Will the Socialist Health Association be the next victim of Starmer’s Purge?

The SHA’s ‘crime’? Opposing Streeting & Starmer’s support for the Privatisation of the NHS

The Socialist Health Association, formerly known as the Socialist Medical Association, has been affiliated to the Labour Party since 1931. The SHA was formed to campaign for a National Health Service. Not surprisingly they are strongly opposed to the plans of Starmer and Streeting to turn the NHS into a British version of American Medicare & Medicaid, dominated as it is by insurance companies and private companies who make rich pickings at the expense of patients.

We know that Starmer, Streeting and the other cuckoos in Labour’s nest are ‘business friendly’, but the NHS must be off limits to the hedge fund owners, venture capitalists, US health care companies and other capitalist vultures.

It is some measure of how right-wing Starmer and his supporters are that they would even think of disaffiliating an organisation which was one of the original campaigners for a national health service, free at the point of delivery. The SHA has been affiliated to the Labour Party for nearly 92 years.

People may remember that when Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party he pledged that

Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.

Starmer meant none of this. He lied, lied and lied again in order to get elected and once Leader he junked every single one of his promises.

On 11^th January 2023 the SHA issued a strong statement in response to a statement by West Streeting, Shadow Health Secretary, supporting greater involvement by private companies in the NHS. ‘SHA response to use of private health companies’. Its subtitle was blunt and to the point: ‘Statement on Wes Streeting’s NHS proposals and acceptance of donations from John Armitage and MPM Connect.

Gurinder Singh Josan

The response by Starmer’s supporters in the form of Gurinder Singh Josan CBE has been to allege irregularities in the recent SHA elections of its Officers and Executive.

In a tweet of 29 January 2023 Josan alleged

·        constitutional breaches

·        attempts to manipulate result

·        breaches of GDPR

All the things that Starmer and his cronies have turned into a fine art. For supporters of Starmer to allege breaches of the GDPR and the SHA’s constitution after all the attempts by them to rig elections and their loss of members’ data demonstrates that satire has lost all meaning for them. As for attempts to manipulate the result, we only need recall their attempts to fiddle the result of the trigger ballots of Ian Byrne MP and Apsama Begum MP.

In a statement issued by the pro-privatisation candidates, including Jewish Labour Movement clone Neil Nerva, they withdrew from the elections and called on the Returning Officer and the SHA Officers to resign and then called on the Labour Party

Statement from right-wing slate (p.1)

‘to give consideration to the undemocratic nature of one of its affiliated Socialist Societies and to take appropriate action to review the affiliation’.

They also called on the SHA Officers to self-refer themselves to the Information Commissioner’s Office!

Statement from right-wing slate (p.2)

The right-wingers complained that the National Secretary of the SHA, Harry Stratton, had lobbied SHA  members in support of the socialist slate of candidates, having done precisely that themselves!

Knowing full well that they would lose, the Privatisation Slate then withdrew from the elections.  Unfortunately they left it too late.

The four successful socialists who were elected as Vice Chair (the Chair, Secretary and Treasurer being elected unopposed) gained an average of 707 votes. The unsuccessful privatisation candidates gained an average of 122.5 votes! In other words the socialist candidates secure 5.77 votes for every vote that the right-wing candidates obtained!

Clearly the vast majority of SHA members prefer to keep the NHS public and not turn it into an auction for the highest bidder.

The three victorious officers, Chair Mark Ladbrooke, Secretary Harry Stratton and Treasurer Esther Giles issued a joint statement celebrating their victory. It read,

“SHA members recognise that accelerating moves to integrate private providers into the health service will drain funding from the NHS and turn it into a mere brand for a mess of private corporations- all extracting shareholder returns and cutting services in order to do so.

“Big corporations have captured top NHS bodies with the intention of funnelling NHS resources into their pockets. They train few- if any- staff and maintain a parasitic role in the sector. Members of Labour’s front bench are deeply mistaken if they believe these businesses will resolve the catastrophic problems caused by decades of neoliberal austerity and service cuts.”

