Report – Labour Against the Witchhunt All Members Meeting 28 August 2021

LAW votes narrowly not to support setting up a socialist movement but votes to uphold No Platform for Fascists

Update

It would seem that the Spectator had a mole at the meeting! Its account is published here. It would seek that some sad nerd spends his time doing little else than attending the meetings of groups. This is the nerd in his own words and this is an interview with him in The Critic.

The most revealing comment is in his article Infiltrating the Left where he says:

'I was never a hateful person myself before I started doing this — but now, I despise these people and everything they do. I suppose hate rubs off

 Of course what mole doesn’t reveal is who is paying him and his relationship to the secret state.  My assumption throughout is that mole is a man.  

TG 

Introduction

LAW held its All Members Meeting last Saturday night with over 100 members attending. The agenda and a record of the decisions are here. This is a brief report on what took place.

The context of the meeting is a witchhunt unprecedented in its scope and ferocity in which Keir Starmer and his glove puppet David Evans have torn up all democratic rules and procedures. Regardless of the electoral cost, Starmer is determined to drive the left out of the Labour Party. Acting on behalf of the ruling class Starmer is determined that never again will a socialist and anti-imperialist gain control of the Labour Party.

Can you imagine what the press would make of the Labour Party if Corbyn had proscribed Progress, Labour First and the other scab organisations of the Labour Right. They would have cried ‘dictator’ from the rooftops. However attacks on the left meet with their approval – from the Mail to the Guardian.

When Starmer came to power he announced his intention to ‘root out the scourge of anti-Semitism’ despite the fact that what passed for ‘anti-Semitism’ was not hatred of Jews but hatred of apartheid Israel and the Zionist movement.

Starmer immediately declared that he was a Zionist, ie a racist ‘without qualification’. The subsequent issuing of reports by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group and Human Rights Watch declaring that Israel was an Apartheid State have had no effect on Labour’s racist leader.  On the contrary, whilst fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ he has quietly readmitted to Labour the Trevor Philips for whom Muslims are a ‘nation within a nation’ and who has described the adoption of Christian children by Muslims as ‘akin to child abuse’. There are some forms of racism that Starmer is perfectly happy with.

This is what 'Zionist Without Qualification' Starmer Supports

The mere mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ however was enough to send Momentum’s children running to nurse for fear of something worse. ‘Anti-Semitism’ was the evil by which all manner of deeds were done. So when Starmer wanted to be rid of Rebecca Long-Bailey, to whom he had felt obliged to offer the position of Shadow Education  Secretary, ‘anti-Semitism’ was the excuse to remove the last vestiges of the Corbyn left from the front bench.

The excuse was retweeting Maxine Peak condemning Israel’s Police for having taught the American Police the neckhold that killed George Floyd. Now whether this was strictly true was irrelevant. What is true is that the Zionist Anti-Defamation League boasted of having ‘trained 150,000 (US) law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers’ with the Israeli police.  The ADL has since taken this down but I quoted it here. Apparently this was an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy’. What Israel’s police were not teaching was respect for human rights!

Likewise when Jeremy Corbyn was suspended Andrew Scatterbrain, head of Momentum, complained that this ‘undermined the fight against anti-Semitism’. Scatterbrain didn’t get it that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations had been perfected to get rid of Corbyn even before he was elected as Labour leader.

The stupidity of much of the Labour left coupled with its cowardice has led to the present situation of automatic expulsions, where due process and natural justice have been abolished. LAW and its sister organisation Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed on July 20 for having called out the fake and spurious nature of the anti-Semitism allegations levelled by the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the main proponent of Israeli apartheid, the World Zionist Organisation which contains a Land Theft Division.

Although over 100 people attended the meeting and there were some good debates, it cannot be said that the meeting responded adequately to the needs of the hour. Partly this was because of the disarray of LAW’s Steering Committee whose 6 members are grossly unrepresentative of the organisation. LAW has had hundreds of new members since Starmer outlawed us yet 50% of the Steering Committee are members or supporters of the tiny Communist Party of Great Britain.

