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Democracy and the Labour Party, Labour Party Marxists, Transform the Labour Party

Model motion: for an entirely new clause four

This branch/CLP notes that the old 1918 clause four was drafted by the Fabian leader, Sidney Webb, in order to divert the considerable rank-and-file sympathy that existed for the Russian Revolution into safe, peaceful and exclusively constitutional channels. Clause four was managerial, statist and predicated on the continuation of wage-slavery. It had nothing to do with putting an end to capitalism and bringing about the socialist transformation of society.

This branch/CLP notes that, by sacrificing the old clause four in the full glare of publicity, Tony Blair and his New Labour clique sought to appease the establishment, the City, the Murdoch empire, the global plutocracy. Capitalism would be absolutely safe in their hands. A New Labour government could be relied upon not even to pay lip service to a British version of state capitalism.

The Labour Party has been transformed by the influx of tens of thousands of new members and the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. This branch/CLP therefore believes that the time is ripe to commit the party to the following, genuinely socialist, version of clause four:

  1. Labour is the federal party of the working class. We strive to bring all trade unions, cooperatives, socialist societies and leftwing groups and parties under our banner. We believe that unity brings strength.
  2. Labour is committed to replacing the rule of capital with the rule of the working class. Socialism introduces a democratically planned economy, ends the ecologically ruinous cycle of production for the sake of production and moves towards a stateless, classless, moneyless society that embodies the principle, “From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs”. Alone such benign conditions create the possibility of every individual fully realising their innate potentialities.
  3. Towards that end Labour commits itself to achieving a democratic republic. The standing army, the monarchy, the House of Lords and the state sponsorship of the Church of England must go. We support a single-chamber parliament, proportional representation and annual elections.
  4. Labour seeks to win the active backing of the majority of people and forming a government on this basis.
  5. We shall work with others, in particular in the European Union, in pursuit of the aim of replacing capitalism with working class rule and socialism.

This branch/CLP calls for this version of clause four to be included as part of Labour’s constitution at the earliest opportunity.

[For trade unions:] This branch/conference calls upon the union to campaign within the Labour Party at all levels for this version of clause four to be included as part of Labour’s constitution at the earliest opportunity.

Anti-Semitism, Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Rothschild and irrationality

Carla Roberts looks forward to the May 4 members meeting of Labour Against the Witchhunt

Any event that Labour Against the Witchhunt is putting on these days is likely to be – correctly – described as timely. The witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his leftwing supporters has now become daily and normalised. In the run-up to the local and European Union elections rightwingers in and outside the Labour Party have been busy scrolling through the Facebook and Twitter accounts of Labour candidates in particular. Naturally, they have been hugely successful in discovering ‘problematic’, often historic, posts (that were not considered problematic at all a few short years back).Liverpool council candidate Sam Gorst, for example, is now under investigation for alleged “anti-Semitism”, because it appears he tweeted something “in defence of former London mayor Ken Livingstone”. His accounts have been deleted, so we cannot tell you more about it – but if that is all, then clearly the compliance unit is going berserk. Remember, Livingstone resigned from Labour after the national executive committee decided to readmit him after a one-year-suspension. The right wing cried ‘foul’ and the Corbyn leadership was in agony over what to do with Ken. He resigned to spare Corbyn any more blushes – to no avail, of course. Because Corbyn and his allies have continuously given in to the witch-hunters rather than standing up to them, Livingstone is now ‘known’ to be an anti-Semite (as is Corbyn himself, of course).

Corbyn has also – again – been put on the defensive after somebody found that in 2011 he wrote a forward to a new edition of John A Hobson’s hugely influential 1902 book Imperialism – a study. Corbyn praised it as “a great tome”, which is “brilliant, and very controversial at the time”. Hobson was a liberal anti-war journalist who later joined the Independent Labour Party and developed a theory of underconsumption to explain capitalism’s vicious repeating cycles of bust and boom. He was also (probably) the first person to explain that the development of imperialism was the direct result of capital’s need for constant expansion. His book had an influence on Lenin, Trotsky and many socialists to this day. In 2014, The Guardian described it as the “definitive book on imperialism”.

For the Daily Mail, however, this 400-page seminal work is nothing but a “century-old book, which argued that banks and newspapers were controlled by Jews”; and Daniel Finkelstein in The Times describes it as a “deeply anti-Semitic book”.

In fact, it is a single paragraph that riled up Finkelstein (who kicked off the whole business) and it does not come “a few pages in”, as he claims – but at the end of chapter 4, where he states that, “while the new imperialism has been bad business for the nation, it has been good business for certain classes and certain trades within the nation” and goes on to describe those who “benefit from aggressive imperialism and militarism”.

He starts by listing the most obvious companies – those who produce weapons. Then there is “the shipping trade” and those from the ruling class who take up “the numerous official and semi-official posts in our colonies and protectorates”. Not to mention “the investor, who cannot find at home the profitable use he seeks for his capital, and insists that his government should help him to profitable and secure investments abroad”.

This is the context in which Hobson writes: “… still more dangerous is the special interest of the financier, the general dealer in investments”, who “use stocks and shares not so much as investments to yield them interest, but as material for speculation”. These “great businesses” were “controlled, so far as Europe is concerned, chiefly by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience”. He asks: “Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a great state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?” (my emphasis)

Of course, 120 years ago, Hobson would have used the word “peculiar” in its original meaning of “distinctive” or “characteristic of a particular group” – not in its modern sense of “odd” or “eccentric”. But no doubt he did mean the ‘Jewish race’. The point is, however, he was writing at a time when anti-Semitism was prevalent and acceptable within the ruling class. As a Labour press officer is quoted as saying, “Similarly to other books of its era, Hobson’s work contains outdated and offensive references and observations.”

But do these phrases mean that the book as a whole has no value? It is quite likely that Corbyn did not even read the whole book, but, like many others, knew of its historical importance – and, of course, as Labour’s press officer said, “Jeremy completely rejects the anti-Semitic elements of his analysis.” But there is a real danger that the current hysteria sparked by the witch-hunt is robbing people of any sense of proportion, history and rationality. Will the likes of the Daily Mail and Finkelstein start demanding the suppression of the writings of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill and John Buchan – all redolent with anti-Semitism?

Clearly, there is tons of work to do for a campaign like Labour Against the Witchhunt.

Controversies

The members’ report produced by LAW’s steering committee for the May 4 meeting in central London makes for impressive reading. Since January 1, the campaign has produced dozens of model motions, petitions and campaigns in defence of Labour members who have been investigated, suspended, expelled and/or falsely accused of anti-Semitism – among them Chris Williamson MP, Jackie Walker, Asa Winstanley, Liverpool councillor Jo Bird and Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, who the NEC refused to endorse as parliamentary candidate in South Thanet.

