This is another message I got from the organisers of the Arise Festival of left-wing ideas. They’re organising an online meeting on the 31st May 2023 about defending our right to resist from the highly authoritarian and illiberal legislation that was used to arrest the anti-monarchy protesters at the coronation.
The shameful rushing through of anti-protest legislation in the run-up to the Coronation – & how police treated protesters during it – starkly illustrate how a deeply unpopular Government has had a major authoritarian shift on top of years of attacks on our democratic rights. As John McDonnell noted yesterday, “There’s a comprehensive assault on basic civil liberties – the right to strike, right to protest peacefully & right of journalists to report without arrest.. Time has come for a new movement to defend our civil liberties.”
Yours in solidarity, Matt Willgress , Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas (via Labour Assembly.)
Our Right to Resist
Major online rally. Wednesday May 31, 6.30pm. Register here // Retweet here & spread the word.
John McDonnell MP // Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP // Kate Osborne MP // Lord John Hendy KC // Zita Holbourne, BARAC // Myriam Kane, Black Liberation Alliance // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) & Momentum NCG // Rob Poole, Strikemap // Chris Peace, Orgreave Truth & Justice Campaign // Hasan Patel, Young Labour/ / Fran Heathcote, PCS President // Alex Gordon, RMT President // Video message from Shami Chakrabarti.// Chair: Christine Blower // & many more tba.
The deeply unpopular Tory Government has had a major authoritarian shift, with a new assault – on top of years of attacks – on our basic civil liberties and democratic rights. As part of the growing opposition to this, we are bringing together a wide range of voices to stand up for our right to resist and say no more.
Opening Arise – An Online Festival of Left Ideas 2023. ‘
The Guardian posted a piece yesterday reporting that our shambolic, authoritarian leader in the Labour party has purged yet another group. Starmer seems to be trying to steal some of the Tories’ clothes as the leader of a patriotic party. Under Maggie Thatcher, the Tories draped themselves in all the imagery of traditional British patriotism – Union flags, references to Maggie’s hero, Winston Churchill and the Second World War. The 1987 Conservative general election film featured black and white footage of Spitfires zooming around while an excited voice declared ‘It’s great, to be great again’. Except she didn’t make us great. She nearly wrecked the country economically and institutionally while declaring she was. Starmer’s clearly seen how that worked, and wants to do it for the Labour party. Hence photos of him stood with a Union flag parked in a corner somewhere.
Now he’s passed another internal regulation preventing constituency Labour parties from affiliating to the anti-monarchist group, Republic. He justified this by stating that he was a patriot, and that was why he believed in a series of left-wing policies. Well, for now, at least, until he’s told otherwise by Murdoch or his donors. But the same could be said of Republic. Patriotism could be construed as wanting the very best for one’s country. If you adopt that point of view, then Republic are patriots in that they believe the country can be improved by ditching the monarchy.
But who are Republic anyway?
I admit, I’m a royalist, and so I don’t know anything about republican and anti-monarchist movements. The last such organisation I heard about was MAM – the Movement Against the Monarchy, who came and protested the Maundy Thursday service in which the Queen dispensed Maundy money several years ago at Bristol cathedral. I hadn’t even heard of Republic until Starmer acted and the Groan reported the issue. My guess Starmer is afraid that Labour would get embroiled in any controversy that flares up about the planned anti-monarchist demonstrations at the coronation tomorrow if it’s found that these organisations are connected to the Labour party in some way. But it’s still an attack on Labour grassroots democracy.
I realise many people, especially the older generation, strongly object to anti-monarchist demonstrations. This was especially true of the older generation who fought and served in the Second World War. Several of Mum’s older friends had done so, and had the privilege of receiving the Maundy money from Her Maj several decades ago. They were bitterly disgusted by the demonstration by MAM. But democracy says you tolerate opposing viewpoints. You might find Republic deeply offensive, but that shouldn’t deny individual parties the right to affiliate them. That’s their business, not Starmer’s. Although he did justify it by saying it was just putting into action regulations passed two years ago preventing local Labour parties from affiliating to organisations proscribed by the NEC. And boy, is there a list! It includes Jewish Voice for Labour, Sikhs for Labour, pro-Palestinian groups and so on. Any group that gives David Evans a fit of the vapours and causes Thatcherite apparatchiks to clutch their pearls.
