Showing posts with label Galloway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Galloway. Show all posts

1 October 2026

Open Letter to Zack Polanski – Congratulations on Declaring That You Are an Anti-Zionist – Now is the Time to Show That You Mean It

If You Oppose Zionism's Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing Project You Must Support the Zionism is Racism Motion & Oppose My Expulsion




Polanski Declares that he's an anti-Zionist at the Board Of Deputies Hustings

Dear Zack,

Your clear and explicit declaration at the Board of Deputies hustings that you are an anti-Zionist is to be welcomed. I unreservedly support your candidature at the forthcoming Holborn & St. Pancras by-election and I hope that you are the successor to the detested war criminal Keir Starmer who slithered away like the snake he is.

Whereas I supported George Galloway at the Rochdale by-election in 2024 I am firmly opposed to his divisive and reactionary candidacy in this election.

Polanski opposes 'divisive' Zionism is Racism motion

However I am also aware that after winning the leadership of the Green Party [GP] so decisively last year, you equivocated on the question of Zionism and appeased the old Green Establishment of Caroline Lucas and co. So the question is whether you are prepared to break with the GP's support for NATO and imperialism?

The Daily Mail's Proprietor Viscount Rothermere waxed lyrical about the 'youthfulness' and dynamism of the Nazis

In your Zeteo interview you stated that ‘Zionism means different things to different people.’ But that is true of any ideology. Do you think that the Nazis came to power promising to wipe out all Jews? On the contrary they played down anti-Semitism.

The Nazis were seen as a vigorous, young movement that was going to do away with the old corrupt politicians and abolish unemployment. People supported them not because of anti-Semitism but their economic promises and anti-communism.

South Africa had petty apartheid, which Israel didn't have until the advent of colonisation of the West Bank where there are now roads for Jews only - they don't have signs but that is the reality

Apartheid in South Africa was not defended by its supporters as a way of exploiting and oppressing Black people but as "separate development". The Nationalists argued that South Africa was not one nation, but a multitude of ‘nations’ (Afrikaners, English-speaking whites and various Black ethnic groups).

The Apartheid leaders claimed that forcing different cultures to integrate would lead to friction and that each group should live independently within its own territory. This is no different to what Zionism argues. Jews need their own state.

Israeli Labor leaders Ben-Gurion & Golda Meir. Ben-Gurion was the architect of the Nakba & Gold Meir was famous for saying that 'It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist,” 

The Israeli Labor Party’s support for a two state solution was posited on the need to separate Jews from Palestinians in order to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel. Only then could Israel be both democratic and Jewish. In the words of Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid:

My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.

You went on to say that what the present Israeli government is doing is clearly racist thus implying that previous Israeli Labor governments weren’t racist. But this is not true. There is nothing that Netanyahu and Likud have done that the Labour Zionists didn’t do before them. The right-wing Zionists are just more honest.

The Nakba wasn’t organised by the Revisionists but the Labour Zionists. It was primarily the ‘left’ Zionist militias, Haganah and Palmach, who were responsible for the massacres and forcible expulsion of Palestinians in 1947/8 and throughout the 1950s.

The Apartheid structure of the Israeli state, with its confiscation of Arab land and apartheid legislation like the Absentee Property Law was created by Labour not Likud. The concept of ‘Jewish’ Labour, i.e. violently picketing Jewish employers who employed Arabs was a Labour Zionist campaign in the 1920s and 30s.

The expansion of Israel into the West Bank was under the Labour Zionists. The first settlements were created under the Israeli Labor Party and indeed the founders of the Greater Israel movement were stalwarts of the Labour Zionist movement like Yitzhak Tabenkin, Israel Galili and Yigal Allon. [See Between Land and State – ‘Greater Land of Israel’ according to Tabenkin and the United Kibbutz Movement]

Yes many Jews see Israel as a refuge from anti-Semitism but as the Jews of Argentina, 3,000 of whom were murdered, found out in the 1970s, the Israeli state will offer no protection against an anti-Jewish regime with which it is on friendly terms and doing business with the Israeli state. Israel preferred a billion dollar trade with a neo-Nazi Junta to saving Argentinian Jews from the torture chambers.