No doubt, most prominent and effective has been LAW’s campaign for the reinstatement of Chris Williamson, who is unfortunately the only MP who has dared to stand up to the witch-hunters (and the only one who has campaigned for the democratisation of the party). LAW has managed to debunk as “fake news” the so-called ‘ban’ on Labour Party branches and CLPs discussing and passing motions in solidarity with Chris and has produced detailed advice on the issue on its website. At least 27 CLPs, eight Momentum branches and “dozens of left Labour and trade union organisations” have since come out in public support with Chris and are listed on LAW’s website, alongside supportive statements that the group has collected from Ken Loach, Alexei Sayle, Lowkey, Mike Leigh and many others.

The campaign, which has “close to 400 members”, has also managed to extract a rare apology from the Mail on Sunday over its malicious reporting of the March 25 ‘Defend the left’ meeting, where it reported Livingstone as saying: “It is not anti-Semitic to hate the Jews of Israel” – even though he was merely quoting one of the ridiculously false charges made against him! After hundreds of people complained, the paper had to print an apology. Ken Livingstone has since become honorary president of LAW, alongside founding member Moshé Machover.

LAW has also campaigned against the Labour Party’s adoption of the ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, publishing a detailed position paper outlining its opposition and a number of model motions on the issue, while also highlighting a number of cases where the IHRA definition has been misused to discipline and expel union members and even sack people from work. So far, it has not been used in disciplinary cases in the Labour Party, but that is probably only a matter of time.

Slightly more controversial has been LAW’s petition fighting for the overdue implementation of the reformed trigger ballots, about which we previously reported. Not all LAW supporters seem happy with what they see as the campaign going beyond its original remit of fighting the witch-hunt.

We disagree. The Parliamentary Labour Party is stuffed with careerists, Blairites and witch-hunters, who are openly hostile to Jeremy Corbyn and have been busy sabotaging his leadership from day one. Given the chance, members in most localities would have chucked out rightwing MPs years ago. But now the NEC – in an attempt to stop more rightwingers from defecting to Change UK – is dragging its heels when it comes to implementing a timetable for trigger ballots (which is the only way a sitting MP can be deselected). Should there be another snap election without re-selections, the PLP’s political composition will probably remain unchanged. Almost 1,500 people have signed the petition, so there is clearly some appetite for this important issue.

Similarly, some LAW supporters have criticised the fact that the May 4 meeting will discuss a motion on ‘George Galloway and EU elections’. The motion objects to Galloway’s call for a vote for “Nigel Farage’s Brexit party”, because it is “a vote for rightwing chauvinism and an anti-migrant stance”. It also emphasises that LAW – of course, given the name and its campaigning priorities – calls for a vote for the Labour Party.

Judging by the number of those, including some LAW supporters, who have expressed sympathy for Galloway’s call, I think it will be useful to discuss the issue. There are plenty of illusions on the left that Corbyn can introduce ‘socialism’, once Britain has finally been able to free itself from the ‘shackles of the EU’. This is not just mistaken about the way global capitalism works, but also a serious misunderstanding of Corbyn’s rather reformist and tame politics.

The meeting will also discuss if Peter Gregson should be expelled from LAW. In the past, the campaign has published a number of statements in Gregson’s defence – for example, protesting against his expulsion from the GMB union – while also criticising his often slapdash use of language. In March, Gregson posted an update to one of his petitions, which he also sent to a number of LAW members and supporters, in which he urged people to read the article, ‘UK’s Labour anti-Semitism split’, by Ian Fantom (founder of the Keep Talking campaign).

As LAW’s Tony Greenstein then pointed out in a long email exchange with Gregson, in this article Fantom makes reference to “my colleague, Nick Kollerstrom”, who “had been targeted in a witch-hunt” for a positive review he wrote of a book about Auschwitz and the “gas chamber illusion”. Tony advised Gregson to take down the reference to Fantom’s article, arguing:

The title of Kollerstrom’s article – ‘The Auschwitz “gas chamber” illusion’ – speaks for itself. But anyone with any doubts needs simply read the first sentence: “This essay will argue that well-designed cyanide gas chambers were indeed present at Auschwitz, and did work efficiently, but that they were operated for purposes of hygiene and disinfection, in order to save lives and not take them.”

Tony goes on to explain why this is not a question merely of ‘freedom of speech’: “It is incredibly damaging for LAW or anyone else to have the slightest contact with you if you maintain these links and I would ask for an immediate assurance that you will cut these links.”

To cut a long email exchange short, Gregson refused Tony’s request and as a result Tony deleted him from the ‘Unofficial LAW Facebook group’, where he is the main administrator. Gregson then stupidly published the whole exchange on his website (including bad-tempered comments by LAW members who wanted to be deleted from the exchange), where it was picked up by the Jewish Chronicle, which gleefully reported the whole disagreement.

As the steering committee’s motion proposing Gregson’s expulsion points out, “We do not believe that Peter Gregson should be expelled from either the GMB union or the Labour Party. These are broad organisations of the working class that contain many different viewpoints.” But LAW, however, is a campaign with a rather narrower political focus and therefore needs to “confront any hint or trace of genuine anti-Semitism in our ranks. We do not wish to be associated and tainted with holocaust denial”.

Left

In its lead motion, LAW quite rightly calls out the Corbyn leadership’s “short-sighted and futile attempt to appease the right”, which “can only undermine the Corbyn leadership and often plays into the false ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ narrative”. Momentum is described as “unfit for purpose”.

Therefore, LAW will support efforts to

build an alternative Labour left that organises democratically and transparently; both supports Corbyn against attacks by the right, and is independent and able to criticise the leadership when necessary; and is consistently anti-racist and internationalist – a stance which by definition includes anti-Zionism and supporting the Palestinians.

The steering committee proposes a campaign for the “disaffiliation of the Jewish Labour Movement from the Labour Party and for Labour CLPs and trade union branches to affiliate to LAW and Jewish Voice for Labour”. I understand that there will be at least one amendment opposing the first part of the sentence.

We welcome the fact that LAW proposes to campaign for “the scrapping of all bans and proscriptions” within Labour, because “if the mass of socialists in Britain joined the party, it would put us in a much stronger position in the ongoing civil war within the party”.

We are looking forward to what is shaping up to be an interesting meeting, though it could well get rather heated at various times. But that is not a problem. Meetings within the labour movement should feature open discussion around controversial issues. Instead of burying our disagreements thanks to compromise formulations, we need to debate them out honestly.

