Category Archives: Democracy and the Labour Party

Anti-Semitism, History

Jackie Walker, Norman Finkelstein and the new definition of anti-Semitism

Jackie Walker wandered into a political minefield when she innocently asked at a training workshop on anti-Semitism at Labour Party conference 2016: “In terms of Holocaust Day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?” She was robustly corrected by some right wingers in the room that formally the supposed ethos of the 46 governments who came together to create the Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 2000 was to “remember the victims of Nazi persecution and of all genocides” (our emphasis). However, she really got into trouble with additional, uncontroversial observation that “In practice, [HMD] is not actually circulated and advertised as such.”

Ken Livingstone, another comrade who is also in trouble for making clumsy comments with a kernel of truth, made the incontrovertible observation that “I suspect you’ll find the majority of people in Britain didn’t know the Holocaust Memorial Day had been widened to include others,” he said.

Norman Finkelstein’s 2000 polemic described how the Nazi holocaust and the destruction of European Jewry became the “The Holocaust”: an “ideological representation” of this real historical event, that has is now presented as “categorically unique historical event” which “cannot be rationally apprehended … Indeed, The Holocaust is unique because it is inexplicable, and it is inexplicable because it is unique” (pp41-45).

And which, it must be added, via the ruthless battle for the ‘memory’ of the holocaust becomes a form of the class struggle itself. That, not the bilge about ‘anti-Semitism’ is the political significance of the attacks on comrades Walker, Livingstone and many others in the Labour Party.

LPM recommends Norman G Finkelstein, The holocaust industry: reflections on the exploitation of Jewish suffering (Verso 2000)

Norman Finkelstein
The new Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust Industry

A video of Norman speaking at Communist University 2016 on the issue is available here.

When Norman Finklestein’s The Holocaust Industry first hit the shelves in 2000, he must have anticipated that his punchy little polemic would stir the pot a little. You wouldn’t imagine he anticipated the shit storm that was about to break over him:

  • This book “provides considerable comfort to every holocaust denier, neo-Nazi and anti-Semite on the face of the planet” (Tobias Abse New Interventions autumn 2000).
  • Finkelstein comes “dangerously close to giving comfort to those who dream of new holocausts” (Alex Callinicos Socialist Worker July 22, 2000).
  • “How different is [Finkelstein’s] assertion that ‘the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not plain fraud’, from the holocaust revisionist David Irving’s rantings …?” (Socialist Worker July 22).
  • Finkelstein was “a Jew who doesn’t like Jews” and who “does the anti-Semites’ work for them” (Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian July 14, 2000),
  • “He’s poison, he’s a disgusting self-hating Jew, he’s something you find under a rock” (Leon Wieseltier, Zionist intellectual and literary editor of New Republic).

Holocaust industryOn the surface, Finkelstein has impeccable credentials to write on the horror of that broke over European Jewry in WWII. Both his mother and father were survivors of the Warsaw ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from his parents, every family member was exterminated by the Nazis. In the words of Finkelstein, “My earliest memory, so to speak, of the Nazi holocaust is my mother glued in front of the television watching the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) when I came home from school” (p5).

It is also very ironic that Finkelstein’s project is rather moderate in its scope and its intentions – essentially, all he wanted to do is make the holocaust a subject of rational inquiry. This entails rescuing real history from the clutches of “holocaust correctness” (p65) and so-called ‘holocaust awareness’, which, to use the words of the Israeli writer, Boas Evron, is actually “an official, propagandistic indoctrination, a churning out of slogans and a false view of the world, the real aim of which is not at all an understanding of the past, but a manipulation of the present” (p41).

Finkelstein’s project is to strip away all the self-serving myths and falsehoods which envelop the holocaust, which can only mean stepping on a lot of very sensitive toes – some powerful, some just desperate for a crumb of ideological absolutism in an uncertain and disturbingly relativistic world. As he clearly puts it in his mission statement, “In this text, Nazi holocaust signals the actual historical event, The Holocaust its ideological representation … Like most ideologies, it bears a connection, if tenuous, with reality. The Holocaust is not an arbitrary, but rather an internally coherent, construct. Its central dogmas sustain significant political and class interests. Indeed, The Holocaust has proven to be an indispensable ideological weapon” (original italics – p4). In other words, Finkelstein wants to understand how the Nazi holocaust became “the Holocaust” – a “categorically unique historical event” which “cannot be rationally apprehended … Indeed, The Holocaust is unique because it is inexplicable, and it is inexplicable because it is unique” (pp41-45).

As a graphic example of the “sacralisation of the holocaust”, as the liberal scholar Peter Novick dubs it, some have been infuriated by Finkelstein’s blunt statement that “much of the literature on Hitler’s ‘final solution’ is worthless as scholarship. Indeed, the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not sheer fraud” (p55).

Finkelstein’s remit is to explain the way in which the ruling class and reactionary forces in general have managed to expropriate the ‘memory’ and discourse of the holocaust – to the extent that the almost unimaginable suffering endured by the victims of Nazi rule has become the virtual political-moral property of the reinvented, post-World War II bourgeoisie, which never tires of parading its new-found anti-racism/fascism.

The semi-hysterical reaction to Finkelstein’s birth described above illustrates the alarming climate of censorship that has grown alongside this ideological appropriation. It says it all that the Socialist Workers Party, former Finkelstein fans, issued a call for the works of David Irving to be prohibited from public libraries. If Finkelstein’s views also come “dangerously close” to Irving’s, as Alex Callinicos wrote in Socialist Worker (July 22 2000), then why not demand that The holocaust industry also be removed from public libraries? A very slippery slope.

‘The Holocaust’ – as opposed to the Nazi holocaust – is largely a retrospective construction by those with various (and sometimes rival) ideological and ‘special interest’ axes to grind. Indeed, ‘The Holocaust’ would not have been recognisable to most people who went through World War II and Nazi rule. In some respects, an anachronism (‘The Holocaust’) is being introduced as an alternative to understanding contemporary responses to real events. Substituting for a rational examination of the specific historical dynamics that led to the Nazi holocaust, we have the mystifying fog of ‘holocaust awareness’.

