Tag Archives: Labour Party Marxists

Red Pages: Sunday, September 22 2019

SUNDAY 2019 PDFClick to download today’s issue in PDF version here.

How to get rid of Tom Watson
With his much-publicised motion to abolish the position of deputy leader, Momentum’s owner Jon Lansman was trying to pose left – but don’t be fooled

Abolish all private schools?
This demand is not as radical as it sounds – what about, say, those run by cooperatives? Those that are based on a working class, socialist vision of society?

Debate over Clause four: Fight for real socialism!
Despite the fact that the rule change fell far short of what is required, we urged for a vote for it, against the Blairisation of the Labour Party. Sadly, Labour’s NEC kicked the issue into the long grass.

Fast-track expulsions will make the anti-Semitism witchhunt worse
Although a majority of CLP representatives yesterday voted AGAINST a further tightening of Labour’s disciplinary system, the rule change from the NEC was accepted because the affiliates overwhelmingly voted in favour. This will make the witch-hunt much, much worse.

John McDonnell’s 10% shares plan: There is no ethical capitalism

WEDNESDAY fullRed Pages, Wednesday September 26 – download the PDF here

In today’s issue:

There is no ethical capitalism
John McDonnell’s 10% share scheme sounds radical, but it is an old trick

Bomb hoax at Jackie Walker film

Right wing damp squib
The Jewish Labour Movement and other right wingers kept their heads down – some thugs did their dirty work

No Momentum
Conference proved that it is time for Jon Lansman to step aside


There is no ethical capitalism

John McDonnell’s 10% share scheme sounds radical, but it is an old trick

In his key speech to conference, John McDonnell outlined his plans for “true industrial democracy”. After all, “workers, who create the wealth of a company, should share in its ownership and, yes, in the returns that it makes”. So, up to a third of the seats on company boards would be “allocated to workers”. Companies employing more than 250 staff would have to pay 1% of their assets, or up to 10% of their shares, into an ‘inclu- sive ownership fund’. Although they would not be compelled to pay out dividends, McDonnell reckons that most companies would do so, which would mean up to £500 a year for perhaps 11 million workers.

Anything above £500 would be paid into a fund to help finance pub- lic services. McDonnell believes that would provide an extra £2 billion a year for the NHS, etc. Although he was trying to sell all this as very radical, he was careful to emphasise that it was actually in the interests of capital too. You see, “employee owner- ship” is likely to increase “a company’s productivity” and encourage “long-term thinking”.

In reality there is nothing radical about such schemes. Far from em- powering our class, the intention is to emphasise a ‘common interest’ with the capitalists – if we cooperate, both sides will benefit, right? That is why similar programmes have been introduced in several countries – often by rightwing parties. Surely if we have a share in the ownership of the company employing us, that will make us more likely to work alongside the bosses to help increase profits, won’t it? And it wouldn’t be a good idea to go on strike.

This scheme would be unlikely to make workers better off. It is obvious that funds diverted to shares for em- ployees would have to be taken from somewhere – companies would argue that this additional cost would reduce their ability to increase wages.

McDonnell once knew that workers and capitalists have no common interest, and that, far from promoting a more cooperative form of capitalism, we need to establish our own system, based on production for need, not for profit. But now, instead of targeting the system of capital itself, he restricts his criticism to the “financial elite”.

When it came to the proposed public ownership of industries like water, energy, Royal Mail and the railways, McDonnell reiterated that this would not represent a “return to the past”. This time the nationalised sector would be “run democratically” – with workers’ representatives sitting alongside state appointees.

Despite this vision of a more ethical, participatory form of capitalism, McDonnell had the cheek to end his speech by describing it as “socialism” – before shouting “Solidarity!” to the largely approving delegates.

The problem he and Corbyn have is that, no matter how much they go out of their way to reassure the estab- lishment, the latter just doesn’t buy it. It knows that, with their past record of siding with the workers, neither can be trusted to run the system.

John and Jeremy – drop the reassurances to capital and stick with the interests of the workers!

 


Right wing damp squib

The Jewish Labour Movement and other right wingers kept their heads down – some thugs did their dirty work

In the run-up to conference there were reports that rightwingers were planning to “force conference dele- gates to ‘run the gauntlet’ of a placard-waving demonstration that will claim to be about anti-Semitism”; that “disruption was planned at any fringe event that Corbyn is expected to attend”, and that “any appearances by Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, Labour general secretary Jennie Formby or Chris Williamson are on the hit list”. There were also rumours of some sort of anti-Corbyn demonstration along the lines of the ‘Enough is enough’ outing on March 26. Various leftwing ‘rapid response teams’ had started to organise in or- der to mobilise for a quick counter-demonstration.

Tweet on LPMIn the end, none of it happened. Supporters of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement and other rightwingers kept to themselves and made no attempt to engage delegates and visitors. We also received markedly less abuse this year compared to the 2017 conference in Brighton. Last year, our Labour Party Marxists front-page article – ‘Anti- Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism’, written by Israeli socialist Moshé Machover – led to huge uproar. Assorted rightwingers and supporters of the JLM gathered aggressively around our stall, snatched copies of LPM and tried to provoke our distributors. It was all pretty small-scale and pathetic, but the right was in an aggressive and offensive mood.

It got worse: John Mann MP and the JLM complained to Labour’s compliance unit. It led to the suspension and then expulsion of comrade Machover over his links with LPM. After a huge international outcry and a pointed lawyer’s letter to the Labour Party, Iain McNicol relented and reinstated comrade Machover within a month.

But that was 2017. This year, the response has been far more mooted.

Again, our excellent front-page article was written by comrade Machover. Its headline is intentionally provocative: ‘Why Israel is a racist state’. This refers, of course, to the NEC’s ill-judged adoption of the full ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), including all 11 disputed examples – which includes a ban on describing Israel as racist. Clearly, comrade Machover’s article is perti- nent and we were not surprised that many delegates and visitors were attracted by the headline. We handed out over 2,000 copies of LPM, in addition to the 1,300 daily copies of our Red Pages. Reactions were 95% favourable, with many thanking us, and some commenting along the lines of: ‘At long last, somebody is giving some political guidance!’ Even Labour First’s Luke Akehurst could not help admitting that he was “very impressed” by our daily output (he seems to have been the only one handing out his A4 Labour First leaflet).

palestine flags 2We got a few quietly huffed comments along the lines of ‘Don’t you know that’s anti-Semitic?’ But that’s about it. While the right has been incredibly successful with their smear campaign in the mainstream media, that kind of bubble bursts pretty quickly once you come to con- ference. Party delegates are usually among the most active Labour members – they know from first-hand experience that the party is not riddled with anti-Semites. It seemed as though every other delegate or conference visitor had swapped their official lanyard (featuring the logo of the rightwing Usdaw union) with that handed out by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Yesterday, hundreds of delegates waved Palestinian flags (which had been distributed by the PSC and Labour Against the Witchhunt) when a composite motion on Palestine was debated and, like last year, every reference to Palestine was greeted with huge applause.

No wonder then that rightwingers are not exactly keen to openly show their face at conference any more. We can just about imagine the reception they would have got if they had tried to hold up ‘Corbyn is an anti- Semite’ posters.

However, we hear of two instances where small groups of Zionist thugs from ‘Jewish Human Rights Watch’, armed with video cameras, followed Jewish pro-Palestine campaigner Jenny Manson and Unite general secretary Len McCluskey after fringe meetings, trying to threaten and provoke them. The bomb scare at the screening of the Jackie Walker documentary certainly falls into that category (see below).

Screenshot 2018-09-25 20.04.39Clearly, the civil war is far from over and the smear campaign in the media continues unabated. For example, the right has been busy fingering comrade Machover and LPM: The Jewish Chronicle shouts that we were distributing “vicious anti-Israel hate material, Breitbart calls it an “inflammatory article”, while The Times of Israel complains, wrongly, that comrade Machover was “comparing Israel to Nazis”.

Comrade Machover has responded in an admiringly calm manner to all this: “If you are interested in the truth, please read my article and the two attacks. You will see that the Jewish Chronicle and Times of Israel articles contain several lies and distortions, among which are the very headings of the said articles.”

We cannot rule out that comrade Machover may once again be reported to Labour’s compliance unit. We cannot rule out that he will once again be suspended. We cannot rule out further expulsions of LPM supporters. Although Jeremy Corbyn publicly stated last year that he was “glad” that comrade Machover had been reinstated, a lot has happened in the last 12 months. Because of the ongoing and doomed strategy of the party leadership around Corbyn to try and conciliate and placate the right, the fake anti-Semitism campaign has gained an incredible amount of ground.

Take the conference session on Tuesday afternoon with the rather absurd title of ‘Security at home and abroad’, which included the debate on Brexit – and Palestine. This session was, incredibly, chaired by NEC member Rhea Wolfson, a member of the JLM. She started the session by warning conference to stay away from “inward-looking debate which focuses on internal matters and NEC decisions. Please be careful about the language you use. Make everybody feel welcome and do not boo.”

Wolfson was, however, less than “welcoming” when Hilary Wise from Ealing and Acton Central CLP spoke eloquently about the anti-Semitism smear campaign. She stated that as a campaigner on Palestinian rights for 30 years, she had “never seen anything like the current campaign of slurs and accusations made against Jeremy Corbyn and the left in the party. I am afraid it is an orchestrated campaign and if you want to know how it works I urge you to watch ‘The Lobby’ on Al Jazeera.”

At that point Wolfson warned her: “I would ask you to be very careful. You are straying into territory here.”

Comrade Wise went on to warn quite rightly that “this campaign will only get worse and the list of people being denounced as anti-Semitic will get longer, often simply for being proponents of Palestinian rights.” Wolfson interrupted her again: “I urge you to be careful” and then went straight on to tell her abruptly: “Take your seat – your time is up now.”

After two minutes and 45 seconds, that is. All other delegates got a minimum of three minutes, with Wolfson gently requesting that they finish when their time was up. But Wolfson is not just a member of the JLM: she used her vote on the NEC to send Jackie Walker to the national constitutional committee, pushed through the IHRA definition and has ambitions to become an MP. She will fit in well with the current PLP. Her fellow travellers in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty must be so proud (she is an editor of their magazine The Clarion).

Thornberry

In this context, the speech by Emily Thornberry, groomed by ‘moderates’ to take over from Jeremy Corbyn, was interesting. She clearly had been picked to speak in favour of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt – the only person at conference to do so. “There are sickening individuals on the fringes of our movement, who use our legitimate support for Palestine as a cloak and a cover for their despicable hatred of Jewish people, and their desire to see Israel destroyed. These people stand for everything that we have always stood against and they must be kicked out of our party, the same way Oswald Mosley was kicked out of Liverpool.” Her dramatic shouts of “No pasaran, no pasaran!” tricked some people into giving her a standing ovation.

Needless to say, Rhea Wolfson made no attempt to reign in Thornberry for these crass insults, no doubt directed at comrades like Jackie Walker, who is about to be thrown out of the party. Thornberry is a fellow Zionist, after all.

To quote Chris Williamson MP at the fringe organised by Labour Against the Witchhunt: “The only way you stop a playground bully is to stop running. The monster is getting bigger, the more you feed it. Stop feeding the beast! They are trying to pick us off, one by one. Which is why we need to call this campaign out for what it is: a pile of nonsense.”


Bomb hoax at Jackie Walker film

bombLast night’s film preview of the new documentary, ‘The political
 lynching of Jackie Walker’, had to be stopped a few minutes in.
 After an anonymous phone call (“there are two bombs in the
building that will kill many people”), all 150 visitors had to evacu
ate Blackburn House on police orders. Of course, no bomb was
found. By the time the police gave the all-clear, the staff wanted 
to go home. This hoax is almost certainly part of the campaign
by pro-Zionist forces to disrupt and intimidate the pro-Palestinian left. But, of course, this kind of cowardly behaviour will only
 increase the feeling of solidarity for Jackie Walker and all the
other victims of the witch-hunt – and interest in the film. Director Jon Pullman announced outside Blackburn House that anybody who wants to show the documentary should contact him: www.jonpullman.com.


No Momentum

Conference proved that it is
 time for Jon Lansman to go

Momentum played almost no role at conference. Of course, it organised The World Transformed across three venues, but with varied levels of success. It felt smaller than previous events and much less relevant, with most sessions having been outsourced to other organisations. While Freedom of Speech on Israel, the Liverpool 47 and Labour Against the Witchhunt were denied spaces, those allowed to organise at TWT made use of it by putting on valuable sessions like ‘Decolonising yoga’ and ‘Acid Corbynism’.

Last year, Momentum made a huge effort in advance of conference to gather data from delegates, so that they could be regularly sent text messages, carrying frequently useful voting guidelines. None of that happened this year. Momentum had published an app, but, unless you actively went looking for recommendations, you wouldn’t know how Jon Lansman (the owner of Momentum’s database) felt about the various conference motions.

Momentum also did not put forward any candidates – or voting recommendations – for positions on the conference arrangements committee or the national constitutional committee (which deals with all disciplinary matters passed on to it by the NEC).

Crucially, Lansman badly folded on the question of open selection of parliamentary candidates (also known as mandatory reselection). Moved by International Labour, this rule change would have done away with the undemocratic trigger ballot, which always favours the sitting MP, who has to be actively challenged. Open selection would have created a level playing field between all interested candidates. Clearly, a much better and far more democratic system.

Having opportunistically jumped on the open selection bandwagon about a week before conference, he let it be known during the debate on the Party Democracy Review that Momentum would now prefer that delegates voted in favour of the NEC compromise after all – ie, a reform of the trigger ballot rather than its abolition. This followed hot on the heels of Unite general secretary Len McCluskey’s intervention, who kept on insisting that he would ask his delegates to vote for mandatory reselection – if such a motion should reach conference floor. But, in the meantime, he did everything in his power to stop the motion coming before conference.

