As I said earlier this evening, I was at an online meeting of my local constituency Labour party tonight. I was very impressed by Karin Smyth, our local MP, and her report on Sajid Javid’s health and social care bill, and what she and the Labour party are doing to prevent private healthcare firms sitting on the new commissioning boards the Tories wish to set up and the compulsory outside tendering. Smyth is a supporter of grotty, sectarian, squalid Starmer, but I believe she is sincere in her defence of the NHS and am impressed by how hard she works for her constituents.
But I don’t believe Starmer is, and if the choice comes between embracing the Tories’ privatisation and not getting his overprivileged, aristo, millionaire posterior in 10 Downing Street or winning the approval of the Tory press, the Stormfront Stalin will sacrifice the NHS to the private healthcare parasites and throw any Labour MP who attempts to defend it under the bus.
But I was less than impressed by what the local party’s delegate to conference had to say. They’d voted for nearly all of the motions put at conference. This included the Green New Deal. But it also included them voting for David Evans as General Secretary, the decision to raise the proportion of MPs required for a leadership candidate, and in fact nearly all of Starmer’s notions to knobble party democracy. They also voted for the implementation of the E.H.R.C. report into Labour anti-Semitism.
And then in the questions the local delegate or liaison from Unison, whose scab leadership endorsed all these scummy notions, announced that she also endorsed the implementation of the E.H.R.C. report. She had been indifferent of the anti-Semitism issue until she had attended a very powerful training session, which alerted her to the abuse our Jewish brothers and sisters got from the Left.
This was too much. I was sick of the sectarian anti-Semitism promoted at these workshops, and the way she had swallowed it hook like and sinker.
These training sessions are biased. Starmer has handed them to the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, the sister of the Israeli Labour party. The JLM was formerly Paole Zion and was dying on its anti-Arab tuckus before it suddenly got a massive influx of money from person or persons unknown. It does not represent Labour’s Jews. You don’t have to be Jewish or even a party member to join it, as you do for Jewish Voice for Labour. It conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and is one of the major organisations behind the witch hunt against putative anti-Semites. And an amazing, incredible number of these seem to be secular or Torah-observant Jews. I say ‘incredible’ because I don’t believe a damn word of it. Not after reading the blogs, testimony and comments on mine and Mike’s blogs from the great Jewish peeps who’ve been a victim of this utterly damnable witch hunt. And also the same from genuinely anti-racist gentiles, like Mike himself, who have always been staunch opponent of real anti-Semitism and Nazism. Some of these people, Jews and gentiles, have suffered real anti-Semitic hate crimes, including violence and assault, either because they were Jews or marched against them as friends and allies. Mike was smeared and purged simply for saying that Ken Livingstone was historically correct about Adolf Hitler’s wretched support for Zionism in the Ha’avara Agreement. This made him an anti-Semite despite the fact that when Mike was at College, he gladly took part in a performance organised by one of his Jewish friends commemorating the Holocaust. He was one of the readers reading out the names of just some of those murdered. I have on my bookshelf a book, in German, he sent me, about the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst and its role in the persecution of political prisoners and the Holocaust. It lists some of the names of those butchered, maps showing the locations of the various concentration camps and pogroms and the stats for the numbers of innocents murdered at these various locales. And in answer to the Holocaust Deniers, yes, 6 million did die.
But this comes to nothing. The JLM and related organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Labour Friends of Israel, the GnasherJew troll farm and all the scummy rest specialise in going through peoples’ social media posts looking for whatever they can use to twist so that it sound anti-Semitic. That’s how they got self-respecting, anti-racist Jews like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, as well as Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Graham Bash and many, many more. Men and women whose only crime has to criticise Israeli for its barbarous persecution of the Palestinians. Disgust which they also share with anti-racist Zionists – there are a few – and Israelis.
I am utterly disgusted by this and do intend to challenge this in my local party. Whatever Starrmer wants, his vicious, sectarian anti-Semitism is still an issue some of us intend to keep on fighting.
No pasaran to Blairite socialFascism and anti-Semitism!
One of the people I contacted for assistance against the anti-Semitism allegations levelled against me by persons or persons too cowardly to reveal their real identities was my local MP for south Bristol, Karin Smyth. I received this reply from her on the 27th of last month, August 2021, in which she told me that she thought it was inappropriate for her to get involved. She also said that she had confidence in the impartiality of the Complaints Team and that an EHRC report had said that there was a problem with anti-Semitism complaints in the Labour party, and so there was a need to respond to them promptly and fairly. Here’s her email
“Dear David
Thank you for your e-mail.
I believe that it is important that the Labour Party has a clear process to investigate complaints of whatever nature. Therefore, it is not appropriate for me as an MP to get involved with individual cases.
I have confidence in the Complaints Team to investigate allegations fairly. There is an appeal procedure available, should you need it.
As you will know, anti-Semitism has been a very sensitive issue within the Labour Party (the EHRC report in 2019 found significant failings in the way the Labour Party had handled anti-Semitism) and the Party is now doing its utmost to respond to all complaints promptly and fairly.
Yours sincerely
Karin
Karin Smyth Labour MP for Bristol South”
Repeated observation of the handling of such cases has demonstrated to me that they are anything but impartial. I can appreciate Smyth not wanting to get involved, but am afraid that her personal biases may well be involved. She has said that she has worked with Starmer and has immense respect for him because of his work in establishing the Good Friday Agreement with Mo Mowlam in Northern Ireland. Well, that may be so, and if it is, it’s probably one of the few good things the wretched man has done. As for the EHRC report, others have found that anti-Semitism in the Labour party was lower than in other parties and actually fell under Jeremy Corbyn. Quite apart from the anti-Semitism in a process which particularly targets left wing Jews. I have therefore sent her the following reply.
“Dear Karin,
Thank you for your kind reply to my email asking for assistance in tackling the allegations of anti-Semitism that have been made against me. While I can appreciate some of your reasons for doing so, such as your statement, “I believe that it is important that the Labour Party has a clear process to investigate complaints of whatever nature. Therefore, it is not appropriate for me as an MP to get involved with individual cases.” The rest of your reply is much less satisfactory and, along with your closeness to Keir Starmer, raises serious issues about your own impartiality.
You say:
“I have confidence in the Complaints Team to investigate allegations fairly. There is an appeal procedure available, should you need it.”