This is easily observed by the way that Martin Niemöller’s famous mea culpa (“First they came for the communists …”) has been radically doctored for political reasons. Infamously, Time magazine’s ‘new’ version promoted the Jews to first place and dropped both the communists and the social democrats. Al Gore publicly did the same too – and for good measure he dumped the trade unionists as well. Gore, Time and others have all added Catholics to Niemöller’s list – even though he did not mention them. In the heavily catholic city of Boston, they were added to the ‘quotation’ inscribed on its holocaust memorial.

Naturally, the establishment-sanctified US Holocaust Museum airbrushes out the communists from its roll call of official victimhood (but, interestingly, the holocaust bureaucrats decided to retain the social democrats as authentic, bona fide victims). Others have decided to include gays – the fact that Niemöller did not was obviously a mere ‘oversight’ on his part.

This footloose and fancy-free attitude to what should be a basic, easily verified and hence non-contested truth clearly demonstrates that the ruthless battle for the ‘memory’ of the holocaust is a form of class struggle – and a handy indicator of the current balance of class forces. Once upon a time, at least in the US, to ‘harp on’ about the Nazi holocaust was a sign of dangerous pinko-commie leanings. Now it is a badge of moral and bourgeois uprightness. Niemöller himself symbolises this shift in bourgeois ideology.

In the 1940s and 1950s the protestant pastor, who spent eight years in Nazi concentration camps, was regarded with grave suspicion by American Jewry in the shape of organisations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti Deformation League. Niemöller’s instinctive opposition to the McCarthyite witch hunts made him persona non grata for America Jewish leaders who were desperate to boost their anti-communist credentials – to the point of joining, and partly financing, far rightist organisations like the All-American Conference to Combat Communism and even turning a blind eye to veterans of the Nazi SS entering the country. Indeed, the AJC enthusiastically joined in the establishment hysteria whipped up against the Rosenbergs, and its monthly publication, Commentary (November 1953), actually editorialised about how the couple – executed as Soviet spies – were not really Jews at all. (This tradition of toadying before the US establishment continues – the Simon Wiesenthal Centre made Ronald Reagan the winner of its ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ award in 1988.)

Another significant aspect to the debate is the so-called uniqueness of the holocaust, an idea heavily pushed in schools, colleges/universities, books, TV documentaries, films, etc. Banally speaking of course, every single event that has ever happened, and ever will happen, is ‘unique’. The evangelists for ‘uniqueness’ have a different agenda though.

Take Deborah Lipstadt, occupant of the holocaust chair at Emory University, an appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and author of the widely lauded, Denying the holocaust: the growing assault on memory and truth. Lipstadt became a liberal hero for successfully slugging it out with David Irving last year in the British courts, after the Hitler-admiring historian filed a doomed libel suit against Lipstadt for branding him “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for holocaust denial”.

What was not mentioned in the mainstream press coverage of the time, and which throws a different and less salutary light on Lipstadt’s motivations, is that she is on record declaring that if you do not accept the ‘uniqueness’ theory, you must be effectively classed alongside those who deny the very historical fact of the Nazi holocaust itself. We are all potential Irvings then. Thus, in Denying the holocaust, Lipstadt rages against the drawing of “immoral equivalences” with the Nazi holocaust – like the Armenian genocide. This has “intriguing implications”, according to Finkelstein, who observes: “Daniel Goldhagen argues that Serbian actions in Kosovo ‘are, in their essence, different from those of Nazi Germany only in scale’. That would make Goldhagen ‘in essence’ a holocaust denier. (The holocaust industry: reflections on the exploitation of Jewish sufferingLondon 2000, p71).

Inconsistencies, contradictions and paradoxes may abound in the ‘uniqueness’ school of Wiesel, Goldhagen, Lipstadt et al – but it is strongly recommended that you make loud, approving noises if you want to find yourself with your feet well under the table, and if you are non-Jewish it could also mean that you are actually feted (always nice). Reject the doctrine, however, and purdah beckons – doubly so if you are Jewish and thus an abominable ‘self-hater’.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Inside the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Labour Party branches/CLPs in support of Jackie Walker and free speech

 Kilburn (Brent), which is part of Hampstead & Kilburn CLP

This Branch/CLP notes that Jackie Walker has been suspended from Labour Party membership following remarks she made at a Party training session at conference.

We also note;

The Chakrabati report advised against specific training sessions in anti-racism;

The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) was given the task of running the training session, despite it being known that its views are contested by many Jewish members of the LP;

That contrary to Data Protection – without any notice to participants – the training session was secretly filmed by a JLM member and released to the media.

That, in the view of this Branch/CLP none of the remarks made by Jackie Walker at the training session constituted anti-Semitism;

That Jackie Walker is a Black Jewish anti-racist campaigner.

That Jackie Walker’s suspension by the Party is contrary to the recommendations in the Chakrabati report and the requirements of natural justice.

We therefore call on the Party to reinstate Jackie Walker to full membership of the Party

[Resolution to be sent to Ian McNichol, general secretary of the Party and all members of the NEC]

 

Henley Labour Party

This branch believes that there should be no infringement on the rights of free speech and free criticism within the Labour Party. The thousands of suspensions of Labour members during the 2016 leadership election, based often on one-off comments on social media, unsubstantiated claims or association with left wing organisations, appears to have been politically motivated.

This process was an affront to democracy and this CLP condemns the entire process. Legitimate grievances should be dealt with according to the principles of fairness, with suspension as a last resort not a primary action. We demand the reinstatement of all those still suspended without a hearing.

Regarding expulsions, there should be no ban on memberships of campaigns or organisations as long as they are not campaigning against the election of a Labour government or Labour councils.
The only acceptable political limitation on membership of the Party, other than the exclusion of proscribed organisations, is that people who join or are members or supporters, commit to support Labour candidates in future elections. Earlier electoral activity is of no importance.

We call on the CLP to welcome in any supporter and member prepared to make such a commitment.

