Open Letter to Labour’s NEC – How Long will the Chakrabarti Report be Ignored?

Why, after over 19 months, has Labour’s not Implemented the Chakrabarti Report Proposals for a fair Disciplinary Procedure?

I have been expelled on the basis of charges that relate solely to allegations and material that surfaced after I was suspended on March 18th 2016.  In paragraph 102 of the Skeleton Argument of the Labour Party's barrister, Thomas Ogg, be states:

102. All of the charges relate to conduct after Mr Greenstein's suspension from theLabour Party on 18 March 2016.

In other words I was suspended first and then the Compliance Unit looked around for evidence.  If that happened in a bourgeois court the charges would be thrown out for abuse of process.  In the Guidelines to the National Constitutional Committee, Appendix 6 Clause 6D Procedural matters at NEC or CLP level states:

i. The rules under which the NCC operates make it clear that the NCC and its panels are concerned only with the charge(s). The procedures adopted on behalf of the Party or a CLP in advance of a referral to the NCC are not matters for the NCC dealing with a particular case. The NCC is entitled to (and will) act on the basis that the charges are properly brought before them and cannot become embroiled in dealing with complaints about the administration of any investigation leading to the charges. Any such complaint will therefore not be entertained by the NCC or panel thereof unless it is material or relevant to the consideration of the evidence to be used by the presenter in support of the charges.

This is what I have termed the 'Turning a blind eye' clause.  Whatever the injustices perpetrated by Sam Matthews and the Compliance Unit, the NCC is obliged to ignore it except of course that in Chapter 9, Clause IX (4) the Rule Book lays down an obligation on the Labour Party to be fair:

4. The NCC or any panel thereof in hearing and determining charges against an individual shall have regard to procedural guidelines as determined by the NCC. The NCC shall have the power to supplement such guidelines from time to time and to modify its procedures in order to meet the circumstances of any particular case to ensure fairness to both the individual and the Party.

Below is a letter from members of the Labour Party in Holborn & St Pancras and Hampstead & Kilburn asking why, 19 months later, the Chakrabarti Report’s recommendations on a fair disciplinary process have not been implemented.

The Chakrabarti Report has gathered dust for the past 19 months as the Labour Right cannot openly oppose its recommendations on natural justice and fair process

We have seen Labour Parties such as Brighton and Hove and Wallasey suspended on the basis of outright lies.  See Warren Morgan, Emma Daniels & The Spitting Incident That Never Was - The Lies that led to the Overturning of Elections & the Suspension of Brighton & Hove Labour Party [see Labour party's tensions between left and right in focus in Brighton]

Brighton and Hove were suspended solely because, having lost democratic elections to Momentum candidates, the Right invented false allegations of spitting and intimidation.  In Wallasey, after the attempted coup by 172 MPs, Angela Eagle became the challenger to Corbyn. Wallasey CLP made it clear that they were going to back Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party headquarters responded by suspending the party.  The pretext was false accusations of homophobia which apparently took place at an AGM.  Now, after the dust has died down, these allegations have been quietly dropped because of course they were always without substance. 

The late and unlamented Iain McNicol and his servants were happy to suspend whole parties for the benefit of Progress and the 172 PLP traitors on the basis of outright lies.  We had the spectacle of the Disputes Committee investigator in Brighton, Katherine Buckingham refusing to look at the video of the alleged spitting incident on ‘data protection’ grounds.  The real reason was, of course, that it proved that the original allegations of spitting at the front entrance were complete lies and that Councillors Warren Morgan and Emma Daniels who made the original allegations were liars.

The Letter that Anne Black, recently deposed Chair of the Disputes Committee, sent to the suspended Brighton & Hove Labour Party - from the beginning Black assumed that the allegations were true, as can be seen in her final sentence

The Chakrabarti Report on Racism and Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has gathered dust for over 18 months.  It made a comprehensive series of recommendations, basic principles that every court of law in the country takes for granted.  However for McNicol, the Compliance Unit and Labour’s civil service, the idea of according people accused of offences under the Labour Party constitution the basic right of knowing who your accusers are, what the charges are and the evidence against you is unthinkable.  These petty bureaucrats, who would not have been out of place in Stalin's Rusia, invent allegations against those they suspend and ‘auto exclude’ for naked political reasons on the flimsiest of pretexts.  The last thing they want are any written procedures.  Fairness doesn’t come in to it.   That is why the Chakrabarti recommendations have been comprehensively ignored.

