How is it that a Council with 2/3 Black and Asian Councillors Voted for a Tory Resolution on 'racism'? This is institutionalised Uncle Tommery
On Saturday 27th July Big Ride for
Palestine, which raises money for sports equipment for children in Gaza, was
prevented from using a park for their rally in Tower Hamlets. This was
because of a decision by Tower Hamlets Council to adopt the IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism which conflates opposition to Zionism and the
Israeli state with anti-Semitism.
The
truth of why the Council had banned the rally came out a week later as a result
of a Freedom of Information request by PSC.
Council
officers found it easier to lie than tell the truth. The council told
The Big Ride that the event’s “political
connotations” meant that the rally could not
go ahead in the borough “without problems”.
Council staff feared there was a “real
risk” that the event might breach the IHRA definition of antisemitism
because of references on the Big Ride’s website to apartheid and ethnic
cleansing.
When considering how to explain the decision, one council official said
it would be wise to “avoid the anti
Semitism aspect ref their website as this could open a can of worms and come
back to bite us”. Indeed it did!
On
September 19th 2018 the largely Labour Council, just 4 of whose
councillors are not Labour, unanimously passed a motion adopting not only the
38 word IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism but all its 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of
which reference the State of Israel. In other words the IHRA has nothing whatever to do with
anti-Semitism.
On 14th
November a petition was handed into the Council asking for the policy to be
amended to include a provision that
"It is not antisemitic,
without additional evidence, to suggest that it displays anti-Jewish prejudice
to criticise the Government of Israel; or to criticise Zionism as a political
ideology; or to describe any policy or law or practices of the state of Israel
as racist, including acts leading to Palestinian dispossession as part of the
establishment of the state; or to define Israel as an apartheid state; or to
advocate Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel." (2) Support
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza by flying the flag of Palestine at the
Town Hall in the week before and after the UN International Day of Solidarity
with the Palestinian people on November 29th.
This was
unacceptable to Mayor John Biggs because the whole point
of the IHRA is to defend Zionism not defeat anti-Semitism. This caveat would
drive a coach and horses through the definition. Biggs rejected this contemptuously stating
that:
there can be no qualifications or caveats to a
definition of racism, particularly where they specifically relate to a single
group or country
And Biggs is
right. There can be no caveats over a definition of racism. But whatever else it is the IHRA is not a
definition of racism.
Biggs is not
only a racist he is an idiot. Racism applies to individuals not countries. You can't be racist towards an abstract noun. The idea that we couldn’t have criticised Chile under
Pinochet or Spain under Franco because we might be considered racist is a
testament to the intellectual poverty of this former financial analyst from
the City of London.
The IHRA consists of over 500 words
whereas the Oxford
English Dictionary definition of racism: ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ is only 6 words. As Antony Lerman wrote
in the Independent this week:
‘I warned
that adopting the IHRA would shut down Palestinian protest – I’ve been proved
right, which describes what happened when Tower Hamlets implemented the
decision.’
Tower Hamlet’s Council was led by a radical left Mayor Lofthur Rahman until 2015. Rahman was elected
Mayor in 2010 and again in 2014. This proved too much for the corrupt local New
Labour machine backed by Eric
Pickles, who subsequently became Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel.
Soon after his reelection Rahman was accused of a series of electoral
offences and removed by an election court presided over by Richard Mawrey. It was
what I called a ‘Democratic
Coup in Tower Hamlets by an Unelected Judge’.
In the Guardian Richard
Seymour and Ashok Kumar wrote about how The smear campaign against Lutfur Rahman is
an insult to democracy. 37,000 people voted for him yet an unelected Tory judge had removed him.
Giles Fraser in ‘The Lutfur Rahman verdict and the spectre of ‘undue
spiritual influence’ wrote
that among the reasons for removing Rahman from office, was that he had exerted
“undue spiritual influence” on some
sections of the electorate, specifically Muslim voters .
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| Cartoon in Punch portraying the Irish as monkeys |
The legislation under which this ‘crime’
had been committed was the 1883 Corrupt and Illegal Practices
Act. The idea of “undue spiritual influence” was
introduced to constrain the influence of the Roman Catholic clergy on what the
English establishment at the time took to be the ignorant and impressionable
minds of the Irish proletariat. Instead of impressionable Catholics it was now
Muslims who were likely to be stirred by religious passions. Mawry was
explicit about this. “Time and again”, he said
it was stressed that the Catholic
voters were men of simple faith, usually much less well educated than the
clergy who were influencing them, and men whose natural instinct would be to
obey the orders of their priests … This principle still holds good … [A]
distinction must be made between a sophisticated, highly educated and
politically literate community and a community which is traditional, respectful
of authority and, possibly, not fully integrated with the other communities
living in the same area … [I]t is the character of the person sought to be
influenced that is key to whether influence has been applied....
