Ten Year’s Hard Labour is the most important account yet of the defeat of the Corbyn Project

Chris Williamson describes how the Labour Right, with the complicity of Momentum, allowed the fake ‘Anti-Semitism’ narrative to destroy the Left 

Ten Year’s Hard Labour – Chris Williamson,

Lola Books, 2022, pp. 394

There is a tendency amongst many on the left to engage in an uncritical adulation of Jeremy Corbyn now that we see how awful is his successor, the serial liar and empty suit, Sir Stürmer. That would be a mistake.

Stürmer did not emerge from nowhere. Despite being part of the Chicken Coup, Corbyn embraced this latter day Brutus without once questioning his role as Director of Public Prosecutions in the cases of Julian Assange, IanTomlinson and other similar cases.

Without an analysis and understanding of where Corbyn and his entourage went wrong and why their policy of appeasement could only lead to disaster, the Left is destined to repeat the same errors.

Corbyn ended up throwing his friends to the Zionist wolves in a vain attempt to appease them

For those who wish to understand how the Corbyn Project went from the dizzy heights of near election victory in 2017 to catastrophic defeat two years later, Chris Williamson’s account is compulsory reading. Unlike books such as those by Owen Jones and Gabriel Pogrund/Patrick Wintour, it isn’t concerned with the gossip and tittle tattle of who did what in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office. [LOTO]

This is a book about the sustained attack that was mounted by Britain’s political establishment, in conjunction with the Zionist lobby and the secret state, on Corbyn and his allies. All with the connivance of Labour’s senior staff and the Labour Right. An attack which was fought in the name of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Today we can see where this fight has ended up. Starmer became leader of the Labour Party pledging to ‘root out anti-Semitism from the Labour Party’. Yet today Jews are five times more likely to be expelled for anti-Semitism than non-Jews. People like Jewish Voices for Labour members like Mike Howard, 72, for 40-years a Labour member and former Hastings councillor and Riva Joffe, a South African-born anti-apartheid activist in her 80s. Both died with the slur of ‘anti-Semitism’ hanging over them.

Not surprisingly Williamson’s book has been ignored by the mainstream press and those who were responsible for the fake anti-Semitism attacks on socialists and anti-racists in the Labour Party. Stürmer and General Secretary David Evans have ridden roughshod over all notions of natural justice and due process as they have launched a witchhunt, the likes of which has never been seen before in the Labour Party.

Those in the media who would have cried to the heavens if Corbyn had expelled Margaret Hodge or Ruth Smeeth, keep silent as thousands have been excluded by Stürmer.

I was the first Jewish person to be expelled in February 2018. When allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were first raised in the Labour Party we were told that we were paranoid to suggest that it was all about Israel and Zionism. Yet today Stürmer, who defines himself as a Zionist ‘without qualification’ makes no pretence about the fact that he considers anti-Zionism to be anti-Semitism.

What Williamson calls the ‘optics left’, such as Novara Media, Richard Seymour, Dave Renton and Owen Jones, played a major part in the defeat of the Corbyn project. This book raises the question as to whether the Left can ever win control of the Labour Party since the Right will stop at nothing, including open collaboration with the Tories and the prostitute press, to destroy anyone who isn’t committed to neo-liberalism and NATO.

This book isn’t an autobiography and, as it name suggests, covers the years when Williamson was MP for Derby North, from 2010-15 and 2017-19, ending in his defeat in 2019.

Bereft of ideas, Starmer's only concern is to turn Labour into a safe party of capitalism

Williamson ignores the period in the early to mid-2000s when he was Labour’s pragmatic leader of Derby Council making arrangements with the Tories in order that Labour could retain control of the Council and even using the Private Finance Initiative in order to buy up housing.

Chris Williamson followed in the footsteps of his hero, Tony Benn, in moving from right to left. Perhaps this was part of the reason why he was so hated by the right. Although Williamson came from a working class background unlike the aristocratic Benn, he defied the tradition in the Labour Party of Labour MPs moving in the opposite direction.

Williamson held on to Derby North, a red wall seat, in 2010 with a majority of just 613. In 2015 he lost the seat by the smallest majority in England, 41. In 2017, the first election under Corbyn, Williamson regained it with a majority of 2,015.

In 2015 right-wing Labour MPs, believing their own rhetoric that Corbyn would lose disastrously, asked voters to support them despite Corbyn’s leadership. Their campaigns, as we now know, were covertly funded by the rogue Ergon House operation run by Labour’s senior staff.

Nick Cohen summed up their mentality just one month before Theresa May announced the 2017 election. Cohen described the election disaster that was around the corner:

On current polling, Labour will get around a quarter of the vote... Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.’