Just as in 1920 thousands of Ukrainian Jews fleeing the pogroms were turned away by the Zionists who pressurised the British not to admit them.

Zionism is not what is in the head of some fragrant young Zionist but what Zionism does. Jewish or Zionist justifications for Zionism are about as valid as the defence of Apartheid in South Africa by its supporters.

Zionism is not a Jewish but a Christian idea. Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli state. It explains why Palestinian children are called ‘little snakes’ by former Israeli 'Justice Minister' Ayelet Shaked, legitimate targets for IDF snipers. Zionism, in all its flavours is first and foremost a movement of Jewish Supremacy, ethnic cleansing and now genocide.

Yes Zionism has had many different strands and currents but all of them were united on the need for a Jewish Supremacist state.

Supporters of South African Apartheid were divided between Jan Smuts and DaniĆ«l Malan. Both however agreed on White Supremacism. The Nazi party too was divided between Hitler and the ‘left’ represented by Gregor and Otto Strasser. However both wings agreed on anti-Semitism.

One of your objections to the ZIR motion was ‘safeguarding Jewish people’. This is wrong. Supporting Palestinians and opposing Zionism does not threaten Jewish safety. If anything increases anti-Semitism it is the Zionist claim that all Jews support the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

If some Jewish Greens are Zionists then far more are anti-Zionist. If you are a Zionist then you are supporting a racist, apartheid state. Why would such a person want to be in the GP?

Jewish people are not under attack, their homes are not being bombed, their children killed, their doctors tortured and raped to death. When the question of Palestine is raised it has nothing to do with Jews. To imply that support for Palestinians threatens the safety of Jews is to buy into the Zionist narrative. Israel is not a ‘Jewish’ state other than in a racial supremacist sense.

Those Jews at the Board of Deputies hustings who shouted that there is no genocide were no different from neo-Nazi holocaust deniers. They are racist monsters and should be treated as such.

The Jewish racists who heckled you would change their tune if it was 20,000 Jewish children who had been murdered. Jewish people in Britain are not experiencing anti-Semitism but a reaction to the carnage most of them support.

Allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are nothing more than a rationale to support the Zionist agenda. Jews in Britain who declare they are Zionists are holding hands with the far-right and people like Tommy Robinson, a self-declared Zionist.

You raised the red herring about someone who opposes genocide & apartheid but is a member of a Zionist synagogue. You said they should not be treated differently or made to feel unwelcome. I agree. People who are members of Zionist synagogues should not be held responsible for the politics of their synagogue if they oppose Zionism.

Your second objection was about supporting a single Palestinian state. You even said that there was ‘something imperialist about this’. This is untrue. Palestine today is already one state. An apartheid state. There is no possibility of a two state solution nor is it desirable since it would leave an apartheid Jewish state in place. What is required is that there are equal rights for all the inhabitants of that state. What is imperialist about equal rights?

If you ask any Palestinian whether they would prefer one state or two states the overwhelming majority opt for the former. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation only adopted support for 2 states because they despaired of achieving a single state. Today it is clear to all that, in the words of B’tselem, Israel’s main human rights organisation, Israel is a

regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid

In 1919 Chaim Weizmann, later to become Israel’s first President, stated that a Jewish state would be ‘as Jewish as England was English.’ In other words its indigenous population would have no place.

A Jewish ethno-nationalist state cannot be any other than a racist, apartheid state. By definition it is a state that privileges Jews.

Crispin Flintoff Interviews Chris Williamson and Natalie Strecker about Zack Polanski

I also wish to raise my expulsion from the GP, which you have kept quiet about. It was planned and executed by a small group on the Green Party Council [GPC] led by Laura Eccott and supported by Green supporters of Zionism and genocide like Elise Benjamin. It was agreed by the narrowest of margins 7-6.

