Report – Labour Against the Witchhunt All Members Meeting 28 August 2021

LAW votes narrowly not to support setting up a socialist movement but votes to uphold No Platform for Fascists

Update

It would seem that the Spectator had a mole at the meeting! Its account is published here. It would seek that some sad nerd spends his time doing little else than attending the meetings of groups. This is the nerd in his own words and this is an interview with him in The Critic.

The most revealing comment is in his article Infiltrating the Left where he says:

'I was never a hateful person myself before I started doing this — but now, I despise these people and everything they do. I suppose hate rubs off

 Of course what mole doesn’t reveal is who is paying him and his relationship to the secret state.  My assumption throughout is that mole is a man.  

TG 

Introduction

LAW held its All Members Meeting last Saturday night with over 100 members attending. The agenda and a record of the decisions are here. This is a brief report on what took place.

The context of the meeting is a witchhunt unprecedented in its scope and ferocity in which Keir Starmer and his glove puppet David Evans have torn up all democratic rules and procedures. Regardless of the electoral cost, Starmer is determined to drive the left out of the Labour Party. Acting on behalf of the ruling class Starmer is determined that never again will a socialist and anti-imperialist gain control of the Labour Party.

Can you imagine what the press would make of the Labour Party if Corbyn had proscribed Progress, Labour First and the other scab organisations of the Labour Right. They would have cried ‘dictator’ from the rooftops. However attacks on the left meet with their approval – from the Mail to the Guardian.

When Starmer came to power he announced his intention to ‘root out the scourge of anti-Semitism’ despite the fact that what passed for ‘anti-Semitism’ was not hatred of Jews but hatred of apartheid Israel and the Zionist movement.

Starmer immediately declared that he was a Zionist, ie a racist ‘without qualification’. The subsequent issuing of reports by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group and Human Rights Watch declaring that Israel was an Apartheid State have had no effect on Labour’s racist leader.  On the contrary, whilst fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ he has quietly readmitted to Labour the Trevor Philips for whom Muslims are a ‘nation within a nation’ and who has described the adoption of Christian children by Muslims as ‘akin to child abuse’. There are some forms of racism that Starmer is perfectly happy with.

This is what 'Zionist Without Qualification' Starmer Supports

The mere mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ however was enough to send Momentum’s children running to nurse for fear of something worse. ‘Anti-Semitism’ was the evil by which all manner of deeds were done. So when Starmer wanted to be rid of Rebecca Long-Bailey, to whom he had felt obliged to offer the position of Shadow Education  Secretary, ‘anti-Semitism’ was the excuse to remove the last vestiges of the Corbyn left from the front bench.

The excuse was retweeting Maxine Peak condemning Israel’s Police for having taught the American Police the neckhold that killed George Floyd. Now whether this was strictly true was irrelevant. What is true is that the Zionist Anti-Defamation League boasted of having ‘trained 150,000 (US) law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers’ with the Israeli police.  The ADL has since taken this down but I quoted it here. Apparently this was an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy’. What Israel’s police were not teaching was respect for human rights!

Likewise when Jeremy Corbyn was suspended Andrew Scatterbrain, head of Momentum, complained that this ‘undermined the fight against anti-Semitism’. Scatterbrain didn’t get it that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations had been perfected to get rid of Corbyn even before he was elected as Labour leader.

The stupidity of much of the Labour left coupled with its cowardice has led to the present situation of automatic expulsions, where due process and natural justice have been abolished. LAW and its sister organisation Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed on July 20 for having called out the fake and spurious nature of the anti-Semitism allegations levelled by the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the main proponent of Israeli apartheid, the World Zionist Organisation which contains a Land Theft Division.

Although over 100 people attended the meeting and there were some good debates, it cannot be said that the meeting responded adequately to the needs of the hour. Partly this was because of the disarray of LAW’s Steering Committee whose 6 members are grossly unrepresentative of the organisation. LAW has had hundreds of new members since Starmer outlawed us yet 50% of the Steering Committee are members or supporters of the tiny Communist Party of Great Britain.

