Showing posts with label Jeremy Corbyn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jeremy Corbyn. Show all posts
Fra HughesIn undermining Corbyn in a Machiavellian-type coup, the new Labour leader Keir Starmer was supported by the establishment, supported by the mainstream media, supported by Tony Blair, and supported by Zionist "Israel".

First Published In
Al Mayadeen English
24-January-2021


Jeremy Corbyn the one-time leader of the British Labour Party whose leadership was undermined from within the party by Blairite centrists and without the party through a broad-based attack claiming he was an anti-Semitic, a communist and a pro-IRA supporter. The great hero of the left, the hope for a future generation of socialists and left of center voters, has disappeared under the leadership of Keir Starmer.

In undermining Corbyn in a Machiavellian-type coup, Keir Starmer was supported by the establishment, supported by the mainstream media, supported by Tony Blair, and supported by Zionist "Israel". Corbyn's leadership within the party became untenable after this orchestrated smear campaign prevented him from winning the British General Election in 2019 and ushered Boris Johnson and the conservative party back into power.

Once Corbyn had resigned, Starmer stepped forward to take on the mantle of leader of the Labour Party. He withdrew the party whip from Jeremy Corbyn, in effect expelling the latter from the Labour Party.

With elections due on Thursday 2nd May 2024 for the British Parliament, it looks very likely Keir Starmer will not allow Jeremy Corbyn to run in his constituency of Islington North in London as the official Labour candidate.

Corbyn was the man who brought tens of thousands of new members to the Labour Party.

Corbyn was the man who inspired a new generation of young voters; the man who was hailed at Glastonbury festival with a chorus of ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’ by the tens of thousands in attendance; the man who could have led Britain away from the Blair-Cameron-Johnson type of Conservative neoliberal and centrist politics and into a new space on the left for the many and not for the few.

It appears that if Corbyn wishes to continue to represent the people of Islington North in London, he must stand as an independent socialist candidate.

The Labour Party under Keir Starmer has been led further to the right. It is to all intents and purposes a shadow Conservative Party.

This transition from Labour's traditional socialist background to a new form of center-right politics completes the transition from Labour socialism to Labour capitalism.

Like the Democratic and Republican parties of the United States of America, while these parties profess to be different from one another, once in power there is very little to separate their foreign and domestic policies.

While the Democrats claim to represent the working class when they talk about Medicare, about addressing homelessness, about educating the poor etc … once they are in power, it is the shadow government, it is the establishment, it is the deep state with its corporate and capitalist interests that continue what seems to be a seamless transition from Democrat to Republican President with no major changes in American domestic or foreign policy.

They are two parties with one overriding agenda, supporting capitalism and the free market to the detriment of the many and in favor of the few.

The late American actor Robin Williams once said, ‘Politicians should wear sponsors jackets like Nascar drivers, then we know who owns them’. How prophetic is that!

Keir Starmer is merely following in the footsteps and the policies of Tony Blair, the man who brought us the war on Iraq, and is thus finalizing the transformation of the British Labour Party from a left-wing socialist working-class movement to a corporate, capitalist version of the American Democratic Party.

As trade union movements in Britain begin to divest from the Labour Party, they will quickly be replaced by the captains of industry, the barons of the oil companies, the banks and the City of London. They will heavily fund the new Labour program that pushes the neoliberal agenda to the forefront of British politics.

While Keir Starmer and his cabal in the shadow cabinet continue the witch-hunt against socialists within the Labour Party, the nation with its two-party political system, the duopoly of power, from Conservative to Labour and from Labour to Conservative, will finally see an end to socialism as a potential for change within the body politics of the British Parliament, and Britain would be condemned to the Democrat-Republican false narrative division with the accumulation of the wealth of the nation in the hands of a few super-rich, super-powerful leaders of the political-industrial complex.

Corbyn’s Vision to re-nationalize the utilities of oil and gas, water, trains, to offer free education, free adequate health care for all at the point of delivery, has disappeared.

Jeremy Corbyn may very well be re-elected as an independent socialist MP for Islington North in London, but he will have no speaking privileges, no powerbase, he will have no influence on party manifestos, he may well be a political prophet but like many prophets, he will be nothing more than a voice in the wilderness.

There are socialists in the Labour Party but the Labour Party is no longer a socialist movement.

In the absence of a revolution, Britain is destined like nearly all the other European countries to be ruled by millionaires dressed in the clothes of party political manifestos, who care nothing for the people and everything for the Millionaire class that many of them belong to.

Jeremy Corbyn a lifelong socialist, a leader, a visionary, a portrait of a generation that has put its hope in, and has fallen by the wayside.

We may never see his like again.

While the Liberal party made a huge gain in the North Shropshire by-election, overturning a Conservative majority to gain the seat, the real loser was not the Conservative Party but the British Labour Party who, at the last election, came with a meager 3000 votes.

They were humiliated into a distant third.

Labour under Starmer is staring into the Abyss.

𒍹The opinions mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Al Mayadeen, but rather express the opinion of its writer exclusively.

Fra Hughes is a columnist with Al Mayadeen.

Jeremy Corbyn And The North Shropshire Conservative Defeat

Mick Hall The whole point of political party's like Labour, the Tories and Lib-Dems is to maintain the status quo so the banksters, city slickers, the monarchy, aristocracy, and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam that makes up the English ruling classes can sleep safely in their beds. 

True, these party's may quibble over this and that, but when it boils down to it they always support the status quo even when it's clearly against the best interest of the majority of people.

There are many examples of this in history. WW1 was the worst, the Iraq war came a close second. It's indicative today when with a flick of a switch the ruling classes have gone from being Sinophiles who eulogised trade with China to placing sanctions on it. Pray, tell me how will this help the average person? Please don't tell me this issue is about human rights. When did the UK state ever care about human rights? Need I mention Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Libya, apartheid South Africa, Ireland, the list is endless.

The reason Jeremy Corbyn was treated so harshly by the state apparatus, the MSM, and their agents of influence, was because they feared he might upset the applecart and gain enough support to tear up the rule book which ensures the status quo.

Once Starmer became LP leader the status quo became normalised again and increasingly the left of the party were marginalized. All talk of anti-Semitism within the Labour party disappeared as if by magic from the MSM.

Starmer's refusal over the last year to face Johnson and his government down, despite its record of U-turns and failed systems to combat Covid-19 has allowed Boris Johnson to set the agenda over and again.

Yet still comrades cling to the LP, despite Starmer using the LP left as a doormat to wipe his feet on. For Christ sake today he is even trading under the same slogan as Johnson, Build Back Better. He is a man who all but sat on his hands whilst approximately 55,500 thousand people died of Covid-19, and refused in its first draft to oppose draconian legislation which curtailed our human rights. He is a creature of the state, a ruling class toady, a member of a privileged class who benefits from the status quo, just as he was when he was head of the Crown Prosecution Service.

You cannot reform a party which is led by a knight of the realm, an agent of influence of the ruling classes. Only a new party will give self respect, Sadly at the moment there is little sign the Corbyn leadership is going down this road.

It's heartbreaking, as one of the biggest achievement of the Corbyn years was how Corbynism united the left, something which had never happened before. Now the left is hanging by a thin vine, beginning to atomise out in different directions.

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Build Back Better ➖ Better For Whom?

From People And Nature Some thoughts on the election from Liverpool Riverside. A guest post by John Graham Davies written not long after the devastating defeat for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in the UK General Election. 

