Saying there’s no reason why Muslims and canines can coexist, Sheikh Shawky Allam said while some view dogs as impure, the Maliki doctrine said they were not. He said that the Malikis came to this conclusion from their logic that every living animal was pure. He said: “We adopt the Maliki doctrine here in Dar Al-Iftaa (Egypt’s Islamic advisory body) and have ruled on this issue based on it. If you perform wudu (ablution) and there is saliva from the dog…

A dramatic gunpoint confrontation with “his torturer” saw British aid worker Tauqir ‘Tox’ Sharif being re-arrested in rebel-controlled Idlib in Syria yesterday. Sharif was originally snatched by armed, masked members of the Sunni Islamist militant group, Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham, last month and held in prison for 24 days pending trial. After being given conditional bail including a media gagging order, his story took another dramatic turn when he confronted the man who he claims had interrogated and tortured him in the HTS prison. During the surprise encounter at the courtrooms in Sarmada, a row ensued and poured out onto the streets where the East Londoner…

I don’t normally cry that easily but there were sections of Alice Walker’s book which caused me to tear up and on the final pages I struggled to read because my eyes were so full. but this book will make you laugh as well. Therefore it comes as no surprise to discover The Color Purple won Walker the coveted Pulitzer Prize and a host of other awards back in 1983. The only surprise for me is that it has taken me this long to read the novel. It has been described as a piece of feminist work about an abused and uneducated African American woman’s struggle…

British aid worker kidnapped in Syria – by Yvonne Ridley, Diplomatic Editor A British aid worker was kidnapped on Monday night by members of a Sunni Islamist militant group in the last rebel-held stronghold of Idlib in Syria. Tauqir Sharif, 31, from Walthamstow, in East London, lives and works in the northwestern Syrian city, with around 200 other British humanitarian workers who form a coalition community group called The Unity Project. Details of his kidnapping are still sketchy but the group Hay’ at Tahrir al-Sham, commonly referred to as Tahrir al-Sham, is thought to be behind his disappearance. According to…

Her brutally frank observations reveal an upbringing in an atmosphere of what she perfectly describes as “performative hate”.

By Yvonne Ridley Like all good reads, Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar has so many layers to it and is the book I’ve chosen today for another of my literary revisits. The Bell Jar was banned by some bookshops in the Sixties because of its uncompromising content subjects of both suicide and sexuality. The novel also ruffled a few male feathers because of the critical stereotyping of women as both mother and wife. In short, this American classic made some people feel damned uncomfortable! It was first published in January 1963 but under the pseudonym of Victoria Lucas although the American poet and short story…

Whenever I think of Tooting I think of Citizen Smith, the young man who sticks his fist in the air and loudly proclaims: “Power to the People” as he strides out of Tooting Broadway station. For those of you who think Lockdown Madness is setting in, I’ve just recalled a 40-year-old TV comedy, the main character being the loud, ebullient Wolfie Smith, a self-styled Che Guevara who kept us all laughing with his anti-social revolutionary tactics as the leader of the Tooting Popular Front. So fast forward to today and Tooting has given birth to another revolutionary but he’s quite…

There’s a great deal of pompous invective in the literary world, especially when it comes to self-publishing but The Amber Tablets provides a great antidote to those snooty, high brow critics who refuse to read the work of authors who’ve done it for themselves. Author Andrea Kon had a great story to tell. Using authentic accounts from her own relatives she began to uncover details of a little known aspect of Jewish persecution in World War Two. After several rejection slips (JK Rowling’ Harry Potter accrued more than a dozen!) Kon decided to turn to self-publishing with her gripping work…

Time for liberal intellectuals to STFU and listen to someone who really knows about poverty and the problems it causes, says Yvonne Ridley’s book review of ‘Poverty Safari’. She revisits the award-winning book Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey. I’ve never met Darren McGarvey and, depending on his mood, I’m not sure I would welcome the experience but he has written a book which all of us should revisit at least once during the Boris Johnson years. McGarvey’s brutal and unrelenting narrative on his scorching critique of poverty in Britain pumps out excoriating doses of anger on every page and not without justification. We all…

Becoming Eve – the Transformation from an Orthodox Rabbi to Eve

It’s hard to know where to begin with film producer Tasmina Shaikh’s debut movie without spoiling the storyline for cinema-goers but there’s a lavish dose of Bollywood drama with an equally dramatic Scottish backdrop and it was a magnificent experience of soaking up the Scottish flavour at the Edinburgh Premiere. Naturally, there’s lots of music, some scintillating dance scenes and a love triangle with challenging family values at the heart of the story, so bring lots of tissues along with the popcorn. If Shaikh’s name sounds familiar she has acted in a number of popular Urdu drama serials including ‘Des Pardes’ (1999)…

The deterioration began, I believe, around the time of the Blair Government

Surely war crimes tribunals can be established to deal with these suspects?

The Week So Far with Yvonne Ridley

Britain should not use the rest of the world as a dumping ground for rogue citizens, says Yvonne Ridley in the row over revoking Jihadi jack’s citizenship

From Afghanistan – A terrorist Bomb kills 63 at wedding Hall in Kabul