When the results were announced Labour had achieved a 40% share of the vote and an increase of 30 in the number of seats. It was the largest swing since 1945 and 9.6% more than Ed Miliband’s miserable performance in 2015.

Williamson took a principled stance and far from distancing himself from Corbyn issued a press release announcing himself as ‘the most Corbyn-friendly candidate standing anywhere in Britain.’  [93]

The Miliband Years

Williamson devotes relatively little time to his period in parliament from  2010-2015 when he was a Shadow Fire Minister under Ed Miliband before being sacked after standing on an FBU picket line. Williamson was not a firebrand or anti-imperialist when he was first elected. In March 2011 he supported a resolution approving the imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya, the precursor to NATO’s bombing of Libya. A decision he was to later regret.

Williamson describes how Miliband, having been elected as the left-wing candidate, proved a bitter disappointment. Williamson savages the decision to abstain as the Tories took the axe to social security benefits. Under Miliband the approach to austerity was that the Coalition, in the words of Shadow Chancellor Alan Johnson, was ‘cutting too far and too fast.’ [5]

Chuka Ummuna, who was later to defect to the Lib Dems, was put in charge of opposing the privatisation of the Post Office. When Williamson urged Ummuna to commit Labour to renationalising the Post Office, the answer was revealing as to who really wields power in Britain: ‘We can’t do that.  The City wouldn’t wear it.’[26]

Williamson recalls Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, remarking that ‘One of the first acts of the Coalition government was to turbo-charge Lord Adonis’s academy programme.’ [28] The privatisation of local authority schools had been inherited from New Labour.

As Williamson observed ‘The Shadow of New Labourism continued to linger on in the Miliband years.’ The book however is most revealing for its description of the Corbyn years and how Corbyn and the Labour Left snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2017.

The Corbyn Years

From the very beginning of his leadership Corbyn faced the unremitting opposition of Labour’s senior staff who, it was revealed in Labour’s Leaked Report, had openly wanted a Tory victory. When the polls began to turn in Corbyn’s favour they openly expressed their disappointment.

Corbyn’s election had been a fluke. The Labour Right had convinced itself that one-person one-vote would ensure that the Left would be forever marginalised. Right-wing MPs like Sadiq Khan had persuaded themselves that Corbyn could never win and therefore nominated him in order to make the process seem democratic. As Margaret Beckett ruefully remarked later, she was a ‘moron’ for having done so.

After having attacked Corbyn on a variety of grounds without success, the Right settled on ‘anti-Semitism’ as their chosen weapon. There were many reasons for this, not least that it gave them the moral high ground to be seen to be attacking Corbyn as a racist.

Lansman ended up working with arch-Zionist and witchhunter, Luke Akehurst

This should have been called out for what it was from the beginning. This was the most catastrophic mistake of Corbyn and the Labour Left, especially Momentum under Jon Lansman’s baleful influence.

It wasn’t as if it was difficult to point out the hypocrisy of the Labour Right adopting the mantle of anti-racism. The British National Party  even sent Margaret Hodge a bunch of flowers in appreciation of her proposal for a Whites only housing policy.

Tom Watson, who declared that he wouldn’t rest easy until every last anti-Semite had been expelled from Labour, had a long record of playing the race card stretching back to the Birmingham Hodshrove by-election in 2004 when he told the electorate that Labour was ‘on your side’ unlike the Lib Dems who ‘were on the side of asylum seekers’. 

When Phil Woolas, who had run a racist campaign in 2010 designed to ‘make the white folks angry’, was removed by an Election Court from Parliament for lying about his Lib Dem opponent, Watson wrote about how he had lost sleep thinking about ‘poor Phil’

Others who led the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign included John Mann, who had previously issued the Bassetlaw Anti-Social Behaviour Handbook which labelled a whole ethnic group, Gypsies, as anti-social. Mann ended up being interviewed by the Police under caution.

The worst New Labour racists had suddenly become concerned about anti-Semitism. Of course the Labour Party, with nearly 600,000 members harboured a handful of anti-Semites. It would be surprising if they didn’t. Statistically the Labour Party no doubt harboured a few paedophiles but no one suggested that Labour was overrun by them.

The Labour Right was full to the brim with Islamaphobes but nobody mentioned that. Yet Corbyn, McDonnell and Lansman, alongside the openly Zionist AWL adopted the anti-Semitism narrative wholesale.

The ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were clearly about Israel. Today every human rights organisation accepts that Israel is an apartheid state. The only defence Zionist supporters have is to cry ‘anti-Semitism’. Unfortunately Williamson was the only Labour MP to get it.

When Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth was suspended and then expelled for having criticised Ruth Smeeth MP at the Chakrabarti Inquiry press conference, only Williamson stood up for him. When Jackie Walker, a Black-Jewish member was suspended it was Williamson who stood by her. Williamson supported Labour Against the Witchhunt and spoke on its platforms alongside expelled and suspended members.

At Wadsworth’s hearing a ‘lynch mob’ of all-White MPs accompanied Smeeth to the hearing. Yet instead of Corbyn coming out in support of his old friend, Marc was told by LOTO that ‘it won’t help Jeremy if there is a demonstration.’[86] When Marc told the press that Corbyn had phoned him personally to give support LOTO went out of their way to deny it.

When Williamson appeared on a platform with Jackie Walker, Ben Folley of LOTO told Williamson to heed the Zionists’ ‘advice’ not to do so. [111] As Williamson recounted:

The febrile atmosphere bludgeoned every MP but me into accepting the false narrative. I was, literally, the only MP prepared to challenge it publicly.

To this day I wonder why it never occurred to Corbyn’s advisors such as Seamus Milne that retreating only encourages your enemies. In Milne’s case he knew from personal experience how Israel’s supporters deploy accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. The question must arise as to who Milne was working for.

If Jeremy had stood up to the weaponisation of anti-Semitism he could have turned the tables on his detractors. He could have pointed to New Labour’s racist record and mobilised the 70% of Labour Party members who consistently refused to accept that Labour was an anti-Semitic party.

The Zionist lobby in the Labour Party led by the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM] had its knives out for Williamson who they outrageously called a ‘Jew-baiter’. Williamson who had fought National Front influence on building sites, often with his fists, was now called a racist by those who had never fought either racism or anti-Semitism.

In March 2018 the Board of Deputies called a demonstration to protest at Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. Among the ‘anti-racists’ who attended were Norman Tebbit MP of the ‘cricket test’ and Ian Paisley Jnr, of the anti-Catholic DUP. Tebbit had previously said that those who supported the Indian or Pakistani cricket teams were not really British was now an anti-racist!

This was the first ‘anti-racist’ demonstration that the Board had ever called. When Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists tried to march through the East End in October 1936 they were repulsed at the Battle of Cable Street despite the Board advising Jews to stay indoors and keep their heads down. The Jewish Chronicle wrote:

Jews are urgently warned to keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march and from their meetings. Jews who, however innocently, become involved in any possible disorders will be actively helping antisemitism and Jew-baiting. Unless you want to help the Jew-baiters, keep away.”

When the National Front was mobilising on the streets in the 1970s the Board repeated the same message.

The Zionist movement has never fought anti-Semitism. The Zionist  movement, when it first arose at the end of the 19^th century, was greeted by most Jews as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. Zionism believed that anti-Semitism was a virus that all non-Jews carried around with them and therefore it was futile to fight against it.

Williamson is suspended by Jennie Formby

Corbyn and his advisors, rather than standing up to their detractors, appeased and apologised, throwing first Ken Livingstone and then Williamson to the wolves.

Williamson was suspended in 2019. It was a classic example of what George Orwell called Doublethink. In the eyes of Jennie Formby and the witchhunters Black was White. At a meeting of Sheffield Momentum in February 2019 Williamson gave a speech in which he stated ‘We’ve been too apologetic. What have we to apologise for? For being an anti-racist party?’ [150]

This was twisted by the Yorkshire Post into ‘Chris Williamson tells a Sheffield Momentum meeting that Labour has been “too apologetic” about  anti-Semitism”

A good example of how the McCarthyist ‘guilt-by-association’ technique had been adopted and accepted by Corbyn and Formby was the comment in the right-wing Labour magazine Prospect on hearing of Williamson’s suspension.

This week matters came to a head. In the space of 48 hours we have seen Williamson attempt to host an event in Parliament with a woman who has been suspended from the Labour Party under investigation for antisemitism before telling an event in Sheffield that the Party has been “too apologetic” about the same topic.

These two things in one week alone should have been enough to warrant disciplinary action even if they had come from nowhere. But Williamson has a well-established history of upsetting the Jewish community

Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian was prominent amongst who prostituted themselves for the Israeli state

The weasel words of these press whores, because journalists they are not, are a wonder to behold. They build their case resting one lie on top of another. Who in the ‘Jewish Community’ (is there one?) was upset?  We are not told. Apparently it is unacceptable to host an ‘event’ (a film called, appropriately enough The Witchhunt) because it is with a woman accused of, anti-Semitism. In other words you are guilty until proven innocent (although Jackie Walker was at no time accused of antisemitism).