Two years ago Gurinder Singh, who is close to Tom Watson and the far-right Labour MP John Spellar, was subject to complaints of bullying a blind fellow Muslim UNITE member alongside Spellar. Singh is also close to local Sandwell Tories.

Unsurprisingly the reaction of property dealer Gurinder Singh (owner of Josan Estates Ltd.) and his friends is to try and disaffiliate the SHA and then set up a new organisation from which socialists will be barred.

All of this takes place in the context of the refusal of Starmer and Streeting to support the nurses and ambulance workers in their fight to decent pay and conditions and their attacks on the health unions over their proposals for reform.

What You Can Do

On Labour’s National Executive Committee there are 11 trade union representatives. They are:

Div. I – Trade Unions: Mark Ferguson (Unison)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Nicola Jukes (TSSA)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Isabelle Gutierrez (Musicians’ Union)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Michael Wheeler (USDAW)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Wendy Nichols (Unison)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Andy Kerr (CWU)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Gavin Sibthorpe (GMB)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Jayne Taylor (UNITE)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Kathy Abu-Bakir (GMB)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Ian Murray (FBU)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Mick Whelan (ASLEF)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Joanne McGuinness (USDAW)
Div. I – Trade Unions: Tony Woodhouse (UNITE)

Most of them have supported Starmer’s purge of the left and socialists in the Labour Party. Union members must demand that they oppose any attempt to disaffiliate the SHA. For any trade union member to support the attempts of Gurinder Singh, Starmer and Johanna Baxter to disaffiliate the SHA would be the equivalent of supporting the privatisation of the NHS.

My own union UNITE has two representatives. I shall be moving at my branch that they are instructed to oppose any attempt by Starmer and Streeting to disaffiliate the SHA and thus further the privatisation agenda of the Right. I urge you to do the same.

If there is any Socialist Society that should be disaffiliated it is the apartheid supporting, racist Jewish Labour Movement.

Tony Greenstein

Why Labour Against the Witchhunt & Labour-in-Exile-Network Should Merge

 With the Collapse of the Corbyn Project there is a clear choice between Building a Socialist Movement or Retreating into the Politics of Sectarianism 

Ken Loach absolutely DESTROYS Keir Starmer (doubledown.news)

Starmer and Evans are conducting a scorched earth policy inside the Labour Party. They are determined to complete what Blair began, making the Labour Party safe for capitalism. That is why, on July 20^th Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed. It is on that basis that Ken Loach, Jo Bird and many others have been expelled.

Any socialist of note, indeed anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, is likely to be expelled. But whereas the Labour Party is now a ‘hostile environment’ to socialists, racists like Trevor Philips (‘Muslims are a nation within a nation’) and Luke Stanger (‘travellers are a nasty blight on society’) are quietly readmitted to the Labour Party. Anti-racists and socialists are expelled on the pretext that they ‘undermine the Labour Party’s ability to campaign against racism’ even though Labour under Starmer has done nothing about racism.

Recent expulsions include Graham Bash, Editor of Labour Briefing with 53 years of membership, and Cllr. Jo Bird, both of whom are Jewish. Pamela Fitzpatrick, a much respected Councillor in Harrow and a member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy has also been expelled.  Pamela made a number of complaints about people like Stanger abusing and harassing her and the Labour Party’s response has been to expel the victim and readmit the abusers.

Very few politicians tell the unvarnished truth but never can there be two leaders of the two main parties, Starmer and Johnson, who suffer from truthophobia. Both of them, quite literally, have an allergic reaction to telling the truth. 

As Skwawkbox noted ‘Just days after Keir Starmer told a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) gathering that his would be a party for all Jews’, Jo Bird, a Jewish councillor in Wirral was expelled. Indeed if you are Jewish in the Labour Party you are 5 times more likely to be expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ than if you are non-Jewish!  This is the parallel universe of the Labour Right. Anti-racist Jews aren’t Jews.

