Category Archives: Witch-hunts and expulsions

Trade unions, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Taking the witch-hunt into the workplace

Hammersmith and Fulham council is appealing against the employment tribunal’s decision that its dismissal of Stan Keable was ‘unfair’. Ed Kirby reports

Stan Keable – LPM secretary – was sacked by Hammersmith and Fulham borough council for making critical remarks about Zionism. This happened in the course of a notably civilized exchange at the ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration and Jewish Voice for Labour counterdemonstration in Parliament Square on March 2018.

He was, though, fully exonerated by an employment tribunal. However, now council officers have decided to appeal. If that appeal is allowed to go ahead, not only will more precious public funds be wasted on lawyers’ fees, the council’s reputation will be further tarnished.

The appeal is, of course, politically motivated. Stephen Cowan, Labour leader of the council, wants to uphold the British establishment’s ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ false narrative. In this Stan Keable is not the real target. That is Jeremy Corbyn – and the entire Labour left. In the attempt to see the back of Corbyn, the Labour right is quite prepared to extend the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt from the Labour Party into the workplace.

The council’s failure at the five-day tribunal hearing in May – a full year after Stan Keable’s dismissal – was humiliating. Judge Jill Brown found that the dismissal, for “serious misconduct”, was “both procedurally and substantively unfair” and “well beyond the range of reasonable responses of a reasonable employer”.

Stan Keable has asked for reinstatement, and his work colleagues are looking forward to welcoming him back into the housing team. Departmental director Nicholas Austin – the man who formally sacked him – told the tribunal that he had “an entirely clean disciplinary record”, was “good at his job” and described him as “good, thorough, dogged in pursuit of landlords in trying to improve housing conditions”.

The issue of reinstatement was due to be resolved, along with appropriate compensation, at an October 2 “remedy hearing” – which may now be postponed, extending Stan Keable’s time in limbo even further. Hopefully, the tribunal will refuse permission to appeal. Criticism of Zionism and Israel should be calmly debated, not be a sacking offence.

On March 27 2018 – the morning after the ‘Enough is Enough’ demonstration, ostensibly against Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed anti-Jewish racism – Stephen Cowan forwarded a 105-second long video to the council’s chief executive officer. This video had already been publicly tweeted by Chelsea and Fulham Tory MP Greg Hands. It showed a brief moment taken from a longish political conversation in Parliament Square between Stan Keable and an unknown man,

Cowan’s email stated:

LBHF [London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham] employee Stan Keeble [sic] making anti-Semitic comments. I’ll let Mr Keeble’s words speak for themselves. I believe he has brought the good name of LBHF into disrepute and committed gross misconduct. Please have this looked at immediately and act accordingly and with expediency … Please advise me at your earliest opportunity what action you have taken.

Hands’ tweet, tagged to Cowan and Hammersmith Labour MP Andy Slaughter, was not a complaint to the council, but a public attack on the Labour Party, smearing the party as a home for anti-Semites. Stan Keable’s employment at LBHF was unknown to Hands, but well known to Cowan, who seized the opportunity to extend the scope of the anti-Corbyn witch-hunt to the workplace. Cowan was, at this stage, the only complainant – joined later only by Greg Hands himself. His twitter campaign to drum up a storm of protest – and of BBC Newsnight journalist David Grossman, who was actually responsible for the video – produced zero results. Tens of thousands viewed the video, Stan Keable’s comments were reproduced in the Evening Standard and Mail Online – surrounded, as usual, by reports of unsubstantiated allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. But no-one complained to H&F council. Hands and Cowan were alone.

By labelling Stan Keable’s comments “anti-Semitic” and saying “gross misconduct”, Cowan effectively instructed council officers to suspend and dismiss him. Judge Brown found that they were “clearly put under very considerable pressure by Mr Hands MP and by councillor Cowan to dismiss the claimant”.

Four hours after Cowan’s email, Stan Keable was unceremoniously suspended from work – on charges which did not include anti-Semitism. One presumes that the council’s lawyers had pointed out that telling well documented, historical truths about the Zionist movement did not constitute racism. That would have been a good moment to tell Cowan that he was wrong and advise him to drop the matter. But an instruction is an instruction. Omitting the leader’s unsustainable “anti-Semitism” complaint, the suspension letter described the comments as “inappropriate”, “insensitive”, “likely to be considered offensive” and having “the potential to bring the council into disrepute”.

The tribunal, however, took a different view. Judge Brown “found that the claimant’s demeanour throughout the video clip was calm, reasonable, non-threatening and conversational”.

Stan Keable was not told that the complainant was the council leader, nor the substance of the complaint – that it was explicitly about “anti-Semitism.” Those embarrassing facts were only revealed a year later, shortly before the tribunal hearing. Nor did the suspension letter specify which comments were considered “offensive”. The original complainant (Cowan) had not done so.

Two “offensive” comments were eventually selected by the investigating officer, Peter Smith: (1) “The Zionist movement at the time collaborated with them” (ie, the Nazi regime), and (2) “The Zionist movement from the beginning was saying that they accepted that Jews are not acceptable here” (ie, in the countries where they currently live).

Stan Keable’s Jewish former wife, Hilary Russell, had already helpfully emailed the council: “I can say absolutely confidently that he is no anti-Semite … it is not anti-Semitic to be opposed to Zionism, as many Jews are, or to criticise the government of Israel.”

Keep digging

Smith should have dropped the case. But he chose to keep digging, adding the Equality Act 2010 to the allegations. If anti-Semitism won’t stick, let’s try anti-Zionism.

He wrote:

If Zionism constitutes a belief under the terms of the Equality Act, then the statements made by the claimant 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 … [and] do not promote inclusion nor treat everyone with dignity and respect and … have breached the council’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy.

Subsequently, whether a belief in Zionist ideology should be considered a protected characteristic under the Equality Act was neither claimed by the council nor determined by the tribunal. In any case, the act does not forbid criticism of a protected “religion or belief”: it outlaws harassment, discrimination and victimisation of believers. But the council “did not find that the claimant had made anti-Semitic or racist or discriminatory remarks”, so this seed fell on stony ground.

In his zealous search for a case to answer, Smith concluded his investigation report by adding a truly Orwellian allegation to the charge sheet, effectively saying that council employees must not attend demonstrations:

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 …

Unsurprisingly, the tribunal upheld the right to demonstrate. The judge concluded that Stan Keable’s comments were “an expression of his views and beliefs. The claimant, as other employees, had the right to freedom of expression and assembly, which would normally include attending rallies and expressing their views there”

As Justice Michael Briggs commented in the High Court (Smith v Trafford Housing Trust [2013] IRLR 86, HC):

The encouragement of diversity in the recruitment of employees inevitably involves employing persons with widely different religious and political beliefs and views, some of which, however moderately expressed, may cause distress among the holders of deeply felt opposite views. The frank but lawful expression of religious or political views may frequently cause a degree of upset, and even offence, to those with deeply held contrary views, even where none is intended by the speaker. This is a necessary price to be paid for freedom of speech.

Quite so.

Unable to dismiss Stan for anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism, the council then attempted to establish “misconduct” for being “offensive” – but this failed at the tribunal too. The judge “took into account the line of case law which says that for a single act of misconduct to justify dismissal it must be serious, wilful and obvious”:

The misconduct must be obvious; it must be such that the employee would plainly recognise it as conduct which would merit summary dismissal if discovered by his employers. Such recognition might be either because the employers had expressly made known to their staff that a particular type of misconduct would be treated as a dismissible offence or because the employee, judging the matter for himself according to the ordinarily accepted standard of morality of the time, would recognise dismissal as the predictable consequence of such misconduct (Bishop v Graham Group plc EAT 800/98).

The basis of the decision to dismiss Stan Keable was departmental director Nicholas Austin’s personal view that “the average person would interpret the claimant’s comments as suggesting that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis in the holocaust and that that was highly likely to cause offence”. However, the judge disagreed: “Mr Smith had not interpreted the claimant’s comments in that way, nor had Mr Hands in his tweet or letter … and nor had the other evidence which Mr Smith had relied on from the Mail Online or the Evening Standard.”