One of the demands of Labour Against the Witch-hunt is that Chakrabarti is now implemented and we expect the  now left Labour NEC to do exactly that.

Katherine Buckingham sent out the above email but her real job was to ensure that the original decision to suspend Brighton & Hove Party was vindicated

Tony Greenstein

Letter to Labour's National Executive Committee

Sisters and Brothers

We have waited for 19 months for the Chakrabarti Enquiry’s recommendations to be put into practice, and give our party the fair disciplinary procedures it needs and deserves.  We hope that the NEC will make a start today by clearing David Watson of unfounded charges and letting him return to Walthamstow where he was a valued officer.

We have seen so many good comrades across the Labour Party suspended on the basis of anonymous accusations, and still waiting to be reinstated. There have been waves of factional purges which are shameful in a democratic party. First members were accused of being Green, then trade union militants, then antisemites and then transphobic. Accusations seem to have come down most heavily on people of colour, thus further excluding them from our party which we say that we want to reflect the society we live in.

We are all members of the Labour Party in Holborn & St Pancras and Hampstead & Kilburn. Many of us have Jewish heritage.  We are concerned for Labour in future government to have a real ethical foreign policy including international co-operation and fair trade. This includes confronting the internationally condemned actions of the state of Israel and reining in its unfair trade privileges, creating equal rights for Palestinian citizens and more. We strongly deny that supporting the international nonviolent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions is antisemitic, or that questioning the colonising actions of Israel shows that the Labour Party harbours hatred of Jews. This is not our experience.

We are still waiting for suspended active members like David Watson to get a fair hearing and be reinstated. We need their abilities to win the next election.

23 January 2018

Signed (in alphabetical order)

Ruth Appleton, Highgate branch, GC delegate from Unite

Simon Burton, Kings Cross branch

Prof Miriam E David, Highgate branch

Daphne Davies, Kings Cross branch

Harriet Evans, Vice-Chair, Highgate branch

Pete Firmin, CWU delegate, Hampstead & Kilburn CLP

Sam Gisagara, BAME officer, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

Alice Gray, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

Owen Holland, Bloomsbury & Kings Cross branch

Agnes Kory, Hampstead & Kilburn CLP

Richard Kuper, Political Education & Training officer, Highgate branch

Marie Lynam, West Hampstead & Fortune Green branch, GC delegate GMB

Bernard Miller, Gospel Oak branch

Moshe Machover, Queen’s Park branch

Tom Muirhead, Hampstead & Kilburn CLP

Gareth Murphy, Kentish Town branch, GC delegate from Unite

Barbara Rosenbaum, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

Jo Rostron, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

Linda Sayle, GC delegate, Kings Cross & Bloomsbury branch

Amanda Sebestyen, GC delegate, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

Prof Tom Selwyn, Vice Chair, Camden Town with Primrose Hill branch

As the Witch-hunt gathers momentum, Jon Lansman’s Momentum does nothing

Mike Paling and David Watson are just two of the casualties of McNicol’s war on free speech

 

Mike Paling's Expulsion letter

Draft Resolution on the Witch-hunt

This Branch/CLP

i.                Welcomes the reinstatement of Professor Emeritus Moshe Machover, who was expelled (‘auto excluded’) from the Labour Party on 3 October 2017. Professor Machover is Jewish, born in Tel Aviv in 1936,  and is the co-founder of Matzpen, the socialist organisation which from the 60s to the 80s brought together Arab and Jewish opposition to the illegal occupation of Palestine (see http://www.matzpen.org/arabic/ );

ii.             Notes that the Head of Disputes, Sam Matthews, accused Prof Machover of writing an “apparently antisemitic article” according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, and further accused him of “membership or support for another political party, or a political organisation with incompatible aims to the Labour Party’ on the basis of having written articles for them and having spoken on their platforms.