The blame for this state of affairs can be laid at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn and Lansman’s Momentum. It was they who accepted the false ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative of the right-wing, that Labour was ‘overrun by anti-Semitism’. It was they who supported the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. It was Corbyn and Lansman who supported the expulsion of Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and myself.

Starmer and Johnson leapt to the defence of Israel's racist Ambassador

We are now seeing exactly what the Right meant by ‘anti-Semitism’ – a defence of the nakedly racist Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and the expulsion of Jewish anti-racists from the Labour Party.

Hotovely was the person who, as Chair of the Knesset’s Womens Committee, invited the overtly fascist Lehava group to give testimony. Lehava, like the Jewish Nazis they are, oppose Jews and Arabs having personal/sexual relationships and they go hunting for Arabs in ‘Jewish areas’ in order to beat them up. This is the vile creature that Starmer and Angela Rayner defended.

Starmer was elected on the basis of 10 Pledges, which were based on the Corbyn Manifesto. Since his election he has abandoned every single pledge. Pledge number 1 was to reverse the Tory cuts to Corporation Tax.  When the Tories did increase it Starmer opposed it!

Ken Loach Interview with The Canary

Jo Bird spoke for many when she said that

‘I’m delighted the Labour Party has expelled me today. I’m free from fear about speaking and meeting with other people.... This racist Labour Party is dying as a vehicle for social justice.’

Ken Loach said of his expulsion that ‘it’s like leaving an abusive relationship’.

As thousands continue to stream out of the Labour Party and hundreds, if not thousands, fall foul of the witchhunt, a responsibility rests upon 2 of the 4 proscribed groups, Labour-in-Exile-Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt to organise, both those who are still inside the Labour Party and those who are now outside the party into a coherent socialist movement as opposed to a separate party.

Whereas Gordon Brown went from Stalin to Mr Bean, Starmer has gone from Mr Bean to Stalin

That is why the two All Members Meetings (All Members Meeting) this Friday and Saturday of LIEN and LAW are so important and I urge people to attend.  At these meetings motions will be proposed that the 2 organisations should merge. If you are not already a member of one or both groups then you should join now. You can join LIEN here and LAW here.

Luke Stanger, a vile racist and friend of Hove's right-wing MP Peter Kyle (Vice Chair of LFI) is readmitted to the Labour Party

LIEN’s Steering Committee has voted in favour of merger or consolidation of both organisations, since LIEN was in many ways an outgrowth of LAW. At one time 3 members of the LAW SC were also on LIEN’s SC . However LAW’s Steering Committee, under the influence of Labour Party Marxists, has come out against a merger with only myself, out of 6 members, in favour of merging with LIEN.

Trevor Phillips - another genuine racist readmitted to the Labour Party

At the LAW AMM on July 24 a motion was passed to ‘explore the merging of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network’. Moved by Tina Werkmann (who has since changed her mind) the motion read:

 This meeting believes that:

1.   Unity is strength. While there are obvious political differences in the history of both groups, the composition of both memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that both groups have enough in common politically to justify a possible merger.  

2.   Such a merger would send out a strong signal to many of those who are feeling disheartened and politically disoriented by the current trajectory of the Labour Party. 

3.   It might encourage more people and groups to join our merged organisation. 

4.    This meeting therefore resolves to start exploring a merger process between both organisations...

 At a joint LLA, LAW and LIEN members and supporters meeting on October 14 a motion moved by Tina Werkmann stated:

Unity is strength. While there are obvious political differences in the history of the three groups, the composition of their memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that they have enough in common politically to start bringing their forces closer together by setting up joint campaigns, joint educational events and joint meetings of the respective leaderships.

