Category Archives: Democracy and the Labour Party

Anti-Semitism

Morning Star: Compounding the mistake

No-one should be congratulated for the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt in the Labour Party, says David Shearer

Last week saw a bit of a controversy in ‘official communist’ circles over the publication of an article in the Morning Star entitled ‘Rising anti-Semitism cannot be tackled without addressing Israel’s crimes’ (June 18).

The article was written by John Elder – described subsequently by the Star editors as “an external contributor” – but a couple of days later it was removed from the paper’s website following protests about its contents, which were indeed highly problematic. While Elder was adamant in his condemnation of the Israeli state for its slaughter and continuing oppression of Palestinians in Gaza, he conflated criticism of and hostility towards Israel with anti-Semitism, in exactly the same way as the Zionists do.

He talked about “developing international anti-Semitism (or anti-Israel sentiment)” and “rising anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment in Britain” – as though opposition to Israel was exactly the same thing as hostility towards Jews.

According to Elder:

Unfortunately, mainstream Jewish communities everywhere – and their supporters – appear unwilling to accept the connection between developing international anti-Semitism (or anti-Israel sentiment) and Israel’s decades-long, yet still ongoing, acts of barbarism against Palestinians, and its illegal occupation and annexation of their land.

Apparently the anti-Semitism directed against such Jews

… could be because of their perpetual backing of a nation that cocks a snook at worldwide excoriation of its repeated military atrocities in Gaza, and seemingly endless UN resolutions opposed to its general conduct towards the Palestinians.

He adds:

So surely the Jewish organisations and individuals who lately were protesting about growing anti-Semitism in Britain must see that, as advocates of Israel’s historical and still unremitting brutality against Palestinians, they will inevitably be regarded by some other British nationals as being indirectly complicit in that country’s actions.

It is reasonable enough to say that those who justify or excuse the acts of an oppressor will be seen as “complicit” in those acts – and perhaps not just “indirectly” either. But stating your opposition to such people’s views has nothing whatsoever to do with anti-Semitism, whether or not the apologists are Jewish. It is a Zionist lie to suggest otherwise.

It is true that some anti-Semites justify their hatred of and prejudice against Jews by claiming that they are somehow collectively responsible for Israel’s crimes. But for a supposed leftwinger to make such a claim is a disgrace. There are many thousands of Jews who are militantly anti-Zionist – indeed amongst young Jews in particular increasing numbers no longer identify with Israel.

In fact one thing that is noteworthy about the “developing international anti-Semitism” – in Austria, Poland, Hungary, etc – is that it is totally unconnected with “Israel’s crimes”. Take Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won a landslide victory in the April elections – his third such victory in alliance with the Christian Democratic KDNP.

Fidesz’s election campaign focused to a large extent on the Hungarian-born US financier, George Soros, who is Jewish. Although it was not stated overtly, the posters carrying pictures of Soros, and bearing slogans against people like him who were allegedly responsible for trying flood Hungary with Muslim migrants, strongly implied that it was all the fault of the Jews.

At one rally Orbán said of his political opponents: “They are not national, but international; they do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.” Once again, he did not say so explicitly, but the language used – reminiscent of anti-Jewish conspiracy theorists -was pointing the finger at Jews and alleged Jewish sympathisers within the opposition parties.

This is the same Viktor Orbán who has described former Hungarian regent and notorious Nazi collaborator Miklós Horthy as an “exceptional statesman”. Yet Fidesz is pro-Israel – last year Orbán invited Binyamin Netanyahu to visit Budapest and the Israeli prime minister was delighted to accept.

But such pro-Israel sentiments among anti-Semites are not unique to Hungary and other European states. They have actually been a feature of the far right in Britain too. So there is virtually no connection between “rising anti-Semitism” and “Israel’s crimes”.

And what about that phrase – “rising anti-Semitism”? Elder says he is opposed to Zionists in the Labour Party, together with groups like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Alliance, but plays into their hands not only by conflating opposition to Israel with anti-Semitism, but by appearing to admit that anti-Semitism is increasing in Britain, particularly within Labour.

To be fair to Elder, he talks about the “apparent anti-Semitism within Labour Party ranks and emerging in the population at large”, and what the BoD and JLA “considered to be anti-Semitic conduct by some of Labour’s members”. He also says that, even during last month’s slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, “Their attention remained focused on Labour and, also, on what they believed to be rising anti-Semitism in Britain itself” (my emphasis).

However, while it is true that the headline was no doubt chosen by the editors, caveats like those emphasised above are omitted in other parts of the article, such as when he talks about the “pressure on the Labour Party and its leadership to stamp out anti-Semitism within its ranks and take action against the perpetrators”. And, most notably, when he writes: “… no amount of protestations about the symptoms of rising anti-Semitism or anti-Israel sentiment in Britain and elsewhere will end the problem until its root cause – Israel’s criminal behaviour – is dealt with” (preferably by the United Nations, he thinks).

Anti-Corbyn

As I have already noted, it is ludicrous to describe “Israel’s criminal behaviour” as the “root cause” of anti-Semitism, “rising” or not. However, Elder’s article provided the minority of sympathisers for the Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt within the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain with a golden opportunity. Foremost among them is Mary Davis, who demanded that Ken Livingstone’s weekly column in the Star be immediately terminated following his remarks in 2016 about the collaboration between the early Nazi government and German Zionists, for which he was suspended. Thankfully, the editors – and, presumably, the CPB leadership – rejected her demands.

But now Davis took up the opportunity in the shape of an article penned jointly with Phil Katz, entitled ‘Jews and all citizens should be encouraged to challenge actual and existing anti-Semitism’ (June 20).

They say of the Elder article: “Its rationale – that Jews everywhere are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government – is by reverse exactly the argument put forward by the Israeli government and rightwing Zionists.” This is basically correct. But things go rapidly downhill from there.

They continue:

What is alarming about current-day anti-Semitism is that it continues to use the same themes that have been used to stigmatise and justify genocide of the Jews for centuries. And, where the Labour Party is forced to confront hundreds of cases and act on them, it can hardly be “apparent” …

The Labour Party should be applauded for taking anti-Semitism seriously and dealing with it robustly. To say anti-Semitism isn’t an issue, is a conspiracy to bring down Jeremy Corbyn or that no British Jew can challenge anti-Semitism without being called an apologist for genocide is a dangerous path.

So who in the Labour Party has been disciplined for using “the same themes that have been used to stigmatise and justify genocide of the Jews for centuries”? Nobody at all. No-one has been accused of stating that Jews are money-grabbing self-seekers or part of an international conspiracy to control the world. Like Livingstone they have mainly been accused of making anti-Zionist statements that are allegedly “offensive”. It is true that many Zionists will take offence when reminded of their co-thinkers’ collaboration with the Nazis, but it is not anti-Semitic to point to such historical facts.

And what about the claim that Labour has been “forced to confront hundreds of cases and act on them”? As far as I know, only one person has actually been disciplined specifically for alleged anti-Semitism. It is true that many others originally faced spurious ‘anti-Semitic’ charges, just like Livingstone, but in just about every case the charge was eventually changed, as it was with him, to “bringing the party into disrepute”, using unpleasant language, and so on.

If there were numerous instances of actual anti-Semitism within the Labour Party, then of course it would be “an issue” that should be taken “seriously”. But I’m afraid such allegations have been used precisely as part of the anti-Corbyn campaign, which does aim to eventually “bring down” the leader.

Anyway, the day after the Davis-Katz article was published, the Star carried ‘An apology’ on the front page (June 21). This stated that the Elder piece had “crossed a line” and should not have been published – now “This article has been removed from the website”. The editors had “failed to vet with the care necessary on a subject of such importance”, and now “we have reinforced editorial procedures and oversight to ensure this error is not repeated”. To be honest, it is not unusual for the Star to publish worthless pieces, but it is unusual for such pieces to be taken down from the website.