iii.           By this criteria Jeremy Corbyn, who was a columnist for the Morning Star for 10 years should also be ‘auto-excluded’.

iv.           The witch-hunt that the Compliance Unit and the Disputes Committee are conducting is unacceptable.  It is an attack on supporters of Jeremy Corbyn under the guise of opposing anti-Semitism.  It is used almost exclusively against those on the Left, supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism.

v.             We note the comment of Jewish comedian, Alexei Sayle in a Sky TV interview in October 2017 that:  ‘most of the people who have been suspended from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism seem to have been Jewish.’

vi.           It is noticeable that anti-Muslim or anti-Roma racism doesn’t merit the same concern by the Party apparatus.

We demand:

vii.       No auto-exclusions or expulsions. Everyone has the right to a fair hearing.  All those who have been auto-excluded must be reinstated.

viii.      That the proposed expulsions of Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone should be halted.  It is noticeable that two of the above are Jewish and two are Black anti-racist activists.

ix.        We reject the 450 word IHRA definition of anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism.  We note the Opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC that ‘It does not have the clarity which would be required from such a definition.’ http://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/ihra-opinion/#sthash.xHhUS24q.dpbs. 

x.         We prefer the simple 21 word definition of Professor Brian Klug of Oxford University:

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

xi.        The Compliance Unit should be abolished. All disciplinary action against members should be undertaken by elected bodies not full time staff.

As the the case of Mike Paling below demonstrates, the Right is attempting to reverse the victories of the Left at Party conference by stepping up the witch hunt and ‘auto-excluding’ and suspending anyone who speaks out on Palestine or is associated with a left group they disagree with.

Labour Against the Witchhunt

Next Meeting

Calthorpe Arms, Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross

Saturday December 2^nd 12.00-3.00 p.m.

On the very same day that Moshe Machover was expelled so was Michael Paling.  As his email to Moshe explains, his ‘offence’ was sharing posts which included articles from Weekly Worker.  His timeline is full of posts he has shared, most of them have nothing to do with the CPGB or LPM.  He was obviously targeted as an active trade unionist.  They were amongst many such posts that he shared on Facebook.  We need to put an end to this McCarthyism.  

Why the hell are Labour Party staff, paid by us, spending their time poring over social media posts of people in the party and seeing what they are sharing?

David Watson, the Fundraising Officer in Walthamstow CLP has also been suspended for 18 months now.  Stella Creasy, his local MP, takes exception to anyone speaking out on Palestine in her constituency.  The constituency is by all accounts run by her family like a mafia town.

Labour General Secretary Iain McNicol - it is almost certain that he is working with Britain's secret state to help destabilise the Labour Party

Meanwhile Jon Lansman and Momentum’s leadership are like the 3 monkeys – they neither see, say or hear anything.  It is outrageous that Momentum have done absolutely nothing about the expulsions or suspensions even though they must know that their purpose has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with weakening the Left.  The only point of these witch-hunts is to weaken the pro-Corbyn left.

Mike Paling has been expelled under Chapter 2.I.4.B of the Labour Party's rules which states:

“A member of the party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour Group or unit of the Party or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member, subject to the provisions of part 6.I.2 of the disciplinary rules”.

These posts were the 'evidence' Mike Paling was supplied with

This rule has to go.  As it stands it could be interpreted to debar any member or supporter of Progress or Labour or indeed any organisation deemed political but of course it is only being used to debar members of left-wing groups.   An anti-fracking or an anti-racist group could equally be deemed political.  The proscribed list of organisations, such as Militant, has been scrapped.  Now any member of the Compliance Group can take exception to any group they define as political and then auto-exclude someone, without them having any right of appeal, from the Labour Party.  This rule is  witch hunter’s charter.

It could of course and maybe in the future it will be used against members of Momentum.  However today it is being used solely against people on the Left.  Although I detest the Zionist politics of the Alliance for Workers Liberty for the reasons I gave in my post yesterday, they have a right to function and operate in the Labour Party like any other group.

Letter from Mike Paling to Moshe Machover

Dear Moshe,

                    No one was happier than myself when your expulsion was rescinded after the fantastic campaigning by members. Sadly the same cannot be said for myself regarding my expulsion at the same time, my crime was the sharing of 8 items from Labour Party Marxist and the weekly worker, (CPGB).

