A Love Letter to Bella Sankey

Sometimes It’s Those Who You Love Most Who You Hurt the Most– But in Bella’s Case I’ll Make An Exception and Try To Kill Her With Kindness

Bellay and friends (AI Generated)

A few people have misinterpreted my last blog to Brighton’s Bella Sankey. It wasn’t written out of hatred but love. So I thought I’d make amends with a short letter to Bella.

Andrei Czolak didn't like my letter to Bella

It was favourably received by everyone I sent it to with one exception, the hitherto unknown Cllr. Andrei Czolak, who gives brown nosing a bad name. He let me know that he found my letter to Sankey ‘exceptionally boring and I’ve better things to do with my time’ yet despite this he found time to read it. I guess one can’t please all of the people all of the time.

And just to make sure he got in Bella’s good books he copied her into his email. I just hope he gets his just rewards.

I thought it would only be fair if I shared it with readers of my blog, strictly on the condition they no one shares my sweet words of nothing to Bella!

Tony Greenstein

Monday, 19 October 2026

A Personal Letter to Bella Sankey

My dear Bella,

Below is a link to an Open Letter to yourself and those of your colleagues who agreed to your abysmal statement.

It is said of George Washington that he never told a lie, whereas it could be said of you that you’ve never knowingly told the truth.

Although you are not Jewish you felt entitled to call the Green Party anti-Semitic because it passed the Zionism is Racism motion. I am not aware that you have any expertise on the subject of anti-Semitism, Zionism or racism.

You wrote about ‘the dereliction of duty (which) has allowed the Green Party of England and Wales to sit side by side with the British Union of Fascists and the National Front.’

Anyone who knows anything about British fascism would be aware that Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists ceased operations in July 1940, a mere 86 years ago. It might therefore be a tad difficult to sit side by side with them now!

It’s not as if there is any excuse for your ignorance. If you go to the Dome website there is a section on Lewis Cohen and Fighting the Fascists at Brighton Dome which describes how, when Oswald Moseley came to speak at the Dome, electricians had fixed the wiring so that when Moseley spoke the only sounds coming out were the Marseilles.

You are not only an ignoramus but a charlatan. You pick up bits of information which are then scattered in your brain like scrambled eggs. These are the thought patterns of an opportunist. That you are Leader of Brighton and Hove Labour Group speaks volumes for the calibre of your colleagues.

As the author of the only book about the history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and one of the leaders of the anti-fascist struggle in this city, I am not aware of any contribution you have made to that fight. [See Politics of the far-right never welcome in city] Not least because the Labour Party is the party of the Police who have always done their best to defend fascist marches in this city.

Police protect fascist march in Brighton

I note that you worked for Liberty, Detention Action and Reprieve. You are the kind of person who works for progressive organisations without possessing an ounce of commitment to anything they stand for. Your support for the late unlamented Starmer says everything.

Ambalavaner Sivanandan

Your empty headed statement makes it clear that you are a racist, a Zionist and above all a supporter of the imperialism which is responsible for refugees arriving in this country. As the great anti-racist Ambalavaner Sivanandan said, refugees are here because we were there in their countries.

Your statement defends the Zionism that was responsible for the creation of a ‘Jewish’ racial state in Palestine. A state that was born in ethnic cleansing and terrorism and is now committing genocide.

I wonder how many more Palestinian children have to be burnt alive in their tent encampments by Israeli bombs for you to question Zionism. Or how many more Palestinians have to die for the ‘right to exist’ of a genocidal state?  6 million?

Zionism was a creature of European anti-Semitism and took on its colours. That is why, when Zionism first arose, most Jews saw it as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. As Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, wrote:

 ‘The anti-Semites will be our most dependable friends, The anti-Semitic countries our allies.’

You have an uncanny ability to write about things you know nothing about. You talk about ‘Jewish self-determination’. A completely meaningless phrase. Jews are not a nation. Only nations have the right to self-determination. Jews are members of many nations.

