The Framing of Kelvin Hopkins MP

First it was ‘anti-Semitism’ now the Labour Right (& the BBC's Tory Kuesnberg) are weaponising Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is much like anti-Semitism.  No one wants to be accused of it and the immediate thought when faced with the accusations made against Kelvin Hopkins is that there is no smoke without fire.  

Kelvin Hopkins

The use by a man of pressure, by virtue of an economic or other relationship of dependancy, because it is nearly always a man, on a women to gain sexual favours is by definition despicable.  That was why George Bernard Shaw described marriage as a legalised form of prostitution.

I know this because in my Momentum group in Brighton for the first few months a number of people thought that I must be guilty if I was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’.  It was only after people like Jackie Walker and others began to be accused of the same crime that it dawned on people that this was a cynical ploy by the Right to divide the Left.  And because the Left has a conscience, because socialists as opposed to the neo-liberals of the Right don’t act like cynical automatons, people do take these things seriously.  The same is true of sexual harassment.

Perhaps more so with sexual harassment because all men are, to a greater or lesser degree, guilty of possessing power in relationships and using that power.  I doubt if there is any man who can honestly say they haven’t, at some point in their life been guilty of some form of sexual harassment or coercion or pressure.  You live in this world and are part of it, a world framed by patriarchal relations.  You can’t live outside the social relations that you are a part of. 

Ava dressed up as a schoolgirl by her Telegraph minders for her interview

That is why just like anti-Semitism has been weaponised, so sexual harassment can be and it would appear is being weaponised at this moment.  It is clear that the Tories epitomised by the monstrous lech Michael Fallon are clearly guilty of gross acts of abuse and worse.  However there is a determined effort by the BBC and the Tory press to turn the attention on Labour.  The Right are doing all they can to encourage this and the Left should stand up and ask where the proof is, because apart from Ivan Lewis MP there seems none.

It is almost certain that Kelvin Hopkins is innocent of the charges against him. I must confess that when I first saw Etemadzadeh I rubbed my eyes. Why is she dressed up as a schoolgirl? Is this to try and suggest she is young, virginal and innocent? She must be at least 23-24, what is this school girl image for?  And the poppy?  No socialist activist would be seen dead wearing a symbol to British military imperialism.

A very different Ava E in her Linkedin profile

I confess on Friday night, after just coming out of hospital, I had BBC News 24 on and the news goes round in cycles and Etemadzadeh seemed to be on interminably as I half listened, and got on with writing and posting a blog.  Perhaps because I listened to her more than once it gradually occurred to me that she had been very carefully coached – her interview seemed incredibly staged and even forced.  At the end she described an alleged conversation where Kelvin said that if he were young, he would have been proud to have her as her lover and then she said ‘and if he was young he would be happy to have her as a lover’ and then the killer punch ‘but he’s not’ made me feel that this was not spontaneous.  It now appears that it was a put up job with John Pina.

More details have come about concerning Ava.  She is a member of Progress and she has been working with the Telegraph, hardly a Labour paper.  She seems to have been put up to it by a Progress MP (Wes Streeting?) just as the Jewish Labour Movement have constantly run to the Times and Mail when they wanted an anti-Labour story printed.

Too much of this story doesn't hang together. The one conflict of evidence is where Etemadzadeh says that Hopkins rubbed his crotch against her when saying goodbye at Essex.  If that is the case, then why the hell did she go out of her way to make further contact with him?  It’s not as if she had to.  There was no financial or contractual or employer-employee relationship between them. 

There were 3 separate messages sent by Etemadzadeh to Kelvin Hopkins, none of which square with his alleged behaviour.  And why wait 3 years if indeed all this transpired?  It may well be the case that Hopkins told her that if he was young he would happily fall in love with her.  That is no more than saying that he found her a nice woman.  Certainly you can question his appalling sense of judgement but it hardly constitutes sexual harassment.  She doesn’t allege that there was any further alleged physical or sexual contact.