Democracy and the Labour Party, The right

George Galloway and Claire Fox: Left cover for Farage’s Brexit Party

Nigel Farage is back. Again. And it looks like his fourth (or is it his fifth?) incarnation might be his most successful one yet. A YouGov poll for the May 23 European Union elections has his Brexit Party on 27% (sharply up from 15% the week before), followed by Labour on 22%, the Tories on 15% and the UK Independence Party on 7%. The Greens are on 10%, the Liberal Democrats on 9% and the saboteurs of the snappily titled ‘Change UK’ – formerly known as The Independent Group – are languishing at 6%. There was an expectation that Change UK and the Lib Dems would get it together in some kind of ‘remain’ alliance – perhaps with the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalist Party. After all, fighting for a second referendum was officially one of the key reasons for TIG’s split from the Labour Party (along with Labour’s alleged widespread anti-Semitism, of course).

But, somewhat surprisingly, it is not to be, as Chuka Ummuna explains:

Change UK-TIG has not been formally approached by any of the other pro-EU parties with a view to running one list of candidates. That is because it is impossible to run one list of candidates unless you merge to form one party, which, not unreasonably, none of us are prepared to do.

Various disappointed bourgeois commentators have already pointed out that there were other methods with which pro-‘remain’ parties could have presented a more effective challenge: for example, by dividing up regions between them.

Overconfident public schoolboy that he is, Ummuna tries to assure them that “there is already a grassroots, ‘remain’ alliance – Change UK-TIG is it.” But, as they have also buggered up their application to stand in the local elections, these anti-Corbyn rightwingers continue to make headlines only for their ineptness: in the first 24 hours after the launch of its EU election campaign, two of Change UK’s European candidates have already been forced to step down for posting racist tweets. The only real ‘success’ they can claim is the fact that they got the Corbyn leadership to take yet another step back: in the hope of stopping other MPs from splitting because they fear being deselected by the local membership, Labour HQ has still not published a timetable to implement the reformed trigger ballot system – the only realistic way local Labour members can get rid of their sitting MP.

The undemocratic selection method for Labour’s EU candidates underlines the problem: ordinary members had zero input. In a brief email they have been informed – after the fact – that, “sitting MEPs who wished to stand again have been re-selected. Candidates for remaining places on the list have been appointed by joint NEC and regional selections boards following interviews earlier this week.” That means 16 out of Labour’s 20 sitting MEPs have automatically been reselected. The newcomers include Jeremy Corbyn’s right-hand woman, Katy Clarke, and Momentum organiser Laura Parker, who has been heavily promoted by her boss, national executive member Jon Lansman. But overall the selection process has demonstrated yet again that the Corbyn leadership is continuing to try and appease the right in the party – even though this demonstratively does not work.

It seems unlikely that those elected on May 23 will remain MEPs only until October 31; we expect there will be more ‘deadlines’ and more extensions of Britain’s EU membership. And the fact that we are the middle of a huge constitutional crisis clearly makes this an important election. When have candidates for MEP positions ever received so much coverage in the national press?

Only one thing seems clear: unless the Tories get shot of Theresa May pronto – replacing her with somebody who looks like he/she could make Brexit work (a miracle) – they will receive an absolute trashing on May 23. A questionnaire of Tory members for the Conservative Home website found 62% were planning to vote for the Brexit Party, and only 23% intended to vote for their own. And a poll of Conservative councillors for the Mail on Sunday found that 40% of them were planning to vote for Nigel Farage’s party, and only 52% for the Tories. Sure, a lot can happen in six weeks and these polls are clearly biased – but undoubtedly they are telling a certain truth.

Nigel Farage’s latest organisation certainly has a lot of forward momentum. Former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe is the latest ‘celebrity’ to join the former Ukip leader. All things being equal, it looks as if the party will do as well as – if not better than – Ukip did at the last European elections in 2014, when it came first with 27.5 % of the vote. The Brexit Party already has a sizeable fraction in the European parliament – 14 of the 24 MEPs elected as Ukip members have already switched allegiance since it was launched in January.

Nigel’s former party, Ukip, meanwhile, has Tommy Robinson, Carl Benjamin (he who “wouldn’t even rape” Jess Phillips MP) and Mark Meechan, also known as Count Dankula – the man who was fined £800 for teaching his dog to perform a Nazi salute when he shouted things like “Sieg Heil”. They seem to be aiming to win the votes of – how to put this? – a particularly narrow and alienated section of the working class, which tends to be male and very white.

Compared to those clowns, the Brexit Party really does look rather sane. Farage is, of course, a Tory at heart, albeit a very rightwing one. He has assured people that he is “sorry to be taking votes from the Conservatives” and that his main target are “disappointed Labour voters in the northern heartlands”.

And a certain Claire Fox is supposed to be covering his left flank. Fox was a leading member in the Revolutionary Communist Party and all its transformations since: Living Marxism, Spiked and the Institute of Ideas, which is now the Academy (!) of Ideas. Her sharp move to the right has been characterised by the belief that capitalism is a really good thing and that the world needs more of it (for example, to end hunger in Africa). For the last decade or so, the output of Fox and other co-thinkers like Frank Furedi and Mick Hume could at best be described as rightwing libertarian.

Another candidate on Farage’s list is Spiked contributor Alka Sehgal Cuthbert. She unconvincingly explains how she, “as an Indian”, can support a party committed to keeping out refugees and foreigners:

The EU is not a haven of social justice – it is a thoroughly racist institution. In order to maintain EU free movement, it has to ensure its borders are kept tightly sealed against non-EU people.

She is obviously aware that Farage happens to be the guy who during the 2016 referendum campaign unveiled his ‘Breaking Point’ poster, which depicted threatening masses of Syrian refugees bound for the UK. So she quickly and unconvincingly points out: “That poster, or anything else Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage may have said, pales into insignificance compared with the egregious racism of the EU.” So Farage is not quite as bad as the EU then. Not much of an endorsement.

Claire Fox, on the other hand, overplays her leftie credentials just a little bit when she assures us in an article for the Daily Mail that she has been a “leftwing campaigner for 35 years. I’ve been arrested on picket lines, led anti-imperialist demonstrations and spoken at anti-deportation protests outside police stations.”It’s been a while though, hasn’t it, Claire?

She leaves out the fact that Spiked has been arguing for years that the labels ‘left’ and ‘right’ are oh so wrong and old-fashioned, because, don’t you know, “We live in a world beyond left and right politics”. In her article, she briefly references this position by claiming that, “the left-right divide has been replaced by democrats vs anti-democrats”, before describing herself as a “lefty” a few more times. To top it all, she claims to be acting in the tradition of the “Levellers during the Civil War, the Chartists in the 19th century or the suffragettes in early 20th”.

