Tony Greenstein on the Leaked Anti-Semitism Report, the Political Motivation behind the Smears, and Corbyn’s Capitulation

Tony Greenstein has just put up the second part of his critique of the leaked report on anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This is the report that has caused so much anger and outrage amongst ordinary, rank and file members, through its revelations that the party bureaucracy were doing everything they could to unseat Corbyn, including purging his supporters and actively campaigning against the Labour party in the 2017 election. The first part of Greenstein’s article examines this aspect of the report. The second part now explains how it shows that Corbyn and his office did not understand the political nature of the anti-Semitism allegations. Led by Jon Lansman, Corbyn and his team absolutely accepted that the accusations were made in good faith. They caved in utterly to the accusers, who were motivated purely by a desire to topple Corbyn and protect Israel from justifiable criticism of its brutal programme of slow-motion genocide against the Palestinians. Thus Corbyn, Lansman, Milne et al threw their supporters to the wolves in a massively mistaken policy of appeasement. The Israel lobby and its accomplices inside and outside the party, including the Conservative Jewish establishment, were not only not appeased, by emboldened by this capitulation. They continued with increasing fervour until Corbyn himself, a passionate lifelong anti-racist and opponent of anti-Semitism, was smeared.

Greenstein’s piece tackles a number of episodes in this sorry tale of retreat and capitulation. This includes how Corbyn should have responded to Andrew Neil’s demand that he apologise to the Jewish community by pointing out how Neil, as head of the board of the Spectator, was responsible for the continuing employment of real anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers by the magazine. Scumbags like David Irving and Taki. He describes how Corbyn’s office itself put on pressure for the expulsion of himself, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone.

His piece discusses real anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, such as the historical cases of the Webbs, Herbert Morrison, and the perversion of the definition of anti-Semitism to mean anti-Zionism. He also argues that some of the hostile rhetoric against the Rothschilds really isn’t anti-Semitic, as many of those using it don’t understand that the Rothschilds were Jewish. It just reflects a poor political understanding of Zionism, when used solely in this context. He makes the point that the British and American elites support Israel for its military and political significance in the Middle East.

He also shows how the far-right ultra-Zionist activist David Collier infiltrated the Labour Party, leading the party’s Governance and Legal Unit to suspend Glyn Secker of Jewish Voice for Labour. He also discusses Jackie Walker’s and other cases, where the claims of anti-Semitic were false or at best, extremely flimsy. He also describes how anti-Semites have supported Zionism ever since the days of Alfred Dreyfus, and shows how the Jewish Labour Movement always supported Netanyahu and never criticised Israel, despite their denials. He refutes the claim that Sir Stephen Sedley and Geoffrey Robertson, one a former appeal court judge, the other a QC, both supported the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. In fact, they were both ardent critics. The report also boasts of how Jennie Formby increased the suspensions for anti-Semitism due to pressure from the Jewish establishment. He quotes Len McCluskey, who said of the Jewish establishment’s refusal to be satisfied that Labour was effectively tackling anti-Semitism, as them refusing to take ‘yes’ for an answer.

He also shows how the accusations that Labour was in denial about the extent of anti-Semitism in the party was simply a convenient slur to mask their real targets – Corbyn’s support for improved conditions for working people and proper funding of the NHS. He states that Corbyn was unable to formulate a competing worldview to counter that of the Tories, which is why he ultimately lost. He simply wanted an improvement in conditions, whereas the whole structure of society needs to be changed. And he states that this accusation shows absolute contempt for the 70 per cent of Labour members, who don’t believe anti-Semitism is a problem and understand that the vast majority of accusations are politically motivated.

He then moves on demolish other cases of bogus accusations of anti-Semitism against Margaret Tyson, Asa Winstanley, Chris Williamson, Brian Lovett-White – smeared because he said that Zionism was anti-Semitism, which was actually historically the attitude of most Jews; and Alan Bull, suspended for connecting Israel to ISIS, when there is evidence to support this as factually correct. He also describes cases where the witch-hunters dragged their feet or failed to act against genuine cases of anti-Semitism, such as Nasreen Khan, Christopher Crookes, and Fleur Dunbar. He contrasts their case with that Anne Mitchell of Hove, who was expelled simply for talking about the Israel lobby, despite the fact that Israel does have lobbying groups like AIPAC campaigning on its behalf.