Listening to Radio 4 on Tuesday morning was a lesson in the gloating ruthlessness of our ruling class. We had just heard a clip of Jeremy Corbyn giving a dignified, measured assessment of his, and our, calamitous loss in the election. Corbyn explained why it was necessary for him to stay on for a short transitional period.

Cut to the studio: a cackling young BBC journalist, with an accent which sounded like it came out of one our more expensive public schools, armed with the obligatory fragment of Latin. 

Jeremy Corbyn addressing a crowd outside St George’s Hall, Liverpool, in 2016

“What’s the opposite of mea culpa? Ha ha ha! Not much self-criticism there, is there? Bit of a non mea culpa if you ask me.”

This braying buffoon, like so many of the other highly paid liars at the BBC, lives in so much of a bubble that he seems unaware of how much in contempt most of the British public now hold him. Him and his beloved BBC, that pompous foghorn of the state.

A right-wing Labour member of parliament was sharing the studio and made no attempt to silence the attack, or challenge it.

We all know that the knives are out for Jeremy Corbyn, but they are also aimed at our movement as a whole, and her silence was a reminder of that.

This election result, according to those who hold the wellbeing of our class most dearly to heart – well paid journos; former Labour politicians now earning nice salaries fronting radio shows; Tory politicians who sportingly feel it is “so vital” for our “democracy” to have a “proper opposition”; Labour MPs who have spent the past three years slandering the party that generates their generous salary and pension arrangements – all demand (for the good health of the Labour Party of course!) that this result must mark the definitive defeat of Corbynism as a movement.

If we mean by Corbynism something that was attempting to build a broad socialist coalition going beyond Westminster elections, then I don’t think it has necessarily failed – yet.

But I think we have to be honest. Last Thursday was a catastrophic defeat and we know what will follow in its wake: spiralling worries about money, how to feed our children, mental health problems.

All these – bad already – will get worse. We will see more homeless people on the streets, and some of us, particularly elderly and disabled people, will die younger as a result of cuts and our health service being given away to the sniggering spivs of the City and Wall Street.

It will be harder for our unions to rebuild and fight back. Racism, violence and the far right will grow.

There are things that we can do to try and counter all this, but this is what the victory of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) over Corbyn last Thursday means.

For that is what the election was.

The victory was not only Johnson’s. It also belongs to those on the right of the party (i.e. most of the PLP) who have worked night and day for the past three years to undermine Corbyn and the ideas of the movement which made Corbyn’s leadership possible.

We don’t forget the shocked and disappointed face of Stephen Kinnock at the exit poll announcement in 2017. He was smiling smugly on Question Time the day after this election. A defeat for Corbyn was vital for these careerist leeches, and they worked might and main for it. The bulk of them remain.

Before I move on to Brexit, it’s important to briefly mention the context, the Labour Party context, which has fuelled much of the scatter gun anger felt by many working class communities.

Others have written about the effect that Labour cuts have had. The fact that these originated in Tory government funding cuts to Labour councils was of no comfort to those seeing their services shredded. For many, Labour’s claim to be “for the many” must have rung hollow.

The fact that some of this righteous anger took the form for support for Brexit, and in many cases a little Englander mentality closely related to racism, should be no surprise.

One of the first acts of the Blair government, when it first took office in 1997, was to capitulate in the face of an assault by the media on “asylum seekers” and “economic migrants”. Fifteen years down the line, some Labour MPs were still talking about creating “hostile environments”. This was all manure for the far right and racism.

Coming out of that context, Brexit was a big factor. But, for me, neither the Brexit issue nor its effect on the election result are as straightforward as some comrades claim.

It was a difficult issue to deal with, given the twin demands of on the one hand our movement’s much vaunted (though seldom realised) tradition of internationalism and anti-racism, and on the other of recognising the hatred felt towards the institutions of the EU by those working class communities decimated by Thatcher, and then left to rot, clutching their lottery tickets in hope, by Blairism and, by extension in their eyes, the EU.

So it was a difficult issue and how it played out in parliament did us no favours. But it was certainly a big factor in the election result.

But so was the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. Or should I say, so was the portrayal of the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

In the canvassing that I did, it was clear that a sizeable number of voters had doubts about Corbyn. These doubts were often vague. Yes, some voiced ludicrous claims about the abolition of the army (once), allowing the rest of the world in (if only it were true!), meetings with the IRA, and, of course, antisemitism. But when asked for details about these fears, they collapsed quite quickly into an inarticulate sense of unease.

Voters were unsure or hostile, but often found it difficult to express the exact nature of their opposition to Corbyn. There was a general sense that he was dodgy, weak, and probably a racist.

The effect of the media lies and smears has been for a thin layer of disapproving dust, disapproving of Corbyn in person, to settle on a lot of people. This shouldn’t surprise us, and the media campaign should not on its own have been enough to have turned a significant section of the electorate against Corbyn.

The problem was that the campaign wasn’t properly challenged – for two reasons.

Firstly, a large and very vocal section of the PLP was noisily reinforcing the smears, or in many instances instigating them. Our own MP in Riverside, Louise Ellman, had carte blanche to lie about Corbyn and about local pro-Corbyn members. For three years she had open access to every TV channel and newspaper column in the country to spread this filth. She was energetically supported in this, both locally by a small group of Liverpool councillors, and nationally by a network of MPs, Dame Margaret Hodge being only the most prominent amongst many.

As a side note, Ellman’s fantasies about antisemitism reached their comic nadir when she claimed on national radio to be able to sense that Jeremy Corbyn had anti-Semitic thoughts, even though Jeremy didn’t himself know he was having them. Twenty years ago there was a psychic called Doris Stokes who used to earn a good living at the London Palladium peddling this kind of thing. If Ellman can add the laying-on of hands to her repertoire, she might get a call from the late Doris’s agent.

The hostile, unremittingly false media campaign was out of our control. But right-wing Labour MPs shouldn’t have been. MPs like Ellman and Hodge should have been de-selected or expelled two years ago.

Unfortunately there was opposition to this course of action from most of the leadership around Corbyn, and by some on the left. Certainly, in our Constituency Labour Party (CLP), there was far too great an appetite from its leadership to hide behind “advice” from anti-Corbyn regional officials, and carry on a kind of “peaceful co-existence”. This “advice” was then marketed as “instructions” to the membership, preventing free discussion about the need to have Open Selection, or to discuss the slanders aimed at the most prominent and staunch pro-Corbyn members (e.g. Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Chris Williamson).

So the failure to deal with those in the PLP hell bent on destroying Corbyn’s leadership was a serious mistake in my view, and permitted the character assassination to continue unabated for three years. We should have protected him and our fellow comrades better.

The second factor which allowed this paper-thin veneer of disapproval to settle on Corbyn – for some of our electorate at least – was the failure to robustly challenge the various witch hunts, most centrally the fake antisemitism campaign. We should have been clearer and, in Chris Williamson’s words, less apologetic.

Antisemitism is the oldest and – for the numbers killed, and the chilling industrial efficiency of the Holocaust, among other reasons – the foulest of the various racisms in our racist country. And antisemitism still exists throughout our society.

But it is at its most ideological in our ruling class and within the far right. As recently as the noughties, a Tory front bencher characterised the problems of the Tory Party as being centred on Michael Howard, Oliver Letwin and Charles Saatchi because … “could they know how Englishmen felt?”. This isn’t a slip in language, an ambiguous mural, a re-tweet of an obscure anti-Semitic meme or a harmless joke about Jewishness. It’s conscious, ideological racism.