If you think Jews in Britain are a separate nation from the British that is confirmation that it is you who are anti-Semitic. Perhaps you might tell us what Christian or Muslim self-determination is?

I prefer the opinion of Boris Vladeck, the great American Jewish Labour leader, who called the Zionist movement the ‘scab agent’ of Hitler’s Germany, to your vacuous and empty headed rhetoric.

You talk of the ‘two state solution’. There is no such solution. There is just apartheid in what is now a Greater Israel. The so-called two state solution was a cover for the theft and settlement of Palestinian land. That ship has passed.

The two state solution is Partition. That turned out well in India/Pakistan and Ireland, to name but two examples of this imperialist ‘solution’.  As James Connolly said of partition, it would create a carnival of reaction on both sides of the border.

It is not Zack Polanski or the Green Party which is anti-Semitic but you Bella. Of course you will understand none of this because you trade in vacuous soundbites, which saves you the trouble of thinking too deeply.

Zionism is racist because it excludes and others the indigenous people of Palestine. That is why Israel has just passed a death penalty law for Palestinians only. In the words of Netanyahu Israel is not a state of all of its citizens, just its Jewish citizens.

The Zionist Memorial to Israelis Who Died on October 7 - Most of them killed because of the Hannibal Directive

I note that you attended on October 7, the memorial to Israelis who died when the Palestinians broke out of their concentration camp in Gaza. You described them as innocent, despite the occupation of Gaza for over half a century.

Yet you didn’t manage to attend the march in memory of the70,000+ Palestinians who have been murdered in Israel’s genocide. Presumably the 38 Israeli Jewish children who died outweigh the 50,000 or more Palestinian children who were deliberately murdered by Israel’s army. And then you have the audacity to call others racist.

Hundreds march in Brighton to mark three years of genocide in Gaza

You stand in a long tradition Bella of British imperialism which singled out Jews and Zionism for a role in the British Empire. I suggest you read Churchill’s Zionism v Bolshevism of February 1920. Churchill was nothing if not an imperialist.

I have been active in Brighton politics for over half a century. I have known many Labour councillors who were people of principle. Joe Townsend, a Jewish councillor and anti-Zionist who was on the Anti-Nazi League Steering Committee with me in the 70s. Francis Tonks who together with Jack Hazelgrove campaigned to stop the Council from transferring Council Housing to an ALMO. The same type of organisation responsible for the Grenfell fire.

Cllr. Francis Tonks

These people were socialists who believed in and stood for a different kind of society to the neo-liberal warmongering society that Labour presides over today. You are merely a piece of detritus which will soon be forgotten. You stand for nothing apart from yourself. You aren’t fit to shine their shoes.

According to Greg Hadfield, you and your fellow councillors were handpicked by the Labour Zionist Paedophile Ivor Caplin, who the Police and CPS have conspired not to prosecute despite being caught red handed.

I confess to what might be called a conflict of interest. It seems as if the

 only achievement of Brighton Council is the closing of Wellington House, the last Day Centre in Brighton for Adults with Learning Difficulties. My son, Daniel, currently attends the Centre. You cynically held a consultation having made the decision to close it regardless of the outcome.

I guess this is what is meant by ‘self-determination’ but it would appear that it only applies to racists, not the disabled. I guess this is the feminism of imperialism.

Yours as always,

Tony Greenstein

Yesterday I Learnt That Santander has Frozen My Accounts – No Reason Given – No Reason Needed – Opposition to Israel’s Genocide in Gaza is Enough

The British State’s Attack & Banks’ Complicity in Attacking Palestine solidarity Activists is Financial Terrorism

You Can Donate Here 

Update

It would be useful if people email Santander to protest at their outrageous behaviour and ask them if they are happy depriving the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre of vital funding. Email addresses I have for the bank are:

ukbbusinesscomplaints@santander.co.uk, ceo@santander.co.uk,

ConsumerService@santander.co.uk,

ExecutiveCommunications@santander.co.uk,

complaints@santander.co.uk, 

Nearly a year ago I wrote about how the Police and the Security Services were using money laundering legislation, introduced to stop serious crime, to target Palestine solidarity supporters, including myself.