I am aware of the appeals procedure. I have no confidence however, in either the ability or willingness of the Complaints Team to investigate these issues fairly, based on the experiences of friends and colleagues who have been similarly smeared, nor the entire disciplinary procedure. The courts used to judge these cases are very strongly biased. In the cases of people I know personally who have been through them, members of those tribunals acting for the Labour party have been instructed to avoid looking at particular sections of the accused’s defence which support their case. We are also seeing people expelled for the crime of having given interviews to organisations that Keir Starmer and David Evans wish to proscribe, but were actually perfectly acceptable at the time the interviews were given, such as Pamela Fitzpatrick. I have also noticed that all these allegations are directed against the Labour left, and especially against critics of Israel. Reasonable criticism of Israel and Zionism should be perfectly acceptable. It is not the same as anti-Semitism, although this what my anonymous accusers seem to believe. I was accused of anti-Semitism because I argued that Zionism was a minority position amongst European Jews before the Second World War, which it was according to respectable historians. They also objected to my saying that the real definition of anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as Jews. There is nothing anti-Semitic in this. This is how the founders of modern anti-Semitism, noxious individuals like Carl von Schoenerer, a 19th century Austrian anti-Semitic politician, actually defined it. There was a disgusting rhyme that demonstrates this. It roughly translates into English as ‘The religion is beside the point. In the blood is the swinishness’. I was also accused because I said that every ideology and state should be open to discussion and criticism, including Zionism and Israel. Which obviously isn’t anti-Semitic, because it does not single out Israel for special or exclusive condemnation.
There have also been a series of high profile cases which in my view have also demonstrated the blatant bias of what can only be called a witch hunt. Jackie Walker was accused of anti-Semitism for remarks she made at a discussion of the commemoration of the Holocaust. The Jewish Labour Movement running the event secretly recorded her and then leaked the recording, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a closed session. Marc Wadsworth was similarly accused of anti-Semitism because of a remark to Margaret Hodge criticising her for passing on a Labour leaflet to a Torygraph journalist. This was supposed to correspond to the trope of the disloyal Jew, despite the fact that it wasn’t. Wadsworth had worked with the Board of Deputies to combat real anti-Semitic attacks by the NF on the Isle of Dogs in the 1980s and didn’t know Hodge was Jewish. And I could go on. I also find it no accident that the majority of those smeared as anti-Semites are themselves Jewish, which indicates to me that there is a kind of very partisan, sectarian anti-Semitism in these accusations. The corrupt way the Labour party has handled these investigations, and the way it has leaked details to the press and local party informing some accused members that they have been suspended, as happened to one member in Wales, but not told the person themselves, indicates that the party and its bureaucracy are deeply untrustworthy.
Then there’s your comment
“As you will know, anti-Semitism has been a very sensitive issue within the Labour Party (the EHRC report in 2019 found significant failings in the way the Labour Party had handled anti-Semitism) and the Party is now doing its utmost to respond to all complaints promptly and fairly.”
Other reports have also found that there is less anti-Semitism in the Labour party than in other parties, and especially the Tories. They also found that it had dropped under Jeremy Corbyn, despite the vilification of the former leader as an existential threat to Britain’s Jews, as well as reports that Corbyn was deliberately prevented from promptly and correctly addressing cases of anti-Semitism by right-wing members of the party apparat determined to discredit him. I am also concerned at the way this is being pushed, while other forms of racism, such as the alleged bullying of Black and Asian MPs and activists and the rising Islamophobia within the party are being ignored and tolerated.
I regret that I see these accusations as nothing short of the ultra-Zionist right trying to silence responsible criticism of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians, while those following in the Thatcherite traditions of Tony Blair, like Mr Starmer himself, appear to be using it to purge the party of traditional socialists. They are anything but impartial.
Your closeness to Mr Starmer and statement of faith in the complaints procedure therefore makes me wonder about your possible bias in this, and how far you may be trusted to represent fairly your constituents and ordinary rank and file members on this and related issues.
Yours faithfully,
David Sivier”
I’ve only just sent the email off. I’ll let you know what reply I get, if any.
Here’s another bit of art I’ve made. This time it’s a cartoon lambasting the current purging of left-wingers in the Labour party, and particularly those critical of Israel, all under the pretence that it’s about combating anti-Semitism. It isn’t. It’s Starmer, Evans and the Blairite right trying to silence and expel anyone who stand up from real socialism and decries the Israeli state’s persecution of the Palestinians. And there’s more than a bit of anti-Semitism in it. Jewish Voice for Labour only the other day submitted a report to the Forde Inquiry and the Equalities of Human Rights Commission pointing out that four-fifths of those purged have been Jewish, and Jews are more than 300 times more like than gentiles to be smeared as anti-Semites and purged.
I realise that there’s no better way to flatten a joke than to explain it, but to make sure there are no misunderstandings, this is what it all stands for. This is my particular view of what is going on, and in my opinion what is going on is comparable to a medieval inquisition by the Blairites on behalf of the Israeli state. The figures in Klan robes represent just such bigoted, inquisitorial justice. I chose their robes rather than the real costume of the Holy Office or Spanish Inquisition because they are more recognisable but have the same religious overtones in my view. David Evans, who is charge of this perverted kangaroo court justice, also wears them. This is because I regard him as chief inquisitor. I am not saying that he is personally anti-Semitic, although the witch hunt over which he presides certainly is. In my opinion, that is.
The figures at the bottom are supposed to be Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, who represents Jewish Voice for Labour. They are all Jewish. Walker and Greenstein have been purged as part of this witch-hunt. I think Wimborne-Idrissi is still a member, but she and her organisation of real Jews have suffered the same accusations of anti-Semitism. Grotty individuals like Neil Coyle have tweeted demanding JVL’s expulsion along with other ‘commies’. And before anyone claims that it’s anti-Semitic because it attacks Zionism, Zionism has never been solely a Jewish movement. It arose in the 19th century among Christians, who wanted the Jews to return to Palestine in order to hasten Christ’s return. It has also been popular amongst real anti-Semites, like the composer Richard Wagner. Wagner had Jewish friends, but he wanted the Jews to move back to Palestine so Germany would be rid of them. See Karl Dietrich Bracher, The GermanDictatorship. And as I’ve said very many times, in terms of membership the biggest Zionist organisation in America is Pastor Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. I’d also like to point out that I do respect the opinion of left-wing Zionists, who believe in Israel but want humane treatment for the Palestinians. I should really have called it ‘the ultra-Zionist inquisition’, but this is too much of a mouthful.