She was also an intern with Michael Dugher, who was special adviser to the most right-wing of all Labour MPs, John Spellar, an old associate of the Electrical Trades Union and its anti-communist leadership.  Dugher was also a special adviser to Geoff Hoon, Blair's Defence Minister and latterly he worked as a corporate lobbyist for American multinational Electronic Data Systems (EDS), one of the government's largest IT contractors.

Left-wing men of course feel very queasy about standing up to this and that is precisely the problem.  The Labour Right, both men and especially women, are unscrupulous in using peoples’ abhorrence of sexual harassment or racism for their own devious political purposes.  Taking out left-wing men is a game to these people. 

I am referring to people like Jess Phillips who is quite happy to say she’d stab Jeremy Corbyn in the front rather than the back or who tells Dianne Abbot, who unlike her has a record of standing up to oppression racist bullying, to ‘fuck off’, without of course meriting any punishment from Labour Party HQ. 

Phillips is the archetypal right-wing feminist, a woman who attacks left-wing men as the ‘enemy’ but seems more than happy to be friends with the backwoodsman Tory Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man who believes that a woman who is raped should be denied an abortion.  His chivalry apparently bowls the simpleton over. 

No self-respecting woman could count a misogynist like Rees-Mogg, the man who never changed a nappy, as a friend.  Phillips is a fraud and a fake as are most right-wing feminists, precisely because they see their liberation as taking place at the expense of the most oppressed women.  That is why some of the vilest Zionists happen to be women on the Labour Right.  We have a good example of that in Brighton Labour Party where the execrable racist Progress Councillor, the mad and bad ‘Poison’ Penn, willingly use scurrilous allegations against socialist men, in order to pursue a far-Right Zionist and racist politics.

I include Hattie Harman in this, a woman whose feminism didn’t prevent her cutting benefits for single parents as soon as she became a Cabinet Minister in 1997.

People have to get use to the fact that the Right in the Labour Party are wholly unscrupulous.  This is because they are in bed with US imperialism.  They are the old Atlanticists to whom the ‘special relationship’ even if it is with Trump is more important than anything else.  That is why Israel is such an important issue for the Right.  Israel symbolises the American relationship hence why someone like Louise Ellman is happy to justify Zionist war crimes, even against children.

It is a great pity that once again Corbyn takes what he sees as the easy way out by accepting at face value the allegations against Kelvin Hopkins.  My suggestion is that, unlike the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations he starts to probe a little deeper, not least into Miss Goody Two Shoes Etemadzadeh, who isn’t quite sugar and spice and all things nice that young girls are supposed to be made of!

There are a number of interesting things one can gauge from reading the Linked in page for Etemadzadeh.  She worked as an intern with people like Gavin Shuker and former MP and JLM officer Michael Dugher.  She also campaigned for Wes Streeting, Daniel Zeichner, Gareth Thomas etc, She stood on a platform with Richard Angell of Progress and campaigned for Blairite Jasmin Beckett for NEC. She moved easily in right-wing circles but not with anyone on the left of the party. She also seemed to admire Blair.

I also suggest that people read very carefully Kelvin Hopkin's statement before reaching a judgement on this 'girl'.

Press Statement of Kelvin Hopkins MP in response to press reports concerning allegations by Ava Etemadzadeh (hereafter ‘Ava’):

1. My first recollection of ever meeting Ava was at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester in September 2014. She was one of approximately 10 party activists who had been present at a fringe reception and who accompanied me and my daughter to an evening meal in Manchester for activists and supporters. She introduced herself as the Chair of Labour Students at Essex University and she joined in the general conversation around the dining table. As I usually do, I let her have my contact details.

2. I next came across Ava when I was canvassing in support of the Labour candidate in the Clacton-on Sea by-election on 9 October 2014. She was one of a number of Labour Party activists who joined me in leafleting and door knocking. I had no prior knowledge at all that Ava would be in Clacton for the by-election. I had a general chat with her about the by-election in the company of the other campaigners.

3. On 11 October 2014 Ava sent me a text message:

“Hi Kelvin, how are you? I was wondering if you would like to come to University of Essex to speak in one of our Labour society socials this term? x Ava”.