Most delegates were fuming and the NEC amendment only scraped through because of the support of the unions. Momentum was clearly not representing CLP delegates – the vast majority of whom are in support of mandatory reselection (see yesterday’s issue of Red Pages).

Momentum has proved once again how utterly useless it is when it comes to actually organising the Labour left. Things really started to disintegrate in the wake of the Lansman coup of January 10 2017, when Lansman abolished all democratic structures in Momentum and imposed his own constitution. But the whole farce over the defeat of the principle of mandatory reselection exposed really rather dramatically the huge vacuum that exists on the left of our party. We urgently need a principled, effective organisation of the Labour left that can coordinate the fight for the democratic transformation of the party and coordinate a national campaign for mandatory reselection and other important democratic demands. Momentum clearly cannot fill that role.

Why Israel is a racist state

Any colonial-settler project must involve systematic discrimination against the indigenous population. Moshé Machover calls for the deZionisation of Israel

That Israel is a racsist state is a well-established fact. On July On July 19 2018, it enacted a quasi-constitutional nationality bill – ‘Basic law: Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people’ – which has been widely condemned as institutionalising discrimination against Israel’s non-Jewish citizens. As many have observed, this law merely codifies and formalises a reality that long predates it.1)Thus, for example, Bernie Sanders remarked in passing that “the recent ‘nation state law’ … essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens”. (‘A new authoritarian axis demands an international progressive front’, The Guardian, 13 September 13 2018). Within its pre-1967 borders, Israel is an illiberal semi-democracy. It defines itself as “Jewish and democratic”, but, as its critics point out, it is “democratic for Jews, Jewish for others”. In the territories ruled by it since 1967, Israel is a military tyranny, applying one system of laws and regulations to Jewish settlers and an entirely separate one to the indigenous Palestinian Arabs.

The ways in which Israel exercises racist discrimination are too numerous to list here. Adalah, the Legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, lists over 65 Israeli laws that discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens in Israel and/or Palestinian residents of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). In addition to these laws there are countless unofficial bureaucratic practices and regulations, by which Israeli racist discrimination operates in everyday life.

The conclusion cannot be denied: the state of Israel is structurally racist, an apartheid state according to the official UN definition of this term.

Shocking comparison

In Israeli public discourse, racist speech is extremely common even at the highest echelon of politics. Some of this high-level racist discourse is almost casual, such as Benjamin Netanyahu’s infamous “Arabs voting in droves” video 2)“The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/binyamin-netanyahu-israel-arab-election on election day, March 17 2015; or the “we are not Arab lovers” declaration of Isaac Herzog, leader of Israel’s Labor Party. 3)‘We are not Arab lovers – Israeli Labor’s bankrupt efforts to stave off decline’, Middle East Eye, 25 April 2016, https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-israels-main-opposition-party-has-problem-countrys-palestinian-citizens-1878921672  At the most obscene end of the range there are statements by senior politicians containing barely concealed calls for ethnic cleansing.

Some of the harshest condemnation of Israel’s racism is voiced by two Israeli academics, who, as recognised experts on the history of fascism and Nazism, speak with considerable authority.

Professor Zeev Sternhell is emeritus head of the department of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s leading experts on fascism. In an article published earlier this year, he referred to statements made by two senior Israeli politicians, members of the ruling coalition, Bezalel Smotrich (deputy speaker of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament) and Miki Zohar (chair of one of the Knesset’s most important committees). These statements, Sternhell writes4)‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’, Ha’aretz January 19 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israel-growing-fascism-and-a-racism-akin-to-early-nazism-1.5746488?=&ts=_1537002401268, “should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism, but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.”

This shocking comparison with Nazism is endorsed by Daniel Blatman, professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose book The death marches: the final phase of Nazi genocide won him in 2011 the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research. In an article published last year he commented: “deputy speaker Bezalel Smotrich’s admiration for the biblical genocidaire, Joshua bin Nun, leads him to adopt values that resemble those of the German SS.” 5)‘The Israeli Lawmaker Heralding Genocide Against Palestinians’, Ha’aretz May 23 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-mk-heralding-genocide-against-palestinians-1.5475561. The biblical reference is to the book of Joshua, which contains a mythical account of the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the land of Canaan (Palestine) by the Israelites. The account is of course purely fictitious, but is taken as inspiration and virtual blueprint by the likes of Smotrich

Blatman returned to this topic in a more recent article:

Deputy Knesset speaker MK Bezalel Smotrich … presented his phased plan, according to which the Palestinians in the occupied territories (and possibly Israeli citizens, too) would become, in the best case, subjects without rights with a status that reminds us of German Jews after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. To the extent that they do not agree to the plan, they will simply be cleansed from here. If they refuse to leave, they will be uprooted violently, which would lead to genocide.

Another elected official from the ruling coalition, Likud’s Miki Zohar, did not hesitate to state that the Arabs have a problem that has no solution – they are not Jews and therefore their fate in this land cannot be the same as that of the Jews .…  Prof Zeev Sternhell wrote in this paper earlier this month that this racism is “akin to Nazism in its early stages.” I think it is Nazism in every way and fashion, even if it comes from the school of the victims of historical Nazism.

He concludes that “if a racism survey were held in western countries like the one on anti-Semitism, Israel would be near the top of the list.” 6)‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day: An Israeli Hypocrisy’, Ha’aretz January 28 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-international-holocaust-remembrance-day-an-israeli-hypocrisy-1.5768945

Role of racism

Exposing Israel’s racism is all too easy. Mere denunciation, without explanation of its underlying context, may actually be misleading if not counterproductive; it may appear as singling Israel out for some peculiar and exceptional moral defect of its leaders or, worse, of its Jewish majority. In fact, racist structures and attitudes, wherever they occur, are part of the legal and ideological superstructure and cannot properly be understood in isolation from their material base.

In the case of Israel, that material base is the Zionist colonisation of Palestine – a process of which Israel is both product and instrument. That the Zionist project is all about the colonisation of Palestine by Jews is, once again, an indisputable fact. It is how political Zionism described itself right from the start. Thus, the second Zionist Congress (1898) adopted the following resolution (supplementing the Basel programme adopted at the first Congress a year earlier):

This Congress, in approval of the colonisation already inaugurated in Palestine, and being desirous of fostering further efforts in that direction, hereby declares, that:

For the proper settlement of Palestine, this Congress considers it is necessary to obtain the requisite permission from the Turkish government, and to carry out such settlement according to the plan, and under the direction of a committee, selected by this Congress ….

This committee to be appointed to superintend and direct all matters of colonisation; it shall consist of ten members, and have its seat in London. 7)www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2612-basel-program

The Congress also resolved to establish a bank to finance the activities of the Zionist movement. The bank was duly incorporated in London in 1899; its name was the Jewish Colonial Trust.8)www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-colonial-trust Well into the 20th century, Zionists continued to describe their project unabashedly, in a perfectly matter-of-fact way, as one of colonisation. Later in the 20th century this usage became a public relations liability, and the term was replaced by various euphemisms. But the practice of colonisation of Palestinian land has continued unabated and is going ahead at full steam to this day.

This context makes Israel’s racism quite ‘natural’, in the sense of conforming to a general law. Every colonisation of an already inhabited territory is accompanied by racism. This is the case whether or not the colonisers arrive with preconceivedracist ideas. Colonisation invariably meets resistance by the indigenous people. This was clearly understood, for example, by Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880–1940), the founder of the Zionist current that has been politically dominant in Israel for the last 41 years. In his seminal article ‘The iron wall’ (1923) he wrote:

Every native population in the world resists colonists as long as it has the slightest hope of being able to rid itself of the danger of being colonised. That is what the Arabs in Palestine are doing, and what they will persist in doing as long as there remains a solitary spark of hope that they will be able to prevent the transformation of ‘Palestine’ into the ‘Land of Israel’ .…

Colonisation can have only one aim, and Palestine Arabs cannot accept this aim. It lies in the very nature of things, and in this particular regard nature cannot be changed.

Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power [ie, Britain – MM] that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach. 9)‘The iron wall’ (O Zheleznoi stene), published November 4 1923 in the Russian-language journal Rassvyet (Dawn); English translation https://tinyurl.com/m8dp3le

In their conflict with the ‘natives’, the settlers tend to develop a racist ideology as self-justification.

We can say more. Racism in general comes in many different variants, and colonisers’ racism takes different forms, depending on the type of colonisation. In colonisation based primarily on exploiting the labour-power of the indigenous people, the latter are usually depicted by the colonisers as inferior creatures deserving no better fate than working for their conquerors.

But in colonisation based on excluding and displacing the ‘natives’ rather than incorporating them into the colonial economy as workers, they are usually depicted as dangerous wild and murderous people who ought to be ethnically cleansed. Zionist colonisation belongs to this category. In this respect, it is not unlike the colonisation of what became the United States, except that the Zionist organisation insisted explicitly and deliberately on denying employment to non-Jews. 10)See the 1929 constitution of the Jewish Agency, https://tinyurl.com/ycq3nqpo

In the US Declaration of Independence, the freedom-loving founding fathers – only some of whom were slave owners – complain that the king of Great Britain “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” In today’s terminology they would no doubt be described as ‘terrorists’. The Palestinian Arabs are Israel’s “merciless Indian savages”.

When viewed against the background of the history of this type of colonisation, Israeli racist ideology and practices are par for the course. The annals of colonisation certainly have grimmer chapters, such as the total extermination of the people of Tasmania, to mention an extreme example. Zionist colonisation is, however, exceptional in being anachronistic: it continues in the 21st century the kind of thing – settler colonialism – that elsewhere ended in the 19th.

To conclude: apart from its anachronism, there is little that is exceptional about Israel’s racism. It is rooted in its nature as a settler state. Uprooting colonialist racism requires a change of regime, decolonisation – which in the case of Israel means de-Zionisation. 11)See my article ‘The decolonisation of Palestine’, Weekly Worker June 23 2016, https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1112/the-decolonisation-of-palestine/

 

 

References

References
1 Thus, for example, Bernie Sanders remarked in passing that “the recent ‘nation state law’ … essentially codifies the second-class status of Israel’s non-Jewish citizens”. (‘A new authoritarian axis demands an international progressive front’, The Guardian, 13 September 13 2018).
2 “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves. Left-wing NGOs are bringing them in buses.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/binyamin-netanyahu-israel-arab-election
3 ‘We are not Arab lovers – Israeli Labor’s bankrupt efforts to stave off decline’, Middle East Eye, 25 April 2016, https://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/when-israels-main-opposition-party-has-problem-countrys-palestinian-citizens-1878921672
4 ‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’, Ha’aretz January 19 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-in-israel-growing-fascism-and-a-racism-akin-to-early-nazism-1.5746488?=&ts=_1537002401268
5 ‘The Israeli Lawmaker Heralding Genocide Against Palestinians’, Ha’aretz May 23 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-israeli-mk-heralding-genocide-against-palestinians-1.5475561. The biblical reference is to the book of Joshua, which contains a mythical account of the conquest and ethnic cleansing of the land of Canaan (Palestine) by the Israelites. The account is of course purely fictitious, but is taken as inspiration and virtual blueprint by the likes of Smotrich
6 ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day: An Israeli Hypocrisy’, Ha’aretz January 28 2018, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-international-holocaust-remembrance-day-an-israeli-hypocrisy-1.5768945
7 www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/2612-basel-program
8 www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-colonial-trust
9 ‘The iron wall’ (O Zheleznoi stene), published November 4 1923 in the Russian-language journal Rassvyet (Dawn); English translation https://tinyurl.com/m8dp3le
10 See the 1929 constitution of the Jewish Agency, https://tinyurl.com/ycq3nqpo
11 See my article ‘The decolonisation of Palestine’, Weekly Worker June 23 2016, https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1112/the-decolonisation-of-palestine/

Solidarity with Moshé Machover! The Labour movement speaks out

The expulsion of long-standing Israeli socialist Moshé Machover from the Labour Party (expulsion letter here) has caused shockwaves throughout the labour movement. We feature motions and statements in support of Moshé and against the ongoing witch hunt by the right in the party. 

On October 5, Moshe received a second explusion letter, which states that “These allegations [of anti-Semitism] are not subject to an investigation as you are not currently a member of the Labour Party.” They will probably be kept on file, should his expulsion based on his “clear support” for LPM be overturned. This is arbitrary, to say the least. This draft motion (in Word or PDF), taking both letters into account, is currently being discussed in a few branches and CLPs. Feel free to use and amend.

This open letter has been started by ‘Free Speech on Israel’ and has already been signed by more than 1,200 Labour Party member – add your name asap!

Labour Party branches and CLPs

Other organisations and individuals


Sheffield Hallam CLP

Motion overwhelmingly carried at Hallam CLP meeting, October 27 2017

Reinstate Moshe Machover

On Tuesday October 3, Professor Emeritus Dr. Moshe Machover was expelled from the Labour Party, based on allegations that he denies. Professor Machover is an Israeli Jew, the distinguished co-founder of the socialist organisation Matzpen, which from the early 1960s to the 1980s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

This CLP notes:

  1. The first expulsion letter from the head of disputes, Sam Matthews, on October 3, focuses on Professor Machover’s article ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal Anti-Semitism’, which is described as “apparentlyantisemitic” and that “it appears to meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism which has just been adopted by the Labour Party.”
  2. The letter of expulsion does not quote the definition but instead says: “Antisemitism of any form – whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people – is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in the Labour Party. Language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive falls short of the standards expected of us as party members and has no place in the party.” It appears to be referencing the parts of the IHRA definition that were not adopted by the Labour Party.
  3. The article in question is a scholarly criticism of Zionism as a political ideology.
  4. Professor Machover is accused “of involvement and support for both Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain (through your participation in CPGB events and regular contributions to the CPGB’s newspaper)”.
  5. Prof Machover has denied all allegations, but has not been given the opportunity to challenge them.
  6. That after many Labour Party members, branches and organisations have sent in protest statements, Professor Machover was sent a second expulsion letter on October 6, which states he has only been expelled for his “clear support” for LPM and CPGB. The allegations of anti-Semitism “are not subject to an investigation as you are not currently a member of the Labour Party.”

