If You Can’t Defend Chris Williamson, You Can’t Defend Jeremy Corbyn

Support the Mass Lobby of Labour’s Disputes Committee - Tuesday July 9^th  Reinstate Chris Williamson Now

First they came for Tony Greenstein, then Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone as well as near misses such as Naz Shah and Richard Burgon.  The they is the Jewish Labour Movement, Israel’s Trojan Horse inside the Labour Party. 

By their own description the JLM is the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labour Party.  A party of segregation, which has pledged not to uproot any settlements, hostile to non-Jewish asylum seekers and the author of the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinian refugees. The JLM is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation which funds the very settlements which destroyed the two state solution that the JLM purports to support.

Jeremy Corbyn instead of standing up to Tom Watson’s demand to re-suspend Chris Williamson once again gave way. John McDonnell went one worse giving Chris the same advice he had given to Ken Livingstone which was to apologise ‘because Jews are a very forgiving people.’ Apart from the anti-Semitic stereotype in the above statement it demonstrates just how far McDonnell has moved away from anti-racism and anti-imperialism. In other words, those who supported the gunning down of unarmed demonstrators by Israeli snipers in Gaza over the past year should be appeased once again.

And what was Chris Williamson supposed to apologise for?  The following statement:

"The party that has done more to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party.

I have got to say I think our party's response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion… we've backed off far too much, we have given too much ground, we've been too apologetic...

We've done more to actually address the scourge of anti-semitism than any other political party. Any other political party. And yet we are being traduced.”

I defy anyone to explain how the above is anti-Semitic. It is complete fakery. McCarthyist nonsense.  Chris Williamson was clearly saying that Labour has been too apologetic in the face of false allegations of anti-Semitism.

Jewish Chronicle story

Today’s Sunday Times has lurid tales of rifts between Corbyn, McDonnell and Diane Abbot.  It is impossible to know whether this is true or not however there is no doubt that Corbyn’s tactics have been crazy and self defeating.

Corbyn chose to stand firm on the wrong issue – instead of rebutting the false allegations of anti-Semitism he caved into them and repeatedly apologised whereas he did himself untold political damage by refusing to accept a second referendum and making Labour a party of Remain.

Tom Watson bullied Yvonne Davies from standing for the Council for having opposed a BNP-style march

The fact is that Labour gained just 13% in the European elections, defeated even by the Lib-Dems.  Corbyn’s idiotic strategy let the Lib Dems come back and have been responsible for historically low levels of support.  The support at the 2017 General Election has been frittered away in a bout of little Englandism. Labour could have been the party of Remain and Reform of the EU and pulled the rug from under Tom Watson.

Brexit was the policy of the European Right.  Leaving meant abandoning a form of capitalism that has at least incorporated minimum social standards such as the Working Time Directive in favour of a completely unregulated form of capitalism, red in tooth and claw, best epitomised by Donald Trump’s statement that anything, including the NHS, was on the table for a trade deal.

It was on the fake allegations of anti-Semitism that Corbyn should have stood firm against Watson and the rest of Labour’s right. Why no mention of their support for May’s ‘hostile environment policy’ that led to the Windrush scandal?

The racist leaflet of Phil Woolas that  Tom Watson supported

It is inexplicable, given Tom Watson’s racist record that Corbyn has kept a sullen silence.  In Tory lies, Lib Dem lies , Phil Woolas and a mystical shaman of truth Watson described the High Court’s decision to remove Phil Woolas as an MP as ‘one we will all regret’. Watson stated that:

Watson leapt to the defence of 'poor Phil' Woolas and his racist election campaign

‘I’ve lost sleep thinking about poor old Phil Woolas and his leaflets.’ He felt ‘like a piano has been dropped on my head. It is the most brutal truth of all – the realisation that you are on your own in politics.‘

Watson wasn’t the only one to defend an MP whose election agent mapped out an election strategy which was explained in an email: ‘“If we don’t get the white folk angry, he’s gone.” There was John Mann, another proponent of fake ‘anti-Semitism’.

Corbyn’ tactical stupidity dates back to the 1970’s under Tony Benn when the Labour Left effectively allied with Enoch Powell and the Tory Right to oppose membership of the then Common Market.  It led to the isolation and defeat of the Labour Left then.  Unfortunately Corbyn has been too stupid to learn any lessons from that defeat.

This nationalist nonsense was the product of Communist  Party nationalism, who directed the economic strategy of the Labour Left and what in essence was the desire of the Soviet Union to keep Europe weak. It was also a useful way of the Labour Left avoiding any confrontation with the Wilson government over the social contract and the attack on working class conditions.   Defeat in the referendum led to Benn being switched from Trade and Industry to Energy and a major defeat for the Left.

If the Right are able to pick off Chris Williamson then the Corbyn project is effectively at an end. We have to defend Chris Williamson and try and put some steel in the backbone of Labour’s NEC.  If Watson and Labour’s racist right get away with the expulsion of Chris Williamson then Corbyn’s head will be next.

Momentum, led by the unelected Jon Lansman is no longer on the left.  Lansman’s attacks on Chris Williamson and Jewish Voice for Labour demonstrates that he has thrown in his lot with the Right.  Those who refuse to see it will live to rue the day.

In a poll by Labour List on whether Chris should be readmitted to the Party, over 10,000 members voted by 61% to 31%   in his support.  It is essential that next Tuesday there is as large a lobby of Labour’s NEC as possible to tell them that they represent only themselves if they refer Chris’s case to the National Kangaroo Committee.

Tony Greenstein