4. I then arranged, through the secretary of the student Labour society at Essex University, to speak at Essex on 12 November 2014. I arrived at Colchester mid-afternoon as the social event was due to start at 4.15 pm. I gave my speech to the students. It was a well received talk and involved a lively questions and answers debate with those who were there. After the event, Ava walked me to my car in the car park at the university. There were many people in the general area.

5. The allegation has been made and reported in the press that I “hugged her [Ava] inappropriately” (eg Telegraph newspaper 3 November 2017). Ava is reported to have said, “He hugged me to say goodbye, held me too tight and rubbed his crotch on me, which I found revolting”.

6. I absolutely and categorically deny that I in any way engaged in any such inappropriate conduct. I simply put an arm around her shoulder to give her a brief slight hug just before getting in to my car. I did not hold her tight. I did not rub any part of my body, let alone my crotch, against Ava. She waved me off as I drove away and did not say anything whatsoever to suggest that anything had occurred that upset her let alone revolted her. In fact after I left the University, Ava sent me a text message during the same evening of 12 November timed at 9 pm saying:

“Thank you so much Kelvin for coming tonight!! We had a fantastic time. My members loved you!  You’re a star! x Ava”

7. On 15 December 2014 Ava sent me a text message:

“Hi Kelvin, how are you? Could you please send me your post address? I’d like to send you a Christmas card. x Ava”.

8. I gave her my address as House of Commons, Westminster London SW1A 0AA. Her card arrived on 17 December.

9. When I had visited Essex University I had made an invite to the students to visit the House of Commons. I often take groups and individuals on tours of the Palace of Westminster and often dine with my guests in the House. Arrangements were made for a group of about 8 students to come to Westminster early in 2015. I believe the group trip was cancelled but Ava still wanted to visit and came to Westminster on 2 February 2015. It is reported in the press that at that meeting I asked questions about her personal life and that I made her uncomfortable with a suggestion that I would have liked to take her to my office if it were empty. I have no recollection whatsoever of such conversations. I recall the meeting lasting about 2 hours including dining in the Strangers Dining Room which was buzzing with very many other parliamentarians and their guests also having lunch. Shortly after leaving Westminster Ava sent me the following text message on 2 February at 14:50:

“Thank you, Kelvin for today. It was lovely meeting you!  xx”

10. On 16 February 2015 I did send a text message to Ava which included the reported words saying Ava was “charming and sweet natured” and that “a nice young man would be lucky to have you as a girlfriend and lover…Were I to be young…but I am not…”. She in fact replied to my text on the same day:

“Oh thank you Kelvin for such kind words. I was ill last week for a couple of days and also I had run for NUS delegate – they announced the results and I got elected with the highest number of votes!! So sorry if I couldn’t speak to you last week x”

11. My only contact with Ava since then was about a year ago when she made contact with me to discuss working in Westminster. She told me that she had applied for a job with a Labour MP and that although she had been shortlisted to the final 2 for the job she nevertheless did not get it. She wanted my advice on how she could possibly have done better. I called her from parliament and advised her that jobs with MPs are difficult to get and I told her for example that my office had no vacancies. I advised her that she should also think about working as a member of staff of the House of Commons and should think about the civil service. I also suggested that as she is bi-lingual (Ava is fluent in Farsi) she could also think about working with the Foreign Office. Our conversation was friendly.

12. I have had no contact with Ava since then and was shocked when I saw the allegations appear online last night and in the papers today. I have always wished and still do wish, Ava the very best of luck in pursuing the career in politics that she wants to follow. I am happy to fully cooperate with the Labour Party to bring to a swift conclusion the investigation that is now being carried out into my conduct.