Now I have no objection to the group per se.  After all I have written for their newspaper the Weekly Worker for over 15 years, but they have a line on the Labour Party, that it was founded as a ‘united front of a special kind’ which is bonkers. The Fabians were amongst those that formed the Labour Party and they are and were an organisation of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Webbs and the Shaws.

The CPGB suggest that any attempts to build anything outside of Labour is doomed to failure. They follow what amounts to a rigid dogma, almost a theology.  I termed them the Catholic Church of the Left at the meeting! Regardless of changing circumstances they stick to the same line. Some 120,000 members of the Labour Party have already left in disgust at the behaviour of Starmer and they have nothing to say to them apart from stay in and fight!

The meeting was chaired by Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish woman who was witchhunted in  disgraceful wave of racism and betrayed by Jon Lansman when Jackie was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum  in the autumn of 2016.

Resist at the Rialto & Labour Left for Socialism

Two years ago, because of Zionist pressure on venues not to hire out venues to anti-Zionists we hired for 2 days the Rialto, a Brighton theatre whose owner has experience of supporting the Kent Miners and is unafraid of a few racist trolls.  Last time we put on a book launch for Bad News for Labour that Waterstones, under pressure from the Zionists had abandoned at the last minute.

This time we hiring the venue for 4 days and have a whole series of alternative events planned. from Sunday of the Conference to Wednesday. You can register for the events here. They provide an alternative to the controlled dissent of Momentum’s World Transformed. An outline of what is planned at Labour Party Conference is here.

A public meeting called by Defend the Left on 18^th September is planned with Ken Loach, Howard Beckett, Graham Bash, Esther Giles and other speakers. 

LAW has also participated, not without problems, in an organisation Labour Left for Socialism.  LLS has published a statement signed by 15 organisations, some of which, such as CLPD have effectively been complicit in the witchhunt.  Now of course people and organisations can learn the error of their ways, but the question unfortunately they haven’t.

After prolonged discussion LAW’s Steering Committee agreed to send two delegates to this organisation and to agree to the statement yet strangely enough LAW’s name has been left off the statement. What is even worse is that the statement contains the following weasel words. LLS ‘stand(s) in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.’ What this meant is that of the 3 proscribed Labour Party organisations LLS only supports one of those organisation, Socialist Appeal.

Because LAW and LIEN have been proscribed for their opposition to the fake anti-Semitism witchhunt and this statement effectively refuses to support them. Stan Keable, the CPGB secretary of LAW sent an email to (LLS) expressing his ‘disappointment’ with them.

When I saw this anaemic email I immediately sent a somewhat stronger email saying that:

‘it really is disgraceful that Labour Against the Witchhunt, one of the proscribed groups, has been deliberately left off the joint statement by Don't Leave Organise, that purports to oppose the proscriptions but instead introduces the following weasel words:

'We stand firmly against proscriptions, and stand in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.'

Unfortunately the co-Chair of LAW, CPGB supporter Tina Werkman took exception to my blunt words and at an emergency Steering Committee moved that I be removed as a delegate to LFS. My replacement has since decided not to take up his place as delegate, yet Ms Werkman, instead of proposing that I be restored as delegate has proposed that LAW just send one delegate, the CPGB’s Stan Keable. None of this was reported to the AMM meeting.

DISCUSSION OF MOTIONS

The first motion moved by the CPGB’s Kevin Bean welcomed the invitation to LAW and LIEN to participate in LLS without any criticism of it bar the fact that you can’t quote anyone who speaks in its meeting under the so-called Chatham House Rules. To me this seemed the least of its problems. No mention was made that Socialist Action, an ‘underground’ group which is part of the CLPD representation, had effectively tried to ensure that the group did not support those who did not go along with the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.

Tina Werkman moved an amendment putting this right and it was passed by 60-11 with the CPGB opposing.

The main vote however took place on the assertion in paragraph 2 that ‘LAW stands for unrestricted freedom of speech.’ I moved an amendment deleting ‘unrestricted’. I do not support free speech for overt racists, fascists, war criminals or organised scabs and I gave 2 examples. A meeting which socialists and miners from Kent NUM broke up in Brighton at the 1984 Tory Party conference. Apparently the CPGB would have supported the right of the scabs to freedom of speech despite using it as part of a campaign to starve the miners back to work.

