Labour’s Confected ‘Anti-Semitism’ Crisis Allowed Anti-Semites To Become Anti-racists & Anti-racists to become ‘anti-Semites’
One of the ironies of Labour’s
manufactured ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was how those who had never thought about
racism before suddenly became anti-racists. ‘Anti-Semitism’ can sometimes work
miracles.
No one was more concerned about
‘anti-Semitism’ than Gordon Brown. He called for the
expulsion of all ‘anti-Semites’. This was the same Brown who used
the slogan
of the National Front and BNP, British
Jobs for British Workers, in an attempt to whip up fears about foreign
workers.
Tom Watson was also concerned
about ‘anti-Semitism’. Watson was worried
that Labour would ‘disappear into a
vortex of eternal shame and embarrassment” over ‘anti-Semitism’. In 2004 the
same Tom Watson was Campaign Manager for Labour in a byelection in Birmingham
Hodge Hill when a leaflet “Labour is on
your side; the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum-seekers” was distributed
When former
Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was removed as an MP in 2010 by the High Court,
after waging
an election campaign based on ‘making
white folk angry’ Watson’ told
Labour Uncut that he had ‘lost sleep’
over the fate of ‘poor Phil.’
The
Tories also find supporting racism and opposing ‘anti-Semitism’ easy to
reconcile. When he was leader of Bradford Council, Eric Pickles, a former Chair
of Conservative Friends of Israel, supported
a racist and fascist headmaster Ray Honeyford. When he was Community Secretary Pickles
provided funding
to Basildon Council in order that it could evict the Travellers at Dale Farm.
Labour’s
Support for Zionism
Historically the
Labour right has distinguished itself by combining anti-Semitism with support
for Zionism. The two went hand in hand.
In
August 1917, Labour adopted
the War Aims Memorandum, two and a
half months before the Government’s Balfour Declaration, which proposed
that Palestine be freed from Ottoman rule
‘in order
that this country may form a ‘free state’ under international guarantee to which
such of the Jewish people as desire to do so may return …’
In 1920 Poale Zion [PZ]
affiliated to the Labour Party as a Socialist Society. This gave it the right
to propose motions at Labour Party conferences and have delegates to its bodies.
Labour’s leaders thoroughly approved of what they saw as a ‘progressive’
colonialism.
Ramsay MacDonald, the first
Labour Prime Minister, visited Palestine in 1921 and he was favourably
impressed by the Zionist settlers. In 1922 PZ published his report of the visit A Socialist in Palestine. Like most Christian Zionists
MacDonald saw Palestine through a biblical lens describing Ludd (Lydda) as ‘a
city of the Philistines and the place where Peter cured a man of the palsy.’
MacDonald
attributed Palestinian opposition to Zionism to their ‘leaders who wish for
strife and to engage in riots and pogroms.’ In his eyes, they would have
welcomed the Zionist settlers but for their leaders! The same myths are
repeated today where Palestinian resistance is attributed to the ‘incitement’
of a few.
MacDonald wrote that ‘the Zionist movement has appealed with great
force to Jewish Socialists…’ despite the fact that it was the socialist and
revolutionary movements, where Jews were prominent, which bitterly opposed
Zionism. MacDonald blamed this opposition on two groups. One was ‘the
Scribes and Pharisees’ who have ‘the blindness and the stiff-neckedness
of the proud tribe of Judah at its worst.’ The other were represented by:
‘The rich
plutocratic Jew ( who) is the true economic materialist. He is the person whose
views upon life make one anti-Semitic. He has no country, no kindred. Whether
as a sweater or a financier, he is an exploiter of everything he can squeeze.
He is behind every evil that Governments do and his political authority, always
exercised in the dark, is greater than that of Parliamentary majorities... He
detests Zionism because it revives the idealism of his race.’ {A Socialist
in Palestine, p. 6. Poalei Zion
Publication, 1922, London]
Yet PZ,
which now calls itself the Jewish Labour Movement, were happy to print
MacDonald’s anti-Semitic tract. Why? Because then as now their main concern was
not anti-Semitism but Zionism.