This CLP further notes:

  1. The Chakrabarti Report found the Labour Party’s “complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including that of Professor Machover.
  2. This accusation of anti-Semitism will be held on file in the event that after 5 years Professor Machover was to reapply for membership.

This CLP believes:

  1. This action in expelling Professor Machover is arbitrary, lacking in basic justice and is bringing the Labour Party into disrepute.

This CLP agrees:

  1. To call for professor Machover’s expulsion to be rescinded and for his immediate reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party.
  2. To reject any McCarthyite-style move to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications. Jeremy Corbyn had his own column in the Morning Star for many years.
  3. To call on the NEC to investigate the procedures followed to ensure that principles of natural justice are upheld.

This CLP further agrees:

  1. To submit this this to the next higher unit of the Labour Party (e.g. Branch to CLP, CLP to DLP).
  2. To send the motion as passed to the following:

Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes

Chair of the NCC

Chair of the NEC

Party General Secretary

The Leader’s Office

Shami Chakrabarti


Hackney South and Shoreditch CLP

The Hackney South and Shoreditch Constituency Labour Party calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him; and calls for an urgent review of Party disciplinary procedures so that such injustice is not repeated.

 Motion to be sent to Sam Matthews
cc Party General Secretary Iain McNicol; the leader’s office; NEC members

The voting was 54 in favour, 1 against, and 7 abstentions.


Hexham CLP

Emergency Motion – concerning the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover

Background information
Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, has been summarily expelled from the Party.

Prof Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine. He has been found guilty – by the Head of Disputes Sam Mathews, with no due process whatsoever – “of involvement and support for both Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain (through your participation in CPGB events and regular contributions to the CPGB’s newspaper).” Prof. Machover has never been a member of either organisation.

Sam Matthews also accused Prof Machover of writing an “apparently anti-semitic article”. The article in question is a scholarly criticism of Zionism as a political ideology. Prof. Machover denies the accusations, but he has been given no hearing to challenge the allegations and his expulsion.

This CLP notes that:
The Chakrabarti Report found the Labour Party’s complaints and disciplinary procedures “… lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. It set out basic principles that the Party should follow in disciplinary cases in future.

This CLP believes that the principles recommended in the Chakrabarti Report must be applied in all disciplinary cases. They have clearly not been applied in the case of Moshe Machover. This expulsion is a worrying precedent in a party which is working to be more democratic, and accountable and to adopt disciplinary procedures based on natural justice.

This CLP therefore calls for the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.


Hampstead & Kilburn CLP 

18 Oct 2017: passed overwhelmingly; 58 for, none against and 8 abstentions.
The motion to be sent to the leader of the Labour Party, the National Executive Committee (individually), the National Constitutional Committee (individually), the Head of Disputes and Professor Machover.
This CLP is outraged that:
  • Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover has been expelled from the Party.  Professor Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine;
  • the Head of Disputes has accused Prof Machover of writing an “apparently antisemitic article” according to the new IHRA definition, and further accused him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party”.
This CLP notes that:
  •  The Chakrabarti Inquiry found that the party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and called for “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.
  • The IHRA definition is being monitored by Camden Council to ensure that it is not used to stifle free expression and criticism of Israeli policies.
  •  Prof Machover who denies the accusations, has not been given the opportunity to challenge neither the accusation of antisemitism nor his alleged support for another party or organisation.
  • This expulsion is a frightening precedent in a party which is working to be more democratic and called for, in the words of its leader Jeremy Corbyn, ‘support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and the illegal settlement expansion’.
This CLP therefore calls for:
  •  Prof Machover’s expulsion to be immediately rescinded; the letter informing him of his expulsion to be immediately rescinded; and for any allegations against him to be investigated in accordance with due process to take place so that he is given the opportunity to challenge the claims of the Head of Disputes.
  • And further calls on the Labour party to protect the right of members to contribute to the political debate across numerous platforms, without expressing support for other political parties or views contrary to the values of the Labour party.

Stoke Newington Labour Party branch

Expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover

This branch notes:

  • Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, was expelled for writing an article entitled “Anti Zionism does not equal anti- Semitism” in the magazine Labour Party Marxist. Prof. Machover is Israeli and Jewish by origin, a long-time socialist and campaigner for Palestinian rights, and a highly respected academic.
  • The initial expulsion letter on 3 October described his article as “apparently antisemitic” and that it “appears to meet” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism adopted by the Labour Party. However, the letter appears to reference only the parts of the IHRA definition that were not adopted by the Labour Party.
  • The expulsion was also justified through guilt by association, on the grounds that Labour Party Marxist is a front publication for another political organization. Many other Labour Party members and MPs have written for comparable journals without sanction.
  • Prof. Machover was expelled, not suspended, without the right to defend himself at the disputes meeting, a violation of due process and democratic procedure.
  • After many Labour Party members and branches protested against his expulsion, Prof. Machover received a second expulsion letter on 6 October, which stated that he was only expelled for his “clear support” for Labour Party Marxist and the Communist Party of Great Britain. It said that the alleged (ie not proven) antisemitism was “not subject to an investigation as you are not currently a member of the Labour Party.”
  • Prof. Machover regards the allegation of antisemitism as malicious and totally unfounded. He denies that he is a member of either of the Marxist organisations cited in the accusations against him. His full response can be found here: http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/wp- content/uploads/2017/10/MMresponseFin.pdf
  • The expulsion of Prof. Machover was rescinded in late October following growing protests against it in the Labour Party.

    This branch calls for:

  • Moshe Machover to receive a full and public apology for his summary expulsion, for tarnishing his reputation and for abusing his rights.
  • An urgent review of Party disciplinary procedures to ensure that such an injustice is not repeated.

    This motion should be sent to:
    Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes
    Chair of the NCC
    Chair of the NEC
    Party General Secretary
    The Leader’s Office
    Shami Chakrabarti
    Plus the Chair and Secretary of all other branches of this CLP


Otley & Yeadon branch / Leeds North West CLP

Motion passed nem con November 1 2017

This Otley & Yeadon branch / Leeds North West CLP welcomes the reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party of Professor Moshé Machover.

This Otley & Yeadon branch / Leeds North West CLP notes that:
• The Chakrabarti inquiry found that the party’s “… complaints and disciplinary procedures … lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise…” and called for “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”

• Professor Machover, who denies the accusations, has still not been given the opportunity to challenge the accusation of anti-Semitism, or his alleged support for another party or organisation.

It demands:
• That all the damaging insinuations of anti-Semitism must be publicly retracted.

• A full apology, as requested by Moshé Machover, must be published.

• That the whole system that allowed this travesty of justice, and which has brought the Party into disrepute, must be fully investigated by the NEC, and reformed, and those who instigated this damaging course of action held to account.

• That the Party establishes a clear and transparent disciplinary procedure based upon Trade Union best practice on discipline of members. Natural justice : not procedural unfairness based upon prejudice.

• That all the recent expulsions and suspensions be reviewed and must be revoked where there is no clear evidence of breach of rule.

This Branch/CLP further agrees:
To submit this motion to the next higher unit of the Labour Party (e.g. Branch to CLP).
To send the motion as passed to the following:
Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes
Chair of the NCC
Chair of the NEC
Party General Secretary
The Leader’s Office
Shami Chakrabarti
Plus the Chair and Secretary of all other branches of this CLP


 

Broomhill and Sharrow Labour Party branch (Sheffield Central CLP)

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Motion to be sent to Sam Matthews – legal_queries@labour.org.uk
cc Party General Secretary Iain McNichol – iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk
The leader’s office – petersenn@parliament.uk
+ chair and secretary of Central, Manor Castle, Nether Edge, and Walkley branches

Supporting argument

As outlined in a statement from the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged.

The article by Moshe that has been cited is a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas.

As the JSG further notes, the action against Professor Machover represents a McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

According to the Chakrabarti Report, the Labour Party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including Moshe Machover’s is a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas.

As the JSG further notes, the action against Professor Machover represents a McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

According to the Chakrabarti Report, the Labour Party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including Moshe Machover’s.


 

Larkswood & Valley Labour Party Branch (Chingford and Woodford Green CLP)

 This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.
Motion to be sent to Sam Matthews – legal_queries@labour.org.uk
 cc Party General Secretary Iain McNichol – iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk
    The leader’s office – petersenn@parliament.uk
  chair and secretary of Larkswood & Valley Branch and of the CLP.
Supporting argument
 
As outlined in a statement from the Jewish Socialists’ GroupMoshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain.
The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged
The article by Moshe Machover, that has been cited, is a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas.
As the JSG further notes, the action against Professor Machover represents a McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.
According to the Chakrabarti Report, the Labour Party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including Moshe Machover’s. 
 

Evidence presented in the expulsion letter sent to Prof Machover by Sam Matthews appears in the form of articles written for the CPGB paper Weekly Worker and a report of a discussion in which Prof. Machover participated.  


South West Central branch of Oxford East constituency Labour Party:

EMERGENCY RESOLUTION Moshe Machover

This branch notes that:

The 2016 Chakrabarti Report found the Labour Party’s “complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.

The report’s recommendations have been adopted by the NEC.
Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases

This branch therefore calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover immediately, so that due process can take place and he will have the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Emeritus Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, was expelled from the Labour Party on 3 October. Professor Machover, 81, is a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and and campaigner for social justice in Israel/Palestine, and a distinguished academic in the fields of Logic, Philosophy and Mathematics.

He was declared by the Labour Party Head of Disputes to have excluded himself from the party by “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party.”

Professor Machover denies that he is or ever has been a member of either of the organisations that have been cited [the ‘Communist Party of Great Britain’ and a group called ‘Labour Party Marxists’].

He has on occasion written for CPGB publications and spoken at their events, as have other non-members. The same principle could be used to expel prominent party members and trade unionists who have written for the Morning Star, in effect the paper of the Communist Party of Britain; or appeared on platforms and suppported events organised by Unite Against Fascism which was launched by the SWP.

His only right of appeal is to submit evidence to the same official who expelled him. He should instead be entitled to be treated according to the principles accepted by the NEC and still not brought into force.

We further call on the Labour party to protect the right of members to contribute to the political debate across numerous platforms, without expressing support for other political parties or views contrary to the values of the Labour party.


Mapesbury Branch (Brent Central CLP)

Motion passed unanimously 11th October

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.


 

St Michael’s Branch Labour Party

Last night, St Michael’s Branch Labour Party, the largest branch in Liverpool Riverside Constituency Labour Party, itself the second largest CLP in the country by membership, voted unanimously to call for the re-instatement of Prof Moshe Machover, the noted mathematician and anti-Zionist Israeli socialist.
The conclusion calls for “Prof. Machover’s immediate reinstatement; an apology for such tarnishing of his reputation; and an urgent review of Party disciplinary procedures so that such injustices are not repeated.”

Sherwood branch (Nottingham East CLP)

Emergency Motion for Sherwood Branch LP , passed unanimously on 10th October, to be forwarded as a motion to Nottingham East CLP

Sherwood Branch Labour Party condemns the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, before any hearing of evidence against him, from the Labour Party.

He has been accused of ‘membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims of the Labour Party’, based on him having articles published and participating in meetings.

This branch notes the expulsion has been justified though a process of guilt by association and was sparked by a totally unfounded allegation that Professor Machover, who is Israeli and Jewish by origin, wrote an antisemitic article. This allegation is based highly selective quoting from a long and closely argued article and by an extreme interpretation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association working definition of antisemitism that “pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people” is antisemitic.

This branch therefore demands from the Party: his immediate reinstatement; an apology for such tarnishing of his reputation; and an urgent review of Party disciplinary procedures so such an injustice is not repeated.

And to support Mark Wadsworth and all other members suspended over similar charges.


Wanstead  Branch (Leyton and Wanstead CLP)

motion on the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, passed unanimously, 9th October 2017

The Wanstead Branch of the Labour Party condemns the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, before any hearing of evidence against him, from the Labour Party.

This original letter of expulsion addressed two things. The branch notes that the expulsion has been justified through a process of guilt by association and was sparked by a totally unfounded allegation that Professor Machover, who is Israeli and Jewish by origin, wrote an antisemitic article. This allegation is based on highly selective quoting from a long and closely argued article and by an extreme interpretation of the International Holocaust Remembrance Association working definition of antisemitism that “pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people” is antisemtic.

The second issue cited in Professor Machover’s expulsion letter and in the updated letter of expulsion upon which his expulsion was based relates to his membership in, or support of, the Communist Party of Great Britain and Labour Party Marxist. Professor Machover denies this.

The fact that Professor Machover was unable to defend himself at the disputes meeting is a violation of due process and democratic procedure.

The branch therefore demands from the Party that the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Professor Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

We also ask that an urgent review of Party disciplinary procedures is undertaken so that such an injustice is not repeated.