Now I have no objection to the group per se.  After all I have written for their newspaper the Weekly Worker for over 15 years, but they have a line on the Labour Party, that it was founded as a ‘united front of a special kind’ which is bonkers. The Fabians were amongst those that formed the Labour Party and they are and were an organisation of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Webbs and the Shaws.

The CPGB suggest that any attempts to build anything outside of Labour is doomed to failure. They follow what amounts to a rigid dogma, almost a theology.  I termed them the Catholic Church of the Left at the meeting! Regardless of changing circumstances they stick to the same line. Some 120,000 members of the Labour Party have already left in disgust at the behaviour of Starmer and they have nothing to say to them apart from stay in and fight!

The meeting was chaired by Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish woman who was witchhunted in  disgraceful wave of racism and betrayed by Jon Lansman when Jackie was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum  in the autumn of 2016.

Resist at the Rialto & Labour Left for Socialism

Two years ago, because of Zionist pressure on venues not to hire out venues to anti-Zionists we hired for 2 days the Rialto, a Brighton theatre whose owner has experience of supporting the Kent Miners and is unafraid of a few racist trolls.  Last time we put on a book launch for Bad News for Labour that Waterstones, under pressure from the Zionists had abandoned at the last minute.

This time we hiring the venue for 4 days and have a whole series of alternative events planned. from Sunday of the Conference to Wednesday. You can register for the events here. They provide an alternative to the controlled dissent of Momentum’s World Transformed. An outline of what is planned at Labour Party Conference is here.

A public meeting called by Defend the Left on 18^th September is planned with Ken Loach, Howard Beckett, Graham Bash, Esther Giles and other speakers. 

LAW has also participated, not without problems, in an organisation Labour Left for Socialism.  LLS has published a statement signed by 15 organisations, some of which, such as CLPD have effectively been complicit in the witchhunt.  Now of course people and organisations can learn the error of their ways, but the question unfortunately they haven’t.

After prolonged discussion LAW’s Steering Committee agreed to send two delegates to this organisation and to agree to the statement yet strangely enough LAW’s name has been left off the statement. What is even worse is that the statement contains the following weasel words. LLS ‘stand(s) in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.’ What this meant is that of the 3 proscribed Labour Party organisations LLS only supports one of those organisation, Socialist Appeal.

Because LAW and LIEN have been proscribed for their opposition to the fake anti-Semitism witchhunt and this statement effectively refuses to support them. Stan Keable, the CPGB secretary of LAW sent an email to (LLS) expressing his ‘disappointment’ with them.

When I saw this anaemic email I immediately sent a somewhat stronger email saying that:

‘it really is disgraceful that Labour Against the Witchhunt, one of the proscribed groups, has been deliberately left off the joint statement by Don't Leave Organise, that purports to oppose the proscriptions but instead introduces the following weasel words:

'We stand firmly against proscriptions, and stand in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.'

Unfortunately the co-Chair of LAW, CPGB supporter Tina Werkman took exception to my blunt words and at an emergency Steering Committee moved that I be removed as a delegate to LFS. My replacement has since decided not to take up his place as delegate, yet Ms Werkman, instead of proposing that I be restored as delegate has proposed that LAW just send one delegate, the CPGB’s Stan Keable. None of this was reported to the AMM meeting.

DISCUSSION OF MOTIONS

The first motion moved by the CPGB’s Kevin Bean welcomed the invitation to LAW and LIEN to participate in LLS without any criticism of it bar the fact that you can’t quote anyone who speaks in its meeting under the so-called Chatham House Rules. To me this seemed the least of its problems. No mention was made that Socialist Action, an ‘underground’ group which is part of the CLPD representation, had effectively tried to ensure that the group did not support those who did not go along with the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.

Tina Werkman moved an amendment putting this right and it was passed by 60-11 with the CPGB opposing.

The main vote however took place on the assertion in paragraph 2 that ‘LAW stands for unrestricted freedom of speech.’ I moved an amendment deleting ‘unrestricted’. I do not support free speech for overt racists, fascists, war criminals or organised scabs and I gave 2 examples. A meeting which socialists and miners from Kent NUM broke up in Brighton at the 1984 Tory Party conference. Apparently the CPGB would have supported the right of the scabs to freedom of speech despite using it as part of a campaign to starve the miners back to work.