And finally, the caption is, of course, a parody of the famous Monty Python sketch. Unfortunately the inquisition in the Labour party isn’t offering anybody comfy chairs Except, of course, for the backsides of those in charge of this corrupt, compromised ‘justice’.
Starmer’s continuing purge of the Labour left, and especially left-wing Jews critical of Israel, is meeting resistance. As Mike put up yesterday, Pamela Fitzpatrick has put the bargain basement Stalin on notice that she may take legal action against the Labour party for her ‘autoexclusion’. Starmer wants to expel because last year she gave an interview to Socialist Appeal, one of the four groups he wants to expel from the Labour party. But this was at a time when Socialist Appeal was still perfectly acceptable. This is retroactive justice, the criminalisation of individuals and groups for actions that were perfectly legal at the time they were committed. It’s a hallmark of tyrannies and dictatorships from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Russia, as Fitzpatrick herself has pointed out. She tweeted
I am starting to wonder, given my line of work, as to whether the practice of introducing laws with retrospective effect, the presumption of guilt until proven innocent, the denial of appeal rights and lack of fair process is to be future Labour policy for our justice system.
This is, of course, grossly hypocritical coming from Starmer. As Steve Sammut pointed out, between 1986 and 1988 Starmer was editor of Socialist Alternatives, a magazine published by the International Marxist Tendency. Labour Party Marxists are another group Starmer has decided to expel, despite the fact that, unlike Militant Tendency in the 1980s, I’ve seen zero evidence that they are an entryist group trying to take over the party. Indeed, many of the socialist societies that came together to form the Labour party were either Marxist or Marxist influenced. And when the scandal about Militant hit Labour in the 1980s, the Swedish Social Democrats responded by saying that they had absolutely no problem with the Marxists remaining in their party, providing that they didn’t engage in those tactics. These tactics, used to subvert democracy in the party, have been taken over and applied wholesale by the real entryists, the Blairites now headed by Starmer and David Evans in the NEC.
And let’s be clear – this is an inquisition. Starmer is actually using the language used by the Christian and Roman Catholic church to excommunicate heretics. The concept of ‘autoexclusion’ was devised in the fourth century to justify the excommunication of the Donatist schismatics of north Africa. The argument was that the Church isn’t excommunicating them. Rather they are excommunicating themselves through their beliefs and actions. It’s a doctrine that isn’t confined to the sphere of religion, however. Andre Breton, the ‘Pope of Surrealism’, used it when he wanted to throw dissident artists out of his artistic movement. His victims included a group of Christian artists interested in using the techniques of Surrealism to explore their religion, which caused the militant Marxist atheist to go berserk.
But Jewish Voice for Labourare also showing thereal anti-Semitism behind these purges.
They have just submitted a report to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the ongoing Forde Inquiry showing that the vast majority of the witch hunt are Jews. Four out of five of those accused of anti-Semitism are Jewish. If we had a decent media in this country, this would be reported and more than demonstrate that these accusations have nothing to do with real anti-Semitism. Instead, it’s all about protecting Israel and presenting the Board of Deputies as the real representatives of Britain’s very diverse Jewish community. Of course, the Board are nothing of the sort. Tony Greenstein and other great Jewish activists and bloggers have demonstrated that the Board really represent only the United Synagogue, who seem to be the Jewish members of the Conservative party at prayer, just as the old adage said that the Anglican Church is for Christians.
Mike reports that JVL’s statement, submitted on the 24th August 2021, runs
“We have become aware of seven new investigations of Jewish Party members. Notifications of new investigations and auto-exclusions are arriving on a daily basis.
“This means it would appear that over four times more Jewish than non-Jewish Labour Party members have faced actioned complaints of antisemitism. The disproportion is even greater in relation to JVL Committee members and officers. The staggering numbers suggest that these Jews are nearly three hundred times more likely to be investigated than non- Jewish Labour Party members. In all these cases the charges of so-called antisemitism are deeply offensive.
“Dozens of Jewish members are now being targeted by Labour as antisemites, for voicing an understanding of antisemitism that is a direct product of our Jewish political and personal heritage.
“The effect of rejecting or ignoring complaints made by JVL members of antisemitism; our experience of bullying and harassment; and the refusal to consult or involve JVL in, for instance, the EHRC required Action Plan; all show disdain for our status and roles as Jews.”
Their personal understanding of real anti-Semitism appears to me to be absolutely incontrovertible and corresponds to what the founders of modern anti-Semitism actually said. Slugs like the Austrian anti-Semitic politico, Carl von Schoenerer, stated that they hated Jews simply for being Jews. Their religion or other opinions were immaterial. Indeed, there was a nasty little rhyme they sang that said that Judaism wasn’t the issue. The ‘swinishness’ was in the blood. This is quite different from the verbose, convoluted and extremely flawed definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and used to chill criticism of Israel, as one of its authors, Kenneth Stern, has admitted.
And Jewish Labour members like Andrew Feinstein have pointed out the massive injustice in smearing decent, anti-racist Jews as anti-Semites when so many of them have been personally affected by the Holocaust. He regards their persecution by a reactionary Labour party leadership as indefensible.
And he’s right. I’ve read that half of the British Jewish population lost family members in the Shoah. And the victims of the NEC’s and now Starmer’s witch hunt has included proud, decent Jews, who have personally experience anti-Semitic abuse and violence, as well as anti-racist gentiles who have also suffered the same for their activism in support of the Jewish community.
The overwhelming preponderance of Jews as victims of the anti-Semitism witch hunt should absolutely put the lieto any claim that these people are really self-hating and anti-Semitic.
This is all about silencing criticism of Israel, and particularly Jewish critics, because their simple existence refutes the lies and propaganda by Netanyahu and his British supporters that all Jews everywhere are proud Israelis, and that the British Jewish community uncritically supports Israel.