As is normal these days with the Terrorism Act 2000, legislation introduced for one purpose is being used for another purpose, in this case attacking peaceful direct action groups and opponents of Genocide.

It is Financial Terrorism because it is intended to frighten and deter people from taking action against the British State which is actively complicit in the Genocide in Gaza. The State faces an uphill battle to convict me in a trial starting at Kingston Crown Court on August 18^th for ‘inviting support for a proscribed organisation (Hamas)’. This despite the fact that we have a hostile Judge Plashkes KC presiding over it.

Ironically I Received This From Santander Today!

Hence the attempt to intimidate me. The question that springs to mind is whether those responsible for contacting the banks are engaged in trying to pervert the course of justice.

The message I get when I log on

In the past two years I have been debanked by three banks – Nationwide, which is an anti-Palestinian bank, HSBC and First Direct. No reason has ever been given but it’s not hard to work out what was going on. The Financial Ombudsman Service, to which I complained, has proved itself a completely toothless lapdog.

I Received This Yesterday From Santander!

The Police and the National Crime Agency have decided to attack the finances of Palestine solidarity groups. Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine have both had their bank accounts frozen because of an alleged link to Palestine Action, even before the  latters unlawful proscription.

Unity Trust Bank, which is supposed to be a progressive bank, since it’s owned by the trade unions, confirmed at a meeting with Scottish PSC that the freezing of their account was at the behest of the NCA. It seems that ‘serious crime’ today is not robbing a bank, money laundering or human trafficking – it is opposing Genocide in Palestine.

The NCA is one of these organisations that are accountable to no one but wield a great deal of power because their remit is serious crime. However Palestine solidarity has been redefined as ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘terrorism’ so the NCA has become the State’s instrument of choice in the attempt to criminalise solidarity with the Palestinians.

It is not only in this country that the State is employing financial terrorism. Francesca Albanese, the UN Rapporteur for Palestine, has been a target of the Trump regime. Her bank accounts, credit cards and finances have been frozen, all because she has been an outspoken critic of the West’s role in financing and arming Israel’s genocide.

Albanese’s reaction to US sanctions sums up my attitude – ‘What a mafia. But they will not break us.’ The Trump and Starmer regimes are just that – mafia bosses in suits. At least though Trump doesn’t claim to be a human rights lawyer unlike Starver.

The Judges of the International Criminal Court were also targeted by Trump’s sanctions, which include travel bans, asset freezes and denial of services from US companies, for having had the temerity to press war crimes charges and issue a warrant against Netanyahu, the Hitler of our age. The idea of indicting war criminals is not one that our leaders take very kindly given that they may be next in line.

As Ashifa Kassam wrote in respect of Kimberly Prost, a Canadian Judge at the ICC:

For years, she has sat as a judge at the international criminal court, weighing accusations of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity; now she is on the same list as terrorists and those involved in organised crime. “It really was a moment of a bit of disbelief,” she said.

And that is the reality of the financial sanctions that I and others face in Britain. A government which had an iota of morality or principle, would have condemned outright the US sanctions on Albanese and ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan, which the Trump Junta imposed in February 2025.

Starmer and the ‘Labour’ Government said nothing and quietly went along with everything Trump decreed, ending up with Charles Mountbatten being sent to Washington to flatter Trump.

Capitalism is now run by politicians who owe more to Al Capone than Thomas Paine and the Rights of Man. This is the context in which I have once again been faced with anonymous allegations, the nature of which I am not allowed to see or know, being used to freeze my accounts and those of the charity of which I’m a trustee.

For the past year Santander has intermittently carried out 3 investigations into the accounts of the Brighton Trust and related organisations. It found nothing but I always suspected that their justification of ‘getting to know their customer’ was simply a pretext.