There have always been anti-monarchists in the Labour party. When Clement Attlee and the great Labour government of 1948 came to power, the saw themselves in the tradition of a long series of working class radicals like Tom Paine, the author of Common Sense, which argued against the monarchy and aristocracy and supported the American Revolution. Back in the 1980s there was Willie Hamilton, who hated the monarchy as well as much of the British establishment. I remember all the jokes about him. On one of the Saturday morning radio panel shows, the contestants were asked to guess what was happening from a sound clue. You heard a swishing sound, then a scream. The panel’s fun answer was ‘the Queen knighting Willie Hamilton’. I haven’t heard of Republic, I haven’t heard of anyone affiliating to Republic, and I haven’t heard of anyone being put off voting Labour by Republic. I guess some of the radical London councils may have, but they’ve hardly caused a national panic.
This is Starmer trying to turn the Labour party into the Tories Mark 2. It’s more proof that he’s an authoritarian who’s totally unfit to rule. If does this in Labour, what will he do in government?
I went to the online meeting last night on restoring Labour party democracy staged by Arise and the Labour left. I didn’t spend very long there, as sometimes I get too irate at what’s being said – not at the speakers, but at the problems they’re talking about. And the major problem facing democracy in the Labour party is Starmer. He and the NEC are doing everything they can to purge and silence socialists in the party. The most glaring example of this is his deselection of Jeremy Corbyn, a man whose position as party leader Starmer isn’t fit to fill. But there are other cases where he’s deselection sitting MPs and senior party officials over the heads of local constituency parties and the wishes of ordinary Labour party members. And one of the most blatant and toxic examples of this, after Corbyn, is his removal of someone Leonard as head of the Scottish Labour party.
Leonard had aroused right-wing ire by being too left. Even before his removal the NEC and the Labour right had been trying their damnedest to undermine him. The crunch finally came, however, when someone in the House of Lords and a group of Labour party donors told Starmer that they wanted him gone or they would take their money elsewhere. New Labour are corporatists, and when their masters in industry say ‘Jump!’, they say ‘How high?’ And Starmer duly got rid of Leonard and replaced him with someone more pliable.
This does not bode well for the future of the Health Service, as Stalin has among his advisers people from the private healthcare companies. He got touchy when asked about them, and declared that he wouldn’t answer questions on his advisors. Well, the time is long past when we should be questioning politicians on the help they’re getting from the private sector. When Blair slithered into power he was surrounded by a host of lobbyists and advisors from private healthcare companies and even American private prisons, all keen to influence his government. And the result was over a decade of corporatist government that left the people of this country worse off but made Blair and his backers rich. George Monbiot describes this sorry state in his book Captive State, and Bremner and the Long Johns tore into Blair and his corporate cronies in their book You Are Here.
Corporatism is a major problem in America. It’s led to an erosion of trust in politicians, as the majority of Americans believe that once they get elected, their politicos will abandon their election platforms to do what their corporate backers want. A Harvard study declared that because of this, America was no longer a proper democracy but a corporate oligarchy. And some conservatives were also outraged at it. A Republican businessman in California wanted to have a law passed stipulating that politicians gaining from corporate donations should wear the badges of the companies funding them, like racing car drivers and other sportsmen. The major problem in America is a judgement in the 1980s stating that corporate donations are free speech, and thus permissible under the law. Over here it seems to be pretty much a straightforward reaction by industry to the unions funding the Labour party. And just as this corporatism is undermining democracy in the Labour party, it also caused people to leave the Tories. Because the Tory grassroots felt their concerns were being ignored in favour of the corporate big boys and girls.