The Board of Deputies has always opposed physical opposition to fascist anti-Semitism whilst at the same time condemning all opposition to Zionism and Israeli Apartheid

The Board of Deputies 

The other example I gave was of the 43 Group of Jewish ex-servicemen who, after they came back from the war in 1945, set about destroying the attempt of Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists to regroup by holding street meetings.  By 1950 the Union Movement was finished.  Interestingly for the benefit of Socialist Action, Red Labour, CLPD and others who are complicit in the witchhunt, the Board of Deputies, which today is so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ – vehemently opposed the 43 Group. I suggest that they and LAW’s Steering Committee read this excellent article. The British Jews who fought postwar fascism on London's streets

Despite the majority of the SC opposing my amendment it passed by 35-32 votes.

What I thought was a non-contentious motion calling for no confidence in Keir Starmer, was passed by 75 votes to 8. The only opposition coming from the CPGB! Quite why the CPGB should have opposed the motion is unclear. As far as I am aware they don’t yet support Starmer though perhaps this is a sign of what lies ahead!

The main debate was on strategy. The motion from the CPGB which called for god, mother and apple pie, received 40 votes.  It called on people to do what they are already doing.

What it didn’t do was offer any strategy to take on board the fact that over a hundred thousand members have already resigned from the Labour Party, that thousands of socialists are in the process of being expelled and thousands more show every sign of deserting the good ship Labour. To these people this motion offered nothing except rhetoric about ‘continuing to campaign at a grass roots level against bans and proscriptions, and countering the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against the left.’

The CPGB motion was supported by 5 out of 6, ie. 84% of the Steering Committee. I moved a motion, seconded by Brighton members Dave Hill and Paddy O’Keefe and a background strategy paper written by myself and Esther Giles. Although I didn’t oppose much of the CPGB motion the problem was that it could have been written anytime in the past 5 years.

What set the cat among the pigeons was points 8 and 9 of my motion:

8.           We believe that it is essential to create a socialist movement, that encompasses people inside and outside the Labour Party, which will keep activists in the Corbyn Project together, with a view to forming a distinct socialist party in the near future.

9.           We believe that the time has come when socialists in trade unions should argue for disaffiliation from a party that is now part of the neo-liberal consensus.

In other words I called for the formation of a socialist movement which encompassed both those in and those who have left the Labour Party. It did not call for the formation of a new party today but said that that should be on the agenda in the near future. 

Of course this was anathema to the CPGB for whom devotion to the Labour Party is an article of faith. Contemplating a break from the Labour Party is akin to commiting idolatory in the temple. It is heresy in any language.

Despite my fear of being cast into perdition, the CPGB motion obtained 40 votes to 31 for my motion.  In other words 44% of those voting agreed with me that it was not enough to call people to fight in a Labour Party where democracy has been abolished.

I think I can make one prediction and that is this debate will not go away. What is also obvious is that membership of LAW’s Steering Committee needs to be doubled. Whilst I have no objection to the CPGB having representatives on the Steering Committee, it is undemocratic for them to have effectively 50% of members when they are a small and tiny group. In other words they will have to win votes by argument not force of numbers.

Tony Greenstein

The Execrable Luke Akehurst Defends Israel’s Occupation & Its Methods of Control

Akehurst of Labour First Supports Hewlett Packard’s Supply of Technology under the guise of ‘Anti-Terrorism’

Akehurst comes from a long tradition of Labour imperialists

The dictionary.com definition of execrable is either:

1.             utterly detestable; abominable; abhorrent or

2.             very bad:

By way of contrast the OED defines execrable as ‘Extremely bad or unpleasant.’

I suspect they all describe Luke Akehurst even if they miss out the vital ingredient of what makes someone who is obviously intelligent support the most reprehensible aspects of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  I refer to his right-wing pro-imperialist politics that sees little or nothing wrong with the imperialist presence in the Middle East.

Akehurst until recently worked for the British Israel Committee’s We Believe in Israel department.  In Hewlett Packard stands with Israel – stand with HP against the boycotters Akehurst defend Israel’s use of Hewlett Packard’s technology to maintain its police state methods of repression.  Everything is excused under the rubric of ‘terrorism’.