And the witch-hunt against left-wing Jews in the Labour party is part of a strain of political anti-Semitism stretching back to the wretched Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One of the accusations levelled by the right against their opponents on the left is that they follow the classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories by confusing Jews with capitalism and the control of the government and the economy. But the Protocols of the Elders of Zion also claimed that Jews were also responsible for socialism and communism. A little while ago I blogged about a letter from Craig Ferguson published by the JVL at their site, which pointed out that British anti-Semitism was originally targeted at left-wing Jews. The British newspaper magnate who published the Protocols in the 1920s himself drew a distinction between loyal, patriotic British Jews, and radical, communist Jewish immigrants flooding in from the continent. The witch-hunters clearly seem to be guided by that kind of anti-Semitism in their attacks on JVL. The Labour MP Neil Coyle even called for their expulsion along with other ‘commies’.
And Michelle Laufer clearly showed Starmer’s personal hypocrisy in targeting entirely decent left-wing Jews considering his own dismal record of lies and intriguing as party leader in this tweet:
I’ve just heard Starmer on the radio saying he and Labour need to be honest with the British public so they can learn to trust the Labour party again. As a Jewish member of the Labour party who has had to watch other Jewish members abused, suspended and expelled as anti- Semitism has been weaponised, I’d like to know if he’s going to be honest about this. Is he going to be honest about the fraudulent way he in which he became leader, his broken pledges, the gerrymandering of Party democracy, the silencing of members of criticise apartheid Israel, his fawning obedience to the Board of Deputies who do not represent the views of the majority of Jews in this country and the imposition of antisemitism training by the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.
Well no, of course Keef Stalin isn’t. He’s an authoritarian liar, and this would destroy him and the other Thatcherite entryists driving this witch-hunt, as well as his attempts to ingratiate himself with all those Tory voters out there.
Mike concludes his article with these comments
And the problem isn’t anti-Semites; it’s him – and the entryists who are supporting him because they know falsely accusing Labour socialists (the people for whom the party was originally created) of a heinous offence will make the party unelectable, leaving the way clear for the Tory corruption that we have seen under Boris Johnson.
I think it’s just a matter of time until this particular house of cards comes crashing down around Starmer and his allies.
I hope so. And I hope it brings down everyone else who was involved in this vicious vilification and persecution of decent people, including David Evans and the woefully misnamed Jewish Labour Movement.
Here’s something far more controversial after some of the posts I’ve put up recently. A few days ago, the writer and Youtuber Simon Webb put up on his channel, History Debunked, a piece about a worrying attempt by a young Black American woman, Kennedy Mitchum to change the definition of racism in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Webb states that most people would say that racism means racial prejudice, or that there are more profound differences between racial groups than their skin colour and physical appearance. The Merriam-Webster dictionary currently defines racism as
A belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities, and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
A doctrine or political programme based on racism and designed to execute its policies.
Racial prejudice or discrimination.
This wasn’t good enough for Mitchum. Three days after the death of George Floyd, with riots breaking out across America, she emailed the publisher calling for the definition to be changed in accordance with Critical Race Theory. This holds that racism is due to the imbalance of power in society, and implemented by the dominant racial group. Instead of telling Mitchum where to stick her suggestion, as Webb himself would have done, the publishers responded to her, telling her that this issue needed to be addressed sooner rather than later and that a revision would be made. Peter Sokolofsky, one of the dictionary’s editors, stated that the second definition would be expanded to be even more explicit in its next edition, and would include systemic oppression as well as sample sentence, and would be formulated in consultation with academics in Black Studies.
Webb points out that if this is done, then it would redefine racism as something that only Whites do, and absolve people of colour of any responsibility for it on their part, or indeed see them as being racist at all, because Whites are the dominant race in Britain and America. This is, he claims, the attitude of many liberals and leftists, who believe that all White people are racist. It would also mean that Blacks, who hated Jews or Indians, would not be viewed as racist. He has personally seen such racism in the Caribbean street robbers of Hackney. They hated Orthodox Jews and used to go to Stamford Bridge to prey on the Jewish community there. He ends the video by stating that such a redefinition of racism would mean that all Whites in Britain and America are defined as racist but no other ethnic groups.
There certainly is an attitude amongst some anti-racist activists that only White people can be racist and are never the victims. Way back in October 2019 Sargon of Akkad, the man who broke UKIP, put up a post commenting on a report in the Guardian about complaints about an EHRC investigation into racism at Britain’s universities by a group of Black and Asian academics and students. The group, which included Heidi Mirza, the visiting professor of race, faith and culture and Goldsmiths College, University of London, Fope Olaleye, the NUS’ Black students’ officer, Gargi Bhattacharyya, professor of sociology at the University of East London, and Zubaida Haque, the deputy director of the racial equality think tank, the Runnymede Trust, were outraged at the Commission because it dared to include anti-White, anti-English racism. This, they seemed to believe, detracted from the Commission’s true purpose, which was to combat White racism against Blacks and Asians.
I’ve posted a number of pieces criticising the lack of attention and action against anti-White racism. At the moment the attitude that racism is something that only Whites are guilty of racism seems extremely prevalent. In fact, the situation regarding racial prejudice, abuse and violence is far more complex. About 20 years ago, before 9/11 and the subsequent massive rise in Islamophobia, Whites briefly formed the largest number of victims of racial abuse and violence. There are also tensions and conflict between different non-White minorities. In the 1980s or ’90s there was a riot in Birmingham, not between Blacks and Whites, but between Blacks and Asians. I’ve also heard that in one of the schools in Bristol in one of the very racially mixed areas, most of the playground fights were between different groups of Asians. Some people were aware that different ethnic groups also had their racial prejudices. Boy George mentioned it when he appeared on Max Headroom’s chat show on British TV in the 1980s, for which he was praised for his brave outspokenness by the world’s first computer generated video jockey.
There is, however, a real reluctance to tackle ethnic minority racism. A couple of years ago an Asian man told Diane Abbott that there should be more action on the racism members of ethnic minorities experienced at the hands of other non-Whites. Abbott told him she wasn’t going to do anything about it, because the Tories would use it to divide and rule. Like Kennedy Mitchum and the Critical Race Theorists, as well as the critics of the EHRC, she was solely focussed on tackling White racism.