Yet what was the response of LOTO?  To defend Williamson? To call out the harlots of the press and the Labour Right? No their advice was to apologise. Not only did the Socialist Campaign Group not defend Williamson but Laura Pidcock told him not to attend any more meetings! [159] 

Solidarity was never the SCG’s strong point. McDonnell’s advice was to ‘apologise again and again’. [198] The only members to offer any support were Richard Burgon and the MP for Crewe, Laura Smith.

Like Dave Renton, another SWP exile, Richard Seymour ended up justifying the witchhunt

All the soft-Corbynites from Guardian journalist Owen Jones to Jon Lansman and Novara Media joined the calls for Williamson’s expulsion. Even Richard Seymour, the ex-SWP writer repeated the lie that Williamson had said Labour was too apologetic about anti-Semitism. [173] Yet what Williamson said was easily available.

In June 2019 a National Executive panel voted 2-1 to reinstate Williamson. Almost immediately a hue and cry was raised and Tom Watson launched a petition amongst right-wing peers and MPs. What Corbyn should have done was to issue a statement welcoming the decision and reaffirming his earlier statement of 31 January 2019 to the Derby Telegraph that ‘He is not an anti-Semitic in anyway.’ [192]

Yet Corbyn not only didn’t defend Williamson he issued a statement implying that he was anti-Semitic. Once again Corbyn had done the work of the Right. Williamson was duly resuspended 48 hours later.

Williamson went to court and applied for a Declaration that the suspension was unlawful. In September 2019 Justice Popperwell ruled that it was indeed unlawful. In anticipation Labour General Secretary Jennie Formby had issued a third suspension on a flimsy pretext but this was enough to carry the day and Williamson remained suspended.

Formby was appointed General Secretary in the wake of Iain McNicoll’s resignation. She was a supporter of Corbyn yet she had engineered a situation where the demands of the Right for Williamson’s head were met. Not for nothing does Williamson label her ‘Judas Jennie’  though perhaps this is unfair. Judas was paid 30 pieces of silver whereas Jennie betrayed Williamson for nothing!

After the high hopes of September 2015 and his success in defeating the challenge of Owen Smith MP in 2016 Corbyn, instead of fighting Labour’s pro-capitalist MPs had succumbed to them. As Williamson said of LOTO ‘they were one-trick ponies, whose only strategy was to appease and capitulate to hostile forces.’

Did this appeasement of the JLM achieve anything? Did Formby not understand that when she boasted of the expulsion of hundreds of Labour Party members for ‘anti-Semitism’ that all she was doing was confirming the Right’s false anti-Semitism narrative? 

Labour’s Leaked Report (p.306) sums up the policy that Corbyn and his advisors had adopted of appeasing the Zionist lobby:

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”.

Well we were all expelled or forced out of the party. Was trust rebuilt? Of course not. It simply whetted the appetite of Corbyn’s accusers who went on to demand more and more heads until there was no one left to expel but Corbyn himself.

Not content with preventing Williamson stand at the 2019 election, Corbyn and Formby introduced ‘fast track’ expulsions for the most ‘egregious’ of cases, which were subsequently used against hundreds of people including Corbyn himself.

Corbyn, who in a different era had been Secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt, opposed the very things he had always fought for such as Open Selection of MPs at the 2018 conference. In doing so he sealed his own fate.

Possibly the main fault of Williamson’s book is his tendency to seek revenge against detractors like Edward Isaacs of Bristol University when they are simply unimportant. Williamson also does not really deal with whether what happened is inevitable in a reformist social democratic party which seeks to manage capitalism rather than change it.

However this book will be ignored by the Left at its peril.  It is not about personalities or the weakness of Corbyn and Formby but about socialist strategy and whether Labour is doomed to remain a pro-capitalist party.

Tony Greenstein

Local Election Results Confirm the Failure of Starmer’s New Labour Project

As Starmer faces a Police Investigation one thing is clear - Labour will never again form a majority government

A Big Welcome to Sinn Fein's Historic Victory - Full Steam Ahead to a United Ireland

Blair’s poisoned chalice to Starmer

Despite all the bluster by Starmer’s sycophants that everything is fine, it is clear that Labour is headed for the buffers.

Despite marginal advances in the Wales, the South and Scotland, Labour’s performance is little better today than 4 years ago under Jeremy Corbyn. If you remember back then Corbyn was under fierce attack because of the fake anti-Semitism campaign.