The Labour Party has no reason to be defensive about its record fighting antisemitism. Had it not been for the labour movement in general, with the Labour Party at its heart, antisemitism would not have been challenged at Cable Street. This fight against Oswald Mosley was carried out against the wishes of the Jewish Board of Deputies, but with the support of vast numbers of Labour Party members, many of them Jewish. And we have no reason to be apologetic or defensive about antisemitism now.

Allowing ourselves to be driven onto the defensive had a negative effect in two ways.

Firstly, for those who were inclined to be taken in by the fake claims, our defensiveness and unending apologies made it look suspicious – as if we had indeed been up to something.

Secondly, for those who saw the smears for what they were, a political campaign to destabilise the Corbyn movement, our repeated apologies were a puzzle, demoralising, or worse. For these people, Corbyn’s repeated self-flagellation in the face of a fake campaign appeared strange. I have heard numerous people say so. For some, it took the shine off his well-earned reputation for plain speaking and probity. For others it appeared weak.

Since the election result, the witch-hunters have renewed their campaign with confidence. They have to be challenged robustly and directly.

The result of this prevarication and compromise was that some in the leadership ended up actually participating in the witch hunt. Much has been written about Momentum’s degeneration, both in terms of its democracy and its participation in the witch hunt. This was eventually echoed in the CLPs.

From being initially staunch opponents (at least vocally) of the witch hunt, some leading left members in our CLP ended up supporting it, or urging silence in the face of the suspensions. Solidarity with those suspended locally became weaker. And this was only an echo of what was going on in the national leadership circle.

As far as I understand, Chris Williamson’s expulsion was discussed by John McDonnell and his advisors – and McDonnell maintained a deafening silence when Williamson was suspended. At around the same time, McDonnell appeared in a cosy interview with Alistair Campbell, the snake oil salesman who sold us the mass murder in Iraq. During this chat, McDonnell chummily told Campbell that he’d happily have Campbell back in the party.

So in the same week we had two things: the strongest voice in parliament defending Corbyn being thrown to the wolves, and cosy overtures being made to a notorious Blairite liar.

I found this change in McDonnell quite shocking, and, if I’m perfectly honest, demoralising.

I felt the same shock listening to comrades locally who were quite happy to watch as a succession of innocent comrades were thrown under the bus on spurious charges, and who seemed indifferent to the fact that local right-wing councillors were behind this, routinely running to the hostile press, slandering local members, creating stress, health problems and family conflict.

Loss of solidarity at the top was followed by the same thing in our CLP.

Demoralisation and drift away from the Party has been evident on social media for two years, but has speeded up in the last nine months. Those who have left were among the most politically conscious and experienced Corbyn supporters. Momentum membership has plummeted. There has been an initiative by some ex-Momentum members, and others concerned about the absence of a democratic grass roots movement, to set up a national Left Alliance. This may still go somewhere.

But the Party was seriously weakened at the grass roots before this election was called. You could see it at the various rallies, which whilst still outshining the Tories by a country mile, did not have the size or fervour of 2017.

So, where do we go from here? Is the Labour Party the vehicle we need to bring about radical, fundamental social change? Is it up to the task? Can it even play a part in a wider movement?

I’m asking that question because this article is aimed at those party members who do not want a return to the free-market, capital-friendly Labour Party of the past, which is being presented to us as inevitable.

If you can’t face that, there are two alternatives, it seems to me: 

We stay inside the Party, and make sure we get as good a leader as we can, continuing, as far as is possible, in the spirit of the Corbyn movement’s ideas. This will involve an urgent and determined fight to democratise the Party: open meetings, no limits on discussion, rotation of CLP officers.
We join with others, those socialists who remained outside, in a broad, democratic, grassroots movement.

I think we should do both. I don’t suggest this though without misgivings.

A close political friend told me four years ago that he wouldn’t be joining because the Labour Party was corrupt, pro-imperialist, and was incapable of change. Fuelling illusions in its capacity to do so would only bring about disappointment and alienation from politics for a large number of people. That comment has popped into my head a good deal recently.

I have to say that my own experience of the party is that its machinery has not changed much since a lot of us joined in 2015. The party’s bureaucracy remains out of democratic control, and its disciplinary processes are opaque and corrupt. Despite some limited improvements, attempts to change these things have essentially failed.

However, we do have some things in our favour. Half a million voices – while they remain – can make a lot of noise. Two or three hundred thousand people, a lot of them young and previously unengaged with politics, have experienced a very intense political education: the importance of trade unions, of fighting social injustice, learning about the Palestinian struggle. This knowledge and experience won’t go away.

The question is, will that knowledge now become active, part of an ongoing struggle, or will it turn to disappointment and disillusion. And if we do continue to try to change the course of this massive, undemocratic tanker that is the Labour Party, do we do it by trying to accommodate those on the right whose careers and material interests are bound up with a political ideology alien to ours?

In my view, the right wing of the Labour Party is a representative of capital within the workers’ movement. It acts as an agency of capital. Without defeating it, there can be no democratic socialist movement. It is acting now, ruthlessly, to try to extinguish our movement and our hopes. We need to confront it, without compromise, and re-build our trade unions and grass roots organisation. Our leaders can’t do this, we have to.

The Radio 4 programme I mentioned at the beginning of this article continued with the same journalists speculating on the next Labour leader. As if to reinforce how detached they are, one of these hired mouthpieces opined that the right-wing Labour MP Jess Phillips was a real, viable contender.

He continued, “those fanatical Corbynistas from 2015, they’ll all have disappeared in a week or so!”

Let’s prove them wrong.

■ More election comments on People & Nature: Nightmare on Downing Street (Gabriel Levy, 16 December), and After the election: standing up to the global rise of nationalism (Martin Beveridge, 17 December).

⏭ Keep up with People And Nature.

Confronting The Agents Of Capital ➤ A Corbynista’s Dilemma

Mike Craig surveys the perfidy that helped undo the Corbyn leadership of the British Labour Party.

Everyone, except notably the mainstream Media, has been commenting profusely on the recently leaked report on The Labour Party's internal investigation, entitled The work of The Labour Party's Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014-2019.

Several Left-wing writers and bloggers have dissected the report and catalogued offending snippets of social media communications in order to show that there was an organised and concerted campaign to undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Party. These highlighted excerpts do indeed prove that this was the case.

It appears that the report was commissioned by the current General Secretary, Jenny Formby, with the aim of pinning the blame for the failure to investigate antisemitism on her predecessor Iain McNicol, together with leading members of the Witch-finder General's office, AKA The Governance and Legal Unit.

The person(s) who leaked the report and those writers who have investigated it, listing the names of the culprits involved in this activity and the evidence against them, have done the Public a service.

Of course this is not how Corbyn's successor Keir Starmer sees it. No, for Starmer, the most pressing issue is to hunt down the whistle-blower. Starmer has form in criminalising those who act in the public interest. He was instrumental in the fast-tracking of the extradition of Julian Assange and in pressurising the Swedish authorities to take this route.

Starmer was part of the so-called 'Chicken coup' in 2016, and was among those MPs who resigned. He was not an innocent bystander while all of this underhand activity was going on, and as it has turned out recently, he had a lot to gain from it.

There is evidence in the leaked report that investigations into alleged incidents of antisemitism were deliberately archived rather than being dealt with. The aim being to show that the Corbyn Leadership didn't take the issue seriously, and that therefore Corbyn himself must be antisemitic. Although this tactic did have some effect, it didn't undermine the support for Corbyn among party members and the general public to the extent that the conspirators had hoped for. They needed another weapon to supplement this one, and that appeared when the General election was called in 2017.