The motion should be sent to:

Chair of the Labour Party
Party General Secretary (iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk)
Leader’s Office (petersenn@parliament.uk)
Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes  (legal_queries@labour.org.uk


Queen’s Park branch of the Labour Party (part of Hampstead & Kilburn CLP), which is the branch that comrade Machover used to belong to

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes to do the following:

1) Rescind immediately the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover;
2) Rescind immediately the letter informing Professor Machover of his expulsion.
These 2 actions should be taken because:
First, the allegations against Mr. Machover are unsubstantiated; and, second, the process through which the decision to expel him was taken seems to have him guilty until proved innocent, rather than presumed innocent until proved guilty. The letter to Professor Machover and the apparent lack of process seem both unworthy of the Labour Party and unjust.
We further call on the Labour party to protect the right of members to contribute to the political debate across numerous platforms, without expressing support for other political parties or views contrary to the values of the Labour party.

 

The Cam, Dursley and Berkeley branch of Stroud CLP notes that:

Emeritus Professor, Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, was expelled from the Labour Party on 3 October.Professor Machover, 81, is a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and and campaigner for social justice in Israel/Palestine, and a distinguished academic in the fields of Logic, Philosophy and Mathematics.

He is accused by the Labour Party Head of Disputes of writing an “apparently antisemitic article” and of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party.”

Professor Machover regards the allegation about the article as malicious and totally unfounded. He denies that he is a member of either of the organisations that have been cited.

The 2016 Chakrabarti Report found the Labour Party’s “complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. The report’s recommendations have been adopted by the NEC. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases.

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes to rescind the expulsion of Professor Machover immediately, so that due process can take place and he will have the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him. 

Ecclesall Labour Party branch, Sheffield

Reinstate Moshe Machover

On Tuesday October 3, Professor Emeritus Dr. Moshe Machover was expelled from the Labour Party, based on allegations that he denies. Professor Machover is an Israeli Jew, the distinguished co-founder of the socialist organisation Matzpen, which from the early 1960s to the 1980s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

This Branch/CLP notes:

  1. The first expulsion letter from the head of disputes, Sam Matthews, on October 3, focuses on Professor Machover’s article ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal Anti-Semitism’, which is described as “apparentlyantisemitic” and that “it appears to meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism which has just been adopted by the Labour Party.”
  1. The letter of expulsion does not quote the definition but instead says: “Antisemitism of any form – whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people – is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in the Labour Party. Language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive falls short of the standards expected of us as party members and has no place in the party.” It appears to be referencing the parts of the IHRA definition that were notadopted by the Labour Party.
  1. The article in question is a scholarly criticism of Zionism as a political ideology.
  1. Professor Machover is accused “of involvement and support for both Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain (through your participation in CPGB events and regular contributions to the CPGB’s newspaper)”.
  1. Prof Machover has denied all allegations, but has not been given the opportunity to challenge them.
  1. That after many Labour Party members, branches and organisations have sent in protest statements, Professor Machover was sent a second expulsion letter on October 6, which states he has only been expelled for his “clear support”for LPM and CPGB. The allegations of anti-Semitism “are not subject to an investigation as you are not currently a member of the Labour Party.”

This Branch/CLP further notes:

  1. The Chakrabarti Report found the Labour Party’s “complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including that of Professor Machover.
  1. This accusation of anti-Semitism will be held on file in the event that after 5 years Professor Machover was to reapply for membership.

This Branch/CLP believes:

This action in expelling Professor Machover is arbitrary, lacking in basic justice and is bringing the Labour Party into disrepute.

This Branch/CLP agrees:

  1. To call for his expulsion to be rescinded and for his immediate reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party.
  1. To reject any McCarthyite-style move to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications. Jeremy Corbyn had his own column in the Morning Star for many years.
  1. To call on the NEC to investigate the procedures followed to ensure that principles of natural justice are upheld.

This Branch/CLP further agrees:

  1. To submit this this to the next higher unit of the Labour Party (e.g. Branch to CLP, CLP to DLP).
  1. To send the motion as passed to the following:

Sam Matthews, Head of Disputes
Chair of the NCC
Chair of the NEC
Party General Secretary
The Leader’s Office
Shami Chakrabarti
Plus the Chair and Secretary of all other branches of this CLP


The St Georges branch of Islington North CLP notes that:

Emeritus Professor, Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, was expelled from the Labour Party on 3 October. Professor Machover, 81, is a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and and campaigner for social justice in Israel/Palestine, and a distinguished academic in the fields of Logic, Philosophy and Mathematics.

He is accused by the Labour Party Head of Disputes of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party.”

Professor Machover regards the allegation as malicious and totally unfounded. He denies that he is a member of either of the organisations that have been cited.

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes to rescind the expulsion of Professor Machover immediately, so that due process can take place and he will have the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Haggerston and Hoxton West branches of Hackney South and Shoreditch CLP on Thursday October 5 2017

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Motion to be sent to Sam Matthews – legal_queries@labour.org.uk

cc Party General Secretary Iain McNichol – iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk
The leader’s office – petersenn@parliament.uk
Hackney South and Shoreditch CLP Executive for consideration at October GC meeting

Supporting argument

As outlined in a statement from the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged.

The article by Moshe Machover, that has been cited, is a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas.

As the JSG further notes, the action against Professor Machover represents a McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

According to the Chakrabarti Report, the Labour Party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including Moshe Machover’s.


 

East Dulwich Labour Party branch

On Thursday 5th October 2017 East Dulwich branch in Dulwich and West Norwood CLP passed the following resolution condemning the expulsion of Moshe Machover by 20 to 0 with one abstention.
This branch/CLP calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Herne Hill Labour Party branch

Emergency Motion. Herne Hill Labour Party Branch,  October 5 2017
Passed nem con

This Branch notes the NEC policy that auto-exclusions ceased following the party’s adoption of the recommendations of the Chkrabarti Report, that the Party’s policy is now to follow due process, based on natural justice, in relation to disciplinary procedures.

The proper application of this policy is pertinent to a very recent case where a long standing member of Hampstead and Kilburn Branch, MM, has been expelled without due process, having not been informed in advance of the action, not having been suspended pending investigation, and where the grounds for expulsion are not even that he is, or ever has been, a member of a proscribed organisation (he has, in fact, never been a member of the organisations cited).

The grounds are that he has attended their public meetings and has had articles published in their journals. In none of the articles cited as evidence did MM in any way advocate support for these organisations nor advocate opposition in any way whatsoever to the Labour Party.

The Chakrabarti Report, found the Labour Party’s  “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.

The summary expulsion this week of MM is a deeply disturbing repetition of this bad practice and heralds a serious curtailment of free speech within the Party. It sets a frightening precedent and flies in the face of a party which is working to be more democratic and accountable and to adopt procedures based on natural justice.

This Branch therefore calls for the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of MM, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place, and MM can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him in proper hearings.


 

Emergency Resolution Passed by the Bethnal Green Ward

Labour Party, 5 October 2017
Reinstate Moshe Machover
 The Israeli socialist and long-time campaigner for Palestinian rights, Moshe Machover, has been expelled from the Labour Party for writing an article entitled “Anti Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism”.

We note with great concern:

The expulsion letter from the head of disputes, Sam Matthews, describes the article as “apparently antisemitic” and that it “appears to meet” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism which has just been adopted by the Labour Party.

 The letter does not quote the definition but instead says: “Antisemitism in of any form – whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence to jewish people – is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in the Labour Party. Language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive falls short of the standards expected of us as party members and has no place in the party.” It appears to be referencing the parts of the IHRA definition that were not adopted at the conference.

Moshe has been expelled, not suspended, without the right to defend himself, on the grounds that the publication concerned, Labour Party Marxist, is regarded as a front publication for another political organization, even though there are many examples of Labour members and politicians writing for comparable journals.

We believe:

This action is arbitrary, lacking in basic justice and is bringing the Labour Party into disrepute.

Therefore we resolve:

1.         We fully support Moshe Machover and call for his expulsion to be rescinded and for his immediate reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party.

2.         We reject any McCarthyite-style move to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

3.         We call on the NEC to investigate the procedures followed to ensure that principles of natural justice are upheld.


West Branch Hastings and Rye Labour Party

On Tuesday 3rd October, Labour Party member Professor Emeritus Dr. Moshe Machover was summarily expelled from the Labour Party, based on allegations which he denies. Dr. Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the early 1960s to the 1980s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine. Dr Machover has been an activist for decades and is an asset to the Labour Party. It is an act of self-harm to expel such a valuable member.

However, we would be demanding reinstatement for any member, regardless of their political perspective who has been treated like this because we are equally concerned that this action was taken without a clear and transparent process ‘in accordance with the principles of natural justice and proportionality”. These were within the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Review, which seem to have been largely ignored. These included looking at other penalties short of suspension and expulsion .

We demand the immediate reinstatement of Moshe Machover and a public apology. In addition we demand a clear and public assurance that no member of this Party will again be treated in such an appalling manner and that in future, any actions will be taken only following such a clear process, as outlined in the Chakrabarti Report.We are also very concerned at the apparent misuse of the IHRA definition of antisemitism to stifle free expression, including the right to non abusive criticism of the State of Israel as we had outlined in our own Rule change. We insist that the Party firmly commits to uphold the right to non abusive free speech in all its political discourse.

This motion to be sent to:

Chair of the Labour Party
Chair of the NCC
Chair of the NEC
Leader’s Office
Shami Chakrabarti


 

Kilburn Labour Party branch

This Branch/CLP is outraged that:

  • Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover has been expelled from the Party. Prof Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine; 
  • the Head of Disputes has accused Prof Machover of writing an “apparently antisemitic article” according to the new IHRA definition, and further accused him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party” on the basis of “participation in CPGB events and regular contributions to the CPGB’s newspaper, the Weekly Worker”.

This Branch/CLP notes that:

  • The Chakrabarti Inquiry found that the party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and called for “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.
  • The IHRA definition is being monitored by Camden Council to ensure that it is not used to stifle free expression and criticism of Israeli policies.
  • Prof Machover who denies the accusations, has not been given the opportunity to challenge either the accusation of antisemitism nor his alleged support for another party or organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party.
  • This expulsion is a frightening precedent in a party which is working to be more democratic and called for, in the words of its leader Jeremy Corbyn, ‘support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and the illegal settlement expansion’.

This Branch/CLP therefore calls for:

  • Prof Machover’s expulsion to be immediately rescinded and for due process to take place so Prof Machover is given the opportunity to challenge the claims of the Head of Disputes.

 


Holme Valley North Labour Party branch

Holme Valley North Labour Party calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes to immediately rescind Professor Moshe Machover’s expulsion, and for any allegations against him to be investigated in accordance with due process and natural justice, so that he is given the opportunity to challenge those allegations made against him.


Highams Park Labour Party Branch 

Motion passed on October 4 by Highams Park Labour Party Branch (Chingford and Woodford Green CLP)

This branch calls upon the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes immediately to rescind the expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, so that due process can take place and Prof. Machover can be given the opportunity to challenge the allegations made against him.

Motion to be sent to Sam Matthews – legal_queries@labour.org.uk

cc Party General Secretary Iain McNichol – iain_mcnicol@labour.org.uk

The leader’s office – petersenn@parliament.uk

+ chair and secretary of the three other C&WG branches and of the CLP.

Supporting argument

As outlined in a statement from the Jewish Socialists’ Group, Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain.

The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged.

The article by Moshe Machover, that has been cited, is a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas.

As the JSG further notes, the action against Professor Machover represents a McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

According to the Chakrabarti Report, the Labour Party’s “. . . complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise . . .” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including Moshe Machover’s.


West Hampstead and Fortune Green Labour Party branch

The following resolution was adopted nem con on 4 October 2017 by the West Hampstead and Fortune Green branch of the Labour Party, which is part of the Hampstead and Kilburn Constituency LP

This West Hampstead and Fortune Green branch / Hampstead and Kilburn CLP is outraged that:

  • Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover has been expelled from the Party. Professor Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine.
  • The Head of Disputes has accused Professor Machover of writing an “apparently anti-Semiitic article” according to the new IHRA definition, and further accused him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party.”

This West Hampstead and Fortune Green branch / Hampstead and Kilburn CLP notes that:

  • The Chakrabarti inequiry found that the party’s “… complaints and disciplinary procedures … lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise…” and called for “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”
  • The IHRA definition is being monitored by Camden Council to ensure that it is not used to stifle free expression and criticism of Israeli policies.
  • Professor Machover who denies the accusations, has not been given the opportunity to challenge either the accusation of anti-Semitism nor his alleged support for another party or organisation.
  • This expulsion is a frightening precedent in a party which is working to be more democratic and called for, in the words of its leader Jeremy Corbyn, ‘support to end the oppression of the Palestinian people, the 50-year occupation and the illegal settlement expansion’.

This West Hampstead and Fortune Green branch / Hampstead and Kilburn CLP therefore calls for:

  • Professor Machover’s expulsion to be immediately rescinded and for any allegations against him to be investigated in accordance with due process so that he is given the opportunity to challenge the claims of the Head of Disputes

Momentum Sheffield

At its October 25 general meeting, Momentum Sheffield unanimously agreed the following resolution:

Momentum Sheffield condemns the expulsion of Moshe Machover from the Labour Party and calls for his immediate reinstatement. We oppose all McCarthyite auto-exclusions on political grounds, which have chiefly been used to get rid of Corbyn supporters from the Labour Party.


 

Swansea Bay Momentum

The meeting on October 17 unanimously agreed the following motion.

  1. THIS MEETING NOTES THAT:

1:1 On Tuesday October 3, Professor Emeritus Dr. Moshe Machover was expelled from the Labour Party, based on allegations that he denies. Professor Machover is an Israeli Jew, the distinguished co-founder of the socialist organisation Matzpen that, from the early 1960s to the 1980s, brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine.

1:2 This expulsion was initially based on two charges.