Surely, having made the mistake of publishing it, it would have been better to leave it in place, so that readers could judge for themselves whether it had indeed “crossed a line” and learn the appropriate lessons. Removing it was actually compounding the mistake. But what about the Davis-Katz piece? Was that all right? The Star claims over and over again that it is on Corbyn’s side, yet it publishes an article (not a letter) which upholds one of the main weapons used against him.

Democracy and the Labour Party

Problems with playing the ‘long game’

It is not often we listen to Labour deputy leader Tom Watson with interest. But in an interview this week he reminded us that the civil war in the Labour Party is very much alive and kicking.

He simply cannot understand that his former flatmate, Unite leader Len McCluskey, seems to have turned his back on him. “Sadly, we fell out over that week when Jeremy went into the second leadership election, and I’ve not spoken to him since that week.”

“When Jeremy went into the second leadership election”… well, that is certainly an interesting way of describing a full-on coup, which had none other than Tom Watson among its instigators, of course. And just because of that silly little coup his old mate McCluskey is apparently now “coming for me”:

He’s powerful enough, if he wants to take me out as deputy leader, he probably could, but that’s up to him. They’re upping their delegates and all of that. I’m just going to get on and try to bring everyone back together and do what I can, as best I can.

Sure you are, Tom. You’re all about unity. And just like the rest of the right wing in the party, you tend to appeal for it when your own career prospects might be under threat.

Watson seems to say that McCluskey is getting his own Unite troops ready to challenge him for his role as deputy leader. Just like for leader of the party, there are no regular elections for deputy leader. The incumbent either has to die, resign – or be challenged.

Of course – and Watson knows this very well – affiliated unions play no role at all when it comes to such a challenge. Potential candidates need the support of “20% of combined Commons members of the Parliamentary Labour Party and members of the European Parliamentary Labour Party” before they can make it onto the ballot paper.

So the fact that Unite is “upping their delegates and all of that” has no relevance to there being an active challenger to Tom Watson – or not (needless to say, in our view there definitely should be a challenge – the man is a rightwing backstabber par excellence). Rather Watson is speaking here as a kind of representative of the whole ‘moderate’ right in the party and particularly in the PLP. There have indeed been moves by a number of unions and affiliated organisations to increase the number of branches affiliated to local CLPs – and not just by the left. The Jewish Labour Movement, for example, has approached pretty much all CLPs. The difficulty these national affiliates have is proving that they indeed “have members who are registered as electors within the constituency”, which is the main requirement for local affiliation.1)Labour Party rulebook 2018, chapter 7, clause III, point 2. See http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Labour-Party-Rule-Book-Labour-Party-2018-Rule-Book.pdf.

Once they are affiliated to a CLP, those local affiliates could play an important role in the highly undemocratic trigger ballot – currently the only way that you can get rid of an MP. If the sitting MP wants to stand again, all the constituency’s Labour Party branches and its local affiliates have a single vote each. Each branch and each affiliate is counted equally, irrespective of the number of its members. If a simple majority of branches/affiliates votes ‘yes’, the sitting MP automatically becomes the official candidate. A full selection procedure only takes place if a majority of branches/affiliates votes ‘no’ at this stage. Then, every Labour Party member casts a vote (the affiliated organisations are not involved at this stage of the process).

Reselection

In other words, Tom Watson is warning Len McCluskey not to challenge rightwing MPs like himself on a local level. His intervention is no doubt also designed to see off the lame proposal for a slight reform of the trigger ballot procedure. Despite the fact that Jon Lansman has campaigned for the mandatory reselection of parliamentary candidates for decades (it was, after all, the main demand of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, in which he played a leading role), he has now dropped it and merely calls for raising the threshold from 50% to 66% – ie, two-thirds of the local branches and affiliates have to vote ‘yes’ to a sitting MP, otherwise a full selection process begins.

But this still disproportionately favours the sitting MP: rather than allowing for a full and democratic automatic reselection process before every election, a sitting MP would still have to be challenged. Lansman’s tinkering would merely restore the trigger ballot to what it was when it was introduced by Neil Kinnock in 1990 in order to curb the power of the unions, before Tony Blair reduced it to today’s 50%. Lansman here appears to be following the lead of Jeremy Corbyn, who has declared that nowadays he is not in favour of mandatory reselection.

In this context, we are very pleased to see a much more radical rule change going forward to this year’s conference from International Labour – the party unit to which party members living abroad belong. IL is putting a deal of energy and effort into publicising the motion, no doubt in order to stop it from being ruled out of order, or batted aside by the conference arrangements committee in favour of Jon Lansman’s lame proposal.

The rule change by IL simply removes the whole trigger ballot process. While the trade unions currently have no role in the local selection process of parliamentary candidates, this would also remove their role in potentially blocking reselection. Having said that, it is clearly a huge and important step in the right direction towards transforming Labour into a real party of labour. MPs must become truly accountable to the membership.

Unite actually voted in favour of mandatory reselection at the union’s policy conference in 2017. The motion read:

MPs have not got ‘jobs for life’. They represent their constituency, but ultimately they are selected by and accountable to their Constituency Labour Party. To ensure democratic accountability and the rights of party members to select candidates that reflect their views, conference supports the need for mandatory reselection of Labour MPs in each parliament as essential.

Should Len McCluskey get behind IL’s motion, there is a real chance it might actually go through.

LRC and Gordon

Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn is still trying to appease the right in the party. Presumably, he thinks of himself as playing the long game, in which he will eventually emerge as prime minister, running a leftwing Labour government and bringing to fruition his neo-Keynesian, nationalist programme. Strategically, he is therefore trying to concentrate on ‘bread and butter issues’ like the NHS and austerity, while ‘sitting out’ more complex questions like democratisation, as well as Brexit, etc.

When it comes to even more tricky questions like the fabricated ‘anti-Semitism’ scandal in the party, he has chosen the path of least resistance: he says he will deal with the ‘problem’. So having replaced general secretary Iain McNicol with the more leftwing Jennie Formby, she was told to put on a show of combating anti-Semitism and not to object when Labour members are suspended or expelled on trumped-up charges.

His appointment of Gordon Nardell as ‘in-house QC’ to deal with disciplinary matters looks similarly good on paper. Nardell is a founding member of the Labour Representation Committee, where he was tasked, among other things, with rewriting the organisation’s disciplinary procedures. Nardell has come under quite a lot of scrutiny from the rightwing media and has quickly deleted his social media accounts – not quickly enough, mind. He has been ‘outed’ as having been a Facebook friend of Tony Greenstein (who cannot recall ever meeting or communicating with him) and having made a couple of comments in support of Jackie Walker.

The Labour Party has also confirmed that in his new job Nardell will be working with the definition of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance – but not the 11 examples that come with it, as an outraged Jewish Chronicle reports. The examples are, of course, the crux of the matter, as they conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.

There has been a lot of confusion over this definition and which part was adopted at last year’s Labour conference. The Jewish Labour Movement claimed that the party accepted the definition plus the examples, and the Board of Deputies has tried to get Jeremy Corbyn to confirm that. Marc Wadsworth’s disciplinary hearing even had to be adjourned so that Labour Party lawyers could go away and find out what the party had adopted.

In a sense, of course, this is pretty academic – it all depends on who is enforcing the rules and to what purpose. Marc Wadsworth, we should remember, was not expelled for anti-Semitism, but for the catch-all crime of “bringing the party into disrepute”. But it is an important and very welcome sign that Nardell has come out in opposition to the IHRA examples.

We welcome Nardell’s appointment and hope that he – and Corbyn – will stand firm against the ongoing smear campaign against him and his ‘friends’, even if they are mere online acquaintances. By endorsing what could be viewed as a highly political appointment, Corbyn does, of course, implicitly acknowledge that there is a civil war going on. It is just that he is trying to win it by stealth, rather than having the argument out in the open. That is a very dangerous game.

For example, Corbyn probably thinks he is being clever by meeting with the Board of Deputies without making any public concessions. But the mere fact he has met them – and at the same time continues to refuse to meet the comrades from Jewish Voice for Labour – means that he has given way politically.