The Racism of Elise Benjamin – the Green Party’s leading Zionist

According to Benjamin the Nakba is ‘Iran backed propaganda’ the Palestinians being too stupid to have thought of it themselves. She also repeats the fable of an Israeli ‘offer’ to allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Wikipedia’s 1949 Lausanne Conference dispels this nonsense. There was an ‘offer’ to accept 100,000 refugees but it was quickly withdrawn and in return Israel wanted a portion of southern Lebanon and other territories

 

Benjamin fawns over a White Israeli woman, Izabella Gandlin who was apparently killed by Palestinians (we will never know because it is likely that most Israelis who died on October 7 were victims of the Hannibal Directive. Benjamin never profiles Palestinian children or doctors like Dr Abu Safia who to this day is imprisoned and tortured by Israel. Indeed not once has Benjamin said anything about the genocide, starvation and torture.

 

In response to an article about Israel’s sexual assault on Palestinian girls, Benjamin reaches for another Zionist fabrication about Hamas intercepting aid and abusing Palestinian women. She also only has words for the fake allegations of mass rape on October 7, not the documented and videod IDF rape of Palestinians.

On April 16 I was suspended. The complainant was allowed to remain anonymous contrary to GP policy. Just 11 words justified my suspension: ‘Documented history of antisemitism, including court decisions and recent terrorism charges’

On May 7 I was expelled, the reasons being that I had:

  1.           ‘displayed no contrition or regret (or remorse)’ for ‘the repeated                instances of anti-Semitism that led to TG’s suspension.’
  2.         That I had had the audacity to publicly criticise those who had                   engineered my expulsion.   

My expulsion was based on a series of lies. ‘Repeated Anti-Semitism’ was not a reason for my suspension so how could I show contrition? If the GP wishes to expel anyone then it should be those who make false allegations of anti-Semitism - Elise Benjamin, Laura Eccott and Andrei Frieze. It is the Green racists not the Green anti-racists who should be expelled.

I was also suspended for the ‘crime’ of being charged with ‘terrorism’. Thousands of people face ‘terrorism’ charges today for supporting Palestine Action. The most recent Home Office statistics reveal that the average ‘terrorist’ is no longer a 31 year old male but a 59 year old White woman.

The GPC assumed that being charged ‘terrorism’ meant that I was guilty. GPC acted contrary to one of the most basic principles of law, the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. It is enshrined in Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights. I completely understand why Laura Eccott and Elise Benjamin prefer Israeli ‘justice’, where you are assumed to be guilty and gaoled without even the pretence of a trial (if you are a Palestinian).

On August 18 I went on trial under the Terrorism Act 2000. It ended on August 21 when the jury unanimously acquitted me after just 2 hours. They accepted that what was at stake was freedom of speech not terrorism. I was fortunate that the jury did not consist of members of Green Party Council.

My closing speech to the jury was described by the right-wing Libertarian Alliance as ‘maybe the most important speech made this century in an English court of law’. I explained why the Terrorism Act 2000 was not about terrorism but about suppressing free speech. It is something that members of GPC might take the time to acquaint themselves with.

It is bad enough that the British state accuses Palestine activists and protesters against the banning of Palestine Action of terrorism. What is grotesque is the fact that the GPC gave their support to those accusations.

Zionism is a reflection of the European racism that led to the Holocaust. The Palestinians are the Jews of Israel. Christian Zionism predated Jewish Zionism by 4 centuries. It believed in the idea of a ‘Jewish return to Palestine’ an anti-Semitic idea which assumed that Jews do not belong where they live.

44% of young British Jews now declare that they are anti-Zionist or non-Zionist. The GP no longer needs to walk in fear of the ‘anti-Semitism’ scarecrow. The GP needs to abandon support for Zionism and become an anti-racist and anti-imperialist party.

The GP has the most pro-Palestinian policy of any political party yet it is distrusted by Palestine solidarity supporters because its main interest lies in harvesting the votes of those opposed to genocide rather than putting its policies into practice.

The IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism is still GP policy and you have said nothing about this. Recently New South Wales Supreme Court Judge Desmond Fagan ruled that the IHRA:

propounds a concept different from that which ‘antisemitism’ has long been understood to describe and appropriates that word to the novel concept.... The [purpose of IHRA] is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel.

