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

Please Support the Labour Left Alliance’s 6 Candidates for Labour’s National Executive Elections

Roger Silverman is the only Jewish Anti-Zionist Candidate Standing because Jewish Voice for Labour Cowardly Accepted Momentum’s Veto and Withdrew Jo Bird

The Left has its back to the wall in the Labour Party.  The worst thing it can do is engage in wishful thinking.

As I predicted before the leadership elections, Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for. Despite Sturmer’s claim that he was the ‘Unity candidate’ ‘he is Establishment down to his manicured fingers’ and notwithstanding his youthful days of radicalism ‘Today he is the darling of the Right.’

I quoted from two Jewish members of his Holborn & St. Pancras constituency, Ruth Appleton and Amanda Sebestyen, that

Time and time again, as left-leaning members we have been subjected to hostility and abuse... Those that are close to Keir Starmer, rather than welcome involvement from the left, have actively prevented it....

Their advice was that

‘any socialist thinking about supporting Keir Starmer should think again and instead support a candidate that welcomes and supports socialist policies and encourages the active involvement of socialist members!’

Momentum was split. Half of them, including Laura Parker Lansman's right hand woman, supported Sturmer. They also supported Angela Rayner, a right-wing nonentity against Richard Burgon and on the day Sturmer’s election was announced they issued a ludicrous statement that claimed victory!

We are proud too that, in four and a half years, Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supported him has changed our party for the better and given voice to the hopes of millions who felt unrepresented in politics.... ... This is our victory. And we should be proud.

Coming from the organisation that did more to secure Corbyn’s defeat than anyone, it is no surprise that they claimed Sturmer’s election as a victory.

My own reaction was slightly different: Mogadon Man Assumes the Leadership of the Labour Party as Lansman’s candidate is crushed ‘Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right’ was my comment.

The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance Should Be Put Out To Grass

The Centre Left Grassroots Alliance was reconvened in order to stitch up a slate for the NEC.  The LLA was not invited. Meanwhile Momentum had held its own internal elections and Lansman’s Renewal slate was comprehensively defeatrf by the Momentum Forward group. Unfortunately there was no change of political perspective.

What Jo doesn't say is that she's standing for the Councillors' 2 seats because Lansman's successors and CLPD vetoed her candidature

Both Momentum Forward and the CLPD put a veto on Jo Bird, a Jewish anti-Zionist and member of JVL from being a candidate. Lansman had previously attacked JVL for not representing the ‘Jewish community’ which should be considered a good thing since the Jewish community is a reactionary and racist one that has voted Tory for the past half a century. Unfortunately, rather than refusing to back down and insist that Jewish anti-Zionists cannot be vetoed, JVL hauled up the white flag of surrender, suitably kosherised!

Jo Bird is now one of 2 candidates standing in the Councillors section which means she has no chance of being elected.

By way of contrast the lead candidate on the LLA slate is Roger Silverman, a Jewish anti-Zionist.  I have known Roger for over 20 years and he is a sound Marxist. For those who are interested in these things, Roger is the son of Sydney Silverman MP whose parliamentary life was devoted to the abolition of the death penalty.

I can therefore recommend, without a moment’s hesitation, that members, whoever else they vote for, put Roger at No. 1.  I would also recommend that the rest of the LLA slate be supported before you vote for any other candidates. The full slate is:

1.     Roger Silverman

2.     Chaudhry Qamer Iqbal

3.     Carol Taylor Spedding

4.     Ekua Bayunu

5.     Alec Price

6.     Steve Maggs

Even if the JVL doesn’t understand what is at stake, the Jewish Chronicle certainly does. ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin, its Political Correspondent, who was arrested in the hacking scandal, wrote a witchhunting article targeting shadow cabinet member Lyn Brown, the MP for West Ham, for supporting Roger and thus hinting to Sturmer that he should sack her for dangerous lefty tendencies.

The LLA has launched a petition which is an Open Letter to JVL calling on them to support Roger.  In view of the fake ‘anti-Semitism witchhunt continuing and even increasing there is a burning need for an anti-racist, anti-Zionist, socialist Jew on Labour’s National Executive to call out the racist stiff that goes by the name of Sturmer (for those who think I am misspelling his name Der Sturmer was the anti-Semitic paper of Nazi Julius Streicher, Gauleiter of Franconia who was hanged after the war).  Sturmer’s racist support for Israel should result in his suspension.

