Sacrificing a Black anti-racist for criticising White Zionist MP Ruth Smeeth will INCREASE anti-Semitism & STRENGTHEN the anti-Corbyn Right
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Labour Against the Witchhunt lobby of Marc Wadsworth's hearing
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| Smeeth's all-White lynch mob included Streeting and Jess Phillips - only the white hoods were missing |
The decision by the National
Kangaroo Committee to expel longstanding Black anti-racist activist Marc
Wadsworth is shameful. The role of Corbyn’s
office, which tried to get Marc to call off Labour Against the Witchhunt’s demonstration
on Wednesday, as a Parliamentary
Lynch Mob accompanied Smeeth to the hearing, was cowardly. It doesn’t seem
to occur to Corbyn that those supporting Smeeth – Streeting, Mann, Jess
Phillips, Joan Ryan, Luciana Berger – are the same creatures that have
dedicated themselves to overthrowing him.
Marc has a long and proud record of
fighting racism and fascism, from campaigning to secure the defeat of the British
National Party’s first councillor in Britain, Derek Beacon in the Isle of Dogs,
to getting Nelson Mandela to sponsor the Stephen Lawrence campaign. This was at a
time when the Labour Party under Blair completely ignored the Lawrence
campaign.
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| Arkush speaks to a meeting that includes 2 members at the front with the tee-shirts of the JDL/Kach, a Jewish neo-Nazi group |
What
makes Marc’s expulsion even worse was that it was at the behest of the Zionist Board
of Deputies under right-wing Tory Jonathan Arkush. The same Arkush had no hesitation in welcoming
the ascent to power of Donald Trump and his anti-Semitic entourage. According to the Washington Post Anti-Semitism
is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody. See Trump
Rolls Out Anti-Semitic Closing Ad for an analysis. Arkush also spoke
to a meeting that included the openly fascist Jewish Defence League.
Not
once has Arkush criticised the Tories
links with genuine anti-Semitic parties such as the Polish Law and Order
Party and Latvia’s National Alliance in the European Parliament as part of the European
Conservative Reform group.
A
longstanding Black anti-racist has been sacrificed to appease Arkush, Smeeth
and the rest of the racist scum who make up Israel’s apartheid lobby in
Britain. What is equally appalling is that
Momentum, under its property developer dictator Jon Lansman, has not only said
nothing about the expulsion or witchhunt but it has backed the claims of false anti-Semitism
calling it ‘unconscious’
anti-Semitism. This at a time when Black
people in Britain, the Windrush generation have been deported and denied benefits
and medical treatment. Genuine racism is
not ‘unconscious’. It is because anti-Semitism in the Labour
Party is non-existent that Lansman and Momentum’s leadership have resorted to
Freudian psycho-analysis. Let us be clear about one thing.
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| Jackie Walker - the next target for Labour's racists |
Marc’s expulsion has nothing to
do with anti-Semitism anymore than my expulsion or the prospective expulsions
of Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker have anything to do with anti-Semitism. This campaign is about Israel not Anti-Semitism.
Of course if you say
that the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is fake and false, then that is proof
of your anti-Semitism! It is much like when
someone is defined as insane. The more
they protest they are normal the more psychiatrists are convinced of their
malady.
Arkush and Goldstein complain,
in all innocence that ‘we are accused of “smearing” Corbyn’.’
Perish the thought. Using the language of the left they protest
that ‘We are not merely being denied the
most basic principle of anti-racist behaviour – solidarity – but are viciously
accused of smears, of dirty tricks, of lies.’ Who would guess that on 30th March,
after Israel began murdering unarmed protestors in Gaza, that these poor
victims of racism had blamed
the killings on the Palestinians?
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| Ken Livingstone - top of the target list for the Zionist Labour Movement |
The proof that anti-Semitism is a marginal phenomenon in
the Labour Party is the fact that those expelled have all been Jewish, Black or
anti-racist activists. It is a strange
purge of ‘anti-Semitism’ when the real racists in the Labour Party, those councillors
who have evicted Roma and Gypsies or who have demonised Muslims, are left
alone.
Zionism has never had
any objection to anti-Semitism. From the
very start of the Zionist movement anti-Semites and Zionists have been best of
friends. Livingstone’s main offence was
to point to a truth attested to by Zionist historians. The Nazis and the Zionists had a racial conception of humanity. They divided society into race not
class. The collaboration of Zionism with
the Nazis is a fact. Not only did the Zionists
conclude a trade agreement Ha'avara with the Nazis at the very time that the
International Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany was at its height but they also
campaigned against the lowering of
immigration barriers in the USA or opening any country to Jewish refugees bar Palestine
itself. As Ben Gurion told Mapai’s
Central Committee on 9th December 1938, after Kristallnacht and
after Britain agreed to the immigration of 10,000 Kindertransport Jewish children:
‘If
I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by
bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to
Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh
not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of
Israel.’ [Gabriel Piterberg, Returns of Zionism, p.99.]