The Board of Deputies has always opposed physical opposition to fascist anti-Semitism whilst at the same time condemning all opposition to Zionism and Israeli Apartheid

The Board of Deputies 

The other example I gave was of the 43 Group of Jewish ex-servicemen who, after they came back from the war in 1945, set about destroying the attempt of Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists to regroup by holding street meetings.  By 1950 the Union Movement was finished.  Interestingly for the benefit of Socialist Action, Red Labour, CLPD and others who are complicit in the witchhunt, the Board of Deputies, which today is so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ – vehemently opposed the 43 Group. I suggest that they and LAW’s Steering Committee read this excellent article. The British Jews who fought postwar fascism on London's streets

Despite the majority of the SC opposing my amendment it passed by 35-32 votes.

What I thought was a non-contentious motion calling for no confidence in Keir Starmer, was passed by 75 votes to 8. The only opposition coming from the CPGB! Quite why the CPGB should have opposed the motion is unclear. As far as I am aware they don’t yet support Starmer though perhaps this is a sign of what lies ahead!

The main debate was on strategy. The motion from the CPGB which called for god, mother and apple pie, received 40 votes.  It called on people to do what they are already doing.

What it didn’t do was offer any strategy to take on board the fact that over a hundred thousand members have already resigned from the Labour Party, that thousands of socialists are in the process of being expelled and thousands more show every sign of deserting the good ship Labour. To these people this motion offered nothing except rhetoric about ‘continuing to campaign at a grass roots level against bans and proscriptions, and countering the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against the left.’

The CPGB motion was supported by 5 out of 6, ie. 84% of the Steering Committee. I moved a motion, seconded by Brighton members Dave Hill and Paddy O’Keefe and a background strategy paper written by myself and Esther Giles. Although I didn’t oppose much of the CPGB motion the problem was that it could have been written anytime in the past 5 years.

What set the cat among the pigeons was points 8 and 9 of my motion:

8.           We believe that it is essential to create a socialist movement, that encompasses people inside and outside the Labour Party, which will keep activists in the Corbyn Project together, with a view to forming a distinct socialist party in the near future.

9.           We believe that the time has come when socialists in trade unions should argue for disaffiliation from a party that is now part of the neo-liberal consensus.

In other words I called for the formation of a socialist movement which encompassed both those in and those who have left the Labour Party. It did not call for the formation of a new party today but said that that should be on the agenda in the near future. 

Of course this was anathema to the CPGB for whom devotion to the Labour Party is an article of faith. Contemplating a break from the Labour Party is akin to commiting idolatory in the temple. It is heresy in any language.

Despite my fear of being cast into perdition, the CPGB motion obtained 40 votes to 31 for my motion.  In other words 44% of those voting agreed with me that it was not enough to call people to fight in a Labour Party where democracy has been abolished.

I think I can make one prediction and that is this debate will not go away. What is also obvious is that membership of LAW’s Steering Committee needs to be doubled. Whilst I have no objection to the CPGB having representatives on the Steering Committee, it is undemocratic for them to have effectively 50% of members when they are a small and tiny group. In other words they will have to win votes by argument not force of numbers.

Tony Greenstein

Can the left survive outside the Labour Party? Is it time to form a new socialist party?

Einstein remarked that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Is that also true of the Labour left?

The Left in the Labour Party is facing an existential crisis.  Can it survive?  Does it have a future in a party where democracy has been abolished? Where guilt-by-association is the modus operandi and where McCarthyism is the rule how can it operate other than by subterfuge?

The launch meeting of LAW - from right to left - Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Jackie Walker and Ken Loach

Tomorrow Labour Against the Witchhunt, which was proscribed by Starmer’s minions on 10 July, will debate these and other questions at an All Members Meeting.

If you are a member you are welcome to participate and if you are not then you can still joinand participate.

I have submitted a strategy paper which raises these and other questions.  It is clear that Starmer is intent on purging the left from the Labour Party. Unfortunately the left is still divided into those who are considering doing something and those who believe, like Dickens' McCawber, that ‘something will come up’. The largest organisation Momentum, which can barely be called on the left, has simply refused to fight the witchhunt. It believes that by keeping its head down it can avoid being targeted.