I first found out what was happening when Stripe, who handle payment processing for the Chuffed crowdfunder which we set up to appeal for donations to the Al Tafawk Children’s Centre in Jenin sent me a cryptic message saying that ‘A recent payout to your connected bank account failed’. It soon became clear why it had failed.

Without any warning Santander had frozen a total of 8 accounts. The only one spared was that of my son, which I administer. When I contacted the bank no one would speak to me from the department in question.

It was not until June 5, three days after the freezing of my accounts that they sent me an email, which said nothing other than that ‘We will arrange for a specialist complaints manager to contact you at their earliest opportunity.’ They still have not contacted me.

It is as if they were too ashamed to even try to defend their decision.

It means that I have had to take emergency action to ensure that funds raised for the children of the Al Tafawk Centre are secured. To attack the ability to operate of a charity raising funds for a children’s centre is despicable. They suffer enough at the hands of the terrorist IDF without facing the terrorism of the British state acting via its banking system.

The faceless men who run the National Crime Agency in conjunction with tame bankers are, like their counterparts in the Metropolitan Police, devoted to supporting the Genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing underway in the West Bank.

I am taking legal advice over my next steps and without giving anything away I will not hesitate to challenge the freeze in court if necessary. I intend to force Santander to justify their actions and to release the money. To do this I will need to raise money so I ask people to contribute to my Legal Crowdfunder. As Chuffed is based in Australia it is beyond the reach of Starver’s mafia and his police state mates.

However this whole debanking exercise needs to become a political issue. Banking is essential for anyone to function in the modern economy. To take peoples’ banking facilities away because they don’t conform to the state’s expectations is financial terrorism. Banks need to be forced to justify any attempt to debank someone.

The ideal solution would be for the banks to be nationalised. They are too important to be left in the hands of the private sector. When they get into trouble, as was the case in 2008, then they come running to the state to bail them out. If they are ‘too big to fail’ which is how they were able to secure billions of pounds from the state in a bailout, then they are too big to be owned by private shareholders.

Ivor Caplin caught by a sex sting

I have no doubt that these dirty tricks tactics by the state are intended as a prelude to my trial at Kingston Crown Court. But whilst the Secret State is targeting my bank accounts and those of other opponents of genocide, paedophiles like Ivor Caplin – former Defence Minister and former Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement go scot free.

Caplin was the subject of a sting in January 2025, when he tried to liaise with a young boy for the purposes of sex. 18 months later he still has not been charged. Of course the police have form over this as Jimmy Saville might testify. As do Sussex Police which turned a blind eye to Saville and another prominent paedophile and Charles Mountbatten’s friend, the Bishop of Lewes Peter Ball.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYKYkhRwzU8

Ivor Caplin arrested for attempt to meet 15 year old boy

However Sussex Police did arrest a friend of mine, Greg Hadfield, a former journalist on the Sunday Times and Daily Mail, for exposing Caplin’s predeliction for hard core pornography and sex with young boys on Twitter.

Jeremy Scahill on Sky TV About Israel's Burning Alive of Children

It can't be often that a Perjurer is Given a Police Award!

Hadfield was the subject of a complaint by a leading Brighton Zionist Fiona Sharpe, friend of Sussex Chief Constable Jo Shiner, who was awarded a top police award. Sharpe cannot but have been aware of Caplin’s extra-mural activities as he advertised them on X. Another who clearly knew was his ex-boyfriend and now Trade Minister, Peter Kyle the MP for Hove. Corruption

But whatever dirty tricks the Police and National Crime Agency get up to between now and my trial they will not deter me. As should be obvious from my arrest at the Nakba demonstration for defying Mark Rowley’s ban on the use of the words Globalise the Intifada.

So when we hear of two-tier policing we should remember that the Police and the Crown Prosecution Service, have always protected the rich and the powerful. That is why Andrew Mountbatten was able to get away with raping trafficked girls without as much a whisper from the Metropolitan Police. Their only concern is leaked documents.

