No sooner had Lloyd-Russell Moyle MP Apologised for Supporting the Purge of Socialists from the Labour Party than he Recanted!

Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s bravado lasted til the first right-wing headline – this is the Socialist Campaign Group  

Full of Sound & Fury Signifying Nothing

I must confess to having a soft spot for my local Labour MP, Russell Lloyd-Moyle. Perhaps it’s a case of familiarity breeding contempt. Whenever Lloyd makes a radical gesture you can be sure that he will be rowing back as fast as his little legs can carry him. It’s a case of 1step forward and 3 steps back.

when I questioned Lloyd at a public meeting about his lack of support for Chris, he simply lied to me and said Corbyn had told Chris what he had to do.  This was  untrue

Being a generous soul I welcomed Lloyd’s statement at the Socialist Campaign Group rally last Tuesday condemning the purge of socialists and apologising to the thousands of anti-racists and socialists who have been hurt and devastated by false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ from the racists and reactionaries who are or were part of Labour’s toxic Governance and Legal Unit.

“I want to apologise from all of us but me in particular. Because if we have made you feel like you are alone, if we have not reached our arm around you enough in these tough times when you are being purged or set up with false allegations, I not only apologise, I will endeavour to do better because we have to support each other.

I must confess I did draw the line at Lloyd putting his arms around me! Perhaps it’s my religious upbringing, being the son of a rabbi, but I welcome the conversion of a sinner on the road to Damascus (yes I know it’s the wrong religion but it’s the principle I’m talking about!).  The picture of Lloyd being blinded by the light as he fumbles around, looking for people to put his arms around is a touching one.

The first person Lloyd might want to reach out to is Amanda Bishop. Amanda’s crime was to suggest a march on a synagogue to protest at their support for Israeli Apartheid. Now I’m not sure marching on synagogues is the best tactic but there is nothing anti-Semitic about it.  I can remember an old Jewish member of Brighton PSC making such a proposal regularly before others knocked it back. 

I picketed a Christian Church in Worthing whose members had been active in harassing women seeking an abortion at a clinic in Brighton. There was nothing anti-Christian about my actions or those of my fellow demonstrators. Yet what was Lloyd’s response to a woman who had lived in South Africa and been one of the few White opponents of Apartheid? Lloyd-Moyle tweeted:

“What she said was revolting and tonight, after I first read the comments today and reported them, she has been suspended. “This is anti-Semitism and not acceptable in our society and our party; no excuses.”

So an apology to Amanda by Lloyd would be especially welcome.

Lloyd's email to Iain McNicol - naturally he had informed noone about it

Much the same happened to me. When I was suspended in March 2016 for ‘comments you are alleged to have made’  I put in a Subject Access Request and received back, among other documents, some emails from LRM. Although they were redacted it didn’t take long to work out that LRM was the rat who had written to McNicol urging my expulsion. The whole correspondence is here.

I wrote to LRM and on 23 August 2016 LRM offered me a ‘limited apology’ (although his spelling is appalling!) and admitted that he had not only informed on me but that ‘I wrote to the regional office on a number of occasions about differnt members.’ Before going on to say that

‘I hope that you can accept my limited apoligy for point 3 being poorly worded, and I hope that you will understand that whilst I don't regard you as an anti-semite, I do believe that to style, tone and manor which you comment to be very unpleasant and to have no place in the Labour Party. ‘

If you can make your way through the appalling spelling and grammar, Lloyd concluded on a high moral tone:

 

Well we all try to be kind, even to our enemies.  And I have a few!  You will imagine my surprise when, a few weeks later I came across this act of ‘kindness’ on Facebook.

‘I am the [unelected] chair of his CLP and can tell you he is an abusive, unpleasant little man.  I have told him that to his face.  He alienates people who should be his natural supporters and whilst I’m not convinced he should be suspended for anti-Semitism he has gone…’ 

 I wrote back that ‘I have rarely come across such dishonesty and two facedness as that of yourself.  It really is staggering, even on the personal, let alone the political level.’  I also added for good measure that:

I know it is a small matter but it was a lie to say you had been unpleasant to my face.  Quite the contrary.  You are one of those people who are very pleasant and obsequious to someone’s face and then when their backs are turned you abuse them.  You have all the social graces of an untrained pet.