The GP Establishment has mobilised against the Zionism is Racism motion and you Zack have equivocated. It is time for you to come out in its support now you are an anti-Zionist.

James Baldwin

The West’s support for Israel has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Jews are the moral alibi for a racist state guarding Western interests in the Arab East.  As James Baldwin remarked:

But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests.

The real problem is the GP’s fear of breaking with the foreign policy consensus between Labour and the Tories. The question is whether you want to break from that or adapt to it.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Polanski opposes 'divisive' Zionism is Racism motion

Green leader Zack Polanski describes Zionism as racism

Polanski sparks anger after declaring himself ‘anti-Zionist’ at packed communal hustings

Israel lobby group CAA threatens Greens over ‘Zionism is racism’ motion

WATCH: Zionists heckle Polanski even though he’s gone soft on anti-Zionism


17 September 2026

Open Letter to George Galloway – There is only one issue in the Holborn-St. Pancras By-Election – Labour’s Support for Genocide in Gaza

Two Years Ago in Rochdale You Said that Gaza was the Main Issue – What Has Changed? The Genocide is Still Continuing

In March 2024 at the count in the Rochdale by-election, which Galloway won with a stunning 40% of the vote, he said that Gaza was the main issue.


Arch-Zionist Luke Akehurst is Canvassing for Labour in Camden - is George Galloway Really Going to Help Her?

Now however the issue is not Gaza or Genocide or Zionism. Galloway is reported as saying that his decision to stand as a candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election is his differences with Zack Polanski over Ukraine and trans-rights. Gaza and Israel’s blitzkrieg in the Middle East has been forgotten. It seems that the real issue is George’s huge ego and his inability to stay out of the limelight.

Chris Williamson was right to resign as Deputy Leader of the Workers Party of Britain. The only choice in the election is between Polanski of the Green Party and Sagal Abdi-Wali, of the Labour Party. There is no other choice.

As The Standard said, Polanski has gained a huge boost from the backing of Andrew Feinstein, the former ANC MP and socialist who gained 7,312 votes in 2024 against the notorious liar, the unlamented Keir Starmer. Whereas Andrew gained 18.9% of the vote Starmer, despite being the incumbent Prime Minister, had a swing of 17.3% against him.

Polanski is clearly the anti-Genocide candidate standing against Labour’s genocide supporting candidate. For Galloway to stand, when it is clear he is going to get a derisory vote on a par with the 1.4% and 489 votes he obtained in Tom Watson’s old seat of West Bromwich East in 2019, or perhaps the 0.5% and 164 votes that Peter Ford of the Workers Party obtained in the 2025 by-election in Runcorn, demonstrates that Galloway’s hatred of the Green Party, or is it Polanski, is greater than his hatred of the Labour Party.

1.4% may be the difference between Polanski winning and losing. Galloway has always said that Palestine is for him the key issue yet here he is threatening to help the party of genocide, the Labour Party, win the election.

The reality is that Galloway’s primary concern has always been himself. He has never subordinated his own ego to the greater good. How can he be serious and say that trans rights is the main issue?  This is an issue that divides the left. It is an issue that the right-wing has campaigned on vociferously demonising anyone who doesn’t fit into the binary of male or female.

Given the attacks of Trump, Sunak and the far-right against transgender people one would expect anyone serious about left politics not to join in trans-baiting.


Galloway has always had a bad record on issues of sexuality. In an interview with Novara Media Galloway said:

“I don’t want my children prematurely sexualised at all, I don’t want them taught that some things are normal when their parents don’t believe that they’re normal.”

He has opposed gay sex being treated as normal in the context of sex education in schools.

He has also had the Tate brothers on his Moats show. Andrew and Tristan Tate are notorious for building a massive online following by promoting extreme misogyny, hyper-masculinity, and luxury lifestyles, alongside facing criminal charges including human trafficking, rape, and sexual exploitation.

It is no surprise that Galloway finds the Tate brothers attractive, despite Andrew Tate being removed from Big Brother in 2016 after a video showed him attacking a woman with a belt.