The report shows that this clique worked against their own party during the election campaign. They would rather have had the Tories remain in power so long as this meant the end of the Corbyn leadership. This was a step too far!

This was no longer a battle between the Right and the Left in the Labour Party. The chicken coup from the previous year had now developed into a real coup d’etat.

The dictionary definition of a coup d’etat is 'the forcible removal of an existing government from power through violent means'.

Well let's look at that definition.

Was the Labour Party the government in power? No, but there is no doubt that the 2,700 votes by which it fell short in the general election were only a fraction of what it lost due to the negative campaign tactics of the conspirators. The LP would be in power today if there had been no conspiracy!

Was violence used in order to keep the said government from power? It is my understanding that If you know that your actions will cause loss of life, then you are deliberately committing an act of violence.

We don't need to look at the leaked report for evidence of this violence. Since 2010, 200,000 people have died due to cuts in public services, and a further 150,000 have died due to the welfare reform bill. The Corbyn manifesto contained plans to end the causes of these deaths. Those MPs, officials and staff of the Labour party involved in securing their own Party's defeat knew this to be the case. They are guilty of malice aforethought in the execution of their crime.

The plotters had a close shave in the 2017, and they needed to ensure that the results were more definitive the next time. Enter Sir Keir, leading the elephant of Brexit into the room just in time to save the day. Finally Corbyn threw the towel in after the 2019 election, an election, it must be remembered, would not have taken place if the previous one hadn't been sabotaged!

Of course no one could have predicted the current crisis, but I think it goes without saying that if the Corbyn government had been in power for the last two years, Britain would not now have the second highest death toll in the World from covid19.

Not a bloodless Coup by any stretch of the imagination!

Mike Craig is a member of Left Horizons.

Not So Bloodless Coup

From The Guardian a view of how Jeremy Corbyn's leadership contributed to the disastrous election result for the British Labour Party.  
By Jonathan Freedland

A 1970s hard-left clique led the party into a dead end – and it’s the poor and vulnerable who will pay the price.

We can skip the first stage of grief. A result like this leaves no room for denial. Let’s move instead to the next stage: anger. We can feel a deep and bitter fury at what five more years of Boris Johnson will mean – at what his government, armed with such a mandate, will do. It will allow him to pursue a hard Brexit, to cosy up to Donald Trump and to trample on our democratic norms and judicial restraints. It will risk the union. It will allow him to ignore the poorest and most vulnerable, the children going to school hungry, to abandon the people whose lives and communities have been made thin by a lost decade of austerity and shrunken services – a decade that will now stretch, like a prison sentence, to 15 years.

We can be angry at the Tories for winning this election, but we must feel an equal rage for the people who let them do it. I am speaking of those who led the main party of opposition down a blind alley that ended in Labour’s worst election performance since the 1930s – a performance that broke new records for failure. Look upon the scale of that calamity: to lose seats to a government in power for nine lean years, a government seeking a fourth term that is almost never granted, a cruel government so divided it purged two former chancellors and some of its best-known MPs, led by a documented liar and fraud. A half-functioning opposition party would have wiped the floor with this Tory party. Instead, Labour was crushed by it.

Continue reading @  The Guardian.

This Is A Repudiation Of Corbynism ➤ Labour Needs To Ditch The Politics Of The Sect

From the Indo, and written prior to the UK general election. Miriam O'Callaghan is scathing of the media treatment of  Jeremy Corbyn. 

By Miriam O'Callaghan

Today's political parrots are using confected and calculated controversy to belittle the values of people like Jeremy Corbyn.

A few years ago, I told a former political colleague that I admired Jeremy Corbyn. They laughed. "God, you're gas". The exchange went like this.

Jeremy Corbyn? Sure he's useless. He's a joke.

Really? How is he useless? How is he a joke?

Well, I suppose I don't know anything about Jeremy Corbyn, really. But all the media and the politicians say he's useless anyway. That he's a joke. Well, he is? Isn't he? Is he?

Once, that kind of parroting told us that the fundamentals were strong and property was not over-priced and the landing would be soft and Morgan Kelly was an eejit. Today, political parrots slap themselves on the back, line up to tears and cheers, tell us that we live now in a modern, "compassionate" Ireland.

So modern and "compassionate" that tented-living creeps like knotweed through our towns and cities; that when our homeless children are not being fed on cardboard in the street, they're developing anxiety disorders, delays in speaking, walking, chewing, because the Government crates them like veal calves in hotels.

The sheer vapidity of that political parroting, suggests equal vapidity of ''insight'' into the ''useless'' and ''joke'' conviction politics of Jeremy Corbyn. 

Continue Reading @ The Indo. 

In Shallow Politics Of Optics, A Principled Man Looks Like A Joke

Gideon Levy insists that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. His real sin is to fight against injustice in the world, including the version Israel perpetrates   

The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get.

On Tuesday it reached its climax in an article by the chief rabbi of Britain, Ephraim Mirvis, in The Times. Mirvis has decided that the anxiety of British Jews over Corbyn is justified and he is not fit to be prime minister. He called on Jews not to vote for Labour in the election on December 12.

 Born in South Africa and a graduate of Har Etzion Yeshiva in the settlement of Alon Shvut, Mirvis is the voice of British Jewry. In Capetown, Johannesburg and Har Etzion, he should have learned what apartheid was and why one should fight it. His parents did so, but one doubts that he learned the moral lesson from the regions of disenfranchisement in which he lived in South Africa and the West Bank.

Continue reading @ Haaretz.

The Contract On Corbyn

The Canary feels that Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky just took apart the Anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn.

By James Wright

Renowned Jewish intellectual Noam Chomsky has taken apart the antisemitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn.

Professor Chomsky is the author of over 100 books on war, politics, linguistics and media. In an email to Media Lens, Chomsky said the smears were part of a “disgraceful” campaign to dispose of Corbyn:

The charges of anti-Semitism against Corbyn are without merit, an underhanded contribution to the disgraceful efforts to fend off the threat that a political party might emerge that is led by an admirable and decent human being, a party that is actually committed to the interests and just demands of its popular constituency and the great majority of the population generally.


Labour’s policies do seem to meet the demands of the “great majority of the population”. 

Polling on some key features of Labour’s industrial strategy illustrates this: 

77% of people want public ownership of energy
84% want the NHS in public ownership
76% want the railways in public ownership
83% want water in public ownership

Continue reading @ The Canary.

Chomsky Takes Apart The Anti-Semitism Smears Against Corbyn

Tommy McKearney thinks that society has to move beyond social democracy if it is to prevent a further decline into the abyss. The piece featured in Socialist Voice.

Several decades from now a leaked report will disclose how British Intelligence orchestrated a campaign in the 2020s to prevent Her Majesty’s government falling into the hands of a “dangerous Marxist.” Opinion-writers for the Guardian will fulminate about this abuse of process but will reassure their readers that “lessons have been learnt, and nothing similar could ever happen again.” The BBC will launch its new flagship drama series, “The Enemy Within,” based on novels by a retired researcher with its (by then discontinued) Panorama programme.

Are these the ravings of an old Fenian, steeped in conspiracy theories? Well, maybe so, but again maybe not. Surely I’m not alone in asking if it’s a pure coincidence that the question of alleged anti-Semitism in the Corbyn-led Labour Party is being highlighted now with increased intensity. Apart from the spurious nature of the allegations, there is the matter of timing. With a new Tory prime minister committed to a Brexit deal that is unlikely to win support in the House of Commons, the odds are heavily in favour of a general election that by any normal calculation would be won by the Labour Party—not just any Labour Party but one led by a left-wing social democrat.