He says nothing about Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Marc Wadsworth and the hundreds of others. He says nothing when Stan Keable is sacked from his job by a Labour-run council for stating that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazi regime – a historical, if inconvenient, fact. He says nothing even when his old comrades and allies, Christine Shawcroft and Ken Livingstone, are in the firing line – quite the opposite. He urges them to resign. He has, therefore, become complicit in the right’s campaign against his own supporters.

But, no matter how many more pawns he sacrifices in this long game, he is very unlikely to win it. Even if Corbyn should become the next prime minister (and it is a big if, for a number of reasons) he would still be surrounded by a PLP whose members are mostly sworn enemies. In fact, the methods used against ‘prime minister Corbyn’ – if he were permitted to get that far – would make the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign look pretty tame. Why on earth would the PLP suddenly shut up and support Corbyn? Under these circumstances, it is a self-defeating and utterly hopeless strategy to seek ‘unity’ with the right – the last three years have demonstrated that they are not about to give up.

References

References
↑1 Labour Party rulebook 2018, chapter 7, clause III, point 2. See http://labourpartymarxists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Labour-Party-Rule-Book-Labour-Party-2018-Rule-Book.pdf.
Democracy and the Labour Party

And then they came for the LRC…

John McDonnell has a political history, writes Carla Roberts. But, unfortunately, not much in the way of a backbone

The Sunday Telegraph has a scoop: It has “emerged”, the paper writes, that shadow chancellorJohn McDonnell is the president of theLabour Representation Committee.1)Sunday Telegraph June 3 2018 And The Jewish Chronicle is so impressed that it copied the article almost word for word.

Having made such a major discovery, the Torygraph thinks that McDonnell’s position is simply untenable. It quotes usual suspect John Mann MP, who calls on McDonnell to resign from the LRC (we will get to Mann later).

Why? Because, on the one hand, McDonnell said he would follow Jeremy Corbyn in rooting out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party. After all, has he not just promised former Labour councillor and campaigns officer of the rightwing Jewish Labour Movement, Adam Langleben (who inexplicably lost his seat in Barnet after ranting and raving for months against the terrible level of anti-Semitism in the party), that he would “call out hard-left news websites if they promote conspiratorial and anti-Semitic stories”? (As an aside, Jewish Voice for Labour, on the other hand, has been trying unsuccessfully for almost a year now to secure a meeting with either McDonnell or Corbyn.)

But McDonnell cannot fool the eagled-eyed investigative journalists of the Telegraph so easily, who diligently managed to dig out McDonnell’s association with the LRC (which only goes back to the refounding of the organisation in, oh, 2004 – a mere 14 years). The problem, as far as the Telegraph is concerned, is that the LRC dares to come out in defence of Labour Party members who have been unjustly suspended and expelled over the last two years: to the LRC’s credit, there are numerous articles and statements on its website defending Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Stan Keable.

In the words of the Telegraph, the LRC is “campaigning for Labour figures accused of anti-Semitism”. It quotes an unnamed Labour MP: “Jeremy Corbyn says one thing on anti-Semitism, but his cheerleaders say quite another. This isn’t a good look for Jeremy or John McDonnell, as it makes what they’re saying on anti-Semitism look quite insincere.”

Needless to say, our fearless investigators fail to mention the fact that none of those “accused of anti-Semitism” and defended by the LRC have actually been subject to discipline for that offence. Had Ken Livingstone not resigned, he would undoubtedly have been expelled under the charge of “bringing the party into disrepute”. The same catch-all phrase has been used to get rid of Marc Wadsworth and Tony Greenstein. Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt, has been expelled from the party for his association with Labour Party Marxists – and sacked from his job for – you guessed it – “bringing the council into disrepute”. Jackie Walker, when her case is finally heard, will in all likelihood also be charged under the same clause.

Of course, it is true that all those comrades have been accused of anti-Semitism – by the right in the party, the pro-Israel lobby and the mainstream media. Falsely accused, that is. But never charged with it. Because the charge would never hold up – not even in front of Labour’s highly politicised kangaroo court, the national constitutional committee, which is still dominated by the right and chaired by Maggie Cosin, “a leading force in Labour First”,  according to investigative journalist Asa Winstanley of the award-winning Electronic Intifada.

None of the comrades have said anything even remotely anti-Semitic. Marc Wadsworth criticised Ruth Smeeth MP, who happens to be Jewish. Stan Keable and Ken Livingstone pointed out the historically verifiable fact that the early Nazi government and the Zionist Federation of Germany signed the infamous Ha’avara transfer agreement in 1933. Even Tony Greenstein, who has used the word ‘Zio’ – which Jeremy Corbyn and Jon Lansman now want to ban as representing an expression of the rather mythical “new anti-Semitism” – was booted out not for anti-Semitism, but basically for being rude.

As if it were out to highlight the deeply irrational nature of the ongoing witch-hunt, the Telegraph in its article quotes at length John Mann MP. He pretends to be simply outraged by this particular paragraph in the LRC’s statement on Ken Livingstone:

When we consider political pygmies like John Mann and Wes Streeting accusing Ken of anti-Semitism, it is worth asking oneself, ‘What have these people ever done in their lives to advance the cause of Labour’? Livingstone has done quite a lot.

Mann complains not about the correct observation that rightwingers like himself seem chiefly interested in damaging the Corbyn-led Labour Party rather than building it. Instead, he now considers “filing a formal complaint” against the LRC over its “appalling racist language”. You see he is apparently also the “chairman of the parliamentary group on the Great Lakes of Africa”. In this very important role, he has managed to meet real pygmies and knows what they go through. Anybody using “this racist insult should hang their heads in shame, and be expelled from the Labour Party. I am sure John McDonnell will want to resign immediately”.

I must confess, I did laugh out loud when I first read this. This is such a monumentally stupid charge, it almost beggars belief the Telegraph would print such nonsense. However, the LRC steering committee has now changed the phrase “political pygmies” to “self-publicists”.  It has done this without any explanation, as far as I know – a missed opportunity in our view to criticise the outrageous hypocrisy of John Mann, who, as everybody knows, could not give a hoot about really fighting racism.

Clearly, this is part and parcel of painting Jeremy Corbyn and his allies as a bunch of cranks and anti-Semites that can never be trusted to reliably run capitalism. In this case, they are trying the old trick of guilt by association.

Grow a backbone

In other words, this latest attack by the Telegraph was a splendid opportunity for John McDonnell to come out and defend his party against the lazy and politically motivated charge of anti-Semitism. A chance to proudly stand up for his comrades in the LRC. A chance to speak out against the ever-increasing witch-hunt in the party and wider society. And perhaps even a chance to grow a backbone.

But, of course, we knew he would do no such thing. His response has been as disappointing as is now expected of him and the rest of the  Labour leadership (actually, it could be worse: he might still resign his long-held post in the LRC, but we doubt he will). His spokesman half-heartedly tried to dismiss the story, stating that McDonnell was “just an honorary president of the LRC, and played no role in the content or decision-making process of the organisation”.

Well, he actually helped set up the LRC. And he used to be chair, that is until Jeremy Corbyn made him shadow chancellor in 2015, when he was replaced by Matt Wrack, leader of the Fire Brigades Union.

But unfortunately, rather than stand with their LRC comrades in openly opposing the witch-hunt against the Labour left, McDonnell and the Labour leadership continue to give credence to the lie that the party has a huge problem with anti-Semitism. Yes, there are a few crackpot anti-Semites in the party. Just as there are sexists, racists and there may also be a few paedophiles. Statistically speaking, it would be virtually impossible for a party of almost 600,000 not to have members whose views are unacceptable. Such a huge membership simply cannot but reflect some of the prejudices that exist in today’s society.