If Roger Silverman is the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ that is only because today most British Jews are, consciously or otherwise racists.  Anti-racists are a distinct minority in what is a very conservative community.  Ironically it was the Ultra Orthodox Union of Hebrew Congregations that dissociated themselves from the Board of Deputies attacks on Corbyn.

I recommend supporting 4 of the CLGA 6, Mish Rahman (who is a signatory of the LLA), Ann Henderson, Yasmin Dar, Gemma Bolton. Ann and Yasmin are already on the NEC and they have been good on the witchhunt.  Nadia Jama from Sheffied is a supporter of Lansman’s Renewal Momentum.  In Sheffield she supported Lansman’s coup and constitution, aimed at removing expelled members from Momentum.  She deserves absolutely no support.  I would rather see Luke Akehurst on the NEC than this treacherous Lansmanite.. 

Exactly the same goes for Laura Pidcock.  She made a name for herself early on as an MP for a number of ‘left wing’ anti-Tory soundbites but when it came to it she was as insubstantial as the rest of the Campaign Group.  Pidcock not only refused to speak out against Corbyn and Formby’s witchhunt but she personally told Chris Williamson, as co-Chair of the Campaign Group, that he should no longer attend group meetings. Chris was the only Labour MP with any guts and Pidcock not only scabbed on him but on Corbyn too, because the anti-Semitism allegations weren’t about me or Chris or Jackie but designed to remove Corbyn.

I would also recommend a vote for Cameron Mitchell and Mark MacDonald QC who, very kindly, gave me invaluable support legally in 2017 when, against the advice of all the other lawyers I consulted, he encouraged me to bring an action for an injumction against the Labour Party. The injunction succeeded  in December 2017 in delaying proceedings but not preventing them.

It really is shameful and an act of political cowardice that JVL accepted a veto on Jo Bird's candidacy.

Re Nadia Jama

There must be no return to the CLGA of old which put right-wingers like Ann Black on the NEC.  Come 2016 it was Black, as Chair of the Disputes Committee, who signed off on the suspension of Brighton & Hove and Wallasey Labour Parties.  The Leaked Labour Party Report makes it clear that both parties were stitched up.  I have twice emailed Black to ask if she regrets the decision she took to act on the allegations of lying right-wingers like Brighton Council Leader Warren Morgan.  Black has not responded!

Nadia Jama was prominent in the attempt by the Lansmanites in Sheffield Momentum to impose Lansman’s undemocratic constitution after his coup in January 2018. The first few attempts were defeated. Then Jama and her clique brought everybody and their granny to a meeting where they then had a (small) majority in favour of the constitution. Nadia Jama was a very vocal supporter of the constitution and of imposing it (which meant that 3 members of the local Momentum Steering Committee, who had been expelled by Labour, were unable to be re-elected to the SC - which was the point of the whole exercise. Everybody knew it and members debated at length how this was a witch-hunting constitution, because it barred from Momentum membership all those who had been expelled by the Labour Party. Needless to say, Sheffield Momentum imploded after that and the anti-witchhunt left went on to form Sheffield Labour Left. Local Momentum is now well and truly dead.

Nadia was briefly one of the two candidates supported by Lansman for the NEC by-election in February 2020, but he dumped her for Lauren Townsend and Leigh Brennan. She continued to stand though, but only got 13 CLP nominations.

However, she clearly remained a supporter of his (and vice versa) and was a signatory of Lansman's 'Momentum Renewal': She then apparently joined the LRC between February 2020 and August 2020, because it was the LRC who proposed her to be on the CLGA slate for this election, despite being told of what had happened the LRC nominated her.

Tony Greenstein

John McDonnell and Laura Pidcock Defy the Board of Deputies’s 10 Commandments by appearing in Zoom Conference with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein

The Zionist Attempts to Close Down Debate on Zionism Lies in Ruins After Last Weekend’s LRC Conference

At last Saturday’s Labour Representative Committee’s AGM  John McDonnell and Laura Pidcock decided to take a day trip to the Left.

Gone was the McDonnell who wanted war criminal Alistair Campbell reinstated in the Labour Party and who said that Starmer’s COVID strategy was 100% correct. Now he talked of Solidarity and even the Grunwick Strike (past battles always make social democrats more at ease than current ones)!