Forty years into the current neo-liberal phase of capitalism, heralded by the election of Reagan and Thatcher, Britain’s elite are not prepared to see their position of privilege challenged to even a modest degree. In this they have the support of the powerful and wealthy throughout the western world. It’s not that a Corbyn-McDonnell government is going to abolish the monarchy and establish a workers’ republic; in practice it would most probably be somewhat less radical than the post-war Labour government of Attlee and Bevan.

Nevertheless the establishment elite oppose a Corbyn government not only because of the legislation it might introduce but also because of the potential challenge to the imperialist New World Order that it might encourage. Britain remains a major, albeit declining, economic power. Though reduced, it still has a significant manufacturing base, and, importantly, retains its own currency. In other words, it is not as easily contained as Greece or Venezuela.

A left-wing social-democratic government in Britain that would begin to reverse austerity and privatisation, stop arming Saudi Arabia or ask for proof of sabotage attributed to Iran would surely set an example that others elsewhere might follow. And who knows what that might lead to? It’s certainly not a risk the elite are prepared to take, or to allow happen.

Important as it is to highlight this anti-democratic attack on Corbyn, there is a wider question in all of this. How possible is it to fundamentally transform society in the interests of working people by focusing on parliamentary practice alone? In the light of the powerful structural obstacles at the disposal of the wealthy, the answer must be in the negative.

In the first place, there is the obvious difficulties in overcoming hostile media, a conservative state apparatus, and an entrenched political caste devoted to the practice of clientelism. And all the while, capital and business are constantly using their enormous resources to ensure that the status quo is maintained at all costs.

This is not an issue confined to Britain. It is a global phenomenon; and we should be under no illusion: the Irish ruling class and its backers abroad are equally determined to defend their privileged position by equally ruthless stratagems.

Not surprising, therefore, that the scale of existing power structures has a sobering effect on many of its critics and opponents. Consequently, some resort to tinkering with it by working for minor reform, while others offer impractical or dangerous ultra-left daydreams. Needless to say, the net outcome of both avenues is to further disillusion working people while simultaneously reinforcing the hold of the elite.

To overcome these counterproductive tendencies it is important to identify realistic objectives, coupled with a viable method of struggle. For us in Ireland this must mean not just examining successful protest movements of the recent past but exploring how we can alter the balance of power in favour of working people.

A first step towards redistributing power is to redistribute wealth, and not necessarily by simply sharing out bank deposits. Better to think in terms of recalibrating the economy by expanding and building up that part of the public sector described by trade unionists in the past as the “social wage.” This should not be confused with merely increasing the number of state employees, as was pointed out succinctly by James Connolly in 1899.*

On the contrary, the social wage is the universal provision of useful assets and beneficial services to every citizen. Although not a comprehensive list, this would include universal access to such things as state-financed public housing, a properly resourced national health service, free to all at the point of delivery, a comprehensive public transport service, an egalitarian education system, with no option for private schooling, and holding all natural resources in pubic ownership.

These are straightforward issues on which a broadly based campaign can be organised, drawing support from throughout working-class society. Moreover, since the principle of the social wage has historically been a central concept within organised labour, this initiative would undoubtedly draw in the crucial involvement of progressive elements within the trade union movement, as happened with the Right to Water campaign.

Naturally, careful consideration would have to be given to identifying a productive methodology. Boycotting and blacklisting some privatised services would surely be on the agenda. Therefore, a people’s campaign to abolish the Industrial Relations Act (1990) might well be a good starting-point.

Winning a limited set of demands is not socialism but would bring about significant advantages. Access to a broad range of public services would challenge wage slavery by removing a worker’s absolute dependence on an employer. In turn, this will enhance working-class confidence and consciousness while broadening grass-roots democracy, away from electoral clientelism. In a meaningful way, this strategy allows our class to prise open the door to progress by means of a transformative process.

Of course, none of this diminishes our enthusiasm for a Corbyn-led British government. It is just that our experience leads us to believe that his victory is far from certain; and even if he does manage to find himself in Downing Street the deep state will manage to curtail all but the most modest of reforms.

If this is to be prevented it would require a radical and fundamental change in how that country is run and how its people might govern, rather than be governed—a lesson that applies to us here in Ireland as much as it does to our neighbours across the Irish Sea.

* . . . state ownership and control is not necessarily Socialism—if it were, then the Army, the Navy, the Police, the Judges, the Gaolers, the Informers, and the Hangmen, all would be Socialist functionaries, as they are State officials—but the ownership by the State of all the land and materials for labour, combined with the co-operative control by the workers of such land and materials, would be Socialism. 
“State monopoly versus socialism,” Workers’ Republic, 10 June 1899.


Tommy McKearney is a left wing activist and author of 

More Than Social Democracy Is Needed

From the NewStatesman a piece written by Francis Beckett suggesting Labour has no serious prospects under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. 



After needlessly alienating members over Brexit, Corbyn’s continued leadership risks handing victory to the Conservatives. 

This week, Labour headquarters has managed the extraordinary feat of handing Alastair Campbell the moral high ground. And Jeremy Corbyn has fumbled his way to a position where Remainers — about 90 per cent of party members according to a recent survey — must choose between abandoning their party or their beliefs.

His most senior colleagues — Emily Thornberry, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott — understand that. Jeremy Corbyn — whom I voted for, whom I like, and about whom I’ve co-written a supportive book — does not. So he must go, and go fast, while he can still be replaced by a leader from the left or the centre left, and the new spirit of hope and idealism that he has brought to the Labour Party can be preserved.

If he goes now, he will be remembered as the leader who ended the triangulation of the Blair years for at least a generation. If he hangs on, he will drive his own friends away, demoralise the left, pave the way for the Blairites to take over again, and allow the Conservatives to recover and win the next general election. Never underestimate the Conservative Party’s ability to escape its grossest errors — it overcame the 1956 Suez debacle to win the 1959 general election.

Every time I hear Corbyn take a deep breath and intone robotically: “Let me be quite clear. Our preference is for a general election…” I despair. It has become a mantra, a comforting reiteration of a “correct” political position, an escape from reality. 

Continue Reading @ The NewStatesman.

Jeremy Corbyn Must Resign As Labour Leader Before The Party Loses All Hope


Barry Gilheany in the first of a two part series writes on Antisemitism: How The Oldest Hatred Became The New Discourse Of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.

Racism and its longest variant, antisemitism or Judeophobia, no longer comes dressed in black shirts, jackboots, Ku Klux Klan robes or bearing a swastika. Since Jeremy Corbyn came from apparently nowhere to become leader of the British Labour Party in September 2015, the Party - long held to be a natural home for British Jews - has been convulsed with a series of never-ending scandals around alleged antisemitism amongst its membership particularly among the tens of thousands who flocked to Labour, many taking advantage of the £3 registered supporter category introduced by the previous Labour leader Ed Miliband, to back Corbyn in two successful leadership contests. 

These allegations have led to three internal party enquiries, a putative London Metropolitan Police criminal investigation[1] and the announcement of an enquiry by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission to establish whether the Labour Party has acted in an institutionally anti-Semitic manner towards its complainants. They have also led to a near breakdown in relations between the Labour Party and the principal UK Jewish community organisations; protests by and demonstrations in favour of Jewish Labour MPs allegedly victims of particularly appalling abuse including death and rape threats. 