Sometimes it was
difficult to tell who was a Zionist and who was an anti-Semite. Zionists held that anti-Semitism was the
fault of the Jews in the Diaspora for not having moved to Palestine. The Jews were strangers in someone else’s
land and as such they had developed unhealthy asocial characteristics. By going to Palestine they would cleanse
themselves.
Israel’s
first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish
vermin’. [Joachim Doron, p.169, Classic
Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’
(1883-1914), Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983). The number of anti-Semites who queued up to
pay the Zionists a compliment were legion – from Edouard Drumont to Heinrich
Class to Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for Ostland and the Nazi Party’s main
theoretician, who wrote in 1919 that ‘Zionism
must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of
German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations. Francis Nicosia,
The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p.25.
A simple truth – Zionists
always resort to false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ to defend Israel’s
murderous behaviour
Corbyn
needs to face up to a simple truth. Apologists
for Israel always resort to
accusations of anti-Semitism to defend Israel’s murderous practices. It is perfectly understandable. How do you defend the beating and torture of
children, the shooting of unarmed demonstrators, the demolition of schools and
homes other than by impugning the motive of the accuser?
When
Natalie Portman, the Hollywood star who is a liberal Zionist, recently boycotted
the Genesis Prize, Israel’s equivalent of the Nobel prize, because she refused to
be in the same room as Benjamin Netanyahu, Likud Minister Yuval Steinitz accused
her of ‘anti-Semitism’. Natalie
Portman’s snub ‘borders on anti-Semitism,’ says minister. The examples are legion.
Stephen
Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, one of the main proponents of the
false anti-Semitism allegations stated,
in a letter to readers only this week apropos of Corbyn’s apology in The
Standard that ‘it contained the odd
assertion that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitic.’ In other words anything but the most anodyne criticism
of Israeli Apartheid is anti-Semitic.
This is not a
trivial matter. The Right in the Labour
Party has abandoned a full-on confrontation with Corbyn. Instead they have resorted to a perverted
version of identity politics whereby the oppressor’s identity becomes equally
as valid as that of the oppressed. They
are using the language of the left to attack the left. Corbyn and his office seem incapable of
grasping this simple truth.
What though is
one to make of the Momentum National Coordinating Group’s acceptance of Lansman’s
position that anti-Semitism is a real problem in the Labour Party? How is one to explain their utter political
bankruptcy?
One thing is for
sure. The false anti-Semitism campaign
was launched in order to sabotage Labour’s local election campaign. It is sapping the strength of the Labour
Party and detracting from the Tories problems over Windrush. Everytime there is an expulsion there is a
demand for another one. As the Tories
appeasement of Hitler in the 30’s demonstrated, the more you appease an
aggressor the hungrier they become. Nothing
Corbyn can or will do will satisfy Labour’s
imperialist right and its Zionist allies.
But it is worse
than this. If, by chance, Corbyn were to
ever get in power, then he would be confronted with opposition by the bankers
and major industrialists that would be ten times what the Arkush and Goldstein
can offer. Then he would be up against
the civil service and the rest of the British Establishment. If he cannot put down loud mouths like John
Mann and Wes Streeting there is no way he is going to stand up to the
multinationals and investment banks.
Corbyn needs to
grow a backbone fast and remove the whip from Streeting, Mann, Ryan, Smeeth,
Ian Austin, John Woodcock and Berger. And that should be for starters. Corbyn needs
to confront Labour’s Right with wholesale removals of the Whip and
deselections. That is the only way he will see in a radical
Labour government. He has to go on the
offensive instead of cringing and making useless apologies for a non-existent anti-Semitism. Instead we are now seeing calls from Arkush
and the Zionists for the removal of the Whip from Chris Williamson for sharing
a platform with Jackie Walker. McDonnell
is even more useless when it comes to confronting Labour’s Bastards.
The reality is
that having foresworn a campaign of reselecting the right-wing MPs, his enemies
on the back benches – over half the PLP – are simply waiting for their chance
to stab him in the back (or as in Jess Phillips case, the front). The only real question is whether they will
move before or after a General Election. It is almost certain that a group of
maybe 50+ Labour MPs will simply refuse to support Corbyn as Prime Minister. By failing to take out these MPs now, Corbyn has
all but ensured that he will never ever be in a position to form a government.
That is what the
expulsion of Marc Wadsworth really means.
Corbyn’s cowardice today guarantees he will ultimately be seen, despite
his undoubted talents, as a weak minded leader who was incapable of standing up
to his own back benchers.
