Jenny Flintoft R.I.P. – Comrades Remember a Tireless Fighter Against Racism and Bigotry

The Palestinians had no better supporter than Jenny, the rock of Portsmouth PSC, a socialist and friend of the oppressed 

UPDATE

Jenny's funeral was held today, Friday 29th January. I attended by video link as only a handful of close friends and relatives were able to be present. It is sad not to be able to pay one's respects in person but that is what the virus that killed Jenny has done to us.

In her last words to those assembled the person officiating quoted the subtitle of this blog:

'The Palestinians had no better friend than Jenny, the rock of Portsmouth PSC, a socialist and a friend to the oppressed.' I found that very humbling. The crematorium will be posting in 3 days a video of the service and if possible I will post it here.

Tony Greenstein

Tragically Jenny Flintoft died last Monday from this accursed virus.  She was born in Rowley Regis, Staffordshire. I found it hard to believe it when I was informed that Jenny had passed away because she seemed like the rock of Gibraltar – indomitable and always there - a permanent feature of Palestine solidarity work.

I knew Jenny from joint Palestine solidarity work. We took to each other as we shared similar views about the pussyfooting diplomacy of the Executive of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

When I need someone to second a motion to PSC AGM on ditching their support for the Apartheid 2 State Solution I knew I could rely on her.  When I stood for PSC Secretary last year Jenny was only too willing to second my nomination, even if she did sometimes caution me not to be too outspoken!

Before the onset of COVID-19 Jenny would invite me every year to speak to a meeting of Portsmouth and South Downs PSC.  Many are the memories I have of trying to navigate my way around windswept Portsmouth housing estates in the bitter cold of winter before alighting on a community centre where the meeting was scheduled to start and it was always a pleasure to engage in debate and discussion with fellow comrades.

Jenny was a vivacious and outgoing person with a wicked sense of humour. It was an honour and privilege to know and meet someone who was so self-sacrificing and committed to ending the tyranny that Israel exerts over the Palestinians.

Although Jenny didn’t live to see the end of the Jewish Supremacist regime in Tel Aviv I am under no doubt that Jenny made a vital contribution to the struggle to end Zionism and its terrorist rule. Slowly, despite the vicious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism, the Zionist State is slowly but surely losing its legitimacy. The latest blow is the decision of Israel’s foremost human rights group, the liberal B’Tselem to describe Israel as a Jewish Supremacist state.

Jenny had no time for the time servers and apologists for Zionism who resorted to identity politics in order to defend Apartheid in Israel. I shall fondly remember Jenny Flintoft as a shining light in the darkness that Israel has cast over the Middle East and beyond.  She will always be remembered.

Below are a number of people who want to pay their respects and recall the contribution that Jenny made to a better world for all.

Tony Greenstein

From Portsmouth & South  Downs PSC

Very sadly Coronavirus claimed the life of Jenny Flintoft on 11 January.  For many years Jenny has been Secretary of the Portsmouth & South Downs PSC. Through PSDPSC she worked tirelessly for the rights of the Palestinian people, convening the monthly planning meetings, inviting speakers, helping organise demonstrations, keeping everyone up to date with events in Israel/Palestine and with local and national campaigns, and representing PSDPSC at PSC branch meetings and AGM.  It was her enthusiasm for folk music that led PSDPSC to raise funds through folk concerts, often with local artists, mostly for Medical Aid For Palestinians.  Israel’s ill-treatment of Palestinian child prisoners was perhaps the thing that angered her most.

PSDPSC supporters join with Momentum and Stand Up to Racism in saying our thoughts go out to Jenny’s husband Gerry and her family.  We send them our heartfelt condolences.

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

From Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

We received the terrible news about Jenny yesterday at the office. Deepest sympathies and all of our thoughts and best wishes with everyone in Portsmouth from all of us, it really is awful, shocking news.

 Lewis Backon

Palestine Solidarity Campaign Campaigns Officer

Portsmouth & District Momentum group writes,

Last year Jenny became Vice Chair of the Portsmouth & District Group of Momentum.  She was an active member of Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism too and one of the organisers of the local Stop the War Coalition.  She was a dogged and passionate campaigner and shared information and campaigns across all the groups she was involved in.