Most recently, the perception that the Labour Party’s alleged institutional antisemitism had become irredeemable and that this antisemitism is party of wider culture of bullying and intolerance was to be one of the factors that led to the departure of seven Labour MPs to join the newly created Independents Group (now constituted as a new political party, Action UK) in the House of Commons. One of these MPs, Luciana Berger, required police protection at the 2018 Labour Party conference held in Liverpool where her constituency is. (One other Jewish MP, Ian Austin, and the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan, have also left the Parliamentary Labour Party but have not joined the Independents/Action UK). It has opened a new front in the struggle for the soul of the Labour Party between Corbyn acolytes who dominate the Party membership and the vast majority of the Parliamentary Party who can reasonably be termed “Corbynsceptics”.

Antisemitism: A Thumbnail Sketch

Antisemitism involves a core demonology about Jews: they are powerful, malign and conspiratorial (Johnson: 2019). But the forms assumed by this supposed Jewish malignity has mutated radically down the centuries.

The Community Security Trust (CST) defines antisemitism as ‘hatred, bigotry, prejudice or discrimination against Jews’. It noted that the word “antisemitism” came into use in the late nineteenth century to describe pseudo-scientific racial discrimination against Jews. Now it generally describes all forms of discrimination, prejudice or hostility towards Jews throughout history. (Johnson: p.15)

Antisemitism has shape-shifted through history. It has created and used interchangeably these spectral figures of Jews: 

➽ The betrayer and killer of the universal God, drainer of gentile blood, poisoner of the wells, etc (Christian antisemitism);

The tribal anachronism, the enemy of the Age of Reason (Enlightenment antisemitism);

The rootless cosmopolitan, everywhere the enemy of and fifth column within organic nations (Counter-Enlightenment antisemitism);

 The biologically programmed threat to all races, to be eliminated to the last child (Nazi antisemitism);

 The sons of apes and pigs who will be killed on a Day of Judgment (some forms of Islam and modern Islamist antisemitism);

 The arch-capitalist exploiter – to be hung from the lampposts as German Communist Ruth Fischer put it (Left antisemitism);

In addition to all of the above, Johnson describes a new form of antisemitism which is largely constitutive of contemporary Left antisemitism and which has been the consequence of the development and demonization of the State of Israel. He writes that ‘Zionism’, “properly understood as a movement of national liberation for the Jewish people”, is demonised through the antisemitic ideas of the ‘The Zios’, ‘The Zionists’, ‘Global Zionism’, and ‘the all-powerful Jewish lobby. In tandem with earlier forms of antisemitism, these conceptions of Zionism see the Zionists as still malign, still controlling the world for Jewish purposes, and still string-pulling. In this narrative, they are “still uniquely evil, the modern-day Nazis” (Johnson: p.17)

How this form of modern antisemitism has evolved and its relationship to the trajectory of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party is central to analysis and discussion of the antisemitism conflicts that have raged in the Labour Party.

The specificity of alleged Labour antisemitism lies in a fundamental antagonism (and many would say obsession) towards the State of Israel as a political entity and its legitimising ideology - Zionism. For much of the conflict over antisemitism within Labour has concerned the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance (IHRA) definition has centred around its clauses concerning whether defining the circumstances of the creation of the State of Israel as a “racist” or “settler-colonial enterprise”; invoking Nazi and Apartheid comparisons with Israel with accompanying epithets such as “Zio-Nazi” and holding Israel to different standards of behaviour from other states and the use of traditional anti-Semitic tropes such as conspiracy theories involving Jewish control of money and financial institutions; of the media and control of other governments. At this point I would state that no state anywhere should be immune from criticisms of its actions but that such criticism should be articulated in universalist language of human rights and ethical standards of behaviour not by a priori and stereotypical (to say nothing of prejudicial and racist) assumptions about the intrinsic wrongness of the state’s predominant culture and foundational values.


Timeline of Labour’s Antisemitism Crisis

The first overt manifestation of alleged antisemitism in the Labour movement was signalled by the resignation in February 2016 by Alex Chalmers as co-chair of the Oxford University Labour Club giving as his reason the allegedly anti-Semitic behaviour of some of its senior members. The Facebook post in which Chalmers (who is not Jewish) announced his resignation gives a snapshot of how modern antisemitism can manifest and has manifested itself:

Whether it be members of the Executive throwing around the term ‘Zio’ (a term for Jews usually confined to websites run by the Ku Klux Klan) with casual abandon, senior members of the club expressing their ‘solidarity’ with Hamas and explicitly defending their tactics of indiscriminately murdering civilians, or a former Co-Chair claiming that ‘most accusations are just the Zionists crying wolf’. A large proportion of both OULC and the student left in Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews (Rich, 2018).

The last straw for Chalmers was the decision by the Labour Club to endorse the forthcoming Israel Apartheid Week a frequent fixture on UK campuses which invariably heightens tension and, on occasions generates conflict between Jewish students and the pro-Palestinian lobbies. Other allegations then emerged from members of the university Jewish society including that Labour Club members mocked the television coverage of the funerals of the victims of the jihadi terrorist attack on the kosher supermarket in Paris in January 2015 and that one member called Auschwitz a ‘cash cow’. (Rich: pp.247-48)

There is the nub of the Labour’s Jewish problem. A cross fertilisation of far left and far right hostility to Zionism; solidarity with Israel’s enemies (regardless of ideological complexion) and casual dismissal of Jewish concerns as “Zionists crying wolf”. Note the similarity with the age-old patriarchal and male misogynist dismissal of rape allegations by women as “crying wolf”. A perfectly apt comparison considering the revelations of the torrent of degrading sexist abuse including rape and death threats online from the legions of Corbynista trollers (as well as from the usual far-right suspects) against Jewish and/or pro-Israeli women: Labour MPs (Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Ryan) as well as against anyone deemed to violate the Corbynite “community of the good” credo; the latest such offender being Angela Rayner, Shadow Education Secretary, who after praising the performance of former PM, Tony Blair the embodiment of evil for Labour’s former lunatic fringe, in an interview on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show had to install panic alarms in her home after getting online rape and death threats.

After receiving a report from Labour Students on the OULC controversy, the National Executive Committee (NEC), the Party’s supreme governing body, instead of acting upon it, decided to institute another inquiry under veteran Labour front bench peer, Baroness Jan Royall of Blaisdon, This inquiry concluded that although the OULC did not suffer from institutional antisemitism, it did have a ‘cultural problem’ that meant ‘some Jewish members did not feel comfortable attending the meetings, let alone participating’. She did recommend that two members of the OULC be referred for disciplinary action. However, this was not the full story. In May 2016, the NEC deemed it necessary only to publish the Executive Summary of Baroness Royall’s report and to withhold the main text. In August the full text was leaked to the Jewish Chronicle who published it on their website which fully amplified her comments about the culture of the Labour Club and the evidence of antisemitic behaviour which did not appear in the Executive Summary of the Report. In January 2017, it emerged that the NEC had decided to drop the investigation into the behaviour of the two OULC members cited in the Report (Rich: pp.286-87). It was a pattern of behaviour by senior Labour decision makers that antisemitism campaigners inside and outside the Party would become familiar with.