The role of Jon Lansman and
Momentum is even more despicable. Having
created an organisation 40,000 strong they have ensured that politically it is
completely useless. In these debates Momentum
carries absolutely no weight, a product of its lack of democracy.
Tony Greenstein
LAW statement on the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth
Labour Against the Witchhunt strongly condemns
the outrageous decision to expel Marc Wadsworth after a two-day hearing in
front of three right-wing members of Labour’s National Constitutional Committee.
Marc is
the latest victim of the politically motivated witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn
and his supporters. Marc Wadsworth, a lifelong campaigner against racism, has
been smeared and his reputation tarnished, first by the vile and false
allegations against him and now, to top it off, by this deeply unjust verdict.
Following 22 months of trial-by-media, our comrade had very little chance of
receiving a fair hearing – and he did not get one.
It was enough for Ruth Smeeth MP to state at the hearing that
she “felt” Marc Wadsworth was being anti-Semitic at the launch of the
Charkrabarti report in June 2016 in order for the NCC to uphold this particular
charge. This sets a very dangerous precedent, where the need for any rational
evidence is, it seems, redundant.
It is not Marc who has brought the party “into disrepute” – it
is the “shameless smears” of the “Corbyn-hating” MPs (Len McCluskey in the New Statesman), who have worked tirelessly to undermine Jeremy Corbyn at
every opportunity since his election as Labour leader in 2015.
Chris Williamson MP got it exactly right when he called this decision“perverse”. He has quite rightly criticised the “weaponisation of
anti-Semitism for political ends”. We warmly welcome his courageous support for
Marc at the hearing and the support of Clive Lewis MP, who supplied a witness
statement and said: “I’ve known him for 20 years. He’s an anti-racist
campaigner. I watched that video and I don’t think that warranted being
expelled from Labour.”
This is in stark contrast to the cynical PR stunt orchestrated
by Wes Streeting MP, who has made no secret of his severe dislike for Jeremy
Corbyn and his policies. Ruth Smeeth did not need to be ‘protected’ on her way
into Church House. LAW’s lobby outside the expulsion hearing was always planned
as a protest in support of Marcand not in opposition to Smeeth. If
Smeeth, who has been funded by the Israeli lobby even since becoming an MP,cannot deal with walking past a couple of dozen protestors,
maybe she (or the members in her Constituency Labour Party) should reconsider
if being an MP is the right profession for her.
We call on Jeremy Corbyn, general secretary Jennie Formby and
the National Executive Committee to finally put an end to this ongoing
witch-hunt against the left in the party. The right-wing will demand more and
more scalps. But the history of appeasement in politics teaches us they will
never be satisfied. Capitulation to their unscrupulous demands is not the
answer. They can never have enough suspensions, enough expulsions, enough
compromised principles, including Corbyn’s lifelong support for the rights of
the Palestinians.
This campaign against ‘Anti-Semitism’ has become the new
anti-communism. We are in a period of new McCarthyism in the Labour Party. It
is to be greatly regretted that Jeremy Corbyn, who in the 1980s was the
secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt, seems to be going along with this
witch-hunt.
The number of cases of anti-Semitism among Labour Party
members upheld remains tiny. The overwhelming majority of
allegations have been baseless and politically motivated – used to purge or
muzzle members who support Corbyn and those who are critical of Israeli
government policies and actions.
We are witnessing the development of a chilling culture of fear,
self-censorship, of members afraid to openly ask questions and learn,
particularly on social media. We have seen many good Corbyn-supporting comrades
being thrown to the wolves of the Tory Party and their supporters in the
mainstream media. They are publicly smeared as Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites,
racists – and have no way of fighting back against such vile accusations. These
smears have ruined lives. Labour’s broken disciplinary procedure, that is not
fit for purpose. It has actually resulted in suicides.
We call for an end to the expulsions and suspensions of Labour
Party members for their political views. All those summarily expelled or
suspended from membership without due process, or as part of the anti-Corbyn
witch-hunt, should be immediately reinstated – and that includes Marc
Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Stan Keable, Tony Greenstein and
Cyril Chilson.
We agree with the statement by Jewish Voice for Labour,
according to which Marc’s “treatment has been a travesty of the transparent,
fair and equitable procedures one would expect from a labour movement
organisation. It is a further irony that his summary suspension followed by 22
months in limbo would not have been possible if the relevant recommendations of
the Chakrabarti Report had been implemented.”
Labour Against the Witchhunt
BCM Box 8932, London WC1N 3XX
Tel: 07817 379 568
Email: info@labouragainstthewitchhunt.org
Web: www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Labouragainstthewitchhunt/
Twitter: W
Tel: 07817 379 568
Email: info@labouragainstthewitchhunt.org
Web: www.labouragainstthewitchhunt.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Labouragainstthewitchhunt/
Twitter: W