 “She was an inspiration to all of us as she worked hard to make people aware of inequalities and oppression in the world.  We will miss her as a comrade, activist and friend.” 

In solidarity

Jackie Lederer

joint Secretary of Momentum Portsmouth and District Group.

Portsmouth Stand Up To Racism reacted

"We are shocked and saddened by the news of Jenny's death.  Jenny was a socialist and an anti-racist, who put her beliefs into action and argued for others to do the same.  People who knew Jenny will miss her tenacious spirit and her willingness to stand up against injustice." 

From Sue Castillon

I first met Jenny and Gerry in 2015 at the first of many Momentum meetings where she distributed Palestine solidarity campaign leaflets and spoke of the organisation, campaigning against the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. She organised many fundraisers for PSC. Jenny was a tireless campaigner for this cause and it is imperative that we continue her work in her memory. 

She was with us on many London and Portsmouth rallies for the NHS and anti racism for instance.

We spent a very happy evening together at the international women’s day dinner at Portsmouth Football Club and she was with us for fundraising at my house for my campaign to stand in Hilsea ward 2018.

She always supported me for various campaigns and was a clear role model for never giving up if passionate about an issue.

I will really miss her and hope Gerry receives all the care and support he needs.

From  Robb Johnson

It was a pleasure and a bit of an honour to have known Jenny Flintoft. It was also great fun, & sometimes a bit exasperating, because words like indomitable, indefatigable, strongwilled & determined don’t do her justice, & she had standards & convictions that you often felt you were unlikely to live up to. But she was also an incredibly kind & affectionate friend, & so I think she kind of overlooked most of my shortcomings. 

I met Jenny, & her partner in every sense of the word, Gerry, when they came to the Hove Folk Club. This was held in the oak-panelled room above The Poet’s Corner pub in Hove. I got the impression that they were delighted to find a Sussex Folk Club that liked political songs & hated the Tories. This was in the days when they were still driving. Jenny had a wonderful voice, that was part sweet girlish treble & sincerity, & part wise woman anger & authority, & Gerry made absolute magic come from his concertina. Jenny invariably arrived with a sheaf of lyrics & a rough idea of what she might sing. She had the sort of repertoire of songs that to me represents the very best of folk singing. She would do a hilarious song involving Father Christmas in December, & knew the best feminist version of “House of the Rising Sun” anybody has ever heard. She also modestly wrote songs too, vivid, powerful songs supporting the oppressed & savaging the oppressor. One song “He Refuses to Fight” started with an aching, understated verse about a conscientious objector in the Second World War, & then moved perfectly into a verse about as Israeli soldier also refusing to fight. The conscientious objector was her father. I wish I had carried out a plan several of us at the club toyed with: when Gerry stopped driving, they stopped coming to the club, so we thought about  going to where Jenny & Gerry lived to record them, & archive Jenny’s wonderful songs. But they found they could get to Hove by train, & so… we never did. 