Amendment number 8 moved by me stating that

A merger of LAW and LIEN in the light of the recent proscriptions and attacks on the left in the Labour Party would be extremely welcome

was passed by 43-25. Amendment 6 by Diana Isserlis calling explicitly for a new socialist movement passed by 44-31.

Amendment 4 moved by Roger Silverman calling for

the establishment of a common transitional movement uniting socialist activists both within and outside the Labour Party

was passed by 61-15.

Amendment 3 moved by Diana Isserlis calling for a new organisation to

co-operate with forces inside and outside the Labour Party, pursue campaigns linked with the wider socialist movement, build a socialist movement including those inside and outside the Labour Party

was passed by 45-26 and Amendment 2 from me calling for the new combined organisation ‘to organise shadow CLPs to include ex-members and current members of the Labour Party’ was passed by 54-11.  By way of contrast a wrecking amendment from LPM, deleting half of the motion was heavily defeated by 58-12. 

The amended motion was passed by 63-11. In other words except for the hard core supporters of LPM just about everybody else agreed with the strategy of merger.

The LPM, which is the Communist Party of Great Britain, which produces the Weekly Worker. It is a small group of around 30-40 members which has stayed approximately the same size since it was formed from The Leninist over 30 years ago.

Their strategy, if it can be called that, is to form a mass revolutionary Marxist party which will, with the support of the unions, force the Labour Party into becoming a ‘united front of a special kind’.  In the meantime LPM simply writes off the hundreds of thousands of people who joined the Labour Party after the victory of Jeremy Corbyn and the millions who voted for the 2017 manifesto as having the ‘wrong’ politics. There is a complete failure to understand what the Corbyn project represented and how to build on it.

LPM is therefore fiercely opposed to such a merger or indeed any attempt to build the left other than temporary alliances with already existing left groups like CLPD or LRC in the Labour Party. It dismisses all attempts to build anything outside the Labour Party as a Labour Party Mark II.

At the November 9 Steering Committee Stan Keable submitted the following motion:

The LAW steering committee resolves to withdraw from the recent joint meetings with the steering committees of Labour in Exile Network and Labour Left Alliance, and to end LAW’s participation in joint all members and supporters meetings.

The joint steering committee meetings, while nominally favouring continuing the struggle in the Labour Party, have in fact been dominated by proposals to orientate away from Labour, to give up on the struggle within Labour, and to attempt to create an alternative movement or party based on the failed politics of Corbynism, aiming to keep together the thousands of disillusioned comrades at all costs. Far from rearming and rallying the left, we believe such a project will only add to the widespread demoralization and disorientation of the Labour left that already exists.

However, we wish those comrades well, and will seek to co-operate with them wherever possible. Meanwhile, LAW has a tremendous job on its hands in fighting the ongoing witch-hunt.

Unsurprisingly at the LAW All Members Meeting this Saturday LPM will move Motion 2 which is titled:  Reject liquidation of LAW! Keep the focus on Labour! 

The merger or consolidation of LAW and LIEN is called ‘liquidation’ a favourite word in sections of the left. The motion is the height of unreality. It fails to take account that the atmosphere of McCarthyism and vitriol inside the Labour Party, the harassment and bullying of activists has produce a situation where over 150,000 members have simply left with thousands more likely to do so.

It is crystal clear that there is little or nothing that LAW can do to combat the present witchhunt. As Ken Loach said ‘democracy is dead inside the Labour Party.’ In a situation where Labour Party apparatchiks manipulate and make up the rules to get rid of their enemy, where nobody on the left can even become a councillor or MP anymore, it is impossible to fight the witchhunt. There are no hearings before panels anymore because there are no hearings. Thanks to Corbyn and Formby fast-track expulsions have become the norm.

In the present situation the question is whether we can build a new movement from amongst those who were part of the Corbyn movement. The LPM prefers to inhabit a sectarian ghetto of 30-40 to the more difficult task of organising with people who will not always share hard line Marxist politics.