Why is a Labour council pursuing this pathetic case – wasting public money in order to restrict our hard-won rights of freedom of speech and assembly? These rights are the products of, above all, the class struggle of the workers’ movement, from the Chartists onwards. This case illustrates the fact that the class struggle is taking place at present in a sharp form within the Labour Party – councillor Cowan has placed himself firmly on the side of the ruling class.

One can only assume the council is counting on the legal strategy of “deep pockets wins”. Stan Keable’s legal costs, if the appeal is permitted, are likely to rise above £10,000.

Please help out, go to: http://www.gofundme.com/ReinstateStanKeable.

 

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Witch-hunt’s biggest victim

Chris Williamson has dared question the claim that Labour has become institutionally anti-Semitic under Jeremy Corbyn, writes Carla Roberts. Now he is likely to be expelled for this crime.

For future generations of socialists studying how the right has managed to brand lifelong anti-racists as racists, July 9 2019 might serve as a symbolic date.

Outside the Labour Party’s HQ in London’s Victoria Street, 100 protestors gathered in solidarity with the Labour Party’s bravest MP. They delivered a petition, signed by almost 4,000 people, demanding Chris Williamson’s reinstatement. Speakers who were there on behalf of Labour Against the Witchhunt, Jewish Voice for Labour, the Labour Representation Committee, the RMT union and various Momentum branches outlined what really is behind the charges against Williamson: “This is an attack on Jeremy Corbyn himself, because he remains an unreliable ally from the ruling class’s point of view,” said Stan Keable of Labour Against the Witchhunt – a position that was echoed by many other speakers on the day.

Inside the ugly Southside tower, however, fewer than 40 people (most of whom had sneaked in through the back door) made a decision that allowed the McCarthyite witch-hunt in the party to reach Kafkaesque proportions. In what we believe was an unprecedented move, a majority of Labour’s national executive committee voted to ‘revisit’ the verdict of an NEC anti-Semitism panel to reinstate comrade Williamson to full party membership. This only became possible because general secretary Jennie Formby had chosen to accept the ridiculous claim by Keith Vaz (one of the three panel members making the decision) that he was on some kind of mysterious medication that had rendered all his decisions on that day unsafe. Instead, she should have sent him to an independent doctor to verify his claims.

But her decision underlines yet again who is calling the shots in the raging civil war in the party – and that the leadership around Corbyn is still trying to appease the right rather than openly take them on. True, Corbyn might not want to see Williamson expelled. But by not speaking out and allowing the witch-hunt to grow and grow over the last three years, Jeremy Corbyn is as culpable for this decision as Tom Watson, who coordinated the vicious media backlash against Williamson’s brief reinstatement.

So instead of clearing comrade Williamson – which is, of course, the only rational conclusion the so-called evidence against him allows – the July 9 NEC meeting decided to have his case re-examined by a different NEC anti-Semitism panel.

lobby Chris Williamson NECIncredibly, this will be the third panel dealing with Chris’s case. As we reported last week, the first one was to be made up of Momentum owner Jon Lansman, Claudia Webbe and ex-MP George Howarth. We can just about imagine the furore if such an ostensibly leftwing panel had voted to send Williamson – who is hugely popular amongst the membership – to the national constitutional committee (NCC). This is where the NEC outsources all the disciplinary cases that it cannot/does not want to deal with. Despite this body’s recent expansion from 11 to 25 members, it is still dominated by the right; the three person panels are ‘traditionally’ made up of one leftwinger and two rightwingers. No wonder that a referral to the NCC usually results in expulsion – which is how it got its well-deserved epithet of ‘national kangaroo court’. Both Webbe and Lansman chickened out, leaving it to a second panel to rule on the case. As we know, Huda Elmi and Keith Vaz both voted for Williamson’s reinstatement, which was followed by a very PR-effective outcry by the right, mobilised by chief saboteur Tom Watson (whom Steve Hedley, assistant general secretary of the RMT union, quite rightly called “a scoundrel” that “the members should get rid off” at the lobby outside).

What if this third panel finds Williamson innocent? Will somebody have to fake a heart attack to get the verdict revisited once again? How many panels does it need to get the correct answer? We already know, of course, that the next panel is bound to get it ‘right’ – ie, wrong – and send Williamson’s case to the NCC.

Vicious circle

There is a very small chance this will not result in Williamson’s expulsion, but this has less to do with justice and more to do with timing: should there be a snap election before his case is dealt with by the NCC, he will be unable to stand again in Derby North, the constituency he represents, as he will still be suspended. Somebody else will be installed as the official candidate and might or might not become the next MP for Derby North.

It is far more likely, however, that the party leadership will want to get this over with soon. The very public resignation this week of three parasites from Labour’s benches in the House of Lords (who bizarrely claim that the party is “shielding anti-Semites”) and the outrageously one-sided edition of BBC’s Panorama programme on the issue will add even more pressure on those around Jeremy Corbyn to be seen to ‘act’. Unfortunately, we know what that means: there will be more investigations, more suspensions, more expulsions. The witch-hunt grows – ditto the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. It is a vicious circle.

There is exactly zero chance of comrade Williamson getting a fair trial at the NCC – and even less chance of being exonerated. We expect that he will (eventually) be expelled. So let us be clear what his ‘crimes’ are: like Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and many other Corbyn supporters who have been smeared, vilified and wrongfully accused of anti-Semitism, he will be expelled for stating that the tiny number of cases of actual anti-Semitism in the party have been weaponised, amplified and woven into a hugely distorted, politically motivated narrative. He will be expelled for the crime of questioning the commonplace that the party has become institutionally anti-Semitic because of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. He will be expelled, in other words, for daring to state the truth.

As Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of Jewish Voice for Labour put it at the NEC lobby, “Now even questioning if somebody really is an anti-Semite is proof that you are an anti-Semite yourself.” Or, in the words of Moshé Machover, who also addressed the event: “The proof that Chris Williamson was right to question the party’s response to such false allegations is, of course, his own treatment by the party.”

There are obvious similarities to the case of Ken Livingstone. The former mayor of London might have been slightly clumsy in his off-the-cuff remarks about Hitler – who, he said, “supported Zionism until he went mad”. Of course, he got the date wrong when he said Hitler came to power in 1932 (it was a year later). It was also wrong to personalise the shift in policy. But the point he was making about the collaboration of the early Nazi regime and Zionism is basically correct, as comrade Machover outlines in his excellent article, ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism’.

Livingstone’s original punishment for saying what is now deemed unsayable was a one-year suspension. The NEC was probably hoping that things would die down and that he could be allowed to sneak back quietly into the party. But, of course, by giving in to the witch-hunters and suspending him in the first place, the NEC and the leadership helped to fuel the flames and allow the witch-hunt to grow out of all proportion. So, instead of readmitting him, they planned to add another 12 months to his suspension. At this stage though, the rightwingers in and outside the party had grown so emboldened that anything less than Livingstone’s expulsion was not acceptable. Livingstone resigned to save Corbyn from further blushes.

We do not expect comrade Williamson to do the same. Contrary to Livingstone and many other Labour lefts, he is quite prepared to publicly criticise Corbyn. We note with interest the open letter circulated just before the July 9 NEC meeting, which has been signed by Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, John Pilger, professor Avi Shlaim, Alexei Sayle, Lowkey, Brian Eno, Professor Ilan Pappe and some other well-known people. This has no doubt been prepared with Williamson’s input:

Jeremy’s victory in 2015 was almost immediately followed by an onslaught against his supporters – starting with black and Jewish socialists – maliciously misrepresented as anti-Semites by disparate forces hostile to the prospect of a Corbyn-led government. Chris was sometimes their only parliamentary ally and advocate. The party’s complicity in this campaign of systematic harassment of black and Jewish members with long histories of fighting racism rendered all activists and MPs fair game, including Jeremy and members of his shadow cabinet.