That is why Jeremy Corbyn’s promise of enforcing a “zero tolerance” policy towards anti-Semitism is so wrong-headed.   Firstly, taken to its logical conclusion it means a system of intimidation and thought control. Secondly, it is just politically wrong. The way to fight backward ideas is not to throw out anybody who makes a stupid, racist, sexist or nationalistic comment. But by education, by open debate and thorough discussion. The opposite of what is happening in the party today, in other words. Many comrades are now scared of discussing anything contentious, out of fear of coming onto the radar of the witch-finders and having their reputation and livelihood ruined in the process.

Unfortunately, Jeremy Corbyn has to take a fair share of the blame for this McCarthyite atmosphere. After all, it is only the continued policy of trying to appease the right and the pro-Israel lobby emanating from the Labour leader’s office that has given the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ narrative the traction it now has. Once the media found that Corbyn was willing to give ground, it kept piling on the pressure with one ridiculous accusation after the other.

For over two years, the Labour leadership has been sitting on the report into anti-Semitism produced by Shami Chakrabarti. Despite the despicable role the lawyer has played in forcing Ken Livingstone out of the Labour Party, her recommendations, at least when it comes to due process and natural justice, would have led to the exoneration of pretty much all those recently expelled. The cases of Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker come to mind.

But Corbyn seems to have been advised that it is best to get rid of those ‘problematic’ cases first, before he green-lights the long overdue reform of Labour’s disciplinary process. This is both cowardly and foolish. The right will not give up, but will continue to throw everything they have at him.

For the right and the pro-Israel lobby, the treatment meted out to Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony Greenstein, Stan Keable and all the other victims of the witch-hunt is not primarily about those individuals. They will fight tooth and nail to stop the transformation of the Labour Party into a democratic, anti-imperialist, working class party that will resist the drive for yet another devastating war in the Middle East.

For us on the left, these victimised comrades need to be publicly and vigorously defended with every available weapon at our disposal. We will defend them alongside comrades from the LRC, Labour Against the Witchhunt, Jewish Voice for Labour and all other groups that fight against unjust suspensions and expulsions from the Labour Party.

But which side are John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn on?

References

References
↑1 Sunday Telegraph June 3 2018
Democracy and the Labour Party

A very British cover-up

Conspiracies do happen, as the Jeremy Thorpe scandal proves. And Eddie Ford reckons the establishment might also conspire against Jeremy Corbyn in the event of a Labour victory

The world does not operate according to diabolical plots hatched by small, sinister cabals. Having said that, conspiracies do happen – attempts are made to make something happen that serves the interests of this or that person, group, lobby or body. After all, someone tried to kill the Skripals in Salisbury, whether it was the Russian or Ukrainian ‘security services’, SBU (Security Service of Ukraine), MI5 or some other actor. Somebody, somewhere conspired to bring that event about. Then there is the ‘murdered’ Russian journalist, Arkady Babchenko, turning up very alive at a press conference in Kiev – again, someone conspired to pull that particular hare-brained stunt. Things are not always what they seem, and the fact that some crackpots believe that too does not necessarily make it untrue.

Which brings us neatly to the recent three-part BBC mini-series premiered on May 20, A very English scandal, starring Hugh Grant as Jeremy Thorpe and Ben Whishaw as Norman Scott. The title of the drama, written by Russell T Davies, was perhaps a nod in the direction of Chris Mullin’s influential A very British coup. The last episode, aired on June 3, was directly followed on BBC4 by a documentary made by BBC veteran journalist Tom Mangold, entitled The Jeremy Thorpe scandal. In 1979, Mangold was the Panorama reporter who led an investigation into the trial of Jeremy Thorpe and others for the conspiracy to kill Thorpe’s former lover from the early 1960s, Norman Scott – that was when homosexual acts were illegal, of course. Therefore any disclosure about his relationship with “Bunnies”, his pet name for Scott, would have ended Thorpe’s seemingly glittering political career.

Convinced that the former Liberal Party leader would be found guilty, as was everybody else, a special Panorama post-trial programme was prepared – but had to be hastily scrapped when the jury returned a verdict of not guilty on Thorpe and the other defendants, with the BBC’s director-general of the time ordering that all copies be destroyed. Wisely, Mangold kept a copy. Edited and updated with new information about a fresh 2015 inquiry by Gwent police, which was dropped two years later under slightly mysterious circumstances, Mangold clearly shows how powerful political forces right at the top of the British establishment tried to protect Jeremy Thorpe, who was considered one of their own, being Eton and Oxford-educated and all the rest of it.

The programme featured fascinating interviews from 1979 with Norman Scott, chief prosecution witness and former Liberal Party MP for Bodmin Peter Bessell, and Andrew ‘Gino’ Newton, the hit man. Newton, as shown grippingly in the drama, shot dead Scott’s Great Dane dog on Bodmin Moor in 1975 and then tried to kill Scott too, but fortunately for the latter the gun jammed and he is still alive today to tell the tale – unlike Jeremy Thorpe who died in 2014 after suffering for decades with Parkinson’s disease.

In my view A very English scandal was superb – everybody should watch it. Hugh Grant’s performance as Thorpe was almost uncanny in the way it perfectly captured the Liberal leader’s physical mannerisms and personality – what an actor: it could have been Thorpe himself staring languidly at you from the TV screen. Ben Whishaw was also excellent – even if Scott, now 78, apparently “hates” the way he was portrayed as a “mincing weakling” (not how it came across to me when I watched the show: rather he seemed quite a resilient character).

For readers of an older generation – or perhaps students of comedy – one of the main memories of this affair is Peter Cook’s brilliant 1979 sketch, ‘Entirely a matter for you’, ruthlessly satirising judge Joseph Cantley’s notoriously biased closing remarks to the jury. Needless to say, those remarks were a near pristine example of the ‘old boy network’ at work, not to mention general class prejudice and bigotry. According to Cantley, Scott had a “warped personality” and was an “accomplished sponger”, “crook”, “fraud”, “proven liar”, “whiner”, “parasite” and, of all things, a “male model”. Enough said.

The judge did not think much of Peter Bessell either: he was a “humbug” whose entire evidence was a “a tissue of lies” because he had signed a “deplorable” contract with The Sunday Telegraph for the serialisation rights of his memoirs and his fee of £25,000 would double were Thorpe to be convicted. But Thorpe, on the other hand, in the judge’s opinion, was a fine man of “hitherto unblemished reputation” and a “national figure with a very distinguished public record” – why would he consort with low-life such as Scott?

‘Judge’ Peter Cook’s summing-up said it all, when he instructed the jury “now to retire … to carefully consider your verdict of not guilty”. In denial almost right to the very end, it seems, Thorpe told The Guardian in January 2008 that if his affair with “Bunnies” happened now, “I think the public would be kinder”. In other words, he was no longer denying that the two had had a homosexual affair, but he did not even mention, let alone express any remorse about, conspiring to murder his ex-lover. You would almost believe that he was the victim, not Scott.

Context

Returning to the main point, the entire Jeremy Thorpe scandal clearly represents an extensive cover-up – or conspiracy, if you prefer. Obviously this did not just involve leading figures in the Liberal Party, but also the Tory government at the time – especially the then home secretary, the infamous Reginald Maudling.

Scott told his story in May 1971 to Emlyn Hooson (chairman of the Liberal Party in Wales and MP for Montgomeryshire) and a certain David Steel, later to become the Liberal leader. An internal party inquiry was set up, chaired by Lord Byers, the leader of the Liberals in the House of Lords. However, at the inquiry Byers became immediately hostile to Scott – who felt “like a boy at school up before the headmaster” (Byers remarked, judge Cantley-style, that Scott was a “common blackmailer” who needed “psychiatric help”). The inquiry then questioned police officers about the extremely intimate “Bunnies” letters sent by Thorpe to Scott early in their friendship. The police claimed in 1962 that they were “inconclusive” – even though they were nothing of the sort. Thorpe persuaded Maudling, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, John Waldron, to inform Byers that there was “no police interest” in Thorpe’s activities and no evidence of wrongdoing on his part. As a result, very conveniently, the inquiry dismissed Scott’s allegations.