                     I would just like to make it clear from the off, I have never attended a LPM or CPGB meeting  let alone joined either of these organisations.

                     I regularly share political articles on Facebook, including some by your good self, but I've shown no bias towards LPM or WW. I've checked my Facebook timeline and counted 12 occasions when I've shared LPM and WW pieces during September, the month cited by Sam Matthews. However, there were over 200 political articles shared from other sources, such as Labour MPs, Unite the Union, the TUC, New Statesman, national newspapers, etc, during the same period. Of course, I will dispute the premise that LPM support is incompatible with membership, but even if that is accepted, there is no evidence that I've given any such support. Like yourself, I was offered no right of appeal but given 14 days to challenge the validity of the so called evidence attached to the expulsion letter, unlike you, however Sam Matthews has not seen fit to reply to, or even acknowledge, my communication.

                    During my time as a Labour Party activist I've participated in election campaigns Party actions regularly attending CLP, branch and Momentum meetings and supporting Labour  movement, antifascist and Palestinian solidarity actions. No doubt the latter has made me more susceptible to the attention of purge minded bureaucrats. 

Kind regards, M Paling.

Please sign this petition in support of David Watson, who has been suspended for 18 months by the Labour Party

Lift David Watson's suspension from the Labour Party!

David Watson and Jeremy Corbyn

Walthamstow Labour Party fundraiser suspended – who had it in for David Watson?

EXCLUSIVE:

David Watson, Labour Party fundraising coordinator for the Walthamstow constituency in northeast London, was suspended last week for unspecified “breaches of party rules.” The Jewish Chronicle – a Zionist weekly newspaper which has been a main cheerleader for the campaign branding Labour a hotbed of Jew-hatred – gave an “Exclusive” tag to its May 6 report alleging that Watson had been suspended because of antisemitic Facebook posts.

Both the JC and the local Waltham Forest Guardian newspaper quoted Labour MP Stella Creasy saying that “bigotry” is inconsistent with membership of “a party campaigning for social justice,” implying that this was relevant to Watson’s case.

Word in local Labour circles says it was the MP’s father Philip Creasy, Constituency Party secretary, who notified Watson of his suspension on May 9, three days after he was asked about it by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle. How did they know?

Who has an interest in pillorying a secondary school teacher of modern languages with a long history of working with Greenpeace and the Campaign Against Arms Trade? David Watson is a man who prides himself on combating antisemitism among kids he teaches, getting them involved in projects run by organisations such as the Anne Frank Trust and Amnesty International. Might his friendship with Jewish anti-Zionists have played a role? Or his past visits to Israel and Palestine and association with Israeli and Palestinian anti-Occupation activists? Or was it merely the fact that when he was elected Walthamstow party fundraiser, he replaced Stella Creasy’s mother in the role? Witnesses present at the relevant Annual General Meeting say that the honourable member made no attempt to hide her displeasure at Watson’s election.

Some suspect the Conservatives may have had a hand in his victimisation, since pictures of Watson with Sadiq Khan, at that time vying with Tory Zac Goldsmith for election as London’s mayor, featured in the JC and alongside charges of antisemitism posted by the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism on May 3.  Allegations had also appeared on the notorious Zionist blog, Harry’s Place.

Let’s have a look at Stella Creasy’s idea of what constitutes bigotry, remembering that this is taking place against the background of an ongoing witch hunt in the Labour Party – gleefully stoked by Conservatives joining hands with Labour opponents of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership making allegations of antisemitism, mostly distorted or even fabricated, against opponents of Israel’s colonial settlement of Palestine.

The CAA alleged that Watson believed “Israel is secretly behind ISIS.”

Reality: He had posted a picture of Israeli shells allegedly found in an ISIS camp and written over it “Mmmm”

He was charged with suggesting links between Israel and the Nazis.

Reality: He had posted a link to a Daily Mirror report, which was also carried in many other newspapers, about an SS officer who had been employed by the Israeli secret service to kill former Nazis working in Arab countries after the war. Watson wrote: “A moral army with a fine moral foundation.”