This paragraph points to the ridiculous nature of the witch-hunt. Chiefly directed against Corbyn and his supporters, it could only become so successful because of “the party’s complicity” – ie, that of Jeremy Corbyn himself and those around him.

What’s an anti-Semite?

We note that Gordon Brown and Keith Starmer are now demanding that “anti-Semites” should be “automatically expelled from the party”. That begs the question: what exactly is an anti-Semite? Thousands of party members have been suspended and investigated – and not because they show actual “hostility to or prejudice against Jews” (which is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines anti-Semitism).

Most complaints are based on (sometimes sloppy) comments made in the heat of an online debate, when somebody, for example, writes ‘Zionists’ when they should say ‘the Israeli government’. Or somebody sharing a meme or a video that, on much closer inspection, turns out to be the work of an actual anti-Semite – does that make the sharer anti-Semitic? How about having your words taken out of context, twisted and rearranged?

Or take the evolution of the term ‘Zionism’. This is a label chosen by the Zionists themselves to describe their political ideology. Yet we have seen dozens of examples of Labour members being investigated simply for their use of the word – often merely in a descriptive fashion. They are presented with a charge sheet that reads:

The Chakrabarti report states: “The word ‘Zionist’ has been used personally, abusively or as a euphemism for ‘Jew’ … Use the term ‘Zionist’ advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse.” Do you think that your comments are against the spirit of this?”

Ditto Jon Lansman, who wants to ban the diminutive form, ‘Zio’, because for him it is an insult.

Those accused might point out the Chakrabarti report has, in fact, not been implemented – otherwise, for example, automatic suspensions like that of comrade Williamson, would have to cease too.

These types of accusations make up the vast majority of the complaints against Labour members. Hastily written, sometimes based on misconceptions and misinformation and, yes, sometimes based on low-level prejudice. But these instances – which, as can be expected, are increasing proportionally with the growth of the witch-hunt – would best be countered not by silly demands for ‘zero tolerance’, but by education through open debate (and, no, we are not talking about the ‘rehabilitation programmes’ offered by the Zionists of the Jewish Labour Movement or the witch-hunters in Hope not Hate, who have joined in the calls to expel Chris Williamson).

After all, the idea of socialism is based on the presumption that people can change, for the better. But then, most of the people pushing this witch-hunt and a ‘zero tolerance’ approach are, of course, not socialists – and should not be members of the Labour Party.

And, encouragingly, some half a dozen rightwing MPs have now publicly declared that they will not stand again. These include Blairites like Kate Hoey, Stephen Twiggs, Jim Fitzpatrick and Kevin Barron. Good riddance. Let us hope there will be many more rightwingers who follow their example.

Most of those now stepping down are, of course, jumping ship before they are pushed, thanks to the newly reformed system of trigger ballots. We are still awaiting detailed guidelines and a timetable from Labour HQ (without which trigger ballots cannot be launched), but we note with great interest a circular that was apparently sent by Jennie Formby to panicked MPs at the beginning of July. It clarifies how votes will be counted. As readers know, if a minimum of 33% of a Constituency Labour Party’s branches or 33 % of the CLP’s affiliates vote ‘no’ to retaining the sitting MP, a full selection process starts – ie, a democratic contest between different candidates, including the MP. But the circular clarifies this by stating: “the third of branches is calculated based only on the branches that do cast a vote”. Which would be excellent, if indeed this is how the rule will be implemented.

Getting rid of some of the biggest saboteurs in the Parliamentary Labour Party is crucial in the fight to transform the party into a weapon of and for the working class. It remains to be seen, however, whether this will be a case of ‘too little, too late.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Let’s get trigger-happy!

The (temporary) reinstatement of Chris Williamson has riled the witch-hunters, writes Carla Roberts. Now we must ensure that the decision to introduce the reformed trigger ballot process is used to drive them out

On June 26 pro-Corbyn MP Chris Williamson was reinstated as a Labour member, following a suspension that lasted exactly four months. [UPDATE: Two days later, he was suspended again. Check out the website of Labour Against the Witchhunt on how you can protest against this]. A three-person panel from the party’s national executive committee issued him with a formal warning about his behaviour – not least his totally accurate statement that the party had been “too apologetic” over claims of anti-Semitism. But the NEC’s anti-Semitism panel declined to take things further by referring comrade Williamson to the national constitutional committee, as it had been expected to do.

Ruth Smeeth (left) with her fellow anti-Corbyn saboteurs Luciana Berger and Jess Phillips
Ruth Smeeth (left) with her fellow anti-Corbyn saboteurs Luciana Berger and Jess Phillips

Ironically, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Williamson’s claim that the party had “given too much ground” over utterly false anti- Semitism allegations, Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, who is chair of the rightwing Jewish Labour Movement’s parliamentary group, said that he had “demonstrated a pattern of behaviour over a period of many months, seemingly seeking to intentionally undermine, marginalise and harass the British Jewish community and Jewish Labour Party members, which has continually brought the Labour Party into disrepute”.

She added:

“The fact the NEC disputes panel has today ignored the recommendations of Labour Party staff, to let him off with a slap on the wrist, is simply appalling. It’s no surprise that the Labour Party is being investigated by the EHRC for institutionalised anti-Jewish hatred. I’m truly disgusted that he’s being readmitted to the Labour Party.”

The fact that Equality and Human Rights Commission has been asked to investigate Labour for “institutionalised” anti-Semitism, and that Smeeth can make such disgraceful accusations against Williamson, clearly illustrates that the party has in fact given far too much ground to people who come out with such outrageous lies.

So does this represent a sea-change in the attitude of Jeremy Corbyn and those around him? Not necessarily. But it certainly strikes a blow against the right – at a time when general secretary Jennie Formby has just indicated that the long awaited reform of the trigger ballot process, allowing Constituency Labour Parties the possibility of deselecting their sitting MP, is now to be implemented. In another irony, comrade Williamson was before his suspension prominent in the campaign to help democratise the party by holding MPs to account.

Trigger ballots

On June 23 Formby wrote to all sitting Labour MPs “to ask you to inform the Labour Party if you wish to remain a candidate at the next general election”. MPs have until July 8 to reply. If they answer ‘no’, then a full selection process between different candidates begins (with the usual restrictions: for example, all-women short lists). If the sitting MP replies ‘yes’, however, the local CLP can organise a trigger ballot – which, after its reform agreed at last year’s conference, now gives members for the first time in almost 30 years a realistic chance of getting rid of an unsatisfactory sitting MP.

Rightwingers have already criticised the letter as the beginning of their “purge” from the party. Jim Fitzpatrick, MP for Poplar and Limehouse, was the first to huffily declare on Twitter that he will not stand again, while Ian Austin MP tweeted: “Decision time for Labour MPs. In their hearts the vast majority know Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to lead our country, so are they really going to knock on doors and ask people to make him prime minister?” May those two careerists be followed out of the door by many, many more. We would prefer it all the vile Blairites and warmongers were booted out of the party by an active local membership, but we really do not mind if they jump ship beforehand.

saboteurs
Trigger ballots are needed to deal with these people

Interestingly enough, some of the most zealous Corbyn critics are keeping suspiciously quiet for the moment – among them Tom Watson, Margaret Hodge, Jess Phillips and Stella Creasy. We presume they are engaged in some form of deliberation – and splitting from the party will no doubt be one of the options they are discussing. But the embarrassing fate of Chuka Umunna and his merry band of losers will certainly have come as a strong discouragement, at least for now. Even if Watson took a very large number of MPs out behind him the chances are he would end up the same way. Given the first past the post electoral system, they would have very little chance of getting re-elected – unless they did a deal with the Liberal Democrats or Tories. And their career is very dear to these people.

