Open Letter to Caroline Lucas - Why Have You Remained Silent About The Attack on Freedom of Speech?

The Attempt to Ban Chris Williamson and the Rally in Regency Square was in Caroline Lucas Constituency Brighton Pavilion 

Dear Caroline,

Last Thursday a fellow Member of Parliament, Chris Williamson, spoke to over 150 people in Regency Square, which is in your constituency, on socialist economics. The meeting was originally scheduled to be at the Brighthelm Centre which is also in Brighton Pavilion. The meeting was cancelled after the intervention of the MP for Hove, Peter Kyle.

Email sent to Holiday Inn by Zionist opponents of Chris Smith

The meeting was then transferred to the Holiday Inn which received a barrage of abusive and threatening calls including a visit by two men threatening ‘consequences’.

Email confirming that threats of violence were made against the Brighton Quakers by Zionists

Friends Meeting House in Brighton

The meeting was then transferred to the Quaker Friends Meeting House, again in your constituency. Although they were fully aware of the controvery the meeting was cancelled at the last minute after a barrage of abusive phone calls and threats of violence.  The FMH is also in Brighton Pavilion.

In her more radical days Caroline Lucas, Britain's only Green MP stood on picket lines unlike Kyle, who refused to support her NHS Reinstatement Bill

Despite the best efforts of Kyle and the supporters of Israeli Apartheid, the meeting went ahead because enough people were determined enough to ensure that freedom of speech in Brighton and Hove will not be subject to a veto by the Israel lobby.

The Pathetic Marie van der Zyle, President of the BOD, came down from London and stayed in the Jury's Inn in order to protest Chris Williamson's meeting - no one even saw her!

The Board of Deputies Led the Campaign to Ban Chris Williamson - One Year Ago It Supported Israel Shooting Unarmed Protesters in Gaza

The reasons for Kyle’s attack on what is a basic democratic right, freedom of speech and assembly, both guaranteed under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights, was that Chris Williamson was a ‘Jew baiter’. This bogus and spurious allegation, which is made against all supporters of the Palestinians including Jewish supporters, has no foundation. There is nothing that Chris has said which merits this venomous accusation.

At the meeting in Regency Square the Chair of the meeting Greg Hadfield, told how he wrote to you asking for a message of support which could be read out at the meeting. It would appear that you decided not to respond.

This attack on freedom of speech is not a one-off. There have been repeated attempts to prevent supporters of the Palestinians, including Jewish people, from speaking by those acting on behalf of the world’s most racist state.

Steve Bell, the legendary Guardian cartoonist, had an innocuous cartoon depicting Tom Watson as the witch-finder general censored. Jackie Walker has been confronted by a concerted attempt to prevent her film The Witchhunt being shown, including bomb threats.

Chris has been subject to a McCarthyist campaign for having dared to challenge the Establishment Consensus that the Labour Party is overrun with anti-Semitism. As happened at Salem in the 18^th century, denial of being a witch is taken as proof of one’s guilt. As you are probably aware, Arthur Miller’s Crucible used Salem as a metaphor for McCarthyism in the United States.

When you were first elected I, like many socialists, was happy to vote for you rather than New Labour. You were then an explicit supporter of the Palestinians. Of late you have remained silent in the face of a wall to wall propaganda blitz, led by BBC’s Panorama, . It would seem that Brexit and your new allies such as Peter Kyle have had a deleterious effect.

Although you initially opposed the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism you succumbed to the onslaught and changed your position despite the Green Party conference rejecting the IHRA.

The IHRA has been slated by academics and legal scholars. Geoffrey Robertson described the IHRA as ‘not fit for purpose’. Even the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, in testimony to the US Congress, described it as ‘chilling’ freedom of expression.