The proscription of LAW, Labour-in-Exile-Network, Socialist Appeal and Chris Williamson’s Resist is the beginning not the end. Almost certainly next on the list is the Labour Representation Committee, whose President is John McDonnell. Already many members of its Executive, such as Pete Firmin and Graham Bash, have been expelled or given notice of auto exclusion.

Jennie Formby on Twitter today forgets that she began the ball rolling and Starmer picked it up from her

But organisations such as the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy have done their best not to fight the witchhunt, despite a number of their own members having been targeted. CLPD is particularly invidious in this respect. When Pete Willsman, its veteran representative on the NEC was suspended, the CLPD completely disowned him even though he was setup by a far-Right Israeli racist. And this happened under Corbyn and Formby not Starmer.

CLPD has effectively been dead for many years. Its heyday was in the early 1980s with the Benn for Deputy Campaign and the campaign to elect the Labour leader (prior to 1981 the leader had been elected by the Parliamentary Labour Party).

LAW fringe meeting at Liverpool Labour Conference 2018 with Chris Williamson speaking and the late Militant Councillor Terry Mulhearn

Labour Left 4 Socialism

A new organisation, Labour Left for Socialism (formerly Don’t Leave Organise) made up a number of groups, including the Bakers Union (whose President Ian Hodson is on the brink of expulsion) and the Fire Brigades Union, whose President Matt Wrack is Chair of the LRC and also a candidate for expulsion, issued a statement ‘Labour Left Rallies To Reclaim Party As Democratic Force For Socialist Transformation’.

Unfortunately this is not true. Sectarians around the CLPD and Socialist Action, the undercover group that does not declare its presence, insisted on inserting a weasel worded clause which reads:

We stand firmly against proscriptions, and stand in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views. 

In other words it was only prepared to support Socialist Appeal, which was that part of Militant years ago which stayed inside the Labour Party. It doesn’t therefore support LAW or LIEN which were proscribed for opposing the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. It is for that reason that LAW, although signing up to the statement, found its name left off the initial signatories.

Momentum which was part of the DLO has since walked out.  Presumably the idea of fighting anything that Starmer does is too much for those who have inherited the mantle of Lansman. It was hoped that the victory of Forward Momentum over Lansman’s Momentum Renewal meant that Momentum might revert to a more activist stance but this has not proven to be the case. If anything things have gotten worse.

As it is Momentum is haemorrhaging members and an organisation which once boasted over 40,000 members is now believed to have less than 15,000 paying members, only a fraction of whom are now active. SE National Coordinating Group member Phil Clarke recently called a Brighton & Hove Momentum Zoom meeting. There was an attendance of 33, one of whom was me! In the days when we had physical meetings we would regularly get 60-70 and sometimes over a hundred attending. Zoom meetings tend to attract more not less people and at one time Brighton had some 1,500 supporters so if Brighton is anything to go by the organisation is in serious decline.

Corbyn’s failure to confront the Fake Anti-Semitism Campaign

If Jeremy Corbyn and those around him had understood that the fake anti-Semitism was about as genuine as a 9 bob note then Labour might be in government now. Instead Corbyn and McDonnell spent their time fighting the left and appeasing the Right. This culminated in the decision to oppose Open Selection, the only means of removing the scab Right in the PLP.

It was or should have been obvious that anti-Semitism was being weaponised. Even before Corbyn was elected, in August 2015, the Daily Mail ran a story about Corbyn being associated with a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. That story disappeared but other fake stories came and went, always without any discernible victims. Indeed one of the most remarkable things about the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations is that there never were any Jewish victims.

Graham Bash - Jewish member over 50 years in the Labour Party - on the brink of expulsion - this is what Starmer's 'antisemitism' campaign has led to

At least not unless you consider those 2 Zionist harridans – Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth. Not forgetting of course Ella Rose, the Israeli Embassy employee who became Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and a potential Oscar winner when she starred in Panorama’s Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

Why anti-Semitism?  Because it gave a certain moral righteousness to the Labour Right that they otherwise would have lacked if they had attacked Corbyn for opposing austerity. To some extent they ran with ‘terrorism’ but ‘anti-Semitism’ made the racists of the Labour Right feel good.  After all who doesn’t want to oppose anti-Semitism?

