Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP for Brighton Kemptown Defies the Board of Deputies 10 Pledges & Speaks on the Same Platform as Expelled Labour Member, Tony Greenstein
UPDATE
Labour MP’s platform rally with Tony Greenstein &
For the first time in more
years than I can remember, Brighton & Hove Trades Council organised a May
Day demonstration. It was held at the Level. The theme of the demonstration was
the Police,
Crime & Sentencing Bill which will make illegal all demonstrations that
cause a ‘nuisance’ or are in any way effective. It is a clear threat to the
rights of workers You will be able to hold demonstrations in future only if
they are ineffective. A telling commentary on capitalist democracy today.
Howard Beckett - Unite Left Candidate for General Secretary
The main speaker was
Howard Beckett, the left’s candidate in the Unite General Secretary election.
There were a host of other speakers including Mark Abel from UCU, Sue from the
Campaign to Save Brighton University’s One World Nursery, Matt Webb, Secretary
of the Trades Council, Lloyd-Russell Moyle MP for Brighton Kemptown, Steve from
Save the NHS campaign and myself.
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| Tony Greenstein (left) and Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP speaking at Trades Council's anti-Police Bill rally |
After the rally the Stop the
Bill Campaign organised a march to Brighton Clocktower via the Police Station
chanting ‘Sussex Police are not innocent’
amongst other slogans.
Sue speaking from the Campaign to Save the One World Nursery
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who was sacked from Sir Starmer’s shadow cabinet has been extremely weak and wobbly on the Zionists’ fake anti-Semitism campaign. Indeed when I was suspended from the Labour Party in 2016, Brighton & Hove District Party voted to oppose my suspension. Lloyd however, as Chair of the Party, wrote secretly to right-wing General Secretary Iain McNicoll urging that my expulsion be sped up. I obtained his correspondence from a Subject Access Request. Although Lloyd’s name had been redacted it was not difficult to work out the rat who wrote it!
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When a Facebook post of Lloyd’s from 2009 was found saying:
“The
point is people who are form Jewish descent/Jewish but are not Zionist is that
the two are not automatic that you can be proud of being Jewish but realise
that idea of inheriting/claim a land that you may have never visited or seen
but have a ‘heritage’ claim for is not progressive in its very nature...
Terrorism feeds of
violence, that is why it is only Israel that can stop the violence, it was the
National Party in South Africa that had to make the first steps.”
All of these comments were
true but instead of standing by them Moyle apologised
and withdrew his comments saying that:
“I
have now deleted these posts and recognise why they were offensive.”
The Jewish Chronicle quoted
Moyle as saying that he would be contacting the Jewish Labour Movement for
talks, adding:
“I
am completely and unreservedly committed to supporting Keir Starmer and Angela
Rayner’s pledge to rid the party of antisemitism.”
This has been typical of
the cowardice of the Campaign Group ‘left’ which has consistently retreated on
its support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism.
I therefore pointed out in
my speech that the respected Human Rights Watch last week described
Israel as guilty of the crime of Apartheid. This followed the declaration
by Israel’s main human rights organisation B’Tselem in January that Israel was
an apartheid state from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
In an immediate response
to HRW’s 231 page report, the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, which describes itself as the ‘voice of British
Jews’ ‘condemned’
HRW’s report and defended Israeli Apartheid by pointing to a few token Arab
ambassadors, judges and professors, as if this
somehow negates the demolition of Palestinian homes, the destruction of Palestinian
villages, the segregated education sector and the refusal
of Israel to vaccinate the 5 million Palestinians living under its military
rule.
It was the Board of Deputies which accused the Labour Party of ‘anti-Semitism’. A campaign which led to the overthrow and then suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and hundreds of expulsions and suspensions in the Labour Party including myself. It should be clear even to the most stupid member of Momentum or the Campaign Group of MPs that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was concerned about one thing only – Corbyn’s support for the Palestinians. It had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
It is therefore to be welcomed
that Lloyd defied the McCarthyist 10
Pledges (in fact Commandments) of the Zionist Board of Deputies.
When I spoke (see above) I
recalled that the last time I spoke at a Stop the Police Bill demonstration I
had only just been released from Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison where I had
been remanded as a result of the arrest of 6 supporters of Palestine Action who had intended to
redecorate Elbit’s Shenstone
factory of death where engines are manufactured for their killer drones.
At today’s march I laid
into the Labour Party which is led by someone who describes himself as a Zionist
(i.e. racist) without qualification. Starmer had originally intended to abstain
on the Police Bill as he had ordered Labour MPs to do on the Spy Cops Bill.
This was in order to demonstrate that the Labour Party, now it was ‘under new management’ would be a responsible
party and not challenge neo-liberal economics or imperialist foreign policy.
Speaker from Labour Party Black Socialists
It was therefore extremely
welcome to see hundreds of people at the rally, not only older trade unionists
but hundreds of younger people with a variety of posters and banners.
I also learnt from Sue who
spoke from Save One
World Nursery at Brighton University that their nursery is under threat of
closure. I have a very personal interest in this.
44 years ago I led the
campaign, as Vice President of Brighton Polytechnic Student Union, to establish
a nursery at the Poly. In 1979 we were successful. Now the contribution of
Brighton University's VC and Administration to women's equality and the
provision of workplace based child care is to abolish the nursery on grounds of
cost.
This outrageous decision
should not be accepted. Please sign the petition and join the campaign.
Tony Greenstein
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