Steve Terry, UNISON's Scab Official, Must Be Dismissed 4
Refusing to Support a Worker's Right to Free Speech
On
26 March 2018 the Board of Deputies held
a demonstration outside Parliament to protest about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. Jewish
Voice for Labour organised
a counter demonstration.
Stan
Keable was one of those who protested against the Zionist ‘anti-racist’
demonstration. A demonstration which included those well known anti-racists
Norman Tebbit, Ian Paisley and Sajid David.
The Evening Standard article that set the ball rolling
In
its 260 year history the Board
has never held an anti-racist
demonstration. Not against Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists, not
against the National Front or any other fascist or anti-Semitic group. In October
1936 the Board toldJewish people not to demonstrate
against the fascists.
In
the course of a conversation Stan mentioned the fact that the
Zionists collaborated with the Nazis. Stan also said that
anti-Semitism was not the sole cause of the holocaust. This too is true. There have
been many anti-Semitic regimes but only one led to mass genocide.
BBC
2 Newsnight ‘journalist’ David Grossman was covertly
filming the exchange and he uploaded it to Twitter where it was seen by Greg
Hands MP who retweeted it to the leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council,
Stephen Cowan.
Steve Cowan - Hammermith & Fulham's right-wing leader
On 27 March Cowan sent an email to Council
officials including Mark Grimley, the Council’s Director of Corporate Services “LBFH employee Stan Keeble making anti-Semitic comments.” Cowan stated that:
“I’ll
let Mr Keeble’s words speak for themselves. I believe he has brought the good
name of LBFH into disrepute and committed gross misconduct. Please have this
looked at immediately and act accordingly and with expediency... Please advise
me at your earliest opportunity what action you have taken.”
Stan was immediately suspended and
the suspension letter informed him that:
“ .. The
following serious allegation(s) which, if substantiated could constitute gross
misconduct … (1) that you made inappropriate comments which have subsequently
been circulated on social media which are deemed to be insensitive and likely
to be considered offensive …; (2) that these comments have the potential to
bring the council into disrepute.”
An ‘investigation’
was carried out by Peter Smith, Hammersmith's Head
of Policy and Strategy. The bias of the Report can be judged by the
following:
Zionism is not a religion,
although it is closely related to Judaism, but it is a belief in the right of
the Jewish people to have a nation state in the ‘Holy Land’, their original
homeland.
Apparently the ‘Holy Land’ is my
original homeland, itself an example of anti-Semitism! Smith held that Stan’s comments,
‘that
the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis and that Zionists accept that
Jews are not acceptable here, do not promote inclusion nor treat everyone with dignity
and respect.’
In other words you can’t say anything which might
possibly offend anyone. Hammersmith’s ‘Equality’ policies were used to attack freedom of speech. To Smith freedom of speech was meaningless.
As Orwell observed,
‘‘If
Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do
not want to hear”. Smith concluded:
It is my belief that in attending the counter demonstration at
Westminster on 26th March and in making the comments that subsequently appeared
on social media, Mr Keable has failed to avoid any conduct outside of work
which may discredit himself and the Council.’
That, in
attending a counter demonstration... on the 26th March 2018, Stan Keable
knowingly increased the possibility of being challenged about his views and
subsequently proceeded to express views that were in breach of the Council’s
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Policy and the Council’s Code of Conduct.’
Not only had Smith driven a coach and horses throughArticle
10of the European
Convention of Human Rights on free speech, but he had abolished Article 11 on freedom of assembly
and association. Not bad for an Equalities policy!
The Disciplinary
Hearing was chaired by the Director of the Council’s Residents Service, Mr Austin. There was never a
chance that Austin was going to contradict the express wishes of the Leader of
the Council and Stan was duly fired.
I represented Stan at the hearing being
an accredited Brighton & Hove UNISON steward. Of course this was
unsatisfactory. Stan should have been represented by a UNISON official. That's what they are paid to do. Stan was a member of UNISON and was entitled to representation.
Steve Terry - full-time UNISON official - in any other job he would have been given his cards since he is clearly incompetent
When I rang Terry he made it clear that he did not understand the concept
of freedom of speech when it contradicted his own views. His
recommendation was that Stan should apologise and plead guilty. When I pointed
out that he had done nothing wrong, Terry became confused and garbled.
Terry made it crystal clear that he
would give Stan no support. He would attend the disciplinary but say
nothing, thus making it clear that UNISON didn’t support him! Needless to say
his kind offer wasn’t accepted since it would have made Stan’s position worse.
On 8 May 2018 Terry wrote
to Stan outlining his position:
The
course that you should take is to indicate that you regret any offence caused
by your remarks and plead mitigating circumstances, relying on your unblemished
record in relation to conduct to receive a sanction short of dismissal. ... You
have decided both not to follow my advice and to appoint another
representative.... UNISON regrettably is no longer able to provide you with
advice and/or assistance in this matter.
Thus this scab official washed his
hands of Stan’s case. Terry was supporting the employer’s attack on a worker’s
right to freedom of speech. On 23 May Stan made a complaint to UNISON:
At my
case meeting with Steve Terry on April 27th, he made it clear that he did not
support my case: that I should plead guilty as charged; that I should not have
attended the March 26 demonstration; that I should apologise for the political
views I expressed; and that I should promise not to attend controversial
demonstrations and should avoid expressing my political views in future.
He also
gave me an ultimatum if I did not follow his bad advice: either Unison support
would be withdrawn forthwith, or he was willing to attend my disciplinary
hearing as a silent Unison rep while I presented my own case -
which obviously would have shown the employer that Unison did not support my
case.
On 29 May Beth Bickerstaffe, Director
of the Executive Office, wrote back. Beth who? Yes that’s right. Beth is the
daughter-in-law of former General Secretary Rodney Bickerstaffe! UNISON at
heart is a family affair and they like to keep the best paid jobs in the family.
Of course there was little point in
Stan writing to one official to complain about another official since the whole
point of the Complaints system is to enable officials to complain about
members, not the other way around. Beth did what comes naturally to her and
rejected Stan’s complaint, writing:
You were provided with advice and
offered representation by UNISON but you did not agree with the advice, decided
not to accept it and appointed a different representative to Mr Terry. This is
a choice that you are free to make. However, the union’s rules are clear that
in those circumstances it will withdraw from acting for you.
Given that you decided both to
take a different route from the one advised and appointed an external
representative the union has made it clear to you that it is unable to act for
you and it will not therefore be seeking legal advice about your dismissal.
Beth
explained that ‘normally’ UNISON does
not use solicitors in disciplinary matters because ‘Regional Organisers use their knowledge and experience’ to advise
members. As can be seen from the decision of both the Employment
Tribunal and the Employment
Appeal Tribunal Terry’s advice was wrong.
Picket Outside UNISON against naked union electoral corruption
This miserable
bureaucrat didn’t bother to consider that Terry’s advice was wrong. After all
UNISON’s primary purpose in her eyes was to provide a safe and secure
environment for its officials. Questioning their judgement does not come within
her remit. The idea of a second opinion, as Stan requested was simply ignored.