Let us recall what Ronnie Kassrills, a Jewish member of the ANC’s Executive Committee for 20 years and Intelligence Minister for 4 years in the ANC government said about Israel’s benign occupation, whose methods Luke Akehurst is so committed to defending:

Protestors staging a die-in at HP headquarters

‘Ronnie Kasrils on Apartheid Israel, 2007: 

“Travelling into Palestine's West Bank and Gaza Strip, which I visited recently, is like a surreal trip back into an apartheid state of emergency. It is chilling to pass through the myriad checkpoints -- more than 500 in the West Bank. They are controlled by heavily armed soldiers, youthful but grim, tensely watching every movement, fingers on the trigger… The West Bank, once 22% of historic Palestine, has shrunk to perhaps 10% to 12% of living space for its inhabitants, and is split into several fragments, including the fertile Jordan Valley, which is a security preserve for Jewish settlers and the Israeli Defence Force. Like the Gaza Strip, the West Bank is effectively a hermetically sealed prison. It is shocking to discover that certain roads are barred to Palestinians and reserved for Jewish settlers. I try in vain to recall anything quite as obscene in apartheid South Africa.”

In 2002 Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu wrote a series of articles in major newspapers, comparing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank to apartheid South Africa, and calling for the international community to divest support from Israel until the territories were no longer occupied. In an April 2010 open letter to the University of Berkeley, Tutu wrote 

“I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.”

 In 2011, Tutu wrote an article for the Tampa Bay Times, arguing that Israeli apartheid is now so bad that only an international boycott can force Israel to change its policies.  [Earlier this month, Tutu said, :  “It is not a Muslim or Jewish crisis. It is a human rights crisis with roots to what amounts to an apartheid system of land ownership and control. It is a crisis that fuels other crises…”  

Both Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kassrills were aware of the close economic, political and military links between Apartheid South Africa and Zionist Israel.  Luke Akehurst, as a racist supporter of Israel’s settler colonialism is determined to ignore the reality of Israel’s occupation.  The wonder is how this creature managed to become a runner-up in Labour’s NEC elections this year and to have even served as a CLP representative previously.

It is an example of the depths to which Labour’s Right and the Zionist lobby will sink that such a man, who makes his living by working for an Israeli propaganda organisation, is the best they can find.  A man without any sign of moral scruples.

In Akehurst’s rant below he has even put up a petition for people to sign supporting this mega American multinational.  One wonders whether, if he had been alive at the time, Akehurst would have summoned up support for IBM’s involvement in providing a basic computerised card index for the Nazis in order that they could classify Jews more efficiently?  The methods of operation of IBM  and Hewlett-Packard are much the same – providing electronic services to regimes of oppression.

Edwin Black’s book IBM & the Holocaust  recounts how

‘The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only one or a few Jewish ancestors.’

Akehurst’s arguments can be boiled down to these:

i.                    The information technology supplied to Israel is to prevent ‘terrorism’

ii.                  This protects not only Israeli (for which read Israeli Jewish) civilians but Palestinians too.  Perhaps the most nauseous of Akehurst’s statements is where he says that:

iii.                ‘Boycotts are harmful to peace, as they stop dialogue and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.’

As the article The case against Hewlett-Packard shows, Hewlett Packard’s systems have nothing to do with preventing ‘terrorism’ but have everything to do with enabling the Israeli state to maintain its coercive and repressive regime of Occupation.  The idea that HP’s technology makes it ‘easier for Palestinian workers and others to travel into Israel, as they can prove their identity’ is simply a lie.  Palestinian lives are completely disrupted by the hundreds of Israeli checkpoints which makes a short journey take hours. 