But we should never forget that this is about the British State continuing to support war crimes such as the burning alive of people in tents as Israel bombs them mercilessly or the targeting of hospitals in Lebanon - three of which have been attacked in the last week. Attacking a state’s health facilities is a speciality of the barbarous ‘Jewish’ state.

Brighton & Hove Labour Council Attacks the Disabled By Closing Down Wellington House, The Last Day Centre for Adults with Learning Difficulties

Starmer Labour Has an Obsession With Attacking the Disabled – The First Thing They Did in Government Was to Attack Their Benefits

Save Wellington House campaign protests outside budget council - Brighton & Hove Local Democracy Reporting Service

In the last 20 years Brighton and Hove  Council has closed the Beaconsfield Villas Day Centre (2005), Cromwell Road Day Centre (2008), the Connaught Centre (2013/14), Buckingham Road Centre (2015) and the Belgrave Day Centre (2016).

The Petition Can Be Signed here

My son, Daniel, used to go to the Belgrave Centre in Portslade before that was closed. At the time we were reassured that there was space in the Wellingon House Centre. Now they are closing that too and hope to farm it out to the voluntary sector, a mishmash of different facilities, all of which are overstretched. This is privatisation by another name.

All the Labour councillors were handpicked and vetted, according to Greg Hadfield by Ivor Caplin, the former Hove MP and Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement who was caught in a sting by paedophile busters. Because of who he is he still has not been charged nor is he even on bail. Starmer, with his turning of a blind eye to Peter Mandelson and his ennoblement of Lord Doyle, despite having canvassed for a paedophile Sean Morton, who was facing charges at the time.

The ideology that says that disabled people are surplus to requirements and dispensable did not begin with Brighton and Hove Council.

From 1909 until 1979, California forcibly sterilised more than 20,000 women, third of the total in the United States. In Mein Kampf Hitler wrote that

What I wrote in my Argus Opinion in 2016 when the Belgrave Centre was closed is still relevant. We had a Tory Govt. then & a Labour one now - but in essence there's no difference

There is today one state, in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.

Hitler Attacked What He Called ‘Useless Eaters’ and ‘Life Unworthy of Life’ and thus began the policies that ended with the so-called Euthanasia program, which many consider the beginning of the holocaust.

I’m not saying that Brighton and Hove Council or even Starmer’s Labour are going down that road but the singling out of disability benefits and services for the disabled reflects the same mindset. That is why mental health has always been the cindarella of the NHS.

Councillor Mitchie is driving through the closure of Wellington House under the guise of improving the service - she hasn't yet bothered to actually visit it

Cllr. Mitchie Alexander is the cabinet member responsible for Adult Social Care. She is quoted in the local Argus as saying that

It is not just about making a saving. It is an opportunity to assess what provision people with learning disabilities and their families would like to see offered in the future.”

Which is the kind of mindless word salad that you expect from Starmer Labour. It’s like saying, as Jonathan Turner of UK Lawyers for Israel did, that Israel’s starvation of people in Gaza that was an opportunity to tackle their obesity!

There is though no pretending that the intended closure of Wellington House is driven by anything other than financial considerations, austerity and the cuts agenda. Jacob Taylor, the Deputy Leader of the Council was quoted as saying that if the day centre remained open, the council would have to find the savings elsewhere in the adult social care budget.

10 years ago we were fighting the same fight - to save another centre - now Brighton's 'Labour' Council is intent on further 'savings'

 At a committee meeting on Thursday, February 19, the Brighton and Hove Parent Carers’ Council’s (PaCC) Fiona England said the day centre had capacity for at least 24 people and that the proposed closure would affect 21 adults, mostly in their forties, fifties and sixties.

According to Ms England 17 eligible young people are due to leave full-time education in the summer and their transition from children’s services to adult social care was already a source of concern. Closure of the day centre would add to that concern.