More revelations of apparently anti-Semitic content by Labour Party members, activists and officials nationwide. I have space for only a few; a recent research study by Johnson cited 134 examples of antisemitism by Labour Party elected reps, party officers and election candidates[2] (including my own Constituency Labour Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate). Vicki Kirby, the vice-chair of Woking Constituency Labour Party, was accused of tweeting ‘Who is the Zionist God? I am starting to think it may be Hitler #Free Palestine.’ Salim Mulla, former Mayor of Blackburn and Labour councillor, allegedly wrote that ‘Zionist Jews are a disgrace to humanity’ and posted conspiracy theories suggesting that Israel was behind ISIS terror attacks in Europe and school shootings in America. Shah Hussain, a Labour councillor in Burnley, appeared to have tweeted to the Israeli footballer Yossi Benayoun: ‘you and your country doing the same thing that hitler did to ur race in ww2. Veteran Trotskyist and party member Gerry Downing posted an article on his own website on ‘Why Marxists must address the Jewish Question.' (Rich: pp.248-49)


Ken Livingstone and the Long, Hot Spring and Summer of 2016 for Labour

But Labour’s problems with antisemitism really exploded into public view with the suspensions of Naz Shah MP and the former Mayor of London and left-wing icon Ken Livingstone. Naz Shah, elected to serve the constituency of Bradford West in the General Election of 2014 by defeating the anti-Israeli firebrand George Galloway[3], was suspended after Facebook posts came to light that she had made as a pro-Palestinian campaigner in Bradford during the Israel-Hamas conflict in the summer of 2014 calling for Israel to be ‘relocated’ to the United States and for people to defeat ‘the Jews’. This comment, unnoticed during the febrile, angry online atmosphere of the time, was discovered (as have many other comments of the same vintage) by the conservative Guido Fawkes blog to shattering impact (Rich: pp.251-52)

Naz Shah used her three-month suspension to recant from these offensive posts and through engagement with her local Jewish community and national Jewish organisations to develop an understanding of modern antisemitism. In her acknowledgement to the BBC that her comments were anti-Semitic and offensive but argued that this was due to ignorance and ‘subconscious biases’ rather than conscious hatred of Jewish people. It should be acknowledged that the issue of whether people in the Labour Party who express anti-Semitic views are actually anti-Semites or are just ignorant (as indeed with anyone who expresses racist or other prejudiced views) is never easy to assess. A clue lies in the response of those accused of expressing racist or anti-Semitic views. Naz Shah was clearly speaking from a position of ignorance. It is almost impossible to say the same for the next high profile Labour figure to be accused of antisemitism – Ken Livingstone.

The day after the suspension of Naz Shah from the Labour Party, Ken Livingstone was interviewed about it on BBC Radio London. He said:

I’ve been in the Labour party for forty-seven years. I’ve never heard anything anti-Semitic. I’ve heard a lot a criticism of Israel and its abuse of the Palestinians, but I’ve never heard someone be anti-Semitic … Let’s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy was then that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism. [He then] went mad and ended up killing six million Jews .. There has been a very well-orchestrated campaign by the Israel lobby to smear anyone who criticises Israeli policy as anti-Semitic … Frankly there has been an attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn and his associates, as anti-Semitic from the moment he became leader. (Rich: pp.254-55)

This was a restatement in the strongest way of “The Livingstone Formulation” formulated by the sociologist David Hirsh in 2006 after his counter-response to accusations of antisemitism (after he had accused the Jewish Daily Mail reporter David Feingold of acting like a “concentration camp guard” after he had allegedly been door-stepped by Feingold. The Livingstone Formulation – the counter-allegation of Zionist conspiracy (or Israeli lobbying) which treats discussion of antisemitism as though it were a vulgar, dishonest and tribal fraud (Hirsh, 2018) – is a constant staple of contemporary left antisemitism and has been, along with the parallel narrative of perpetual undermining of Corbyn, has been the standard refutation by Jeremy Corbyn’s allies and supporters of allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party.

But by far the most inflammatory statement in that passage is that Hitler supported Zionism. To evidence what many saw this outlandish claim, Livingstone cited the hitherto obscure Haavara Agreement struck between German Zionists and the Nazi regime to enable 60,000 German Jews to leave Germany with some of their possessions rather than losing everything. At the time it was criticised by other German Jewish organisations who wanted a total boycott of Germany. (Rich: p.258). That the Haavara Transfer Agreement represented a mere coincidence of interests between the Nazis and German Zionists was something that Livingstone appeared to be wilfully blind to.

After his initial suspension, Livingstone added further fantastical (and in most Jewish eyes outrageous) claims: that the Zionist movement collaborated with Nazi Germany by agreeing to buy German goods, thus undermining an international boycott; that Nazi Germany armed the Zionist underground in British-controlled Mandate Palestine; that the SS set up training camps for Zionist Jews in Nazi Germany and that the ‘Zionist flag’ was the only permitted flag to be flown in Nazi Germany apart from the swastika. Even though eminent scholars of the Holocaust such as Professors Timothy Snyder, Yehuda Bauer, Rainer Schultze and Deborah Lipstadt have all proven these allegations wrong, Livingstone never apologised for making them, unlike Naz Shah. He eventually received a two-year suspension in 2018 for bringing the Labour Party into disrepute not, significantly, for anti-Semitic behaviour.

Livingstone’s repetitive claims about Nazis supporting Zionism derived from the work of an obscure Trotskyist historian Leni Brenner in his book Zionism in the Age of the Dictators. A particularly explosive claim by Brenner was that Zionist leaders collaborated in the deportation of 400,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz in 1944 in order to ensure more Jewish emigration to Palestine. This led to a dramatic moment in British theatrical history when in January 1987 when “Perdition”, a play by the Scottish Trotskyist playwright Jim Allen, which sought to substantiate these allegations, was suddenly withdrawn 24 hours before it was due to be staged at the Royal Court Theatre after a libel allegation against the author and producers of the play. Central to the libel action was the gross distortion of history attested to by the Holocaust specialists Martin Gilbert and David Cesarani. Allen lost; a salutary lesson on the dangers of playing fast-and-loose with the historical record in the interest of a supposed freedom of expression and a lesson which the Holocaust-denying, neo-Nazi “historian” David Irving was to deservedly learn in his libel action against the renowned Jewish scholar Deborah Lippstadt in 2002.

The assertion that Zionism was prepared to collaborate in the extermination of European Jewry in order to advance its goal of a Jewish homeland in historic Palestine is a staple of Soviet antizionism which sought to deny any claims by Jews to a distinct ethnic identity and concomitantly to national self-determination which thorough its mutations was to become a foundational claim of antizionist discourse particularly in the years after the Six Years War and subsequent (and internationally condemned) Israeli occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan and Gaza Strip.

The Chakrabarti “Whitewash”

To return to the time line of alleged antisemitism under Corbyn. The rows over the suspension of Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone led to the establishment by Labour of another inquiry led by the former direct of the civil rights campaign group Liberty and now Labour peer, Shami Chakrabarti. The terms of reference (TOR) of the inquiry were surprising; they established that it would look ‘at antisemitism and other forms of racism including Islamophobia ‘even though the inquiry was set up in response specifically to antisemitism concerns and that there had been no concerns expressed about the extent of incidences of the other two forms of prejudice itemised in the TOR.

The inquiry’s prospects were further compromised in the eyes of its detractors by the decision of Shami Chakrabarti to join the Labour Party on the day that she agreed to lead the inquiry explaining to Labour members and supporters in her Report “that my Inquiry would be conducted, any my recommendations made, in the Party’s best interests." Thus, it was hard to avoid the conclusion that where the party’s interests collided with those of the Jewish populace, those of the party would take priority (Rich: p.289).