The jury is out on whether Galloway can even be described as on the left. He made his name as a firebrand in Scotland, Chair of the Scottish Labour Party and the person who ousted Roy Jenkins of the SDP from his Glasgow Hillhead seat in 1997. He has represented 4 different constituencies including Bradford West, Bethnal Green and Bow and last of all Rochdale.

His attitude to refugees and asylum seekers has been little different to the far-right. In May 2021 hundreds of Glaswegians prevented the thugs of Priti Patel’s snatch squads from seizing and deporting refugees by surrounding their van. Nicola Sturgeon supported them. But Galloway vented his spleen instead against those who freed the refugees rather than the racist Priti Patel and the Home Office:

“A devolved assembly has openly and unlawfully defied the implementation of a UK government decision,”

Galloway indulged in what Mark Brown described as ‘bilious refugee baiting.’

Galloway has always has been a bitter opponent of Scottish devolution and independence. This ‘bilious unionism’ perhaps explains his support for Brexit and his attempt to stand for the Brexit Party of Nigel Farage. Although according to The Spectator he has now changed his mind and supports independence for Scotland.

At the time of the 2016 referendum over Brexit he appeared on the same platform as Nigel Farage and compared their relationship to that between Winston Churchill and Stalin. Galloway’s high points – his confrontation with US Senators over Iraq and the Rochdale by-election are unfortunately matched by his low points such as support for the Brexit party in the 2019 European elections.

Perhaps the only principle he has maintained throughout his career is support for George Galloway. One can only hope that he has second thoughts and doesn’t end up supporting the party of Genocide in Gaza, the Labour Party.

I have therefor written an Open Letter to Galloway in the hope that he will reconsider his egotistical decision to stand.

Tony Greenstein

6 August 2024

To Counter the Riots & Attacks on Refugees We Need a New Anti-fascist/Anti-Racist Movement – We Can't rely on the Police or State

Stand Up to  Racism is NOT that movement – it is a recruiting vehicle for the SWP & a cosy alliance with the Trade Union Bureaucracy


Tony Greenstein's speech at Palestine solidarity rally in Liverpool 4 August 2024


Tomorrow there will be a mobilisation in Brighton against the Fascists

Last Sunday I spoke at a Palestine solidarity rally in Liverpool. There was going to be a demonstration first and then a rally but fears of fascist attacks led to the demonstration being cancelled (although there was an impromptu one after the rally).

On the previous evening the fascists had rallied outside a mosque and burnt down the Spellow Library and Community Hub library, a 'one stop shop for one of the most deprived'. This story has been repeated throughout the country.

A remarkable achievement for fascist goons in Liverpool - they burnt down a local library and advice hub

Al Jazeera Rioting in Liverpool

Unfortunately Skwawkbox’s report did not tell the whole story about what happened in Liverpool. The previous day a thousand fascists had mobilised at the Pier Head, the traditional rallying place of the Labour Movement and just six anti-fascists were present. Although they were unable to attack the mosque in Walton the fascists did considerable damage.


If anyone bears responsibility for the riots today it is the disgusting coconut Suella Braverman. The irony is that she is the child of immigrants.

Although the catalyst was the murder of 3 young girls in Southport a week ago, the months and years of demonisation of refugees and Muslims have taken their toll. Sunak and Braverman, who were so voluble about ‘hate marches’ against genocide in Palestine and who were so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ have had nothing to say about the violent attacks on Black and Asian people and Mosques. Their indignation about racism is reserved exclusively for Jewish supporters of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.

If anyone bears responsibility for playing the same theme tune as Farage its Yvette Cooper - instead of changing the racist discourse she continued where Braverman left off - this is where bourgeois feminism has ended up


Those who talked about ‘swarms’ of migrants (David Cameron) and an ‘invasion’ of refugeees (Braverman) bear the responsibility for what has happened today. So does Yvette Cooper who only a week ago was proudly boasting about how she would wage war on refugees earning a crust washing cars. What a terrible crime it is to want to work!

Instead of attacking the obvious anti-Black and Islamaphobic racism of the rioters Starmer and Cooper frame what is happening in terms of thuggery and violence. 