July 10th Picket of Labour NEC which proscribed 4 organisations

If Corbyn and his advisers had had their wits about them they would have sussed out the Board of Deputies immediately.

In its 250 year history the Board has never opposed anti-Semitism. It has always urged caution. When Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists began organising in the Jewish East End of London in the 1930s the Board urged that Jews turn the other cheek.

The only ‘anti-racist’ demonstration that the Board has ever organised was in March 2018 and that was against Jeremy Corbyn!  And who attended it?  Those well known anti-racists Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and Norman Tebbit, famous for his cricket test for Indians and Pakistanis.

The fact is that Zionism has never opposed anti-Semitism for the simple reason that they and the antisemites both agree that Jews do not belong in the countries they are living. As the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl observed in his Diaries (pp. 83/4), ‘The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies,”

When the fascists attempted to march through the East End of London in October 1936 the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle told them to stay indoors!

When Moseley decided, in October 1936 to march through the East End he was opposed by thousands of Jewish and non Jewish workers. Estimates range from 100,000 upwards. They were organised by the Communist  Party, the Independent Labour Party and the Jewish Peoples Council.  The Board of Deputies (& the Labour Party) were vehemently opposed. The Board told Jews to stay indoors and keep their heads down. As Harriet Sherwood observed:

The Jewish Board of Deputies and the Labour party were against confrontation. “Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march and from their meetings,” said the Jewish Chronicle. “Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping antisemitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew-baiters, keep away.”

Of course a party of nearly 600K members would have a few anti-Semites in it.  It had a hell of a lot more Islamaphobes in it too but no one seemed to be bothered about that. It also had, statistically some paedophiles in it but no one suggested it had a paedophile problem.

There was a time that the Labour Party had an antisemitism problem.  It was a problem of the Labour Right. Herbert Morrison, Labour Home Secretary during the war and grandfather of Peter Mandelson, was both a fervent Zionist and an anti-Semite. He also did his best to keep Jewish refugees from the Nazis out of Britain.

In October 1942 Morrison received a delegation of eminent churchmen and public figures such as Eleanor Rathbone and Lord Astor, asking him for visas for 2,000 Jewish children and the elderly in Vichy France. Morrison refused. Apparently anti-Semitism ‘was just under the pavement.’ A month later the Nazis overran Vichy France and these Jews were deported to Auschwitz. Morrison was said to doubt that there was a holocaust.[i]

On 31 December 1942 Morrison made it clear that although the Home Office might take a limited number of refugees ‘he could not, however, agree that the door should be opened to the entry of uncategorised Jews.’ [ii] Morrison believed that if the Jews were allowed to remain in Britain after the war ‘they might be an explosive element in the country, especially if the economic situation deteriorated.’[iii] In other words Morrisson’s real fear was of communist Jews. 

Yet Corbyn took the accusations of anti-Semitism personally instead of seeing them for what they were, part of a deliberate state destabilisation of the Labour Party. A radical, anti-imperialist pro-Palestinian leader of the Labour Party set off alarm bells not just in MI5 but in Tel Aviv and the CIA. The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was the answer.

‘Anti-Semitism’ today is the false anti-racism of the Right. Donald Trump attacked the Squad, the group of 4 radical Black Congresswomen, for ‘anti-Semitism’ whilst at the same time telling them to ‘go home’ .

Yet instead of rebutting these accusations and seeing them as coming from the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, eager to defend Israel, whose ‘sister’ party the Israeli Labor Party is now in coalition with the far-Right in Israel, Corbyn took them as genuine.

Corbyn, who had 30 years experience of pro-Palestine politics should have been aware of the fact that all Palestine solidarity activists are routinely accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ including Jewish anti-Zionists.  I doubt there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in Britain who hasn’t been accused of anti-Semitism. Yet Corbyn and McDonnell were oblivious to this.