In order to fully understand the Jeremy Thorpe story, it is vital to remember the wider political context. Thorpe’s personal standing was greatly enhanced in March 1973 when he married Marion, countess of Harewood, whose former husband was a first cousin to the queen. More importantly still, the general election of February 1974 saw the party winning six million votes and 14 seats, putting them in a strong position because the election had resulted in a hung parliament. In subsequent negotiations, Thorpe was to be offered a cabinet post by Conservative prime minister Edward Heath, if he would bring the party into a coalition – junior ministries would be allocated to other senior Liberals. Many people at the time thought that Thorpe was an absolute shoo-in for deputy prime minister – an early Nick Clegg, but with more gravitas.

Meaning that in this period Jeremy Thorpe was very well connected and potentially a very important mover and shaker – maybe even a kingmaker. No way could a “parasite” like Norman Scott be allowed to upset the establishment’s plans to ensure political stability. Hence they rallied to defend Thorpe and that carried on into the 1979 court case, and beyond. Always stick together, old boy.

The Gwent police’s re-investigation of the case in 2015 was eventually dropped because Andrew Newton was apparently dead. But where was the death certificate? With the BBC drama, plus a Mail on Sunday ‘exclusive’ on June 3, revealing that Newton – just like Arkady Babchenko – was actually alive and well, the police reopened their investigation. Strangely, the police did not appear to know how to do a simple Google search, unlike Mail journalists, given that his name appears in a 1994 article. This reported on an inquest, where a man called Hann Redwin was accused of foul play over the death of a woman, but it emerged that Redwin was, in fact, Andrew Newton, who was then living in London (he was cleared of foul play at the inquest).

We also discover, quite incredibly in some ways, that four years ago another potential hit man, Dennis Meighan, told the Mail that in 1975 he was offered £13,500 – the equivalent of £140,000 today – by a ‘representative’ of Thorpe to silence Scott for good, because it was feared that he was about to go public with all the details of his past relationship with Thorpe. Meighan initially agreed to kill Scott, but got cold feet and went on to confess to the police – making explicit Thorpe’s involvement in the plot. But curiously his original statement disappeared – to be replaced by one that removed all incriminating references to Thorpe and the Liberal Party, surely at the behest of elements within the British establishment.

If it looks like a conspiracy and quacks like a conspiracy, then it probably is a conspiracy. Yet, as is nearly always the case with the British establishment, these things start to come out so long after the event that most of the people involved are either dead or too old to be held to account. Gwent police now claim to be “satisfied that there is no basis to re-refer the matter to the CPS and the investigation remains closed”.

Implications

In view of what the Thorpe affair demonstrates, it does seem appropriate to finish with a few thoughts about that other Jeremy – current leader of the Labour Party. If Corbyn does lead Labour into the next general election, and it ends up with a majority or as the biggest party, it is highly questionable whether he would actually become prime minister. This is much to the bafflement of most on the left, who seem to believe that the British ruling class would never do anything that is not in strict accordance with Queensberry rules.

Communists say look at the Jeremy Thorpe case and tell us seriously that the establishment would not take steps to ensure such a government never happens. For all those on the left who refuse to believe this, look at your TV screen and learn – the BBC has provided the working class movement with valuable information about the workings of the establishment, knowingly or not. If you want to talk about dangers to the stability of the capitalist system, then we in the CPGB can reassure you that Corbyn is a far bigger danger than poor old Norman Scott – he was a victim of the establishment, not a radical opponent, as the Labour leader is still deemed to be. If you take the ongoing campaign to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, this is fundamentally about preventing a Corbyn government. Thus, for example, if Corbyn did lead Labour to victory, is it not possible that the queen would decline to invite this ‘anti-Semite’ to form a government? Would she not follow the advice of her privy council and look for someone else in the Labour Party who is not tainted by accusations of anti-Semitism, such as that nice Sir Keir Starmer?

Such accusations are a load of bull, of course – which is what Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell should be saying, not coming out with claptrap about how there is an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem within the party, and so on. The left also tells us that if the queen moved against Corbyn in such a manner there would be a revolution – what utter nonsense. How can there be a revolution if you have not split the army, or failed to win the working class to the idea of actually taking power?

As for Corbyn and McDonnell, they need to develop a backbone quickly and remember their republicanism, which has become increasingly platonic. We need to open the fight for a genuinely democratic constitution, which by definition means a federal republic – the incorporation of self-determination for Scotland and Wales, together with the abolition of the House of Lords, the standing army, the privy council and the whole monarchical set-up.

 

Democracy and the Labour Party

Defend Stan Keable! No to political sackings!

The deeply worrying implications of Stan Keable’s victimisation by Hammersmith and Fulham Council must be a matter of grave concern not simply for comrades on the left of the Labour Party, but for all democrats, defenders of free speech and, indeed, those of us who simply believe it is legitimate to reference historical facts to make points about contemporary politics. Clearly, the witch-hunt in the Labour Party is spreading ever further into society and is now threatening people’s livelihoods.

Stan is the secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt, a leading supporter of Labour Party Marxists and was a housing enforcer for the west London council for 17 unblemished years. He attended a counter-demonstration organised by the Jewish Voice for Labour to challenge the March 26 ‘Enough is Enough’ anti-Corbyn demo/provocation staged in Parliament Square by a coalition of rightwing Jewish organisations and a smattering treacherous Labour MPs. The comrade mingled with the anti-Corbyn crowd, distributing leaflets and engaging individuals in conversations – some calm and useful, others less so.

One of our comrade’s less edifying encounters was secretly recorded by the BBC Newsnight editor, David Grossman. In this, Stan can be seen briefly alluding to the well-documented (and uneasy) collaboration between the early Nazi regime and Zionists. (The same episode that Ken Livingstone has been crucified for citing.)

The next day, this snippet of Stan’s comments were splashed over the pages of scab rags like the Evening Standard, Jewish Chronicle and the Daily Mail. On Twitter, local Tory MP Greg Hands demanded action be taken against Stan and followed up with a letter to Steve Cowan, Labour’s leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. Then, on April 21, a letter – which began with the warning that its content was “Strictly private and confidential”– informed our comrade that he was dismissed for the nebulous crime of having “brought the Council into disrepute”, a charge that was upheld when comrade Keable was dismissed a few weeks later after a hearing (“Disrepute” in who’s eyes? How does this verifiable 1930s episode bring shame on today’s Hammersmith and Fulham Council?)

To make matters worse, he was also let down by union Unison, which advised him to apologise instead of fighting the charges. When he refused that advise, they informed him that they would not represent him.

The logical implications of a ruling like this are deeply worrying:

  • Comrades should read the full article of this exacting Weekly Worker commentary by Tony Greenstein (who defended Stan at the hearing), but one of the points he makes there is particularly worthwhile highlighting. The Council’s justifications for its actions state that Stain “failed to avoid” putting himself in ‘discredit’s way’, as it were, not only by “making the comments” that were splashed all over the rightwing media, but also by “attending [the JVL] counter-demonstration”! In other words, a part of Stan’s culpability lies in the fact that he attended this demonstration – he could have been Sphinx-like in his inscrutability on the day and still have breached the Council’s strictures simply by being present at the JVL event.
  • This is made explicit later in the letter where – incredibly – we are told that “in attending a counter-demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on March 26 2018, Stan Keable knowingly increased the possibility of being challenged about his views and subsequently proceeded to express views that were in breach of the council’s equality, diversity and inclusion policy and the council’s code of conduct”! (Our emphasis) There is some slippery use of language here. Stan certainly aired his views on the March 26 actions, but the sensitive issue of Nazi-Zionist collaboration is not a viewpoint. It is a historical fact that people can have different interpretations of – but it did happen.
  • Apparently however, citing this concrete historical fact equates to “offensive comments” according to Hammersmith and Fulham Council. And anything deemed to be “offensive” is – literally – unsayable.  The infamous Berufsverbot was the name for given to a system under German law of automatic prohibition of entry into some professions. Originally introduced by the Nazis, it was widely used in West Germany after a 1972 decree to ban people with “radical” views from employment in the German civil service. (A wide category that included teachers, for example.) Although touted as a response to the reactionary armed actions of the miniscule Red Army Faction, it was used far more widely to deny employment to thousands of leftists.