We should not accept this . The violence and thuggery is a consequence of the politics of racism and scapegoatism and both Starmer and Cooper are equally guilty of creating the conditions in which it took place. The answer is NOT more legislation restricting the right to protest. The irony of restricting the right to protest against genocide in Gaza has been lost on these hypocrites.

As it is dozens of peace activists and protesters are in gaol, some with lengthy sentences, because direct action to prevent climate catastrophe is considered more dangerous than whipping up race hatred.

Starmer and his Zionist supporters went on about ‘anti-Semitism’ repeatedly although no Jewish synagogues were attacked nor were Jewish people. But when Mosques are attacked NOTHING IS SAID.

Cooper talked of the  ‘billions’ the asylum backlog is costing us which is a straightforward lie. Asylum seekers want to work and house themselves. It is the immigration rules that prevent this that is costing money.

Greater Manchester Police Attack Victim of  Race Attack

Scapegoating refugees is so much easier than tackling the real criminals such as Boris Johnson and Sunak who handed out billions of pounds of COVID contracts to their corrupt cronies - something the Met is refusing to investigate

What has cost us an estimated £15 billion is the COVID Contract frauds perpetrated by the last government when they established a VIP track to allow their friends and cronies, such as Baroness Mone, to secure lucrative contracts to provide Personal Protective Equipment, much of which was defective and never used.   Mone and her company Medpro was given over £200 million pounds for PPE that was unfit to use. The whole scheme was later judged illegal but the CPS and Metropolitan Police have not prosecuted anyone. Over £40 million was handed to Matt Hancock’s pub landlord, Matt Bourne, who had never before manufactured PPE.

Just imagine this corrupt pair, including Tory Peer Lady Mone, trousered over £200m & a profit of over £100m for PPE that was useless. The Met has done fuck all - however this is not newsworthy for the BBC

But the thugs and idiots who have run rampage in the last week know nothing of this because we have a ‘Labour’ government which is as much in hock to the rich and privileged as the last Tory government. Far better to attack refugees and Muslims than those who are really to blame. Starmer’s Labour has pledge to continue with austerity with Rachel Reeves removing the winter heating allowance from most pensioners.

Sussex Police actively tried their best to prevent the launch of my book on fighting fascism in Brighton - the Quakers of Friends Meeting House literally quaked, giving in to Police threats that they would provide no protection - the eventual EDL picket was barely enough to fill a phone box

Twice the Independent Police Complaints Commission upheld my complaint about Sussex Police trying to prevent an anti-fascist book launch - we should never think that the Police are neutral when it comes to racism or fascism

Sussex Police did their best to obstruct attendance at my book launch - their sympathy for the fascists was all too clear

The EDL picket of my book launch then moved to Churchill Square where they tried to attack the Palestine stall and got the shock of their lives as hundreds of shoppers turned on them - they had to seek police protection in the end - Tony Greenstein is speaking  with the megaphone

The Book that Brighton/Sussex Police tried to ban - demonstrating once again that the Police will never be our friends

The BBC have actively promoted the charlatan Farage and his racist agenda - and there are still those who call themselves anti-racists who pay the BBC licence fee

The attacks we have witnessed have political roots which have been exploited by charlatans like City money man, Nigel Farage, who the BBC have shamelessly promoted for years. We have to set our own agenda and the labour movement has been pitifully weak at doing this or combating the growth of the far-right.

The answer @FigureSpeech is not to pay the BBC Licence Fee

National Front march 1976 Bradford

I was active in the 1970’s in fighting fascism when the National Front was talked about as the third major party after having come third in the 1973 parliamentary by-election in West Bromwich with 16%, securing 18% of the vote in Leicester council elections and over 100,000 votes in the Greater London Council elections. But despite this I can't remember a fascist rally when the Left was outnumbered by the fascists. This is what is different this time around.

Oswald Moseley speaking at the Brighton Dome in 1936 - canny electricians wired up the speaker system that gave the assembled fascists a chance to listen to the Internationale!