I wrote a blog on what happened with the two-faced Moyle at the time. Nonetheless I turned up to campaign for Lloyd at the 2017 General Election campaign and no one was happier than me when he ousted the Tory incumbent Simon Kirkby. I even distributed leaflets for Lloyd in 2019 before being thrown off the campaign for sending him critical emails and being an expelled Labour Party member. Clearly he wasn’t putting his hands around me! See No one Better Represents the Opportunism and Lack of Principle of the Campaign Group of MPs than Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Having made his bold apology for all the injustices members have undergone, Lloyd then faced a backlash, led by the Spectator which quoted Lloyd as saying  ‘'this has been a goddamn awful conference with a goddamn awful leadership' before suggesting that Starmer ‘'is not a politician for the Labour party.'

All of which is true but would RLM stand by his words? On the basis of his previous record the answer is clearly ‘no’. No sooner had the words of his speech rippled through the media than RLM was backpedalling.

In response to one particularly venomous Zionist Lloyd tweeted that

There are anti-semites that have rightly been expelled from party & for other reasons too (bullying behaviour or supporting other parties). But have been a number (which David Evans himself has apologise to) who have been threatened with expulsion or investigation for no reason.

this is Starmer's new Labour Party - the Police acting as Stewards

In fact there have been virtually no expulsions of anti-Semites. Almost all of those expelled and suspended have been critical of the apartheid State of Israel. And even those guilty of anti-Semitic phraseology, the reason for which is because Zionist groups like the Jewish Labour Movement and Board of Deputies claim to speak on behalf of all Jews whilst supporting Israeli war crimes. It’s little wonder that some people believe them. In other words a classic case of Zionism creating the very ‘anti-Semitism’ that it protests about.

Given that RLM refused even to sign a petition calling for the reinstatement of Jeremy Corbyn, because 'he doesn't feel this was a political decision in the first place' (what was it?  a culinary decision?) you can be sure that RLM's cowardice and self-interest will outweigh any political principles that are lurking.

Lloyd's pathetic email explanation as to why he wasn't signing a petition calling for Corbyn's reinstatement - 'it wasn't political'

No doubt at Labour Party Conference next year, LRM will make another fine speech attacking the leadership and their purge.  Meanwhile he will do his best not to antagonise Starmer or the red Tories that now run Labour. After all, when all is said and done, Lloyd’s main concern is not to follow Jeremy Corbyn and have the whip withdrawn.

Tony Greenstein

 

 

 

 

How to Create Anti-Semitism in 2 easy steps

First you say that Zionism is the same as being Jewish, then, when people criticise Israel you cry ‘anti-Semitism’

What is remarkable about the false anti-Semitism campaign waged by Labour’s racist Deputy Leader Tom Watson and child abuse supporter Margaret Hodge is how often they get away with it. 

[There was a time when Jewish Chronicle then Daily Express Editor Stephen Pollard wrote about Hodge that ‘It’s difficult to imagine a more blatant, shameful and utterly contemptible piece of two-faced hypocrisy than the behaviour of Margaret Hodge‘. It was true then and it’s true now!

Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader because of a desire to see fundamental change. However the people who supported him were political novices who were unprepared for the backlash that followed.

It was not easy for the Right to attack Corbyn who won as the anti-Austerity candidate. Arguing, as did the Dark Prince Peter Mandelson that he was “intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich” whilst people were using food banks or sleeping on the streets did not convince many people. Liz Kendal tried it in 2015 and flopped with 4.5%.

‘Anti-Semitism’ was a much more useful weapon, almost custom made. It had an aura of moral righteousness about it. Fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ could make even the worst reactionary feel good. It is, as I once wrote in an essay for Return No. 5, ‘The False Anti-Semitism of the Right’.

Fighting for lower taxes for the rich is far less morally uplifting than opposing racism against those who suffered from attempted extermination. Even if it means getting into bed with racists!