I have
some experience of Employment Tribunals and the Employment Appeal Tribunal having
spent well over a decade defending workers in them. I appeared 5 times before
the EAT and was successful in all 5, see for example Lucas v
Chichester Diocesan Housing Association, an early whistleblowing case.
Any union
adviser worth their salt would have realised at once that when issues arise
concerning the interplay of the Human Rights Act with Employment Law then
full-time officials will be out of their depth. Discrimination law can be
extremely complex which is one reason why success in discrimination cases is
less than half that in unfair dismissal cases.
When Stan
was dismissed he appealed against the decision. London regional UNISON then set
about ensuring that I was not able to represent Stan at the appeal hearing as
is evident
from para. 82 of the Employment Tribunal decision.
UNISON officials
were determined not to give Stan Keable any support whatsoever. Now that the
Employment Appeal Tribunal has ruled
in Stan’s favour (see here
for the full judgment) it is to be hoped that finally UNISON admits their
culpability and makes amends.
The Zionist Demonstration in Favour of Racism
UNISON
has a left-wing Executive for the first time so one hopes that they make amends
by paying Stan’s lawyers. Although they acted pro bono there was no reason why they should have had to. UNISON
should agree, as a rich union, to make an ex
gratia payment to both Iqbal Sram, the lawyer at the Employment Tribunal and Dave Renton, the barrister at
the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
But the matter does not rest there. I reported extensively on the case
and on UNISON’s abysmal failures. See here, here, here, here and here. Now there is no greater
crime in UNISON’s rule book than criticism of an official by a member. It is a
hanging offence. The union is there to protect its officials and their perks
from its members, not the other way around as some misguided people believe.
The useless official who conducted the investigation
So, quite understandably in the circumstances, an investigation was
launched into my conduct conducted by UNISON’s South-East official Tony Jones,
also a right-wing councillor and Gail Adams. The only time
I had seen Jones in over 20 years was when he came to a branch meeting to defend
calling off industrial action. It had become too successful and Prentis,
UNISON’s corrupt General Secretary, wanted out.
You
can read the whole investigation interview here
or you can listen to the tape of the interview here.
Mark Fischer
Unsurprisingly the investigation did not go in my favour and a
disciplinary hearing was conducted by Mark Fischer, a member of UNISON’s
Executive and a Prentis loyalist. Fischer's only concern was protecting Terry. The
fact that a worker had been stabbed in the back was of no consequence. This is
the mindset of UNISON’s officials.
Fischer took care not to have the hearing recorded and insisted on my
phone and that of my silent witness, Bill North, being handed in. However I had
anticipated such a move and I had taken care to conceal another recorder on my
person which you can listen to here!
Difficult as it is to believe, Ferncombe is as thick as she looks! However that is NOT a disadvantage amongst UNISON officials. Indeed some might say it is a positive advantage
What made the hearing unfair was that the complaint against me was made by Maggie Ferncombe, London
Regional Secretary. This presented me with a problem since the person who I had
allegedly intimidated and reduced to a gibbering wreck, Steve Terry, was not available for
cross-examination. I had apparently humiliated him but he was not giving
evidence. Anyone who was fair minded would have dismissed the case but Fischer
was a rubber stamp not an impartial arbiter. The relevant part of the cross-examination is below,
although you can look at the full transcript here
or here:
Imagine
that in a court of law, you are accused of harassing someone but it’s not that
person who gives evidence but someone who talked to him. This is UNISON’s idea
of justice. The relevant part of my cross-examination was as follows:
TG: [54:00] You made the complaint about me?
MF: I did
TG: ... and yet the obvious thing would have been for him to
have made the complaint. Would it not?
MF: I can’t speak for Steve.
TG: But you spoke to him.
MF: I can’t speak for Steve whether it’s obvious or not for him
to make a complaint. What I can say is that Steve raised it with me because of
the subject matter. He believed that it was an issue that I needed to be aware
of... because we must be prepared to have a response. He raised it with me and
I then read your blog and once I had read your blog that is when I decided I
would make a complaint.
TG: Can you enlighten us as to why he did not make a complaint?
MF: I don’t know.
TG: You spoke to him but you have no idea why, you did not ask him?
MF: No.
TG: You weren’t interested?
MF: No.
TG: You did not invite him to make a complaint?
MF: No
TG: You did not think it was necessary for him to make a
complaint?
MF: I think that was down to the member of staff (TG: clearly) I
took my responsibilities as a senior manager of the region to determine that I
didn’t think this was appropriate, I thought it was outside of our norms fact
TG: I realise that
MF: and I took the decision to make the complaint. And in fact I
informed Steve that I had made the complaint.
TG: But Steve had the right to make the complaint if he was
aggrieved. Did he not?
MF: All members of staff have the right to make a complaint.
TG: So you have no idea, on the basis of your relationship with
him, why he chose not to make a complaint?
MF: (after some considerable delay) I can only say that it is
highly highly unusual in my experience for a member of staff to make a
complaint about a member.
TG: Well maybe this case is maybe highly unusual so it wouldn’t
be exceptional?
MF: I can’t speak for Steve.
TG: What was the nature of your conversation with ST?
MF: I just explained that he said that there was an issue that
was happening in that particular branch, regarding a member and that he was
going to be advising and that he thought that I needed to be aware of it on the
basis that it might attract interest from the press and therefore we might be
contacted ...
TG: The charges against me today are ... that I was
disrespectful, intimidating, I exposed him to ridicule, embarrassment and
contempt and it violated his dignity. If we go through those. Did he say that I
disrespected him?
MF: I did not have a great deal of conversation regarding how
Steve felt regarding the blog at all.
TG: So you weren’t curious as to how he felt?
MF: Steve didn’t offer how he felt when I had a conversation
with him. Steve offered that there was an issue I needed to be aware of in one
of our branches that I would need to be prepared for should the media decide to
TG: Sorry he didn’t come to you and say ‘I’m feeling intimidated as a result of the behaviour of Mr Greenstein?’
MF: No.
TG: Did he say that he felt ridiculed or embarrassed or felt
that I held him in contempt?
MF: No.
TG: Did he say that I had violated his dignity?
MF: No.
TG: So would you agree that these charges are entirely
speculative? That they have no basis or foundation and are not the subject of
an allegation.
MF: No, I don’t agree with that.
TG: But nonetheless he did not make any complaint as to this
nature did he?
MF: No but the charges talk about conduct which may and I
believe your conduct
TG: So it may have exposed him but there is no evidence to
suggest that it did expose him
MF: Well I
haven’t really done an investigation into what...
Mark
Fischer, was not happy with my cross-examination. His favourite phrase was ‘Let’s stick to the facts.’ On one
occasion I responded that ‘WellI’m giving you the facts. You may not
like them but I can’t give you any others!’
The recommendation was that I be suspended for 3 years with a loss
of membership rights. Short of expulsion this was the maximum penalty. The
Jewish Chronicle naturally crowed about
the decision.
Racist, corrupt, machievellian and not very bright - what is there not to like about John Stolliday?
On 4 December I
received a letter from John Stolliday, Head of UNISON’s Members Liaison Unit, informing
me of the date of the hearing, 16 December 2019. I rubbed my eyes and wondered if I
had mixed up my correspondence. In March 2016 I had received another letter of
suspension from Stolliday suspending me from the Labour Party!