So it seems that – at least in the short term – Watson and co are trying to keep their heads down in order to avoid deselection. Last week, Watson’s Future Britain group organised a meeting in parliament, entitled ‘Incumbency and campaigning’, which was designed to “give colleagues the chance to share their local strategies for preparing for trigger ballots”. We are guessing that matters like ‘How to stop seeing your position as an MP merely as a career move’ or ‘How to stop constantly knifing Jeremy Corbyn in the back’ were not high on the agenda.

But these are the kind of issues that loom large in local CLPs and we doubt that many members will be fooled by any of the dumb survival ‘strategies’ Tom Watson et al come up with (perhaps most obvious among them the recent discovery of ‘women’s issues’ by the aforementioned Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips). At least we know what Future Britain is supposed to be good for, now that we have seen its first concrete policy: ‘Save your seat’.

There will probably be attempts by the right to delay and cancel meetings, so that branches cannot actually launch trigger ballots. Watson has already used that tactic to prevent his own West Bromwich East CLP from discussing the proposal to change from general-committe to all-members meetings. Apparently, there was “no urgent business”, as the CLP chair, Simon Hackett, informed members when cancelling the meeting – did we mention he happens to work for Watson? This cancellation also, outrageously, robbed members of their right to select delegates to conference (so now those rightwingers elected last year will get to go again – simple!).

It is of utmost importance that Labour Party members up and down the country start getting seriously organised for trigger ballots now, if they have not done so already. This pressure from below is also needed to ensure that the reform will be fully implemented and that the leadership does not pull back at the last moment.

This remains a real danger. CLPs have yet to receive a full timetable and written guidelines from Labour HQ. There is still the possibility that, perhaps, the devil will be in the detail.

The fact that it took almost a year to implement the rule change – and six months for Formby to produce guidelines after she was commissioned to do so “urgently” by the NEC back in January – is an indication of how controversial this reform is, even for Jeremy Corbyn and his allies. The leadership has until recently tried to avoid implementing the rule change (despite the fact that it originated from the leadership). And it has to be said that it does somewhat jar with Corbyn’s four-year-campaign of trying to appease the rightwing saboteurs in the party, rather than take them on openly.

We can only hope that he and his allies have finally understood that there can be no peace, no ‘unity’ with the right. Thousands of members have been sacrificed in this campaign, as the right has suspended, expelled and smeared as ‘anti-Semites’ many of the most ardent Corbyn supporters. It would indeed be high time for the leadership to make a bold move against the right.

In this context it is interesting that it was the NEC officers meeting on June 24 which “agreed the procedural guidelines for reselection of sitting members of parliament” – and not a full meeting of the NEC. The majority of NEC officers can be described as pro-Corbyn, with only three of the eight officers being on the right (deputy leader Tom Watson, NEC chair Wendy Nichols from Unison and Cath Speight of the GMB union, who is the chair of the national policy forum). In meetings of all 39 members of the NEC, however, Corbyn does not have an outright majority and on some issues his supposed ‘allies’ like Jon Lansman are known to have let him down (for example, over Corbyn’s unsuccessful attempt to include a ‘waiver’ when the NEC adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s so-called ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism).

It is not inconceivable that the next meeting of the full NEC in July might decide to overturn some of the decisions taken by the NEC officers. Or they might decide to delay the publication of a timetable … until it is too late, perhaps? In the snap election of 2017, CLPs were told that the sitting MP would simply remain in place, as there was “no time” for a selection process. In our view, that was a huge political mistake, as the Parliamentary Labour Party has been at the heart of the coup against Corbyn. But we are not yet certain that, despite comrade Williamson’s reinstatement, he and his allies have actually learned that lesson.

Reform

We should also remember that the reform of the trigger ballot was only moved in order to stop the far more democratic system of mandatory reselection (aka open selection) from being adopted at last year’s conference. This issue has been at the heart of the fight between the left and the right of the party for many decades.

palestine flags
CLP delegates at Labour Party conference 2018 were overwhelmingly in favour of ‘open selection’ (ie, the mandatory reselection of parliamentary candidates)

Trigger ballots were first introduced by Neil Kinnock in the early 1990s as a means of abolishing the much more democratic system of mandatory reselection (under which sitting MPs had to be specifically approved and any challenger rejected – a system which existed in the party in different forms for about 10 years previously), while simultaneously giving the system a veneer of ‘democracy’.

But, in reality, this method was always rigged: it made it almost impossible to get rid of a sitting MP, as locally affiliated unions and ‘socialist societies’ held a huge amount of power. Until last year, a democratic selection process between different candidates could only take place if a minimum of 50% of all the local Labour branches and the local affiliates voted to challenge the sitting MP. As every branch and every affiliate had a single vote each (irrespective of their membership figures), this often gave a local union bureaucrat the same power as, say, a branch with 500 members. Most of the time, these affiliates used their power to retain the sitting MP – an arrangement which often reflecting the rather cosy relationship between them. Labour members frequently did not even know if a trigger ballot had taken place in their branch – they were not really interested, as it was quite rightly not seen as any kind of useful tool in the struggle between the left and the right in the party.

But all that changed at last year’s Labour conference in Liverpool. It was the threat of the reintroduction of the eminently democratic principle of an open contest between different prospective parliamentary candidates that forced the hand of the party leadership: over 95% of all conference delegates expressed their support for the proposed rule change known as ‘open selection’. As the party’s largest union affiliate, the Unite union, had also just reconfirmed its commitment to a system of mandatory reselection, it looked like the rule change would sail through conference. The unions count for 50% of total voting at conference, despite the fact that there are far fewer union delegates present than for CLPs – without the support of at least a proportion of them, it is very difficult for any motion to be passed.

web-Len-McClusky+Jez
Len McCluskey and Jeremy Corbyn

Alas, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies got cold feet. Fearing that the right wing in the party would once again escalate its ongoing slow coup against him if mandatory reselection was adopted, he bottled it. Instead of supporting the campaign – started by members supportive of his leadership – the Corbyn team suggested a reform of the trigger ballot instead. The first that delegates got to see of the proposed reform was at conference itself. No meaningful debate or any amendments were possible, as the proposal was part of the reform package produced in the wake of the ‘Democracy Review’ conducted by Katy Clark, which was presented to delegates on the basis of ‘take it or leave it’.

While delegates from local CLPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of opening up the conference agenda to allow a debate on this part of the proposed reform package, Corbyn asked Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, to vote against. And, since all other unions (apart from the three delegates of Matt Wrack’s Fire Brigades Union) followed suit, the reforms were adopted without any chance to amend them. Len McCluskey got a lot of stick for claiming afterwards that, had the rule change on open selection been tabled, he would have asked his delegates to vote in favour of it – but in reality he was largely responsible for stopping it from being tabled.

Civil war

Conference delegates in Liverpool and members at home were understandably fuming about what they quite rightly saw as a huge betrayal. As opposed to Jeremy Corbyn and his allies, they seemed very much aware of the fact that, without dramatic changes to the composition of the PLP in favour of the pro-Corbyn left, the civil war in the party would remain badly tilted against them and could not be won.

Another direct attempt to depose Corbyn is improbable – simply because there is no doubt he would win again. But, even in the unlikely event of him getting the keys to No10, this would not stop the ongoing civil war against him by the right in and outside the Labour Party. The current crop of rightwing-dominated MPs will continue to sabotage and undermine him at every possible opportunity – he will remain a prisoner constrained by a hostile PLP. He would be lucky if he could convince these rightwingers to vote even for some of the demands in his ‘moderate’ For the many, not the few manifesto.

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

In reality, however, we know that the ruling class would do everything in its power to prevent a Corbyn-led government from actually happening. They know that, despite his constant moves to conciliate and accommodate the Labour right, he just cannot be trusted because of his past record. And, of course, there also remains the danger of the formation of a national government ‘to sort out Brexit’ – perhaps after a snap election. No doubt, Jeremy Corbyn would not be called up for this dream team to be forged, but there are plenty of current Labour MPs who would gladly join such an endeavour.