Are we moving towards norm where it will be demanded of all job applicants: “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?”

Read Stan’s ‘Open Letter’ and donate to the fund for the legal costs he will incur challenging his sacking. On the latter, he writes:

“Unison has withdrawn support because I rejected the bad advice of their regional organiser to plead guilty, throwing away the right to demonstrate and to freedom of speech – so I need funds for a barrister and potential legal costs to challenge my political victimisation at an employment tribunal, as well as for campaigning for reinstatement.

“My dismissal extends the McCarthyite witch-hunt against Corbyn supporters in the Labour Party to the area of employment. Don’t let me be the first of many political sackings.

“Please give generously. Any surplus funds will be passed to Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW) for campaigning.”

PLEASE CONTRIBUTE HERE. 

Witch-hunts and expulsions

The case of Stan Keable: No criticism permitted

Tony Greenstein reports on the case of LPM secretary Stan Keable, whose employer is threatening to dismiss him for comments made in a private conversation

On March 27, the day after he attended the Jewish Voice for Labour counter-demonstration outside Parliament, Stan Keable, secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt, was suspended from his job because of comments he made in a conversation with a Zionist demonstrator.

Last week I represented Stan at his disciplinary hearing, despite not being from his branch, because Unison’s London regional organiser, Steve Terry, refused to give Stan any support. In a letter dated May 8, Terry stated that because Stan would not accept his advice, Unison was withdrawing its support. He had recommended that Stan apologise for his comments, apologise and plead for mercy. In other words, he was advocating surrender.

Last week I posted an article on my own blog explaining both the background to the case and the role of Terry, who is a rightwing Labour councillor in Walthamstow and now I have received an email from Beth Bickerstaffe, Director of Unison’s executive office, saying that a complaint of serious misconduct has been made against me. I have been requested to take down my post and not to refer to Terry on social media or elsewhere!

The demonstration that Stan attended was organised by two Zionist groups, the Board of Deputies and Jewish Leadership Council. This was their first ever ‘anti-racist’ demonstration. When it came to confronting the British Union of Fascists at Cable Street in 1936, the Board of Deputies recommended that Jews stay indoors and keep their heads down. This was also its message when the National Front and British National Party began organizing in the 1970s and 80s. The Board of Deputies in particular has but one concern: defending the Israeli state.

This must have been the first anti-racist demonstration that the Protestant supremacist Democratic Unionist Party has ever attended. We even had our old friend, Norman Tebbit, there. Tebbit, who was previously best known for having devised the ‘cricket test’ to ascertain whether Pakistani and Indian immigrants should be regarded as British, is apparently also concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’.

As Stan went around handing out leaflets, he got into a conversation about the holocaust with a Zionist and explained that it was not only caused by anti-Semitism (it is obvious that this is correct – it began with the extermination of the disabled, for instance). Stan also explained that Zionism held the view that Jews did not belong in the countries of their birth and because of that the Zionist movement had collaborated with the Nazis, who also wanted them out of Germany.

BBC Newsnighteditor David Grossman secretly recorded the conversation and the result of this quite innocuous conversation was headlines in papers like The Evening Standard and Jewish Chronicleand that well-known anti-racist paper, the Daily Mail. The next day local Tory MP Greg Hands sent out a tweet demanding action against Stan and he followed this up with a letter to Steve Cowan, leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, Stan’s employer, demanding action.

Stan was suspended for making “offensive comments” likely to be in breach of the Equalities Act 2010. These comments apparently “have the potential to bring the council into disrepute”. The latter is a catch-all charge, plumbed from the depths of McCarthyism.

Freedom of speech

You don’t have to be a follower of Voltaire or to have read John Stuart Mill’s On liberty to understand that inherent in freedom of speech is the right to offend or shock. If one cannot discuss one’s opinions without a servile member of BBC Newsnight’s thought police recording you, then what is free speech worth?

It is no surprise that Stephen Cowan, Blairite leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, should seek to effect Stan’s dismissal for daring to voice a dissenting opinion. After all, it is received wisdom amongst our rulers (but precious few others) that Zionism is a good thing, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and kosher pigs fly. To dare to voice a contrary opinion on Zionism – the movement responsible for slaughtering dozens of Palestinians this very week on the Gaza border with Israel – risks incurring the charge of ‘anti-Semitism’ and offending all manner of diversity and equality policies.

As Jodie Ginsberg wrote in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings and the murder of a Danish filmmaker by jihadists, “the right to free speech means nothing without the right to offend. If all you have the right to do is to utter platitudes, then free speech is meaningless.”

Of course, Ginsberg was referring o offending Muslims and that is acceptable, but when Livingstone said that Hitler “supported Zionism”, he was merely speaking an uncomfortable truth. Zionism is the ideology of a state that has led to millions of refugees, thousands of deaths and a series of never-ending wars. It is a fact that during the holocaust the Zionists even opposed the rescue of Jews if their destination was not to be Palestine. As Ben Gurion famously said in a speech to Mapai’s central committee on December 9 1938,

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the people of Israel. 1)T Segev The seventh million London 2000, p28

On August 10 1933 the German Zionist Federation and the Palestinian Jewish Agency signed an economic trade agreement, Ha’avara, with the Nazi state, that helped destroy the Jewish-led international boycott of Nazi Germany.

As Zionist historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote, on January 28 1935 Reinhardt Heydrich, deputy leader of the SS, issued a directive stating: “the activity of the Zionist- oriented youth organisations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews for agriculture and manual trades prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.” These organisations were therefore “not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organisations (assimilationists)” ((L Dawidowicz War against the Jews London 1991, p118; and F Nicosia Zionism and anti- Semitism in Nazi Germany Cambridge 2008, p119. Even Zionist historian David Cesarani noted that “the efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to further emigration”.2)D Cesarani The final solution Basingstoke 2016, p96

Stan was also accused of breaching the Equality Act because he said that, according to Zionism, “Jews are not acceptable here”.

Perhaps Lucien Wolf, a leading member of the Conjoint Foreign Committee of British Jews, was also an anti-Semite when he wrote a letter to James de Rothschild on August 31 1916 expressing his fears that:

the Zionists do not merely propose to form and establish a Jewish nationality in Palestine, but that they claim all the Jews as forming at the present moment a separate and dispossessed nationality, for which it is necessary to find an organic political centre, because they are and must always be aliens in the lands in which they now dwell and, more especially, because it is ‘an absolute self delusion’ to believe that any Jew can be at once ‘English by nationality and Jewish by faith’. I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. 3)Reproduced in B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839- 1972 Cambridge 2004, Vol 1, p72

Equality Act 2010

The allegation contained in Hammersmith and Fulham’s disciplinary investigation was that Stan had breached the Equality Act 2010. It is difficult to believe that trained ‘human resources’ professionals can come up with such nonsense. One wonders whether the allegation ever passed the eye of a lawyer in the council.

The suggestion that debating an issue such as Zionism is a breach of the Equality Act is for the birds. The introduction to the act is quite clear. Its purpose is:

to reform and harmonise equality law … to prohibit victimisation in certain circumstances; to require the exercise of certain functions to be with regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and other prohibited conduct … to increase equality of opportunity; to amend the law relating to rights and responsibilities in family relationships; and for connected purposes.

There is nothing in the act about restricting freedom of speech or disciplining people who have views which are unpopular with Britain’s yellow press or its obsequious journalists. The key paragraph in the charges against Stan stated:

“The question as to whether or not Stan Keable’s comments breach the Equalities Act may hinge on an interpretation of what constitutes ‘belief’ under the terms of the act … One of these [protected] characteristics is “religion and belief”. Zionism is not a religion, although it is closely related to Judaism, but it is a belief in the right of the Jewish people to have a nation-state in the ‘Holy Land’, their original homeland. Legal advice, obtained as part of this investigation, states that case law has established that the definition of belief can extend to political beliefs. If Zionism constitutes a ‘belief’ under the terms of the Equality Act then the statements by Stan Keable that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis and that it accepted that “Jews are not acceptable here” might be deemed to have breached the Equality Act.”