For Claire Fox and her ilk, “sovereignty” is the key, because we “remain shackled to Brussels”. She cannot see any problem with standing alongside Farage, because this is a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to save “our democracy” from those evil foes in the EU. Fox has a problem only with the EU version of capitalism, because it is too regulated and Spiked very much believes in the free market – free for the capitalists, not for immigrants, obviously. Some “lefty”.

Slightly more sad – though not entirely surprising – is George Galloway’s support for Farage. On April 17, he declared on Twitter:

Given the nature of Labour’s Euro-fanatic candidates list and the crucial juncture we have reached in the fight for the full implementation of the Brexit referendum result and for one time only, I will be supporting Nigel Farage in next month’s elections.”

Clearly, he has given up hope of ever getting back into the Labour Party. Galloway seems to agree with Farage on the need for tougher immigration controls: “Being opposed to mass immigration is not (necessarily) racist,” he writes – “only Trotskyites and globalised capitalists really believe in ‘open borders’.”

This is nothing new, of course. He already outlined his reactionary beliefs in 2005 when he was still allied with the Socialist Workers Party in Respect. The SWP kept schtum when he wrote an infamous article in the Morning Star, where he called for “an economic-social-demographic plan for population growth based on a points system and our own needs” (ie, the needs of British capital). He claimed that the scrapping of immigration controls would mean “urging all the most accomplished and determined people to leave the poor countries of the world and come to the richest, [making] the poor countries even poorer and the rich countries richer”. 1)Morning Star February 12 2005

No doubt, Farage will have some success in appealing to Brexit-supporting members of the working class who usually vote Labour and would probably do so in a general election – in fact, we have been rather disturbed to see evidence of that in Corbyn-supporting Facebook groups. Not because of Claire Fox posing unconvincingly as a leftwinger, but because the Labour Party will have to continue to ‘sit on the fence’ for as long as possible, if it does not want to seriously alienate large sections of its electoral base on either side of the Brexit divide.

In the EU poll (as well as the local elections), we urge our supporters to vote Labour – despite the many, many shortcomings of the Corbyn leadership. There remains a window of opportunity to radically transform the Labour Party into a united front of a special kind.

Carla Roberts

References

References
↑1 Morning Star February 12 2005
Democracy and the Labour Party, Momentum, The right

Jewish Labour Movement: In praise of Momentum

(our picture shows Momentum’s Navendu Mishra posing with the JLM outside a protest against a David Icke event)

The Jewish Labour Movement has recognised Jon Lansman’s ‘valuable work’ in support of Zionism, reports Carla Roberts

Reports of the AGM of the Jewish Labour Movement have been splashed all over the bourgeois media, because it voted “almost unanimously” for a motion stating that “the leadership of the Labour Party have demonstrated that they are anti-Semitic and have presided over a culture of anti- Semitism”; that “Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to be prime minister and that a Labour government led by him would not be in the interest of British Jews”; and that therefore the JLM has “no confidence” in Corbyn.

So far, so predictable. Gathered in the JLM are, after all, some of the most vile rightwingers who have been plotting against Jeremy Corbyn from day one – ie, long before the smear campaign to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism really took off. You would have thought that this campaign – which has proven so incredibly successful since then and has led to the suspensions and expulsions of thousands of Corbyn supporters – would have led to a massive influx into the JLM.

But we read that in “the closest vote of the day” a mere 148 people took part. And apparently that is not down to huge numbers of abstentions, as elsewhere an attendance of 160 has been reported. Now remember, you do not have to be Jewish or a Labour Party member to join the JLM – for example, Gordon Brown recently signed up. He thought it would be a good idea to join his former nemesis, Tony Blair, and engage in a bit of anti-Corbyn propaganda just before the local elections. He ‘stars’ in a video produced by Hope Not Hate – or ‘No Hope, Hate Corbyn’ as it should henceforth be known. In the video, Brown claims that “the Labour Party has let the Jewish community and itself down. They should never have allowed legitimate criticism, that I share, of the current Israeli government to act as a cover for the demonisation of the entire Jewish people.” Who exactly is ‘demonising’ the entire Jewish population, Gordon?

Anyway, on this basis, 160 members coming to an AGM is, to put it mildly, pathetic. This organisation claims to be “the” voice of Jewish members in the Labour Party. Clearly it is not. Jewish Voice for Labour should reconsider its policy of not publishing its membership figures, because it would quite clearly and easily trump this hands down.

This “closest vote of the day” does affect the JVL, as it happens. And it makes for interesting reading. The main motion (besides expressing no confidence in Corbyn) concerned itself, naturally, with anti-Semitism. After all, that is the main reason why the JLM, which was pretty inactive for a number of years, relaunched in 2015 with the expressed aim of harming Jeremy Corbyn, as the award-winning Electronic Intifada has uncovered.

This main motion contained a sentence that charged Momentum, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and the Labour Representation Committee as having “acted … to protect and support those engaging in anti-Semitism”. This displays a considerable lack of actual knowledge when it comes to the left of the party. The CLPD has been shamefully quiet on the witch-hunt against Corbyn supporters.

As for Momentum – or, more precisely, its owner, Jon Lansman – it has been playing a very active role … on the side of the witch-hunters: as soon as Jackie Walker was first suspended from the party (over charges that were later dropped because they were so flimsy), Lansman immediately moved to have her removed as vice-chair of Momentum – with the help of the pro-Zionist Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, who were in turn booted out during his coup of January 10 2017.

He then turned on his long-term comrade in the CLPD, Pete Willsman, when he was accused of being soft on anti-Semitism, removing him from the Momentum-endorsed list of candidates for Labour’s national executive committee (Willsman was re-elected nevertheless).

When Chris Williamson MP was suspended for stating that the party had “apologised too much” over the charge of anti-Semitism, Lansman did not say a word in his defence – but a day later publicised and spread a letter, in which Labour Party members “sincerely apologise to the Jewish community over our collective failure on the issue”, using similar vocabulary to that of Chris Williamson, but, of course, stating the opposite. In other words, it is a vile, scabbing letter. And that is the role that Jon Lansman has been playing for some time: he is a scab who is not just happy to throw Corbyn supporters to the wolves, but is actively undermining Jeremy Corbyn himself.

The majority at the JLM AGM, however, seems to have recognised that, in fact, Momentum is not the enemy any longer and that Jon Lansman has been acting like a witch-finder general. An amendment was moved to delete Momentum from the list of organisations said to be ‘protecting’ and ‘supporting’ anti-Semites – and replace it with Jewish Voice for Labour. That does indeed make a lot more sense.