Starmer is just going to drag us back to the corporate sleaze of the Blair years.
There might be some hope, though. One of the speakers, Nabeela Mowlana, pointed out that Starmer hadn’t killed young people’s enthusiasm for socialism and Corbyn’s and his vision. And there was Blair’s spectacular failure when he tried to stop Red Ken standing as mayor of London. The man Private Eye dubs ‘Leninspart’ stood as an independent, and beat Blair’s candidate.
Starmer is not just destroying democracy in the Labour party, he’s also destroying the wider hopes of the British people, the majority of whom backed Corbyn’s policies for a mixed economy and strong welfare state. We do need to organise and resist him.
Last week Starmer blocked Corbyn from standing as a Labour party MP, very much against the wishes of his Islington constituency party. This is just the latest in Stalin’s attack on democracy in the Labour party, and the grassroots are organising against it.
‘EVENT: Let the Members Decide – For Labour Party Democracy.
Online. Wednesday April 5, 6.30pm. Register here // Share & invite here // Retweet here to spread the word.
Initial speakers confirmed: Jess Barnard, Labour NEC (pc) // Neil Findlay, former MSP // Rachel Garnham, CLPD // Nabeela Mowlana, Young Labour Chair // Mish Rahman, Labour NEC (pc) // Jon Trickett MP .
An online meeting facilitated & streamed by Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas in light of the growing concern about the erosion of democracy in the Labour Party. All other pages listed on social media are kindly helping to promote the event.‘
This is very interesting. Al-Jazeera, the Arab news agency that broke the story about Shai Masot and his attempts to influence the selection of the Tory cabinet years ago to benefit Israel, has reported that a group of 100 scholars have written to the UN urging it to reject the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The report begins
‘More than 100 scholars have urged the United Nations not to adopt the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism due to its “divisive and polarising” effect.
In a statement published on Thursday, the 128 scholars, who include leading Jewish academics at Israeli, European, British and American universities, said the definition has been “hijacked” to protect the Israeli government from international criticism.
They also called on the UN to instead rely on universal human rights instruments and different resources, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.
“Let us be clear: We wholeheartedly welcome the commitment of the UN to fight anti-Semitism and commend the UN for its vital efforts in this regard,” the statement said.
“What we object to and strongly warn against is that the UN would jeopardise this essential fight and harm its universal mission to promote human rights by endorsing a politicised definition that is instrumentalised to deter free speech and to shield the Israeli government from accountability for its actions.”’
Precisely. Kenneth Stern, one of the scholars who drew up the definition, and a Zionist himself, has testified that it is being misused to stifle debate and reasonable criticism of Israel. That’s why the self-appointed leaders of the British Jewish establishment, the Jewish Chronicle, the Chief Rabbis and the Board of Deputies of British Jews went absolutely berserk at the Labour party under Corbyn’s leadership a few years ago. Corbyn had committed the unconscionable crime of being pro-Palestinian and the Labour party had not adopted the I.H.R.A. definition, and so they went frantic with the rest of the British media and political establishment painting him as something he most definitely wasn’t: anti-Semitic.
In fact, a range of Jewish academics and legal experts, including a former Scottish appeal court judge, have condemned the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism. A far better definition of anti-Semitism is that used by the League of Anti-Semites, the late 19th century German hate group that coined the term: hatred of Jews as Jews, regardless of religion or any other dimension.
But the article is also interesting because it contains this photo by Reuters’ Henry Nicholls of a Jewish protester outside a meeting of Labour’s NEC. I didn’t see this on the news, and I bet you didn’t either. Corbyn had a great deal of support amongst the Jewish community, brave people who have been especially vilified in the most disgusting terms by the zealous defenders of Zionism.
I’ve just got this email through from Mish Rahman, a left-wing Labour MP, opposing Starmer’s diktat against Labour MPs joining picket lines and the sacking of Sam Tarry for doing so.