We call on the National Executive Committee to ensure that these principles are reflected in the membership application process, so that all party units will welcome in any supporter and member prepared to make such a commitment.

We demand the Party implement the proposals in the Chakrabarti report.

Anti-Semitism, Momentum, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Momentum branches and members in support of Jackie Walker

October 15 meeting of Momentum’s London Regional Committee 

  1. Condemns the unjust suspension of Labour Party members, many of whom are Black, Muslim, committed anti-racists and/or Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights, and many Corbyn supporters.
  2. Calls for Momentum to campaign against the purge of thousands of Labour Party members and supporters in the run up to the Leadership election, some of which were targeted for spurious reasons such as tweeting about other political parties. Free speech is a right that should be respected by the Labour Party Compliance Unit. 
  3. Calls for Jackie Walker, a Jewish Black woman and anti-racist campaigner, to be reinstated into the Labour Party.
  4. Calls for discussion on democratic structures and procedures, suspensions and elections at the national conference [of Momentum] in February. 

Barnet

Barnet Momentum defends Jackie Walker and calls on national Momentum to not remove her from her role as vice-chair of Momentum.

Rossendale

Complaint letter heading to Momentum – “Dear Comrades,

At our Rossendale Friends of Jeremy Corbyn meeting on 4th October we decided we wished to establish ourselves as a branch of Momentum, which we have scheduled for 25 October. However we wish to unanimously condemn the action of the Steering Committee in their suspension of Jackie Walker and her removal as Vice Chair, following the Anti-Semitism training day at Labour Party Conference. We assert that Jackie’s words on a secretly filmed clip at a JLM training day – which was quietly handed over to the Press, presumably by the hostile right wing JLM – did not reveal her saying anything anti-Semitic.

A couple of our members were present at the Chakrabarti debate at The World Transformed in Liverpool and came back reporting that Jackie had spoken brilliantly and had lots of support from the audience unlike Jeremy Newmark of JLM, who went down like a lead balloon. It would appear that she has massive support from Momentum members across the country.

Jackie has again been suspended by the NEC of the Labour Party, and is facing a witch hunt by the Blairite/JLM section of the Party. Instead of Momentum taking a totally undemocratic vote to suspend Jackie they should be supporting Jackie and campaigning for her to be admitted to the Labour Party.

We are extremely concerned that Momentum has also fallen into the ‘witch hunters ‘ trap by removing Jackie from her position.

We call on Momentum to reinstate Jackie and to defend vigorously any members or supporters subject to these vile attacks. Momentum should not be engaging in any ‘witch hunts’ of Labour Members expressing political opinions.”

The Manchester Momentum BAME Caucus are concerned with the undemocratic and troubling actions of the Momentum leadership in removing Jackie Walker from her position as Vice Chair of the Momentum Steering Group. Jackie Walker is a Jewish Black woman and anti-racism campaigner. Her removal from the position of Vice Chair was made by a majority white panel under immense pressure from allegations she had been anti-Semitic by groups and individuals who have weaponised Anti-Semitism in order to attack the Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and his support for the right of Palestinian self-determination.
The Momentum Steering Committee in their own statement accepted that Jackie Walker had not been anti-Semitic but judged her remarks on Holocaust Memorial Day and her interview to Channel 4 News to be offensive. This was despite the many Jewish voices stating her comments were neither anti-Semitic nor offensive. The committee in coming to this conclusion seems to have ignored the fact that Jackie has faced an onslaught of not only biased press coverage but also personal attacks that included racist abuse.
The Committee also failed to respect and acknowledge Jackie’s own identity and her right to question how concepts central to the Jewish community are defined as a Jewish woman. We are also troubled by the fact that there was a media briefing against Jackie from inside Momentum with Momentum’s ‘sources’ actively misquoting Jackie and contributing to her trial by media and forces hostile to the Corbyn Leadership. Removing the lifelong anti-racism campaigner from her post in such circumstances has left BAME Momentum members wondering who is representing them within the leadership.
The Steering Committee must also accept that it has made Momentum a less safe space for BAME members, who already feel marginalised by the failure of the committee to engage positively with BAME members. The Steering Committee made no effort to contact its BAME membership in order to gauge their views.
BAME Members must have the safe space necessary to advocate for issues such as Palestine and Black Lives Matter even if that means countering prevailing views. Apartheid in South Africa was supported by the Thatcher government and many in the establishment but figures such as Jeremy Corbyn fought against such views even if that resulted in arrest; Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the Black Panthers and the Black Lives Matter movement have also taken courageous stands against the oppresion of Palestinian people despite very similar pressure and attacks. Our concerns now are that the Momentum leadership will continue to capitulate and leave its membership susceptible to outside pressure when they take a meaningful stance.
The fight against racism and anti-Semitism cannot be selective and GM BAME caucus abhors any act of anti-Semitism or racism and extends the hand of solidarity to any comrade who has suffered such abuse. There can also be no justification for any form of latent or unconscious racism and therefore we remain perplexed at the actions of the Committee over this matter.
In order to repair relationships we call on the Momentum Steering Committee to engage in the following actions:
– Engage in positive and constructive dialogue with BAME groups within Momentum with the assistance of BAME allies within the Labour and Trade Union movement
– Draw up a clear and fair disciplinary policy that is agreed by members including the right that Liberation groups be consulted and involved in any potential disciplinary action of members of their groups
– Take on board the findings of the Chakrabarti report in terms of how disciplinary cases are to be handled
– Apologise to Jackie Walker for her treatment in regards to the disciplinary procedures used against her
– Support liberation groups within Momentum to actively engage in decision making within Momentum but also respect the different viewpoints that may bring
If Momentum is truly a peoples movement committed to transforming Britain for the better under a future Labour government, then Momentum needs to learn from its mistakes and listen to its members if it is to have any role in delivering this change.

Brighton and Hove

This emergency resolution was passed:

This annual general meeting of Momentum – Brighton and Hove condemns the decision to remove Jackie Walker as vice-chair of Momentum nationally made at the Steering Group meeting held on Monday October 3rd and calls for her immediate reinstatement.

