Private Eye: Corporate Donor Trevor Chinn Moving From Watson to Lib Dems

Here’s a little piece from this fortnight’s Private Eye, 8th-21st March 2019. According to this article, the Labour donor Trevor Chinn may be abandoning Tom Watson and switching his support instead to the Lib Dems. The article on page 11 runs

As Labour deputy leader Tom Watson tries to rally his party’s “moderates”, one of his loyal financial backers seem to be drifting towards the Lib Dems.

Since 2015, businessman Trevor Chinn has given Watson £50,000 towards his office costs, the last £5,000 coming in November. According to the latest register of MP’s interests, however, Chinn has now given £5,000 to former Lib Dem leader Tim Farron MP to help fund his office.

The apparent drift suggests a financial vote of no confidence in Watson’s prospects as he tries to “convene” a new group of Corbyn-sceptic backbench Labour MPs in the “social democratic” tradition to pressurise the party leadership.

Chinn, senior adviser to private equity firm CVC Capital Partners and a former chair of the RAC, is a long-term Labour funder, mostly for the moderate wing. He gave £27,000 to Owen Smith’s leadership campaign in 2016, and £20,000 to Ivan Lewis MP the same year. All told, he has given around £260,000 to various Labour MPs and groups since 2010.

Chin reportedly gave £500,000 to fund Tony Blair’s office in the 1990s, before figures were made public. Electoral Commission records show  no previous donations from Chinn to any Lib Dems.

I might be wrong, but I think Chinn is one of the corporate donors for the Israel lobby, the Zionist businessmen donating money to right-wing Labour MPs to encourage them to support Israel.

This seems to fit with a story Mike put up yesterday about 100 or so Labour MPs writing to the Jewish Labour Movement requesting them not to break their links with the Labour Party. As Mike points out, the Jewish Labour Movement is an explicitly Zionist organisation, former Paole Zion, or Workers of Zion. It is the sister party to Havoda, the Israeli Labour Party, which has heartily supported the Israeli state’s policy of apartheid and systematic oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. It’s former national director, Ella Rose, previously worked at the Israeli embassy. It was also mentioned by Israeli embassy official Shai Masot as one of his allies when he was caught by al-Jazeera plotting to remove Alan Duncan from the Tory cabinet.

It is one of the organisations within the Labour party responsible for the campaign of lies and smears against Mike and other decent, anti-racist folk, accusing them of anti-Semitism. One of the victims Mike highlights in his piece was the academic and anti-racist activist Jackie Walker, a Jewish lady of colour with a proud personal record and family tradition of standing up against racism and anti-Semitism. But she was smeared and has suffered the most foul abuse, some of it vitriolically racist. According to these campaigners for racial purity, Walker can’t be Jewish, because she’s black. Despite the fact that there have been Black Jews in Ethiopia for millennia.

In his article Mike deals with the accusations against him, such as that he claimed that Paole Zion did not represent Jews – false, as Mike said that they only represent Zionist Jews, and that by attacking Zionism he was attacking the Jewish people’s right to self-government, although that notion applies only to individuals, not nations. And by supporting Israel the Paole Zion and its protectors within the Labour party are denying the Palestinian’s right to self-government.

Mike concludes that the Labour party should be throwing them out, not begging them stay.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/03/06/labour-should-be-throwing-the-jewish-labour-movement-out-on-its-ear-not-begging-it-to-stay/#comment-114287

Looked at together, these stories suggest that the Israel lobby is seriously worried about its waning influence in the Labour party. It looks like it’s picking up its ball and its money and is debating going elsewhere. And the Blair project was also dependent on Israeli cash. According to Lobster, Blair was able to remain financially independent of the trade unions, and thus act against them, because he had funding from the Israel lobby, raised through Lord Levy, whom he met at a party at the Israeli embassy.