[i]t would be wrong … to
treat Tower Hamlets’ Muslim community by the standards of a secular and largely
agnostic metropolitan elite”.
If this is not racist then words have lost all meaning. Muslims were not
as sophisticated as a white ‘secular and largely agnostic metropolitan elite’. Anti-Irish racism has been transformed into anti-Muslim racism.
John Biggs is only Mayor thanks to a racist
Deputy High Court Judge and Tory Lord Eric Pickles.
What is remarkable is that the resolution
was passed unanimously by Tower Hamlet’s Council on the proposal of its two Tory members. What kind of miserable and corrupt Uncle Toms
does Tower Hamlets have , and two-thirds of its members are Black and Asian,
that they pass a resolution on racism moved by its Tory members. The same Tory Party that introduced the ‘hostile
environment’ policy which led to the deportation of the Windrush generation.
I have written to every Councillor in
Tower Hamlets asking them to explain themselves. The answers should be
interesting! For anyone who wishes to email them their email addresses are below.
Tony Greenstein
See Critical Legal Thinking Why
Muslims Can’t Trust the Legal System: The Lutfur Rahman Judgement and
Institutional Racism
Open Letter to
Tower Hamlet’s Councillors How do you sleep at night?
In Israel’s Ha’aretz
newspaper, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and veteran
opponent of the struggle against Apartheid was quoted as saying that
"I have witnessed the systemic humiliation of Palestinian men,
women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation
is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and
insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid
government."
In the Jerusalem
Post of November 28 2017 Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela was
quoted as saying that Israeli Apartheid was worse than in South Africa.
On 3rd April this year,
Ronnie Kassrills, the Jewish founder of Umkhonto We Sizwe, the ANC’ military
wing, wrote in the Guardian
of how when he ‘fought South African apartheid’ he saw ‘the
same brutal policies in Israel’
These veterans of the anti-Apartheid
struggle in South Africa are likely to have a somewhat greater understanding of
what apartheid and racism means than Tower Hamlet’s councillors.
Perhaps it was the existence of
Jewish only roads or the separate entrances in the hundreds of checkpoints – one for
Palestinians and another for Jewish settlers – that impressed them. Or maybe it was the military
collaboration between Israel and Apartheid South Africa or the
existence of hundreds of Jewish
communities in Israel which under the Admissions
Committee Law 2011 bar Arabs from living in them. Possibly they were
referring to the religious edict
of the Chief Rabbi of Safed, backed up by dozens of other rabbis, forbidding
Israeli Jews from renting homes to Arabs.
What may have clinched it for Mandela, Tutu
and Kassrills was Israel’s unique ‘democracy’ whereby 600,000 Israeli Jewish
settlers have a vote whereas the 3.5 million Palestinians whose land they have
stolen do not.
It’s difficult to know what it was that most
impressed these fighters against Apartheid, a system that was no different in
principle to Nazi Germany.
To describe the Israeli state as an apartheid
state is a statement of fact. It has nothing to do with anti-Semitism unless
you believe that most or all Jews are supporters of apartheid in which case it
is you who is anti-Semitic.
Yet this was the pretext for Tower Hamlet’s
refusal to host The Big Ride for Palestine and closing Altab Ali Park to them.
What makes this racist act of Tower Hamlet’s Council all the more despicable is
that you desecrated the name of the person after whom the park was named. Altab
Ali was the victim of a racist murder just as surely were the 551 Palestinian
children after Israel’s blitzkrieg in 2014. The Big Ride aimed at providing
support for the children of Gaza yet you decreed that support should be given
to the murderers rather than the victims.
It is unbelievable that in Tower Hamlets, where
38% of the population are Muslims according to the 2011
census, a resolution was unanimously passed in September 2018
supporting the IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism.
The IHRA has
been heavily criticised, not only by prominent lawyers and academics but even
by the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern. In your desperation to claim your
allowances did you even bother to read up about the criticisms of this fake ‘anti-Semitism’
policy?
‘Not only is there now
overwhelming evidence that it’s not fit for purpose, but it also has the effect
of making Jews more vulnerable to antisemitism, not less.’
