The Time has Come to get rid of Brighton Council Leader Warren Morgan

Warren Morgan Provided Theresa May with ammunition at Question Time today

It was less than two weeks ago that I wrote an open letter to Warren Morgan, a bitter enemy of Jeremy Corbyn and a paid up supporter of Progress, the Blairite group in the Labour Party.  Open Letter to the Lying Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Warren Morgan

Letter in Brighton's Argus responding to Warren Morgan

‘Anti-Semitism’ has been the favourite weapon of the Right in the Labour Party for the past two years, not because there is any genuine anti-Semitism in the Labour Party but because it is a useful means of attacking the Left and supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists.  Ironically, the main victims of the ‘anti-Semitism’ purge have been Jews like Professor Moshe Machover, Jackie Walker and myself.  Jews have always been the foremost opponents of Zionism, even before the Palestinians, because anti-Semitism was seen as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.  The anti-Semites told Jews they didn’t belong in non-Jewish society and the Zionists agreed to get out.

Warren Morgan is happy to provide the Tories, the tabloids and Theresa May with weapons to attack Labour with

Isaac Deutscher, the biographer of Leon Trotsky, in his Non-Jewish Jew and Other Essays (pp. 66/7) explained how:

‘the great majority of East European Jews were, up to the outbreak of the second world war, opposed to Zionism... The most fanatical enemies of Zionism were precisely the workers, those who spoke Yiddish... they were the most determined opponents of the idea of an emigration from Eastern Europe to Palestine... in the idea of an exodus, from the countries in which they had their home and in which their ancestors had lived for centuries, the anti-Zionists saw an abdication of their rights, a surrender to anti-Semitism. To them anti-Semitism seemed to triumph in Zionism which recognised the legitimacy and the validity of the old cry ‘Jews get out’. The Zionists were agreeing to get out.’

The anti-Semitic far-Right today is enthusiastically pro-Israel and pro-Zionist - what is there not to like about this racist anti-Arab society?

What is abundantly clear from the expulsion of Moshe Machover is that Zionists don’t like to be reminded of the times when they praised the Nazis and the Nazis praised them.  To tell the truth about that period of history is now, in itself, anti-Semitic!

This false and fake use of ‘anti-Semitism’ is not only dishonest but can only result in an increase in anti-Semitism, which the Zionists are quite happy about.  If you tell people that if they oppose Zionism and what Israel does to the Palestinians is anti-Semitic, then some people will say ok, I’m an anti-Semite.  If you tell people that they have a choice between supporting Israel and supporting the Palestinians but that the latter means supporting anti-Semitism and hating Jews then some people will make this false choice

In my open letter I showed not only how Morgan lied about there being anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial at the Labour Party conference but he also lied last year about spitting at the Labour Party AGM.  He was prepared to drag through the mud an entirely innocent member of the Labour Party in order to have elections to a new Brighton and Hove Executive cancelled because his faction were as unpopular as he is.

The level of anti-Jewish racism in West European society is minimal compared to Roma or Muslims yet the Labour Right is uninterested in this form of racism

In every single country, Eastern and Western Europe, anti-Roma racism is above 37%, similarly for anti-Muslim racism it is 29% and above.  In only two countries, Greece and Hungary, anti-Semitism as high. 

The hypocrisy about fake anti-Semitism with the redefinition of anti-Semitism, not as hatred or hostility to Jews but as hostility and hatred of Israel as a racist state is best evidenced by the Global Attitudes Survey of Racism in Europe.

In Britain some 7% of people harbour anti-Semitic attitudes of one kind or another.  By way of contrast 45% have negative opinions of Roma and 28% about Muslims.  In other words anti-Muslim racism is 400% higher and hatred of Gypsies is 650% higher, yet we don’t hear an inkling about other forms of racism.  Why?  Because Zionism is an integral part of the British alliance with the United States and the United States pays Israel over $4 billion a year as part of its defence, i.e. war budget.  To oppose Israel is to oppose the alliance with US imperialism.

The same is true throughout Western Europe.  In the Netherlands just 4% have negative opinions about Jews compared to 37% about Roma and 35% about Muslims.  Nor is it merely a question of statistics.  Synagogues in Britain are never attacked and have never been attacked since the 1960’s when fascists associated with John Tyndall’s Spearhead engaged in arson attacks.  Mosques in Britain are regularly attacked, including being firebombed.  Roma are the subject of being banned in pubs, discriminated against in schools and of course subject to police harassment and eviction.  Yet we never hear one word from hypocrites racists such as Warren Morgan because they too are complicit in the eviction of anti-Roma racism.

Warren Morgan had no authority whatsoever to threaten to stop the Labour Party conference meeting in Brighton.  He alleged anti-Semitism but of course he didn’t attend the Free Speech on Israel meeting which he labelled anti-Semitic.  He was happy to take at face value the propaganda attacks of his Israel supporting friends, like Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement, a man who was all but accused of perjury in the Employment Tribunal case of Fraser v University College Union.

It was good enough that his Zionist friends had attacked it, as they do all manifestations of opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitic.

In reality of course it is the Donald Trumps, the Viktor Orbans and alt-Right White Supremacists like Richard Spencer who combine anti-Semitism and support for Zionism.  It is no surprise that Spencer, an open neo-Nazi, who became famous for his ‘Heil Trump’ rally, defined himself, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 2 as a White Zionist.

Morgan was in effect attacking the whole Labour Party conference as anti-Semitic.  Why else would he propose to ban it?  He deliberately provided  Theresa May, who is on the political ropes with ammunition at today’s Question Time, the first after the Party conferences.  The time has come for Warren Morgan to be deselected, deposed as leader of the Labour group and invited to rejoin the Lib-Dems from whence he came.

Tony Greenstein