The background to this decision was a video, circulated on social media, of a contribution Jackie made in a fringe event at Labour Party conference. The event was an ‘educational meeting on fighting anti-Semitism’ organised by the Jewish Labour Movement and, as such, ran counter to the recommendations of the Chakrabarti report into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The filming was done in secret and the only part of the meeting to be circulated was Jackie’s contribution from the floor; which is difficult to hear due to the poor quality of the tape.

As such it is completely unacceptable for either the Labour Party or Momentum to use it as evidence or respond to it. Moreover, whatever one’s views of Jackie’s decision to attend the meeting or her comments at it, there is no evidence of anti-Semitism in anything she said and the suggestion that it is is both ludicrous and offensive.

It is clear that Jeremy Corbyn’s election, together with the unprecedented growth in membership this has generated, is seen as a threat by the establishment and mass media, together with some within the movement. They will stop at nothing in their efforts to undermine, demoralise, confuse and divide this movement and remove him from office. Accusations of anti-Semitism, like those of misogyny and bullying, are just one aspect of this ‘guerrilla warfare’.

Removing Jackie from her position will not appease these people rather it will embolden them to continue their attacks.

Further, we do not believe that a decision of this magnitude should have been made by a hastily called Steering Group but by a more democratic body and after wider consultation. We look forward to the inaugural national conference of Momentum in February and the establishment of a democratic constitution, structures and procedure.

 

Northamptonshire

Momentum Northamptonshire condemns the witch-hunt of Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker on false charges of anti-Semitism.

Jackie is a prominent anti-racist campaigner and labour movement activist; she is no anti-Semite.

The anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party is seeking to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to undermine the Corbyn leadership: to oppose Zionism is to be anti-Semitic; to criticise the Israeli state is to be anti-Semitic; to demand justice for the Palestinians is to be an anti-Semitic.

It is the height of cowardice and stupidity to believe that by throwing Jackie to the wolves these attacks will stop. Failing to defend Jackie will only further embolden our attackers; it will give traction to their accusations of anti-Semitism.

We will undermine ourselves and Jeremy Corbyn if we abandon Jackie.

We are not thugs; we are not misogynists; we are not anti-Semites.

Defend Jackie Walker!

 

Sheffield

“We, members of Momentum in Sheffield, condemn the witch-hunt of Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker on false charges of anti-Semitism. Jackie is a prominent anti-racist campaigner and labour movement activist; she is no anti-Semite.

The anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party is seeking to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism in order to undermine the Corbyn leadership: to oppose Zionism is to be anti-Semitic; to criticise the Israeli state is to be anti-Semitic; to demand justice for the Palestinians is to be an anti-Semitic.

Throwing Jackie to the wolves will not stop the attackers, quite the opposite: Failing to defend Jackie will only further embolden them. This attack on Jackie is an attack on all of us!

Therefore, we call on Momentum to launch a robust campaign to defend Jackie and fight for her full reinstatement as a Labour Party member.”
Lee Rock
Ben Lewis
Dawn Teare
Bill Sheppard
Neville Wright
Abdul Galil Shaif Alshaibi
Mick Parkin
Davy King
Carolyn Jordin
Richard Chessum
Andrew Hardman
Tina Werkmann
Janet Claire Harrison
Susan Atkins
Adam Clark

 

Thanet

According to Channel Four News, the steering committee of national Momentum is considering removing Jackie Walker from her position as vice chair of Momentum.

This is based on a highly biased and distorted report of a fringe event in Liverpool at which, it is alleged Jackie made anti-Semitic remarks.

I was at that meeting and can testify she said nothing whatsoever anti-Semitic. Her remarks were taken out of context and the short fragment of film shown on TV was totally unrepresentative of the full discussion which took place.

This is a blatant attempt to smear Jackie and so damage Jeremy Corbyn by association. It is utterly unfair and unjust.

Anyone wishing to express support for Jackie should email emma.rees@peoplesmomentum.com stating if you are a member of the Labour Party, Momentum etc.

Momentum is taking its decision on Monday so time is of the essence.

Norman Thomas, Chair Momentum Thanet

 

Medway

MOMENTUM MEDWAY MEMBERS HAVE ISSUED AN OPEN LETTER

Sunday 2 October 2016

TO: JON LANSMAN, CHAIR OF MOMENTUM
RE: JACKIE WALKER, VICE-CHAIR OF MOMENTUM

We, the undersigned members of Momentum Medway, wish to show our public support for our colleague Jacqueline Walker over the increasing bullying and harassment she is experiencing.

We are distressed to hear (via statements in the Main Stream Media) that Jackie’s resignation is being sought. We hope this isn’t the case. Jackie is, as you know, a tireless campaigner against all forms of discrimination; a tireless campaigner for Momentum and therefore for Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign. This is, after all, why Momentum exists.

We stand behind Jackie and ask others join our members and share this statement.

We seek your assurance, as Chair of Momentum, that you will back us – and many members and potential members around the Country – and support Jackie Walker as fully as she supports everyone else.

Alec Price
Anna Oates
Ben Rist
Chas Berry
Dawn O’Connor
Deborah Field
Didi Bergman
Elizabeth White
Gill Kennard
Harry Keane
Jac Berry
Jaki Fox
Jez Walters
Joanna Burns
Joanne Murray
Jonathan Brind
Kevin Dyer
Kim West
Lin Tidy
Maal Dauwa
KimberleyHalawa
Matthew Kynaston
Matthew Broadley
Mike Kennard
Neil Williams
Penny Bruce
Peter Thomas
Peter Morton
Sarah Scarlet
Tricia McLaughlin

In addition, members of other Momentum Groups have asked that their names be added:

Stuart McGann (Momentum Thanet)
Isabel McNab (Corby)
Sioux Blair-Jordan (Momentum North Essex)
Mike Razzell (Momentum Falmouth)
John Beeching (Momentum Hastings)
Kate Hamlyn (Momentum Thanet)
Anne Thompson (Momentum Havant)
Heather Nicholls Doncaster)
Barbara Brown (Fareham Momentum)
Clare Dove (Thanet Momentum)
Craig Fraser (Cheltenham and Gloucester Momentum)
Eric Potts (South Warwickshire Momentum)
Gillian Potts (South Warwickshire Momentum)
Stacey Guthrie (Momentum Penzanc
Peter Bloomer (South Birmingham Momentum)
Lily Maria (Momentum Havant)
Mike Hogan ( Momentum Liverpool)
David Rhodes (South and West Dorset Momentum)
Christina McCabe, (Cambridge Area Momentum)
Norman Thomas (Momentum Thanet)
Christine Tongue (Momentum Thanet)
Di Coffey (Momentum Falmouth)
Kay Lawrence (Wales Momentum)
Philomena Hearn (Wales Momentum)
Chris Bainbridge (Momentum Bury)
Mike Hogan (Momentum Liverpool)
David Rhodes (South and West Dorset Momentum)
Gillian Jackson (Wales Momentum)
Stacey Guthrie (Momentum Penzance)
Christina McCabe (Cambridge Momentum)
Liz Milne Momentum Thanet )
Eleanor Firman (Momentum Waltham Forest)

 

Oxford

This evening Momentum Oxford meeting.

A much to0 brief view.

A full draft agenda was shared on 2 sheets of A4. Thank you to those who helped that happen. Their was sufficient for everybody.

Many items. Top of my list was and I think others as significant majority ( estimated 90% )

Jackie Walker to be re instated as Chair of Momentum.

Stephen Marks agreed to write the letter to be sent to Momentum EC.

As you might imagine people felt very strongly about this.

IMO many new attendees see the possibilities for radical changes and still don’t have as yet sufficient “space” to express such.

We agreed to delay the AGM until after October and meet again before then.

Anti-Semitism, Momentum

Defend Jackie Walker!

Defend all comrades from anti-left witch-hunts in Momentum and the Labour Party!

On September 30, Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party for alleged “anti-Semitism”. Again. Having once been cleared of the same charge by the Labour Party, national Momentum vice-chair Jackie has come under renewed attack – but this time, the attackers include, shamefully, her own comrades in Momentum.

The (unelected) Momentum steering group is trying to remove her from her post at its meeting on Monday (please send messages of protest to Emma Rees). Barbara Ntumy, billed as a “Momentum activist”, has gone further on the ‘Daily Politics’ show (September 30), coming very close to calling for Jackie to be expelled from Momentum and the Labour Party: “Her comments are not acceptable in that room, they’re not acceptable anywhere. … Momentum and the Labour Party should deal with her appropriately and that may include her not being part of either organisation anymore.”

It sounds as if the right-wing bureaucrats in the compliance unit of the Labour Party have followed her advice.

It takes a huge amount of bad faith to describe her secretly filmed comments, made at an anti-Semitic training day at Labour Party conference and chaired by Mike Katz of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, as anti-Semitic.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust?”, she asked. She was informed that this was what the event officially stands for – the supposed ethos of the 46 governments who came together to create the Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27 2000 was to “remember the victims of Nazi persecution and of all genocides” (our emphasis), the press release ran. Comrade Walker made the uncontroversial observation that “In practice, [HMD] is not actually circulated and advertised as such.”

It is ludicrous to suggest that anything in this (accurate) comment constitutes “downplaying” the holocaust of Jewish people. Given the original ‘inclusive’ project of the initiators of the Holocaust Memorial Day, were they also guilty of making light of the suffering of the Jewish people? This is just absurd.

At worst, comrade Walker might have shown herself to be a little ignorant on the supposed scope of HMD – but many other people will be pretty much in the dark about this given the way the Nazi holocaust has been utilised to bolster the Israeli state-sponsored “Holocaust Industry”, as Jewish academic Norman Finkelstein has dubbed it.

Also, in what was obviously a critical comment on the organisers of the training day, she noted that “I was looking for information and I still haven’t heard a definition of anti-Semitism that I can work with”. Laughable attempts torture this simple statement into the implication that the comrade refutes the concept of ant-Semitism – again, absurd. (Jackie in fact states that she subscribes to David Schneider’s definition of anti-Semitism, in case anyone is in doubt.)

Neither comment is anti-Semitic. Neither warrants suspension or expulsion from the Labour Party or Momentum. But disturbing news reaches us that a majority on the (unelected) Momentum leadership committee have apparently turned against the comrade and are intent on throwing our comrade to the wolves. Implicitly this would help to legitimise the foul slanders of the Labour right and the yellow press. It would mean:

  • Bolstering the campaign against us by the right, the capitalist press and the Israeli government.
  • Wetting the hunger of the witch hunters. Their reactionary appetites will grow if they taste blood in the water, whether we have been the ones to spill it or not. No more appeasement of our enemies!


More generally, we need to ask – Is Labour Party stuffed with anti-Semites?

‘No’ is the short answer and even the figures produced by media outlets such as the Daily Telegraph -an establishment rag that has been energetically megaphoning the idea that is badly infected with this chauvinist filth – was only able to report (May 2 2016) that a total of just 50 Labour Party members had been suspended “for anti-Semitic” and undefined “racist comments”. No more recent figures have been published – presumably, because that number has not actually grown by very much, despite the best efforts of the right.

Given the hysteria of the yellow press and its echo chamber on the Labour right – some may find this a surprisingly small figure. After all, the likes of MP Ruth Smeeth assured us that the problem was of such a magnitude that the Labour Party as an organisation was “not safe for Jews” and that shambolic muddle headed dope, Nick Cohen, writes in The Observer (September 11) that the Labour Party is now “the natural home for creeps, cranks and conspiracists”.

Utter mendacious nonsense, of course; a crude Goebbels-style ‘big-lies-work’ campaign. Anyone with even a passing acquaintance with the Labour Party and the wider workers’ movement will be well aware that the numbers of people who peddle any latter day versions of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are infinitesimally small. They are oddities who exist on the fringes of the fringe.