That focus, in my opinion, explains why the Black comedian and anti-racist activist, Sophie Duker, felt she could get away with a joke about killing Whitey on Frankie Boyle’s podcast. Boyle had assembled a panel of mainly Black and Asian activists, to discuss the topic of how ethnic minorities were coming together to kill Whitey. Duker had made comments about racism being the product of an ideology of Whiteness, which was harming Blacks and Whites. She then said that they didn’t want to kill Whitey, before adding ‘we do really’. She was clearly joking, but her comment resulted in the corporation receiving 200 complaints. According to right-wing internet radio host and Youtuber, Alex Belfield, the Beeb is now being investigated by the Greater Manchester Police for what is described as a ‘hate incident’. His attitude is that while Duker’s comment was a joke, it should be unacceptable, just as making jokes about killing Blacks is unacceptable. See, for example, his piece ‘Reply BBC ‘Whitey’ Joker STAGGERING From Unapologetic Hate Lady Comedian’, which he put up on Youtube on the 8th January 2021. No, I’m not going to link to it. Even I have standards! I think one of the reasons she felt she could make the joke is because she and the other activists concentrate exclusively on White racism. Anti-White racism simply isn’t an issue with them. But anti-White racism, abuse and violence does occur, hence the angry complaints.
We really do need a study of anti-White racism and racism amongst ethnic minorities. Sir Alan Burns, a British colonial civil servant and former governor of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, discusses Black prejudice against Whites and other racial groups in his book, Colour Prejudice, published in 1948. Nigel Barley also discusses the blind spot Cameroonians had towards their own racism, as well as that of a Black American ethnologist in his The Innocent Anthropologist. The Black American was very racially aware. An idealist, he was inspired by notions of Black brotherhood and wished to live and be treated by the local people the same as one of them. He was shocked when they continued to regard him as they would White westerners, and failed to see how the Fulani traders rigged the local markets to exclude those from other tribes. As for the Camerounians generally, they commonly believed that only Whites were racist. Barley describes how they excused the massacre of French nuns in the Congo by the claim that the nuns were themselves racists. But they refused to recognise that their own hatred and contempt of the people he was studying, the Dowayo, was also racist.
Some Asian nations also have a reputation for racism. Back in the 1990s I found a book on Chinese xenophobia on sale in Waterstones in Bath. I’ve also read various books on Japan, which have also described how racist Japanese society is. I don’t know if it is still true, but one could only qualify as a Japanese citizen if both parents were Japanese. This meant that there was a sizable Korean community, who had lived in the country for generations, which had no civil rights under the law. In schools there was a strong suspicion of outsiders, so it has been claimed, which resulted in foreign students being segregated in separate classes. This is on the grounds that their Japanese language skills may not be good enough for inclusion with the rest of the pupils, but it is applied even to children who are fluent in the language. Outside Japan, expatriate or visiting Japanese will stick almost exclusively to themselves. Back in the 1990s there was a controversy in Australia, I believe, over the construction of a luxury resort there by the Japanese, because it was exclusively for Japanese and no-one else. I don’t mean by this to claim that all Japanese are racist. I’ve met people, who lived in Japan, who admire them and who told me that in their experience they were a very kind people. The travel writer and historian William Dalrymple also describes the anti-Black racism he encountered in India in his book, In Xanadu. Arriving at a railway station with a friend, a Black American soldier, he approached a group of Indian porters, only to see them turn away, sneering at the Black American simply for being Black. Again, I don’t wish to imply that all Indians are racist either.
Racism and racial prejudice exists amongst all peoples and ethnic groups to a greater or lesser degree, even in this country. It is about time that there were proper academic studies of it amongst non-White ethnic groups and anti-White racism in this country. At the moment there is a feeling amongst Whites that only White on Black racism is taken seriously, and that prejudice against Whites is not only acceptable, but being fostered by supposed anti-racist activists.
If the authorities are serious about tackling racism, and all forms of it, that needs to change.
Starmer’s attempts to purge the Labour party of its left-wing members, who support Jeremy Corbyn, continues. All under the false pretext of fighting anti-Semitism, of course. This time the two victims are Moshe Machover and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, and the very notion that either of these two are any kind of real anti-Semites is a grotesque joke. Machover is a highly respected Israeli mathematician and philosopher, as well as a Marxist philosopher. Which I would imagine already really winds up his Blairite enemies, as it shows he’s almost certainly more intelligent than they are. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is the leader, or one of the leaders, of Jewish Voice for Labour. You know, that terrible Jewish group that supported Jeremy Corbyn, which only admitted Jews as full members and actually had a membership in hundreds. As opposed to their opponents in the Jewish Labour Movement, who had a membership that was just barely over a hundred, and most of them were gentiles. And while you also had to be a member of the Labour Party to be part of Jewish Voice for Labour, you don’t in the Jewish Labour Movement. Everything about the Jewish Labour Movement is fake or a half-truth, but the British political and media establishment decided that they really represent the Jews in the Labour Party.
Machover and Wimborne-Idrissi have been targeted because they’re anti-Zionist activists. They’ve been gunning for Machover for several years now. They tried suspending him a few years ago for a piece he wrote in the magazine of the Labour Marxists group. However, the outcry from Labour members was such that they had to reinstate him. Clearly they were just biding their time until they could try it again. This time the reason is that he appeared on Resistance TV with Chris Williamson and Tony Greenstein. Greenstein’s another Jewish critic of Zionism, who was thrown of the Labour party after a kangaroo court trial. Like Machover and Wimborne-Idrissi, he’s no kind of anti-Semite. He’s a passionate opponent of all kinds of racism and Fascism, and while he’s a secular Jew, he is very definitely not ‘self-hating’. Apart from very detailed, and minutely historically-informed criticisms of Zionism and Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, he’s also attacked domestic Fascists like Oswald Mosley and the BUF. He’s published a book on the struggle against Fascism on the south coast, as well as several articles on his blog about how the good, left-wing peeps of his home town of Brighton gave Mosley and his storm troopers a dam’ good hiding when they tried recruiting there. Which is clearly a source of pride to him, as it should.