The PLP remains the key problem for Corbyn, in other words. He cannot achieve anything much if he remains controlled by these rightwingers. The reformed trigger ballot does not make it as feasible to remove rightwing MPs as mandatory reselection would – but it makes getting rid of the biggest traitors a real possibility.

No doubt, most of the new crop of candidates selected in this process will be on what can charitably be described as the soft left of the party, with many no doubt being pushed by Momentum’s witch-finder general, Jon Lansman. In other words, these deselections can only be the first step in the campaign to radically transform Labour.

How it works

If the system is implemented, as agreed at the 2018 conference (which is not yet certain), we can look forward to the long overdue clearing out of many of the careerists, Blairites and warmongers that have been hogging Labour’s parliamentary benches for decades.

Every party member should familiarise themselves with the rules. We think it would be a good idea to hold trigger ballots everywhere, including in seats where members are happy with their MP and actually do not aim to replace them – that would show that MPs who actually represent the wishes of the local membership have nothing to fear from a democratic selection process. It would also be a step into the direction of reintroducing the much more democratic and transparent mandatory reselection of all sitting MPs.

  •  The 2018 Labour conference voted to introduce two separate trigger ballots: one for all the branches of a CLP; another for all local affiliates (trade unions, socialist societies, cooperative organisations).
  • All sitting MPs have until July 8 to reply to Jennie Formby’s question as to whether they “wish to remain a candidate at the next general election”.
  • If the sitting MP replies ‘no’, then a democratic selection process begins. If the MP replies ‘yes’, the CLP will organise two trigger ballots:
  1. Local party members will meet in their branches and will be asked to vote for or against retaining the sitting MP as the only candidate. A simple majority will decides whether the branch is counted towards a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote.
  2. Local affiliates (unions and other organisations) – most of whom will probably not hold a democratic vote on the question – will also have one vote each in the CLP.
  • If a minimum of 33% of a CLP’s branches or 33 % of the CLP’s affiliates vote ‘no’ to retaining the sitting MP, a full selection process will start – ie, a democratic contest between different candidates, including the sitting MP. Only full Labour members will have a vote in this stage of the process.

For example, if a CLP has 10 branches and 10 affiliates, either four LP branches or four affiliated organisations have to vote ‘no’ when asked if they want to retain the sitting MP in order to trigger a full selection process.

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Pete Willsman’s suspension: all part of the coup against Corbyn

Pete Willsman is the victim of a well-timed sting – yet his own CLPD comrades will not stand in solidarity with him. Carla Roberts reports

On May 31, Labour Party general secretary Jennie Formby informed other members of the national executive committee that she had put Pete Willsman under “administrative suspension” after having “received a number of complaints, including from NEC members”, about his latest comments”.

Comrade Willsman, who has been serving on the NEC since 1981 (1994 was the only year he was not re-elected), was caught by the Israeli-American author, Tuvia Tenenbom, making a number of unguarded comments on the so-called ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ in the party. Unaware of being recorded, Willsman apparently boasted that he is “Peter. Red Pete. They call me Corbyn’s enforcer”. But that cannot actually be heard in the heavily edited clip that runs for 102 seconds on LBC radio’s website and forms – so far – the only evidence. Here is a full transcript of the clip:

The rich control the papers, the rich control everything else and the rich know he’s going to make them pay taxes [edited gap].

One of these things about anti-Semitism is they’re using that to whip people up – they use anything, any lies. It’s all total lies and they whip it up. [Tenenbom makes positive grunting noises.] I’ll tell you what and this is off the record: it is almost certain who is behind all of this anti-Semitism against Jeremy. Almost certainly it was the Israeli embassy. [Tenenbom encouragingly says, “Really?”] Yes, they caught somebody in the Labour Party it turns out was an agent in the embassy [edited gap].

The people in the Labour Party doing it, they are people who are linked – one of them works indirectly for the Israeli embassy. I wouldn’t want to be bothered to find out, but my guess would be that they’re the ones whipping it up all the time [edited gap].

In The Guardian not long ago we had 69 rabbis, obviously organised by the Israeli embassy, saying anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is widespread and severe. Is 70 out of 600,000 [members] really widespread and severe? Is it widespread and severe? [Tenenbom can be heard murmuring, “No”.] From here [Oxford] to London it is 70 kilometres and 600,000 kilometres is 14 times around the whole world. They’re saying from here to London is widespread and severe compared to 14 times around the whole world. That is the rubbish they’re coming out with.

And that is it. Clearly, nothing Willsman said here is either anti-Semitic or warrants suspension. Unaware that he was being recorded, he might otherwise have been a little more vague when it comes to a number of details. The 69 rabbis, for example, might well have been organised by the Board of Deputies (though there is little doubt that they also have close links to the embassy). Also, we are not quite sure who it is he means who worked “indirectly for the Israeli embassy”. He was probably referring to Ella Rose, who used to work there – pretty directly – as a public affairs officer, before becoming director of the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the Labour Party.

Throughout the short clip, Willsman must obviously have referred to the fascinating documentary, The lobby, which has been wilfully ignored by the mainstream media. The documentary revealed the systematic efforts by the Israeli embassy to involve itself in the internal battles in the Labour Party. It also revealed the campaign by the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs to label opponents of Israel as anti-Semites. Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement have quite clearly been acting as the embassy’s ‘political arm in the Labour Party’. Ella Rose is shown in The lobby boasting about JLM’s relationship with Shai Masot: “We work with Shai, we know him very well.” Masot was the Israeli embassy spy forced out of his job (and the UK) after Al Jazeera exposed him plotting to “take down” various politicians.

Naturally, political interference via secret services, embassies, media outlets and many other avenues is widespread and commonplace (the reason we pay our taxes!). But the Israeli government’s campaign to topple Jeremy Corbyn has been particularly blatant and obvious. It is this campaign of interference that should be the subject of an overdue investigation rather than Pete Willsman. And this is what Jeremy Corbyn actually publicly demanded when The lobby was first aired in 2017.

But it is fair to say that the party has gone a bit quiet on the issue. We know why, of course: Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Corbyn and his advisors still seem to believe that they can appease the right, many of whom have close relationships with LFI and the JLM. How else do you explain the proposed appointment of Tony Blair’s buddy, Lord Charlie Falconer, to head up yet another party investigation into anti-Semitism? Luckily for Corbyn, Falconer declined. A few days ago he explained to BBC Radio 4 about how Willsman had “attacked the Jewish embassy”. Is he really suggesting that this is the embassy for all Jews? What a suicidal appointment that would have been!

Michael Moore of the Zionist right

The carefully timed and choreographed ‘expose’ of Willsman should prove to Corbyn once and for all how futile is his ongoing campaign to try and appease the right. Willsman was recorded in January, but Tenenbom (and LBC radio) waited almost six months to publish the audio recording – no doubt so that it could coincide nicely with the pressure building up over a second Brexit referendum, the bad EU election results, the investigation into ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ by the Equality Commission (see below) and the attacks on Labour’s Peterborough by-election candidate, Lisa Forbes. The aim is clear: the Labour right – in cahoots with much of the establishment and the media – want to weaken and isolate Jeremy Corbyn in order to get rid of him. Willsman is – like so many others – nothing but collateral damage.

Contrary to the picture painted in the mainstream media of Tuvia Tenenbom as some kind of respectable and neutral ‘journalist’ who just happened to run into Willsman in a hotel bar (and whose sound engineer just happened to leave a microphone switched on and set to ‘record’), this has more than the whiff of a sting operation about it. Tenenbom, clearly a convinced Zionist, has published a number of books in which he uses exactly this kind of method: he takes on a different persona and secretly films and records people, leading them on and guiding them into making exactly the kind of unguarded comments he was looking for – all in order to prove how anti-Semitism is rife in Germany, Palestine, the USA, etc. He is like a Michael Moore of the Zionist right – but on a much lower level.