Corbyn believed that he could appease the apartheid animal that is Zionism.  There was only one way to disarm the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks and that was by confronting it.  It is to his eternal discredit that Corbyn took the path of least resistance, betraying those of use who were his allies.  In the Labour Leaked Report he and his office are quoted on page 306 and 333 thus:

Well we were all expelled but was trust rebuilt?  Of course not. The Zionists simply demanded more victims and Corbyn and Formby supplied them.  Formby was very proud of how many socialists she expelled. She and Corbyn were too stupid to understand that the more people you expel the more credence you give to the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations. In essence they were running on a treadmill.  The faster they ran the faster it revolved.

Corbyn apologised and apologised.  Did it make him stronger or weaker? Well the answer is obvious. Just as I predicted the near victory in 2017 I also predicted the debacle of 2019.

Corbyn’s strongest supporter in Parliament, Chris Williamson was targeted by the Zionists and instead of supporting him Corbyn abandoned him. Ken Livingstone was abandoned for telling the truth that during the Nazi period the Zionists collaborated with and worked with the Nazis, especially in the 1933-39 period.  This is simply a matter of historical fact. The Zionists were the right-wing nationalists of the Jewish community and they agree with the Nazis that Jews did not belong in Germany or anywhere outside Palestine.

Seamus Milne & James Schneider

If Corbyn can be forgiven for not being clued up, this is not true of either of his closest advisors, ex-public school boys Seamus Milne and James Schneider. Milne in particular must have been aware of what was happening yet he stayed silent. The suspicion must be that this scion of the ruling class was not all he seemed.

Today there is no pretence that people are being expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’. But when Starmer was first elected he promised to ‘root out’ anti-Semitism. His first action was to declare, in an interview with The Times of Israel that he was a Zionist (i.e. racist) ‘without qualification’.

When I was the first Jewish person to be expelled Starmer took to Twitter to welcome my expulsion. That was the first time that I took notice of this apology for a personality. However I was expelled under Corbyn not Starmer.

Unfortunately Corbyn and Jennie Formby welcomed Starmer to their bosom despite him having been part of the chicken coup. Because Starmer used ‘anti-Semitism’ as his pretext much of the stupid Left (Momentum and CLPD) were fooled into believing everything was fine. Andrew Scattergood, co-chair of Momentum, even came out with a statement that

“the suspension of [Jeremy Corbyn] risks politicising and undermining Labour’s response to anti-semitism.” 

How more stupid can you get? The whole point of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was to get rid of Corbyn in the first place. With a left like this it’s no wonder that Starmer has had such an easy ride.

It probably still hasn't dawned on Scatterbrain that Jews in the Labour Party are now 5 times as likely to be expelled as non-Jews. This is the 'fight against anti-Semitism' yet Momentum stays silent.

Where to now

However we are where we are. The question is what next? The reformist left in the Labour Party, CLPD and Momentum, will be protesting their loyalty even whilst Starmer kicks them out.

However most Labour members don’t and never have accepted the fake anti-Semitism narrative. Some 120,000 at least have left the Labour Party and it is likely that another 100K or more will do so with the expulsion of Ken Loach.

It is also likely that not only will Starmer move to proscribe the LRC and CLPD and possibly even Momentum but that he will move against at least that part of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs who have at least given some indication of standing up to Starmer.

Although it is clear that many of the SCG are running for cover, 19 of them have signed a statement opposing the expulsion of Ken Loach. Which means that nearly half of them haven’t put their names to it. I emailed my own MP, Lloyd Russell-Moyle to ask why he hadn’t signed but I received no response. Lloyd has been so busy retreating from previously held positions that he hasn’t had time to answer!

But if much of what passes for the Labour Left is pathetic and cowardly then much of the socialist or far left is suffering from myopia.

At the LAW AMM tomorrow the Communist Party of Great Britain/ Labour Party Marxists will put its own strategy paper to the meeting. Their argument is for fighting in the Labour Party because it is supported by the trade unions. And essentially that is the limit of their strategy. It is more a dogma and article of faith than a rational argument. There is absolutely no reason to believe that it is any longer possible to fight the witchhunt in the Labour Party. The present witchhunt is the worst since 1945 and quite possibly ever.