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was, I feel, targeted this time because she dared to put her head above the barricades and made a video for Double Down News about how she and others like her, were ‘the wrong kind of Jew’. She was first called this when she was 19 at an exclusively Jewish meeting when she presented the case for the Palestinians. The Jewish Telegraph was there, and stuck her and that insult on their front page. Which shows just what a despicable rag it is. In the video for DDN, she talks about the other insults that are flung at Jewish critics of Israel – that they’re self-hating, or are ‘kapos’. The last is especially obnoxious, as the kapos were the collaborators with the Nazis in the extermination camps. It’s very clear from the DDN video that she is anything but self-hating. She says at one point that her people’s history contains much that is ‘wonderful and magical’ as well as horrendous persecution. Those, who hate themselves and their people generally don’t describe their people’s history in such positive terms, nor lament their persecution.
There are anti-Semites and self-hating Jews, though I’ve only read about the latter. From what I’ve seen, they’re deeply messed up individuals. One of them was the leader of a group of American Nazis, who shot himself when he was outed to his fellow storm troopers. He might be an extreme case, but he’s clearly poles apart from Machover, Greenstein, Wimborne-Idrissi and the many other Jews, who’ve been smeared as self-hating and purged by the Blairites. None of the above have ever tried to hide their Jewish identity, they’re not ashamed of it, and rather than join any kind of racist outfit, they’ve been active campaigners against racism.
They are only self-hating because, like so many other Jews, they dare to defy the demands of the self-proclaimed British Jewish establishment that Jews give their unqualified support to Israel. It’s ridiculous. Jews have been saying ‘Next year in Jerusalem’ as part of the Passover meal probably since the destruction of the Temple in AD 72 and then their forcible removal from the city by the Romans. But political Zionism was, as David Rosenberg and Tony Greenstein have both amply shown on their blogs, and Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi clearly shows in her video, a minority movement amongst modern Jews. The Jewish socialist party, the Bund, campaigned for Jews to be equal citizens of the countries in which they currently lived. American Jews were very comfortable with their lives over the other side of the Pond, though they had to work extremely hard to make their new lives there. As late as 1969 American Jewish Zionist magazines were lamenting the fact that there was no interest amongst them for returning to Israel. Wimborne-Idrissi’s video shows footage and photos from huge Jewish political meetings rejecting Zionism. But if adherence to Zionism is taken as the defining feature of Jewish identity, then according to the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate and the rest, historically there have been an awful lot of self-hating Jews. Some of whom were obviously so self-hating that they actually fought against the Nazis, like Marek Edelman, one of the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto. Which clearly makes the accusation utter twaddle.
This is selective anti-Semitism. Left-wing Jews are being targeted for abuse and purging from the party because they’re Jews, and their idea of Jewish identity conflicts with the British establishment’s. I’ve said very many times that the British establishment supports Israel because its a locus of western imperial influence in the Middle East. Hence it ain’t just the Jewish establishment that is determined to smear as anti-Semitic Jewish critics of Israel. Which means that we’re now treated to the grotesque spectacle of gentiles smearing decent, self-respecting Jews as anti-Semites. When Corbyn was leader, there was much hoo-ha in the press about the supposed ‘hurt’ and ‘pain’ suffered by Zionist Jews in the party, and by its supposed anti-Semitism. Well, the level of anti-Semitism has been shown by the E.H.R.C. report and previous studies to be grossly over exaggerated. But what is never discussed is the immense pain and hurt suffered by left-wing Jews. Mira Bar Hillel, a Jewish journalist, has said that there are many Jews afraid to speak out because they’re afraid of the terrible vilification they’ll suffer. And you can see how vile that abuse is when you think of the abuse and threats another self-respecting Jew, Jackie Walker, has received. She’s received messages telling her that she should be lynched, her body burnt and dumped in bin bags, and that she can’t be a proper Jews because she’s a woman of colour. Tony Greenstein has had irate Zionist Jews telling him that they wish he and his family had died in the Holocaust. But the media ignores the suffering of Jewish critics of Israel. They don’t exist, according to the establishment.
They’re the wrong kind of Jews.
Mike in his article about these latest suspensions has tweets from members of the public naturally condemning them. The peeps making them including Jews, people of Jewish heritage and Jewish organisations like Just Jews, Glenn Greenwald, Shlomo and Tom London, as well as left-wing, anti-racist gentile allies like Chris Williamson, Rachel Swindon, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, James Foster, and Cornish Damo. These are the peeps the Blairites and the ultra-Zionists despise and wish to purge and silence, because they actively demonstrate what a politically motivated lie the fake accusations of anti-Semitism are.
And the fake accusations against decent, anti-racist, Israel-critical Jews are actively harming the fight against real anti-Semitism. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi states this clearly in her video as others have said before her. These accusations cheapen the charge of anti-Semitism by reducing it to a piece of cynical rhetoric. But at the same time real anti-Semitism and racism is on the rise. But the organisations that pose as Jews protectors, like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, are largely uninterested. They were set up to attack Labour and left-wing criticism of Israel, not the real storm troopers like National Action, who scream anti-Semitic abuse and mouth stupid conspiracy theories about Jews plotting to destroy the White race. Nazis and anti-Semites, who hate Jews simply for being Jews, and mean them real harm.
These purges are an utter disgrace. They’re the product of sectarian anti-Semitism against left-wing Jews and their supporters. All of those smeared as anti-Semites, both gentile and Jewish, should be immediately reinstated with copious apologies.
And it should be their accusers instead who should be suspended and investigated for anti-Semitism and bringing Labour into disrepute. Even if that means suspending the General Secretary, David Evans, and the party leader himself, Keir Starmer.
I’ve just started reading Barbara Leonie Picard’s Tales of Ancient Persia (Oxford: OUP 1973). It’s a children’s book, one of a series of books on world folktales and legends. It’s really a retelling of the great Iranian national epic, the Shahname, or ‘Book of Kings’, composed by the poet Firdausi in the 12th century AD. By this time Iran was very definitely a Muslim country, but the book is about the great heroes of Zoroastrian myth and legend, fighting for the good god, Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda, against the evil god Ahriman, his demons and tyrants.
One of these tyrants is Zohak, an Arab prince who has been corrupted by Eblis, the Islamic Satan sent by Ahriman. After arranging for him to seize the thrown and introducing meat-eating, Eblis asked to kiss Zohak’s shoulders as a reward. Zohak allows him, and this results in a pair of monstrous serpents sprouting from his shoulders. Monstrous reptiles that grow back as soon as they are cut off, and can only be satisfied through eating human brains. So every day, two people have to be brought to the royal palace to be killed so that their grey matter can be fed to them.