In Labour Party Marxists’ submission to the inquiry headed by Shami Chakrabarti we made what should be a simple, incontrovertible point that “Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism.” Yet it is precisely this false amalgam that lies at the heart of the spurious category of the “new anti-Semitism” – ie, that opposition to the barbaric state policies of Israel, and in particular its colonial oppression of the Palestinian people equates to anti-Semitism.

LPM comrades report that they have encountered many, too many Labour Party comrades who express the idea that if we ignore it – or even make concessions to the accusers – this “anti-Semitism” problem will eventually fade away. Jackie Walker may be the highest profile victim of this craven attitude, but unchecked it will see us decimate our own ranks – the right won’t have to break sweat.

Most worryingly in this context, we have had the co-founder of Momentum, Jon Lansman, advising us “to start talking in a new language”, a vocabulary “that expresses our views about Israel, about the policies and actions of its government and about the rights of Palestinians without alienating any of those who might agree with us.”

The point being, of course, that if people “agree with us” about the oppressive colonial actions of the state of Israel then, ipso facto, they ain’t Zionists. In practice then, comrade Lansman is advocating we avoid “alienating” Zionists of various stripes, that we attempt to placate them.

Of course, we want to win all manner of people who currently hold reactionary views to socialism. But not by blurring what should be clear lines of political delineation with fuzzy, unfocussed and opaque language. Because where vocabulary leads, politics follow.

*

Here is a selection of articles that address some of the key accusations deployed by the right wing of the Party in this ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt:

‘Anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’?

Weapon of choice. Author Tony Greenstein is himself a high profile victim of the right’s smear campaign. In this useful article, the comrade explains that the “new anti-Semitism” assumes that Israel is the “Jew amongst the nations”. It is targeted, not because it is engaged in ongoing colonial oppression of the Palestinian people, but simply because it is a Jewish state. Opposition to the Israeli state and Zionism therefore qualifies as anti-Semitism, in this warped logic.

Everything in socio-economic context. Having equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, the capitalist press attempts to extend the accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ back into history, that the left’s ‘racist’ problem is lodged in very origins of modern socialism. Thus, Simon Schama writes: “Demonstrating that you do not have to be a gentile to be an anti-Semite, Karl Marx characterised Judaism as nothing more than the cult of Mammon, and declared that the world needed emancipating from the Jews” (Financial Times February 21-22 2016). Jack Conrad puts the record straight. (This contribution is adapted from the opening chapter of Fantastic reality (2013). A chapter which is itself part based on a reworking of Michael Malkin’s February 1 2001 Weekly Worker article, ‘Karl Marx and religion’.)

A shameful retreat. Paul Demarty explains why a clear understanding of the Labour right’s motivation in prosecuting this disgraceful campaign is necessary so that we can be clear on how to fight it. After all, lies – unlike the truth – must necessarily have an instrumental purpose. Otherwise there’s justification for the risk and expense of making things up. Tweaking our vocabulary, a la Jon Lansman, just won’t cut it …

Anti-Semitic smears employed by right. Gary Toms of Labour Party Marxists takes the right wing’s shameless shenanigans at the February 2016 Young Labour conference as an object lesson in how the left must up its game to win.

In the cause of imperialism. The right claims that one concrete expression of the left’s supposed anti-Jewish racism is the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign. Tony Greenstein explains what is behind the timing of move to outlaw boycotts by western governments and its links to the scurrilous activities of right wing in Labour.

Inside the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Model resolutions on the Labour purges

This branch/CLP/Conference:

  1. Condemns the lack of due process in the suspensions and expulsions of Labour Party members, particularly in the last twelve months. The failure to apply the principles of natural justice brings the Labour Party into disrepute.
  1. Calls for the immediate restoration of full membership rights to all those suspended or expelled.
  1. Calls for the abolition of the Labour Party Compliance Unit and for the establishment of democratic, transparent disciplinary procedures, which follow the principles of natural justice.

This motion is based on the Labour Representation Committee’s statement on the purges

This branch/CLP/conference opposes the widespread suspensions and expulsions of Labour members and the disqualification of members and supporters from voting in the Party’s leadership contest. As Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP has noted, this smacks of a “rigged purge”.

These suspensions and expulsions are disproportionately affecting known Corbyn supporters. So zealous are those working in Labour’s Compliance Unit that those affected include leading labour movement figures such as Ronnie Draper, General Secretary of BFAWU – a Labour affiliate. Jeremy Corbyn has rightly called for “the strongest principles of natural justice” to be implemented. These are being systematically ignored at present.

We demand that these basic principles be extended to Labour members and supporters:

  • To be told in clear and specific terms why they are suspended or expelled, or why their voting rights have been withdrawn.
  • Notification of the name of their accuser, unless there is a real risk to safety.
  • Setting a strict time limit on all provisional suspensions; e.g. thirty days.
  • Allowing appeals against suspensions and expulsions, making the procedure clear and publicly available.
  • Extending the right of appeal to registered supporters who have had their right to vote withdrawn.
  • Setting a strict time limit on the retrospective consideration of ‘offences’; e.g. when specifying particular terms of so-called abuse, Labour members’ past actions should only be reviewed for a maximum of two years.
  • No member of the Labour Party should be disciplined for supporting parties other than the Labour Party if they weren’t Labour Party members at the time (ie, the rule cannot be applied retrospectively). Winning over supporters of over parties is a crucial part of winning the whole of the working class to the Labour Party.
  • Suspensions and expulsions that do not adhere to these basic principle should be overturned and full membership rights restored without delay.

Suspensions and expulsions are being carried out in the name of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC), but this is a fiction. The NEC is in no position to investigate or even review the cases of potentially hundreds or thousands of Labour members. It is not in continuous session. We believe the unelected General Secretary, Iain McNicol, and the unelected Compliance Unit are responsible for the present outrages. On taking office, priorities for the newly-elected NEC must be to:

  • Hold an inquiry into Iain McNicol’s role in relation to the suspensions and expulsions of Labour members and supporters
  • Propose rule changes to make the Labour Party’s General Secretary an elected post.