This racist, corrupt bureaucrat
(see here)
who was quoted as saying that ‘Letting members have a say is the worst
thing that happened to the Labour Party’. (p.112) and referring to Ed Miliband by his nose (‘beaker’) had been
hired by Prentis.Clearly his attitude to UNISON members is no different
to his attitude to Labour Party members.
One thing is certain - Dave Prentis owed a lot to Linda Perks. When she retired, Prentis wasn't far behind
Mark Fischer pretended that my case was all about my having broken the rules. Yet Linda Perks above, flagrantly broke union election regulations on behalf of UNISON's corrupt General Secretary Dave Prentis. Her reward? She was promoted!!!
Because the appeal hearing
was not heard until over a year later I applied for an injunction from the High
Court to prevent the hearing but this was unsuccessful. However I refused
to pay the £4,000 costs which were awarded against me!
For UNISON's full-time officials corruption is a way of life. Those who are honest tend not to last too long
At the Appeal hearing I
applied to have an email of 18 May 2018 from Beth Bickerstaffe admitted. I had made a complaint against Terry in respect of his treatment of Stan
Keable but Bickerstaffe had refused to accept my complaint because only the member himself could complain. My application to admit her email was refused. In her email Bickerstaffe had written that:
‘In your letter you seek to make a
complaint against Steve Terry in relation to his handling of another member’s
case. Should that member want to raise a complaint he may do so under our
published procedures.
In
other words I was not allowed to make a complaint about another member but Maggie Ferncombe was allowed to make a complaint on
behalf of Terry. It was one rule for an official and another for a member. It
was clear that the hearing was going to be a formality and I walked out since it would have been a waste of my time.
Although he purported to support Corbyn, Prentis was in league with the Jewish Labour Movement's Adam Langleben
On
17 December I received a letter
informing me that the decision to suspend me for 3 years had been upheld. I
promptly resigned and joined UNITE. It was with regret that I was no longer a
member of the Brighton and Hove UNISON branch but I had no choice.
Now
that the Employment Appeal Tribunal has upheld the decision of the Employment
Tribunal that Stan Keable was unfairly dismissed it is time for UNISON to revisit
the refusal of Stephen Terry to support the right of a member to exercise free speech.
The
continuation in employment of a scab official, Stephen Terry, is a disgrace and
a stain on UNISON.It is one that needs to
be speedily remedied.
There
is Only One Decision – No Extradition chanted the crowd and the Judge in the
crowd. However extradition is a real
possibility unfortunately. There was a crowd of a few hundred. I noticed that there were no members of the usual
left groups like the Socialist Workers Party present. I guess there were no
recruits in it.
There
were also no Labour MPs present – no Jeremy Corbyn, no John McDonnell – indeed none
of the spineless Socialist Campaign Group. There was no Labour Party presence,
no Momentum but there were still activists who care about freedom of the press
and lots of journalists though what makes it into the press remains to be seen.
In the picture above, the man with the peaked cap is 84 year old Stephen Kapos, a survivor of the Budapest Ghetto that the Hungarian Nazis, the Arrow Cross/Nyilas set up in November 1944. Stephen is a holocaust survivor as well as being a member of Camden Momentum.
Stephen must be a tempting choice for Herr Sturmer to expel from the Labour Party. Not only is he Jewish but he got away from the death camps. Herr Sturmer hopes to succeed where the Nazis failed.
Credit
must go to Chris Williamson who did attend the picket, travelling down early
from Derby at some expense. Julian’s
father John Shipton was also there.
We
have seen how the Guardian, having benefitted from Julian’s work abandoned him
and yellow gutter journalists like Luke Harding deliberately lied about him.
Anyway
here is a video of the proceedings and some photos.
I have emailed David Renton, challenging him to debate the conclusions in his book, but for some reason he hasn't responded! You could try reminding him on contactmyclerks@gclaw.co.ukplease be polite.
It
is an iron rule which allows few exceptions, that those who leave the SWP drift
to the right. Dave Renton is no exception.
Renton
joined the SWP in 1991, leaving in 2003 only to rejoin in 2008. In 2013 he left
the SWP because of the rape scandal.[i]
The
details of this scandal are well
known. A woman who alleged that she had been raped appeared before the SWP’s
Disputes Committee, which consisted of friends of the alleged rapist, National
Secretary Martin Smith. Smith was cleared of all the allegations. Instead, it
was the victim who was pilloried and questioned about her sexual history and
drinking habits. A second woman who supported her was harassed and suspended. The
victim herself wasn’t even allowed to attend the conference called to discuss
the matter.
Dave
Renton has written movingly of his experiences in the SWP and about what
happened in 2012/13.[ii]
Together with others, he formed RS21.
Renton’s
book makes it clear, though, that he has abandoned any form of Marxist or class
politics in favour of a subjective identity politics which divorces the
politics of race from class.
Renton, as his Wiki[iii] biography makes clear, was a prolific author of
books on anti-fascism, racism and Marxism. He wasn’t a run of the mill member
of the SWP whose political consciousness is low and confined to sloganeering
activism. Possibly his weak point was an understanding of imperialism but the
question I ask myself is how can he have been so comprehensively fooled by the
false and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign into believing that anti-Semitism
was a genuine problem in the Labour Party?
How can Renton have got into bed with Stephen
Pollard, the foul neo-liberal editor of the Jewish Chronicle who was a founder
member of the Henry Jackson Society? This society’s membership includes Douglas
Murray and others who support White Replacement Theory. It is genuinely and
overtly racist, representing the far Right of the British Establishment – people
like Islamaphobe Baroness Cox.
Does Renton really believe that someone like Pollard
is genuinely interested in fighting anti-Semitism as opposed to tarring anti-racists
with that brush? Renton’s Damascene conversion to the Right (because that is
what it is) is a mystery. In the absence of a cogent explanation I can only
explain it as being a return to his class origins.
By
his own admission, Renton’s political sympathies during the anti-Semitism
witchhunt were with Jon Lansman, a figure who, more than any other, bears
responsibility for the defeat of the Corbyn project.
Not
once does Renton entertain the idea that Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis might
have been manufactured, confected and weaponised in order to remove Corbyn,
despite the evidence. Instead he writes that
‘Part of the
reason why so few people come out well from Labour’s antisemitism crisis is
that we were dealing with the revival a form of racism in relation to which
many people had forgotten how to act.’
The whole of the British and US military and
political establishment was united in wanting to see an end to Corbyn. For
example, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was recorded
as saying:
“It
could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected. It’s
possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to
push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too
hard once it’s already happened.” [iv]
Israeli
involvement in Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations was copiously documented in
the Al Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’.[v]
The
weaponisation of ‘anti-Semitism’ had first been tried out against the Sandinistas
and then against Hugo Chavez.[vi]
The advantages of such a tactic are obvious. It gave the racist right-wing of
the Labour Party and the political establishment the moral high ground. They
weren’t attacking Corbyn for his opposition to NATO or austerity. Good gracious
no. They were opposing anti-Semitism!
You
had the absurdity of Thatcherite journalist Andrew Neil asking Corbyn whether
he would apologise for Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ at the last general election.