But Zohak has been warned in a prophecy that a hero, Feridun, will arise and slay him. Forewarned, Feridun runs off to the mountains, where he gathers a small army of loyal followers against attack.
The Persian people put up with Zohak’s oppression until one day a blacksmith, Kava, arrives at the palace. He wants justice. He has had eighteen sons. 17 have been killed, and only one of them remains. But he has been taken and he wants him back, to comfort him in his old age. Zohak agrees to restore the son, and asks him who has done all this. Kava replies that it is him. He has had 17 of his sons killed to feed the serpents. Zohak, however, keeps his promise, and gives his son back to him. Kava seems satisfied at this, and so Zohak believes he will be loyal to him. He therefore asks Kava to swear an oath he has made everyone else in Persia swear, that Zohak is a good and just king and they love him. Kava, a man of integrity, is utterly outraged and not only refuses to swear the oath, but smashes the tablet on which it’s written and storms out. He puts his blacksmith’s apron on a spear turning it into a banner and seeks out Feridun. The two then raise an army. As they march through Persia they are greeted as liberators and people flock to their cause. Finally they storm the palace, Feridun kills Zohak and seizes the throne.
All very stirring stuff, I hear you say, but what’s it got to do with Starmer and the Labour Party? Well, I believe there’s a message here for Starmer. He isn’t a demonic creature like Zohak, and I’m pretty sure supernatural snakes aren’t coming out of his shoulders to munch on people’s brains. Except in a symbolic way, of course. His leadership is so partisan and inept it does seems to be result of mind-destroying stupidity. But in his partisanships and petty vindictiveness he is pushing people into rebellion. He’s done this through his purge of Corbyn’s supporters and the left of the party, and increased this in his suspension of the former Labour leader himself. He’s been forced to reverse this, but has refused Corbyn the whip. But what has added insult to injury is that he and his chairman, David Evans, have issued diktats forbidding ordinary Labour members and constituency parties from discussing any of this, or rejecting the E.H.R.C.’s report on anti-Semitism in the party.
As a result of this and other massive failures by the leadership, ordinary members are leaving the party in droves. People are defying him, taking to social media to discuss all this while a string of local constituency parties, Labour affiliates and trade unions have passed motions of solidarity with Corbyn. Some have also passed votes of no confidence in Starmer and Evans.
A rebellion is going on. And it’s been provoked not only by bad, overbearing and partisan leadership, but by an attempt by the same leadership to stifle debate and discontent. Just like Zohak tried to cover up his tyranny by making the people of ancient Persia swear an oath that he represented good government.
I wonder if there wasn’t a piece of political commentary in this. It’s a great story, and in a freer Iran you could turn it into a fantasy epic, like the Chinese have with Monkey. But apart from its entertainment value, I think Firdausi was also including an important political lesson. He was writing for the shah, Mahmud of Ghazni, and while monarchy everywhere in the Middle Ages was absolute or near absolute, there were rebellions against it. Hence, in medieval Europe at least, there was the literary genre of ‘mirrors for princes’, advising them on good, popular government.
The message here is simple and eternal. A leader can only push people so far before they will rebel. And they will do so even if, or especially because, of edicts trying to silence them and enforce absolute loyalty.
It’s a timeless message for rulers and leaders. And what makes great literature is that it can speak across time and place to make comments on politics and the human condition.
Including to Starmer. But he’s not listening to anyone except the other Blairites.
Mike also reported yesterday that Angela Rayner made a speech to the faux Jewish group, the Jewish Labour Movement, that she would suspend ‘thousands and thousands’ to get rid of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This looks like a threat to purge all the awkward Labour party members, who insisted on discussing and passing motions against the suspension and denial of the party whip to Jeremy Corbyn. A string of local Labour parties and affiliated organisations and trade unions have passed motions of solidarity with the former Labour leader and condemning the leadership’s attempts to prevent discussion of this issue, and their other attacks on party democracy. These local parties include Pudsey, Harrow East, the Westminster branch of Momentum, New Cross, Dulwich and West Norwood, Milton Keynes North, Milton Keynes South, Hall Green Birmingham, Bristol East, Bristol South and Leeds North East. Momentum held an online rally in support of Corbyn on Saturday, and Hackney South and Sheffield Hallam have passed motions of ‘no confidence’ in David Evans. Hackney South have also passed a similar motion on Keir Starmer. As the peeps on Twitter have observed, this is a revolt of the Labour rank and file against the leadership.
Hence Rayner’s threat to purge the party. This comes after she declared a little while ago that she wouldn’t be in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet if she believed he was an anti-Semite. She has also written an article stating that the EHRC’s findings on anti-Semitism in the Labour party are not up for discussion and that the Labour party was going to implement them. As Mike points out, this is precisely what Starmer and Ange aren’t doing. The EHRC report condemns the political interference in the conduct of cases. But this is what Ange and Starmer are doing. The gruesome twosome are also very conveniently neglecting to mention that in 60 per cent of cases, the EHRC found that the conduct of cases was biased against the accused. Mike’s trial following smears in the press of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial was a kangaroo court, and so have been the cases of very, very many others. Marc Wadsworth’s was notoriously biased. He’s Black, and a long-standing campaigner against real racism and Fascism, including genuine anti-Semitic attacks. But he too was accused on anti-Semitism with a squad of White Blairite women MPs demanding his expulsion. Some commenters compared it to a Klan lynching. They have a point.
And so Rayner has been threatening a mass purge of all those awkward people, who dare to defy the leadership’s lies and its rightward movement back to Blairism.
And it’s significant that she made this threat at a meeting with the Jewish Labour Movement. I’ve called it a faux Jewish group, and it is. It’s the old Zionist Labour party organisation, Paole Zion, rebranded. This was moribund, effectively dead, until a few years ago when it was revived, given a change of monicker and had masses of money pumped into it from someone, somewhere. It claims to represent the party’s Jews, but in fact you don’t have to be Jewish or even a member of the Labour party to be a member. It was also until Corbyn’s ouster numerically small. It had just over a hundred members, and its active core was probably much, much less. The pro-Corbyn Jewish organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour, was much larger and much more Jewish. Only Jews could be full members, though gentiles could become associate members. But they were sidelined and ignored by the establishment and the media because they’re left-wing Jews, who opposed the Israeli state’s abuse of the Palestinians. The Jewish Labour Movement is much smaller and far less representative, but as they are a right-wing, fanatically Zionist organisation, they are presented as the true representatives of Labour’s Jewish members.