Disciplinary procedures within the Labour Party must be changed to allow due process and implementation of the principles of natural justice.  The broad principles of the report compiled by Shami Chakrabarti should be implemented:

  • A legally qualified panel should be available to advise the Labour Party on the justice of disciplinary procedures.
  • The National Constitutional Committee (NCC) should take over the handling of disciplinary procedures from the NEC. The NCC should be bound by strict rules.
  • The power of interim suspensions should be removed from officials acting on the instructions of Labour’s General Secretary.
  • No section of the Labour Party should be kept under special measures for more than six months without a review. Suspension must not be allowed to be repeatedly rolled over.”
Democracy and the Labour Party, Labour structures and programme

Corbyn wins! Now – Launch the counter attack!

Comrades, this is a call to arms!

Every left comrade in the Labour Party and beyond will have responded to Jeremy Corbyn‘s victory with deep satisfaction. For the second time in just over a year, Corbyn has won the leadership – this time with an impressively increased majority on a much bigger turnout. Had all those been able to vote who wanted to vote, he would have won with a truly dramatic majority.

But if we now relax, think the storm has blown itself out and hope that “slate can be wiped clean”, as Corbyn put it in his victory speech, we are making a massive political error.

The right has already promised us that it will attack again. What form this takes will become clear soon – perhaps a parliamentary split and a bid to ransack the assets of the party; a fresh attempt to exhaust the party, and Corbyn personally, with another bruising leadership election; an escalation of the campaign of foul slanders against the socialists in the party, crude provocations designed to lose the party the next election, then lay the blame at Corbyn’s door.

Corbyn’s second victory gives us an unparalleled historic opportunity. The right promise us that they will continue this draining civil war. Our work from here on out has to be based on a strategic recognition that the right will never reconcile themselves to a Corbyn – or any left – leadership, let alone the growing influence of the radical, socialist and Marxist left. Alan Johnson has come out openly and announced that the neo-Blairites will fight a “a relentless rebellion” against Corbyn and the left.

It is therefore crucial that the left takes up arms, stops retreating or makes ill-conceived ‘peace’ overtures and tries to win this civil war! No more spin about olive branches and re-uniting. Our membership must be organised, educated and galvanised. Not just to vote Corbyn. Not just to defend Corbyn, but for the war in the wards, constituencies, committees and conferences.

In this article, James Marshall lays out the vital long-term strategic goals that can transform the political essence of the Labour Party.

But in the here and now, we have five key tasks:

1. Take control of our representatives!

Fight for rule changes stipulating that all elected Labour representatives must be subject to mandatory reselection, as was the case between 1980 and 1989 (and is the case for councillors today). Reforming trigger ballots is not enough. (Although we can take full advantage of them while they exist to allow all local party units, including Labour Party branches and affiliated organisations, to determine whether the constituency holds a full, open selection contest for its next candidate, where other potential candidates can be nominated, or a sitting MP is reselected without such a contest.)

MPs must be brought under democratic control – from above by the National Executive Committee; from below by the Constituency Labour Parties. And let’s make the House of Commons an ‘unsafe’ space for the likes of the venal careerists who currently make up the bulk of PLP. All our reps should live on the average skilled worker’s wage – say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). The balance must be handed over to the party.

2. Abolish the hated compliance unit!

It operates in the murk, it violates natural justice, it routinely leaks to the capitalist media. Restore full membership rights to all those cynically suspended or expelled, the vast majority on the basis of ludicrous trumped up charges. Reach out to good socialists barred from membership, because, repelled by the Labour right’s politics, they once supported Green, Left Unity or Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition election candidates. If there is any evidence of genuine serious misconduct, such cases must be handled properly and transparently. The evidence must be presented without delay to the accused, who must be entitled to defend themselves in front of a jury of peers (ie, Labour Party members) within a set time frame.

3. Give Momentum its head!

This grassroots organisation needs an urgent injection of democracy, transparency, trust in the membership and the election of and right to recall all its own officials. End top down control-freakery. Maximise mobilisation by giving local branches the full membership lists. Momentum members can then transform themselves and others, become leaders locally and nationally, caucus and lay plans to beat the right.

4. Fight to win more trade union affiliates!

Vitally, within the existing affiliates, we must win many, many more members to enrol. There are well over four million who pay the political levy, but only just over 70,000 affiliated supporters voted in the 2015 leadership election. Joining Labour is easy. We ought to set our sights on a million affiliated supporters as a minimum.

5. Build and transform Labour!

Every constituency, ward and other basic units must be captured, revived and led by the left. The right has made them cold, bureaucratic and lifeless spaces. We have to convince the sea of new members, and returnees, to attend meetings and organise alongside us – Facebook, Twitter, social media forums are useful tools, but not the future of politics. At worst, they can be simply echo chambers. We must persuade Corbyn’s ‘virtual’ supporters to become full individual Labour Party members and to regularly attend ‘meat-space’ meetings with their comrades. With new leaderships at a local level, our ward and constituency organisations can be made into vibrant centres of organisation, education and action. We should fight for socialist principles and a new clause 4.

But this would be just the beginning, of course. In the longer term, the Labour has to be re-made from top to bottom in spirit of the vision that motivated its founders. It must be a united front of all working class organisations, encompassing the trade unions, the cooperative organisations and the socialist groups outside the party that were originally excluded in the 1920s as a signal to the ruling class that Labour would a safe pair of governmental hands for capitalism.

Witch-hunts and expulsions

The Keith Vax affair: An old-fashioned tabloid scandal?

Sex between consenting adults should be their business, says Harley Filben

Spare a thought for Keith Vaz – a man who, having weathered a brief flurry of scandals in the early noughties, might have thought himself in the clear. He certainly seemed to us the sort of Teflon-coated careerist who thrived under the Blair and Brown regimes; who would retire at a time of his choosing to become Lord (Keith) Vaz of Somewhere-Or-Other: the full lifecycle.