The amendment also added a sentence, praising Lansman’s good work: “… Momentum has, for the last year, committed itself to tackling anti-Semitism within the Labour Party and wider society, through educational videos directed at Labour Party members, calling out and reporting anti-Semitic posts online, and joining JLM and other groups in protest against the likes of David Icke and Gilad Atzmon.”

Indeed it has. The mover could have added plenty of other examples of Momentum – just like the JLM – propagating and fostering the lie that Labour is overrun with anti-Semites. Not everybody in the room was convinced – too deep-seated is their hatred of what they conceive to be the left, no doubt. But 81 voted in favour of the amendment, while 67 were against.

Did the latter figure include Ruth Smeeth MP, who replaces Luciana Berger as national parliamentary chair of the JLM? After all, just after the AGM she claimed on Sky News that Jeremy Corbyn was, in fact, “responsible for anti-Semitism inside and outside of the party” (my emphasis).
Last but not least, the AGM also saw the return of Ella Rose, who quietly disappeared after the Al Jazeera documentary The lobby exposed how closely she was working with Shai Masot – “the senior political officer at the centre of the Israeli embassy’s covert efforts to influence British politics in an even more pro-Israel direction”, as the Electronic Intifada reported. In the documentary, she is heard angrily talking about how her previous employment at the Israeli embassy had been publicised: “Anti-Semites, the lot of them”, she fumes. Masot, incidentally, talks about Jackie Walker, whom he calls “problematic”, indicating she was on the Israeli government’s radar. Asked by the Al Jazeera undercover reporter what can be done about Jackie Walker, Masot responds: “Do not let it go.”

At the AGM, Ella Rose was elected unopposed as “JLM network officer” – no prizes for guessing who she might be networking with. But the main question that springs to mind is: why on earth is this rightwing outfit allowed to remain a Labour Party affiliate?

Conference 2018, Democracy and the Labour Party

Where are our trigger ballots?

Jeremy Corbyn keeps digging his own grave, says Carla Roberts. But we want to bury the right

Snap election or national government, the overwhelming majority of current Labour MPs have certainly made it very clear that they remain deeply hostile to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

However, another direct attempt to depose him is improbable – simply because there is no doubt he would win again. But even in the unlikely event of Corbyn getting the keys to No10, this would not stop the ongoing slow coup against him by the right in and outside the Labour Party. The current crop of Labour MPs will continue to sabotage and undermine him at every possible opportunity – he will remain a prisoner locked into a hostile Parliamentary Labour Party. He would be lucky if he could convince these rightwingers to vote for half a dozen of the demands in his For the many, not the few manifesto.

More importantly though, what if the US and/or the ‘international community’ called on their British ally to go to war against the ‘terrorists’ in Iran or Lebanon? Or back a military coup in Venezuela? Or condemn the desperate protests of Palestinians in Gaza? If Corbyn refused to do any of those things, he could easily be outvoted by his PLP … which would quite conceivably lead to a no-confidence vote … which could spell the swift end of prime minister Corbyn.

The PLP remains the key problem for Corbyn, in other words. He cannot achieve anything much if he remains surrounded by these rightwingers. This is why Labour Party members at last year’s conference voted overwhelmingly in favour of discussing a motion that would have reintroduced the mandatory reselection of MPs. Mandatory reselection – ie, a full democratic contest between all candidates ahead of each election – would have been the easiest and the most democratic method to change the PLP to reflect the composition and political will of the membership. The membership, given half a chance, would have long replaced the most ardent rightwing MPs.

But Jeremy Corbyn and his allies bottled it. Yes, in concrete terms it was Len McCluskey who instructed his Unite union delegates to vote with the right against allowing conference to even hear the proposal for mandatory reselection (the unions count for 50% of total voting at conference – without their support nothing goes through). But we have no doubt that McCluskey, who came under heavy criticism for this move – was correct when he claimed that he merely acted “on the request of Jeremy Corbyn”. Instead, to stop mandatory reselection from being voted through, the national executive committee produced suggestions to slightly reform the trigger ballot, which is currently the only way for members to exercise at least some level of control over their MP.

Until last year it was virtually impossible to get rid of a sitting MP. A majority of all local union and Labour branches affiliated to a Constituency Labour Party had to challenge the MP by voting ‘no’ in the so-called trigger ballot. Each branch and affiliate was counted equally, irrespective of the number of members. A CLP usually has far more union affiliates than Labour branches and, unfortunately, those union reps have tended to vote with the right (just like they do on the NEC).

But last September conference voted to replace the current trigger ballot with two separate ones: one for local affiliated bodies like unions; and one for local party branches. The threshold in both was reduced from 50% to 33% and it is enough for one of the two sections to vote ‘no’ to start a full selection process – ie, a democratic contest between the different candidates. It is a small step forward from the status quo (though totally insufficient, when one considers that in the 1980s the party provided for the full, democratic and mandatory reselection of all candidates).

Since Corbyn’s election as leader, Constituency Labour Parties up and down the country have voted for motions that showed they have “no confidence” in their MP – but such motions have no official standing in Labour Party rules and do not lead to trigger ballots.

The NEC actually has to issue guidelines and a timetable before local members can attempt to trigger a full selection process. And indeed the January 22 meeting of the NEC’s organising committee commissioned general secretary Jennie Formby to “prepare a plan to ensure that CLPs have the opportunity to call a selection process if they so wish, even if Theresa May calls a new ‘snap’, short-campaign general election” – and to do it quickly: “The NEC ‘officers group’ expects to meet earlier [than the March meeting of the NEC] to approve Formby’s plan when it is ready.”

It seems that this news was enough to encourage some of the most unpopular rightwing MPs to jump ship – among them Chukka Umunna, Luciana Berger and Angela Smith – who would all have been toast, had the local membership been given the chance to get rid of them. And they knew it. This was then followed by the foundation of Tom Watson’s ‘Future Britain’ group – a clear warning sign to Corbyn that more MPs might quit the Labour whip.

Now, from a Marxist point of view, this was all very good news. With the huge increase in membership following Corbyn’s victory, we have a real chance to radically transform Labour into a real party of the working class. We do not want Blairites, warmongers and careerists in our party. We are happy to get rid of them democratically, through elections at various levels, but we are just as pleased when they feel the need to jump before they get pushed.

Not so Jeremy Corbyn and his allies. He has bent over backwards time and time again to try and keep the right on board. Considering that after three and a half years of appeasement, the right is as hostile to him as they were on day one, this does not look like a particularly successful tactic to us.