CLPD refused to defend their own representative on the NEC

Where Labour is heading under Starmer

Starmer is, as he has made clear, determined to complete what Blair started.

Starmer’s distinguishing mark has been as a liar.  He has all the charisma of a wet fish on a windy day. He stood as a unity candidate with a radical set of 10 pledges. It is hard to believe that his first pledge, Economic Justice, contained the promise that he would

‘Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.

He ended up opposing the Tory increase in corporation tax! A position that New Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson endorsed. The same Alan Johnson who gave birth to the term ‘hostile environment’. Given that Starmer relied on a few rich donors to fund his campaign, including the Zionist owner of Qwik-Fit, Sir Trevor Chinn, it is amazing that many Momentum supporters like Paul Mason and Lansman poodle Laura Parker backed him.

Yet despite this the opposition to Starmer’s political move to the Right has been almost inaudible.

We cannot just focus on those remaining in the Labour Party

It is true that socialists inside the Labour Party cannot just be abandoned and nor is a strategy that encourages them to leave a useful one.

However thousands have left and it is clear that Starmer intends to continue the purge, destroying Labour Party democracy in the process. It is equally clear that Corbyn, having failed to regain the Labour whip by rowing back on what he said, is determined not to lead the fight against Starmer.

It is crystal clear that that the fight against the witchhunt will fail, not least because the trade unions are giving it their tacit support and there is no rule that Labour's bureaucrats are not prepared to break. What then?

My own view is that we should be thinking of setting up a Socialist Movement in parallel to the Labour Party and as the precursor to an alternative party. If members of the SCG are expelled, as seems likely, then such a party could have real weight, especially if Corbyn were to join.  Given that it is highly unlikely he will be allowed to stand as a Labour member at the next election it is to be hoped that for once he will take decisive action.

But regardless there is no doubt that the traditional allegiance of the working class to Labour is dissipating.  The Red Wall effect may not simply confined to the North. Having lost the Scottish working class it is quite possible that Labour will also start to lose other sections, starting with the Muslim vote.

Unfortunately with the disappearance of traditional class consciousness, with the atomisation of the working class, old allegiances are also dying.

The question is whether the socialist left in the Labour Party can be bold enough to take a step outside the comfort of resolutionary socialism. There is no natural law that says that the Labour Party will continue to have the allegiance of the working class.

And that will effect our attitude to the trade unions.  If I was in the Bakers Union, which is considering disaffiliation from the Labour Party I would support such a motion.  Likewise in the FBU. For too long the Labour Party has taken the unions and the working class for granted. Now that Starmer wants to make Labour a safe capitalist alternative to the Tories there are serious questions that need to be asked about the future of the socialist left in Britain. And they may not involve automatic support for Labour.

For some like the CPGB there will never be a retreat from comfortable dogma and shibboleth.  But the same does not need to be the case for all socialists facing the dilemma of what to do next.

Tony Greenstein

Appeal for Paddy French, who is being sued for libel by Islamaphobe-in-Chief and Jewish Chronicle co-funder John Ware

 Is Labour Anti-Semitic? was the title of the BBC Panorama programme – but the answer was never in doubt

Please Support Paddy French's Fundraiser

https://tinyurl.com/23syu3ps 

Dear Friend

This is not an appeal on my behalf.  I’m writing to ask you to support an important legal battle between BBC Panorama reporter John Ware and the retired ITV current affairs producer and investigative journalist, Paddy French, for criticisms he made of the July 2019 Panorama programme “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?

Paddy French

Paddy French is an investigative journalist with more than four decades experience. He founded and edited the Welsh magazine Rebecca (known for its uncompromising Corruption Supplement) in the 1970s. He then went on to become an independent TV producer making programme for Channel 4, the BBC and ITV before joining ITV Wales as a staff producer.

The case is John Ware v Paddy French, QB-2020-002233.

Ware is suing Paddy for £50,000 over criticisms he made of the July 2019 Panorama programme “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?”