Other alleged crimes include calling Zionism a racist ideology and expressing sympathy for Palestinian “guerrillas”.

There is no hint of animosity towards Jews in any of these posts. Many Jews would agree that Zionism is a racist ideology, discriminating again Palestinians and stereotyping Jews as congenitally incapable of living alongside non-Jews in diverse societies. Many – including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak – also empathise with Palestinians resisting the  occupation of their land.

These are subjects which we should be free to debate without being hounded out of any democratic political organisation – above all one that claims, as Stella Creasy says, to be “campaigning for social justice.

It is Time for Unity in the Campaign Against the Witchhunt

Momentum has to support all those suspended not just its Vice Chair Jacqueline Walker

I was suspended on March 18^th from the Labour Party.  Until the suspension of Ken Livingstone I was the most prominent victim of the Right’s feeding frenzy. [see Tony Greenstein suspended from Labour Party - Labour Party machine gets its revenge on Corbyn’s activists as expulsions mount How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis Labour is one step away from book-burning]

Cllr. Aysegul-Gurbuz - suspended

Since then there have been numerous people, it is estimated about 50, who have been fingered for ‘anti-Semitism’.  The one common denominator in all the suspensions has been the lack of any evidence of anti-Semitism.  Ken Livingstone was suspended, not for anti-Semitism but for making political comments about the collaboration between the Zionist movement and Nazism which are a matter of recorded history.  Ken was a member of the National Executive Committee and his suspension has made it impossible for him to continue in that role.

David White, suspended for saying Zionism is racist, with Sadique Khan, Mayor of London 

It is therefore particularly disgraceful that his replacement, one Rhea Lewis, is a former member of the Jewish Leadership Council (an organisation of big Jewish capitalists led by Micky Davies, former owner of mining company Xtrata) and the Zionist Youth Council.  The nomination as part of the left slate of Ms Lewis, especially in the current climate of attacks on anti-Zionists and supporters of the Palestinians, is totally unacceptable.  Voting for Lewis is as good as voting for the Right.

Ken Livingstone - suspended for telling the truth

As I wrote less than week ago, the current witch hunt shows all the signs of state involvement designed to deliberately destabilise the new left wing leadership of the Labour Party.  Britain’s Cointelpro – How the Israeli Embassy and Guido Fawkes destabilised the LabourParty  - Ken Livingstone Must Be Reinstated & Corbyn Must Fight Back 

Jon Lansman - Chair of Momentum - gave left cover to the witch hunt

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, instead of fighting back and rebutting what is so obviously a co-ordinated and orchestrated campaign by their political enemies, have given these allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ credence.  They have parroted that they are against anti-Semitism, as if there is anyone who isn’t against sin.  What they don't seem to have realised is that the anti-Semitism that supporters of Israel talk about isn’t anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism – opposition to the racist and Apartheid nature of the Israeli state.

David Watson -  suspended for saying that Zionism is racist

Corbyn could also have pointed to the links that the Tories have in the European Parliament with an assortment of fascist and anti-Semitic parties, including the Polish Law & Justice Party, which won the last Polish Elections and Robert Ziles LNNK in Latvia.  Some idea of the nature of the Polish Party can be gleaned by the following report from Forward, the liberal US Jewish paper of December 17 2015.  Entitled Poland Turns Hard to Right — and Jews Wind Up in Crosshairs it describes how the Wroclaw branch of the Party held an anti-immigration demonstration and they decided to burn an effigy of a Hasidic Jew for their entertainment.

Tory Boy Steve Reed MP of Progress - behind Watson's suspension

It is somewhat ironic that the Jewish Chronicle’s editor Stephen Pollard is a fan of all those anti-Semites that the Tories work with in the European Parliament.  Pollard, who has played a prominent part in the Labour witch hunt, has gone out on a limb to defend the anti-Semitic former MEP of the Law & Justice Party, Michal Kaminski who called on Polish Jews to apologise for hundreds of their number having been burnt alive in his constituency village of Jedwabne in 1941.  As long as you support the State of Israel then any amount of anti-Semitism is acceptable.  See Jedwabne – The Polish Village Where Up to 900 Jews Were Burnt Alive by Fellow Poles  Pollard – Upset by Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ but a devotee of theanti-Semitic Michael Kaminski