‘Tell Keir Starmer – Back Workers Taking Action!
Get involved: sign here / share here / retweet me here.
Hello David
The recent sacking of Sam Tarry for joining an RMT picket line was a low point for Keir Starmer’s time as Labour Leader, but it’s clear that the majority of Labour members, affiliates & supporters stand with those workers taking action during the deepening cost-of-living crisis.
I’m writing to ask you to join me and over 5000 others in clearly saying that all Labour MPs must back our unions and that Sam Tarry’s sacking should be reversed. Please take 30 seconds to:
Yours in solidarity, Mish Rahman, Labour NEC member on behalf of the Labour Assembly Against Austerity.
PS: Thank you to everyone who has backed my campaign to be re-elected to Labour’s NEC. You can read my launch article here.’
Well, I’ve done so, giving as my reason the fact that the Labour party was partly founded by the unions to defend trade unions and strikes, and that the first working people elected to parliament were the Lib-Labs. They were members of the Liberal party representing the trade unions. Banning MPs from joining picket lines betrays this working class activism.
If you feel the same way, perhaps you’d also like to sign the petition.
I got this newsletter from Bristol’s elected mayor, Marvin Rees, via email yesterday. In it he lays out his policies for Bristol and how his administration is working to stamp out housing discrimination against people on benefits. He also promotes the Labour candidate for the Southmead ward in the forthcoming council by-election, Kye Dudd. The mayor writes
‘I hope you’re keeping well.
I’m writing to you regarding the Council’s budget – including our plan for homes – and the upcoming election. If you have any questions, then please do get in touch.
On Tuesday, our budget came to Cabinet for sign-off. Drafting this budget was always going to be difficult. The circumstances are challenging: a decade of Government austerity and the pandemic which has simultaneously reduced council revenues and increased the need for council services. This has resulted in us needing to find £19m worth of savings in the General Fund.
These are challenges facing councils across the country. Across Britains major cities budget gaps average £30m and range from £7m to £79m. In Bristol we’ve worked hard to protect our frontline services by delivering these savings by reducing the Council’s internal expenses, such as through selling off buildings and leaving unfilled posts vacant. As a result, we remain the only Core City to still maintain the 100% Council Tax Reduction Scheme, which means Bristol’s most vulnerable don’t have to pay any Council Tax. We have protected all of our libraries and children’s centres, our parks, and our social care plans that enable people to stay in their homes for longer. Budget decisions are never easy, but I’m proud that we have managed to find a way to prioritise helping the worst-off and our transition to net-zero.
It’s important that our General Fund is not taken in isolation, because it is only part of the budget. We have also set the Housing Revenue Account which commits £1.8bn of investment in housing delivery, and a separate investment budget for social housing. This is one of the most ambitious plans in the country and will enable the Council to:
Build over 2,000 council homes by 2028, and 300 more every year after
Invest an additional £80m in to retrofitting (making council homes more energy efficient, saving them money and reducing Co2 output) bringing funding to a total of £97m.
£12.5m to upgrade council tenants’ bathrooms improving quality of life and improving water efficiency in thousands of homes
£8.7m investment into communal areas
£350k for council tenants’ in financial difficulties
£13.5m funding to adapt homes to make them more accessible
Building affordable, quality homes is one of the single most significant policy tools we have for shaping life chances and the carbon and ecological cost the planet will pay for meeting our population’s needs. Housing remains at the forefront of our priorities.
Benefits discrimination
Cllr Tom Renhard, Cabinet Members Homes and Housing Delivery, recently put forward a motion to stamp out anti-benefits discrimination in Bristol. If you have tried to rent a home in Bristol, you will be familiar with seeing advertisements listed as ‘working professionals only’, meaning people on benefits aren’t allowed to rent the property. This is discrimination – plain and simple – and we’re committed to eradicating this practice from Bristol.