The Daily Mail, which during the 1930’s supported Hitler abroad and Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists at home in addition to campaigning against the admission of Jewish refugees from the Nazis, began the fake anti-Semitism campaign with a story alleging Jeremy Corbyn had worked with a holocaust denier Paul Eisen.

There is a good tradition for this kind of thing.  When British imperialism conquered India it did it so in the name of fighting Suttee, a Hindu custom of burning widows on the pyre of their husbands. It didn’t mention bleeding India dry of its wealth and resources or blasting people from the barrels of cannons.

That is why it is disappointing that Richard Burgon MP, one of the better members of Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet should first deny and then distance himself from his perfectly reasonable view that Zionism is a threat to peace.

Zionism based its whole project on the  slogan that Palestine was a ‘land without a people for a people without a land’. The slogan had first been coined by a Christian Restorationist, Alexander Keith.

The main accusation against Burgon should have been that it was a statement of the obvious. Saying Zionism is a threat to peace is like saying that dogs bark or fish swim. Why should be want to deny it?

The JLM demonstrate that their concern is Zionism not anti-Semitism

It is irrelevant whether or not Burgon remembered saying that Zionism is a threat to peace. Obviously he must have believed it and why not? Israel has, since it was founded, based its whole existence on creating enemies. First it was Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt, then the PLO, then Hezbollah and now Iran. The Israeli state could not justify its existence without an enemy. 

Recently the enemy has become the 40,000 Black refugees within its borders whose only crime is to be Black and not Jewish. The term used by Netanyahu is ‘infiltrators’ which the Israeli Labour Party’s Avi Gabbay repeated. Infiltrators conjures up another enemy of Israel, the Palestinian refugees who ‘infiltrated’ back into Palestine after their expulsion in 1948. Hundreds if not thousands of them were murdered by the Israeli army in the 1950’s. Calling refugees ‘infiltrators’ is an attempt to equate them with ‘terrorists’.

The lies of Jonathan Freedland - the famous mural had no 'hooked-nose' Jewish bankers in it and 4 of the bankers were non-Jewish

But it’s not only within the Middle East that Israel has been a threat to peace. It has consistently supported the most repressive and genocidal regimes abroad. It actively aided the genocide in Guatemala where up to 200,000 Mayan Indians were slaughtered. It supported the death squad regime in El Salvador. Shipped weapons to the Nicaraguan Contras when the US Congress cut them off.  It supported Pinochet in Chile (Israel’s Supreme Court recently refused to allow the files to be opened on ‘national security’ grounds).  It armed the neo-Nazi Junta of Argentina between 1976-1983 when it murdered up to 3,000 Jews and of course more recently it armed the Burmese regime as it committed genocide. Israel was also of course the main arms supplier to the Apartheid regime in South Africa, including nuclear weapons.

Tom Watson defended 'poor Phil' who campaigned on this racist leaflet from Phil Woolas in 2010 - the High Court removed Woolas from the Commons for lies in a campaign that aimed to 'make white folk angry'

Colin Shindler described in the Jewish Chronicle how

Despite a US arms embargo, Israel trained personnel and provided equipment which could be used against Pinochet’s opponents. In 1989 Eitan Kalinsky and his wife were sent as Israeli emissaries to teach at the Jewish school in Santiago. They attended the now public protests against Pinochet’s regime and were amazed to note that the riot-control vehicles had been manufactured by Beit Alfa, a left-wing Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz.

Kibbutz Artzi was the kibbutz federation of the so-called Marxist Zionist Mapam party!

So the question is why Burgon didn’t proudly admit that he called Israel a threat to world peace and defy his accusers to do their worst? After all Israel is an openly apartheid state which for half a century has maintained a military dictatorship in the Occupied Territories.

The reason is Zionist Political Terrorism. The fake anti-Semitism campaign run by the Israeli Embassy, as Al Jazeera documented, has successfully intimidated otherwise decent politicians like Richard Burgon into denying their own private views.