At the EDL demonstration in London on 27 July there were approximately 15,000 fascists and just 5,000 anti-fascists.  This is something we have to reverse. Of course times have changed. 40 years ago the labour movement was strong with a closed shop in the docks, cars and mines. There were major industrial battles between the working class and the government. Today the working class is atomised and depoliticised. Production has been transferred to the Global South and what used to be referred to as the proletariat has been dispersed. Today it is doctors not dockers who go on strike.

South Yorkshire which was at the heart of the mining industry and an incredibly political working class now sees the effect of deindustrialisation as lumpen youth turn their attention to easy scapegoats such as refugees and Black people.

In sleepy Lewes the NF tried to hold an election meeting in the 1979 General Election but it was surrounded by hundreds of anti-fascist protesters

We need to make our arguments based on class not the liberal diversity agenda which ends up with the Sunaks, Bravermans and Priti Patels of this world. Yorkshire was made an industrial desert by Thatcher and neo-liberal economics. It wasn’t migrants who closed the mines and the docks but those  who own the billionaire press and their friends.

A good letter from the 5 independent MPs but where were the useless Campaign Group of MPs like Abbot and McDonnell

When the rioters say they ‘want their country back’ the obvious question is when did you ever own it? Those who own the wealth of this country don’t have a moment’s hesitation in transferring their money abroad or moving their factories to India or South Korea. Unfortunately the most basic arguments for socialism have been abandoned by a Labour Party which wraps itself in the Union Jack to hide its political bankruptcy.

What we need is to create a mass anti-fascist and anti-racist movement in Britain which can challenge the racist ideas in the heads of young white kids who, lacking any future, target vulnerable minorities. Most of those taking part in the riots are not fascists or neo-Nazis but they are easily recruitable fodder for those who are.

Thousands of anti-fascists came out to prevent an NF march in Wood Green in London

The 1970’s saw major pitched battles between fascists and anti-fascists such as that at Wood Green in April 1977 (where Corbyn earned his spurs) and at Lewisham in August 1977 where the riot police made their first appearance on the mainland. The SWP led the physical force mobilisation on the afternoon of the National Front march. In the morning Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark led a march of liberals and other worthies anxious to avoid any confrontation.

The Metropolitan Police did their best to baton their way through for the National Front as a rain of bricks and missiles landed on them from the local Black youth. After completing just one-third of the route the police gave up. That is the spirit we have to rekindle. Physical force opposition to fascist groups is based on the idea that if you allow fascists and their supporters to control the streets you will lose the battle.

Brighton Anti-Fascist Mobilisation 1981 Against NF March - The Level

In 1976 Brighton & Hove  Anti-Fascist Committee was created, based on the labour movement and a year later the Anti-Nazi League was created. It became, along with Rock Against Racism (which came into being after Eric Clapton gave his support to Enoch Powell) a mass movement. The only mass movement that the SWP has ever initiated.  

When Brighton ANL was created we had mass meetings every month in the old Resource Centre in North Road (where Brighthelm is now) of 400-500. In April 1978 the ANL and RAR organised a massive carnival in London of over 100,000 people which gathered in Trafalgar Square to march the 6 miles to Victoria Park in Brixton. Bands like the Clash and Tom Robinson played. There were a number of other carnivals. The political cultural aspect of the struggle rather than paper selling knocked the stuffing out of the white and old, stale and male National Front. NF stood for No Fun.

Brighton Anti-Fascist Mobilisation Against the NF early 80s

 After the General Election of 1979 when Thatcher came to power and the NF got a derisory 0.6% of the vote the NF took to thuggery and street violence. As Secretary of Brighton ANL at the time I helped organise the anti-fascist response which drove them from the streets of Brighton although not before there had been 3 fascist demonstrations. I record these events in my book in 2012 The Fight Against Fascism in Brighton and the South Coast.

Today’s Stand Up To Racism is a pale shadow of the ANL at its height. It is not only an SWP recruiting vehicle it has effectively become the subcontractor for the trade union bureaucracy allowing them to hive off anti-racism to SUTR whilst actually doing nothing to combat racism amongst their own members.

National Front and British Movement members give the Hitler salute at the 1981 demonstration in Brighton at which I was arrested (& acquitted)!