Even Israel’s hard-line cabinet minister, Uri Ariel, himself a settler, condemned the conditions that Palestinians face at checkpoints where they are forced to wait for hours in the burning sun whilst Jewish settlers pass through a different entrance without problems. Hard-right minister: Conditions at West Bank checkpoints ‘disgraceful’

Elor Azaria, the Kahanist Israeli soldier who shot a severely injured Palestinians lying on the ground in the head has become an Israeli national hero

If it is terrorism that concerns Akehurst then there is plenty of terrorism that HP assists the army in committing.  For example the shooting in the head of a severely injured Palestinian who was lying comatose on the ground by a far-Right soldier Elor Azarya who is a national hero with over 60% support from the Israeli Jewish public. [Most Israelis Say Army Medic Who Killed Wounded Suspect Is Not a Murderer]

Or another example of the terrorism that Akehurst doesn’t see is the murder, one of very many, of an 18 year old college student Hadil Al-Hashloumon.  Eyewitness To Hebron IDF Murder of Hadil Al-Hashloumon: ‘I Never Saw Any Knife’.  There is of course the mundane terrorism that has seen over a thousand Palestinian homes demolished in the West Bank this year in order to make way for settlements.  But the only time Akehurst understand’s terrorism is when the Palestinians under occupation resist.  Otherwise it is simply a case of law and order, maintaining the racist peace and that of course is what the absurd ‘anti-Semitism campaign’ of the Zionists in the Labour Party is about.  As Akehurst says, he is not Jewish but he is a Zionist.   Thus it ever was. 

Akehurst’s Puff Piece on Hewlett Packard

Here’s our latest campaign – please sign this petition: 

http://www.webelieveinisrael.org.uk/petition/hewlett-packard-stands-israel-stand-hp-boycotters/

Anti-Israel campaigners have called on people to boycott the information technology company Hewlett Packard (HP) and its successor companies, because they provide biometric identity systems for Israeli security checkpoints. They also provide IT systems to the Israeli Navy, Army, Defence Ministry and prison service, all of which help Israel combat terrorist threats such as Hamas and Hezbollah. With 6,000 local employees, HP is the second biggest investor in IT in Israel. Just to confuse things, HP recently demerged into two companies – HP Inc. which makes computers and printers, and HP Enterprise which provides IT services and software to governments and companies – but the boycotters don’t care, they are boycotting both!

The call to boycott HP would harm both Israelis and Palestinians because the HP-supplied security systems at IDF checkpoints help prevent terrorist attacks such as suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, whilst making it easier for Palestinian workers and others to travel into Israel, as they can prove their identity.

HPE’s security system is used as a result of the Wye River Accords, signed by the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

Boycotts are harmful to peace, as they stop dialogue and coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. The boycott movement demonises Israel. It is particularly reprehensible to seek to stop Israel obtaining technology that protects its citizens from terrorism, and to attack companies that are involved in Israel’s security.

As Hewlett Packard Enterprise helps protect Israeli civilians from terrorism, we want to encourage it to continue to provide technology to Israel, and to let HP know there is global public support for its role there.

Therefore we would like you to sign our petition thanking Hewlett Packard Enterprise for their continued investment in Israel and support for Israel's security, which we will pass on to the company’s management:

The case against Hewlett-Packard

What is Hewlett-Packard?

Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) is a US multinational information technology corporation. It is a global provider of computer products and IT services. It is also one of the top 25 defence contractors with the US Pentagon.

Why is Hewlett-Packard a BDS target?

Palestinian movement within the West Bank is tightly controlled by Israel through the use of checkpoints. The major checkpoints use what is known as the BASEL system. This system uses scanners with hand and facial recognition to collect biometric data about every Palestinian who uses the checkpoints.

The biometric data of nearly every Palestinian over the age of 16 is held by the Israeli authorities as part of Israel’s system of control and repression.

HP Enterprise Services, a division of HP, is responsible for developing, integrating and maintaining the BASEL system.

HP not only profits from developing systems to racially profile Palestinians and track and control their movements, it is also complicit in the Israeli apartheid which limits the parts of the West Bank which they can access, and which restricts their freedom of movement.

As such, it is complicit in the breach of Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement…within the borders of each state.”

HP is also contracted to provide the Israeli navy’s IT infrastructure. The Israeli navy is used to enforce the illegal blockade of Gaza from the sea, to prevent Palestinian fishermen from carrying out their trade, and to bombard Gaza during major assaults.

Israel’s blockade of Gaza constitutes collective punishment. Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and designates it as a war crime. By contracting with the Israeli navy, HP becomes complicit in the Israeli state’s war crimes against Gaza.

HP has, in the past, supplied PCs to the Israeli army, which enforces the lethal occupation of Palestinian land.

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – don’t buy HP products!