The idea that Jewish
capitalists were ‘behind every evil that
Governments do’ and that his political authority, ‘always exercised in the dark, is greater than that of Parliamentary
majorities’ is a classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
Sidney
Webb, the founder of the Fabians and the pro-imperialist New Statesman, became Colonial Secretary in 1929 in MacDonald’s
second government. He explained that
‘French,
German, Russian socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free.’ Why? ‘There’s
no money in it.’ [Paul Kelemen, The British Left & Zionism – History of a
Divorce, p. 20].
John Newsinger writes of Ernest
Bevin, Foreign Secretary in the Attlee government, that his ‘use of anti-Semitic abuse was not unique
among the labour leadership.’ [The
Labour Party, anti-Semitism and Zionism, International Socialism, Issue: 153]
In their
biography of Harold Laski, Chairman of the Labour Party (1945-6) and a
prominent opponent of Attlee, Isaac Kramnick and Barry Sheerman refer to him
having to put up with not just “the
bullying anti-Semitism of Ernest Bevin”, but also
“the more cultivated sarcasm of the
economics don Hugh Dalton, who…persistently referred to his fellow socialist
Laski as the ‘under-sized Semite’ while also ridiculing his far-left
‘yideology’”.
Dalton was
an extreme Zionist who referred to Africans as “niggers” and Arabs as “wogs”.
Nor was Clement Attlee free of anti-Semitism. In March 1951, when he was
considering a number of appointments to the government, he rejected Ian Mikardo
and Austen Albu because they were Jews: “they
both belonged to the chosen people, and he didn’t think he wanted any more of
them”. (Newsinger).
John Mann, the 'antisemitism Tsar' was most upset by the removal of racist Labour MP Phil Woolas from parliament
In
1935 Herbert Morrison, grandfather of Peter Mandelson and on the right of the
Labour Party, visited Palestine. Josef Gorni wrote that this visit made a
stronger impression on him than any other visit abroad. Morrison
wrote about his experiences that he knew. [The British
Labour Movement and Zionism, 1917-1948, p.125]
“I know the
London Jew very well. But the Palestinian Jews were to me different; so
different that a large proportion of them were not obviously Jews at all”.
Morrison was
right. The Jews he knew were on the left. Palestinian Jews were colonists and
in alliance with British imperialism.
In
Morrison’s view these new Jews were ‘free
of the inferiority complex of their brethren abroad, despite being a national
minority in Palestine.’ If he had not been an imperialist Morrison would have
seen this lack of an ‘inferiority complex’ for what it was – the typical racial
arrogance of settler colonials.
Morrison was
Home Secretary in the war-time coalition government which only permitted a few thousand
Jewish refugees to enter Britain. And this was “despite rather than because of government policy”.:
While every effort was made to
deny entry to Jewish refugees, in the spring of 1940 the government was ready
to receive as many as 300,000 refugees, who never materialised, from Holland
and Belgium. 42
On 23 September in a Home Office
memorandum Morrison outlined his policy as
“not to admit during the war additional
refugees…unless in some quite rare and exceptional cases it can be shown that
the admission of the refugees will be directly advantageous to our war effort”
Everything possible was done once the
war was started to prevent Jewish refugees from Europe entering Britain. The
admission in November 1940 of 450 Jewish refugees from Luxembourg to Tanganyika
was prevented by Herbert Morrison.
Morrison opposed the admission of more than a token
number of Jewish refugees. Fearing he would be inundated with appeals he advised
the Cabinet to reject such requests on the pretext that it would cause an
increase in anti-Semitism. When Attlee proposed, in January 1943, a draft
parliamentary statement which said that ‘any
such refugees as may arrive in the United Kingdom will be admitted.’ Morrison
advised him to remove this promise because
‘it gave the impression that if Jewish refugees are placed on some
worthless boat and sent to a British port that is a way of disposing of them.’ [Leslie Urbach,
Excuses!