Over 80 submissions were received by the inquiry from groups ranging from Jewish and pro-Israel groups, pro-Palestinian groups, Labour Party and trade union branches and anti-racist organisations. Several of the lengthy submissions from Jewish activists and organisations insisted that the party’s problems were part of a wider culture of antisemitism in parts of the left, rather than simply a case of individuals making inappropriate and ill-judged remarks. In his submission, Dr David Hirsh, sociology lecturer, prominent campaigner against left antisemitism and now former member of the Labour Party, defined the type of antisemitism found in the party as ‘institutional racism and cultural racism’ involving ‘racist ways of thinking, racist outcomes, racist norms and practices, discrimination and structural power imbalances’ rather than one of conscious dislike or hatred of Jews simply on account of their Jewishness. He explained the connection between the ‘broad culture of emotional, disproportional and irrational hostility to Israel’ found in sections of the left and the cases of antisemitism increasingly being found amongst Labour members”. He presciently warned that:

If the party leadership cannot move Labour back into the mainstream democratic consensus on Israel and on antisemitism than this issue will continue to throw up crisis after crisis and it will continue to alienate most of the Jewish community; no doubt it will alienate many swing voters too. (Rich: pp.289-90)

The failure of Labour to wrest control of the London Borough of Barnet where many Jews reside from an unpopular Tory administration in the English local government elections of 2018 has been widely attributed to its loss of its Jewish voters with many reports of doors being slammed in the face of Labour canvassers at Jewish households because of anti-Semitic perceptions of the Labour Party. This author has heard anecdotal accounts of similar reactions to Labour on the doorsteps of Jewish homes in Swindon (electorally a highly marginal town). Labour ‘s failure to establish any sort of lasting lead in the polls over the worst Conservative government in living memory must at least be partly attributable to its chronic issues with antisemitism.

On the plus side of the ledger, Chakrabarti Report did recommend the banning of the abusive ‘Zio’ epithet, that ‘racial or religious tropes and stereotypes about any group of people should have no place in our modern Labour Party’ and that comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany should be avoided. The Report did acknowledge that stereotypes about Jews being ‘wealthy or interested in wealth or finance or political or media influence’ are present in the Labour Party. (Rich: pp.291-92)

But the debit side - there was no engagement with the totality of anti-Semitic politics, or the specificity of left antisemitism or how and why intense anti-Israel campaigning can incubate anti-Semitic thoughts and behaviour. There was no discussion of the past associates of Corbyn and his allies even though this was the behaviour, flagged up in the Jewish Chronicle shortly before he became Party leader, that had first triggered concerns about antisemitism under his leadership. Even the recommendations banning the use of the word “Zio” and Israel-Nazi comparisons were not because they are anti-Semitic but to encourage ‘kindness, politeness or good advocacy’ and ‘constructive debate. Some of its disciplinary recommendations risked undermining the party’s power to deal with anti-Semitic members. For example, there should be no life bans; some cases should be dealt with informally with no sanction at all and that it was often unnecessary to suspend members under investigation for antisemitism and suspensions shouldn’t be made public. (Rich: pp: 291-92).

Confidence in the efficacy of the Chakrabarti Report was further undermined by the character of and incidents at its launch. Taking place as it did in July 2016 in the febrile atmosphere after the vote for Brexit in the EU referendum, the resignation of David Cameron as PM and the coup against Corbyn’s leadership launched by almost the entire Shadow Cabinet and the vast majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party met by the counter-mobilisation of thousands of Corbyn supporters outside Parliament, the launch had more the character of a political rally than of a sober report launch. Corbyn was cheered on his entry into the room; questions from journalists on his leadership were met with boos. Marc Wordsworth, a veteran hard-left activist, was distributing press releases calling for the deselection of ‘traitor’ MPs. He refused to give one to Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish Labour MP who was later handed one by a Daily Telegraph journalist. Wordsworth proceeded to speak up during Corbyn’s address to declare: ”I saw the Telegraph handed a copy of a press release to Ruth Smeeth MP, so you can see who’s working hand in hand with the media”. This direct attack on a Jewish Labour MP couched in the conspiratorial, anti-Semitic trope of Jewish influence over the media caused uproar and Ruth Smeeth departed the launch in tears (Rich: pp.294-95) Despite his disapproval of the word “traitor”, Corbyn made no effort to come to the aid of his fellow MP and was seen talking happily to Wordsworth sending a not-so-subtle message that his duty of care as Party Leader appears to lie with activists not MPs. Subtle bias towards and even direct intervention by Corbyn and his allies in the Leader’s Office in favour of alleged offenders has been a constant theme in the story of how Labour party top brass has handled the Party’s antisemitism crisis in the eyes of Corbyn’s Jewish detractors.

Within five weeks of publishing her Report, Corbyn had made Chakrabarti a Baroness; a few weeks after that he appointed her to his Shadow Cabinet (whatever happened to Labour opposition to the unelected House of Lords. In the opinion of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, it was a ‘whitewash for peerages’ scandal.

As I shall argue in future articles, the Royall and Chakrabarti Reports have served as templates for Labour Party institutional inertia on dealing with its chronic antisemitism problem; a problem that had been incubating for years in academia, the student movement and on the fringe left but which has been catapulted into full vide since Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. This has happened because of Corbyn’s immersion in the milieu of far left activism centring on the Palestinian cause (but which has also feasted on in its inimitable inverse colonialist manner on Venezuela, Ukraine, Libya, Syria, Northern Ireland – any cause which ticks the anti-Western box regardless of the democratic credentials of the actors they cheer on). The next article takes us to the breaking point between the Labour Party and the critical mass of UK Jewry.

Notes

[1] Three suspects including a former Labour Council candidate and a former activist have now been arrested on suspicion of distributing material likely to stir racial hatred. “Suspects with Labour links held in antisemitism inquiry” The Times 29 March 2019.

[2] Professor Alan Johnson “Institutional Antisemitism. Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party” A Fathom Publication March 2019.

[3] Ironically, in his usually personal and unpleasant manner of campaigning, Galloway, elected to the seat for the now defunct Respect Party in a by-election in 2012, tried to portray Naz Shah with her record of pro-Palestinian campaigning as an Israeli stooge. Three weeks before polling day, Galloway had tweeted an image of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, smiling with his arms outstretched, captioned with ‘Thank you Bradford West for electing Naz Shah! Our campaign worked. In his concession speech he said ‘The venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating’. (Rich: p.253). This use of the ‘Zionist’ dogwhistle to cast out of the community of the good those deemed to violate its values is a favoured tactic by the regressive left with Galloway a vocal practitioner of it such as his targeting of the veteran Labour Friends of Israel stalwart Louise Ellman as “Israel’s representative on Merseyside” in 2005 on top of his shameless courting of the Bengali Muslim community in the notorious Bow and Bethnal Green contest in GE 2005 and reference to the skin colour of Oona King as part of his successful campaign to oust this female MP of mixed race, Jewish heritage. More recently as MP for Bradford West, “Gorgeous George” promised to make Bradford “an Israel-free zone”

Bibliography


(1) Bower, Tom (2019) Dangerous Hero. Corbyn’s Ruthless Plot for Power London: William Collins

(2) Hirsh, David (2018) Contemporary Left Antisemitism London: Routledge

(3) Johnson, Alan Prof (2019) Institutionally Antisemitic. Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party Fathom Publications.

(4) Lipstadt, Deborah (2019) Antisemitism. Here and Now. London: Scribe.

(5) Rich, Dave (2018) The Left’s Jewish Problem. Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Antisemitism. Fully Updated London: Biteback Publishing.


⏩  Barry Gilheany has joined the Jewish Labour Movement as an affiliate member and encourages fellow labour movement colleagues concerned about Labour’s Antisemitism problem to do the same.

The Emergence Of Labour Antisemitism 2015-2016