Only yesterday Tony Lerman, a distinguished Jewish academic and founder of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research wrote in the Independent an article I warned that adopting the IHRA would shut down Palestinian protest – I’ve been proved right based on the decision last week by Tower Hamlets council to refuse to allow the Big Ride for Palestine, which raises funds for children in Gaza, to meet in a local park because they feared it was ‘anti-Semitic’

Peter Kyle - right-wing Labour MP for Hove

More recently we have seen Greens and neo-Nazis voting together to condemn BDS in the Bundestag as ‘anti-Semitic’ and in Austria to ban Ronnie Kassrills,  the Jewish founder of the ANC’s military wing, Ukkhonto we Sizwe, from speaking on Viennese council premises.

I am therefore writing to ask you to condemn Pete Kyle’s attack on freedom of expression in your constituency and to reconsider your support for the IHRA.

It should not have been necessary for me to ask you to speak up for what are basic civil liberties such as freedom of expression.  However we are living in a period when the Daily Mail and the Sun can condemn ‘anti-Semitism’ at one and the same time as they employ Katie Hopkins as their columnist.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

Tony Greenstein

Chris Williamson MP Defies Zionist Intimidation and the Lies of Peter Kyle to Speak in Brighton

A Magnificent Victory for Free Speech – the Voice of Anti-racism and Anti-Fascism Will Not Be Silenced By Thuggery and Intimidation

When the newly formed Labour Left Alliance was recently formed little did we expect that our opponents on the Labour Right and in the Zionist lobby would move heaven and earth to prevent Chris Williamson MP speaking at our first public meeting.

Peter Kyle, right-wing nominally Labour MP for Hove

Brighton & Hove Momentum give their support to the meeting

Two weeks ago ‘Labour’ MP for Hove, Peter Kyle, pressurised the Brighthelm Church and Community Centre into cancelling our booking of their main hall. Liar Kyle stated that ‘“our city should not be a welcoming place for people who bait the Jewish community or sow seeds of division.’

The only person ‘baiting’ the Jewish community was Kyle himself. Instead of giving the real reasons for not wanting Chris Williamson to speak – the witchhunt, austerity, fake anti-Semitism – he used the Jewish community as a political battering ram.

Kyle has been unable to point to one single thing that Chris Williamson has said which is anti-Semitic. All that he has done is to call out the fake anti-Semitism campaign against mainly Black and Jewish members of the Labour Party.

Chris Williamson’s response, that “When Peter Kyle was still in nappies, I was an active member of the Anti-Nazi League, physically confronting foul racists and anti-Semites in the National Front.” said it all.

Email from Holiday Inn

The next venue to be targeted was the Holiday Inn which had accepted our booking. The Zionists and their friends in the Labour Party engaged in crude and violent intimidation. Abusve phone calls were made calling the staff ‘cunts’ coupled with two men who came in to warn the receptionists that there would be ‘consequences’ if the meeting went ahead forced the hotel into cancelling the booking.

Chris Williamson, Greg Hadfield & Tony Greenstein

They sent Greg Hadfield, who had booked the meeting an email which made it quite clear that the reason for cancellation was that

‘Over the past 24 hours, our hotel and employees have been subject to abuse and threats from members of the public on the phone, on email and on social media outlets.’

Disingenuous statement by national Quakers and response

Finally today the Zionists and Labour Right learnt that we had booked the Friends Meeting House as a backup. Although we have had excellent relations with the local Quakers unfortunately the Quakers nationally were pressurised by the Zionists and they stepped in and forced the cancellation of the meeting.

The tweet put out by the Quakers nationally was disgraceful. It implied that the reason for cancelling the booking was anti-Semitism, when no one has or could point out anything Chris Williamson has said that is even remotely anti-Semitic. It was a thoroughly disingenuous tweet.

In other words it was an act of cowardice by people who aren’t prepared to back up what they say with evidence.  Of course they didn’t accuse Chris of anti-Semitism they merely implied it.  Doubly dishonest.