In the past few years, we’ve been expanding our Landlord Licensing scheme, meaning rogue and slum landlords are no longer allowed to rent out properties in Bristol. This has driven up standards where it’s been in place and we intend to expand the scheme to cover the whole of Bristol. This, combined with our anti-discrimination motion, means that landlords who discriminate against people on benefits won’t be allowed to let properties in Bristol.
It will take some time to expand the licensing scheme citywide so in the meantime, we will be carrying out other policies to help renters. The Council will now assist tenants’ efforts to take discriminatory landlords to the appropriate authorities, will run a public awareness campaign on tenants’ rights, and will create a local action plan to formulate policies to build on these in future – among other things.
Southmead by-election
As former councillor Helen Godwin stood down in the new year, a by-election has been called to fill her vacant seat in Southmead. I am delighted that Kye Dudd has been selected as our candidate for the seat. Kye has been a stalwart of the trade union movement, working for the Communication Workers’ Union for fifteen years, and has served as the Cabinet Member for Transport, Energy, and Connectivity – leading our work to expand our bus and active travel infrastructure, develop our work on mass transit, and decarbonise our energy systems. More recently, he has been working with Empire Fighting Chance, a boxing charity who work with some of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable young people in our city.
He will be running on a campaign of:
· Investing in Southmead’s youth services
· Investing in Council homes
· Protecting local green spaces
· Making Southmead safer for all
· Supporting the community-led regeneration of Arnside’
It ends with the statement that it is vitally important to get Mr Dudd elected and the email address Southmead Labour party if I wanted to be involved.
I broadly support mayor Marvin, as I think he has done a good overall governing the city. He has tried to remain impartial about the controversy over the wretched statue of Edward Colston, despite his justifiable hatred of it as a man of colour. I believe the policies outlined here are excellent. My problem is with the Labour party as it stands under the leadership of Keef Stalin. Starmer has done everything he can to purge the left and turn it into another version of the Tories. One of his favoured MPs, the vile Rachel Reeves, added insult to injury a few days ago when she described those who have left the party in disgust at Starmer’s factionalism and treachery as ‘anti-Semites’. As I’m sick of saying, the people Starmer and his collaborators in the NEC have smeared and purged are most definitely not Jew-haters. They are decent people, many of them with proud records of fighting racism and anti-Semitism. About four-fifths of those he’s thrown out are actually Jewish, decent, self-respecting people, often the victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and vilification. They are not ‘self-hating’. But then, truth means nothing to the liars of the right, the British media and political establishment, and the Israel lobby.
I had a series of emails from the Labour party over the past week or so asking me if I would care to campaign for Mr. Dudd and help get Boris out, and Starmer in. Well, my health at the moment prevents me from getting out much. Southmead isn’t my ward, and the buses from where I live have become very unreliable, so I simply won’t be able to join them. And obviously I do want to get Bozo out.
But I don’t want Starmer in.
I see no difference whatsoever between him and Johnson. Both are lying, treacherous right-wingers with precious little real ability to govern and an intense contempt for the working class. They both want to privatise whatever has been left, including the NHS. I don’t trust him to restore the welfare state to anything like the level that’s needed, nor to strengthen the trade unions. He won’t give workers much needed rights at work. And he definitely won’t do anything to improve public services by nationalising them, despite the obvious fact that they’re decaying as we look under private ownership.
And the voting public aren’t enamoured of Starmer either. I’ve got the impression that at the moment Labour’s haemorrhaged support to the Greens so that they’re almost neck and neck with Labour on the local council.
Now I do support Marvin and hope Mr. Dudd wins the council election when it comes.
But I very much do not want Starmer to get anywhere near No. 10 and definitely want him out as leader of the Labour party.
Mike over at Vox Political has a piece about the recent investigation of Hasan Patel, an elected representative of Young Labour to the National Labour Party. This young chap was informed by the NEC yesterday that he was being investigated once again, five months after he was first investigated. His crime was that he had stressed young folks’ disillusionment with the direction the party was moving. He tweets
“5 months ago, I received an email from Labour’s NEC putting me under investigation for the crime of stressing young people’s disillusionment with the current direction of our party. Now I’ve been given a *second* notice of investigation. I have to speak out.
I’m the young elected representative on any National Labour Party body as Young Labour’s under 18 officer. It just breaks my heart that I am being treated this way. I don’t deserve it. Surely this energy is better placed fighting the Tories and actually fighting for young people.
At this point I don’t know what to do but I know I will not stay silent or give up. I demand to hear from the party leadership about why I’m being silenced. Why am I being singled out? If anyone can help, please reach out to me. Solidarity.”
Mike says of Mr Patel:
“I am familiar with Hasan Patel and his activities, both as a Young Labour representative and as an individual. I consider him to be a principled young man of excellent character.” He goes on to ask if this isn’t a case of targeted harrassment.
I’d say it was. And I have to say I’m not surprised. To quote the late, great comedian Bill Hicks, ‘Well, pull me up a chair”. Keef was embarrassed by Young Labour at the Conference. He tried to stop them appearing because they were going to support the Palestinians, which Keef, a 100 per cent Zionist, thinks is anti-Semitic, as do Keef’s cronies and supporters on the NEC. I also note that Mr Patel Twitter handle describes him as a Corbynista. This is, no doubt, another reason for the NEC’s ire. In fact, as we’ve seen, Young Labour generally are very left, and, unlike the rest of the party, actually have a large membership. As we’ve seen generally, this is in line with the move leftward of young people’s move in both the US and over here. Jeremy Corbyn was massively popular amongst the young in the same way as Bernie Sanders had considerable youth support over in the Land of the Free. And it’s not hard to understand why. They’re sick of mountainous student debt and an uncertain future of unemployment and job precarity without the support of a proper welfare system and an NHS that’s slowly being privatised. All inflicted to give even greater profits and tax savings to the bloated rich by a Thatcherite political establishment. An establishment largely supported by middle aged Conservatives, who did very well themselves from the welfare state but, following the Leaderene, were all too keen to kick it away from the next generation. It’s the people mad right-winger Alex Belfield addresses when he rants about entitled, university-educated left-wing whippersnappers.
Mike says that this is a free speech issue, and he’s absolutely right. And I also wonder if there isn’t a touch of Islamophobia there. Hasan is an Islamic name, and was the name of one of the two sons of Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law. Ali was the fourth caliph to succeed the prophet, and is revered by Shi’a Muslims as the first Imam, the founder of their branch of Islam. Under Keef Islamophobia in the Labour party has been rising to the point where 1/3 of Muslim members have claimed they have suffered Islamophobic abuse. Keef, however, has been completely uninterested in punishing it, possibly because it involves his supporters in the party bureaucracy. And the mighty Tony Greenstein has noted that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, one of the Zionist organisations responsible for the campaign of smears and expulsions of critics of Israel, on its web page states that most anti-Semites are Muslims without a trace of supporting evidence. And Keef has also done precious little about the abuse and bullying of Black and Asian MPs and activists. It therefore wouldn’t remotely surprise if such racist prejudice wasn’t a factor in the targeting of Mr. Patel.
Keef, of course, cannot tolerate any kind of political independence or criticism. Like Stalin, he has to be praised and obeyed with being purged the punishment for any refusal to do so. It looks like he’s trying to get his revenge for Young Labour successfully defying him at the Conference. He tried to have Young Labour’s chief purged, as I recall. This didn’t go his way, so he and his supporters are trying to find new targets.
As someone else who is being investigated by the NEC, Mr Patel has my heartfelt support. People like him should be nurtured and encouraged by the party, because young people are its future. But as they largely don’t support Keef, he’s going to purge them, just like he picks on his other opponents and critics within the party. It’s short-sighted, of course, as it shows that Keef’s once again determined to destroy the Labour party if he and his faction can’t control it. It also shows how personally vindictive and authoritarian Keef is, qualities which make him utterly unsuitable for government.
I wish Mr Patel all the best and that this investigation will be dropped shortly.
Just as I hope more people will get the message that Starmer is absolutely disastrous as a leader, and treat him and his coterie accordingly.
My thanks to the tweeter Leftworks, who posted a piece showing just how ignorant one of the charges the Labour party has made against me actually is. In the list of quotes from my article, which they presumably find anti-Semitic, is the saying, ‘Two Jews, three opinions’. This is, I presume, to demonstrate how my article repeats negative, anti-Semitic stereotypes. But it’s a Jewish saying, not something that has been contemptuously applied to them by gentiles. And I think I first came across it in a paper written by two rabbis for a conference on preserving democracy called by President Roosevelt c. 1942. The rabbis argued that Judaism is innately democratic based on the fact that the Jews have a long tradition of dispute and discussion. The Talmud, Judaism’s second holy book apart from the Bible, contains the records of debates between the great rabbis and sages. These also include minority decisions, or end ‘and so they disagreed’. I used the quote in the article to show that Jewry has never been the monolithic entity that all too often anti-Semites have portrayed it.
The saying is, apparently, so anti-Semitic, that it’s been used as the title of at least two books by Jewish authors. Leftworks found one, which was a compilation of 20th century American Jewish quotations. These obviously come from a variety of different viewpoints, thus demonstrating the pluralism of American Jewish opinion. It’s therefore a fitting title. Leftworks said “Apparently this is the quality of evidence that anonymous accusers have levelled against him. Seriously, this is part of the case against him. Someone actually wrote this charge down.”
When I did a Google search, I came up with a book on the Jewish Community School Network, launched in 1980, which was intended to unite Jews of different religious persuasions according to the doctrine of klal Yisrael, the unity of the Jewish people. So the author of this book also had no problem with using the saying as the title. See the Amazon page here:
This is the level of intelligence of the people accusing me and others of being anti-Semites. No wonder David Evans’ NEC is such afarcical, grotesquely unjust mess.
I received a reply today from the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit replying to my emails calling for them to disclose just who is accusing me of anti-Semitism and bringing the party into disrepute, as would be required in a court of law. Their short reply confirms what I knew already: that they weren’t going to tell me.
“Hello, Thank you for your response. I can confirm the complaint has not yet been considered by the NEC as we are in the process of gathering information, part of which is getting your response to the issues raised. Whilst we have shared copies of the evidence with you, it is not part of our process to share who raised the complaint.
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding, Governance & Legal UnitThe Labour Party”
This is unsatisfactory, and I have therefore sent them the following reply laying out my criticisms of their refusal.
“Thank you for your reply to my inquiries about the complaints against me and the identity of my accusers. I very much regret that it is not part of the complaints process to reveal this information. This casts severe doubt on the justice of the proceedings and the ability of the investigative process to establish the truth. For many people, this invalidates any possible claim the party may make that these investigations have been fair.
There is also the question of the personal or institutional bias of the accusers. Some of the organisations that have led the mass denunciations of innocent members of the Labour party have been Zionist, rather than just simply Jewish. I particularly note the role played by the Jewish Labour Movement within the Labour party. This is a rebranding of Paole Zion, a Jewish Labour organisation whose name means ‘Workers of Zion’. It is, I understand, an explicitly Zionist organisation. The involvement of such groups in these accusations raises the questions of their own motives. For example, do such groups or individuals understand and appreciate the distinction between Judaism and Zionism? Do they also understand that one may justly criticise Israel, or indeed any other state and political ideology without wishing to harm to its people or siding with terrorist groups who do? These are questions I feel should be answered. I understand that the party wishes to protect their identities, but I would like the following questions answered regarding the political and organisational affiliation of my accusers. If I am not allowed to challenge them directly, then I would like to be able to challenge them through you.
Yours sincerely,”
I doubt very much I shall get anywhere with this, but the criticism and complaints should be made and publicised to expose how sham and fraudulentthis whole process is.
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