This was the same Andrew Neil who, as editor of the Sunday Times, employed
holocaust denier David Irving to translate the Goebbel’s Diaries as well
as employing an overt anti-Semite, ‘Taki’, a supporter of the Greek
Golden Dawn neo-nazi party, as a columnist on the Spectator.
One
of the ironies of Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was that even the worst
racists could become opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’ simply by declaring their support
for Zionism and Israel. Not once did Renton explain how papers like the Daily
Mail could oppose ‘anti-Semitism’ while simultaneously employing the neo-Nazi
political commentator Katie Hopkins as a columnist.[vii]
If
Renton had any claim to being a socialist, let alone a Marxist, then surely he would have considered the fact
that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Britain’s second major party,
in the United States’ closest European ally must have set off alarm bells both
in Langley Virginia (CIA HQ)and Tel
Aviv. Was Renton unaware of the US’s political record in Latin America and
Asia? Had he not read Phil Agee’s Inside
the Company?[viii]
According
to Renton, Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ spontaneously broke out just as Corbyn was
elected leader. It seems as if Renton believes that anti-Semitism is inherent
in anti-capitalism.
Throughout
the ‘anti-Semitism’ affair, over two-thirds of Labour members, including Jewish
members, rejected the false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations. Their everyday
experience in Labour was of a complete absence of anti-Semitism.[ix] Jews
had always made up a disproportionate number of its activists. Renton disregards
the views of these members with all the contempt an Old Etonian can muster.
The
book itself is error-strewn. Renton says that the ‘first sustained attempt’ to accuse Corbyn’s Labour of
anti-Semitism occurred in April 2016. He omits the affair of Oxford University
Labour Club, when the Chair, Alex Chalmers – a former intern for Israeli lobby
group BICOM – accused fellow members of anti-Semitism on the basis that they
had supported Israel Apartheid week.
The
first sign that ‘anti-Semitism’ was being weaponised was in August 2015, even before
Corbyn was elected, when the Mail
accused Corbyn of associating with a holocaust denier Paul Eisen.[x] It
progressed from there to attacks on, first, Gerald Kaufman MP and then Vicki
Kirby. Renton’s book is marred by sloppy research.[xi]
Smeeth stormed out of the Chakrbarti press conference to fetch the whip for Marc Wadsworth before remembering that slavery had ended
Renton
describes Ruth Smeeth as storming out of the Chakrabarti press conference ‘in tears’, repeating the lies of the
yellow press.[xii]A cursory examination of the video
shows that there were no tears. ‘How dare
you’ Smeeth cried as if she had been upbraided by her Black slave and was leaving
to fetch the whip. Smeeth later claimed that she had been sent 25,000 hostile
messages. This was a lie. The main recipient of abuse was Dianne Abbot, not
Smeeth.[xiii]
Renton
has a whole chapter on the ‘bullying’ of Luciana Berger. He doesn’t mention
that she was a former Director of Labour Friends of Israel nor that
Smeeth had worked for BICOM before entering parliament. For Renton, the Israel
connection is irrelevant.
Berger is portrayed as the
victim of vicious anti-Semitism. It is true that four fascists were convicted
and gaoled for sending her hate mail but no one on the left, least of all in
the Labour Party, was convicted or accused of anti-Semitism against her. Berger
had a long record, dating back to her days on the National Union of Students
Executive, of making false accusations of anti-Semitism.
Berger had been parachuted
into the Liverpool Wavertree seat by Blair. She had no connection with Liverpool.
Yet what was Renton’s take? ‘The clash
between Wavertree CLP and Luciana Berger weakened the left and diminished our
moral standing.’
But
it is Renton’s treatment of the most prominent victims of the ‘anti-Semitism’
purge – figures such as Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris
Williamson and myself – that demonstrates his Zionist sympathies.
Renton’s
way of dealing with my own expulsion is to avoid mentioning it! It is as if the
case of the first Jewish anti-Zionist to be expelled from the Labour Party was too
difficult for him to handle!
Renton’s
treatment of Jackie Walker is racist. Not once does he ask why one of the few
Black Jewish women in the Labour Party should have been targeted by the Jewish
Labour Movement. He mentions some of the vile racist abuse she received but
never once considers Jackie a victim, still less asks why those purportedly opposed
to ‘anti-Semitism’ should engage in racist abuse far worse than anything Berger
experienced.
Not
once does Renton describe the circumstances in which a private Facebook
conversation was broken into by the Israeli Advocacy Movement, a far-Right
Zionist group. All of us during private conversations may omit the odd word. On
the basis of one missing word, that Jews were among the chief slave owners, Jackie was pilloried for months. Even
when she was reinstated, the JLM continued their racist campaign.
When
John McDonnell spoke with Jackie at an LRC fringe meeting at the TUC
Conference, the JLM removed him as a speaker from their meeting. Two weeks
before the 2016 Labour conference, it was clear that the JLM were gunning for
Jackie.[xiv]
In
another error, Renton says that Momentum immediately removed Jackie as
Vice-Chair. Not so. When Jackie was suspended in May 2016, not only Momentum but even Owen Jonessupported her. It was only following
that year’s Labour Party conference, months later that Lansman and his cronies
removed Jackie as Vice Chair.
On
Wadsworth, Renton has less to say but he still blames a long-standing Black anti-racist
who had played a key role in the Stephen Lawrence campaign, introducing his parents to Nelson
Mandela. Renton sides instead with a supporter of Apartheid. Wadsworth didn’t even
know that Smeeth was Jewish, yet Renton quotes uncritically Smeeth’s attack on
Marc for ‘invoking
antisemitic stereotypes of Jewish conspiracy’ and then says that he ‘should not have used an event intended to prove Labour’s
commitment to fighting antisemitism to attack a Jewish MP.’ The Chakrabarti Report was about racism in the Labour
Party, not just about anti-Semitism. One more error.
It
is over Ken Livingstone and his comment that Hitler supported Zionism that
Renton excels himself. Renton asserts that the purpose of Ha’avara, the trade
agreement between the Nazis and the Zionists, was to save Germany’s Jews rather
than their wealth. Contrary to Renton’s assertion, people who had capital of
£1,000 at their disposal (£50,000 today) would have had no difficulty in finding
refuge. To poor and working class Jews, Ha’avara was a disaster because it
relaxed the pressure on Nazi Germany to stop the violence.
Renton
says that the agreement was ‘condemned by both left- wing (Socialist) Zionists and
right- wing (Revisionist) Zionists’. Wrong
again. It was the ‘left-wing’ Zionists who negotiated Ha’avara. It was the
‘right-wing’ Zionists who opposed it.
In 1933, very few, least of all the Zionists, thought that Nazism
would lead to a holocaust. The idea that the Zionists main motivation was to
rescue Jews is absurd. Even when Jews were in mortal danger, Zionism opposed rescue
to any country bar Palestine.