When the pub became increasingly uninterested in not to say hostile towards having a folk club upstairs, I suggested we could move to the Railway Inn opposite Portslade train station. There, there was a very nice back room & a house PA. Jenny & Gerry were appalled at this development & spoke out about it with great displeasure. Nonetheless, they kept coming anyway – Portslade station was after all just over the road from the pub - & continued to complain volubly whenever they thought the PA was too loud. They also always sat at a table right in the middle, at the very front, the better to monitor the volume level & to eat the evening meal they ordered. Jenny even occasionally used the microphone & stood on the stage, but was also very happy to wave it away & sing accapella if the mike or the mike stand were being uncooperative.  Jenny & Gerry also managed to persuade fellow Labour leftist Graham Noble to come to the club, which meant they could rely on his van & his comradely kindness rather than the last Southern Rail train west. One time, Remembrance Day 2018, Jenny & Gerry turned up at a folk club gig I was doing in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. Gerry had been hospitalised. Jenny sprang him to go to a classical music concert in the afternoon, then on to a folk club in the middle of nowhere near Bournemouth. As the evening drew to a close it became apparent that Graham wasn’t available. Luckily we had a car, & we were going back past Portsmouth & Southampton. Jenny said we could drop them off on the A27 because they lived “just up there” & they would get a cab, at 12.30 am on a wet November night. We drove them home, & of course it wasn’t “just up there” at all. But distance didn’t seem to worry either of them. They used to drive to Greece every year, & even when Gerry couldn’t drive, they still made it to Crete, & Jenny swam in the Mediterranean. We said we like Lemnos, so one year they went there too, & thought it was awful because there was disco music on the beaches, & it was obvious they held us responsible for providing an inaccurate recommendation. We also bumped into them on the Eurostar to Paris one December; they were travelling onwards. Nothing stopped Jenny. One night at the Railway Inn she sailed as majestically as usual, & as usual half an hour before the gig was supposed to start. There was no Gerry. “No Gerry tonight?” I asked. She rolled her eyes. “He missed the train. He didn’t get on quickly enough at Havant. He’ll be along later.” & sure enough, he was. 

Jenny very kindly got me gigs – usually in dodgy pubs – raising money for the Labour Party or Palestine. In 2019, during the commemoration of the 25^th anniversary of D Day, she got me a gig singing at the anti-Trump rally in a square in Portsmouth. While I was singing, a herd of EDL turned up on their way to the nearest Wetherspoons. One of them took a particular dislike to me singing & ambled towards me. I was a bit worried about this trajectory. Jenny wasn’t.  Jenny stood in his way. He tried to get round her. She stood in his way again & again, & again, until he gave up.

One of the benefits she arranged involved all three of us meeting at Havant then taking a train somewhere else. I found out how Jenny & Gerry had met. It was at a student union event in the early 1960s. Jenny was doing English literature at University, & Gerry was doing as much science as possible. Gerry said he was the first member of his family to go to university. He hadn’t particularly wanted to go to university, but he’d noticed that if you went to University, you didn’t have to do National Service, & he was determined he didn’t want to go off to shoot people in Cyprus on behalf of British Imperialism, so he became a student, & that where, & how they met. & lived happily, I think, ever after. It is okay, I think, to talk about Jenny as part of this partnership, because it was a partnership of equals, with Jenny generally tacitly taking a leading role, & Jenny was very happy to be an equal part of that partnership. 

This remembrance has probably gone on for too long. I haven’t said enough about her energy, her delight in life & I don’t think I have done her love of singing justice, or her principled commitment to justice. One year we were going to have a Folk Club Christmas gig where everybody was supposed to sing a Bob Dylan song. Jenny had no time for Dylan because of his pro-Israel politics. She was adamant that she wouldn’t be singing a Dylan song; in fact she was adamant that Jenny & Gerry would not be in attendance that night. Well, just come & sing whatever you like, I said. They didn’t. 

I haven’t said enough, because you can never say enough, because there are never enough good words for people like Jenny Flintoft. 

It was a pleasure, & a honour, to have known her. 

IN MEMORY OF JENNY FLINTOFT - Tom Suarez

Tuesday, 12 Jan 2021: Tragically, Jenny Flintoff, well known to many of us through her selfless work for human rights, died yesterday of Covid19.

I first met Jenny in 2017 when Portsmouth & South Downs PSC invited me to speak about the British Mandate. On the day of the event, as I was on the train to Portsmouth, my mobile rang. It was Jenny. PREVENT, the UK’s notorious supposed anti-radicalisation and anti-terror unit, had closed us down, not just at the scheduled venue, but throughout the city, "due to the nature of the speaker". While no further explanation was forthcoming, this was but one incident in a long history of stifling any open debate on the Middle East.

Jenny was furious. Here we were in Britain, trying to discuss British source documents from Britain’s own archives about the British Mandate, closed down by a British institution with British tax money at the orders of individuals acting on behalf of — ironically — the pariah state the British had jump-started with the Mandate.