And no-one knows exactly who is funding the Jewish Labour Movement. As Paole Zion, it was more or less moribund until two years ago, when suddenly it was revamped and given a massive cash injection. Those 100 MPs – almost certainly Blairites – are probably partly motivated in their attempts to persuade the JLM to stay for fear of their own places in the party. If the JLM goes, and Chinn takes his money to the Lib Dems, then corporate support for them may also dry up. In which case they become even more vulnerable to the Corbynite grassroots, who aren’t impressed with their disloyalty.

Hopefully this means that the Israel lobby in the Labour party is weakening. If that’s true, then perhaps in time we can look forward to seeing a genuine, socialist Labour movement and government determined to work for the ordinary people of this country. Which includes Jews along with all the other ethnicities, religions and philosophies of this great and diverse land. And not a bunch of corporatists determined to back the interests of an interfering and oppressive foreign nation at the expense of their constituents.

More From Lobster on New Labour’s Links to the Israel Lobby

Yesterday I put up a couple of pieces about items on New Labour and its connections to the Israel lobby. One of these pieces discussed James Purnell and James Harding, former Labour politicos and now directors of the BBC, who were involved in attempts to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn when they were councillors in Islington in the 1990s.

Robin Ramsay’s ‘View from the Bridge’ column in Lobster 58 for winter 2009-2010 has further information on the connections between Blair and Brown’s entryist clique and the Israel lobby. He reported that Grim Gordon had appointed Ivan Lewis as the responsible minister at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for Israel and the Middle East. Lewis was the vice chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. (pp. 109-110).

In the same issue he also reports that Channel 4 had broken one of the last great taboos of British journalism, and broadcast a documentary on the Israel lobby. He states that the accompanying booklet is ‘seriously good’ and should demonstrate that the Israel lobby is ‘real and significant’. It was available from as a download from and .

I don’t know whether it’s still available after all these years. Probably not. But it could still be worth a look. (pp. 110).

The Blairites were deeply entwined with Labour Friends of Israel, and the current anti-Semitism allegations, which have now resurfaced again with Liverpool MP Louise Ellman, are all about preserving their influence, against opposition from both gentiles and Jews.

That issue is Lobster is available free online. Go to Lobster’s webpage and select it from the numbers listed.

The Anti-Semitism Accusations, Blair and the Israel Lobby

I’ve blogged a number of articles last week pointing out that the accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour have precious little to do with any genuine anti-Semitism, but are simply part of a strategy by the Blairites to hang on to power within Labour, and the Israel lobby to deflect criticism of the state’s appalling treatment of the Palestinians.

I’ve posted up a number of pieces from the parapolitics magazine, Lobster, about the connections between the Zionist lobby and New Labour. And in the case of Blair his circle of MPs and activists, the connection was very close indeed. For example, in the article ‘Yo, Blair!’, in Lobster 52 for Winter 2006/7, editor Robin Ramsay noted that Lord Levy’s fundraising activities amongst the Jewish community was aided by a member of the Israeli embassy.

Even when the police investigation into Lord Levy’s fundraising activities for the Labour Party overlapped with the Israeli assault on Lebanon, to my knowledge none of the major British media, looking at Blair’s support for the Israelis, thought it relevant to mention that his successful capture of the Labour Party owed much to the money provided by Lord Levy, money which came, we are told, from British Jews, and that this arrangement, which enabled Blair to be financially independent of the Labour Party’s resources – and thus to all intents and purposes beyond their control – was facilitated by Gideon Meir, then with the Israeli embassy in London. (P. 16).

Ramsay also ran another piece on ‘New Labour and Israel’ in ‘New Labour Notes’ in Lobster 44, Winter 2002, 16-17. He wrote

In Lobster 43, p. 9, I referred to Tony Blair’s membership of the Labour Friends of Israel. That body was the subject of ‘Byers plots a comeback with pro-Israel pressure group’ by the Times’ political editor, David Cracknell, which included the following:

‘Stephen Byers is bidding to make an early political comeback just two months after quitting the government. The former transport secretary is the front runner to take over the chairmanship of the influential Labour Friends of Israel pressure group. the body is one of the most prestigious groupings in the party and is seen as a stepping stone to ministerial ranks for Labour MPs. Several recent incumbents have been backbenchers who have gone on to be appointed to government….Tony Blair consults members of the Friends of Israel over Middle East policy and Byers would have the opportunity to regain access to Downing Street on a vital area of policy without attracting unwelcome headlines.’