Werner
Senator of the Jewish Agency Executive warned that if the German Zionists ‘did not improve the quality of the “human
material” they were sending, the number of immigration certificates would
be cut.[xv] Candidates
above the age of 35 would receive certificates ‘only if there is no reason to believe that they might become a burden.’[xvi]
German Jews who entered “merely as
refugees” were considered ‘undesirable
human material’.[xvii]
The
point that Renton misses is that Ha'avara was agreed to by the Nazis as a way
of destroying the international Jewish and anti-fascist boycott of Germany
which was aimed at toppling the Hitler regime.
As the Investor’s Review reported,
‘authoritative opinion is that Hitlerism
will come to a sanguinary end before the New Year.’[xviii]
David Cesarani suggested that those who doubted the viability of the regime ‘were not engaged in wishful thinking’; the Nazi regime, he said, was beset
by enemies coupled with a chronic balance of payments deficit.[xix]
Edwin
Black, another Zionist historian, wrote that Ha’avara was ‘a reprieve for the Third Reich, a let-up in the anti-German offensive…
(it) could not have come at a more decisive moment.’[xx]
Far from rescuing German Jews, Ha’avara condemned them to Auschwitz.
Baruch Vladeck, the Bundist editor of
the Yiddish Forward and Chairman of
the Jewish Labor Committee, described how
‘The whole organized labor movement and the
progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the boycott. The
Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’
Vladeck contended that ‘The main purpose of the Transfer is not to
rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in
Palestine.’ He termed Palestine ‘the
official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’.[xxi]
It was the Zionist Executive itself that
declared that Ha’avara was ‘the sole way
of bringing into Palestine the maximum amount of German Jewish capital.’[xxii]
It was Zionist activists who spoke of ‘saving
the wealth’ and ‘rescuing the capital
from Nazi Germany.’ [xxiii]
When Karl Sabbagh suggested that the
Zionists were concerned, not with saving Jewish lives but Jewish wealth, Renton
accused him of ‘falling
into old ideas of Jewish perfidy.’ This
shows the depths that Renton has plumbed in his attempt to defend Zionism.
In another error, Renton writes
that ‘the pact saved 53,000 lives.’ In
fact Ha’avara saved 20,000 German Jews, most of whom would have found refuge
elsewhere. Most German Jews came to Palestine on ordinary immigration certificates.
According to Renton, Livingstone was ‘finding
excuses to blame the victims.’ He was suggesting that Jews had contributed
to the holocaust and that Jews were in fact among the perpetrators of genocide.
In other words, by treating Zionism as a political movement that collaborated
with the Nazis, Livingstone was accusing Jews of engineering the holocaust.
Using Renton’s ‘logic’, if
you criticise Quisling or Petain then you are blaming the Norwegians or the
French for the Nazi occupation of their countries. It is not only politically
dishonest but anti-Semitic. It blames all Jews for the actions of the Zionists.
The German Zionists at the
time represented no more than two percent of German Jews. Jews
in Weimar Germany referred to the Zionists as ‘volkish Jews.’[xxiv] The Nazis singled out the German Zionists for favourable
treatment. In 1919 Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi’s main theoretician, who was hanged at Nuremburg, had
written:
‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in
order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine
or other destinations.’[xxv]
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a leader of the
German Zionist Federation, admitted that:
“It was morally disturbing to seem to be
considered as the favoured children of the Nazi Government, particularly when
it dissolved the anti-Zionist youth groups, and seemed in other ways to prefer
the Zionists. The Nazis asked for a ‘more Zionist behaviour.’”[xxvi]
Zionism has always sought an end to the Jewish
diaspora, not its perpetuation. The German Zionist Federation [ZVfD] asserted
that the Jews were a separate nation, which was exactly what the Nazis themselves
said.
Kurt Blumenfeld, the ZVfD Secretary, stated
in a letter to Walter Rathenau, the German foreign minister who was
assassinated in 1922, that: ‘Under no
circumstance does a Jew have the right to represent the affairs of another people.’[xxvii]
Donald Niewyk asked whether Zionist assertions of ‘racial and national otherness’ might ‘hasten the day when the Nazis might seek to make Germany judenrein?’[xxviii]
The historian Rabbi Jacob Bernard Agus asked if
‘the
Zionist programme and philosophy contribute(d) decisively to the enormous
catastrophe of the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis by popularizing
the notion that the Jews were forever aliens in Europe?’[xxix]
Zionist historians Lucy Dawidowicz and
Francis Nicosia described how, in May 1935 Schwarze Korps, newspaper of
the SS, wrote that
‘the
Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine they
are helping to build their own Jewish state.... The assimilation-minded Jews
deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be
Christians because they have been baptised in order to subvert National
Socialist principles.’[xxx]
Non-Zionist youth organisations were
banned from 1936, whereas Zionist youth groups remained legal up until 1939.[xxxi]
The Zionist leadership welcomed Hitler to
power. They saw the rise of Hitler as a golden opportunity.[xxxii]
Francis Nicosia spoke of the ‘illusory
assumption’ that Zionism ‘must have
been well served by a Nazi victory’. Hitler’s victory ‘could only bolster Zionist fortunes.’ [xxxiii]
“So positive was its
assessment of the situation that, as early as April 1933, the ZVfD announced
its determination to take advantage of the crisis to win over the traditionally
assimilationist German Jewry.” [xxxiv]
To Ben Gurion, Israel's First Prime Minister the rise of the Nazis was a Golden Opportunity
The Zionist leadership in Palestine was positively
enthusiastic. Berl Katznelson, David Ben Gurion’s effective deputy, saw the
rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to
build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.[xxxv]
Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of
Israel, was even more enthusiastic: ‘The
Nazis’ victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.”’[xxxvi]
Ben Gurion’s official biographer,
Shabtai Teveth wrote that
‘If there was a line in
Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying
catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’[1]
Etan Bloom quoted
Emil Ludwig (1881-1948), the famous
biographer, as saying that:
‘Hitler
will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in
Palestine. You know, the coming of the Nazis was rather a welcome thing. …
Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the
fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.’ [xxxvii]
The Zionist national poet Chaim
Nachman Bialik volunteered that ‘Hitler
has perhaps saved German Jewry, which was being assimilated into annihilation.’[xxxviii]
This was somewhat ironic given what happened.
Today, when neo-Nazis and fascists praise
the Israeli state for its hostility to Muslims – and when Israel supplies the
neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine with weaponry – Renton has become yet
another apologist for Zionism’s far-Right alliances. Geert Wilders, the leader
of the fascist Dutch Freedom Party, explained why Israel is seen as a model
ethno-nationalist state by the far right:
‘If
Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next.’[xxxix]
In discussing Chris Williamson’s
suspension, Renton excels himself. He writes:
‘At its heart were complaints that he had used his social
media account to promote the standing of other people who had been accused of
antisemitism.’
This is mendacious. What
led to the suspension of Chris was the deliberate distortion of a speech he made
to Sheffield Momentum, portraying it as its exact opposite. In the words of the
Independent: Chris
Williamson: Labour MP filmed telling activists party is too 'apologetic' about
antisemitism.[xl]
What were Chris’s actual words?
‘We are not a
racist party, are we? We’re not an anti-Semitic party. We are the party that
stood up to racism throughout our entire history... It was Labour that was the
backbone of the Anti-Nazi League in the 1970s when we confronted the
anti-Semites, the racists, the Islamaphobes on the streets ... And now we –
Jeremy, me and others – are being accused of being bigots, of being
anti-Semites. And it’s almost as we’re living within the pages of Orwell’s
1984. You know the Party that’s done more to stand up to racism is now being
demonised as a racist, bigoted party.