Tenenbom told LBC radio: “He [Pete Willsman] is a nice guy, he has a great sense of humour, he’s knowledgeable. But like Jeremy Corbyn – I met Jeremy and he’s also a nice guy, very fatherly – but they suffer from a disease of really hating the Jews.” Tenenbom has also given lectures, in which he explains why “the suffering of Palestinian people is bullshit” (since you ask, he knows that because he got hold of a nicely produced business card by a Palestinian businessman and visited Palestinian shopping malls that sell some luxury goods).

Clearly, this is a man on a mission. Pete Willsman would have done well to at least quickly Google the guy before he sat down with him for a cup of coffee, talking about one of the most sensitive issues in today’s political discourse. Especially as he was once before the victim: in July 2018, an unnamed fellow member of the NEC secretly recorded Willsman when he angrily criticised all those who were responsible for so many false allegations of anti-Semitism in the party – and then outrageously passed the audio to the press. Clearly, that member should have been investigated for bringing the party into disrepute, not Willsman for stating the plain truth.

Momentum

That episode last year also exposed how far Jon Lansman, founder of Momentum, has moved to the right. Rather than defend his comrade of over 30 years, he dropped him from the slate of recommended candidates for election to the NEC. The fact that comrade Willsman was re-elected nevertheless shows both his popularity and the increasing disillusionment with Momentum among party members. It has been worse than useless in fighting the witch-hunt in the Labour Party – in fact it has been complicit.

Just this week, Lansman was yet again busy conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, when he celebrated the dismissal of George Galloway by Talkradio: “Talkradio is right to sack George Galloway for what he said. Anti-Semitism must be rooted out and rejected by all socialists, alongside all other forms of racism and hate speech.”

We are no fans of Galloway, especially since his idiotic support for the xenophobe and chauvinist, Nigel Farage, and his rightwing Brexit Party. But was his tweet really anti-Semitic? While celebrating Liverpool’s win over Tottenham Hotspurs in the Champions League final, he wrote that there would be “no Israel flags on the cup”. Galloway was referencing the fact that some Spurs fans – who famously identify themselves as the “Yid army” – do indeed carry flags with the blue and white Israeli national emblem on them. Galloway’s tweet exaggerated the scale of the pro-Israel sentiment among Spurs fans – but, in any case, he was referring to Israel, not Jews. With such tweets, Lansman is helping to feed the anti-Corbyn witch-hunt.

As an aside, “Momentum’s most engaged and active members” have just received Lansman’s proposals to “democratise the organisation” (funnily enough, this includes at least one person who has been suspended from Momentum for the last six months, as well as people who assure us that they have not paid their membership fees for the last two years). So exciting times: will we finally see a democratic conference, where members can vote to get rid of Lansman as the owner, leader and all-round puppet-master of the group? Or perhaps we might be given a fair chance to democratically decide a constitution and get rid of the one that Lansman imposed after his coup of January 10 2017? Or, you know, maybe members might be given some say on the kind of campaigns and political priorities we want Momentum to advance? Which surely would be way to the left of what Lansman is doing.

Of course not. Lansman is suggesting three things: (1) to increase the number of regions from three to five; (2) increase the number of directly ‘elected’ people on the leading body from 12 to 20; and (3), our favourite proposal, get rid of the annual ‘elections’ and instead only bother with them every two years. Because, you see, “a relatively high level of resources are diverted into running elections rather than other activities.” That is a classic: increase democracy by decreasing elections. Brilliant.

This last proposal actually seems to be the main reason for the ‘consultation’ (which lasts a staggering seven days, giving the few remaining Momentum groups no time to discuss them). Proposal 1 and 2 are obviously bullshit and will do nothing to democratise anything, but it seems that the annual charade of online elections (where isolated members are asked to choose between candidates of which they know very little) seems to be too burdensome for our Jon. So this is not a proposal to democratise Momentum, but, on the contrary, to make it even less accountable.

EHRC

A Zionist himself, Lansman has been partly to blame for the scale of the ‘Anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign in the Labour Party. It is an outrage that Labour members are being suspended, investigated and expelled for stating the truth: that the so-called anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour Party has been cynically manufactured and carefully directed. Meanwhile, anti-Corbyn MPs, such as Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman and Tom Watson, insult, disrupt, make bogus accusations and work hand in glove with the capitalist media – with no repercussions. “Those making false charges ought to face disciplinary action and should be held accountable for their actions” – as Labour Against the Witchhunt’s recent statement and model motion on Willsman correctly declares (see page 11).”

However, the opposite is happening. The expulsion of the Blairite plotter, Alistair Campbell, is now being “reviewed” – we fear that his reinstatement is imminent. And that despite the fact that he has openly boasted about voting for the Liberal Democrats, no doubt in order to provoke an action by the party and, of course, the subsequent counter-reaction by Tom Watson et al, who claim to be outraged by this application of Labour’s rules. No such leniency is applied when it comes to the auto-expulsion of (leftwing) members who have merely wished candidates in other parties “good luck”. The double standards applied here are staggering and underline which way the scales in the civil war are still tilting.

Similarly, the Labour Party should call out the investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for what it is: part of the latest move against Corbyn. The complaints were lodged by the Jewish Labour Movement and the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Clearly these two organisations have no interest in fighting racism at all: their only purpose is to get rid of a certain Jeremy Corbyn and they have actively plotted against him from day one. The JLM was refounded in 2015 specifically to campaign against Corbyn and Tony Greenstein has described how the CAA has campaigned almost exclusively against Corbyn rather than anti-Semitism or racism.

The EHRC will now investigate “whether the party has unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish”. But, if there has been any unlawful discrimination by Labour against Jewish people, surely it has been against Jewish anti-Zionists. Many of them, as well as black members, are involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights, which explains the disproportionate number of expulsions and suspensions of black and Jewish comrades.

In this context, we are somewhat puzzled by the strategy proposed by a number of black activists, who think that Labour Party members should now swamp the EHRC with examples of anti-black racism. Clearly, that would only give the witch-hunters even more ammunition and lead to the predictable result that the party – and specifically Corbyn – will not just be found guilty of anti-Semitism, but of other forms of racism too. That is not exactly a winning strategy, comrades.

Trigger ballots

At the heart of the latest move is the news that the overdue trigger ballots – by which sitting Labour MPs are subjected to a possible reselection ballot of members – might finally be implemented after all. We have to say, we remain a little sceptical. Of course, as a reform agreed at last year’s Labour Party conference, it should be implemented. After all, it was only ever a compromise cobbled together with the unions to hold off the far more democratic proposal to re-establish the mandatory reselection of all parliamentary candidates (aka open selection), which would otherwise have gone through.

Still, even this slight reform represents a serious danger to many careerist MPs, who quite rightly fear that the local membership might give them the axe, given half a chance. In particular it is the separation of the trigger ballot into two separate votes that could see sitting MPs being democratically challenged for the first time since 1990. Then, Neil Kinnock abolished mandatory reselection and instead introduced the trigger ballot system, where a total of 33% of all Labour Party branches and affiliated organisations (each branch and affiliate having one vote) had to oppose the sitting MP in order to spark a full selection process between different candidates. Democrat that he is, Tony Blair increased the threshold to 50%.

It is now back at 33%, but, crucially, a full selection process starts when either 33% of a Constituency Labour Party’s branches or 33% of its affiliates say ‘no’ to the sitting MP. This is hugely important, as trade unions and other affiliated organisations have in the past often played a negative role, using their votes to side with the right in holding off more leftwing challengers supported by the CLP’s branches.

But, unless the NEC publishes a timetable and guidelines on how to launch such trigger ballots, nothing can happen. In January, Jennie Formby was commissioned by the NEC to urgently produce such documents – but then Chukka Umunna and his friends split from the party and the leadership got cold feet. “In an attempt to stop further defections, Labour could delay the start of re-election battles,” reported The Guardian in February. It added: “Labour is set to put back the start of the formal MP selection process … which could have led to vast numbers of MPs facing deselection.”