1:3 Professor Machover was also accused “of involvement and support for both Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain (through participation in CPGB events and regular contributions of the CPGB’s newspaper the Weekly Worker).” Comrades Machover denies membership of both groups.

  1. THIS MEETING FURTHER NOTES:

2:1 The letter of expulsion does not quote the IHRA definition but instead states: “Anti- Semitism of any form – whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people – is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in the Labour Party. Language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive falls short of the standards expected of us as party members and has no place in the party.” This appears to be referencing the parts of the IHRA definition that were not actually adopted by the Labour Party.

2:2 Many Labour Party members, branches and organisations have sent protest statements. The response of the Compliance Unit was to send Professor Machover a second expulsion letter (October 6). This now stated he had only been expelled for his “clear support” for LPM and the CPGB. The letter stated that the allegations of anti-Semitism “are not subject to an investigation as you are not currently a member of the Labour Party.” (His membership having been summarily ended in part because he was accused of anti- Semitism.)

2:3 The content of the Chakrabarti Report that states that the Labour Party’s “complaints and disciplinary procedures . . . lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and “failed to observe the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”. Members deserve to see these principles applied in all disciplinary cases, including that of Professor Machover.

  1. THIS MEETING:

1:3 That comrade Machover wrote an article entitled ‘Anti Zionism does not equal anti- Semitism’. According to a letter from the Labour Party’s Head of Disputes, Sam Matthews, this article was “apparently anti-Semitic” and “appears to meet” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism which has just been adopted by the Labour Party. The article in question is a scholarly criticism of Zionism as a political ideology.

3:1 Regards the expulsion pf Professor Machover as arbitrary, lacking natural justice and is bringing the Labour Party into disrepute.

3:2 Rejects any McCarthyite-style moves to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” left groups based simply on them contributing articles to their journals or attending/accepting invitations to speak at their meetings. It is common practice for Labour members at all levels of the party to speak at and participate in events of other organisations, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications. Eg, Jeremy Corbyn had his own column in the Morning Star for many years.

3:3 Calls on the NEC to investigate the procedures followed in this case to ensure that principles of natural justice are upheld.

3:4 Demands that Professor Machover’s expulsion is immediately rescinded and he is immediately reinstatement as a member of the LP.

3:5 Agrees to send the motion as passed to the following:

  • Sam Mathews, Head of Disputes
  • Chair of the NCC
  • Chair of the NEC
  • LP General Secretary
  • Shami Chakrabarti
  • Secretaries of Swansea CLPs

Camden Momentum – motion 1

Motion Calling for Reinstatement to the Labour Party of Professor Machover

Passed with only one abstention at MM Camden’s meeting 9 October 2017

Momentum Camden Notes that:

  1. Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover is the first person accused of antisemitism to be expelled following the newly implemented Labour Party rule change, and following the Labour Party’s partial acceptance of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Prof Machover is Jewish and Israeli, the distinguished co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine. His expulsion without any due process was as a result of an accusation which remains anonymous.
  2. The Head of Disputes has accused Prof Machover of writing an “apparently antisemitic article” according to the new IHRA definition, and further accused him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party”. In a second letter the Head of Disputes, under attack for his accusations of racism, denies that antisemitism was involved, saying that it was only Professor Machover’s membership in or support for another party. In professor Machover’s own words, “I am not, and never have been, a member of the organisations cited in the expulsion letter.”

Therefore Momentum Camden:

  • Calls on Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) to demand the immediate reinstatement of Professor Machover’s Labour Party membership and for due process and natural justice to be implemented in accordance with the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Inquiry, affording Professor Machover the opportunity to refute the charges.
  • Calls on Momentum members to pass resolutions in whatever CLPs they belong to, demanding reinstatement and due process for Professor Machover.

Camden Momentum – motion 2

Motion demanding a more democratic consultative process inside Momentum

Passed overwhelmingly by Momentum Camden on 9 October 2017

Momentum Camden Notes that:

  1. Momentum’s National Coordinating Group (NCG) unilaterally decided to support a rule change at the Labour Party conference initiated by the right wing Jewish Labour Movement and modified by the NEC on “Conduct Prejudicial to the Party” with particular reference to protected groups. Like the NEC, the NCG made the decision without consultation with those same protected groups inside Momentum and without consultation with Momentum’s local groups.
  2. Immediately following that newly-implemented rule change actively supported by Momentum, Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover, a Jewish Israeli, was expelled from the Labour Party with the letter of expulsion noting that he had written an “apparently antisemitic article” according to the new IHRA definition, and further accusing him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party”. The source of the accusation of antisemitism remains anonymous. In professor Machover’s own words, “I am not, and never have been, a member of the organisations cited in the expulsion letter.”
  3. Momentum’s NCG was elected by barely a third of the membership of Momentum at the time, and less than one quarter of the present membership. Once elected the NCG chose as their chair a person who has never stood for, nor been elected to, the NCG by the membership of Momentum. He is a member of the NCG based on his appointment by “Left Futures”.
  4. Momentum has been at the forefront of the fight for a more democratic Labour Party that respects and reflects the will of the vast majority of its members.

Therefore Momentum Camden:

  • Calls on the NCG to institute immediately a consultative process with the more than 170 local groups and 30,000 members, and with those sectors named in the Labour Party rule book as facing particular discrimination, before making any more sweeping policy decisions.
  • Calls on Momentum groups to support Momentum Camden’s call for a more democratic, consultative process within our own organisation by making their views known to the NCG.

Merseyside Pensioners Association

The motion below was passed unanimously at a well attended (45+) Merseyside Pensioners Association meeting today, 11 October:

Re: the expulsion of Moshe Machover from the Labour Party

“We, the member of The Merseyside Pensioners Association wish to protest strongly against the expulsion of Professor (Emeritus) Moshe Machover from the Labour Party on the grounds that he allegedly made anti-semitic remarks in an article in a publication of a Marxist group, of which he is not a member. We understand that Moshe is a lifelong Marxist and socialist and, therefore, would reject all forms of racism. We understand that he wrote articles critical of the actions of the Zionist settler-colon state of Israel, of which he is a citizen. We believe that such criticisms cannot be construed as anti-Semitism, which can be properly defined as dislike and/or mistreatment of Jewish people simply because they are Jews.

We believe such treatment of Moshe Machover brings the Labour Party into disrepute. He is a distinguished, world-famous mathematical logician, and has contributed, with an Israeli comrade, to the development of deeper understanding of Marxian economic theory by applying ideas from physics. This has created a new branch of Marxian economics, ‘Econophysics’, which has many followers, especially in Germany and other parts of Europe.  We also believe that he and his Israeli comrade also helped to found the Arab-Jewish socialist party in Israel, called Matzpan.

We, therefore, believe that being a Marxist and writing articles critical of Zionism are no grounds whatsoever to expel anybody from the Labour Party. We therefore demand that comrade Machover is immediately reinstated in the Labour Party and an appropriate apology given to him for his treatment.”


 

Jewish Socialists’ Group statement in support of Dr Moshe Machover

Dr Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party.

Dr Moshe Machover – a lifelong Israeli socialist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist, who has lived in Britain since 1968 – has been expelled from the Labour Party accused of writing “an apparently antisemitic article” and accused of “involvement and support for” two organisations, the Labour Party Marxists and the Communist Party of Great Britain.The accusation regarding the “antisemitic” article references the controversial, flawed definition of antisemitism, which the JSG and many others on the left have challenged: http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/fight-antisemitism-and-defend-free-speech

Moshe Machover has been a friend of the Jewish Socialists’ Group for more than 30 years. He has spoken at JSG meetings, written for Jewish Socialist magazine, and participated in campaigns for social justice with us. We know him as an outstanding and sophisticated thinker and analyst, a fighter for human rights and social justice, and a consistent opponent of all reactionary ideologies and actions.

The JSG is not affiliated to the Labour Party but we have strongly criticised the right wing-led campaign to smear left wing activists as antisemites http://www.jewishsocialist.org.uk/news/item/statement-on-labours-problem-with-antisemitism-from-the-jewish-socialists-g

The Labour Party has a duty to take action against genuine examples of antisemitism and other forms of racism and bigotry. In line with the Chakrabarti Inquiry, however, we:

  • favour education rather than heavy-handed disciplinary measures
  • expect transparent, fair and just process with regard to complaints against members
  • support Shami Chakrabarti’s desire to encourage respectful free speech within the Party.The JSG chooses to support individuals suspended or expelled from the party on a case by case basis.

In this case we fully support Moshe Machover and call for his expulsion to be rescinded and for his immediate reinstatement as a member of the Labour Party.

The JSG recognises the article by Moshe Machover, that has been cited, as a critique of the political ideology of Zionism, not of Jews. Indeed the article exposes antisemitic ideas. The JSG rejects any McCarthyite-style attempt to expel members for alleged “involvement and support for” other left groups on the basis of writing articles and attending and participating in meetings. It is common practice for Labour members of all levels to speak and participate in events of other groups, and have articles published, representing their individual viewpoints, in a range of publications.

Solidarity with Moshe Machover!


 

Brighton and Hove UNISON Local Government Branch

The following resolution was passed unanimously.It will go to UNISON regionally and nationally as well as to Brighton & Hove Trades Council.

Motion on the Expulsion of Moshe Machover from the Labour Party

 

“This branch deplores the decision to expel Emeritus Professor and distinguished mathematician Moshe Machover from the Labour Party for alleged ‘anti-semitism’.

 

Moshe is an Israeli citizen of Jewish heritage who has been a life-long critic of Zionism and of Israel which he has defined as a ‘settler/colon state’.

 

He is a life-long socialist and committed opponent of all forms of racism.

 

We consider this expulsion to be an example of attempts to re-define anti-semitism so as to include all critics of Zionism and of Israel.

 

We call on UNISON to support the demand for Moshe’s expulsion to be rescinded.”

 

We further call for an end to all suspensions and expulsions from the Labour Party on the basis of people’s political views or membership of political groups.

 

No expulsions should take place without an investigation and hearing before the National Constitutional Committee.

 

We call for the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report concerning natural justice and transparency to be implemented immediately.

 

 

Kevin Ovenden: Everyone should stand up for Moshe Machover

The nasty witch-hunters nested in Labour’s national apparatus ought to have bitten off more than they can chew with the outrageous expulsion of Moshe Machover.

Anti-racists, supporters of Palestine and longstanding socialists in Britain will know him mainly through his lifelong socialist commitment and opposition to the apartheid structure of the Israeli state, forged out of his experiences being born and growing up there.He was a founder of Matzpen, the revolutionary internationalist socialist group in Israel.His publications and writings on Israel-Palestine, often with Akiva Orr and Jabra Nicola, remain seminal.

“The Class Nature of Israeli Society” is a must read for anyone trying to understand the Palestinian struggle and zionism from an internationalist and anti-imperialist standpoint – or at all, I would say.

But perhaps less well known on the left is that Professor Machover is a highly distinguished mathematician and logical philosopher.I don’t know the undergraduate curriculum these days, but his primer (with Bell) “A Course in Mathematical Logic” was a set text (excuse the pun) on the Mathematics and Philosophy course in Oxford 30 years ago.

He has made major advances in set theoretic logic. As Professor of Mathematics at the University of London he contributed enormously to the development of the department at King’s College and other campuses.

There is a far wider body of opinion than even the considerable pro-Palestinian sentiment in Britain and its labour movement who will be nothing short of incensed at this expulsion. That his son Daniel is also a well regarded human rights lawyer expands the field further.Mathematicians and logicians are not often the most political of people. But they are usually rather good at distinguishing bogus arguments from truth and sound reasoning.

I am confident that the campaign to overturn this decision will reflect the breadth of opposition to it

.From Aberdeen to Bristol it ought to be taken not just to left political layers, but into every department of mathematics, philosophy and logic. Indeed, beyond Britain.And with a clear message back to the Labour leadership regarding the Blair-era bureaucrats who are disfiguring Labour: The Philistines are upon you. Reason in revolt now thunders.


Free speech on Israel: Article by Mike Cushman

Professor Moshé Machover has been expelled from the Labour Party without a hearing because he spoke on the wrong platform and wrote for the wrong newspaper. What was the Labour bating paper he wrote for and incurred the wrath of Party apparatchiks? Was it the Daily Mail, trailing its history of love-in with fascists, no. Was it one of Rupert Murdoch’s papers with their tradition of lies and distortions of the Party, no. It was, according to the letter Moshé received on 3 October, an on-line paper you have likely not heard of, the Weekly Worker, a paper so powerful and so toxic that, like poison ivy, any brush with it is fatal. Moshé also had the effrontery to speak at the 2016 Communist University . Since the mainstream press and think tank symposiums are generally closed to radical thinkers and writers we must all find whatever outlets we can to try to spread our ideas and educate our colleagues. It is the content of what we say and write that should be judged, not its venue. The complaint against Moshé states

Your involvement and support for both LPM [Labour Party Marxists, claimed to be a front for the Communist Party of Great Britain in the letter] and the Communist Party of Great Britain (through your participation in CPGB events and regular contributions to the CPGB’s newspaper, the Weekly Worker) is documented in Section 3 of the attached evidence. Membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party, is incompatible with Labour Party membership.

Chapter 2.I.4.B of the Labour Party’s rules states:

“A member of the party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour Group or unit of the Party or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member, subject to the provisions of part 6.I.2 of the disciplinary rules”.

You are therefore ineligible to remain a member of the Labour Party and have been removed from the national membership system. You are no longer entitled to attend local Labour Party meetings.

Return to Cold War thinking

The Labour Party’s International Department used to be almost entirely populated by cold-war warriors in times gone by. It seems that such predilections remain alive in Southside with its talk of Communist Front organisations. While the rest of us read le Carré for relaxation, some in the Labour Party seem to read him for instruction.