The JLM have successfully demonised Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson and others, myself. Included. Unfortunately, instead of Momentum standing up to them, Jon Lansman and Owen Jones have gave gone along with the McCarthyites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hoyo140ITc4

When Burgon first stated Zionism was a threat to peace, Joan Ryan MP wrote an open letter on 16^th August 2016 to him. I replied with another Open Letter four days later! This was a dead issue deliberately resurrected by the JLM in order to continue with its campaign of intimidation and vilification.

If Burgon had had the guts to stand up to the JLM and Katz and call these petty racists out, as Moshe Machover for example did, then Katz would have been reduced to the insignificant straw man that he is.

The arguments used by Katz of the Jewish Labour Movement to attack Burgon are interesting and show the dishonesty of the Zionists.  Katz stated that ‘the vast majority of British Jews identify as Zionists’ and that Burgon was therefore ‘insulting a core part of their identity.’

Leaving aside how you can ‘insult’ an identity as opposed to agreeing or disagreeing with it, his basic premise is untrue. In British Jews Attitudes to Israel conducted in 2015 just 59%, down from 71% five years previously, defined themselves as Zionists. 31% of British Jews said they were not Zionists. 59% is not ‘overwhelming’.

However even if an overwhelming majority of British Jews supported Zionism what would that say?  That the majority of British Jews were racists?  Stupid? Ignorant?  Choose your adjective. However if Zionism is racist, as it clearly is, then the views of British Jews are irrelevant.  Truth is more important.

Racism is about dehumanisation. Racism defines people as inferior according to arbitrary attributes such as ‘race’, colour or religion. It is not about challenging a political identity.

Salman Rushdie

When 40 years ago Salman Rushie published Satanic Verses the vast majority of Muslims considered it an insult to their identity as Muslims. Copies of the book were publicly burned and a fatwa was put on the head of Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini.  Many of us on the Left had no hesitation in supporting Rushdie’s right to publish his book unharmed. Were we racist because we were opposed to a core element of some Muslim’s identity?  Of course not.

If some Africans believe that FGM is part of their identity is it racist to oppose it?  Zionism is just as much of a threat to Palestinians and FGM is.  If some Jews identify as Zionists that paints them as incorrigible racists who identify with the historic oppressors of Jews.

The right to criticise religion is a fundamental part of any free society.  Likewise the right to call an ideology, Zionism, racist or a threat to peace is called freedom of speech. It is irrelevant whether Zionism is the core part of the identity of many Jews. So what? It is also the core identity of Evangelical Christians and opposition to Zionism is the core identity of many anti-Zionist Jews. 

Eric Pickles defended the Tory link-up with anti-Semitic and racist parties in the European parliament

The tragedy is that under the baleful influence of the Zionist Jon Lansman, fake leftist Owen Jones and others such as Shadow Foreign Minister Emily Thornberry, supported by cowardly trade union leaders such as Dave Prentis, the Labour Party has adopted the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.  That is why out and out racists like Tory Eric Pickles have signed up to a definition of anti-Semitism that provides an ideological underpinning for British foreign policy. 

What the present campaign of equating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism is doing is to identify British Jews with Zionist atrocities. All the things that the Israeli state does is equated with British Jews. That is why supporting Zionism is the best way to support anti-Semitism.

The fake anti-Semitism allegations have been much in evidence in the local elections. In Brighton the only Black woman council candidate, Alex Braithwaite has been suspended from Brighton Labour Party.  It is too late for her name to be taken off the ballot paper and we hope that in two days time she will nonetheless be elected to the council.

Another Labour Party member, Amanda Bishop, foolishly believed that Alex’s removal was as a result of the actions of local Jews, since what was done was in the name of the Sussex Jewish Representative Council and she made a suggestion on Facebook, more in jest, that we should march to the local synagogue!  She too has been suspended although Amanda too has a long and good record as an anti-racist in the days of Apartheid. The fake anti-Semitism campaign is being used by racists to attack anti-racists.

The only effect of the fake anti-Semitism campaign is to INCREASE anti-Semitism.  And that too will be welcome to Zionism because without anti-Semitism there is no Zionism or emigration to Israel.

Tony Greenstein