I am sure you will remember this BBC propaganda programme. You can refresh your memory with the two blog posts I did here and here.

Ware is a former Sun journalist, a racist and Islamaphobe, who is on the record as saying in the Jewish Chronicle of 26.7.13. (where else!) that whereas anti-Semitism is ‘entirely irrational’  Islamaphobia, if it exists, is ‘reactive’. It is no wonder that Ware won the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s Islamaphobe of the Year award in 2005.

Is Labour Anti-Semitic opened with an Oscar winning performance by Ella Rose, Director of the Jewish Labour Movement and former employee at the Israeli Embassy.  Of course the programme mentioned none of this.  I don’t know how many takes Rose took but her performance demonstrated that she has chosen the wrong career.  Not mentioned in Ware’s propaganda programme was the fact that every witness to ‘anti-Semitism’ that appeared just happened to be officers of the Jewish Labour Movement, who openly describe themselves as the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labor Party, that is present in a coalition with the far-Right in Israel.

After retiring, Paddy launched Press Gang [press-gang.org], a website which “exposes rogue journalism”. And there is no bigger rogue that John Ware, a man who makes Keir Starmer seem like a model of truthfulness.

Paddy carried out the investigation which proved that News of the World investigations editor Mazher “Fake Sheik” Mahmood lied to the Leveson Inquiry about the number of convictions he’d achieved. He also published a long exposé of Piers Morgan.

Just before the 2019 general election, Paddy — at the time a Labour Party member and a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn — published a Press Gang pamphlet called “Is The BBC Anti-Labour?”

This was a broad critique of Ware’s Panorama programme and how it failed to meet the standards required by the BBC’s own editorial standards. You can read it here:

The case, already a year old, is now moving to trial.

Ware v French presents a unique opportunity to correct the historical record, as well as a risk – however small – that Ware will be able to bully Paddy’s legal team into submission. It is imperative that Paddy is not at any point pressured into an unfavourable settlement solely because his legal team are unable to bear mounting costs.

Paddy is determined to defend himself all the way and willing to risk both his property and livelihood in doing so. But if his legal team were at any point to advise entering into an unfavourable settlement, it will be difficult for Paddy to resist on a No Win No Fee arrangement. Such an outcome will then of course be used as ‘vindication’ by Ware and the BBC, with damaging consequences for wider efforts to correct the historical record. If, on the other hand, Paddy has the opportunity to mount his truth defence – or if Ware was to withdraw from the action – this case could potentially be a powerful check against on-going attacks on progressive left politics.

The case will be the only chance we get to have a forensic examination of how John Ware, Panorama and the BBC came to make a programme that was so outrageously biased. Although titled ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ the only concession that the BBC made to me during a lengthy complaint was to admit that the question mark in the title was unnecessary. The programme had formed an opinion from the outset and that was that Labour was anti-Semitic.

This programme was a classic example of how, when a radical leader is under attack, you can count on the BBC to represent the Britain’s racist establishment.  It did this with a reporter who is an open Islamaphobe.

Paddy is represented by the experienced solicitors Bindmans and the barristers Hugh Tomlinson QC and Darryl Hutcheon.

He needs at least £200,000 to be able to bring the case to trial.

His crowdfunder has raised nearly £30,000 from more than a thousand supporters.

In addition, private donors are putting up a further £60-70,000.

So he’s already half way there.

If you can, make a donation at the crowdfunder:

Before turning his attention to Ware, Paddy, together with Professor Brian Cathcart, one of the founders of Hacked Off , produced a devastating report on the unscrupulous anti-Muslim reporting of the Times’ journalist Andrew Norfolk. The Times was so stung that it took the highly unusual step of attacking Paddy and Brian in an editorial.

Paddy then began a long series of articles about John Ware’s Panorama programme. One of these articles led to Ware issuing his writ demanding £50,000 damages.

If you want to find out more, here’s a link to get started:

https://paddyfrench1.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/ware-v-french-goes-to-trial/

Ware v French is the key legal action in relation to the Panorama programme and Paddy is determined to take this all the way to trial.

This is going to be a hugely expensive legal battle.  Please help him succeed.

Many thanks

Tony Greenstein