Starmer and Rayner thought there would be little opposition to their expulsion of Corbyn and his supporters and their attempts to reassert Blairite dominance. And now that the party has shown that it will defy them on this, they’re reduced to making threats of purges on a truly Stalinist level.
Which shows their factionalism, authoritarianism and contempt for Labour democracy and the party’s ordinary members.
As Mike has reported in his piece about Jeremy Corbyn calling in m’learned friends, Bristol South has passed a motion of solidarity with the former Labour leader. This was one of four motions, one of which commented on the EHRC report on anti-Semitism in the party.
Bristol South is my local Constituency Labour Party, and I was at the meeting. Due to the lockdown, it was held on Zoom and was packed. It was a long meeting, partly because of problems some members had accessing the meeting and the polling system with their machines.
The current secretary, David Evans, has issued a diktat stating that it was ‘not competent business’ for local Labour parties to repudiate the EHRC report or comment on the disciplinary proceedings against members. Hence the meeting was very rigidly controlled in order to prevent people unfortunately breaking those rules. The four motions were present to the members, who were called on to suggest amendments. However, because of the danger of transgressing Evans’ decrees, people were not allowed to discuss them. This was naturally resented by many members, but the local party leadership made it clear that they were not going to change their rules for the evening.
One of the motions was, I think, passed unanimously or almost so. This was presented by the CLP’s LGBTQ+ officer. It noted that there was rising levels of prejudice and abuse against other minority groups, such as Blacks, Asians and ethnic minorities, gay and transfolk, and the disabled as well as Jews. It called for the party to treat hate and discrimination against them as seriously as anti-Semitism, for officers dealing with cases to receive special training.
The first motion commented on the EHRC and there was some bitter opposition to it and to the motion of solidarity with Corbyn from those members, who I assume are members of the party’s right-wing or have been taken in by the lies of the establishment smear merchants. These members wished the motions to be altered to omit a number of clauses. One of these was a condemnation of the political interference now being done by the leadership, because it was bringing the party into disrepute, just like the political interference in the anti-Semitism cases condemned by the EHRC in their report. Others stated that it was a pity that the EHRC had not waited until the party’s own reports into the handling of anti-Semitism cases had been published before publishing theirs. The motion also contained a clause requesting the party issue clear guidance on how anti-Semitism cases should be handled. Despite very strong opposition, the proposed amendments to remove them failed and the clauses remained in the motion.
A young man tried to amend the motion of solidarity with Corbyn so that it removed all reference to him and became instead a pledge of unity that the party would go forward to combat racism, Fascism and anti-Semitism. This chap clearly believed that Corbyn was a terrible anti-Semite, but his motion was also defeated. It’s noxious for a number of reasons. The most important of these is obviously that Jeremy Corbyn is not and never has been an anti-Semite, despite the screaming lies by the right-wing British establishment. Secondly, the reason why Corbyn and his supporters have all been grossly libelled as anti-Semites is because Corbyn is an opponent of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. The supporters of the current Israeli government have tried to defend the indefensible by decrying the country’s critics as anti-Semites. They’ve been doing that since the 1980s, which is why one Jewish critic of Israeli racism, Norman Finkelstein, has called the Israel lobby a machine for manufacturing anti-Semites. Thirdly, you cannot pick and choose which racism you oppose if you are serious about combating racism. You cannot, say, denounce and fight anti-Black racism or Islamophobia while ignoring anti-Semitism. At the same time, you can’t oppose institutional racism against Blacks while defending the Israeli apartheid system which viciously discriminates against the Palestinians. This is why Jackie Walker, a Jewish Black woman, came to become an opponent of Israeli apartheid. She had been a member of the movement against South African apartheid in the 1970s, and somebody asked her how she could oppose that, but not Israeli discrimination against their indigenous population. She couldn’t, and so became an opponent of Israeli racism along with the other noxious varieties. This is why the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement took it upon themselves to smear her as an anti-Semite, as they have done so many Jewish critics of Israel, despite her Jewish heritage, marriage and faith.
I am very glad that these motions have been passed, and fully appreciate the reasons for the very tight restrictions the local party leadership placed on their debate. As the secretaries made clear, these are very emotive issues, quite apart from the fact that it has been made clear that any breach of Evans’ rules would result in disciplinary action.
I hope the current leadership will take these motions on board and reinstate Jeremy Corbyn fully, restore the whip to him and adopt the recommendations of the other motions in order to make the party more just and fair in dealing with cases of prejudice and discrimination.
Robin Ramsay, the main man behind the conspiracies/ parapolitics magazine Lobster, has added a few more pieces to the ‘View from the Bridge’ column for this winter’s edition of the magazine. In his piece ‘The Wrong Kind of Member’ he states that, with Corbyn’s suspension simply for telling the truth that there wasn’t much real anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and Starmer’s own position that anybody who claims that the issue has been exaggerated, it really does look like Starmer is using it to purge the party of all the members, who have joined over the last five years. Members who largely come from the left.
He writes
The EHRC report on anti-semitism in the Labour Party found . . . not very much; what they did find hinged on debatable definitions of anti-semitism; and most of it was the responsibility of the anti-Corbyn managers of the party who remained in office until mid-2018. Jeremy Corbyn’s subsequent ‘offence’ was to state that ‘the scale of the problem was . . . dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media’. Which is demonstrably true. For that comment, Corbyn was suspended from membership of the Party.
Current leader Sir Keir Starmer was quite explicit that anyone who points out that the anti-semitism ‘problem’ has been exaggerated has no place in the party. In effect: toe this line or else. Is there a precedent for such a position adopted by a Labour leader? It is hard to see past Craig Murray’s point that Starmer wants to rid the Party of the hundreds of thousands of members who joined in the last five years and support the left.
As Keir Stalin is now trying to gag grassroots Labour members so that they can’t discuss Corbyn’s suspension, I think Ramsay’s point is irrefutable. But as Mike has shown in his article about the attempted gag, Labour peeps aren’t having it and are telling Starmer and co precisely what they can do with it.
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