The Daily Mail took advantage of the ‘scandal’ of the forbidden talk to condemn, by alleged ideological association, Jeremy Corbyn. The tabloid lined Corbyn and me up with side-by-side mug shots and a slanderous headline.

Jenny would not be intimidated. She demanded to meet with the local PREVENT Coordinator, Charlie Pericleous, and I returned to Portsmouth to be present. Jenny grilled Mr. Pericleous tenaciously for two hours. Despite his steadfast refusal to provide any explanation or even clear my name of suspicion, Jenny persevered, was never intimidated, and never fell for decoy replies.

She will be terribly missed.

Jenny Flintoft, who was born on 15th February 1943 died on 11th January 2021 

How Long are Momentum Members Going To Accept a Jewish Supremacist and Zionist as Leader?

Jon Lansman Joins the Lynch Mob in his Attack on Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Pete Willsman

A selection of the choicest tweets that were inspired by the Jewish Labour Movement/Jon Lansman's campaign against Jackie Walker

In May 2016 Jackie Walker, Vice-Chair of Momentum was suspended from the Labour Party for ‘anti-semitism’.  In a private Facebook discussion with a friend about her dual Black-Jewish inheritance, she remarked that ‘my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.’  If this had been a public discussion  then Jackie would have said that her ancestors were among the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.  [see The lynching of Jackie Walker]

However the intention of the Israel Advocacy Movement, which hacked the conversation, was to ‘take out’ Jackie, who was seen as a thorn in the side of the Israel’s supporters in the Labour Party.

McDonnell speaking alongside Jackie Walker at an LRC meeting in Brighton.  McDonnell has subsequently capitulated to the Zionists

Three weeks later Jackie was reinstated but the Jewish Labour Movement, the British representatives of the Israeli Labor Party, refused to accept this decision and they decided to wage a campaign akin to a political lynching, whose purpose was to renew her suspension.  When John McDonnell spoke at a Labour Representative Committee meeting alongside Jackie in early September 2016 in Brighton, he was criticised and had an invitation to speak at a JLM fringe meeting withdrawn.

One of many abusive tweets caused by the actions of Lansman's Zionist friends - for some strange reason they weren't deemed worthy of comment by the yellow press in this country

Since then there has been a vile racist campaign, as the tweets I am publishing here demonstrate, against Jackie.  Neither the Jewish Labour Movement nor Jon Lansman have uttered one word of criticism against this abuse. They have been happy to go along with racist abuse as long as it is not about antisemitism.  Not once have they ever dissociated themselves from the abuse that Jackie has received.  Lansman's only concern is with 'unconscious' or fake antisemitism.

That is why Lansman is a Jewish supremacist and Zionist. He looks at everything from one perspective only - is it good for Jews.  Any other form of racism is secondary too him.  He will surround himself with pliant Black people but the moment they rebel he will cut them off.

Lansman as part of Labour Party delegation meeting people from the Palestinian Authority

Ten days before the 2016 Labour Conference I wrote a blog The Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker. It was obvious to me what was going to happen. At the Conference Jackie attended a JLM ‘training event’ which Adam Langleben, the recently defeated racist Labour candidate in Hendon West secretly taped. Jackie said that she hadn’t heard a definition of anti-semitism that she could accept and that Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations should not just be about Jews but about all those who were murdered by the Nazis. This was held to be antisemitic because anything anti-Zionists say about the Holocaust or antisemitism is by definition 'anti-Semitic'.

Jon Lansman - unelected Chair of Momentum, Zionist and Jewish supremacist

Even a survivor of Auschwitz, Hajo Meyer, was accused of 'anti-semitism' for comparing what he went through with what Palestinians experience and Corbyn stupidly apologised. However when the Blessed Margaret Hodge compared being subject of a disciplinary investigation to what Jewish refugees from the Nazis suffered there are no cries of 'antisemitism'.