His piece concludes

The expulsion of socialists who have dedicated their life to the labour movement and the Labour Party is having a serious detrimental effect on their health. Pauline Hammerton died of a brain haemorrhage a week after receiving her expulsion letter. Clearly the Labour Party’s treatment of her contributed to her death. However such matters are of no concern to the author(s) of this Report. Their only concern is factional, rebutting the suggestion that they were not equally as active in expelling socialists and anti-racists as McNicol and Matthews.

See: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2020/04/pt-2-labours-leaked-report-sad-sorry.html

This is a thorough demolition of the witch-hunt, showing just how spurious and hypocritical the allegations and those behind them were. But it also shows that their false assumption were shared by the compilers of the report. Both Mike at Vox Political and Martin Odoni have also written extensively attacking the report’s blithe acceptance of these smears.

Unfortunately, while there is immense pressure to bring the political intriguers to justice, there is absolutely no commitment to refute assumptions by Starmer and the current leadership. This is probably because they, like Corbyn, uncritically accept them.

And so decent people remain grotesquely smeared, and the potential for fresh witch-hunt, whenever the Israel lobby find it convenient, remains.

 

 

 

 

Unite’s Len McCluskey Attacks Anti-Corbyn Plotters, Backs Rebecca Long-Bailey

Today’s I for 27th January 2020 also reports that the head of the Unite union, Len McCluskey, attacked Jeremy Corbyn’s opponents and publicly supported Rebecca Long-Bailey when he appeared on the Andrew Marr Show yesterday. The report, by Richard Wheeler, runs,

Opponents of Jeremy Corbyn “used the anti-Semitism issue” faced by Labour to undermine the leader, Unite’s Len McCluskey has claimed.

The union’s general secretary labelled such actions “despicable” but also acknowledged that Labour “never handled the anti-Semitism issue correctly”.

Mr McCluskey also said it was “unfair” to describe the Labour leadership hopeful Rebecca Long-Bailey as “continuity Corbyn”, arguing she backs the “radical nature” of the alternative offered by the party but will have different priorities to Mr Corbyn. Unite has supported Ms Long-Bailey for the leadership. Appearing on the Andrew Marr Show, Mr McCluskey said: “I’m absolutely convinced that ther were those individuals who opposed Jeremy Corbyn’s election right from the beginning… used the anti-Semitism issue – which I think is quite despicable that they did this on such an important subject – to undermine Corbyn, there’s no doubt about that.

Dawn Butler, the Black lady campaigning to become Labour’s deputy leader, also attacked the anti-Corbynites at a Labour hustings yesterday. She told the ‘moderate’ MPs who plotted to oust the leader that ‘you lost us the election in 2017’. She also described her anger at them, and her pledge never to join a coup.

But the Skwawkbox adds that she could have gone much further. The plotters meant Labour to lose the 2017 election, just as they meant the party to lose the December election. They were stunned by how close Labour came to winning the election in 2017 with a very similar election to the one a month ago, except for Brexit. They therefore had to put their plans on hold and wait for the last election.

Skwawkbox states that these MPs and plotters should never be allowed to profit from the suffering of millions of people in this country and their shameless willingness to rewrite history to support their false narrative. It concludes

Dawn Butler’s straight talking helps to dismantle that fake narrative. She and Richard Burgon, who have both showed loyalty to the cause of helping the millions in misery, deserve your first- and second-preference votes in the deputy leadership contest – and your CLP nominations to ensure they are on the ballot.

See: https://skwawkbox.org/2020/01/26/video-brilliant-butler-slams-saboteur-mps-you-lost-us-the-election-2017/ which also contains a short, 55 second video of that part of Butler’s speech.