But it continues: at the end of February, The Guardian was told: “Labour could delay the start of deselection battles that party sources fear may prompt further resignations.” After all, “We don’t want to further antagonise”. And indeed, the March NEC came … and went. And it did not issue any trigger-ballot guidelines. In fact, it looks as if the issue has been quietly dropped. NEC member Pete Willsman, veteran of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, does not mention the phrase, ‘trigger ballot’, in the latest of his regular, long NEC reports.

When asked on Facebook, leftwing NEC member Darren Williams confirms: “The NEC has not yet been presented with any proposals for trigger ballots. The next scheduled meeting is in May.” He writes that “there will be a special NEC meeting if a general election is called”, which, he “still hopes”, would then publish the guidelines and timetables necessary to organise local trigger ballots. To the comment, “That is all a bit worrying”, his answer is: “Yes”.

The experience of the 2017 snap election certainly serves as a stark warning. Then, the NEC decreed that all sitting MPs would automatically become the parliamentary candidates once again. In other words, local members were given no chance to organise trigger ballots. Should the NEC go down this road again, then Labour members would not have had a chance to decide on their parliamentary candidate for a staggering nine years (presuming the 2019 crop of MPs remained for a full parliamentary term of five years).

Clearly, this would be extremely undemocratic and in clear contravention of what the vast majority of delegates at last year’s conference wanted. From Corbyn’s point of view, it is political suicide.

As Labour Against the Witchhunt puts it in the useful petition it has produced on the issue: “Unless the makeup of the Parliamentary Labour Party dramatically changes to more accurately reflect the will and composition of the membership, Jeremy Corbyn could well be held prisoner by a majority of MPs, who are deeply hostile to the Corbyn project.”

Almost 1,000 people have signed the petition within the first 24 hours – have you?  CLICK HERE TO SIGN.

implement trigger ballots meme

Democracy and the Labour Party

Report: Defend the Left!

William Sarsfield reports on a successful meeting in solidarity with Chris Williamson and Jackie Walker

Just over 100 comrades attended the March 25 ‘Defend the left!’ meeting in central London, hosted by Labour Against the Witchhunt. Platform speakers Ken Livingstone, Graham Bash and Jackie Walker opened a discussion on the state of the Labour Party, the ongoing purge of left comrades and how we can fight back and defeat the ‘anti-Semitism’ provocation against us.

Tina Werkmann – who chaired the event – read messages from Chris Williamson and Ken Loach. She also observed that the left has never been in a better position … but the right is fighting back with every trick in the book. The most effective weapon of the right has proved to be the baseless accusations of anti-Semitism. That has cowed large sections of the ‘official’ left into silence. Those who dare speak out are the exception. But that is exactly what must happen if we are going to win the prize. To be silent in the midst of a witch hunt is to be complicit.

Ken Livingstone kicked things off with a checklist of the various calumnies he has faced over the years. “Anti-Semite” (obviously), but additionally a tax-dodger, a violent thug, corrupt, alcoholic, a Soviet spy, Gaddafi asset and …. a fan of gay group sex in various sleazy clubs, where he was once sodomised by six men.

On the day that he became leader of the Greater London Council in 1981, he was branded by Thatcher as a man with well-made plans to impose on the UK “a communist tyranny” akin to eastern Europe. Nonsense, of course, but it did not stop the mainstream media from suddenly becoming very interested in the ideological implications of cutting tube and bus fares in the capital – “the Daily Mail brought its war correspondent back from the Middle East” to cover the revolution in County Hall and demanded that he file six stories per day. “I’ve never seen a reporter under so much bloody pressure,” Ken quipped.

His key point was that there was nothing new about these provocations against leftwingers. In this country, it means lies and smears about anti-Semitism; in other parts of the world it can mean assassinations. He reminded us of the role of the right in the Parliamentary Labour Party – specifically in the shape of that oaf, John Mann, who ambushed Livingstone with absurd charges of “Nazi apologist”, conveniently with a BBC news team in tow. Ken hit the nail on the head when he recounted his own experience with the Labour Party’s disciplinary unit – “a Labour machine controlled by all the old ghastly Blairites … and doing everything possible to get rid of” Corbyn. Thatis what has fuelled “all this stuff about anti-Semitism”, he correctly pointed out.

Listening to all this, I could not help thinking what a shame it was that Ken Livingstone had decided to ‘help out’ Jeremy Corbyn by resigning from Labour in May 2018, instead of continuing to fight the ridiculous accusations made against him, which saw him suspended from the party for two years.

Insurgency

Next up was Graham Bash – stalwart of the Labour Representation Committee and Jewish Voice for Labour, but speaking in a personal capacity. With Chris Williamson’s suspension from the Labour Party, we have reached a “pivotal moment”, the comrade declared. This is another coup attempt and the attack on us “will not stop” until the right  has reasserted the “primacy of the parliamentary party over the membership”.

Since the day that Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the key task has remained the same, the comrade emphasised. “The only possible way to fight” the “powerful opposition forces” was to create an “anti-establishment insurgency from below”, channelled through a “democratic, grassroots movement”, with the declared aim of transforming the party. That is the “nub of the problem we face”, he said: “the tension between the PLP and membership – exacerbated by the political degeneration and incorporation of the leaders of Momentum – has now reached a critical moment”.

Our dual task is to be “both supportive and independent of our leaders”, he told the meeting.

Clearly, Graham was articulating the frustration of many left comrades in the party and he highlighted some key tasks that Labour Party Marxists has consistently agitated for since Corbyn won the Labour leadership. Yes, that will require an organisational expression of the left that can coordinate, initiate and make a decisive impact in the inner-party battle. Momentum is the private property of Jon Lansman and – as comrade Bash correctly stated – its leaders have now crossed the line and, in my opinion, should be effectively regarded as allies of the right in the party.1)In the general discussion following the speakers’ presentations, a comrade read comments from Lansman to the effect that “Jackie Walker is an anti-Semite and leads the anti-Semites of this country”. Above all else, however, the Labour left needs to draw a clear line of political demarcation/independence from the Corbyn/McDonnell leadership.

Corbyn’s strategy of concession and accommodation of the right wing in the party is hopeless and is in real danger of demoralising and demobilising the mass membership base. Meanwhile, it seems pretty clear that John McDonnell has effectively caved in to the PLP right – he has “fallen apart”, as one speaker from the floor put it later. Some comrades I spoke to after the meeting suggested that the absenceof an organised rank and file had left Corbyn and McDonnell vulnerable and susceptible to pressures to compromise and backtrack. No doubt, the strains on both these figures have been immense and must have cost them a great deal personally. We are where we are, however. The political autonomy of the Labour left that comrade Bash calls for must find one important expression in sharp criticism of Jeremy Corbyn and – yes – open condemnation of some of the political positions John McDonnell has taken (a stance that comrade Bash explicitly rejected in the debate).