Much of that, of course, is still perfectly possible. Yet it seems a great deal further away, after his resignation from the chairmanship of the home affairs select committee following allegations that he had consorted with male prostitutes, offered to buy them cocaine (he seems to have had the good sense, or taste, not to indulge himself), asked them to bring amyl nitrite to a carnal encounter, and – quite understandably – spent much of a tedious select committee session examining young gentlemen on Grindr.

Add it all up, and it’s catnip for tabloids. Rent-boys, poppers and blow; what’s not to love?

Vaz’s misfortune in all this consists, in part, of his being – at 49 – a little too old. He started contesting seats in 1983, the same year as the infamous Bermondsey by-election, which saw a vile wave of anti-gay bigotry mobilised against Labour candidate Peter Tatchell; he was elected in 1987 in Leicester East, with the culture war over sexuality raging. This was certainly a time at which – for the aspiring politician – a wife was a very important accessory. Today, things are certainly not as bad, at least for candidates in most urban constituencies; there are many openly gay MPs, although the married and civilly-partnered probably still have a better time of it on the whole. (It is probably also true that those in search of casual sexual encounters will find paying for it more and more necessary, as the years roll on by.)

Thus Vaz has ended up cornered – a bisexual, presumably, for longer than the last month (although sexuality is, of course, a more fluid thing than is often acknowledged), he has been forced to repress one side of his sexuality as a concession to mores far stronger in his day than they are in 2016. In still earlier – and even more barbaric – times than the 1980s, homosexuals were hunted down in the state apparatus and other ‘sensitive’ senior positions in society as a ‘security risk’, given that they could be blackmailed. Vaz’s experience reminds us that there is more than a grain of truth to that impulse: for, as soon as you have to conceal your innermost urges, you will always be at risk of exposure and potentially personal ruin. Vaz’s political career may well survive this, as it would not have done 20, 30 or 50 years ago; but his private relationships may not.

For every victim of blackmail, there is a blackmailer. In this case, however, victim and perpetrator alike are not individuals, but collectivities. The beneficiaries, in this case, are obvious – the tabloid press. The benefits are, on one level, equally obvious: as noted, there is nothing more tabloid-friendly than a politician making the beast with three backs with some young gentlemen of the night. That kind of thing sells papers. It’s a prestigious scoop, and hacks at the Mirror are no doubt as chuffed to break it as those at The Sun are livid about missing it.

Yet there is a wider issue, which consists of the fact that these ‘incidents’ in their totality amount to a permanent threat against elected politicians, prominent officials and the like. Keith Vaz did not want to end up like Peter Tatchell; the next fellow will not want to end up like Keith Vaz. Just as the police thrive in a society in which more or less everyone is guilty of some trivial infraction – speeding, smoking weed, pirating Game of thrones – and thus can be interviewed under appropriately heavy manners at all times, so the press gains much of its power from hypocritically imposing a deformed and unattainable morality on its subjects.

There are other beneficiaries, of course – the more sincere guardians of public morality. Historically the most prominent among such people were conservative Christians of various stripes, but the multicultural breakthrough, and related endeavours, have fragmented moralism most spectacularly. There are, of course, other religions to consider (Islamist-inspired campaigns against strip clubs in east London spring to mind), but equally new secular contenders.

Thus, prominent among the voices calling on Vaz to resign as select committee chair was that of a pressure group – Nordic Model Now. NMN, as the name suggests, is a group advocating the implementation of laws similar to those in Sweden that criminalise the purchase of sex (but not the sale). NMN is entirely non-transparent about who is involved (“a diverse group of women from a wide variety of backgrounds”), but seems to have crawled out from the rotten caucus of anti-sex feminists and evangelical groups, who ally to provoke panics over prostitution and sex trafficking.

The last great ‘achievement’ of the home affairs select committee under Vaz, after all, was a long inquiry into prostitution that – much to the dismay of these creatures – ended with a report explicitly opposed to the criminalisation of sex purchase and explicitly commending the “success” of decriminalisation of prostitution in New Zealand.1)See the conclusions here: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/26/2602.htm Some now want the report thrown out, on the basis that Vaz had a vested interest in the result.

This is utterly tendentious. For a start, select committees are not unanimous mouthpieces for their chairpersons – are they all punters? For seconds, Vaz is a longstanding supporter of the Nordic model; assuming that he agrees with the report as written, then he has changed his mind, but simply glancing at the names called before the committee on this matter will reveal as nonsense the idea that it was systematically biased towards decriminalisation advocates – quite the reverse. NMN and its friends had an open goal in front of them – we politely suggest that they managed to miss the target because it is a violation of basic formal logic to criminalise only one side of a transaction. In the end their model is a proposal designed to assuage feminist consciences and conform to the strictures of Christian agape love, rather than empower prostitutes; thus its extraordinarily thin evidence base and the propensity for its advocates (especially when it comes to the supposed plague of sex trafficking) to just make shit up.2)For an old but admirably forensic takedown, see N Davies, ‘Prostitution and trafficking – anatomy of a moral panic’ The Guardian October 20 2009

It is worth going into this not only because the issue itself is an important one, and for the left highlights a difference of principle (to wit: is liberation the conscious self-activity of the masses, or the rescue of the masses by benevolent policemen?). There is also, in fact, something deeply corrosive about sex scandals as such; it is one thing for a tabloid to publish a kiss ’n’ tell, and quite another for people – be they writers for the same tabloid or others – to turn that kiss ’n’ tell into an instrument of some political hobby horse of theirs. The effect is to encourage people at large to view political questions through ‘non-political’ spectacles, and thus to depoliticise politics, and finally to open the way to demagoguery of a more basic kind.

The best prophylactic against this, of course, is to build up its opposite – a political culture where opposing perspectives meet on the grounds of their disagreement, rather than shuffling about in committee rooms and doling out opportunistic press releases.

 

References

References
↑1 See the conclusions here: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmhaff/26/2602.htm
↑2 For an old but admirably forensic takedown, see N Davies, ‘Prostitution and trafficking – anatomy of a moral panic’ The Guardian October 20 2009