Perhaps it was the hilarious news that Change UK was about to split itself into oblivion that led to the latest reports about the overdue implementation of the trigger ballots being imminent. As we said, while we would obviously welcome such a move, we remain sceptical. After all, it would require Jeremy Corbyn and his allies to finally come out fighting and stop their campaign of appeasing those rightwingers who would probably get the chop by the local membership. And we have yet to see any evidence of that.

CLPD silence

Unfortunately, the same goes for Peter Willsman’s own organisation, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. The CLPD is characterised by its uncritical support for (or, more precisely, total submission to the thinking of) Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, the first sentence of the lead motion to its recent AGM (written, we believe, by Willsman) read, rather creepily: “Full support to the party leader at all times”. That also just about sums up its current attitude to the witch-hunt against its secretary, Pete Willsman: Because Jeremy Corbyn remains tight-lipped and does not come out in support of Willsman, neither does the CLPD.

In fact, the organisation and its leader have been very quiet over the whole witch-hunt. Had it not been for the two secret recordings of Willsman, we would not actually have known where exactly he stands on the issue of the smear campaign. Shortly after Chris Williamson’s suspension, the CLPD published a short, mealy-mouthed defence of the MP – but also distributed the so-called instruction that allegedly bans branches and CLPs from discussing any motions on ongoing disciplinary cases. As Labour Against the Witchhunt has usefully pointed out, there is in fact “no ban” on such motions. “True, they are categorised as “not competent business” (which means they will not be discussed by the NEC), but it is always up to the members of any meeting to decide what they want to discuss.

And every single statement, every public resolution will add to the pressure to get our comrades reinstated – whether the NEC discusses them or not.

However, the CLPD pretends nothing has happened. We are assured that “of course” CLPD members stand in solidarity with Pete. But no public statement has gone out, explaining how their comrade was the victim of a sting, no information has been sent to members – nothing. Unsurprisingly though, behind the scenes all hell has broken loose. We hear that Willsman was urged by other officers to resign as CLPD secretary, though that does not actually seem necessary, as the ridiculous rules of the organisation only allow full Labour members to be members. With his suspension from the party, he was automatically suspended by the CLPD. The chickens have come home to roost …

He was swiftly replaced by Barry Gray and Jake Rubin, with the latter being particularly keen to distance the organisation from Willsman. We have been forwarded an email of Rubin’s, where he argues: “Pete should apologise for his comments and I won’t be advising that CLPD defend them. ‎It is not true that the problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is solely the product of Israel.”

Pete Willsman did not actually say that. Remember, on the tape we can only hear a version of his comments that was heavily and purposefully edited. For example, at one point Willsman quite clearly states he is talking about “all of this anti-Semitism against Jeremy”, for which he quite correctly blames “the Israeli embassy” (ie, the Israeli government).

So we are down to this: “One of these things about anti-Semitism is they’re using that to whip people up – they use anything, any lies. It’s all total lies and they whip it up.” You could try and take that apart, bit by bit, to try and work out what exactly he means by “it’s all total lies”. But remember, this is not somebody giving a well-prepared speech for an audience, but somebody speaking out over a cup of coffee with a person pretending to be sympathetic.

But his own comrades are not giving him the benefit of the doubt. With even his leading figures in the CLPD twisting his words and throwing him to the wolves, what chance does Willsman have of a fair trial in front of the party’s skewed disciplinary body?

This is particularly shameful, as comrade Willsman has been a leading figure in the CLPD for close to 50 years and his position on the NEC has kept the group going for much of this time. The CLPD is, shall we say, a little on the inert side – and has, funnily enough, become increasingly so since the election of a certain Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Before that it occasionally posed left, but, as soon as Corbyn was elected, it dropped its key demand for mandatory reselection and has been shadowing his campaign of appeasement.

Apart from proposing a few left-leaning motions to annual conference and publishing the useful (though rather tame) daily voting guide, ‘Yellow pages’, at conference itself, the organisation does very, very little. Its role in the Grassroots Centre Left Alliance (GCLA), which for the last 30 or so years has been recommending soft-left candidates for various internal elections, is diminishing by the day. This latest failure of the CLPD to stand in public solidarity with its leading member will only increase the speed with which the organisation heads towards implosion. That would be a loss.

 

Labour Against the Witchhunt model motion

Reinstate Pete Willsman!

This branch/CLP notes:

  • On May 31, Labour Party NEC member Peter Willsman was put under “administrative suspension” after he was secretly recorded by the Israeli-American author, Tuvia Tenenbom.
  • The audio was recorded in January 2019, but leaked to the press over five months later, no doubt to coincide with a new hotting up in the campaign to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn.

We further note:

  •  Tenenbom claims that he ‘happened’ to come across Pete Willsman in a hotel bar and that his sound engineer ‘happened’ to have left a hidden microphone switched on.
  • However, Tenenbom has published a number of books in which he uses exactly this kind of method. He secretly films and records people, often guiding them into making the kind of unguarded comments he was looking for, in order to prove how anti-Semitism is rife in Germany, Palestine, the USA, etc.
  • Tenenbom has given lectures, in which he explains why “the suffering of Palestinian people is bullshit” (https://bit.ly/2MAH1xo) and has told LBC radio: “He [Pete Willsman] is a nice guy, he has a great sense of humour, he’s knowledgeable. But like Jeremy Corbyn – I met Jeremy and he’s also a nice guy, very fatherly – but they suffer from a disease of really hating the Jews” (www.lbc.co.uk/news/labour-israeli-embassy-behind-antisemitism-smears).

We believe:

  • That anti-Semitism, like all forms of racism, must be vigorously combatted – ideally, through education and debate, not disciplinary measures and ‘zero tolerance’.
  • That the Labour Party is not institutionally anti-Semitic, as the figures published by Jennie Formby prove. On the contrary, many claims of anti-Semitism have been taken out of context, exaggerated and weaponised in order to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, an outspoken supporter of the rights of Palestinians. Anti-Zionism has been wilfully and wrongly equated with anti-Semitism.
  • That nothing Pete Willsman said was anti-Semitic. Pete did, however, point to some uncomfortable truths exposed by the Al Jazeera documentary The lobby, which has been ignored by the mainstream media. The documentary revealed a systematic effort by the Israeli embassy to involve itself in the internal battles in the Labour Party. Also revealed were the efforts by the Israeli ministry of strategic affairs to label opponents of Israel as anti-Semites.
  • That this proven interference should be the subject of an overdue investigation, as demanded by Jeremy Corbyn in a letter of January 2017.

We further believe:

  • A stalwart of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Pete Willsman has been serving on Labour’s NEC for many decades and is one of the few real allies of Jeremy Corbyn on that body. This is why he has been on the radar of those who will do anything to get rid of Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party.
  • That anti-Corbyn MPs such as Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman and Tom Watson insult, disrupt, make bogus accusations and work hand in glove with the media – with no repercussions coming their way. Those making false charges ought to face disciplinary action and should be held accountable for their actions.

We therefore express our full solidarity with Pete Willsman, Chris Williamson MP and all the other Labour Party members who have been suspended, expelled or disciplined on bogus charges of anti-Semitism or because of their support for leftwing groups. We want to see them immediately reinstated.

Important information

There is no ban in the Labour Party on moving motions in support of comrades in ongoing disciplinary cases. As in the case of Chris Williamson MP, the ‘advice’ sent out by Labour Party HQ merely declares such motions to be “not competent business” for the NEC to discuss. That merely means the NEC will not look at them – but the rest of the workers’ movement will certainly do so. Any motion, any statement, any act of public solidarity will add pressure to get our comrades reinstated, gives courage to other Labour Party members and branches and shows the victims of the witch-hunt that they do not stand alone.

More information on this issue and detailed guidelines on how to move a motion are here: www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org/campaigns/there-is-no-ban-on-moving-motions-in-support-of-chris-williamson-mp.