And I’ve 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’ve given too much ground, we’ve
been too apologetic. What have we got to apologise for? For being an
anti-racist party? And we’ve done more to actually address the scourge of
anti-Semitism than any other political party. And yet we are being traduced.’
It is quite clear that Chris was not
saying that the Labour Party had been too apologetic about anti-Semitism but too
weak in standing up to the false accusations of anti-Semitism. The bourgeois
media stitched Chris up and Dave Renton, the ex-revolutionary is happy to go
along with it. So obvious is it that Chris was stitched up that Renton does not even mentionthe Sheffield speech.
The most dishonest part of this book relates
to Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon is a former Israeli who became a supporter of the
Palestinians. He is also an anti-Semite who internalised Zionism’s Jewish
self-hatred and saw in Israel the actions of a Jewish state as opposed to a settler
colonial one. Atzmon is also a world famous jazz musician.
The email I received from Martin Smith to our demands that the SWP dissociate themselves from Atzmon
In 2005, I organised a Jews Against Zionism picket of Bookmarks,
the SWP bookshop, in protest at Atzmon speaking there.[xli]
It took until 2012 for Palestine Solidarity Campaign to take the issue
of anti-Semitism seriously enough to expel an Atzmon supporter and holocaust
denier at my behest.
SWP statement on Gilad Atzmon
For seven years, I led the campaign
against Atzmon alongside many of those whom Renton criticises in Jewish
Voice for Labour. Renton doesn’t mention this but cites, in a footnote, my
article in The Guardian of 19 February 2007, ‘The
Seamy Side of Solidarity.’ Renton omits the fact that from 2004 until 2011,
the SWP, of which he was a member, hosted Atzmon at its events. The SWP defended
Atzmon in a statement of 21 June 2005 which is here.[xlii]
There is also a useful timeline of the SWP’s relationship with Atzmon.[xliii]
I wrote numerous articles criticising
the SWP, such as Time
to Say Goodbye.[xliv] Even my bitter enemies
in the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty ran an article Defend
Tony Greenstein! after I had been
banned by Indymedia.[xlv]
The SWP, which today appeases Zionists over 'antisemitism' used to promote a virulent anti-Semite
What is curious is that despite
the fact that the SWP were still promoting Atzmon, Renton had no problems rejoining
the SWP!And for three long years he
kept his mouth shut about the SWP’s association with an open anti-Semite. This suggests
that Renton’s interest in fighting anti-Semitism is of recent origin and has
more to do with his redefinition of anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism.
Renton attacks Chris Williamson for
having tweeted support for a petition complaining
that Atzmon had been prevented from playing jazz on Islington Council premises.
This is dishonest. Having never previously heard of Atzmon, Chris immediately deleted
the tweet and apologised.
In my view, his apology was completely
unnecessary. I both signed the petition and attended Atzmon’s gig in Brighton.
Let me explain. For the seven years that we campaigned against Atzmon, we made
it clear that we were not trying
to stop Atzmon’s gigs. We had no argument with his music. Jazz was detested by
the Nazis as ‘nigger music’ and they fought an ongoing campaign against
anti-fascist German youth, like the Edelweiss Pirates, who used jazz and swing
music as part of an anti-Nazi subculture.[xlvi]Momentum and the JLM behaved like fascists in pressurising venues to
cancel Atzmon’s gigs.
Even David Toube of Harry's Place site was unsure if the mural was anti-Semitic
Renton
deals abysmally with the long-erased mural by Mear One that was resurrected in
2018 by Luciana Berger. He writes that
‘The most important step in the re-emergence of Labour antisemitism
crisis was the re-discovery that, several years before, Corbyn had supported an
artist Mear One (Kalen Ockerman) after his mural was effaced for its
antisemitic associations.’
This mural was not an innocent discovery. It had been held in
reserve in order to attack Corbyn and the Labour Party at an opportune moment.
People have different views as to
whether or not the mural was anti-Semitic. It wasn’t obvious to me and nor was
it obvious to the Jewish
Chronicle in 2015, when it referred to the mural
as ‘having anti-Semitic undertones’, a
view which it ascribed to others.[xlvii]
When the pro-Zionist Harry’s Place
ran an article
about the mural, David Toube wrote:
‘I’ve
seen the mural, in person. It is clearly a conspiracist work…. But were the men
with beards supposed to be Jews? Well, possibly – but I’ve seen more obvious
stereotypes of Jews deployed in antisemitic art.’[xlviii]
Despite subsequent emphasis on the six bankers’
noses, only two of whom were Jewish, Toube emphasised their beards not their
noses. Yet Renton saw the mural as representing the archetypal Jewish
financier.
The central fault with
Renton’s book is an almost total inability to understand the relationship
between race and class. Renton uses the terms ‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’
interchangeably yet they are not the same. Jews in Britain today do not experience
structural and institutional racism deriving from the state. What they
experience, to some degree, is prejudice based on the past. It is Blacks and
Muslims who experience the full force of state and fascist racism and violence.
Renton treats Jews as if
they were same people who launched the Great Tailor’s Strike of 1912 and who
stopped Oswald Moseley at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936. The fact
is that British Jews have changed enormously since the 1940s. That is highly relevant to their
understanding of what they see as anti-Semitism.
In 1945, Phil Piratin was
elected as a Communist MP in the Mile End constituency. Half his votes came from
Jews. In 2015, under Labour’s first Jewish leader, Jews voted by 69% to 22% for
the Tories.[xlix]
Renton speaks with
derision about those who posit that Jewish support for Zionism is explained by
‘sociological theories’ (“Jews are all rich, or middle- class… Such theories
say little about Jews and more about their speakers”).
Renton tries to caricature
any materialist analysis. Nonetheless, it is a fact that Jews have become the
most privileged section of the White population. It is this that has led to their
move to the right politically. This was symbolized for me by the closure of Blooms
restaurant in 1996 in Whitechapel. Blooms had been at the
centre of East End Jewish life. It closed because the Jews had moved to
the suburbs to be replaced by Bengali immigrants.[l]
William Rubinstein, former President
of the Jewish Historical Society, wrote about
‘the rise of Western Jewry
to unparalleled affluence and high status(which) has led to the near-disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any
size; indeed, the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a
working class of anysize.’ [li]
Rubinstein concluded that British
Jews ‘arearguably more bourgeois now than at any time since the mid-nineteenth
century.’ Geoffrey Alderman, the historian of the Jewish community, wrote
that by 1961,
‘over 40 percent of
Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes, whereas these
categories accounted for less than 20 percent of the general population.’[lii]
By Renton’s logic, Alderman and Rubinstein must be anti-Semitic!
Renton repeatedly demonstrates his ignorance of Zionism as a
political movement and ideology. He writes that it was the Dreyfus Affair ‘which
caused Theodor Herzl to write The Jewish State and launch
the Zionist movement.’ If Renton had read the pamphlet then he would know that
there isn’t one single mention of Dreyfus in it. In Herzl’s four-volume Diaries,
Dreyfus is only mentioned in passing. The conclusion that
Herzl drew from the Affair was that:
‘In Paris... I achieved a
freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand
historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility
of trying to “combat” anti-Semitism.’[liii]
As
Jacques Kornberg, another Zionist historian, wrote:
‘The
dramatic and engaging notion that Herzl “converted” to Zionism in the wake of
the Dreyfus trial is unacceptable.’[liv]
Herzl’s claim was self-serving and only made in 1899, by which
time even the army had accepted that Dreyfus was innocent.
Renton
questions whether ‘there is a thing “Zionism” which
is the same in 2016 as it was in August 1933.’ Elsewhere he writes that
‘Undoubtedly, Israel has changed. The country’s politics are
different: with the left in every government until 1977, and the right almost
as consistently afterwards.’
Renton clearly has no understanding of
what Zionism is. The differences between
‘left’ and ‘right’ Zionism have always been tactical. It was the ‘left’
Zionists of Mapai and Mapam who carried out the Naqba, who placed Israel’s
Arabs under military rule for the first 18 years and who began the process of
settlement in the Occupied Territories. There is nothing that Likud has done
that the Israeli Labor Party hasn’t done. Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Sabra
and Chatilla, came from the Labour Zionist movement. Perhaps it has escaped
Renton’s notice that today’s far-Right Israeli government contains both the ILP
and Meretz (formerly Mapam).
Because Renton refuses to accept that the ‘anti-Semitism crisis’
was confected he finds it difficult to understand why it is that the same
people who were campaigning against ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ were at one and the
same time tolerant of genuine anti-Semitism.
Renton writes that when the fascist philosopher Roger Scruton defended
the anti-Semitic attack by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister on George
Soros,
‘Scruton was rescued from the taint of antisemitism by the Jewish
Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard, who accused his critics of having
“outrageous[ly] distort[ed]” Scruton’s words.’
Renton should not have been surprised. When, in 2009, the Tories
were criticised for entering a coalition with fascists and anti-Semites in the
European parliament and for the invitation by Conservative Friends of Israel to
Michal Kaminski, the anti-Semitic leader of Poland’s Law and Justice Party, it
was Pollard who defended him on the grounds that he was a strong supporter of
Israel.[lv]
It is on record that a large number of ex-UKIP members joined
the BNP. When Nigel Farage (who has also indulged in anti-Semitic attacks on
Soros) was invited to speak to a Jewish Chronicle gathering, Renton notes that Pollard
failed to ask Farage why this was so, confining himself to the observation that
‘The question was not asked and could not
have been, not when Farage’s talk had been billed as a meeting of friends.’
Renton is incapable of asking how it is that Pollard, who drove the false
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, was friends with a virulent racist and anti-Semite.
Renton elides over the fact that Israel's supporters today are from the White Supremacist Right
Another
example of this failure to understand that Zionism has never had a problem with
genuine anti-Semites was how he treated Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and his
attitude to Donald Trump. Renton described Mirvis’s intervention just before
the 2019 election when he advocated a vote for the Tories as ‘shocking’. Renton
writes that:
the Chief Rabbi was unable to say clearly even what he had
acknowledged a year before: that Trump was a racist. He began from a weaker
position than he had in 2016, and he went further than he had on that occasion
in seeking to excuse and justify the behaviour which he was also criticising.’
Mirvis wasn’t the only one. Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, had positively welcomed Trump to power.[lvi]
As did the leader of the ILP and now Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog:
“Warm congratulations to the president of the most powerful nation
in the world: Donald J Trump!”[lvii]
This is the same Arkush who, when he heard that Corbyn had spent
Passover with Jewdas, a leftish Jewish group, described them as a ‘source of virulent anti-Semitism’. Given
that Arkush had accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism, anyone with a socialist bone
in their body might have drawn the appropriate conclusions.
Another
anti-Semite that Pollard excused was Jacob Rees-Mogg who had tweeted in support
of Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD. Mogg
had attacked two fellow Jewish Tories, Sir Oliver Letwin and John Bercow as
“Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves.” Yetthe Jewish Chronicle
said nothing. Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History at
UCL wrote:
‘With his nod to “Illuminati” – pointed at Letwin and Bercow –
Rees-Mogg is knowingly trafficking in the portrayal of Jews as underhanded and
sinister. … he has exhumed, embellished, and rebroadcast one of the most
poisonous antisemitic canards in all of history.’
Yet
what was Renton’s comment on these double standards? Did he question the
concern with supposed ‘left’ anti-Semitism coupled with indifference to genuine
anti-Semitism? Not a bit of it.Renton
writes that:
‘Stephen
Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a journalist who is cited
several times in this book for the care he took to expose left-wing
antisemitism, ran to Rees-Mogg’s defence. “It is not antisemitic to mention the
name of a Jew”’.
The Jewish Chronicle has been the subject of numerous
successful complaints to IPSOS and has been the subject of four successful
libel actions.[lviii]
The JC is little more than a propaganda rag, yet Renton praises the ‘care he
took to expose left-wing anti-Semitism’. Unbelievable.
What Renton does not understand is that the Zionist movement has
never opposed anti-Semitism. As Herzl explained in his Diaries,
‘the
anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic
countries our allies.’[lix]
Renton also attacks Jewish Voice for Labour:
‘The
problem in leaning on JVL to provide an objective view of the crisis was that
no matter how bad the allegations were, it always found a way to excuse those
who were criticised: each of Walker, Williamson, and Livingstone was defended
by JVL.’
Renton accuses Glynn Secker of JVL of supporting a ‘conspiracy theory’ for tweeting that
Israel had purchased oil from ISIS. Rubbish. Israel’s Military Intelligence
Chief, General Herzi Halevy, said exactly that.[lx]
Israel admitted arming al-Nusra (Al Quada) in Syria and other jihadi groups.[lxi]
Assad was the main enemy of Israel. Turkey, too, was heavily involved in ISIS’s
oil trade. Renton has conspiracy theories on the brain.
What Renton won’t face is that there never was a problem of
Labour anti-Semitism. Of course in a party of 600,000 there will be a few anti-Semites.
Labour no doubt has a few paedophiles but does that mean there is a paedophile
problem?
It is the Labour Right that has always been the well-spring of
anti-Semitism. Wartime Home Secretary Herbert Morrison kept out thousands of
Jewish refugees trying to escape from Nazi occupied Europe. Poale Zion
said nothing because the Zionists, too, were opposed to letting in Jewish
refugees.
In
October 1942, Morrison received a delegation of eminent public figures asking
for visas for 2,000 Jewish children and elderly in Vichy France. Morrison
refused. Anti-Semitism ‘was just under
the pavement.’ A month later, the Nazis overran Vichy France and these Jews
were deported to Auschwitz. Like the Zionists, Morrison was said to doubt that
there was a holocaust.[lxii]
Morrison
was only following Zionist policy, which was that Jewish refugees must go to
Palestine or nowhere. And if they couldn’t, then they could not be helped. The
Zionists were fiercely opposed to the kindertransport,
the decision to admit 10,000 Jewish children to Britain after Kristalnacht. Fortunately
the BOD in 1938/9 was still controlled by anti-Zionists. Ben Gurion in a speech
of 9 December 1938 explained:
‘If I knew that
it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over
to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I
would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of
these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’[lxiii]
The culmination of the fake anti-Semitism campaign was the
complaint to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Renton fails to
critique the EHRC and their motives for opening an investigation. How come a
body that ignored Islamaphobia in the Tory Party, which had done nothing about
the Windrush Scandal and whose first chair was the Islamaphobe Trevor Philips,
was so concerned about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’?
