A Simple Question to the Chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Anti-Semitism
After reading John Mann MP attack Shami Chakrabarti,
who produced a Report on Anti-Semitism and Racism in the Labour Party in June,
I thought I’d write him an open letter.
John Mann is the thuggish, boorish loudmouth who all but assaulted Ken
Livingstone a few months ago, because Ken had told the simple unvarnished truth
about Zionist relations with the Nazis over 80 years ago.
 |
| known as Westminster's rent-a-mouth MP |
Despite making many concessions to the Zionists,
including the ludicrous decision to brand the word ‘Zio’ as anti-Semitic and
seeing nothing wrong in the Labour Party’s appalling tradition of supporting Zionist
settler colonialism in Palestine, the Report didn’t give them everything they
wanted. In particular the Report was
good in two areas: it knocked back the
deliberate distortion of the conclusions of the MacPherson report that a racial
incident should be defined by the victim.
It was never meant to apply to false victims, like Zionists, when they
are the perpetrators not the victims and it was specific to institutionalised
racism in Police, i.e. where Police refused to initially accept that an
incident might be racial.
The other positive recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report
was that people like myself who are suspended from the Labour Party are
entitled to know the charges against us, who made them and have all the details as soon as
possible. Also that the decision to
suspend should be taken out of the hands of the permanent staff of the Labour
Party and placed in the hands of people who are elected. In other words that the principles of natural
justice should prevail.
Unsurprisingly the Zionist lobby didn’t like the idea
of natural justice. After all in Israel if
you are a Palestinian you can be locked up without trial for years on end. In Ireland when Britain introduced internment
without trial in 1972 there was uproar.
In Israel it is the norm when you deal with Arabs. Even dissident Jews get ‘administrative
detention’. In Israel the normal method
of interrogating a Palestinian is to use torture. Naturally the Zionists had difficulty understanding
concepts such as knowing the evidence against you as soon as possible!
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| Ruth Smeeth, the obnoxious Zionist MP for Stoke-on-Trent who faked an 'anti-Semitic' incident at the press conference to launch the Chakrabarti Report: being criticised for working with the Telegraph was 'anti-Semitic' |
If my complaint was that Chakrabarti hadn’t come out
and said that anti-Zionism was not anti-Semitic the Zionists complained that
she should have said anti-Zionism was anti-Semitic! Thus when the Zionist lobby barked, Mann
jumped because he doesn’t want to lose all those conferences and freebies that
come with the title of Chairman of the All Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism.
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| Heavy criticism of Mann by an Employment Tribunal |
I therefore thought that it might be helpful if I were
to write to John and ask him if he could help me understand why he had changed
his mind!!
Enjoy.
To: John
Mann john.mann.mp@parliament.uk
Dear John Mann,
I am
confused by your utterances on the Chakrabarti Report and Shami Chakrabarti herself. Perhaps you would be so kind as to enlighten
me?
In the
Daily Mail you are quoted
as having not only accused Jeremy Corbyn of 'appalling hypocrisy' for having made Ms
Chakrabarti a peer, but you told LBC radio that Ms Chakrabarti had 'sold herself cheaply' for a Lords seat. You thus implied that she had crafted or
changed her report, in the sense of ignoring evidence of for example anti-Semitism,
in order that she could do Corbyn’s bidding and exonerate the Labour Party of anti-Semitism.
If what you say is correct, Ms Chakrabarti did all of this
in order that she could obtain a peerage.
What you are really saying is that Chakrabarti prostituted herself in
return for a peerage. In other words she
corruptly obtained a peerage. It is, as
you will understand, a pretty serious, if not defamatory allegation.
You will, no doubt,
understand that I am somewhat perplexed.
On the Labour List site at the beginning of July you wrote an article, John
Mann: The anti-Semitism report gives a route out of this mess which was effusive in
its praise of the Chakrabarti report.
You said:
‘I met Shami Chakrabarti
as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism… to suggest
some key issues I believed required address. I am delighted that every single
one of the proposals I made is included in her report.’
On the 30th June in JewishNewsonline,
an article ‘From
‘hugely significant’ to ‘vague’: mixed reactions to Labour anti-Semitism report’
says that
‘The report was
lauded by John Mann, chair of the APPG against anti-Semitism and a strong
critic of Corbyn, as “hugely significant”. …. “This is now the equivalent of
the legal handbook and in there is everything any lawyer needs to take action. …
It means there’s a system in place that’s far, far more robust than anything
else. The party leader has endorsed it so the national executive committee will
endorse it.”
You are further reported as saying that ‘the report included everything
he [i.e. you] had recommended and added: “This will not be pleasant reading for
Ken Livingstone.’
You understand my dilemma. On the
one hand the Chakrabarti Report contains everything you ever wanted and on the
other hand Ms Chakrabarti has sold herself cheaply. To whom has she sold herself? You?
The only explanations I have for your comments are the following:
i. You are
a self-publicist who will say anything to gain attention or a quote in the
newspaper, what Matthew Norman described as a ‘rent-a-mouth MP’
ii. You are
a loudmouth
iii. You are
an attention seeker
iv. Your
principles are flexible and you are, in your own words, willing to sell
yourself to the nearest bidder
v. That because
the Israel/Zionist lobby in this country has changed its mind about the Chakrabarti
Report, you have also changed your mind.
Because Chakrabarti’s proposals for a disciplinary process incorporates
the principles of natural justice and because this inevitably mean that the anti-Semitism
allegations will not stand up, you no longer support it.
vi.
There is of course another explanation, that of the
Employment Tribunal in Fraser
v University College Union which held that:
Both [you and Dennis McShane MP] gave glib
evidence, appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions…. Mr Mann… told us that the leaders of the
Respondents were at fault for the way in which they conducted debates but did
not enlighten us as to what they were doing wrong or what they should be doing
differently. … when it came to anti-Semitism in the context of debate about the
Middle East, he announced, “It’s clear to
me where the line is …” but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to
locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches.
Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not
to his liking.
Perhaps
you could enlighten me as to which explanation(s) best describes the reason for
your recent comments regarding Chakrabarti?
Yours
sincerely,
Tony Greenstein
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