Ms England also raised concerns that other service providers lacked the capacity to absorb and meet the need of those currently cared for at Wellington House.

However the Labour Group is, at the moment, determined to plough ahead with their plans unless they are stopped.

There is a statutory consultation due to take place with carers and those affected from April onwards for 12 months but these ‘consultations’ are more a case of going through the motions than a genuine exercise in seeing whether the closure of Wellington House should go ahead.

We know this because Steve Hook spoke to staff at Wellington House informing them of the closure last week and got by all accounts a frosty reception. Likewise Cameron Brown, Head of the Specialist Disability Service wrote a letter on 27 January informing carers of the outcome of the Council meeting that took the decision to close Wellington House on 26 February (!)

Although he announced the formal consultation process and statutory review of the needs of those using the Wellington Centre it is clear that these processes are merely going through the motions before implementing the closure.

Why the Council is Lying Over the Consultation Process

The Council has issued 3 documents before making the budget proposals which make their position crystal clear.

They are

1.          Day Options Briefing Document – issued December 25

2.          Reprovision of Council provided Adult Learning Disability Services – Day Options Wellington House  Issued 9 January 2026

3.          Budget Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) Template 2026/27 Service Users Issued 20 Jan 2026

These documents make it crystal clear that:

The purpose of the proposals is not, as Cllr. Alexander said an
  ‘opportunity to assess what provision people with learning disabilities want in the future’ but solely with financial savings in mind. The consultations are merely to pay lip service to peoples’ needs and to provide a justification for the cuts.

The alternative provides do not exist or do not have the capacity to absorb the present, let alone new people.

The document entitled Reprovision of Council provided Adult Learning Disability has under Objectives just one objective and that is at 4.1 – Financial. There are no other objectives.

The document entitled ‘Day Options Briefing Document - Dec 25’ lists at Section 5 – Market Costs & Benchmarking 6 Providers and this is what it concludes under ‘Summary of benchmarking’:

That just 2 out of the 6 providers ‘have the skills and experience to meet the needs of the 9 people with complex needs. These are Ambito and Aspirations.’

Neither of these providers have the capacity required.

Of the other 14 people their needs could potentially be met.

This is back of the fag packet stuff dressed up in the appropriate jargon. It is clear that the Council doesn’t have a clue as to the alternative provision and that any closure of Wellington House will be a leap in the dark.

The main objective, as the Council makes clear, is financial.  A saving of £400,000. This is pathetic even by Brighton and Hove Council’s own lamentable standards.

However we don’t accept the whole concept of the consultation process.  Firstly and most obviously because the decision will be taken by the Council Cabinet who can simply proceed to ignore the outcome of the consultation.

Secondly the Consultation will not be run by those who are neutral or disinterested. 

Thirdly consulting present users and their representatives ignores all those potential users in the years ahead who will have no input. Even if the Council were to ensure that no one presently using the Centre was disadvantaged, the effect of any closure would be to remove the possibility of anyone in the future gaining access to Wellington House’s facilities or those provide in the alternative.

At Wellington House users can access a whole range of facilities and expertise which would be lost in a private sector provider. The privater/charitable sector has no legal obligations unlike the Council.

What is clear though is that this ‘Labour’ Government under Starmer is determined to cut back local authority financing as it expands the ‘defence’ i.e. war budget.  Bombs and missiles to Israel and Ukraine are a higher priority than basic local services.

However parents and carers aren’t taking this lying down and a campaign is being launched to prevent the closure of Brighton and Hove’s last day Centre. We lobbied the Council Budget meeting on 26 February and the first meeting of parents and carers was held earlier this week and a Petition has also been launched.

If you are living in Brighton and Hove then please sign it here.

In the coming weeks then there will be further activity.

Tony Greenstein

Many thanks to Sarah Booker-Lewis, Local democracy reporter  whose reporting I have plundered!

 

See Closure of Wellington House, Brighton, would be 'devastating'

Councillors make promise over plans to close Brighton day centre