Even worse that the talk of Fronts are the lessons taken from the US House Un-American Activities Committee of the forties and fifties, where Richard Nixon made his name, with its pattern of Guilt by Association. Can we expect Professor Machover to next be granted absolution by naming names in front of the NCC, the Labour Party body responsible for discipline, to give them a cast-list for the next act of their expulsion drama?

We are even more disturbed when we examine the incident that prompted this forensic acuity by the Party: an article written by Moshé, ‘Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-semitism’ in the newspaper of the Labour Party Marxists. The letter does not state what part of this closely argued examination of the historical record was alarming but they state:

These allegations relate to an apparently antisemitic article published in your name, by the organisation known as Labour Party Marxists (LPM). The content of these articles appears to meet the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by the Labour Party. Evidence relating to these allegations can be found in Section 1, overleaf.

Antisemitism of any form – whether direct attacks or pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people – is not acceptable and will not be tolerated in the Labour Party. Language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive falls short of the standards expected of us as Party members and has no place in our party.

Manufacturing Antisemitism

These paragraphs follow a familiar pattern of Party allegations: they refer to an article, or a tweet or a Facebook post, but they do not explain how the text is, in their view, antisemitic. It would appear from attacks on this article elsewhere by Zionist attack dogs that the section that attracted their ire was the relationship of parts of the Zionist establishment to the Nazis in the thirties. According to Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust:

Simultaneously, another Jewish anti-Zionist, Moshe Machover, was also putting the boot in: this time a Nazi jackboot belonging to Reinhard Heydrich, one of the primary architects of the Final Solution. Machover wrote a special “Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism” article for Labour Party Marxists to distribute at the Conference, which quoted Heydrich making “a friendly mention of Zionism”. This, despite the notorious Nazi’s quote beginning with the words “National socialism has no intention of attacking the Jewish people in any way”. This is the depths that some Jewish anti-Zionists will reach, just to savage their Zionist co-religionists.

Words ripped out of context, as even a cursory reading of the ‘offending’ article will show. The passage in full reads:

Heydrich himself wrote the following in an article for the SS house journal Das Schwarze Korps in September 1935:

National socialism has no intention of attacking the Jewish people in any way. On the contrary, the recognition of Jewry as a racial community based on blood, and not as a religious one, leads the German government to guarantee the racial separateness of this community without any limitations. The government finds itself in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry throughout the world and the rejection of all assimilationist ideas. On this basis, Germany undertakes measures that will surely play a significant role in the future in the handling of the Jewish problem around the world.

In other words, a friendly mention of Zionism, indicating an area of basic agreement it shared with Nazism.

Of course, looking back at all this, it seems all the more sinister, since we know that the story ended with the gas chambers a few years later. This overlap is an indictment of Zionism, but the actual collaboration between the two was not such an exceptional thing, when you accept that the Zionists were faced with the reality of an anti-Semitic regime.

Moshé has written elsewhere that for any historian the facts must come first and the moral judgement after. The Zionists appear only to want convenient facts made available, and the facts are allowed or disallowed on the basis of the a priori moralism. We may observe this is an approach to history also shared by Michael Gove. Gove was excoriated by a brigade of reputable historians where he tried to see this as a basis for the school history curriculum. We would expect Labour Party employees to have a more reliable moral and intellectual compass than Gove. Sadly, reasonable expectations evaporate when you come within sight of Southside.

More Misuse of the IHRA Definition

Our catalogue of alarm has at least one further item. The Party thought-police have extended their interpretation of the IHRA (mis)definition of Antisemitism beyond our worst nightmares. According to the letter “pejorative language which may cause offence to Jewish people” is antisemitic. Well I find the pejorative language that the Party has used about Professor Machover to be deeply offensive to me as human being but also as a Jew and consequently I demand that all those involved in drawing up and agreeing this letter to expel themselves from the Labour Party forthwith. This demand may have little evidential basis but it has no more and no less than their letter of excommunication.

The implications of such an interpretation are horrendous. It is true that many British Jews find criticism of Israel’s record offensive. This is their right no matter how distorted we perceive the worldview that affords such a reaction. How far we should indulge a view that excuses the suppression of Palestinian rights is a political judgement that Labour Party officials have got very, very wrong. The Party’s responsibility, as a Party that places a high value on Human Rights in Britain and internationally, is to engage with those who jump to offence mode to help them find a more justice-based reaction to words and events.

Add your voice against Moshe Machover’s expulsion

Many local Labour Parties are adopting resolutions condemning Moshé’s expulsion, many more should do so. We have allowed too many messengers to be shot. We must not allow Moshé to be one more. Free Speech on Israel  will be part of that fight.

Moshé Machover: My response to my expulsion

Communication from Moshé Machover to the legal queries unit

Comrade Machover’s excellent letter is also available in PDF format here.

16 October 2017

I refer to your letters of 3 and 6 October 2017, excluding me from the Labour Party on allegations that I am in breach of Rule 2.1.4.B.

In the alternative you appear to suggest that if I were not expelled I would face investigation for breach of Rule 2.1.8 for alleged antisemitism. I profoundly disagree that I am in breach of either rule.

I have taken legal advice before writing this letter and should make clear at the outset that I reserve all my legal rights in connection with the false statements that have been made against me and which have been repeated in your correspondence to me, the fairness of the procedure you have adopted and my right to freedom of political speech.

Introduction

  1. First, I must say that I find the lack of precision in the words you use in making such serious allegations to be unhelpful and confusing. In your letter of 3 October you refer to an “apparently antisemitic article” (suggesting you have come to a decision about the content of the article in question) but in your letter of 6 October you refer to an “allegedly antisemitic article” (suggesting no decision has been made about the content).
  2. Furthermore, in your letter of 3 October, after referring to “an apparently antisemitic article “(i.e. a single article) you go on to state “these articles” (i.e. more than a single article) are antisemitic. Which is it? You are making the gravest of allegations against me, yet you are not precise in what is being alleged against me and do not identify with clarity whether it is a single article or an array of articles upon which I am being accused and judged. The copy articles (plural) referred to in your letter of 3 October in Section 1 are dated 15 December 2016 and 21 September 2017. You do not identify the precise words you say are antisemitic. Please do so.
  3. Indeed, it seems you have been selective in what you have chosen to disclose to me, as the article of 15 December 2016 has “p7” in the bottom right hand corner and the article of 21 September 2017 has “p3” in the bottom right hand corner. I assume you have had at least 7 pages of documents passed to you by my anonymous accuser. I refer below to my right to know my accuser and the case I am facing.

Personal background

  1. I am an Israeli citizen and a naturalised British citizen.
  2. I have long been an Israeli dissident, holding internationalist socialist views, and hence am an opponent of the Zionist project and ideology.
  3. Since my arrival in Britain, in 1968, I have continued my political activity, which has mainly taken the form of giving talks and writing articles advocating my views on Zionism, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the wider region of the Middle East. I have been happy to appear at numerous meetings organised by a variety of organisations – such as student socialist societies and Palestine Solidarity groups – and to be interviewed by and publish articles in various publications. My only condition is that I am allowed to speak freely and that my articles are not censored.
  4. In 2007 I came across a leftist group calling itself the Communist Party of Great Britain (‘CPGB’), of whose existence I had not been previously aware. They soon invited me to publish articles in their weekly journal, theWeekly Worker (‘WW’). I was pleased to discover that the WW has a very liberal publishing policy and provides space for a variety of radical left views, without insisting that they agree with the CPGB political line, or subjecting them to political censorship. I was therefore happy to continue publishing articles in the WW and am of course grateful to the CPGB for its kind hospitality. Likewise, I was happy to speak at various meetings organised by them, just as I have been happy to speak at meetings organised by various other groups and organisations.

Your allegations in relation to CPGB and LPM

  1. I have never joined the CPGB as a member, as I do not wish to subject myself to their organisational discipline, and have several political differences with them.
  2. I am not, and have never been, a member of the organisation known as Labour Party Marxists. I have never written any article for their publications. In September 2017 they contacted me and asked my permission to reprint an article (in fact a edited version of a talk) by me, originally published in May 2016 in the WW http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1107/dont-apologise-attack/. They told me that they intended to distribute or sell a publication containing the reprint in the fringe of the Labour Party conference that took place in Brighton during that month. I willingly gave them my permission – as I would do, and have often done, to any publication that is prepared to disseminate my views. I am grateful to the LPM for distributing my article.
  3. The evidence provided for my alleged “support” for the CPGB or LPM does not indicate such support, as further addressed below.
  4. In any event, I am not aware that, even if I were a supporter of either organisation, this would be a breach of the rules – given that no evidence has been provided to me that these are organisations proscribed by the Party under the rules.
  5. I challenge the purported evidence that you appear to rely on that I am a supporter of those organisations. I challenge its validity in the strongest possible terms, as all I have done is exercise my freedom of speech under their aegis and for these reasons:

(i) Section 1 in your letter of 3 October is an article published by LPM last month, but I did not write this article for LPM. See 6 above.(ii) Section 3 shows that I spoke at a session of the Communist University 2016, co-sponsored by CPGB and LPM, but the evidence cited notably does not claim that I am a supporter (or member) of either organisation and, on the contrary, includes a disclaimer that ‘the views in these videos do not necessarily represent the views of either organisation’.

The fact I spoke at that educational meeting on an issue within my expertise is in principle, as far as Party rules are concerned, no different from David Lammy speaking at the Conservative Party’s fringe event on justice issues together with the current Tory Justice Minister https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political- parties/conservative-party/theresa-may/opinion/politicshome/89397/tory- conference (scroll down); and does not make me a supporter of those organisations any more than speaking at the above event makes David Lammy a supporter of the Conservative Party.

It is in fact quite common practice for Party members, including senior ones, to speak at meetings of other parties, including rival ones. As two out of innumerable examples, I cite the above and the recent appearance by Lisa Nandy (Labour MP) with Caroline Lucas at a Compass fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference, talking about a Progressive Alliance:https://www.compassonline.org.uk/events/alliance-building-for-a- progressive-future-what-next/The evidence goes on to display an obituary by me that was published in WW (December 2016); and a comment published in WW that refers to what I said at a meeting that I attended (March 2016).

The fact that I attended such a meeting does not make me a supporter of the CPGB, nor does anything the article says about me give any such indication. This applies also to the fact that the author of the comment in question refers to me as ‘a friend of the CPGB’. Calling someone who shares a platform with you a “friend” is an accepted form of normal courtesy, such as when Jeremy Corbyn referred to a representative of Hamas as a “friend”, or when a barrister refers in court to another barrister – who may indeed be her opponent – as “my learned friend”.

  1. It is clear that the purported evidence you have presented is nugatory; and cannot possibly support the arbitrary step you have taken against me: expulsion without a hearing or proper enquiry.
  2. On the contrary, presenting such material as “evidence” for my alleged guilt is evidence for something quite different: an extremely dangerous and reprehensible attempt to restrict my freedom of speech, as well as that of other members who hold legitimate critical views on Israel and Zionism, views that are now gaining wide support in the Labour Party, as shown by events at the recent Party conference.
  3. I am led to this conclusion by the fact that in your letter of 3 October you have mentioned prominently, and without expressing any reservation, despicable and utterly false insinuations of “antisemitism” made against me by anonymous persons. Your letter quite wrongly implies there is some merit in the complaints you have received, by referring to my above-mentioned article reprinted by LPM as being ‘apparently antisemitic’. There is no antisemitic content in that article and I am deeply offended and disturbed that you have made this false and scurrilous allegation against me. My article is in fact a serious discussion, extremely critical of Zionism. These insinuations were quite irrelevant to the purpose of your first letter of 3 October, as you admitted, and reiterated in your second letter of 6 October, that they were not a cause of my (unjustified) expulsion. The fact that you included that smear against me in your letter leads me to doubt seriously your good faith.
  4. I demand a proper apology for that smear you have unnecessarily included in your letter of 3 October, and an immediate rescinding of my expulsion.

Knowing my accuser and disclosure of the evidence against me – Fairness

  1. I have been advised that, pursuant to the contractual agreement that I as a member of the Labour Party (‘the Party’) have with the Party, any consideration by you as Head of Disputes of allegations made against me must be fair. Further, I understand that the fairness of the procedure the Party must adopt is protected under common law and under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights 1950 (hereafter “ECHR”). Commensurate with ECHR principles and natural justice, the right to be heard and meaningfully respond requires full disclosure of the evidence given by those accusing me.
  2. The requirement to disclose the full details of the case against me is also reflected in the Report published by Baroness Chakrabarti in 2016. When commenting on the Party’s complaints procedure she wrote:“It is also important that the procedures explain that those in respect of whom allegations have been made are clearly informed of the allegation(s) made against them, their factual basis and the identity of the complainant – unless there are good reasons not to do so (e.g. to protect the identity of the complainant).Baroness Chakrabarti also recommended that the Party:“‘…should seek to uphold the strongest principles of natural justice’”I ask for the immediate full disclosure of the documents and complaints made against me that have led to the decision to exclude me from the Party. As stated above, you appear to have only disclosed pages 3 and 7 of a complaint. Such partial disclosure in such an important matter is grossly unfair. You have made the very serious decision to exclude me from the Party without giving me any opportunity to know the identity of my accuser and to respond to the accusations.
  1. Please provide me with full disclosure of all the evidence that has been given to the Party accusing me of antisemitism and please let me know the identity of my accuser/s.

Right to my freedom of speech

  1. I am advised that your investigation and consideration of the allegations against me must comply with the Human Rights Act 1998. In particular, the Party cannot unlawfully interfere with my rights to freedom of speech under Article 10 of the ECHR, which provides:

ARTICLE 10 FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

  1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.
  2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

21. In the context of freedom of expression, the Party will be only too aware that political speech is afforded the highest level of protection in a democratic society, with the margin of appreciation given to national states in Article 10(2) construed narrowly in the context of such political expression.