 

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

Rothschild and irrationality

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Controversies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Left

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

Therefore, LAW will support efforts to

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

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

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

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

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Jackie Walker: next victim of the witch-hunt

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definition?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leftwing?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After Jackie walked out of her kangaroo court hearing

 

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

 

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

 

[3]. Ibid.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Democracy and the Labour Party, Witch-hunts and expulsions

Corbyn should speak up

Labour HQ has decided upon yet more suspensions. Carla Roberts reports on the appalling consequences of appeasement

Tom Watson’s inaugural meeting of rightwingers in parliament this week certainly looked quite impressive in terms of numbers – there are reports of up to 140 people present, including between 60 to 80 current Labour Party MPs, among them “at least 13 members of the shadow front bench”. But dig a little deeper and the thing looks decidedly uninspiring.

Despite its name, ‘Future Britain’, this outfit is looking firmly back towards the past: “I feel that the voice of the social democratic and democratic socialist traditions hasn’t been strong enough in recent times,” said Watson. Darren Johnson, MP for Bristol North West, expanded: “This is the coming together of the TBs and GBs.” So we presume Tony Blair is supposed to be the social democrat and Gordon Brown the democratic socialist? Have we got that right? It does not matter, really. “Even some of Watsons’ supporters remain unsure what his ultimate intentions are,” writes The Guardian, not known as a friend of Corbyn’s.

Apparently, the group wants to “concentrate on policy development”, move alternative papers to those of the national policy forum and other such exciting things. The New Statesman believes that Tom Watson is “in effect trying to provide a support network and safe space for Labour MPs contemplating life outside the party”.

They can call it what they want, but we know that it is part of the ongoing slow coup against Corbyn. They know they cannot challenge Corbyn in a leadership contest, because they are bound to lose. The membership is still firmly on his side. So Future Britain is very much part of the campaign to kill Corbyn’s leadership through 1,000 cuts, as is the formation of Chuka Umunna’s The Independent Group. In and of themselves, they would not amount to much.

But they have to be seen within the exceptionally successful and very much ongoing campaign to paint Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites. This was the only muck that ever really stuck – because Corbyn and his allies allowed it to stick. They bent over backwards to try and prove to the right that they would take the allegations seriously and ‘sort it out’ – when clearly it was only ever a miniscule problem, reflecting the low-level prejudice and racism that exists in wider society.

But, by suspending one person after another on false and trumped-up charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ (or expelling them for ‘bringing the party into disrepute’) and by adopting the much-disputed definition of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the party could only ever achieve the opposite: ie, it is demonstrating that Labour has indeed a ‘huge problem’. The fact that 12 members have been expelled over anti-Semitism does not prove that the party is dealing with that problem – but that it has let off the other 661!

Now the Jewish Labour Movement, which has sadly voted to remain a part of the Labour Party for now, has succeeded in getting the government quango, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, to open an investigation into the Labour Party over anti-Semitism. And at the same time – as if to show how important such an investigation is – the compliance unit seems to have lost all sense of proportion.

Not only have automatic suspensions for the most minor of accusations been reinstated – in clear contravention to what Shami Chakrabarti recommended following her inquiry. We have also seen members being suspended for even questioning the claim that there is a big anti-Semitism problem in the party.

For example, part of the case against Jackie Walker (whose expulsion hearing takes place on March 26) is that she described the witch-hunt against her and others as … “a witch-hunt”. That charge was, of course, added after her suspension. So fighting back against your suspension becomes part of the charge sheet against you – that is clearly against all natural justice and reeks of Kafkaesque madness.

New victims

These are just some of the latest suspensions that we have become aware of:

– Councillor Stuart Porthouse, former mayor of Sunderland, was suspended for sharing an interview with George Galloway on Sky News, in which the former MP said the party was not-anti-Semitic.

– The suspension of Chris Williamson MP also clearly falls into this category: he is not charged with saying anything anti-Semitic, but questioning if the party’s tactics were wise.

– Councillor Jo Bird from the Wirral has been suspended for making a number of jokes, like changing ‘due process’ to ‘Jew process’ (she is Jewish herself).

– Sean McCallum, mayoral candidate in Mansfield, has been suspended on the basis of two 25-months-old tweets questioning the origins of a meme that Naz Shah MP had posted three years ago.

– Asa Winstanley, investigative journalist with the Electronic Intifada, has been suspended for calling out the Jewish Labour Movement on Twitter: “Israeli embassy proxy the JLM confirms it was responsible for the referencing of Labour to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for supposed ‘institutional anti-Semitism’. Shameless sabotage of the party.”

– Last but not least, we are also seeing a new attempt to ‘get’ eminent Middle Eastern expert Moshé Machover, who John Mann MP and the JLM first tried to have suspended back in 2017, after we reprinted his article, ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism’, in our Labour Party conference issue of Labour Party Marxists. But the compliance unit did one better and expelled him under clause 2.1.4.B (‘Exclusions’) in the party’s rulebook. You see, because comrade Machover attended meetings organised by LPM and the CPGB, it was seen as ‘proven’ that he was a member of LPM, CPGB (or both) and therefore not eligible for membership of the Labour Party.

Comrade Machover, however, managed to get not only some very pointed lawyer’s letters to the compliance unit: his expulsion also led to an international outcry and the party was flooded with supportive statements and resolutions. Within 30 days, the party reinstated him as a full member. The original charge that his meticulously researched article was anti-Semitic was never looked into, “because you are not currently a member of the Labour Party”, as his expulsion letter stated.

This week though, the Jewish Chronicle is fronting another attempt to get him on those allegations. As part of the campaign to charge Jeremy Corbyn with ‘interfering’ with disciplinary cases, the JC reminds its readers of comrade Machover’s crime: “He quoted Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the final solution, to support the notion that the Nazis supported Zionists before the holocaust.” I mean, where do we get if we actually start quoting sources to make a point?

The JC has also dug up a number of newish quotes from comrade Machover, “who has continued to make controversial remarks”: for example, “Mr Machover also claimed Israel’s ministry of strategic affairs had driven an ‘immense public campaign’ in the UK against Labour’s new guidelines on anti-Semitism.”

That is, of course, common knowledge – as well as the fact that the pro-Zionist lobby put enormous pressure on the party to accept the disputed IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, including all 11 examples. The paper also quotes from a speech at Labour Against the Witchhunt’s conference, when he “compared incidents of anti-Semitism in the party to the hunt for paedophiles – suggesting eventually someone will be found”.

Of course, he did not “compare” the two. As opposed to the hack from the JC, I was actually there. Comrade Machover said: “… of course there are some anti-Semites in the party, just as no doubt there are some paedophiles, but it is definitely not the major problem it has been portrayed to be”.

None of these so-called accusations would hold up in any bourgeois court system. But unfortunately, we cannot be sure of what kind of madness has broken out in the compliance unit – we would not put it past them to suspend comrade Machover too. Having accusations printed in the Jewish Chronicle is usually the first step in the campaign to get somebody suspended – Asa Winstanley first learned of his own suspension from that rag. Comrade Machover, however, is not one to go down quietly. The compliance unit might well stretch itself too far with such a move – which could have all sorts of unintended consequences.

We hear that Jeremy Corbyn is getting increasingly unhappy about some of the recent suspensions – especially that of Chris Williamson MP. How much longer can he simply watch, as one of his supporters after another is handed over to the witch-finders in the compliance unit?

Yes, he is a prisoner of the rightwingers in the Parliamentary Labour Party and it is true that even his long-term ally, John McDonnell, now appears to have fully jumped on board the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis bandwagon (which Momentum’s owner, Jon Lansman, has been sitting on for quite some time).

But Corbyn still has a voice – and he is, after all, the reason why hundreds of thousands of members have joined the party. If he spoke up – publicly – in support of Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson, Jo Bird, Moshé Machover and Asa Winstanley, he could make a massive difference to the outcome of the civil war in the Labour Party.