Free Speech on Israel's picket of the TSSA HQ near Euston in October 2016 when Lansman effected the removal of Jackie Walker as Momentum Vice-Chair

Jackie’s words were distorted to suggest what she was saying was anti-semitic. They clearly weren’t but the person who enabled this campaign of political assassination was Jon Lansman.  Lansman proposed that Jackie be removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum and with the support of the Alliance for Workers Liberty this was agreed to early in October 2016.

Prior to this meeting a group of Jewish Labour Party members had written to Lansman and Momentum’s Executive urging that they resist the calls for a witchhunt and the removal of Jackie.  We wrote:

‘We are seriously disturbed by the report in the Guardian Momentum likely to oust Jackie Walker over Holocaust remarks and a similar report in the Independent that ‘Senior members of Momentum are "fuming" at her remarks’. It is your duty not to betray comrades.’

Idiot Jess Phillips 'feminist' friend of Jacob Rees-Mogg

This gave Iain McNicol, Labour’s General Secretary, the cue to suspend Jackie.  Lansman was quoted in The Independent as saying

“I spoke to Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement this morning, he’s very upset and I can understand that – I work closely with Jeremy, I’ve been meeting with Jewish organisations to talk… I’ve been outspoken. I was very, very unhappy about… and I did comment on it, about it, what she had previously said.’

These comments were revealing.  Lansman openly admitted to working with the corrupt Chair of the JLM, Jeremy Newmark, who freely admitted to his close links with the Israeli Embassy and Mark Regev, its war criminal Ambassador. Lansman knows full well the relationship of the JLM to the Israeli Labor Party and its membership of the World Zionist Organisation, the main organisation of Israeli apartheid which funds  Jewish only Israeli settlements.  Lansman preferred to stab a Black anti-racist in the back rather than upset the JLM and the Israeli Embassy.

Fast forward to today. Recently Lansman has been to Israel. It would be difficult to go to Israel and not be aware of the virulent racism against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. Things such as the new Jewish Nation State Law which makes explicit the fact that Israel is an apartheid state, the interrogation of people at the airport (does any other democratic country interview people who visit to ensure that they hold the correct political opinions?) the violent anti-Arab demonstrations, the residential and educational segregation Lansman is aware of all of this yet what does he do?

In a private conversation with a member of Brent Momentum, Graham Durham, Lansman attacked Jackie Walker as an anti-semite, says he doesn’t know if Marc Wadsworth is anti-semitic and for good measure attacks Pete Willsman, though conceding he is not anti-semitic (probably because he is White). 

Everything Lansman says and does is from the perspective of a privileged White community in Britain, a community that has overwhelmingly voted Tory for 50 years. Lansman is a Jewish Supremacist and a racist who cannot tolerate Black people who challenge him. That was Jackie’s real crime as Deputy Chair of Momentum. Lansman personally appointed her, there was no election, because of her well known record as an anti-racist and anti-fascist.  However he could not control her and she was an anti-Zionist.  

Lansman’s support for Israel is no different from that of the alt-Right in the USA or  Tommy Robinson here.  He supports Zionism, right or wrong and his justification for the expulsion of Palestinian refugees in 1948, ethnic cleansing and his belief that ‘the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’  mark Lansman down as a supporter of western imperialism and the racism that is its handmaiden.  Lansman is a Jewish chauvinist who believes in Jewish exceptionalism. Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli State.  It believes in a pure Jewish racial state with Palestinians confined to the margins - hewers of wood and drawers of water in biblical terms.

Luke Akehurst justifies the murder of some 160 unarmed Palestinians gunned down by the Israeli military in Gaza yet this vile creature remains unsuspended

Contrast Lansman’s obsession with anti-semitism which he even calls it ‘unconscious’ in order to explain why it is that no one can ever find any examples of it in the Labour Party.  Yet not once, has Lansman called for the suspension of Luke Akehurst, an NEC candidate, who openly supported the murder of 160 Palestinians, children included, in the Gaza demonstrations.  If he had any integrity he would call for the suspension of Margaret Hodge for comparing her situation to that of Jews fleeing the Nazis but Lansman is not only a hypocrite but he is also a political coward.