22. I note that in your letter of 3 October 2017 you state that “…language which may cause offence to Jewish people is not acceptable…” and that “language that may be perceived as provocative, insensitive or offensive …has no place in our party”. I again emphasise that the allegation that I am an antisemite is utterly false and absurd. I have no common cause with anyone who holds racist opinions. I abhor racism. I am very concerned that the language you have used in your letter of 3 October utterly fails to protect my rights to hold and receive opinions that may not be accepted by all members in the Party. I am an anti-Zionist, which is quite different from being an antisemite.

23. Importantly, in the context of free expression, the Courts recognise that some views may “shock, offend or disturb” but still retain and attract protection under Article 10. I do not in anyway suggest that anything I have said is shocking, offending or disturbing, but as the European Court of Human Rights held in Handyside v. the United Kingdom [1976] ECHR 5, at paragraph 49:

“Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of [a democratic] society, one of the basic conditions for its progress and for the development of every man. Subject to paragraph 2 of Article 10 (art. 10-2), it is applicable not only to ‘information’ or ‘ideas’ that are favourably received or regarded as inoffensive or as a matter of indifference, but also to those that offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population. Such are the demands of that pluralism, tolerance and broadmindedness without which there is no ‘democratic society’.”

  1. I am advised that the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights has been adopted by the domestic Courts. For example, the Divisional Court has highlighted the wide margin given to free speech in this jurisdiction, as per Sedley LJ in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] EWHC Admin 73, at paragraph 20:“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”
  2. I am sure that you will agree that debate concerning the contentious issues surrounding the condition of the Palestinian people and the political situation in the Middle East quite obviously attract the protection of Article 10, as political speech. I cannot see how you consider my primary right of free speech on such matters can be interfered with lawfully within a democratic society on the basis of the material you have adduced.

Conclusion

I absolutely challenge the finding you present and the evidence that you rely upon that I am in breach of rule 2.1.4.B.

I absolutely reject all and any allegations that I am in breach of rule 2.1.8.

Please disclose all the evidence against me, including the identity of my accuser/s.

I reserve all my legal rights against the Party in respect of the decisions that have been taken to exclude me from the Party and to find anything I have written or said to be ‘apparently antisemitic’.

I look forward to your full response within the next 14 days.

Yours sincerely

Moshé Machover

 

Expulsion from the Labour Party: No case to answer

Stan Keable was expelled last week from the Labour Party because of his association with Labour Party Marxists, of which he is secretary. This is his reply to Labour’s head of disputes

Dear Mr Sam Matthews

In reply to your October 2 email, and the attached letter and “evidence”, I am writing for the following purposes.

1. To reject the false and malicious allegation against Labour Party Marxists and against myself, by persons unnamed, of anti-Semitism, and to challenge the validity of the so-called “evidence” supplied, in that it in no way substantiates that allegation.

2. To reject your assertion that the “expressed aims and principles” of Labour Party Marxists, of which I am secretary, are “incompatible” with membership of the Labour Party, and to challenge the validity of the so-called “evidence” supplied, in that it in no way substantiates that assertion.

3. To demand to know who made the allegation of anti-Semitism against LPM, and the precise wording of the allegation.

4. To demand the immediate rejection of the allegation of anti-Semitism as unfounded, because (a) the “evidence” provided transparently fails to substantiate the allegation: ie, there is no case to answer; and (b) because the allegation is obviously a continuation of the malicious rightwing smear campaign, promoted by the Israeli state, which maliciously brands as anti-Semitic all criticism of the politics of Zionism and all opposition to Israel’s apartheid-type laws and ongoing settler-colonisation of Palestinian land; and (c) because the ready acceptance by the governance and legal unit of such obviously malicious allegations brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

5. To demand the immediate withdrawal of your decision to end my Labour Party membership as an invalid decision, because (a) no case has been made to substantiate your bald assertion of “incompatibility” between the aims of LPM and the aims of the Labour Party; (b) contrary to natural justice, no right of appeal has been offered (only the right to “challenge the validity of the evidence”); (c) instant dismissal from membership without due process brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

The so-called “evidence” attached to your letter consists of published materials which contain not one iota of anything which can reasonably be construed as anti-Semitism, or as “incompatible” with Labour Party membership. Indeed you have not indicated any words, phrases or statements in the “evidence” which might substantiate the allegation of anti-Semitism or the claim of incompatibility with Labour Party membership. In short, there is no case to answer.

Anti-Semitism?

As a lifelong communist and internationalist, anti-imperialist and anti-racist, I find the charge of anti-Semitism risible. As a child I was proud to hear my parents’ anecdotes of how, in the 1930s, they formed part of the ‘underground railroad’ in east London, giving refuge in their home to illegal Jewish and socialist refugees escaping from Nazi persecution in Germany. In the 1960s I was proud of my brother’s courageous role when he risked everything to carry ANC propaganda material into apartheid South Africa as one of Ronnie Kasrils’ London Recruits.

The ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, using the contrived definition concocted by the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance, and maliciously alleging anti-Jewish racism where none exists, is designed to deflect criticism of Israel and its role as US imperialism’s chief ally and collaborator in the Middle East. Its conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism misuses anti-racist sentiment to protect the real racism of the Israeli state against Palestinian Arabs. Complicity with Israel’s anti-Semitism smear campaign brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

Labour Party Marxists does not consider the existing rules of the Labour Party, including the existing version of clause four, to be written in stone. We very much welcome the establishment of the democracy commission and the opportunity to engage with others aiming to change the rules for the better. The existing 1994 Blairite version of clause four, which you baldly assert is “incompatible” with the LPM’s aims and principles, is itself the product of several revisions since the adoption of the original version in 1918.

Discussion of further proposed changes does not constitute “incompatibility” with party membership. Indeed, the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy at its 2017 AGM set up a working group (of which I am a member) to draft a rule change proposal for a revised, 21st century, socialist clause four.

LPM was launched by a group of Labour Party members in 2011, following Labour’s 2010 general election defeat, in response to the invitation by Peter Hain, then chair of the national policy forum, to members and party units to submit their views on his consultation paper, ‘Refounding Labour – a party for the new generation’. Our submission to the consultation, ‘Refound Labour as a real party of labour’, was duly submitted, and published in Labour Party Marxists No1 (autumn 2011), which also includes our ‘Aims and principles’. It is still available on the LPM website. Peter Hain thanked us for our contribution, and, of course, no question of our ‘Aims and principles’ breaching the rules was raised then or since. It is unreasonable to do so now.

Rule 2.1.4.B

Your October 2 letter quotes rule 2.1.4.B in support of your assertion of “incompatibility”.

The first criterion in this rule is so arbitrary that its selective use to expel members of LPM or any individual would amount to unfair and malicious political discrimination. Your interpretation of the rule is clearly mistaken. Do you really propose to expel all members who support “a political organisation other than an official Labour group or unit of the party”? That would mean expelling, for example, all members of Progress, Labour First, Compass, Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, Labour Representation Committee and Momentum, to name just a few.

The second criterion for exclusion from membership in this rule – “supporting any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate” – does not apply to LPM. On the contrary, LPM has a record of criticising those left groups which do so, such as the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

LPM believes that the Labour Party will be greatly strengthened not by McCarthyite red-baiting to exclude Marxists and socialists unacceptable to Labour’s right wing, but by winning the allegiance of all socialists and campaigning for the affiliation to Labour of all socialist groups and all trade unions, and making the party – in the words of Keir Hardie – “a great movement for socialism”.

Stan Keable
Unison delegate to Hammersmith CLP

 

LPM @ Labour conference: Wednesday September 27

In this issue of Red Pages:

  • Don’t relax – now the real work begins!
  • Stuffed parrots, texts from Momentum – but very little real decision-making. A first time delegate reports
  • Transform the Labour Party – the basis of our submission to the Corbyn review
  • Support trade unionists in Iran!

Download the PDF version of this issue here: part 1 and part 2


Don’t relax – now the real work begins!

This conference was certainly historic: almost 1,200 delegates and 13,000 visitors made this the largest Labour conference ever. It was also very left-wing, at least in its composition. There are lots of things the left can celebrate:

  • We defeated attempts by the right to portray Corbyn supporters as anti-Semites. Clearly designed to shut up the left, it achieved exactly the opposite effect: there were dozens of speakers at conference who spoke out against the right wing’s vile witch-hunt and in favour of the rights of Palestinians. This ran like a red thread through conference.
  • Pressure from below (and perhaps Corbyn?) forced the Conference Arrangements Committee to re-insert Labour’s support for the Palestinian cause into the National Policy Forum’s report.
  • Labour First and Progress played no role at conference – and were visibly upset about it: their dismissal of the majority of new members as “naïve” and their rants against the Marxist “bullies”show that they have their backs against the wall.

But conference business itself was still firmly in the hands of the right:

  • There were no real debates on anything. The documents produced by the National Policy Forum (to which Tony Blair outsourced policy making) are full of waffle and without any concrete policies. Contemporary motions were distributed way too late and, once merged, were too vague and non-committal.
  • The NEC exercised a lot of pressure on delegates to remit all their rule change proposals in favour of the ‘Party Democracy Review’, even those that do not fall in the review’s remit. Conference should have had a chance to properly debate and vote on, say, the McDonnell amendment, the need to abolish the 12 months delay affecting CLP rule changes and the fight to democratise Young Labour.
  • About a third of contemporary motions were ruled out of order by the CAC, including some that wanted to end British weapons exports to Saudi-Arabia, because a NPF document touches on the issue.

Clearly, the left still has a long way to go in its fight to transform the Labour Party. For a start, conference must become the sole, sovereign decision-making body of the party and the NPF should be abolished. It is an instrument to stop members from shaping party policy.

The next 12 months are going to be crucial in our fight to democratise the party and take it out of the hands of people like Iain McNicol. It is the bureaucratic middle layer that has been resisting reforms; the top and the bottom are now firmly in the hands of the left:

  • With the addition of three more members chosen by CLPs, the NEC will have a (slim) left-wing majority.
  • The new CAC (in office for two years), has a pro-Corbyn majority: Seema Chandwani and Billy Hayes were elected by the membership; two more seats are held by the Unite union.
  • The so-called ‘Corbyn review’ will be run by Katy Clarke, Claudia Webbe and Andy Kerr – all in the Corbyn camp.

This gives us an unprecedented opportunity to transform the party. However! We urge Labour Party members not to rely on Jeremy Corbyn and his allies on the NEC to sort things out for them. Corbyn has relented to pressure from the right on too many issues, be it the ‘anti-Semitism scandal’, Trident or free movement. Corbyn and his allies seem to believe that the saboteurs can been pacified and ‘party unity’ consolidated by giving ground on these issues. This is dangerously naive. The outcome of the Chakrabarti enquiry shows the opposite to be true. The witch-hunters’ appetites grow in the eating.

Members need to exercise as much pressure as possible over two concrete issues arising from conference:

1. The Corbyn review must be as democratic and wide-ranging as possible. Clearly, the party is ripe for radical reform. Branches must be invited to have their views heard – and then implemented! The review could easily become a pseudo-democratic exercise, where people send in their thoughts and we end up with another compromise between the left and the right. This is, of course, the way the NPF currently works.

2. The NEC compromise on ‘prejudice’ is a fudge. The worst excesses of the Jewish Labour Movement’s rule change have been removed. But its fingerprints are all over the compromise and they are trying to enshrine in the new code of conduct the controversial ‘Working Definition of Anti-Semitism’, which conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The JLM must not be allowed to continue to exercise pressure beyond its numerical size. Conference has shown clearly that the membership has no interest in appeasing those determined to destabilise Corbyn’s leadership.


 

Stuffed parrots, texts from Momentum – but very little real decision-making

A first-time delegate gives his impressions of conference

I really enjoyed my first time at conference. It was fantastic to see so many like-minded people, quite a few of whom were very happy to describe themselves openly as Marxists. I did not expect the mood to be so overwhelmingly pro-left, so clearly behind Corbyn and so visibly pro-Palestinian. It’s evident that the panic in the right-wing press over the anti-Semitism scandal helped to consolidate the left at conference. Of course, delegates were eating out of John McDonnell’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s hands. But I did not expect everybody around me to get up to whoop and cheer when Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi made her pro-Palestinian speech. I could not see anybody staying in their seat. Another speaker got a standing ovation for mentioning that she was a member of Momentum.

I also did not expect the right to be quite so small and useless. Apart from a small group of people handing out Labour First’s White Pages, I hardly came across them and they were almost invisible at conference.

Having said all of that, I can’t say I really understood what was going on most of the time. I don’t think delegates were really in control of things here. Everything is left to the last moment, and because of the various NEC compromises it was difficult to prepare. You really have to study the daily update from the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC). For example, it was only by chance that I saw the proposed change to the National Policy Forum’s document on Israel/Palestine in Sunday’s report.

This year’s conference agenda was designed, so we were told, to maximise the number of contributions from the conference floor, as opposed to just the party big-wigs. But the method of selecting these ordinary delegates was hard to believe. Speakers were selected by the chair in groups of three, from different parts of the floor. However, up to fifty would-be speakers attempting to catch the eye of the chair led to the employment of ever more bizarre theatrics: comrades were seen holding up hats, scarves, stuffed parrots, inflated bananas, open umbrellas… you get the picture. Those just raising their hand stood no chance.

But it was worse than that – in one session the chair admitted that they could only see the delegates in the front section of the audience, so anyone wanting to speak from the raised section at the rear would have a long wait. Delegates around me noticed that often the randomly selected speakers seemed to be very well informed with speeches that must have taken a while to prepare. Perhaps it was not that random after all.