Leave aside the nonsense about Zionism being “closely related to Judaism” or that Israel/Palestine is the “original homeland” of the Jews (a popular anti-Semitic misconception of evangelical Christians, who wanted to expel the Jews) there is a fundamental flaw in the above passage, which any child of above-average intelligence should be able to spot.

Zionism probably is a philosophical belief under section 10 of the Equality Act. But then so is anti-Zionism. However, it is not the protected characteristics of those Stan was arguing with which are relevant, but those of Stan! Stan is not their employer! Just because someone might be classified as having a protected characteristic in certain situations – mainly employment – does not mean that if you disagrees with, for example, a gay person you are therefore guilty of discrimination!

‘Protected characteristics’ are not a free-floating cause of action: they are tied to specific acts, such as direct and indirect discrimination, harassment and victimisation. The definition of direct discrimination (section 13.1) says: “(i) A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.”

It should be obvious to anyone – though clearly not to those leading Hammersmith and Fulham’s investigation – that debating a topic in a public space does not infringe his adversaries’ protected characteristics. Put bluntly, debate is not discrimination. No-one is being discriminated against when it is stated that the Nazis and Zionists collaborated. Neither was Stan in any contractual or employment relationship with his adversaries.

However, in suspending and seeking to dismiss Stan, the council is almost certainly breaching the Equality Act, because it is Stan whom they are discriminating against on the grounds of his belief. The failure to understand this simple but obvious point is quite staggering.

There is no single definition of what constitutes a religious or philosophical belief, but the case of ‘Grainger plc and others v Nicholson’ set out some guidelines. The belief must be:

  • genuinely held;
  • not an opinion;
  • in relation to a weight and substantial aspect of human life and behaviour;
  • of a certain level of cogency, seriousness, coherence and importance;
  • worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity, and not conflicting with the fundamental rights of others.

If Stan Keable were to be dismissed, then almost certainly he would have been directly discriminated against because of his philosophical belief: anti-Zionism. In addition to being unfairly dismissed, he would also have suffered a detriment.

No demonstrations!

The council’s investigation report (paragraph 5.6) stated:

“in attending the counter-demonstration at Westminster on March 26 and in making the comments that subsequently appeared on social media, Mr Keable has failed to avoid any conduct outside of work which may discredit himself and the council.”

In other words, Stan’s offence was, in part at least, attending a demonstration! Under ‘recommendations’ (paragraph 7.1) we have this little gem – the product of the same bureaucratic mindset that diligently produced ID cards that were nigh impossible to forge in Nazi-occupied Netherlands (thus condemning thousands of Jews to death):

“That, in attending a counter- demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament on March 26 2018, Stan Keable knowingly increased the possibility of being challenged about his views and subsequently proceeded to express views that were in breach of the council’s equality, diversity and inclusion policy and the council’s code of conduct (‘Working with integrity’ and ‘Working with the media’).”

Have you ever heard such a pathetic, cringing, fawning formulation? That in attending a demonstration Stan “knowingly increased the possibility of being challenged about his views …”!

What kind of person is capable of formulating this nonsense? Whoever wrote this drivel should be sent on a prolonged course on basic civil liberties, the Human Rights Act, the Equality Act – and, for good measure, another course explaining why protest is legitimate in a democracy.

We should be under no illusion that the purpose of the false ‘anti- Semitism’ campaign of groups like Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement – where people are made to feel guilty about saying a word out of place, at the very time that unarmed Palestinians in Gaza are being gunned down in cold blood – is to make people afraid that they might say something ‘anti- Semitic’. The McCarthyite campaign of Israel’s propagandist organisations – such as Luke Akehurst’s We Believe in Israel, is to exert a chilling effect on democratic debate.

If this report is accepted by Hammersmith and Fulham Council and Stan is dismissed, then mere attendance at a demonstration will be a potential breach of one’s employment contract. This is one of the reasons why I have openly criticised Unison’s appalling London regional organiser, Steve Terry. He has in effect accepted that attendance at a demonstration and expressing ones views constitutes a disciplinary offence.

Clearly the fool who drew up the council’s report is unaware of schedule 1 of the 1998 Human Rights Act, which incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into British law.

Article 10, ‘Freedom of expression’, states:

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.

Article 11, ‘Freedom of assembly and association’, begins: “Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” Closely allied to these is article 9 on ‘Freedom of thought, conscience and religion’.

If it is disappointing that a Labour council is prepared to trample over the most basic human rights in order to appease the Israel lobby, then the reaction of Unison in the form of its London organiser is no better. Steve Terry has been obstructive and incapable of acknowledging the issues at stake. He seriously suggested that unless Stan apologised he would only attend the disciplinary hearing as a “silent representative”. The poverty of intellect of Terry is equal to that of his council counterparts. Clearly he does not understand that Unison officials are paid to represent and support their members.

There is little doubt that in the event of Stan being dismissed he will win any subsequently case, because not even the most conformist and timid tribunal will accept that attending a demonstration and airing one’s views in public constitute a breach of the Equality Act or one’s contract. What a sad state of affairs that Steve Cowan and a Labour Council do not understand this and, even worse, that Unison has failed to support one of its members who is subject to such a disgraceful attack by his employer.

 

References

References
↑1 T Segev The seventh million London 2000, p28

On August 10 1933 the German Zionist Federation and the Palestinian Jewish Agency signed an economic trade agreement, Ha’avara, with the Nazi state, that helped destroy the Jewish-led international boycott of Nazi Germany.

As Zionist historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote, on January 28 1935 Reinhardt Heydrich, deputy leader of the SS, issued a directive stating: “the activity of the Zionist- oriented youth organisations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews for agriculture and manual trades prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.” These organisations were therefore “not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organisations (assimilationists)” ((L Dawidowicz War against the Jews London 1991, p118; and F Nicosia Zionism and anti- Semitism in Nazi Germany Cambridge 2008, p119

↑2 D Cesarani The final solution Basingstoke 2016, p96
↑3 Reproduced in B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839- 1972 Cambridge 2004, Vol 1, p72
Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Chakrabarti: A toxic climate of fear

Shami Chakrabarti’s call for Ken Livingstone’s expulsion shows where appeasement leads, says Carla Roberts of Labour Party Marxists

You could almost hear the sigh of relief coming from the right wing in the Labour Party on April 27, when, after three days of torturous deliberations, Marc Wadsworth was finally expelled from the Labour Party on the catch-all charge of ‘bringing the party into disrepute’. Comrade Wadsworth’s case was perhaps the most difficult for the witch-hunters, with the ‘evidence’ against him so thin that it would be laughed out of any court room. Not, however, the kangaroo court of the Labour Party – officially called the national constitutional committee (NCC) – where proceedings are devoid of any form of natural justice or due process. It is clearly dominated by the right and misused for political purposes.

This was an important ‘victory’ in the witch-hunters’ campaign. It has cleared the way to go full steam after the other outstanding cases. It is no longer a question of if Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker get expelled (both have been suspended for close to two years) – but when.

Rightwingers in and outside the Labour Party have been sharpening their knives for those two for some time, of course. In April 2017, for example, when Livingstone’s suspension was extended by another 12 months, almost half of Labour’s Parliamentary Party (plus 40 peers) signed an open letter penned by the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, which called the decision not to expel him a “betrayal” of “the party’s values”. The JLM, of course, is not primarily loyal to the British Labour Party (and whatever ‘values’ it thinks the party espouses to) – but to the state of Israel. This has been proven by Al Jazeera’s outstanding documentary The Lobby. Not that much proof was needed: the JLM’s politics make it pretty clear where its political loyalties lie.