What they are advocating, behind their talk of Solidarity with all victims of the Labour witch-hunt! Step up the fight! is nothing less than an abandonment of any fight whatsoever.  Given that virtually no supporters of LPM are even inside the Labour Party their resolution is pure wind, rhetoric without any purpose.

As LIEN says on its website

The main aim of the Labour In Exile Network is to keep together all those who were mobilised and enthused to support Jeremy Corbyn for leader to continue the fight for democracy and socialism. This includes those who remain in the Labour Party, those who have been unfairly suspended or expelled in the last five years and those who have resigned from the Labour Party in despair of the party’s direction of travel under Keir Starmer and Dave Evans.

There is nothing whatsoever in this which is incompatible with the aims and purpose of LAW.

At the meetings on November 26 and 27 Esther Giles and myself will be moving a motion calling for the ‘consolidation  of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network into one organisation’.

There will therefore be a clear choice facing members as to whether or not to continue the fight against Starmer, but not necessarily on Labour Party terrain since that has now become enemy territory.

The stance of LPM raises wider questions. How does the Marxist and anti-capitalist left build in a situation which is anything but revolutionary. Is the Bolshevik model the only one for Marxists today? Why is it that there has been no workers’ revolution since 1917? Is the working class of the West potentially revolutionary? What is the relevance of modern movements such as Black Lives Matter to revolutionary change? Does the pending climate catastrophe dictate a change in tactics and strategy?

However when you are obsessed with what dead Bolsheviks said or didn’t say a hundred years ago, such questions seem otiose.

Whatever your views please come and have your say and if you are not a member of both organisations then it’s not too late to join!

Below is an Open Letter to Members of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network from Carel Buxton, Roger Silverman, Esther Giles and myself to members explaining why we think that a merger of LIEN and LAW is necessary.

Tony Greenstein

RESIST at the RIALTO – Standing Up to Zionist Attacks on Freedom of Speech - Launch Meeting Today - Friday May 28 6 pm

 Unlike Momentum’s World Transformed we Won’t Ban Events On Palestine and Zionism because we do stand for a World Transformed!

Register here     https://tinyurl.com/k92fp4dt

People may remember the lead up to the Labour Party Conference in 2019, which as it turned out was Corbyn’s swansong. I wrote at the time that The Suspension of Chris Williamson MP is Shameful – This May Be the End of the Corbyn Project

In the lead up to the Conference, under the approving eye of Jennie Formby and Corbyn, who by then had completely surrendered to their enemies, the Board of Deputies and the Zionists waged a campaign to physically prevent pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist events.

Packed session at the Rialto in 2019

At the beginning of August Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance booked in turn 3 venues to hold a meeting with Chris Williamson MP, who had been unlawfully suspended by Formby and Corbyn. All 3 venues gave way to pressure

Justin Schlosberg, one of the speakers, accused those who forced  Waterstones to cancel the book launch of being 'book burners' see students in 1933 burning books in Nazi Germany

First was the Brighthelm Church & Community Centre, run by right-wing Christians. They agreed to a ‘request’ by local Blairite MP Peter Kyle not to host the meeting.

The Holiday Inn were next. Subject to a social media bombardment and then two Zionist thugs walked in threatening staff.

Jack Mendel, political correspondent of Jewish News pleased at another success for those who would destroy free speech

Then finally, on the day of the talk the Quakers’ Friends Meeting House quaked and gave in.

But we didn’t give in. We immediately called people to a rallying point and then took people from there to an open air meeting at Regency Square. The Zionists howled. Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyl was left by herself holding a solitary placard about ‘anti-Semitism’. Leader of the Labour Council, Daniel Yates wanted us prosecuted for breaking the by-laws. All these ‘democrats’ hated free speech that called into question the Apartheid State of Israel.

Yet despite having to publicise the meeting at literally half a hour’s notice, nearly 200 people turned up outraged that a tiny group of Zionists had tried to prevent Chris Williamson from speaking. In the end the Zionists held a demonstration of 12 – half from London! We demonstrated we had mass support whereas the Zionists had the support of the elites.