‘poorly drafted, misleading, and
in practice has led to the suppression of legitimate debate and freedom of
expression.
Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge, who is also Jewish said the IHRA ‘fails
the first test of any definition: it is indefinite. He described it as
‘placing the historical, political, military and
humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestine
beyond permissible criticism.’
The noted human rights barrister Hugh Tomlinson QC said
the IHRA ‘lacks clarity and comprehensiveness’ and that it has
‘a potential chilling effect on public bodies’
‘“The definition was not drafted, and was never
intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus... It was
never supposed to curtail speech on campus.”
Yet without a moment’s thought you
passed the IHRA ‘definition’ the result of which was to ban a charity bike ride
whose purpose was to raise funds for children in
Gaza, who have been subject to a starvation blockade for the past 12 years.
What I find incomprehensible is that
Tower Hamlet's Black and Asian councillors voted for a motion on racism proposed by Tower Hamlet’s Tory members. That is like putting the Moors Murderers in charge of a children’s
home.
30% of Tower Hamlets originate in
Bangladesh. Do I need to remind you that in pursuit of free market economics
and under successive Tory (and Liberal) governments, over
40 million people died of famine in Bengal under the British Raj?
As that well-knownTory racist, Winston
Churchill, remarked:
‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with
a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like
rabbits."
If there is one thing that
distinguishes the Conservative Party it is an unashamed defence of an Empire
whose depredations were justified in the name of a higher civilisation. Above
all else it was racism which oiled wheels of the British Empire.
It is unbelievable that over 30 Black
and Asian members of Tower Hamlet’s Council could vote for a Tory motion on
racism. If I hesitate in calling them Uncle Toms it is only
because Harriet Beechwood Stowe’s Uncle Tom is a noble character.
Last November a petition was
submitted to the Council asking for it to be made clear that the IHRA
definition would not infringe on the right of the Palestinians to criticise
Zionism and Israeli racism. Tower Hamlet’s white and racist New Labour mayor
John Biggs contemptuously rejected this proposal. Biggs stated
that
‘there can be no qualifications or caveats to a
definition of racism, particularly where they specifically relate to a single
group or country.’
Leaving
aside the novel idea that you can be racist about a country, a definition which
is 500+ words long is no definition. The Oxford English
Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism: ‘Hostility
to or prejudice against Jews’ is just 6 words.
It is clear
after the banning of the Big Ride for Palestine that the adoption of the IHRA has
had the effect of branding support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic. I don’t
know whether self-respect is a word that you understand but but if you do still
possess any then you will ensure a speedy repeal of Tower Hamlet’s support for the
IHRA.
Yours
sincerely,
Tony
Greenstein
We the undersigned petition the council to We ask
the Mayor and the Council to: (1) Adopt the following caveat to the IHRA
statement of 19 September. This safeguards our right to campaign for Palestine
in Tower Hamlets.
Tower Hamlets Council, many councillors and our Mayor have welcomed many
visitors from Jenin in Palestine since the formation of the Tower Hamlets Jenin
Friendship Association in 2002.
We are concerned that on 19th September the Labour dominated council passed, unopposed, a Conservative motion to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, along with its highly controversial examples.
We are concerned that on 19th September the Labour dominated council passed, unopposed, a Conservative motion to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, along with its highly controversial examples.
As the far-right grows in Europe and in Britain, it is vital we stand against the poison of antisemitism and all forms of racism, wherever they emerge.
However, some of the examples contained within the definition adopted by the council may be used to prevent our community from expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for equality and human rights. Moves to suppress solidarity have been made by other London Councils.
This Petition ran from 02/10/2018 to 14/11/2018 and has now finished.
53 people signed this Petition.
Council response
Tower Hamlets Council voted unanimously to agree the IHRA definition,
and alt 11 accompanying examples, on 19h September 2018.
While I appreciate that there are strong views on this issue over thirty countries, including the UK and twenty four El-J member countries, have adopted the IHRA's definition of anti-Semitism along with 130 councils across the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary.
The petition asks us to amend a decision we took in September, in effect to adopt a caveat to our adopted definition of anti-Semitism. In my view, there can be no qualifications or caveats to a definition of racism, particularly where they specifically relate to a single group or country.
I deeply worry about what message it would send to apply a caveat to a recognised definition of antiSemitism to reference the actions of Israel, as the petition seeks to do.
It is entirely right and proper to criticise the actions of Israel, and to show solidarity with the people of Palestine, but to do so as a qualification to a definition of anti-Semitism would be wrong in my view.
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