This is brilliant. Both McCluskey and Butler are absolutely right, as is the Skwawkbox about the plotters’ determination to make Labour lose the elections and the immense threat they pose to the poor and working people. However, it wasn’t just the plotters within the Labour party, who were using the anti-Semitism accusations against the party. The lies were repeated by all their opponents – the Tories, Lib Dems and the media as a whole, as well as the Jewish establishment. The latter was determined to destroy Corbyn simply because he was a critic of Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. And the party did not handle the accusations well. It should have gone on the attack and powerfully rebutted them, instead of caving in and meekly accepting them. This was seen as weakness and encouraged the smear merchants to go further. And unfortunately Long-Bailey was one of those, who gave in to their demands without a murmur. Now, by accepting the Board of Deputies highly manipulative and totalitarian demands for the Labour party on this issue, Long-Bailey, Starmer, and Nandy have ceded absolute control over it to them. This will ensure their continued interference and meddling in the party’s affairs in order to stifle reasonable criticism of Israel and prevent a truly radical leader achieving power. They will do this because they’re Zionists and Tories, not because they’re really interesting in protecting Jews.

We need Rebecca Long-Bailey as leader, just as we need Dawn Butler as deputy. But we also need to be realistic and aggressive in rebutting similar smears and plots against a left-wing leadership in the future.

Private Eye on Anti-Semitism Smear Merchants Suing their Accusers

Although the Eye has published a number of letters defending the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn in this fortnight’s issue, it’s still pushing the anti-Semitism smears. And the magazine’s journo who’s done most of this, ‘Ratbiter’ in reality Absurder hack Nick Cohen – has published another piece doing just this. Titled ‘Tribal-Libel News’, it runs

Leftists surveying five more years of Tory rule and a Labour party reduced to an embittered rump can console themselves with the thought that Jeremy Corbyn may not have been good for much, but at least he enriched lawyers.

Labour’s favourite solicitors, Howe & Co, and barrister, Anthony Hudson QC, have already made an estimated £500,000 from Unite’s disastrous decision to waste members’ money fighting a libel action from former Labour MP Anna Turley. There’s plenty more where that came from, as the viciousness of Labour politics sends writs flying.

John Ware, who presented a Panorama investigation into Labour’s cover-up of anti-Semitism, is suing after a Labour spokesman alleged in July that he was “engaged in deliberate and malicious representations designed to mislead the public”. Howe & Co is mounting Labour’s defence.

Panorama featured Sam Matthews, Labour’s former head of disputes, who said he had been pushed close to suicide by the tactics of Corbyn’s supporters, and Louise Withers Green, a disputes officer, who described how party officials minimised anti-Jewish racism. Labour accused them of having “personal and political axes to grind”. They are suing, and once again Labour has hired Howe & Co.

Meanwhile, in 2018, a video emerged of Corbyn sneering at “Zionists” who have “lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their … [but] don’t understand English irony.” Corbyn wasn’t talking of Zionists or Jews in general, he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, just two “incredibly disruptive” Jewish activists.

Richard Millett, one of them, is suing. His claim to the court says Corbyn accused him of so disrupting meetings that Police wanted to arrest him, and of abusing the Palestinian ambassador. Howe & Co are Corbyn’s solicitors. Anthony Hudson is his QC.

To add to the fee fest, Countdown host and campaigner against Anti-Semitism Rachel Riley is suing Corbynista official Laura Murray after Murray accused her in March 2019 that Corbyn deserved “to be violently attacked” and adding that Riley was “as dangerous as she is stupid”. Howe & Co are representing Murray too.

Murray is from the Eye’s favourite dynasty of Marxist-Leninist aristos. Related to the earls of Perth, dukes of Norfolk and the royal house of Navarre, the family is so grand it could hire every libel lawyer in London. But others aren’t as loaded. Last month, when Turley successfully sued Unite and the “independent” left-wing news site Skwawkbox for claiming she had made a “false declaration” to join the union “on the cheap”, Skwawkbox’s editor admitted that Len McCluskey’s put-upon members were funding his defence. If an appeal next month fails, they must pay £75,000 in damages to Turley and mind-boggling costs of up to £2m.

A Unite spokesman told the Eye it wasn’t backing Corbyn or the Labour party in court, so it looks as if Labour members will take the hit if they lose. They should note that the judge in the Turley case, Mr Justice Nicklin, deplored the aggressive tactics of Labour lawyers. Their attack on Turley culminated in Hudson declaring she “was not fit to be an MP”. Nicklin upped the damages he awarded her, saying that “the defendants’ conduct during the trial has seriously aggravated the harm to [Turley’s] reputation and her distress.