Amongst those listening and taking part were Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. McDonnell and Pidcott didn’t bat an eyelid. Surely they hadn’t forgotten the Board of Deputies ’10 Commandments’ No. 5 of which stipulated that

Any MPs, Peers, councilors, members or CLPs who support, campaign or provide a platform for people who have been expelled or suspended in the wake of anti-Semitic incidents should themselves be suspended from membership

Jackie Walker is also mentioned in Commandment No. 4, alongside Ken Livingstone, as someone who will never be readmitted to the Party. McDonnell and Pidcock up to now have never made it clear whether they reject or accept the BOD's McCarthyist programme, whereas the miserable Rebecca Long-Bailey signed up to the Commandments in an attempt to gain the racist vote in her bid for Labour’s leadership.

I have to say that I am extremely pleased that John McDonnell and Laura Pidcock, whose behaviour throughout the witchhunt has not been a model of socialist solidarity have now seen the error of their ways. The repentance of the sinner on the Road to Damascus is to be welcomed.

The Zionist attempt to construct a ‘banned list’ is no different in principle to the actions of their good friends in the Apartheid regime. I’m pleased to say that their attempts  now lies in ruins.

The Conference itself was a damp squib. I was ruled out of order when attempting to move reference back of the section of the LRC’s dire statement ‘Learning from mistakes of the past five years’. Clearly the leadership of the LRC has learnt nothing at all.

I copy the relevant section of the Executive Statement below. It asks ‘Did Jeremy make mistakes? Of course he did’ and then concludes that  ‘Frankly his conduct as an individual has been heroic.’ Perhaps I have an aversion to hero worship, but to me his conduct wasn’t so much heroic as idiocy on stereoids. Others may call throwing your friends and comrades under the bus cowardice.

Not once did it seem to Corbyn that the anti-Semitism attacks, on him and others, were the normal Zionist Weaponisation of Anti-Semitism. Because if he had realised this he might have called it out. Despite employing numerous advisers it doesn’t seem to have occurred to Corbyn that what he needed to do was to fight back and devise a strategy which consisted of more than the words ‘I surrender’.

Firstly by making a major speech explaining that when you have to justify house demolitions of civilians as part of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing or imprisonment without trial of children as young as 12 then ‘anti-Semitism’ is about the only card you can play.

Over ¾ of Labour’s membership consistently refused to accept that Labour had an anti-Semitism problem yet Corbyn insisted on appeasing enemies who would not be appeased. Corbyn had a duty to call out the gaggle of Blairites and what John Prescott called the ‘bitterites’ who levelled the charge of anti-Semitism at anyone they disliked.

Instead Corbyn threw his friends, one by one, under the bus to appease Tom Watson and the Jewish Labour Movement and then in the final insult to the members tried to ennoble Watson as well as Iain McNicol.

In the Leaked Report that Starmer is doing his best to bury the following appears on page 306 and in with slightly different wording on pages 333, 346 and 573. There are other references to ‘rebuilding trust’ with the Jewish community without once stopping to ask themselves why only 22% of Jews voted for his predecessor, the Jewish Ed Miliband.

Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to GLU that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”. GLU often failed to quickly progress these cases, as well as on several cases of antisemitism that LOTO staff directly raised or discussed with GLU.

Well all the above named were expelled or forced out of the Labour Party. Did it ‘rebuild trust’ with the mythical Jewish community?  Of course not.  Our expulsions merely ‘proved’ that the Labour Party had an anti-Semitism problem so they upped their demands and Corbyn and the even more servile Jenny Formby rushed to expel even more people even more quickly. To do this they devised the fast track expulsion procedures so that people could be expelled without a hearing.

The 2019 Labour Party Conference was told that these fast-track procedures would only be used in ‘egregious’ cases but that was a lie. They have been used in every ‘anti-Semitism’ case. And the faster Formby expelled people the more this proved Labour had a problem with ‘anti-Semitism’ so they expelled even more people.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Formby and Corbyn that by expelling anyone who mentioned the word ‘Zionism’ in anything other than a positive light they were simply hastening their own demise. They surrendered the narrative to their enemies.

Was the Zionist Establishment and the Board of Deputies pleased . with them?  Of course not.  The Zionists knew that they had Labour’s leadership on the run and they pursued them even more.  Corbyn forgot Mick McGahey of the National Union of Miner’s advice that ‘they’ll stop chasing you when you stop running,” Corbyn, McDonnell and Formby never stopped running.