Press Enquiries:

Martin Howe (Senior Partner) partners@howe.co.uk 

The Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker

Meeting at Brighton on Monday where Jackie Walker was speaking - John McDonnell is on far left

The Jewish Labour Movement's Liar-in-Chief, Jeremy Newmark

 Open Letter to John McDonnell 
Avoid the Race Baiting Jewish Labour Movement

No sooner was it announced that the Jewish Labour Movement (formerly Poalei Zion – Workers of Zion) were holding a fringe meeting, officially entitled Rally Against ‘Anti-Semitism’ than the thieves began falling out.  The real purpose of the meeting is to isolate anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians in the Labour Party,

Jeremy Newmark believes John McDonnell 'must explain' himself for speaking alongside Jackie Walker

A host of speakers have been listed to speak including the Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, Shami Chakrabarti, Clive Lewis MP and Rhea Wolfson.  It also includes a host of unreconstructed right-wingers including MPs who were sacked or resigned in the attempted coup, such as Michael Dugher, Luciana Berger and Ruth Smeeth.  Other include Naz Shah MP, who was falsely accused of anti-Semitism but unfortunately accepted, like a Stalin purge victim, that she was guilty and Baroness Jan Royall, who produced probably the most dismal and tawdry political report into ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Club that the Labour Party has ever seen.

The JLM sets the tone, refusing to accept Jackie Walker is not anti-Semitic and then lays the ground for racist Zionist trolls

A selection of vile, racist Zionist tweets directed at Jackie Walker

Another vile Zionist compares Jackie Walker to Goebbels and Torquemada - of course the Zionists complain when we make far more justified comparison between them and the Nazis

John McDonnell, despite being put under pressure by Zionists and Progress, spoke at a Labour Representation Committee fringe meeting at the TUC Conference in Brighton last Monday, alongside Jackie Walker, Vice-Chair of Momentum.  Jackie was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’ earlier this year when a private Facebook conversation she was having with a Zionist friend, was broken into by the Israel Advocacy Movement.  Jackie was explaining her own Black and Jewish background and discussed the holocaust, not only of Jews but Black people in the Slave Trade.  An estimated 14 million Black people were murdered in the course of the slave trade, both on the Middle Passage between Africa and the West Indies and on the Plantations.  This is of course of no account to the Zionists for whom there is only one holocaust.

Part of the Zionist campaign to deny Jackie Walker is Jewish - because  Black and Jewish are incompatible to many Zionists

Jackie was reinstated after an investigation but the Zionists have refused to accept her acquittal and have waged a campaign of villification against her ever since.

The discussion she was having was about the role of Jews in the financing of this trade.  It is a matter of fact that some Jews had a prominent role in the Brazilian, Surinam and Dutch slave trade.  In Labour’s Thought Police claims another victim - Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker I quoted from an article in the Jewish Journal, the largest Jewish weekly newspaper in the United States outside of New York City, on Jewish involvement in slavery in The Netherlands. ’ The article How culpable were Dutch Jews in the slave trade? Describes how, in October 2013, Lody van de Kamp, an unconventional Orthodox Dutch rabbi, wrote a scathing critique about the involvement of Dutch Jewry in the slave trade.  He wrote that:

“The portrayal of ‘Peter the slave’ dates back to a period when we as citizens did not meet the social criteria that bind us today,”

“I wrote the book and I got involved in the Black Pete debate because of what I learned from my Dutch predecessors on what it means to be a rabbi — namely, to speak about social issues, not only give instructions on how to cook on Shabbat,” van de Kamp told JTA.

John McDonnell addresses LRC meeting - Jackie Walker is out of camera on right

“Money was earned by Jewish communities in South America, partly through slavery, and went to Holland, where Jewish bankers handled it,” he said. “Non-Jews were also complicit, but so were we. I feel partly complicit.”

The article described how, although van de Kamp 65 holds no official position in the Dutch Jewish community, he is among the best-known Orthodox rabbis in the Netherlands, a status earned through his several books on Dutch Jewry and frequent media appearances.

His book, a historical novel entitled “The Jewish Slave,” followed an 18th-century Jewish merchant and his black slave as they investigate Dutch-owned plantations north of Brazil in the hope of persuading Jews to divest from the slave trade. In researching the book, van de Kamp discovered data that shocked him.

Jackie Walker addresses LRC meeting in Brighton

In one area of what used to be Dutch Guyana, 40 Jewish-owned plantations were home to a total population of at least 5,000 slaves, he says. Known as the Jodensavanne, or Jewish Savannah, the area had a Jewish community of several hundred before its destruction in a slave uprising in 1832. 

Nearly all of them immigrated to Holland, bringing their accumulated wealth with them.

Some of that wealth was on display in 2012 in the cellar of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue, part of an exhibition celebrating the riches of the synagogue’s immigrant founders. Van de Kamp says the exhibition sparked his interest in the Dutch Jewish role in slavery, which was robust.

On the Caribbean island of Curacao, Dutch Jews may have accounted for the resale of at least 15,000 slaves landed by Dutch transatlantic traders, according to Seymour Drescher, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. At one point, Jews controlled about 17 percent of the Caribbean trade in Dutch colonies, Drescher said.

The suggestion that it is anti-Semitic to engage in such a historical debate is nonsense.  John McDonnell is to be congratulated for withstanding the pressure to ostracise Jackie Walker and for speaking on the same platform as her.

The JLM is using the fake anti-Semitism issue to limit debate on Palestine and Zionism

The Jewish Labour Movement on the other hand has run a disgraceful, race baiting campaign against Jackie.  It has been part and parcel of a Zionist attack on her which has questioned her Jewish ancestry on the basis that she is Black.  A large section of the Zionist movement refuses to accept that Black people, for example the Black Hebrews, can also be Jewish. 

Jackie Walker speaking with John McDonnell on far-left

Unsurprisingly a major dispute has blown up this week concerning the invitation to Jackie Walker.  A number of Zionists have objected to the invitation to John McDonnell because he has shared a platform with Jackie Walker, whom they deem ‘anti-Semitic’ as part of an ongoing racist campaign of villification.  Far from defending McDonnell, JLM's Jeremy Newmark, a man branded a liar and perjurer by the Fraser v University College Union Employment Tribunal when he tried to portray UCU as ‘anti-Semitic’, attacked his invitee.

What the Employment Tribunal in Fraser v UCU had to say about Newmarks' truthfulness

Newmark is quoted as saying that John McDonnell ‘must explain his defence of Walker which is inconsistent with his call for zero tolerance. This raises serious questions. Our members expect him to explain himself.’  John McDonnell has no need to explain anything.  Jackie Walker is a long standing anti-racist and anti-fascist activist, unlike the luminaries of the Jewish Labour Movement. 

I have issue an Open Letter to JM asking that he reconsider his invitation from the poisonous and racist JLM.  I sincerely hope that he reconsiders the invitation and keeps a wide berth from those whose primary purpose is to seek the destruction of the Jeremy Corbyn leadership and uphold the apartheid State of Israel. 

In their ballot to see who they should nominate for Labour leadership, the JLM voted by 92-4% to support Owen Smith.  I am still staggered that 4% of the JLM voted to support Jeremy Corbyn.  If I was Owen Smith I would demand a recount.

Tony Greenstein

To:       John McDonnell MP,

            Shadow Chancellor

            mcdonnellj@parliament.uk

Dear John,

As a Jewish member of the Labour Party who has been suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’, I am writing to you to express my disappointment that you should have agreed to speak on September 25^th at the Conference fringe meeting of the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM].  I would seriously ask you to reconsider your decision.

As you will know from the current witch hunt of Jeremy’s supporters, ‘anti-Semitism’ is a weapon that has been wielded against anyone who speaks up in support of the Palestinians or against Zionism, the settler colonial movement which created the Israeli state.

The JLM is the British affiliate of the Israeli Labour Party/Zionist Union [ILP].  Far from supporting a just solution in Palestine, the ILP supports segregation and a Palestinian Bantustan.   Its leader Isaac Herzog recently explained that:

‘I want to separate from the Palestinians. I want to keep a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. I don’t want 61 Palestinian MKs in Israel’s Knesset. I don’t want a Palestinian prime minister in Israel.’ 

If someone said they didn’t want a Jewish Prime Minister in Britain I am sure you would be the first to denounce this as racist and anti-Semitic. [Who needs the Right when we have Isaac Herzog?] 

In an ILP election video Herzog was described as ‘someone who “understands the Arab mentality” and “has seen Arabs in all kinds of situations,” including “in the crosshairs.”  Why did we forget about Herzog's anti-Arab campaign? If someone in the Labour Party spoke about the ‘Jewish mentality’ they would rightly be called anti-Semitic, yet this is standard talk for Israeli Labour politicians.

The Israeli Labour Party is the original party of Zionist colonisation.  It was the party which was responsible for perpetrating the Nakba (‘Catastrophe’) in 1948 when three-quarters of a million Palestinians were expelled in order to create a Jewish state.  This was ‘necessary’ because, even in the 56% of Palestine that was allotted by the UN to the proposed Jewish state, half of the population were Arabs.

The JLM is also affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation [WZO] which openly funds and supports illegal settlement in the West Bank and the Golan Heights.  At the present time it is implementing the destruction of Bedouin villages such as Al Arakeibh in Israel’s Negev and afforestation of the area as part of the official programme of ‘Judaisation’ (as per the Prawer Plan).

The WZO’s Jerusalem Programme, speaks of ‘the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the [Jewish] nation’.  This assertion, that the real homeland of Jews, including British Jews, is Israel rather than the countries where they live, is itself anti-Semitic.  It has long been an anti-Semitic rallying cry that Jews do not belong in the countries where they live.

From its inception the Labour Zionist movement was a racist movement.  As David HaCohen, Managing Director of Solel Boneh, the Histadrut owned building company exclaimed:

I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my Trade Union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there... to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought… to do all that was not easy. [David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch, p.185, Faber, 2003 citing Ha’aretz 15.11.69].

Because the JLM is an openly Zionist organisation, its membership is not open to Jewish members of the Labour Party who are opposed to Zionism. 

The JLM purports to support a two state solution in Israel/Palestine but there is no known example of where it has opposed any aspect of military rule in the West Bank such as the detention and torture of Palestinian children as young as 12 or the separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians.  The JLM has never opposed the theft and seizure of Palestinian land for Jewish-only settlements, the building of Jewish only roads or the network of checkpoints in the West Bank, with separate entrances for Jewish settlers and Palestinians.  Archbishop Desmond Tutu and leaders of the ANC rightly described Israel as worse than Apartheid in South Africa. [Desmond Tutu: Israel guilty of apartheid in treatment of Palestinians]

It is dispiriting that you will be speaking on the platform of an organisation that has engineered and orchestrated the ‘anti-Semitic’ witch hunt in the Labour Party.  The JLM has consistently confused anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  It is led by Jeremy Newmark, who was branded a perjurer by the Employment Tribunal Fraser v University College Union when he tried to portray UCU as ‘anti-Semitic’.

The JLM represents a minority of Jews, the most right-wing Jews, in the Labour Party.  It was no surprise that in its ballot, the JLM voted for Owen Smith by 92-4%. 

What is particularly offensive though is the race-baiting campaign that has been carried out by the JLM against Jackie Walker, the Vice-Chair of Momentum.  They have repeatedly lied and misrepresented what she said, in a private conversation, about Jewish involvement in the financing of the slave trade.  They have refused to accept the fact that she was reinstated very soon after her suspension.  Jackie is being subject to a political lynching.

Zionists and JLM supporters have openly stated that being Black, Jackie cannot be Jewish.  This is a widespread view in Zionist and Israeli circles.  Just this week Jeremy Newmark stated [Anger as Jeremy Corbyn supporters invited to speak at Jewish Labour event] that

"The Shadow Chancellor was invited a while ago before his apparent defence of Jackie Walker and in light of his call for zero tolerance on antisemitism and support for our rule change proposals.  He must explain his defence of Walker which is inconsistent with his call for zero tolerance. This raises serious questions. Our members expect him to explain himself.’

Jackie Walker is someone of Black and Jewish parentage.  Far from being an anti-Semite she is a long-standing anti-racist and anti-fascist activist.  John, are you really willing to speak on the platform of this anti-Palestinian, race-baiting organisation?  I appeal to you to reconsider your decision to speak at this event.  Whatever this rally is about it is not about fighting anti-Semitism.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein –

Brighton & Hove DLP