Stephen Pollard, ex-editor of Express and now editor of Jewish Chronicle - happy to defend anti-Semites as long as they are pro-Israekl

It was extremely unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the Chair of Momentum, Jon Lansman, was seen to put the knife into Livingstone’s back commenting that ‘A period of silence from Ken Livingstone is overdue, especially on antisemitism racism & Zionism. It’s time he left politics altogether’ (28.4.16.)  The comments that caused the Right such offence were:

 "Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’

Pollard defending notorious Polish fascist and anti-Semite Michal Kaminski MEP

Livingstone was wrong to refer to Israel when it was Palestine and he was wrong to imply that the Holocaust was a product of Hitler’s madness.  It was the logical consequence of the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis -  depriving Germany’s Jews of employment, political and civil rights, including citizenship, stripping them of their belongings and then deportation to Poland and Latvia.  But he was essentially correct.

Jon Lansman found out to his cost a week ago that humouring the witch hunters only increased their appetite.  His own Vice Chair at Momentum, Jacqueline Walker, was also suspended for anti-Semitism.  The specific offence was discussing the Jews and slavery.  Being a Black and Jewish person, one might have thought she was eminently suitable to discuss this topic.  Clearly the witchfinder generals at LP HQ thought differently. 

I wrote about Jacqueline Walker's case, a Black-Jewish victim of the witch hunt, on 6^thMay Labour’s Thought Police claims another victim - Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker  What is so reprehensible about the present witch hunt is that any debate around the topic of Zionism or Jews is now being policed by those who will report any comments not deemed 100% kosher to the thought police at Labour Party headquarters. Labour is a political party, it should encourage discussion and debate instead of pouncing on people who stray from the road.  

It is especially disgusting that this policing is being carried out by the devotees of a racist state which is the only apartheid state in the world.  

Israel is a state which has censorship and gagging orders, which detains prisoners without trial, which uses torture freely, which locks up Palestinian children as young as 12 (not Jewish children) and tortures on them [see Jerusalem Post 20.6.13. UN: Israel tortures detained Palestinian children] where racism is rampant.  

A plurality of Israeli Jews support the forcible expulsion of Israeli Palestinians. [see Israel’s Religiously Divided Society Arguably the level of racism in Israel is higher than it ever was in Nazi Germany itself, because the anti-Semitism of the Nazi Party wasn’t particularly popular outside its own ranks.

Of course if the topic of Zionist Nazi collaboration is an expulsion offence, there is no logical reason why discussing Jewish involvement in the Slave Trade should be allowed.  Indeed it would be helpful if Labour General Secretary Ian McNicol could draw up a list of banned topics, much like the old Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (Inquisition) used to do.  Perhaps socialism and Marx could also be added to the list.

For the first time in the anti-Semitism frenzy, the Chairperson of Momentum, Jon Lansman, spoke out against the witch hunt, in an article on Left Futures A frenzied witch-hunt is not the way to combat antisemitism or any form of racism However they are to blame for not speaking out before now.   The suspension of Jacqueline Walker is a direct result of the encouragement that Lansman and the LRC gave to the witch hunt.  By keeping silent until now they encouraged the witch hunters.

It has taken nearly 3 months for Momentum and Lansman to come out clearly against the suspension of an activist, but even then they have focused on Jacqueline Walker as an individual.  There is no mention of other individuals who have been suspended.  Lansman, Momentum and the LRC are playing the witch hunter’s game by playing divide and rule.

Important though her case is, Jacqueline Walker is no more important than that of all the other people who have been suspended.  What is necessary is to oppose the witchhunt as a whole not to single out particular people as ‘undeserving’ of being suspended, thereby implying that everyone else is deserving.

The witch hunt seems to be concentrating on Muslim councillors in particular, which would fit in well with the Islamaphobia of the Blairite bureaucracy.  At least 5 Muslim Labour councillors have been suspended.   See Labour suspends three councillors over alleged antisemitic remarks  Khadim Hussain, former Lord Mayor of Bradford, has been suspended for sharing a Facebook post that said: “Your school education system only tells you about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists that were killed by Hitler.”, Nottingham councillor Ilyas Aziz, ex-Blackburn mayor Salim Mulla and Burnley councillor Shah Hussain.