In the end Corbyn was subject to an ambush during the General Election by the racist Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who trained to become a rabbi at the Har Etzmon Yeshiva on the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut.  And what was Corbyn’s response?  To ask for a meeting with him!  Heroic? I can think of other words!

Hero Worship Sections of the LRC Executive Report

12.       Did Jeremy make mistakes? Of course he did. Everyone does. We, as loyal Corbynistas in the LRC, criticised Corbyn who, pressured by the trade union barons, accepted a process less democratic than the open selection called for by the majority of the membership. That spiked the move to Party democratisation.  How important were these mistakes? 

13.       We must remember what a weak position Corbyn – and the left in general – was in, with a hostile PLP and Party bureaucracy, and unprecedented vilification from the media. Frankly his conduct as an individual has been heroic. The fundamental problem was that he alone was unable to overcome the forces ranged against him in our movement. He was in a very weak negotiating and bargaining position. 

14.       There was an irreconcilable contradiction between the need to transform the party and build a radical democratic grassroots movement and the need to reach an accommodation with a right wing PLP.  The leadership feared a right wing split off from the PLP would make an election victory more difficult and yet to abandon the grassroots would be to give up in advance on the chance of a lifetime of achieving a radical Labour government.

15.       It was a mistake to fail to facilitate the building of an independent grassroots movement. It  was a serious error not to defend Corbyn’s supporters from the witch-hunt by accepting the narrative of what were grossly distorted and politically weaponised allegations of antisemitism which helped to divide and demoralise the Labour left

16.       The most fundamental mistake made by Corbyn’s team was increasingly focusing on triangulating Brexit policies and parliamentary procedures rather than mobilising and educating the rank and file. To combat that would have required a giant mobilisation leading to a wholesale democratisation of the labour movement – a mammoth task that the left failed to achieve.

17.       We live in unprecedented times. Johnson’s administration looked set fair last year for five years of government with very little opposition in sight. Now, with the onset of the pandemic and the prospect of economic collapse, they must know they are on the rack. What of the opposition? Unfortunately under Keir Starmer the PLP seems by a majority to accept the role of a ‘loyal opposition’, playing Parliamentary games with the Tories. But of course it’s not just up to them. The threats facing the labour movement are vast. But so are the opportunities, if our movement is prepared to take advantage of them.

The LRC is unable to come to terms with what happened during Corbyn’s leadership, not least the way its own President, John McDonnell, was the leading appeaser. This is betrayed in the poverty of its analysis (if one can dignify it with such a description). And because it draws no lessons from the debacle of Corbyn’s leadership it has nothing to say about how the Left should go about tackling the right-wing leadership of Keir Starmer.

According to Andrew Fisher’s new book, after Margaret Hodge’s description of Corbyn as a ‘fucking anti-Semite’ when McDonnell urged that she should suffer no consequences, Corbyn didn’t speak to him for months.  It would have been even better if Corbyn had openly called for her suspension.

The LRC was in a prime position during the past 5 years to become the leading organisation of the Left in the Labour Party. Instead it sat on the sidelines and failed to organise any opposition to the Right’s counter offensive. The LRC allowed Lansman’s Momentum to first cement its position, move to the Right and in the end destroy the Corbyn Project it had been founded to protect. Now the LRC is an organisation without a role and without much of a voice either.

Laura Pidcock is seen by activists as having a relatively clean pair of hands compared to McDonnell.  However as co-Chair of the Campaign Group of MPs it was she who told Chris Williamson not to turn up to meetings anymore once he had been suspended.

McDonnell, who was always willing to speak up for the likes of Alistair Campbell and the British National Party’s favourite MP, Margaret Hodge, kept his silence like a Trappist monk when Chris Williamson was resuspended as a result of a petition of right-wing peers and MPs organised by Tom Watson.

Even now the LRC, spurns unity with the Labour Left Alliance and instead takes part in the stitch-up that is known as the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance who, along with the CLPD and Momentum, vetoed Jo Bird’s candidature for the NEC.

Still, at least those of us expelled as a result of Corbyn’s betrayal can be grateful to McDonnell and Pidcock for their belated opposition to the Board of Deputies’s McCarthyite 10 Pledges!

Tony Greenstein