This week then, the new leader of the business-friendly and Tory- supporting Jewish Board of Deputies (BoD), Marie van der Zyl, used her first interview to demand the expulsion of both Livingstone and Walker and added: “We are not saying don’t vote Labour, but – as we’ll be seeing from the results, especially in Barnet – the voters have spoken.” She was a bit more frank about her political views before her election when she said that Jeremy Corbyn is “infested by his bigotry”. 1)The Guardian May 14

If she needed any further encouragement, she got it from Shami Chakrabarti, who joined the witch-hunt last weekend. Chakrabarti threatened on the BBC’s Sunday Politics that she would quit the Labour front bench if Livingstone did not get expelled:

I don’t believe that Ken Livingstone can any longer be in the Labour Party. We can’t run away from the fact that he has repeated really, really incendiary remarks. To compare somebody who was trying to escape Nazis with Nazis themselves, and to do so again and again and again and again, even when you know that this has caused the deepest hurt and upset and embarrassment to the party, is completely unacceptable in my view … He has brought the party repeatedly into disrepute. He has brought shame upon it and his own legacy.

Due process

Chakrabarti’s view is rather important, of course. Not only is she the shadow attorney general: she is a Corbyn ally and, crucially, it was her report that was supposed to put a lid on the fabricated ‘anti-Semitism’ scandal two years ago. Instead, it was branded a “whitewash” by the BoD, with van der Zyl adding: “She has sold out the Jewish community.”

It is easy to see why the BoD objected: many of Chakrabarti’s recommendations, when it comes to disciplinary procedure, are entirely supportable from our point of view and, more than that, would – at least in theory – put a quick end to the more absurd aspects of the witch-hunt against socialists and anti-Zionists in the party. For example, members are still being suspended without any notification of what exactly they are supposed to have done wrong. In the case of Tony Greenstein, for instance, all the evidence eventually produced at his NCC expulsion hearing was based on comments he made after he was suspended.

However, these measures have still not been implemented – more than two years after they were produced. John McDonnell has claimed that this was the fault of former general secretary Iain McNicol. Well, John, the witch-hunter general has been gone for a few months now. If anything, the campaign against leftwingers and anti- Zionists has intensified in that time; the atmosphere in the party is becoming ever more toxic and fearful. Many people are wary of writing or saying anything political, out of fear that it could be twisted, taken out of context and made to look like an anti-Semitic comment. It is very easy to do.

One of the latest victims of the smear campaign is Phyll Opoku- Gyimah, who was frontrunner to become Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate in the safe seat of Lewisham. Guido Fawkes sensationalised a Facebook post of hers on the occasion of Holocaust Memorial Day 2017, when she wrote: “Today is the day when we remember all those affected by holocaust, Nazi persecution and subsequent genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur – I’m adding Palestine to the list.” What’s the problem? Clearly, Israel is pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians, a policy that could be described as a slow genocide.
  But this post was enough to send the media pack and pro-Zionist hyenas screaming for her blood. We cannot blame Opoku-Gyimah for quickly withdrawing her candidacy, citing an “unexpected family situation”. It takes a very strong person to withstand the kind of onslaught she could have expected, had she stood firm.

Rather than standing up to this increasingly unhealthy culture, which starts to resemble more and more the practices of a police state, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies are still trying to appease those running the campaign. More than that, they have become implicit.

For example, it is certainly starting to look as if Corbyn and the NEC have made the conscious decision to delay the implementation of the recommendations made by Chakrabarti – at least until the difficult and prominent cases of Livingstone and Walker are out of the way.

Of course, for most of those suspended and expelled, Chakrabarti’s recommendations and suggested rule changes are – even if they are all implemented – not worth the paper they are written on. It all depends on who interprets these rules and to what purpose.

They are only of potential use for those members who can afford to go down the road of a legal challenge – financially and psychologically. Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone are all in that camp.

Chakrabarti certainly proves with her intervention in the Livingstone case how ‘flexible’ her own sense of justice is. In her 2016 report, she made a strong case for “due process” and “natural justice” that should be followed in all disciplinary cases. In her interview, she blatantly ignores all that: not only has she already found Ken Livingstone guilty – and that in public: she also has handed the NCC the reason for which he should be expelled and has put enormous pressure on its members, should they not follow her advice by threatening her own resignation.

Worst perhaps is the fact that she clearly has put words into Livingstone’s mouth. She claims that Livingstone “compared somebody who was trying to escape Nazis with the Nazis themselves”. Did he really?

What he said

It is worthwhile re-examining what Ken Livingstone actually said – and if what he said is wrong. In an interview with BBC radio he said: “Let’s remember, when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism until he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

Yes, he got the date wrong: Hitler came to power in 1933. It was also wrong to claim that it was Hitler’s state of mind that was responsible for the (changing) attitude of the Nazis to Jews. But in essence his comments were historically accurate.

Moshé Machover has written a whole article on this question, in which he shows how the Nazi government and the Zionists did indeed adhere to a similar approach in the 1930s: both tried to encourage the emigration of all Jews from Europe to what was then Palestine. As comrade Machover writes,

Official Nazi policy was for the exclusion of the Jews from political and civic life, for separation and for emigration. Quite naturally the Zionist leadership thought this set of policies was similar to those of other anti-Semitic regimes – which it was – and the Zionist approach was not peculiar to the Nazi regime. The founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, had pointed outthat anti-Semitic regimes would be allies, because they wanted to get rid of the Jews, while the Zionists wanted to rid them of the Jews. That was the common interest.

Of course, Nazi policy changed dramatically – but only after Germany’s Operation Barbarossa attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. At the Wannsee conference in January 1942, Reinhard Heydrich informed Nazi tops of how the Führer now intended to implement the Endlösung der Judenfrage (final solution): through the mass extermination of the European Jewry – a policy that was soon put into practice on an industrial scale.

In any case, Livingstone did not equate the Nazis with the Jews, as Chakrabarti (a lawyer!) claims. He said – correctly – that for a while the Nazi regime had the same goal as the Zionists.

Of course, neither Marie van der Zyl, nor the Board of Deputies, nor for that matter Chakrabarti actually care if what Ken Livingstone said was historically or factually wrong, right or just confused. For them, what he said was much worse than that: it was, they claim, morally wrong. It might be factually true, but the truth can no longer be told because it upsets some people.

For the same reason, Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, has argued for a ban on the word ‘Zionism’, because “to the Jew in the street it might only mean the Jewish state of Israel, safe and secure, nothing more than that, not a separate ideology.”2)Today Radio 4, April 3: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xcsdb Emily Thornberry supports Ken Livingstone’s expulsion, because his words are “a complete insult”. Not a lie. An insult – to Zionists.

People like Livingstone really mess up the party leadership’s ongoing attempts to appease the pro-Zionist right and those who (often cynically) support their witch-hunting campaign. Disgracefully, John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn have refused to defend Livingstone (or any other victims of the witch-hunt), instead calling on him to apologise. But, credit to him, he has refused to do so – he has got nothing to apologise for.

Clearly, this campaign will not end with Livingstone and Walker. It actually has very little to do with what they have or have not said. They are merely collateral damage in the campaign to take down and/or tame Jeremy Corbyn, and making sure that Britain remains a loyal ally of the US and Israel.

Britain, for example, is expected to take part in the latest campaign for war in the Middle East. If not by dropping bombs, then at least by providing political cover for this necessary war to ‘prevent another holocaust’. A Labour leader and potential prime minister who has been an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians is, in this context, untenable. Labour cannot be allowed to become an anti-war party.

Clearly we cannot rely on Corbyn and Lansman to stand up to the pro-Israeli lobby. Socialists and supporters of the cause of the Palestinians in the Labour Party must now step up their campaign and increase the pressure on the Labour leadership to turn the organisation into a democratic, anti-war party.

References

References
↑1 The Guardian May 14
↑2 Today Radio 4, April 3: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09xcsdb