This chaotic method of speaker selection was matched by the incoherent structure of the sessions. In no way could they be called debates – there was no order to the contributions and many topics in the NPF documents (to which Tony Blair outsourced policy-making) were not covered at all.

It was not much better when it came to contemporary motions. We only got to see them in the CAC’s report on Sunday morning: a thick booklet with over 120 motions, which were grouped into different ‘themes’. And by 3.30pm we were supposed to have read them all and then decide in the ‘priorities ballot’ which four themes we would like to see debated at conference. That is impossible of course. And of course it is designed to be impossible.

This is where the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy comes in. They certainly worked through the conference agenda (and dragged Momentum along with them – they are linked, of course. As I understand it, Momentum’s owner Jon Lansman used to be a leading light in the CLPD back in the day).

As CLPD’s Pete Willsman has been sitting on the NEC for decades, he gets prior access to material and so his comrades were able to read through all the motions in advance. They used their fringe meeting on Saturday evening to instruct/suggest to delegates which themes to vote on. They already knew that the unions would go for growth and investment, public sector pay, workers’ rights and Grenfell. So, in order to maximise the motions heard, delegates were urged to vote for social care, NHS, housing and railways. Lo and behold, these themes got the vast majority of CLPs’ votes.

As a normal delegate, I felt pretty much out of the loop most of the time, so this attempt to coordinate and explain issues was most welcome. At their fringe meeting on Tuesday night, CLPD comrades also urged CLP delegates to remit all their rule changes in order to get the ‘Corbyn review’ through unopposed. I must say I had my doubts about that tactic, as my own CLP was one of those who voted through the ‘McDonnell amendment’: we wanted to see a dramatic reduction to 5 per cent of the nominations needed from MPs and MEPs in order to get a leadership candidate on to the ballot paper. In th end, we were one of the many CLPs who “regretfully” remitted their rule change.

Momentum was a bit short on the arguments, but better with technology. They were texting us throughout the conference, giving voting advice. Particularly the session on Monday afternoon has to be regarded as a brilliant example of Momentum’s ability to issue voting instructions to delegates at very short notice. The very last speaker in the session moved a reference back of a couple of paragraphs in the NPF document on ‘Work, Pensions and Equality’. As he was literally the last speaker, there was no time to hear other speakers for or against, so delegates really had no idea which way to vote.

But the Momentum organisers must have decided it was an important issue, because text messages were despatched to all their supporting delegates on the conference floor: “Please vote for the reference back to reverse cuts to social security!” The document only criticised the cuts, but the delegate wanted the Labour Party to commit itself to reversing them. By the time the vote was taken a few minutes later, the message had got through. The reference back was carried, with support from a huge majority of CLP delegates. The NPF will now have to look at it again – though of course ordinary members will have to wait to see if the 200 or so members of the NPF will actually enforce this in their next annual report.

This kind of decision-making is very much hit and miss. There were plenty of other issues in the very vacuous NPF reports that deserved to be referenced back, but I presume nobody was called in to make the point! In the end, I ended up abstaining on all of the documents, because they are really full of waffle, without any clear, coherent policy proposals. Ditto the composited contemporary motions. As has been common practice, they have been merged into the most bland and uncontroversial motherhood and apple pie-type statements. Impossible to vote against.

The atmosphere of conference was joyous, even jubilant. It’s just a shame that we haven’t got a hold on conference and the party bureaucracy yet. Conference really hammered home to me the need to change that!


 

 

Transform the Labour Party

Jeremy Corbyn says he wants to find ways to give more power to ordinary members and a conference that makes the final decision on policy. The democracy commission has now been agreed and will report next year. All this is very welcome. James Marshall presents a 13-point platform that will provide the basis for the submission by Labour Party Marxists

1. Mandatory reselection is crucial,   though it terrifies the right. We read that this, “even more than nuclear disarmament and membership of the European Community, became the main catalyst for the launch of the breakaway Social Democratic Party” in March 1981. In that same treacherous spirit as the founders of the SDP, Progress – Lord David Sainsbury’s party within a party – furiously denounces mandatory reselection as “a weapon of fear and intimidation”. Yes, mandatory reselection is viewed as an affront by every rightwing wrecker, every hireling, every parliamentary careerist.

It is worth looking at the background. Interestingly, and with good foundation, we read on the Progress website that mandatory reselection carries “echoes of the Paris Commune, and of the Russian soviets, where delegates were subject to recall if they displeased their local citizenry. It rests on the idea that leaders will always be tempted to sell you out, once they get power.” Well, surely, that is what history actually shows.

For decades, sitting Labour MPs – certainly those with safe seats – enjoyed a job for life (or for as long as no better offer came along). They might have deigned to visit their constituency once or twice a year, deliver a speech to the AGM and write an occasional letter to the local newspaper. Meanwhile they lived a pampered, middle class life, frequented various London gentlemen’s clubs and spent their weekends in the home counties with Lord this and Lady that. Despite such evident moral corruption, they were automatically the candidate for the next election. Unless found guilty of an act of gross indecency or had the party whip withdrawn, they could do as they pleased.

With the insurgent rise of Bennism that totally unacceptable situation was called into question. The Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, founded in 1973, committed itself to a range of rule changes – the mandatory reselection of MPs was finally agreed by the 1980 conference. What this saw, however, was  not a Labour Party equivalent of the Paris Commune or the Russian soviets. There was no right to instantly recall. Nevertheless, once in each parliament, our MPs had to secure the endorsement of their local General Management Committee. Note, GMCs were made up of delegates elected by local party and trade union branches. They were sizable bodies too, typically consisting of 80, 90, 100 or even more delegates.

At the prompting of the bourgeois media, Neil Kinnock, desperately seeking acceptability, sought to extract trade unions from the voting process altogether. He failed, but accepted a compromise. A local electoral college for the selection and reselection of candidates was introduced. Ordinary members were given a direct vote for the first time, leaving GMCs with the right to nominate and shortlist only. This electoral college system gave unions and affiliated organisations up to 40% of the vote, with ordinary members having some 60% (the actual balance was different in each seat, depending on party and union membership).

Trigger ballots were a product of the 1990s. Formally honouring conference’s “desire to maintain reselection”, they made it significantly “easier for MPs to defend their positions”. Trigger ballots allowed for a sitting MP to be subject to a full-scale ballot of the membership. But only if they lost a trigger ballot.

We say, all elected Labour representatives must, by rule, be subject to a one-member, one-vote mandatory reselection. MPs have to be brought under democratic control – from above, by the National Executive Committee; from below by Constituency Labour Parties.

2. We urgently need a sovereign conference once again. The cumbersome, undemocratic and oppressive structures, especially those put in place under the Blair supremacy, must be abolished. The joint policy committee, the national policy forums, etc, have to go.

3. We are against the idea of electing the general secretary through an all-member   ballot. The NEC should elect all national officers. Therefore the post of Labour leader should be replaced by the post of NEC chair. We favour annual elections with the right to recall at any time. As a matter of basic principle Marxists oppose all forms of Bonapartism.

4. In Scotland and Wales, their executive committees should likewise elect their own officers, including their representatives on the all-UK NEC. We are against a single individual in Scotland and Wales having the right to appoint themselves, or a trusted clone.

5. Scrap the hated compliance unit “and get back to the situation where people are automatically accepted for membership, unless there is a significant issue that comes up” (John McDonnell). The compliance unit operates in the murky shadows, routinely leaks to the capitalist media and makes rulings in a completely biased manner. We want to welcome into our ranks the bulk of those who have been barred from membership by the compliance unit. Many of them are good socialists with a proven record.

6. Those expelled from membership ought to have the right to reapply, not after five years, but just one year. All disciplinary procedures should be completed within three months. Endless delay violates natural justice.

7. The huge swing towards Labour in the June 2017 general election happened in no small part due to the enthusiasm of young voters. Yet Young Labour a is creaking, uninviting, thoroughly bureaucratic construction. We need a one-member-one-vote organisation. That must include Young Labour’s National Committee. At present, two-thirds of votes are accounted for by appointees from affiliated organisations, eg, the Fabians and Co-op Party, and affiliated trade unions. Instead of the bi-annual policy and national committee elections, their must be an annual conference that can both decide on policy and elect a leadership. Young Labour has to have the right to decide on its own constitution and standing orders.

8. We need a rule that commits the NEC to securing the affiliation of all trade unions to the Labour Party. The FBU has already reaffiliated. Excellent. But what about the RMT? Let us win RMT militants to finally drop their support for the thoroughly misconceived Tusc project. Instead reaffiliate to the Labour Party. And what about the NUT? This year’s Cardiff conference saw the executive narrowly win an amendment, by 50.63% to 49.37%, which in effect ruled out considering affiliation … at this moment. This can be changed … if we campaign to win hearts and minds. Then there is PCS. Thankfully, Mark Serwotka, its leftwing general secretary, has at last come round to the idea. Yes, PCS affiliation will run up against the Trades Disputes and Trade Union Act (1927), introduced by a vengeful Tory government in the aftermath of the general strike. Civil service unions were barred from affiliating to the Labour Party and the TUC. The Civil and Public Services Association – predecessor of PCS – reaffiliated to the TUC in 1946. Now, however, surely, it is time for PCS to reaffiliate to the Labour Party. Force another change in the law.

9. There has to be a shift in the party, away from the HQ, regional officers, the leader’s office, the Parliamentary Labour Party, etc. CLPs must be empowered. Towards that end there has to be proper financing. CLPs should be allocated 50% of the individual membership dues. That will help with producing publicity material, hiring rooms, paying for full-time officers, providing transport, setting up websites, etc. That way our CLPs can be made into vibrant centres of socialist organisation, education and action.

10. Our goal must be a Labour Party, that, in the words of Keir Hardie, can “organise the working class into a great, independent political power to fight for the coming of socialism”. We therefore need rule changes to once again allow left, communist and revolutionary groups and parties to affiliate. As long as they do not stand against us in elections, this can only but strengthen Labour as a federal party. Nowadays affiliated organisations include the Fabians, Christians on the left, the Cooperative Party and, problematically, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Business. Encourage the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Party in England and Wales, Communist Party of Great Britain, etc, to join our ranks.

11. Being an MP ought to be an honour, not a career ladder, not a way for university graduates to secure a lucrative living. A particularly potent weapon here would be a rule requiring all our elected representatives and officials to take only the average wage of a skilled worker – a principle upheld by the Paris Commune and the Bolshevik revolution. Our MPs are on a basic £67,060 annual salary. On top of that they get around £12,000 in expenses and allowances, putting them on £79,060 (yet at present Labour MPs are only obliged to pay the £82 parliamentarians’ subscription rate).

Let them keep the average skilled workers’ wage – say £40,000 (plus legitimate expenses). Then, however, they should hand the balance over to the party. Even without a rule change Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Dianne Abbott ought to take the lead here.

12. Relying on the favours of the capitalist press, radio and TV is a fools game. Yes, it worked splendidly for Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell. But, as Neil Kinnock, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband found to their cost, to live by the mainstream media is to die by the mainstream media.

The NEC should, by rule, establish and maintain our own press, radio and TV. To state the obvious, tweeting and texting have severe limits. Brilliant mediums for transmitting simple, short and sharp messages to the already converted. But, when it comes to complex ideas, debating history and charting out political strategies they are worse than useless. We should provide time and space for controversy and the whole range of different opinions within the party. Without that our media will be dull, lifeless, pointless. We should also take full advantage of parliamentary immunity to circumvent the oppressive libel laws. Then we can say the unsayable. That would prove to be electric in terms of shaping and mobilising public opinion.

13. We should adopt a new clause four. Not a return to the old, 1918, version, but a commitment to working class rule and a society which aims for a stateless, classless, moneyless society, which embodies the principle, ‘From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’. That is what socialism is all about. Not a measly £10 per hour “living wage”, shifting the tax balance and a state investment bank. No, re-establishing socialism in the mainstream of politics means committing the Labour Party to achieving a “democratic republic”.


johnMcDonnell HopiSupport trade unionists in Iran!

John McDonnell has been the honorary chair of the anti-war/solidarity campaign Hands Off the people of Iran for many years. He outlined its core principles in a speech to our 2011 conference:

“While opposing any imperialist attacks, we positioned ourselves in clear, active solidarity with the people of Iran who are fighting against their theocratic regime. That also led us to clearly oppose all sanctions on the country, because in our view that is just another form of imperialism attacking the people of Iran. I think we have successfully engaged others in that discussion.”

HOPI is now calling for solidarity with three prominent worker activists in Iran. Please sign and circulate this statement and contact HOPI (details below) to receive more info on this important campaign:

Three prominent activists are on hunger strike in an Iranian prison. They are protesting against unjust sentences handed down to them by the Islamic courts. The comrades are in urgent need of solidarity, especially from trade unionists and democrats internationally. The three are:

• Reza Shahbi ‐ a member of the coordinating committee of the syndicate of the Vahed Bus Company;

• Abbas Abdi ‐ executive member of teachers’ guild;

• Mahmoud Beheshti Langaroudi ‐ former spokesperson of the teachers’ guild.

Shahabi, Abdi and Langaroudi have had these sentences imposed as a result of their activities in defence of their fellow workers. Worryingly, the hunger strike is starting to have a serious effect on their health and is now endangering their lives. Reza Shahabi, for example, has refused food for more than six weeks.

We call on labour activists and defenders of the working class worldwide to do everything they can to save the lives of these leading activists and to build solidarity with them. We also express our grave concern for the lives of these labour activists and urge them to consider ending their hunger strike. The essential work they undertake in defence of thousands of workers in Iran is vital.

To add your name, email office@hopoi.info