How is it that a word out of place gets supporters of the Palestinians suspended yet Luke Akehurst is allowed to stand for the National Executive Committee?  Yet Lansman is silent as is much of the Left.  Anti-Palestinian racism is acceptable, but a word out of place about Jews leads to instant discipline.

Lansman stated to Graham Durham that ‘Jackie Walker is, I’m afraid, an anti-Semite. She provides leadership for other anti-semites.’

What utter malevolent racist bigotry.  Jackie unlike Lansman has been an active opponent of the National Front. Whilst Jackie was busy fighting the fascists Lansman was accumulating millions as a property developer. Her crime is being an anti-Zionist.  Lansman’s attack is despicable.  He provides no proof for his assertion that Jackie ‘provides leadership’ for other unnamed anti-semites nor could he.  This is a product of Lansman’s racist mindset. Lansman has never played any role or part in the anti-fascist movement. His sole concern has been to support the Israeli state.

Likewise Lansman’s attack on Marc Wadsworth.  He concedes that ‘he may not be anti-semitic’ which is the only form of racism that counts for Lansman, but he asserts that Marc came to the Chakrabarti press conference to cause trouble. How does Lansman know this? Because he spoke from the floor, the only contribution from a Black person in a press conference supposedly about  racism and not just anti-semitism. 

Because Marc was determined to include racism against Black people in the agenda of the meeting, he was guilty of disrupting it and therefore bringing the Labour Party into ‘disrepute’. Even worse he called out the dealing between right-wing Labour MP Ruth Smeeth and the Daily Telegraph.

Lansman also attacked, for good measure, Peter Willsman.  The only form of racism that matters to Lansman is anti-semitism, which barely exists. Racism against Black or Asian people is not his concern. 

The question is how we are going to remove Lansman who made his name over 30 years ago as a supporter of Tony Benn.  It would do well for us to remember the famous 5 questions of Benn:

“The House will forgive me for quoting five democratic questions that I have developed during my life. If one meets a powerful person--Rupert Murdoch, perhaps, or Joe Stalin or Hitler--one can ask five questions: what power do you have; where did you get it; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and, how can we get rid of you? Anyone who cannot answer the last of those questions does not live in a democratic system.”

Today Tony Benn would be accused of 'antisemitism' and suspended for comparing Rupert Murdoch to Hitler!

If Momentum members are serious about supporting Jeremy Corbyn then it is essential to remove Lansman.  Lansman’s treachery is such that it is only a matter of time before this racist property millionaire stabs Corbyn in the back too.  You have been warned!

Tony Greenstein

Lansman’s Conversation with Graham Durham:

From: Graham Durham
To: "brent-momentum@googlegroups.com" brent-momentum@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, 14 August 2018, 10:36
Subject: [BRENT MOMENTUM] Exchange with Jon Lansman

GD:     Ok Jon your view accords with mine on an anti-racist Britain.But whilst understanding the support amongst Jews here for Israel we must not allow this to restrict our criticism or our understanding of how Irgun and other murder gangs created the state and the racist policies since.On anti-semitism I entirely agree with you and would never agree it should be unchallenged but the Hodge and Smeeth etc attacks abuse the desire to see anti-semitism challenged as they are simply a code for anti-Corbyn attacks.Sadly Jon your attacks on Jackie Walker,Pete Willsman and Marc Wadsworth place you in the wrong camp

JL     Jackie Walker is, I’m afraid, an anti-Semite. She provides leadership for other anti-semites. Marc Wadsworth went to the Chakrabarti report launch to disrupt it. He may not be anti Semitic but his actions were deliberate and brought the Party into disrepute. Pete Willsman is not in the same category at all but his consistent bad behaviour is not acceptable

Here is an image of Lansman and others from our Labour Party members visit to Palestine   sharing views with a PLA governor of a West Bank territory in June this year.Following this visit the group members have been following and debating events there and in the ongoing debate in the Labour Party.Last night Jon and I exchanged views and I was surprised at his response ( I’ll leave you to read it and ,for context,my comments he was responding to)