Now that Hudson and Howe & Co. are taking on more of the left’s battles, socialists can be sure that, whatever happens, wealth will be redistributed in their direction.

A casual glance shows Ratbiter’s overt bias. Corbyn’s supporters are the villains here, smearing virtuous, anti-racists and Jews. And they are rich, as shown by Laura Murray’s aristocratic family. The reality is rather different.

The article does not, of course, mention the ordinary people in the Labour, including and especially Jews, who were smeared as anti-Semites for criticising Israel and supporting Corbyn. They were hauled up before kangaroo courts, denied proper representation and natural justice, and expelled. They have found it impossible to sue the party for a variety of reasons. But this is ignored by the mass media, including the Eye and Cohen.

Ware, Matthews and Green’s cases against the Labour party is probably not unconnected to the complaint against the Panorama programme for its massive bias and the film that has just been made about this. But there is no mention of that in the Eye’s article either. Mike and other left-wing bloggers and activists have published pieces detailing the inaccuracies, and it’s a list as long as your arm. It looks like those two are going on the offensive as a way of defending themselves against some very credible allegations.

This also seems to be the case with Millett. I can’t comment in his particular case, but Corbyn’s description of his demeanour is very credible. It’s clear from reading accounts of the behaviour of Zionist activists at pro-Palestinian meetings from bloggers like Martin Odoni and Tony Greenstein, that the Zionists are extremely disruptive. They do march around, scream and hurl abuse. One group had to be turfed out of a meeting by the police. One of the chief Zionist activists, Jonathan Hoffman, a former head of the Zionist Federation, was even given a court sentence for his weird behaviour. It might be that Millett is innocent, but there is certainly reason to doubt this.

As for Rachel Riley, she’s been so often mentioned for her litigiousness that her decision to sue Murray will come as no surprise. She’s a very rich media celeb, who comes across very much as a bully, using the threat of legal action to shut down any criticism of her beloved Israel.

In short, these cases seem to be just the Israel lobby and its supporters using lawfare to try and consolidate their hold on their Labour party and victory over the departing Corbyn. They are the real libellers and smear merchants, whatever the Eye claims.

But the Eye’s sympathy is definitely with them, not their victims.

Radio 4 Series of Political Interviews Next Week with Nick Robinson

According to the Radio Times for next week, 27th October to 2nd November 2018, Radio 4 are broadcasting a series of 1/4 hour interviews with various politicos daily, from Monday to Friday. The show’s hosted by the Macclesfield Goebbels, Nick Robinson. They’re on a 1.45 pm.

The first, on Monday, is with Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson.

Tuesday’s edition has him talking to the general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, who talks not just about his political beliefs, but also his love of poetry and the end of a friendship.

On Wednesday he talks to Liz Truss, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury.

Thursday it’s Andrea Leadsom.

And it concludes, on Friday, with Tony Blair.

The only one I would really like to listen to is Len McCluskey. Tom Watson could be interesting, if it reveals just why he’s spent the last three years or so trying to undermine his leader and shore up a dying and murderous neoliberalism in the party’s ranks. Truss and Leadsom don’t interest me at all, and I think listening to them will only annoy me. As probably would the edition with Watson. And I’m sure Tony Blair’s interview would make me incandescent with rage about what he’s done to this country, the Middle East, and how the arrogant, power-hungry maniac still desperately wants to return to power to make the world safe for free market capitalism and the worse for everyone else. All while simpering about how well everyone’s doing with a cheesy grin on his face.

And it hasn’t escaped me that all the politicians Robinson is talking to, with the exception of McCluskey, who’s a trade unionist, are right-wingers. Watson and Blair are Thatcherite Labour, Truss and Leadsom Tories. So in turns of political philosophy, there’s not a lot of difference between them. But there of different parties, so the Beeb can say it’s unbiased.