Indeed the jewel in Labour’s triumph in the South, the capture of Worthing Council was due to a campaigning left-wing Labour Party, including Palestinian supporters on the Council, having mounted a campaign to dislodge an entrenched Tory Party, one of whose members, Tim Wills, was forced to resign after revelations that he was a supporter of the far-Right Patriotic Alternative.

In Hastings Labour lost control thanks to the efforts of Starmer. Councillor Leah Levane, co-chair of Jewish Voice for Labour, was expelled during the 2019 Labour Party conference. The late Mike Howard, a Jewish former councillor, was also disgracefully suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’.

London where 3 Councils – Barnet, Westminster and Wandsworth – were gained by Labour - is the exception. Why?  Because Labour politics were radicalised under the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone becoming a major centre of opposition to Thatcher in the 1980s and when Livingstone twice won the mayoralty after Tony Blair fixed the Labour nomination in favour of the late Frank Dobson.

But perhaps the most brilliant result of all was in the elections for the Mayor of Tower Hamlets where Aspire candidate Lutfur Rahman beat the incumbent Blairite, the anti-Palestinian racist John Biggs. Lutfur was removed in what I called in a letter to the Guardian in April 2015 a ‘ ‘Democratic’ Coup by an Unelected Judge’.

Guardian 10.6.15.

Starmer may take comfort by the fact that Labour overtook the Tories in Scotland but anyone with any memory will remember how, under Thatcher, Labour had over 50 seats in Scotland. Today they have just one. They will gained less seats than the SNP.

In England Labour gained just 52 seats (at the time of writing) compared to 113 for the Green Party and 191 for the Lib Dems! In the North Labour fell back even further with the first results in  Sunderland showing a swing against Labour.

However much Labour’s stuffed dummy of a leader may talk these results up they clearly point to another victory of the Tories at the next general election.

All that the Tories need to do, and it is odds on that they will do it, is to plunge a dagger in Johnson’s back. With a new leader and a weak Opposition, whoever is the leader, the Tories will regain their lead.

It is not just that Starmer has all the charisma of a rubber duck, the personality of his waxworks model at Mme Tussauds and the presence of a shadow. The real problem is that he has nothing to say. For all the accusations that Johnson is a liar, which is of course, true, it is Starmer who is the real liar.

I defy anyone to explain how the 10 Pledges that Starmer used to get elected as Labour leader are compatible with the positions he has taken since. Take Pledge 4

‘No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.’

Is this the same man who is threatening to deselect any Labour MP who supports Stop the War Coalition and who doesn’t support NATO?

Whereas Blair came to power on a series of pledges such as a minimum wage and cutting hospital waiting lists, Starmer has nothing to offer except the Union Jack.  He is a blank page whose only promise, to rid Labour of ‘anti-Semitism’ has resulted in Jewish Labour Party members being five times more likely to be expelled than non-Jews!  You couldn’t make it up.

Starmer has demonstrated over Ukraine that he is a narrow minded, pound shop patriot, a cheap John Bull who, everytime he opens his mouth, reminds me of Samuel Johnson’s observation that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.’. A cheap nationalist who prefers flag waving to renationalisation of rail and the utilities. His support of the State of Israel which the entire human rights community have accepted, along with the UN’s rappoteur, as an apartheid state marks him out as a racist.

Corbyn appeased his enemies and threw his friends overboard

Unfortunately Corbyn did not stand up to the Right and even worse, John McDonnell did his best with Owen Jones to appease them, with results we all know.

I hate to boast that I was right (!) but I was.  On 4 February when all types of Momentum idiots like Paul Mason and Laura Parker were backing Starmer as a ‘unity’ candidate I wrote Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for.

Even more eloquently Oliver Eagleton makes the same point in his excellent article Keir Starmer Never Had Any Plans to Make Peace With the Left. To quote Oliver:

Given these aspects of Starmer’s record, his most recent McCarthyite outbursts should come as no surprise. Servility to NATO and hostility to left-wing activists are inscribed in his political DNA. So far, the Labour left’s approach to Starmer continues to entertain the notion that he is susceptible to progressive pressure.

Writing about the Socialist Campaign Group Oliver says all that needs to be said:

Its climbdowns will not be rewarded with an iota of policy influence. At best, it will merely avoid expulsion from the party. But if its membership is premised on embracing American power and disowning groups like Stop the War, then how can it contribute to a viable Left strategy? Is the continued presence of socialists a virtue in itself, even if it means forsaking socialism?