Excuses! The Failure to Amend Britain’s Immigration Policy 1942-1943, p. 52].
Nancy Astor at the Election Count
In
October 1942 Morrison received a delegation of eminent public figures such as
Eleanor Rathbone and Lord Astor, asking him for visas for 2,000 Jewish children
and the elderly in Vichy France. Morrison refused. Apparently anti-Semitism ‘was just under the pavement.’ A month
later the Nazis overran Vichy France and these Jews were deported to Auschwitz.
Morrison was said to doubt that there was a holocaust. [Lesley Urbach, pp. 52-3]
On
31 December 1942 Morrison explained that ‘he
could not agree that the door should be opened to the entry of uncategorised
Jews.’ Morrison believed these Jews ‘might
be an explosive element in the country, especially if the economic situation
deteriorated.’ Morrison’s real fear was of communist Jews. He combined both
deep anti-Semitism and ardent Zionism. The Board of Deputies had no objections
to Morrison’s anti-Semitism. [Wasserstein, p. 115-16, 131].
US Ambassador to Britain, John Winant, sent a
message to the State Department describing how the FO
‘are concerned with the difficulties of disposing
of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued from enemy-occupied
territory...’
Morrison
told a Christian-Jewish deputation that despite public opinion being supportive
of the refugees ‘there was also a body of
opinion which was potentially anti-Semitic’ and that it was important not
to ignore this feeling. Morrison was therefore giving an anti-Semitic minority a
veto on the admission of Jewish refugees even if that led to their death. Fear
of ‘anti-Semitism’ was the excuse for his and the government’s own
anti-Semitism.
Despite
UN High Commissioner Sir Herbert Emerson declaring that it would be a mockery
if the Allied Declaration on the Holocaust was not followed by action, Morrison
refused to agree to admit more than 1,000 to 2,000 refugees. [Wasserstein p.183]
Newsinger
cites Tony Kushner that the government would not
allow any official discussion or
attacks on anti-Semitism…. Not only was the Labour Party wholeheartedly
involved in the Churchill government’s policy towards Jewish refugees and the
question of rescue, but it continued aspects of this policy once it came to
power in 1945.
The Attlee government refused to
let Holocaust survivors into Britain whilst at the same time bringing over
200,000 Eastern European workers to remedy a shortage of labour. This included
a Ukrainian Waffen SS Division which, as a Home Office minute noted, had been
made “with the Prime Minister’s
approval”. But the Zionists too opposed holocaust survivors entering
Britain.
However we
should not think that just because Labour’s Right led the manufactured anti-Semitism
campaign, that it has left its anti-Semitism behind. Take e.g. Siobhain McDonagh MP, who admittedly is perhaps the stupidest
person to have ever sat on the green benches. McDonagh explained to the Today progamme (4.3.19) that:
It’s
very much part of their politics, of hard left politics, to be against
capitalists and to see Jewish people as the financiers of capital. Ergo you are
anti-Jewish people.
‘In other words to be
anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic,’ John Humphrys interrupted. ‘Yes,’ Mcdonagh said. ‘Not everybody but there’s a certain strand
of it.’
In other words if
you are anti-capitalist you are anti-Semitic! The unspoken assumption being that
all Jews are capitalists. But if McDonagh’s anti-Semitism could, at least
partly, be explained by her stupidity, no such excuse can be made for Alec
Russell, writing
in the New Statesman about the
‘deep-seated
theoretical underpinnings of left critiques of capitalism that have
antisemitism as their logical consequence’.
One can only wonder why it was that in Nazi occupied Europe it
was the Communist left who protected Jews and the right which collaborated with
the Nazis to kill them, even when fighting the Nazis for nationalist reasons, as
in Ukraine.
But what of Steve Reed who asked
of former Daily Express owner Richard
Desmond, “Is billionaire former
porn-baron Desmond the puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet?” Reed, who
apologised, is Justice Minister in Starmer’s shadow cabinet.
Reed though was a
strong supporter of the false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ and a strong
Zionist supporter. In September 2020 he told
a group of councillors that he promised to ‘continue
to tackle antisemitism within its [Labour] ranks.’
Starmer was quick
to reassure Reed that no action would be taken because his campaign against
‘anti-Semitism’ was only about support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism,
not genuine anti-Semitism.
If Reed’s comments
could be considered mere slips of a racist tongue, then there can be no excuse
for Rachel ‘Bank of England’ Reeves.
Reeves first came to people’s attention when, in an interview with the Guardian she declared that
We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be
seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those who are out of work. Labour
are a party of working people, formed for and by working people.
If anyone is likely to replace the charisma-free zone that is
Starmer it is Reeves. She didn’t serve in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and never
felt obliged to say anything in his defence unlike the two-faced Starmer.
Reeves admiration for Hitler lover Lady Nancy Astor,
the second woman to be elected to Parliament, is second to none. This is understandable,
since Reeves feels a far closer affinity to a fascist than a socialist.
Labour Party members have been expelled for far less yet Starmer
deliberately ignored Reeves gushing praise of
Astor. The same was true of the Guardian’s
Jonathan Freedland who uttered not a word of criticism of Reeves, confining his criticism to Corbyn.
Whereas Corbyn was slated by the Board of Deputies for having
ignored Hobson’s anti-Semitism, in his Introduction to Imperialism,
Reeves gushing admiration for Hitler went unremarked.
Just as with Boris Johnsons comments
in his novel 72 Virgins, about
hooknosed Arabs and Jewish media barons fixing elections, so it was with
Reeve’s praised for Astor. The Zionists fell silent. As Novara Media, Lansman, Jones
and McDonnell failed to comprehend, the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was never about
anti-Semitism.
Nancy Astor was a fully fledged Hitler admirer. In 1936 Astor
and others wrote to Stanley Baldwin that they “‘wholeheartedly’
endorsed the Führer‘s act” in marching into the Rhineland.
In 1938 the Cliveden set, named after Astor’s house, . entertained
Nazi apologist Charles Lindbergh. The group were very sympathetic to fascism. A
David
Low cartoon in the Evening Standard, showed Astor and Times Editor Geoffrey Dawson holding high the
slogan "Any Sort of Peace at Any Sort of Price".
At a Jewish charity dinner in November 1934, she asked James McDonald, the League of Nations’
High Commissioner for Refugees:
did I not after all believe there must be something of the Jews
themselves which had brought them persecution throughout all the ages? Was it
not therefore, in the final analysis, their responsibility?
Astor was convinced that she was a victim of “Jewish
Communistic propaganda”. In the House of Commons (28.2.38) Harold Nicolson
heard Alan Graham, Tory Party MP for Wirral, say to Astor: "I do not
think you behaved very well." She replied: "Only a Jew like
you would dare to be rude to me." The News Chronicle commented that Astor's "emotions about
the Jews" had overcome "her sense of fitness".
She once introduced Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist
Organisation as "the only decent Jew I have ever met." Which
says more about Weizmann than it does about Astor.
Astor complained that the Observer, which
was owned by her family, was "full of homosexuals and Jews"
and worked to bar Jews and Catholics from the newspaper's senior positions.
Astor wrote letters to US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy
in which she suggested the Nazis were a solution to "the world problems"
of Jewry and Communism. She told Kennedy Hitler would have to do more than "give
a rough time" to "the killers of Christ" for her to
want Britain and America to launch a war.
She was referred to as "the Honourable Member
from Berlin" during a 1939 Commons debate. Her opposition to the war
earned her the title of "Hitler's woman in Britain".
It is inconceivable that Reeves was unaware of
Astor’s anti-Semitism yet she refused to retract her praise of Astor. Starmer adamantly refused to do anything.
Like many anti-Semites, Reeves adores Zionism
and the Israeli state. After Kim Johnson had been threatened
with loss of the whip for describing Israel as a fascist and apartheid state,
Reeves said that Johnson’s treatment was ‘a sign
of just how serious Keir Starmer is at booting both antisemitism and
“anti-Zionism” out of Labour.’
In an article ‘I’m proud to be a Labour Friend of
Israel’, Reeves said she believed that political criticism of Israel was
motivated by antisemitism. A completely evidence-free accusation as she herself
proves. She also made it clear that the presence of fascists and
neo-Nazis in Israel’s government would ‘not stop a future Labour government
forging a strong relationship with the Jewish state’.
There are fools on the left – from Lansman and John McDonnell
to Owen Jones and Novara Media who believe that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign
against the left was about anti-Semitism. None of these knaves have repented of
their idiocy because an alliance with the right is their main objective, even
if Palestinians pay the price.
But never let it be thought that if anti-Semitism were to raise its ugly head that the Labour Right would be in the least concerned. Like the Zionists themselves, ‘anti-Semitism’ for them is opposition to Zionism and Apartheid. It is not about hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews. Not now nor has that ever been the case.
Conclusion
The anti-Semitism of the Labour right, unlike the confected ‘anti-Semitism’
of the left, had lethal consequences. It is impossible to know how many Jews would
have survived but for Herbert Morrison’s anti-Semitic immigration policy but it
was in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. It was always available to the British
government to allow unrestricted entry of Jewish refugees into the colonies (something
that did happen on a small scale).
The remarkable thing about ‘anti-Semitism’ under Corbyn was
that not one hair of one Jew was disturbed. No one was hurt. All the tropes in
the world fell to Earth without a single person being hit by them. No one died
because of a Tweet or Facebook comment.
Tony McNulty, like most of the Labour right, was concerned by 'antisemitism' but not by any other forms of racism
Thousands of hours were spent looking into peoples’ social
media history but none was spent looking into the racist record of the Labour
right which denied asylum to refugees. I can remember one particular hypocrite,
the former Labour Immigration Minister Tony McNulty pontificating
on Twitter about ‘anti-Semitism’. I asked him how many people died because of
racists like him in contrast to how many Jews were hurt because of the allegations
of people like him.. McNulty took offence at the comparison but from then on
shut up.
We even had John Mann, the ‘anti-Semitism Tsar’ combining
crocodile tears over the Jewish holocaust whilst simultaneously engaging in the
vilest anti-Gypsy sentiments. Mann holds himself out to be an expert on the Holocaust
yet it seems to have escaped him that the Nazis exterminated approximately 1
million Roma because of their ‘race’, which was proportionately similar to that
of the Jews.
In 2007 Mann issued
the Bassetlaw Anti-Social Behaviour Handbook which described the very existence
of Gypsies and Travellers as a problem of anti-social behaviour. Which was exactly the excuse the Nazis used
to exterminate them.
Another hypocrite is Eric Pickles who accused
Jewish lecturer Rachel Gould of ‘one of the worst cases of Holocaust
denial’ for her
article ‘Beyond
Anti-Semitism’ which argued that the memory of the holocaust was being
manipulated for political purposes.
On that occasion Bristol University, unlike in the case of
David Miller took a robust attitude to these allegations from the
usual Zionist suspects like the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and
Mossad’s Community Security Trust.
Bristol Live’s Chief Reporter Michael
Ribbeck dismissed
the ‘trite soundbites’ of Pickles
witheringly.
to claim, as Sir Eric
Pickles has done, that Dr Gould's paper is "one of the worst cases of
Holocaust denial" is quite frankly ridiculous and inflammatory.
Perhaps Sir
Eric should read up on the discredited historian David Irving before he starts
throwing around accusations and trite soundbites.
In 2015 the High Court ruled
that Communities
Secretary Eric Pickles 'unlawfully
discriminated' against Gypsies. The judge found both human rights and
equality laws were breached by Pickles for 'calling in' cases which would
normally be considered by planning inspectors.
The fact that Pickles is the leader of the British delegation
to the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance says everything you need to know about this body.
Tony Greenstein