Government Cuts: The BBC Defends their Bias

I’ve just started reading Who Needs the Cuts, by Barry and Saville Kushner, published last year by Hesperus Press. It’s a fascinating book, written in straightforward, uncomplicated language by two professionals in the political sphere. According to the blurb, Barry Kushner is a regeneration consultant supporting organisations working in the third sector, and now a city councillor in his home town of Liverpool. Saville Kushner is professor of Public Evaluation at the University of Auckland, who has written widely on democracy and public knowledge and worked for a short while for UNICEF in Latin America.

In the first chapter, Barry Kushner describes what moved him to begin researching the issue of the government cuts, and led to the two brother actively campaigning against them. It came from him attending a meeting of a ‘Children with Disabilities’ planning group in a town in the north-west of England, which he had been brought in to support. The group had been set up to bring together the parents of disabled children, and government officials and care providers as part of Labour’s Aiming High for Disabled Children. The group had hoped to build a respite centre to allow parents and carers a break from the strains of looking after their children. At the last minute, Kushner was informed that the project had been cancelled thanks to Gideon George Osborne’s cuts, and Kushner was given the unenviable job of telling the parents this. Not only was Kushner upset by the sudden cancellation of this much-needed facility, he was profoundly dismayed by the way the parents themselves, who had put so much into getting the project going in the first place, where left crushed and defenceless against the politicians’ story that there was simply no alternative to the cuts. He remarks on how easy it was for all the hard work that had been put in giving parents the confidence to come together to work for improving things for disabled children and their carers to be destroyed in a matter of moments.

Also driving Kushner in his campaign was his experiences at Croxteth Comprehensive school in Liverpool, where he had been a teacher during Maggie Thatcher’s infamous reign in the 1980s. Croxteth had been one of the most deprived areas in the country, and the school was scheduled for closure. The parents and teachers responded to the news by occupying the school and taking it over. Three years later they won their campaign, and the school was saved. In 2009 Kushner attended a reunion of everyone, who had been involved in the occupation. One of those he met was ‘Sean’, who had been ‘a cute, mischievous’ boy of 11 when it all happened. Sean was now forty, and had just come of the drugs he’d been on for the past 22 years. He went through one of the photographs showing the other kids, who were at school during the occupation. At least seven of these children were now dead.

The Kushner’s state that the story that the cuts are necessary is extremely flimsy indeed, and compare it to Joe McCarthy’s tactics during the Communist witch-hunts in the US. McCarthy’s evidence of Communist infiltration was just as a extremely flimsy. At meetings he claimed to have a list of Communists, waving a bunch of papers that were supposed to have their names. In fact, he had no such list and in many cases those papers were completely blank. This tactic nevertheless cowed the press and much of officialdom into blandly accepting his specious claims. The Coalition, and Labour politicians like Alistair Darling, who also took on board the supposed necessity for the cuts, similarly have little real evidence to back up their claims, and are resorting instead to scare tactics. This, unfortunately, has been remarkably effective, with the even the victims of the cuts, like the parents in the above meeting, unable to rebut the arguments. It has left the nation defenceless against an austerity programme several times more severe than previous retrenchment programmes. The book is their response to these specious claims, and has arisen from their own campaign against it, which has led them to speak up and down the country, including in my own home town of Bristol.

It’s an excellent book, and I hope to post a full review, giving some of their arguments against the cuts in due course.

What strikes me now, having posted about the BBC’s right-wing bias, is the Kushner’s description of the way the BBC has promoted the line that the cuts are necessary. They note that there are numerous economists, who have stated that the cuts are not necessary, and that growth, when it occurs, will wipe out the debt. These other voices are either totally ignored by the mainstream media, or else relegated to a footnote. The Kushner’s wrote to some of the journalists and programme managers pushing this line, like the BBC’s economics editor, Stephanie Flanders, and Evan Davies. In her report for 9th of September 2011, Flanders claimed that the poor economic growth from which the country was suffering was due to good weather, the Japanese tsunami and the royal wedding. When she was asked why she didn’t mention that the slump in retail sales and manufacturing along with the redundancies caused by the cuts were also having an effect, and that consumer confidence was at an all-time low, Flanders gave the following reply:

‘We were providing the explanation provided by the ONS, the independent statistical body. If this was not emphasised yesterday, that was simply because there were other things to focus on in a 2.5 minute package, and the broad political and economic arguments about austerity are now so well understood by our viewers’. As Private Eye responds, when given similar brush-offs, ‘So that’s alright, then’. The Kushners note that her role in the BBC was news analysis, not reporting. Her actions in simply regurgitating the ONS’ view was more in line with her previous job as advisor and speechwriter to Larry Summers. They also note that she had also worked with the US treasury secretary as he led the deregulation of the banks, that ‘unleashed the whirlwind of mortgage-backed securities, credit default swaps, sub-prime mortgages and over-leveraged banks that sit behind the whole debt issue’.

Barry Kushner also states that they attempted to make their points known by writing into the BBC and the Guardian, sending a series of emails and taking part on phone-ins on the radio. They stated repeatedly in their correspondence and telephone calls that ‘although the BBC’s coverage reflected the political consensus it did not reflect the broader economic analysis represented by numerous economists and people on both sides of the political spectrum… We begged the question, doesn’t the BBC have duty to do this?’ They received the following reply from a senior executive at BBC News:

‘The Editorial Guidelines state that we strive to reflect a wide range of opinion and explore a range and conflict of views so that no significant strand of thought is knowingly unreflected or under-represented. However, reflecting a broad range of views is not the same as giving equal weight to all shades of opinion and nor are we required to give totally comprehensive coverage.’

They state that this attitude appears to be shared by journalists, even when they know that their analysis is incomplete. They wrote a letter to Evan Davies after he interviewed Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey. This, they state, was far more severe than anything he had dished out to Danny Alexander, George Osborne or the other government ministers. They wanted to know why this was so, and why Davies had prevented McCluskey from elaborating on his argument and why he had not subjected government ministers to a similarly intensive grilling. As an example, the Kushners state they wanted to know why ministers were not required to explain the significance of the low level of national debt and borrowing on their planning for the cuts? The Kushners have already made the point that despite the hysterical claims of the politicos, the national debt is at its lowest for 200 out of 250 years. The argument that somehow these cuts are necessary to pay of this massive national debt is nonsensical.

Davies replied: ‘I personally think there are arguments to be made for not dealing with the deficit at the moment. Indeed there are arguments for monetising it too. But these need to be set out by those who assert them, not by me.’

To which they comment: ‘So Evan knows the answers, but won’t tell us what they are? Aren’t journalists supposed to use their knowledge and experience to ask more intelligent, searching questions?’ From the book’s description about the way Davies prevented McCluskey from developing his arguments further, it’s actually worse than that. Davies clearly knows the opposing arguments, but not only does he not feel it is his job to present them, he is actively obstructing those who do.

Commenting on my last post about BBC right-wing bias, Anna listed a number of BBC journalists with right-wing connections, like Nick Robinson, who used to be part of the Union of Conservative Students. It’s clear from reading Who Needs the Cuts that the BBC, like much of the rest of the media, is actively promoting the Coalition’s flimsy message that the cuts are somehow necessary almost unquestioned. The book notes that both Andrew Marr and John Humphries have started interviews with politicians stating that the cuts are necessary, ‘but..’, and that this political message is so prevalent that it has turned Question Time into a ‘cutsfest’. The executives at the BBC and their Tory allies won’t suffer from the cuts, however, although the Tories are dangling the prospect of freezing the license fee and privatisation in front of the Beeb to make it come to heel whenever it appears to get a bit uppity. The people who really suffer are us, including disabled children and their families, and the deprived kids being denied a proper education, and left to die of drugs and squalor like those Barry Kushner taught in Croxteth. They’re the real casualties. And the Beeb won’t be reporting on them any time soon.

The Kushners lament that we are going back to Maggie Thatcher and her policy of cuts in the 1980s, though without the massive opposition she faced – they were also active on marching against her – or even Spitting Image. It was in the 1980s that I remember the issue of the Conservative bias of the news media was raised with a vengeance. One of the best comments on it was ‘News of the World’, by the Clash, now used as the theme music for the Beeb’s satirical news quiz, Mock the Week. If we’re going back to the ’80s, we may as well enjoy some classic rock. Enjoy!