There is nothing anti-Semitic in this.  Of course he should not have said ‘6 million Zionists’ but given that the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mervis has just had an article in the Daily Torygraph whose sole purpose is to conflate being Jewish with being a Zionist is it any wonder that even former Lord Mayors get confused? 

Mervis wrote in Ken Livingstone and the hard Left are spreading the insidious virus of anti-Semitism that ‘One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’  And then they complain that people call Jews Zionists!  You couldn’t make it up.  The deception and dishonesty of the Zionist movement and its allies in the press and on the Labour Right.

We should also note the description of anti-Semitism as a virus.  This use of a biological metaphor is exactly what the Nazis did.  They described Jews and the untermenschen as viruses and vermin. Racism and anti-Semitism is not a virus, it is the product of the political and economic conditions we live in.  Racism changes its contours as society changes.  Viruses like Aids are sometimes impossible, to cure.  Racism can be cured or defeated.  Zionism however was founded in the belief that racism amongst non-Jews was inherent, biologically inherited and impossible to cure.  It is an anti-socialist position but Zionism itself was always anti-socialist.  It is only racists who describe racism thus.

Suffice to say the Torygraph refused a right of reply to a letter signed by more than 80 Jews (it has been reprinted in Wednesday's Guardian Anti-Zionism does not equate to antisemitism 

What Lansman and indeed both Momentum and the Labour Representative Committee have done by not opposing the witch hunt from the start is to embolden Blair’s LP bureaucracy to strike at the heart of the organisation that they and Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson detest.

When Lansman went off on his own holding talks with Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, the British branch of the racist Israeli Labour Party, he then came back with the brilliant idea that we should not mention Zionism, the movement that created the State of Israel and which has led to the expulsion and dispossession of the Palestinians.  That is where he began to go wrong.  If you don’t understand Zionism you don’t understand why the Israeli state is an apartheid state. Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’

Last week David White, the Secretary of Croydon Central CLP was suspended.  Labour suspends Croydon Central secretary over Hitler tweet  David White’s crime (and no doubt mine) was to have tweeted in support of Ken Livingstone’s comments.  The article explains how:

‘White and Livingstone are long-time colleagues, having both served together on the Greater London Council in the 1980s.

 “Specifically I commented that Ken was largely factually accurate in referring to an agreement in the 1930s between the German Nazi Party and some Zionists to provide for some Jews to go to what is now Israel (the so-called Haavara agreement),” White explained in somewhat more than 140 characters.

 “Immediately I sent the tweet I realised that it was unwise, whatever the historical facts, to conflate Zionism with Hitler.”

White says that he quickly deleted his ill-considered comment. But a reporter on a local newspaper had screen-grabbed the tweet and used it as the basis for an article which included the dread words  “Ken Livingstone’s Hitler comments were ‘largely accurate’,” in its headline.

The far-right Jewish Chronicle boasted in an article Labour suspends Walthamstow activist for antisemitic Facebook posts that 

‘A Labour activist has been suspended from the party after the JC brought his antisemitic posts on social media to light.’

David Watson, the fundraising co-ordinator for the Walthamstow Labour Party, has been suspended pending an investigation, a spokesperson confirmed.

He shared articles on Facebook alleging that Daesh has used weapons made in Israel, comparing Mossad with the Nazis and accusing Israel of genocide against the Palestinians….

Mr Watson also wrote in a Facebook status: “If I were a Palestinian, like most people ... I'd probably want to be a guerilla fighter and liberate my people from a brutal and oppressive occupation.”

Another post saw Mr Watson call Zionism “a racist ideology.”

To most normal people this would be evidence of expressing a perfectly valid political opinion, but to the right-wing rabble around the Jewish Chronicle or Progress it is enough for today's equivalent of the Spanish Inquisition.

Thus the Labour Party’s  Inquisition marches on, with Labour’s Torquemada busy at work.  It must be a disappointment to Progress that the rack has been abolished in Labour Party disciplinary procedures.

Tony Greenstein