In a highly personal, very moving speech, Jackie Walker usefully highlighted an illusion that the vast majority of Labour lefts have historically entertained. That is, the Labour Party – as “a broad church” – was defined by “a deal with the other side” (ie, the Labour right). “Now that we had won the leadership via democratic means”, after having “supported loyally” that wing of the party in elections and campaigning, we thought they would now “do the same for us”. But “we were wrong,” she bluntly concluded. Quite right. The pro-capitalist, war-mongering reactionaries of the right of the Labour Party should not be regarded as ‘comrades’ that we may have gentle disagreements with. Labour needs to be refounded on the basis of genuine working class politics and in the form of a permanent united front of all socialist and communist groups, leftwing think tanks and progressive campaigns.

As we fight for this, we should explicitly state that there would be no place in the ranks of a Labour Party transformed in this way for the likes of today’s PLP majority. We should not regard them as a legitimate trend within any workers’ movement worthy of the name.

As if to underline this point, comrade Walker herself – having also been suspended for two years – was finally to face her hearing over further absurd ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations the next day. She was, of course, expelled on March 27 – not actually for ‘anti-Semitism’, of course, but for making “prejudicial” comments that were “grossly detrimental” to the party (such as stating, “I still haven’t heard a definition of anti-Semitism that I can work with”).

It was clear that the majority of comrades were not simply exasperated with the softly-softly approach that has characterised Corbyn’s attitude to his opponents in the PLP, but now appear to be willing to support a political initiative to organise the left in the party as an independent political actor in the battle for the heart and soul of Labour. This is long overdue and something that we should all energetically support.

[1]. In the general discussion following the speakers’ presentations, a comrade read comments from Lansman to the effect that “Jackie Walker is an anti-Semite and leads the anti-Semites of this country”.

 

References

References
↑1 In the general discussion following the speakers’ presentations, a comrade read comments from Lansman to the effect that “Jackie Walker is an anti-Semite and leads the anti-Semites of this country”.
Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Jackie Walker: next victim of the witch-hunt

Jackie Walker was expelled by a supposedly ‘leftwing’ panel, notes Carla Roberts

After a suspension that has lasted over two and a half years, Jackie Walker has finally been expelled from the Labour Party by its disciplinary body, the national constitutional committee (which richly deserves its alternative description of ‘national kangaroo court’). Although the panel took two days to come to its conclusion, the result was as predictable as it was unjust.

The leadership of the Labour Party should hang its head in shame over Jackie’s treatment. By not clearing her (and not clearing her much, much sooner), it has allowed her to be dragged through the mud and be insulted as an anti-Semite and racist on a daily basis. By standing idly by while rightwing rags like the Jewish Chronicleand the Daily Mailhave heaped lie after lie onto Jackie, it has also prevented her from receiving any kind of fair hearing (tellingly, the Jewish Chroniclewas informed of the NCC verdict before her solicitors). It was impossible for anybody not to become prejudiced in such a drawn-out and publicly fought campaign.

Just three days before the beginning of her hearing, Margaret Hodge MP clearly outlined what was at stake. In an inflammatory Daily Mail article, referring to comrade Walker as “John McDonnell’s ‘anti-Semitic’ ally”, Hodge is quoted as saying: “It’s extraordinary that it has taken so long to bring her to an expulsion hearing. Tough action must be taken, but one expulsion will not solve a far deeper cultural problem that has infected the party.”

So not only must Jackie be expelled: more will have to follow. Many more. That is the real tragedy at the heart of this whole farce, of course. Whatever Jeremy Corbyn and his allies do to appease the right, it will never be enough. They have to deliver the next scalp, and then the next. We will undoubtedly see similar demands over Chris Williamson MP.

This campaign will not and can never end … at least not until Corbyn is finally replaced. As a self-declared socialist and, crucially, an outspoken supporter of the rights of the Palestinians, he is and remains an unreliable ally from capitalism’s point of view. Painting him and his supporters as anti-Semitic has been the key weapon in this struggle. And it has been incredibly successful – because Corbyn has allowed it to be. It really beggars belief that he stillwill not say a public word on the injustice heaped on some of his key supporters like Chris and Jackie.

Jackie Walker never had a chance of a fair hearing. Not just because of the massive pressure from the right to get rid of this woman, who has dared to call the witch-hunt … a witch-hunt. That was, incredibly, part of her charge sheet, as was her legal challenge against the party for breaching the data protection act by leaking her personal information to the press. As she outlines in her well-written and clear public statement, highlighting some of the injustices she has experienced: “I am being charged for defending my rights.”

The key charges centred on her now infamous comments at a training session organised by the Jewish Labour Movement at the Labour Party conference in 2016 (where she was secretly filmed, with the footage passed to the press). She details the allegations in her statement – they are so obviously weak and pathetic that it is unsurprising that the investigating officers felt the need to include all sorts of other, equally pathetic, auxiliary charges.

Her case clearly outlines some of the serious shortcomings when it comes to the procedures in the party’s disciplinary process. For example, the investigating officers added a number of charges to her case a mere three working days before the hearing, making it pretty much impossible for her to counter them effectively. Her request that she should have a chance to respond to those allegations first before they were included in the charge sheet was met with the comment: “Natural justice does not require that she also has the opportunity to respond at an investigatory stage.”

I am not a lawyer, but I would have thought that for a hearing to be properly informed the panel would need to be aware of the accused person’s initial response to last-minute charges. Giving them a fighting chance to defend themselves effectively is pretty much at the heart of the concept of ‘natural justice’.

We do also have to wonder about the party’s motives for including in the evidence pack, statements and complaints provided by people who do not just criticise Jackie – but do so clearly on a basis of racist prejudice. The investigating officers managed to redact the names of the complainants – but they left statements in the charge sheet that include intros like “[JW is] a white middle class woman with dreadlocks” and “Walker – who claims to be part-Jewish”. Even the written statement provided by the party’s only witness, Mike Katz – leading member of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement – contains the sentence: “JW uses her self-identification as a black woman and a Jew as cover to put her beyond criticism …” (my emphasis).

That is an incredibly dumb statement by the usually so eloquent Katz – not just because Jackie clearly isa black woman, who also has Jewish heritage (her mum was a black Jamaican Sephardi Jew and her dad a Russian Ashkenazi Jewish). But he also charges her with exactly what the Zionist lobby has been trying to achieve all along: to label any criticism of their views or tactics as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore illegitimate.

Definition?

Talking of which, it is also interesting that the NCC clearly had trouble proving that Jackie had indeed ever said or written anything anti-Semitic. The party could not apply the disputed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism, because the charges relate to an incident in 2016 – ie, before the national executive committee adopted it.