We urgently need to recreate a mass anti-fascist and anti-racist movement that involves both the labour movement and Black and Asian communities. At the moment Asian communities themselves are heavily split on communal lines, not only between Hindutva supporters and Muslims but between Sunni and Shi'ite.  It is worth reading an article on The Muslim Vote by Craig Murray about the Muslim vote in Blackburn where he was a Workers Party candidate.

George Galloway on the Boat People and the Royal Navy

It also means that there is a responsibility on those like George Galloway not to echo and amplify the message of the racists. If refugees stay in hotels it is because they are not allowed to work not because they wish to do so.

The far-right have established themselves all over Europe in countries where social democracy once reigned, such as Sweden and the Netherlands. We have a duty to ensure that this does not happen here and that means there is no room for left sectarianism and using anti-racism as a party building exercise. Nor is there room for the kind of communalism that Craig Murray experienced. Black is a political not a physical colour. The fact that the murderer of the girls in Southport was a Christian fundamentalist did not affect in the slightest the belief that ‘the Muslims’ were responsible.

After the fascists had attacked a lone Black man in Manchester Greater Manchester Police set upon him, leaving the fascist thugs alone

What we are also witnessing is a coming together of the Zionists and the far-right. For the fascists the best opponents of Muslims are Zionists and the Israeli state. Tommy Robinson is an open admirer of the Israeli state and its wars. Fascist symbols and the Israeli flag go together very well. Zionism has no problem with holocaust deniers. It's Palestinian supporters who are their enemies. As Geert Wilders, the leader of the Netherland’s Freedom Party, which became the largest party at the 2023 elections said ‘If Jerusalem falls into the hands of the Muslims, Athens and Rome will be next.’

SUTR has consistently refused to take up the issue of anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism. That was why Brighton & Hove PSC disaffiliated from them locally. In Scotland they have marched for 5 years with Glasgow Friends of Israel. SUTR seems unable to understand that Israeli Apartheid is racist and worse even than its South Africa counterpart was 30 years ago.

The SWP is still cowed by ‘anti-Semitism’. Like dinosaurs, they are incapable of understanding that the patterns of racism change. Jews were once the victims of racism. Today they are mostly the supporters of racism in the form of the Israeli state.

Of course not all Jews are Zionists. Those who are anti-Zionists are not deterred by the mention of Palestine. So it is Zionist Jews that SUTR are directly appeasing. They don't understand that Zionists have no interest in fighting fascism. When the Board of Deputies organised a march against ‘anti-Semitism’ recently Tommy Robinson went along to join it.

Support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israeli Apartheid must be central to any anti-racist and anti-fascist movement today. There is no room for the participation of Zionists and supporters of Jewish Supremacy.

Joe Solo responds to HOPE not hate controversy – Not The Andrew Marr Show

That is why anti-fascists should have absolutely nothing to do with the Zionist HatenotHope group run by Nick Lowles. It is an anti-left Zionist organisation and its former Deputy Director and Company Secretary, ex-Labour MP Ruth Smeeth (now Baroness Anderson) led the false ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign.

In particular she targeted for expulsion Marc Wadsworth, the veteran Black anti-racist activist after making false allegations of anti-Semitism. She was also a member of the Jewish Labour Movement .


HnH led the attacks on Chris Williamson and even withdrew a ‘Hero Award’ from Jo Solo, a socialist musician, when they learnt that he was also a supporter of Chris Williamson, the former Labour MP.

Such was the backlash to what they had done, that they later rescinded their decision and decided after all to give him the £5,000 which he had all along intended to give to other organisations anyway. A crowdfunder for Jo had raised double that so Jo was in a good position to say ‘no thank you’.  Egg on HnH’s faces all round.

Lady Smeeth was named in a Wikileaks US Embassy Cable as a ‘strictly protect asset’.  In other words she was an intelligence asset. Lowles came from Gerry Gable’s Searchlight Magazine which was well known for trading information on fascists in exchange for handing over information on left activists and anarchists.

HnH is clearly an MI5/Mossad Intelligence Cutout and should be avoided like the plague.

Tony Greenstein

See The BBC condemns the riots and sanitises the far right in the same breath