At 1 pm on Thursday we learnt of the cancellation and I have to confess that I was beginning to think that we might have to accept defeat.  Full marks to Greg Hadfield who had the wits about him to hire an outside PA.  Coupled with the good weather it was decided that we would hold the meeting outdoor in Regency Square in the finest traditions of the labour movement.  Regency Square is a grand place and is, as its name implies, a place of some architectural interest.

At 6 pm we gathered at our pre-arranged meeting point by the Odeon cinema. It had been intended to redirect people to the Friends Meeting House.  Instead we redirected people to Regency Square. When people learnt of what had happened and the cancellation of yet another venue, they were outraged.  Quite rightly people felt angered that a lobby group for a foreign state, Israel, was preventing them attending a meeting to listen to a British MP. Out they poured as we sent never ending groups along to Regency Square, which was 5 minutes away.

Right-wing weirdo Lukey Stanger

At 6.30 an email was sent to our email list telling people where the new venue was. The Zionists meanwhile met outside Brighton Town Hall and we were told that they would be marching to the new venue. In fact the only person to turn up was Lukey Stanger who is         suspended from the Labour Party for harassment of women and claiming that Travellers are a ‘nasty blight’ on society.

Although Zionist stragglers turned up they kept to the fringers and shied away from disrupting a crowd of between 150 and 200 people.  Given that the Friends Meeting House lecture theatre holds only about 100 people, we had inadvertently been given, free of charge, a larger space with which to accommodate people.

After the cancellation of the Holiday Inn room, which held 195 places, we were seriously worried that we could not fit everyone in to the Friends Meeting House. Regency Square however is large enough! It was also the scene of a meeting in July 2016 when Jeremy Corbyn spoke at the overflow to a meeting in the nearby Metropole Hotel.

Chris spoke for about half an hour, primarily on socialist economics and monetary theory whilst refuting all the allegations of anti-Semitism. As he pointed out, he had physically fought the National Front and similar anti-Semites when the Labour Right had argued that even fascist were entitled to freedom of speech,  Right-wing Labour has never opposed the fascists.  They only oppose anti-racists and anti-imperialists under the guise of anti-racism.

Asa Jansson, an academic from Sweden spoke next and she drew the parallels between the rise of fascism in her own country and what is happening today in Britain. It was a careful and thoughtful speech from someone who was in at the beginning of Brighton and Hove Momentum before it swung to the Right.

There were a number of speakers from the audience including myself. One of them, a woman, asked all people of Jewish origin to come and stand by the ‘Jew baiter’ Chris Williamson and about 8 people did so.  Presumably we are the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ i.e. we are not racists or Zionists.

When I spoke I made the point that those who accused us of racism are the very people who introduced the ‘hostile environment’ policy and Windrush, both of which began under New Labour. I also made the simple point that Peter Kyle’s differences with Chris Williamson and Jeremy Corbyn have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is simply a smokescreen.  Kyle’s objections are to do with his support for the involvement if private health care companies in the NHS, to his support for academies, PFI and all the other New Labour/Tory policies which led to 2 successive general election defeats in 2010 and 2015.

I also dealt with the argument that Labour has an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem by way of an analogy.  There are undoubtedly a few paedophiles in the Labour Party just as there are a few people with anti-Semitic ideas.  However no one suggests that the Labour Party therefore has a paedophile problem so why do they say it has an anti-Semitism problem? The answer is Jeremy Corbyn and his proposals, mild though they are, for a redistribution of wealth.

Over 150 people attended this wonderful outdoor meeting.  There was a determination amongst people that we would not be silenced or prevented from meeting.  That the littler Hitlers and petty dictators who had sought to prevent us meeting would and did fail. As I said in my speech, 40 years ago the National Front had tried to stop the Left in Brighton meeting.  They failed then and those who tried to stop us meeting, the Kyles and the Fiona Sharpes of Sussex Friends of Israel have failed now. Unfortunately the Quakers when it came to standing up to powerful lobbies simply folded. 

Tony Greenstein