But, had they applied this – or anyother definition of any kind – they would have failed in their attempts to successfully convict her. Clearly, she is not guilty of “hostility or prejudice against Jews” (Oxford English Dictionary) or “hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic or racial group” (Merriam Webster Dictionary) and she also does not fit the bill when it comes to Brian Klug’s definition: “hostility to Jews as Jews”.

So instead it was explained that the test to be applied in Jackie’s case “does not require the NCC to engage in a debate as to the proper definition of anti-Semitism”, but rather whether an “ordinary person hearing or reading the comments might reasonably perceive them to be anti-Semitic.” (my emphasis)

In reality, of course, this is a Zionist’s wet dream of a definition. Not surprisingly, it is also pretty close to the definition that the JLM has been fighting for – and which the NEC and Labour Party conference 2018 actually rejected.

The JLM’s efforts here are based on a misapplication of the recommendations of the MacPherson report (produced after the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993). MacPherson recommended that, when a victim or someone else perceives an attack or hate incident as racially motivated, then the police must record it as such: ie, as possibly racially motivated. Pro-Zionist organisations in and outside the Labour Party have been working hard to change this into something quite different. The JLM, for example, tried to force through a rule change at the 2018 Labour conference, which wanted a “hate incident” to be “defined as something where the victim oranyone else think it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, transgender identity or sexual orientation” (our emphasis).

The compromise formulation eventually adopted by the NEC (and subsequently by conference) enshrines the need for some kind of – you know – evidence: “… any incident which in their view might reasonably be seen to demonstrate hostility or prejudice based on disability, race … ”

Again, the party would have a hard time proving Jackie’s guilt with this definition. And in the end they decided to throw her out on charges of “misconduct” instead, and thereby also discovered a certain “pattern of behaviour” – ie, she just would not shut up! This does not bode well for Chris Williamson MP, who is also charged with a “pattern of behaviour”.

The final straw for Jackie came with the panel’s refusal to allow her to read out a “brief opening address”. The panel had to adjourn the meeting to discuss with its four lawyers and their assistants what to do about such an incredible outlandish demand. Despite announcing that this would be an “informal meeting” and that Jackie should call the NCC’s Russell Cartwright by his “first name”, it was not quite informal enough to allow her the chance to make a brief statement.

Leftwing?

And that despite the fact that the panel looked – from the outset – like a leftwing one. Russell Cartwright is treasurer of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy (we hear that some of his CLPD comrades are far from happy that he took on this role). Anna Dyer, who is actually the interim chair of the NCC, is described by the Jewish Chronicleas a “Unite union activist”. We must confess we know little about her or her politics, apart from the fact that she was elected to the NCC in 2017, thanks to a place on the so-called “left slate” put out by the Grassroots Centre Left Alliance.

The GCLA is dominated by the CLPD and Momentum, and exists only to put forward ‘centre-left’ candidates in Labour internal elections. (‘Centre-left’ is a very stretchy term, of course. For years, the GCLA slate for the NEC featured Ann Black, who played a leading role in robbing thousands of members of a vote in the leadership elections, following the first coup attempt against Jeremy Corbyn.)

Momentum owner Jon Lansman and CLPD leader Pete Willsman have recently fallen out rather spectacularly, when Lansman dumped his comrade of 40 years over ridiculous allegations of playing down anti-Semitism (what else?). Lansman has, of course, now become a fully fledged witch-hunter; Willsman is, despite those allegations against him, very mealy-mouthed when it comes to the witch-hunt. The CLPD might have put out a brief statement in support of Chris Williamson MP, but it also sent out – uncritically and without comment – the old piece of advice by general secretary Jennie Formby that has mistakenly been interpreted as a ban on Labour Party branches and Constituency Labour Parties moving motions in support of Chris. Labour Against the Witchhunt has exposed this as fake news – but still Pete Willsman is refusing to correct his mistake, despite being urged to do so by LAW. In other words, many – if not most – of the candidates on the various ‘left slates’ have been, at the very least, questionably leftwing.

It is therefore not a huge surprise that the Jewish Chronicle describes Anna Dyer as, in fact, a rightwinger and “having a reputation for being independent”. The paper writes that the third panellist – Alan Tate from the Communication Workers Union, who “is reported to be ‘undecided’ on the allegations” – is “likely to be the casting vote on Ms Walker’s conduct”.

So the Jewish Chronicleplaced Dyer on the right, Cartwright on the left and Tate in the centre. It is a sad testament to the politics of the GCLA that it supported somebody that even the JC thinks can be relied upon to expel Jackie Walker on baseless charges.

We are also less than impressed with the conduct of Russell Cartwright. He was on the NCC panel that back in 2017 found Ken Livingstone guilty of three charges of “bringing the party into disrepute” and decided to extend his suspension for another year. This was no doubt supposed to be some clever plan to sneak Livingstone back into the party 12 months later and to avoid his expulsion (which Rose Burley, the rightwinger on Livingstone’s NCC panel had demanded). But, of course, by then the campaign to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism had grown so massively that Livingstone had no chance. Rightwingers were furious over the impending readmission and Livingstone resigned in the face of a massive media shit-storm. Clearly, by conceding that Livingstone was guilty, the NCC panel had helped to seal his fate.

Maybe the ‘leftwingers’ on Jackie Walker’s panel would have tried something similarly ‘clever’. We will never know. Testing this out and thereby exposing the CLGA’s deeply flawed methods of supporting ‘centre-left’ candidates might have been one of the few advantages of Jackie sitting through her two-day disciplinary hearing. Some might arguethat, by walking out, she let the panel and the party off the hook.

But no doubt the outcome would have been the same in any case. By exposing the total lack of natural justice at the heart of her case with a fantastic, spirited party of well over 100 people outside her hearing, she has certainly gone out with a very loud bang. We doubt this will be the last we hear of Jackie Walker … l

After Jackie walked out of her kangaroo court hearing

 

[1]. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6841057/Shadow-chancellor-John-McDonnells-anti-Semitic-ally-expelled-MPs-warn.html.

 

[2]. www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org/campaigns/press-release-by-jackie-walker-denied-right-to-speak-in-her-own-defence.

 

[3]. Ibid.

 

[4]. http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/humpty-dumpty-and-anti-semitism.

 

[5]. https://labourlist.org/2017/09/left-slate-wins-huge-victory-in-race-for-key-labour-committee.

 

[6]. www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org/campaigns/there-is-no-ban-on-moving-motions-in-support-of-chris-williamson-mp.

 

[7]. www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/long-suspended-labour-activist-jackie-walker-will-not-face-any-antisemitism-charges-1.482124.