Far from being a human rights lawyer Starmer, in his time as Director of Public Prosecutions was an anti-human rights lawyer. Eagleton wrote:

He meted out the same treatment to Gary McKinnon, the autistic IT expert whose extradition — which could have seen him spend the rest of his life in a US jail for hacking into military databases — was blocked by Theresa May on humanitarian grounds. The same year, Starmer paved the way for two Britons, Syed Talha Ahsan and Babar Ahmad, to be dispatched to an American supermax prison, where they were placed in indefinite solitary confinement for their tangential links to an obscure Islamist website.

Perhaps most notably, Starmer’s CPS intervened in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, pressuring Swedish state prosecutors not to drop their charges against the journalist, in a move that streamlined plans to send him onward to the United States. While Crown lawyers hounded Assange for shedding light on US war crimes, Starmer simultaneously refused to prosecute intelligence officials who were accused of complicity in torture — despite the existence of eyewitnesses and documentary evidence.

This is taken from Oliver Eagleton’s The Starmer Project - A Journey to the Right.

Making predictions electorally is always a fraught task but I would venture that if Starmer is not removed and Labour reverses track, which is highly unlikely, Labour will do well  to return to Ed Miliband’s result in 2015 of 232 seats, somewhat less than Corbyn’s 262 seats in 2017.

The Lib Dems gained nearly 4 times as many seats in the elections (191). Even the Green Party gained more seats (60). There is no obvious replacement for Starmer. The colourless Rachel Reeves will go down like cold porridge. In any event it is not a question of personality but what Labour’s program for change will be and under Starmer any change will be for the worse.

There is nothing radical about Starmer.  He is as unimaginative as he looks. He has no answer to the economic crisis apart from repression, which is why he has supported Johnson's repressive agenda – the Spycops and Police Bill (Labour nominally opposed the latter but with no enthusiasm after having originally backed it). Starmer’s record on human rights is, as Eagleton says, abysmal and he is certainly not going to increase taxes on the rich, renationalise anything or disturb any of the privileges of the rich.

The next election is therefore headed for a hung Parliament and all the associated political paralysis.  It offers opportunities to the same far-Right that has prevailed in much of Europe.  It is for that, if no other reason, that the Left has to get its act together.

For socialists to stay in the Labour Party is the equivalent of trying to run up an escalator going down. It is a futile and hopeless task.

The one glimmer of hope is that Starmer has been caught on the hook that he himself fashioned. If the investigation into Beergate leads to Starmer being issued with a fixed notice penalty he may well be forced to resign in which case we will be faced with a competition between a set of colourless nonentities.

Harold Wilson - won 4 General Elections

The only exception I would make to this scenario is if someone like Barry Gardiner is elected. He is one of the few intelligent and articulate Labour MPs. He reminds me of Harold Wilson and he is intelligent, which is why Starmer sacked him. Contrary to widespread belief Starmer is anything but intelligent.  Being a lawyer means being able to master gobblydook and ritual. It doesn't always mean intelligence.

In Starmer's case what he lacks in intelligence he makes up for in ruthlessness. To stay in Corbyn's shadow cabinet without protest suggests someone who is fundamentally dishonest. He is surrounded by cold, calculating technocrats like David Lammy and Rachel Reeves, neither of whom would recognise a principle if it bit them on their buttocks!

Gardiner would probably tack left and seek to build an alliance with the soft left bringing back Corbyn.  However most Labour MPs are too stupid and right-wing to do as the Parliamentary Labour Party did in 1962. His main drawback is that he is a patron of Labour  Friends of Apartheid Israel.

Tony Greenstein

RIP Mike Howard – A Jewish Socialist Whose Family Fled from the Pogroms in Poland and Lithuania

Being Jewish Mike was a natural target for suspension from Starmer's Labour Party

Mike Howard was one of eight people who took the Labour Party to court over its disciplinary process for investigating complaints of anti-Semitism. Below I reprint, without permission!, the tribute that Jewish Voices for Labour, of which Mike was a member, paid to him.

Mike was a Jewish Socialist all his life and fought racism and anti-Semitism consistently. He was also an active trade unionist and a councillor till recently on Hastings Borough Council. His suspension from the Labour Party for ‘anti-Semitism’ says everything you need to know about the bogus nature of the ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations which are being levelled at Jews today in Labour today.

The fact that if you are Jewish you are 5 times more likely to be suspended from Labour under Starmer than if you are not says everything you need to know about how genuine was Starmer’s pledge to ‘root out’ anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately this did not start with Starmer.  It was under Jeremy Corbyn that the anti-Semitism witchhunt took off when people like myself were expelled or suspended. Unfortunately Corbyn went along with this bogus narrative until it got him too.  The fast track procedures now being used to expel and suspend hundreds of members were patented by Corbyn and Jennie Formby.