In ‘Tony Blair, New Labour Trumpet Boy!’, Diane Langford of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI.

* The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mencer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI.

*The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour Friends of Israel include Ivor Caplin, Paul Clark, Oona King, Ashok Kumar, Ivan Lewis, Anne McGuir, Rosemary McKenna, Margaret Moran, former LFI Chair Jim Murphy, Sandra Osborne, Gareth Thomas, Frank Roy, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith, Graham Stringer, Rudi Vis, David Watts, Gillian Merron, Peter Pike, Lorna Fitzsimons, Louise Ellman, Caroline Flint, Linda Perham, Douglas Alexander, Fabian Hamilton, Anthony Colman, LFI former Chair Stephen Twigg, LFI Vice Chair Mike Gapes, and Dan Norris.

Ivan Lewis, in the list above, was PPS to secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers MP.

* Since 1997 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with the Labour Friends of Israel.

* The have been 14 official trade missions to Israel from the UK since 1997. The BRITECH agreement signed by Trade Secretary Stephen Byers means there is now a £15.5 million joint fund to encourage co-operation between British and Israeli hi-tech industries in research and development for their own benefit.

In the even the puff for Byers in the Times came to naught. the new chair of Labour Friends of Israel is the MP James Purple.

Further information on the Labour Friends of Israel appeared in the article ‘Terrorism, Anti-Semitism and Dissent’ by Tom Easton in Lobster 47 for Summer 2005, pp. 3-8.

Gwyneth Dunwoody’s researcher and election agent for some time was David Mencer, a former member of the Israel armed forces, and now secretary of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Stephen Byers, one of the few remaining defenders of the New labour Project, is a senior figure in LFI whose parliamentary chairman is now James Purnell. the latter was elected to Parliament in 2001 after working at No. 10.

Purnell, Stephen Twigg, Lorna Fitzsimmons, Jim Murphy and Sion Simon (a columnist for Conrad Black’s Daily Telegraph before becoming an MP in 2001) were all members of the New Labour ‘Praetorian guard’. Before becoming MPs they all cut their teeth in student politics with the help of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). Numerically small – its website said it had 5,000 members in 2001 – it can afford 10 full-time workers. It played an important role in the 1990s in working with the National Association of Labour Students (later Labour Students) in keeping Israel off the campaigning agenda of the National Union of Students (NUS).

Of an older generation of student politicians is Mike Gapes, who came to work for the Labour Party after the NUS as a foreign policy researcher. He was part of the small team around Neil Kinnock who shifted the party away from its critical stance of the US and unilateralism. Elected to Parliament in 1992 he is now vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. He wears another hat, that of chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a tax-funded operation similar to the NED in the States. Earlier this year Gapes chaired a WFD gathering at which Neocon NED chief Carl Gershman was a speaker.

This is just scratching the surface of the old Atlanticist networks with a newer Israel dimension, but it is sufficient to suggest that much of it in Britain centres around New Labour. And just as Avnery describes the pride the Israel lobby takes in its power over the US political process, so we have a parallel here around Tony Blair.

We not only can piece together the evidence; we can hear the words of one of Blair’s main links to the business community John Mendelsohn. this is what Mendelsohn told Jews Week (www.jewsweek.com) on September 8, 2002.

‘Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs. The milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Friends of Israel meetings.

In a signed 2001 election advertisement in The Jewish Chronicle, Blair said:

‘Since 1997 a record 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with Labour Friends of Israel, swelling the numbers of MPs willing to ensure balance on the Middle East in the House of Commons. More labour MPs have visited Israel than from any other party.’

How many of those Labour MPs voted against the invasion of Iraq? This is now important to the future of British politics. (p.8)

Elsewhere in the article Easton notes that the journos promoting the Iraq war worked for Murdoch, Black and Richard Desmond, who were all very strong supporters of Israel. (p. 6)