This was clearly an intervention in internal Labour Party
affairs by the state. The EHRC is not an anti-racist body. Its treatment of its
Black staff demonstrates that it is riddled by racism.[lxiv]
Renton, however, ignores this. His criticism of the EHRC was entirely
different. The problem in his view was that ‘The EHRC report did little to convey the extent of antisemitism
within the Labour Party.’ In other words,
the EHRC findings should have been more damning! Renton even fails to mention
that the Commissioner who produced the EHRC Report, Alasdair Henderson, tweeted
in support of Roger Scruton and attacked the use of the term ‘misogyny’.
Henderson is clearly of the far-right.[lxv]
Particularly disgusting is Renton’s attack on Raed Salah, a
Palestinian leader from Israel’s outlawed Northern Islamic movement. Salah has
been subject to horrific persecution by Israel including being framed on
charges of racism. In Israel, only Arabs ever get charged with racism. Salah was
issued with a banning order by Theresa May in 2011. He was nonetheless admitted
in error to Britain before being arrested by the police. However, at the Upper
Immigration Tribunal he succeeded in overturning his deportation order. The
charge of anti-Semitism against him rested on a doctored version of a poem that
the Community Security Trust had given to the Home Office.[lxvi]
Renton says that the Tribunal ‘concluded that Salah’s words’ at a speech in Jerusalem opposing
Israel’s attack on worshippers at the Al Aqsa mosque, ‘did invoke the blood libel.’ Renton is a barrister and he knows
full well that the Tribunal’s observations were obiter dicta, in other words, superfluous to the judgement. The
conclusion itself is open to question as Salah, in an emotive speech after
repeated attacks by the Israeli police on worshippers, never even mentioned
Jews and Salah himself maintains that they referred to the Spanish Inquisition.
However, Renton failed to quote any other aspects of the judgement.[lxvii]
But let us just suppose that Renton is right and that Saleh did
make reference to the medieval blood libel accusation. Was Saleh leading a
Christian mob at Easter seeking to butcher and maim innocent Jewish villagers? No
he was confronting armed Israeli troops who were firing rubber bullets and
using stun grenades against unarmed worshippers. His anger would have been
understandable. What was worse? Making an anti-Semitic comment or Israeli
troops taking out the eyes of three Arab worshippers as happened last May at Al
Aqsa mosque?
This is not academic. Irish peasants, when
faced with British savagery, also engaged in anti-British racism. Do we
therefore shift the focus to blaming them for ‘racism’. No, socialists
understand reflective racism as being a product of the low political
consciousness of the oppressed. Salah was not leading an anti-Jewish
pogrom.He was the subject of Israeli
police pogroms.
The Upper Immigration Tribunal was several degrees to the left
of Renton in its judgment. In para. 54, the tribunal found that
‘We
consider, however, that, as in the poem, the intemperate language in the sermon
is addressed towards the Israeli state rather than Jews as such. Further, the appellant
refers at the beginning of the sermon to the Islamic acceptance of Moses and
Jesus as prophets. He expresses the inclusive concept of Jews, Christians and
Muslims all being “People of the Book” who should “come to common terms”.’
Hardly
the stuff of anti-Semitism. The Tribunal also stated (para. 59)
‘We
agree with Professor Pappe that the purport of the sermon as a whole was
against the actions of the state of Israel towards the al-Aqsa mosque and that
the focus was not on the blood libel.’
The
Tribunal noted that
‘the
sermon was given on a somewhat turbulent day when the appellant had been refused
permission to pray at one of the holy sites of his religion, one that he genuinely
fears is under threat from the Israeli authorities.’
The
Tribunal concluded (para. 78) that:
‘there
is no reliable evidence of the appellant using words carrying a reference to
the blood libel save in the single passage in a sermon delivered five years ago....
The absence of other evidence is striking, for at least two reasons. The
appellant is a prominent public figure and a prolific speaker. The first
indictment shows that his speeches are of interest to the authorities in
Israel. In these circumstances we think it can fairly be said that the evidence
before us is not a sample, or ‘the tip of the iceberg’: it is simply all the
evidence that there is.’
Renton did not refer to any of the
above. He was only interested in backing up the Islamaphobes of the Community
Security Trustwho had handled forged evidence.
Renton ends with warm words for Jon
Lansman – ‘who
had managed to consistently maintain their support for Palestinian rights’ while opposing ‘anti-Semitism’. But this is also untrue.
In May 2016, Lansman wrote in Left Futures that the ‘the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’.[lxviii]
He prioritised ‘anti-Semitism’ without so much as a cursory glance at the racism
of the JLM. People such as Margaret Hodge, the JLM’s parliamentary
spokesperson, had advocated all-white housing shortlists which led to the BNP
sending her a bunch of flowers.[lxix]
Lansman supported the IHRA, whose only purpose was to conflate anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism.
Usually, when reviewing a book, I try to
bring out the best in what the author has written. In the case of David
Renton’s book there is literally nothing in it worthy of praise. It is
dishonest and selective in its facts and ignores that Black and Muslim people
were the main victims of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.
Renton has become just another in the
long line of figures who started out on the left and ended up on the right. Educated
– like our own Prime Minister – at Eton, it seems that Renton is returning to
his aristocratic roots. It need not have been like this. Tam Dalyell, the
anti-war Labour MP, was also an old Etonian but he was an anti-imperialist and
one of the finest Labour MPs to have sat in the Commons. Renton, however, has
decided to take the road to Tel Aviv rather than, as Tam did, the road to
Baghdad.
[ix]JC 30.3.21., https://tinyurl.com/4ncmkk9u EXCLUSIVE:
70% of Labour members still think the party has no problem with Jew hate and
don't want Corbyn expelled
[x]Mail
Online, 7.8.15., Jeremy
Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his
'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed, https://tinyurl.com/mf94bbsx
[xii]Independent 30.6.16., Jewish Labour
MP Ruth Smeeth leaves antisemitism event in tears after being accused of
'colluding' with media, https://tinyurl.com/3d37tjjn
[lxi]Ha’aretz 3.2.19. Israel Just
Admitted Arming anti-Assad Syrian Rebels. Big Mistake, https://tinyurl.com/mp9c2snk Israel
Just Admitted Arming anti-Assad Syrian Rebels. Big Mistake
[lxii]Lesley Clare Urbach, Excuses excuses!
The Failure to Amend Britain’s Immigration Policy 1942-1943, European Judaism,
Vol. 52, No. 2, Autusm 2017.
[lxiii]Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist
policy and the Fate of European Jewry, Yad Vashem Studies (1939-42) p.199, see
also Segev, p.28, Teveth, p.855, Piterberg, p.99.