We then decided that we had to hire an alternative venue for the forthcoming Labour Party conference which couldn’t be cancelled (strange that the Right  usually condemn Cancel Culture except when they want to do the cancelling). The Rialto Theatre stepped in and despite the normal Zionist Twitter harassment they stood firm.

Book Launch for Bad News for Labour that Waterstones cancelled

The Rialto is an amazing venue with a hall upstairs holding 100 people and a bar downstairs in which seminars can be held.

Ken Loach popped in for the standing room only book launch

In the 2 days we could hire the Rialto we had an amazing number of meetings. The LRC, whose meeting the Quakers had also cancelled, held their meeting at the Rialto. Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Kerry Ann Mendoza from The Canary spoke. Ken Loach popped in to the book launch. See WE DEFIED ZIONISM'S BOOK BURNERS – FREE SPEECH TRIUMPHED AT THE LABOUR PARTY CONFERENCE THIS WEEK

The Zionists had also forced Waterstones to cancel the book launch of Bad News for Labour. This was a book authored by 5 academics – Greg Philo, Mike Berry, David Miller, Justin Schlosberg and Tony Lerman, which demonstrated the lack of evidence behind the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. This was the last thing the Zionists wanted – proof of their campaign of lies and deceit.  So these book burners set about bullying Waterstones, who later apologised for their cowardice, when customers let rip their disgust at their decision.

This year we have booked the Rialto for 3 days. The Zionists may huff and puff but it will be to no avail.  Like all racists and fascists, Zionists hate freedom of speech. In Israel demonstrations are attacked by the Police and armed thugs.  In Britain the Board of Deputies whines about ‘anti-Semitism’ in tandem with racists such as Boris Johnson and Sir Starmer in order to attack our democratic rights.

The Resist! Event will host a launch event at 6pm on Zoom on Friday, May 28.

Register here     https://tinyurl.com/k92fp4dt

https://www.theresistevent.com/launch/

https://www.facebook.com/Labouragainstthewitchhunt

The speakers will be:

Becky Massey, Hove Labour Party activist expelled on a fake charge of “anti-Semitism” by @UKLabour – for a single tweet about Chris Williamson.

Chris Williamson – the former Labour MP and founder of RESIST: Movement for a People’s Party – whose presence in Brighton in 2019 has helped inspire #TheResistEvent. Read how and why here.

Kerry-Anne Mendoza, editor of The Canary, will talk about why #TheResistEvent is so important.

Tony Greenstein, the first Jewish socialist to be expelled by @UKLabour on a fake charge of anti-Semitism. Read his blog here.

Ben Steele, of Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, will speak about the need for anti-imperialism Follow: @BrightonPSC.

Esther Giles, treasurer of the Socialist Health Association, will discuss the campaign against the privatisation of the NHS. Follow her on Twitter.

Deepa Driver, chair of Camden Momentum and executive member of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, will emphasise the urgent need to stand up for free speech, for whistle-blowers, and for Julian Assange. Follow her on Twitter.

Jackie Walker, author, activist, and co-writer (and performer) of The Lynching. Follow her on Twitter.

The meeting will be chaired by Tina Werkmann, of Labour Against the Witchhunt, one of the supporting organisations included among our launch partners. Along with Labour Left Alliance, Labour Campaign for Free Speech, and the Labour in Exile Network.

If you haven’t already registered, please register here to ensure you are sent a link to the Zoom launch, which will begin at 6pm on Friday, May 28.

Our Free Speech stall on the seafront

Chris Williamson meeting at Regency Square

Greg Hadfield  introduces session on modern monetary theory

Jackie Walker speaking at the LRC fringe meeting

Session on the witchhunt

The Desperation of Sussex Friends of Israel, who have demonstrated with the EDL, at the success of our events - if they were really concerned about homophobia they would look to their favour state of Israel