 It is shameful that Corbyn says nothing about the legacy he has left. Instead of lapping up cheap applause and playing the martyr, he should come out publicly and criticise what is happening. Corbyn’s inability to make even one word of direct criticism of Starmer demonstrates that even if he had won the election in 2017 and even if the Labour Right had agreed to vote him in as Prime Minister, that he would have wilted at the first sign of opposition.

Undoubtedly for someone like Mike, as with all of us, to be accused of anti-Semitism when you have spent your life opposing it, is hurtful. That is why the Labour Right, which doesn’t give a tinker’s cuss about anti-Semitism or any other form of racism, make the allegations.  These accusations are deliberately made to cause hurt and distress.

We should contrast this with the readmission to the Labour Party in recent weeks of one of the vilest racists on the Labour Right – Luke Stanger, a friend of Hove MP Peter Kyle, who worked in the office of Joan Ryan, former Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Apart from multiple complaints of harassment from women in the Labour Party Stanger is on record as saying that Travellers are ‘a nasty blight on society.’

Under Starmer genuine racists are always welcome in the Labour Party whereas anti-racists are expelled.  It is unfortunate that some on the Left such as Jon Lansman, Owen Jones and David Renton, are unable to see through this Zionist campaign of vilification which defames good Jewish socialists like Mike.

We should pay tribute to someone who was a Jewish hero. Those who suspended Mike for 'antisemitism' weren't fit to lick his boots.

Tony Greenstein

Mike Howard – “a true mensch”

Sat 13 Nov 2021

It is with deep regret that we announce that JVL member and long-term fighter for socialism, Mike  Howard died after a short illness, with his close family at his side, in the early hours of Thursday 11th November 2021.

 Many readers of our website will recognise and remember Mike as one of the Labour Activists for Justice (LA4J) who had been treated so abysmally by the Party to which he dedicated more than 45 years of his life. He died a committed socialist and still angry with the Labour Party that had suspended him, a Jewish anti-racist, for antisemitism.

You can get a taste of his anger, his willingness to challenge and a little of his background on this video from a Labour Grassroots show dedicated to those involved in LA4J .

 Mike was born in Hackney in 1952 to socialist parents whose families had fled from the threat of pogroms in Lithuania and Poland.  He always said he learned about internationalism as a child and this informed his philosophy and his activism throughout his life.

He left school fairly early, in part because of antisemitic bullying and was later educated at Newcastle University (where he was active in the National Organisation of Labour Students) and became a librarian.  He was active in the Labour Party Young Socialists in the 1970s – at a time when political education was a major focus – and it was there that he met his wife Dee. In time Mike became (step)father to Dee’s daughter Jenny and they had a son, Robin together.

After graduating he spent some years in the North East then moved to London continuing his work as a librarian.  In Lambeth he was a shop steward and also a Convenor for NALGO (and the Unison) and supported many workers, not least representing the Union in many tribunals.

He was also a committed supporter of Wimbledon Football Club and was involved in turning it into a supporter-owned club remaining in Wimbledon, rather than moving to help the owners to profit.

In Hastings he was well known as an activist, committed to justice for Palestinians and, from 2012-2018 he was an elected councillor in what had mainly been a Tory ward.  He is remembered as an effective councillor, supporting local residents in a number of campaigns as well as doing individual case work and, of course, serving on committees.  He stood down at the 2018 elections to care for his wife.

You can see him talking about his role in Labour Activists for Justice, trying to hold the Labour Party to account and to democratic principles in the video below:

Very many tributes have been received in the first 36 hours after he died which show what sort of a person he was and why he will be so badly missed. Many refer to his appalling treatment by the Labour Party.

Many have commented on how friendly he was and for many younger people and others who joined when Jeremy Corbyn was elected, it was Mike who welcomed them, made sure they were invited to the pub after meetings.  Several have said that they learned so much from him, about the history of the Party and of the wider movement.

Here are some extracts:

Peter Chowney, who was Deputy Leader in Hastings most of the time that Mike was a councillor:

He was a good comrade, and a very good local councillor – the only Labour councillor to successfully defend West St Leonards ward. And a fellow former Hackney Labour Party member! Such a pity he had to spend his last days defending himself against this awful witchhunt. I shall miss him.

Peter Doyle, Jen Pickard and John Pickard – some friends in the North East:

“We are saddened to hear of the sudden and untimely death of Mike Howard, a member of Hastings and Rye Labour Party, in the early hours of November 11. Mike was one of those left-wing members facing suspension by the Party on the spurious grounds of ‘anti-Semitism’, a deeply ironic charge considering his Jewish background. We knew Mike from his time in the Labour Party Young Socialists in Gateshead where we were members and where he was also an active member of the local government union, NALGO.

Mike, who came from a family tradition of socialist ideas, was a Marxist and a supporter of Militant in his days in the North East. He was always a friendly, comradely and cheerful person to know. Mike wrote an excellent article for Left Horizons late last year, on how unfit for purpose Labour’s disciplinary process is, in his own and in other cases… Mike will be a great loss, not only to his family, but to the whole labour movement and those who knew him…”

Simon Hester (local Unite Community Branch member):

I only got to know Mike over the past year but, it’s strange, it feels like I knew him a lot longer. He was such a friendly and welcoming comrade. For socialists of a certain age we have been through so many struggles together it seems to have created an unspoken bond, a shared tradition. I have absolutely no doubt which side Mike was on in the great campaigns against racism, during the miners’ strike, the poll tax campaign, the antiwar movement. Over the past few months I kept bumping into him and Dee at protests over Palestine, NHS pay, refugee rights and the Police Bill. And I won’t forget his outrage and eloquence in challenging the witchhunt of socialists and anti-Zionists in the Labour Party. The movement has lost a principled socialist, an internationalist and anti-racist, and above all, an anti-Zionist Jew. His hope for a socialist future will live on in the growing movements of young people …
solidarity, Simon

Carel Buxton, Chair West Ham CLP (suspended 21 March):

I met him only once and that was at LP conference in 2019 as I recall. Mike made a lasting impression on me because of his warmth, his humour and his clear dedication to socialist ideas. Both of us have roots in the east end and we talked about our great fighting tradition. I still live in West Ham but was born in Hastings, Mike’s life journey was from Hackney to Hastings or rather Mugsborough as we called it. He was a hero of our class and I send you my deepest condolences.

Sarah Gomes-Harris:

Such sad news for the local Labour Party. Such a lovely man, so rooted in the human dignity and decency of socialism and so unfairly targeted and isolated by the party he cherished his whole life…. I wish more people were like Mike Howard… So heartbreaking. Rest with peace, love and power x

Marie Lynam: 

Those who disciplined Mike did a terrible wrong not just to him, but to the justice and bravery contained in his political positions. It is a cruel thing that Mike had to go with this insult done to him, and to everything good he stood for.

Through you, and with my thanks, I send my solidarity to his family and comrades. 

Rica Bird (JVL member; Wirral South CLP):

This is indeed a sad blow, and even more cruel considering his mistreatment at the hands of the Labour Party. Although I didn’t know him, I gather his life has been a gift to all combating oppression and leaves a great legacy for the rest of us to follow.

I keep thinking for those who have been summarily expelled, those suspended, or ‘under investigation’ and those who have simply left, that it is not we who have left the Party, it truly IS the Party has left us!!

In solidarity

Jewish members and others file court claim against Labour for breach of EHRC principles after party tells them: ‘EHRC does not apply to you’

Mike Howard (68) Member of Hastings & Rye CLP. Active Labour Party member for over thirty-five years, holding office in six CLP’s during this time. Twice elected Hastings Borough Councillor. Retired (former office-holding) Unison life member. Unite Community, JVL and PSC. He is a Jewish, lifelong anti-racist whose family escaped the murderous pogroms in pre-war Russia/Poland and fought the fascists in their East London neighbourhood. Mike has suffered real anti-semitism, and finds it completely unacceptable that Labour Party HQ, knowing that he is Jewish, has not responded to his solicitors’ request to drop an anonymous complainant’s accusations of anti-semitism against him which is based on the process the EHRC found was unfair and based on a code the Party will not publish.

Jewish members say Starmer’s pursuit of them ‘makes a mockery’ of claim to be making Labour safe for Jews

We are appalled by the large and growing number of Jewish members of the Labour Party – including ourselves – who have recently been subject to disciplinary proceedings related to alleged antisemitism. This fact alone – over and above the trumped up and politicised nature of the charges – makes a mockery of Keir Starmer’s commitment to ensuring Labour is a safe space for Jews.

It is now abundantly clear that this commitment does not cover discrimination against Jewish socialists. On the contrary, Starmer’s abuse of our Jewish identity and his willingness to exploit antisemitism as a political football is shameful and harmful not only to freedom of expression, but also to the fight against real antisemitism and racism of all forms, both in and outside of the Labour Party.

Graham Bash
Jo Bird
Mike Cushman
Michael Ellman
Michael Howard
Moshe Machover
Diana Neslen
Jonathan Rosenhead
Glyn Secker
Stephen Solley
George Wilmers
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi