The Chutzpah of the Guardian’s Zionist Gatekeeper, Jonathan Freedland

Freedland Calls on the Palestinians to Support Those Who Expelled Them and Stole Their Land in an Internal Jewish War over the Supreme Court

If there is any journalist, and I use the word advisedly, who can claim the credit for the media’s ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn then that person is Jonathan Freedland. It was this that prompted me to ask, just before Britain’s General Election in 2019 Is Jonathan Freedland the most dishonest journalist in Britain?

One month before the 2019 election Freedland wrote ‘Many Jews want Boris Johnson out. But how can we vote for Jeremy Corbyn? If Freedland had been genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism, as opposed to anti-Zionism, then he would have had no difficulty answering his own question.

 Freedland thought nothing of allying with Daniel Finkelstein, the racist Associate Editor of The Times and on the Board of the Islamaphobic Gatestone Institute about a book which barely mentions Jews

Leaving aside Johnson’s racist comments about ‘Watermelon smiles’, ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘letterboxes’. Johnson’s anti-Semitic comments in his novel ’72 Virgins’ should have sufficed. Johnson wrote:

Maybe there was some kind of fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin)

There was ‘the Jewish cabal who run the American media complex’. Even the Jewish Chronicle mentioned how 72 Virgins had

‘described a Jewish character as an unethical businessman with a large nose, who exploits immigrant workers and black women’.

But here’s the strange thing. Not a word about Johnson’s anti-Semitism crossed Freedland’s lips. In all his tiresome tirades Freedland never once quoted an anti-Semitic phrase that Corbyn had used yet Johnson served them up on a plate.

Freedland’s main theme was about how Jewish identity was bound up with Israel and if you attack an identity then that is anti-Semitic.  What if there had been a few thousand South Africa exiles in this country. Would it have been racist to oppose apartheid?  How about German exiles pre-1939?  Would opposition to Nazism have been anti-German? That was the heart of Freedland’s bogus argument for Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’. A completely specious argument.

As the former Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, said when questioned about Corbyn: ‘I've never detected so much as a whiff of anti-Semitism’.

Professor Geoffrey Alderman, a die-hard Zionist and the historian of the British Jewish community, in ‘Is Jeremy Corbyn really anti-Semitic?’ wrote:

The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives…. In 2010 he put his name to an Early Day Motion (tabled by Diane Abbott) calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni Jews in Britain. Indeed I could fill this entire article with a list of philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has signed since he was first elected… in 1983.

Alderman was a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle for 14 years before Editor Stephen Pollard banned him for dissent! Not a word of this made its way into the Guardian under Freedland.

These are just a sample of Freedland's articles during the Corbyn years - he didn't write even one article about the racism Muslims and Black People Experience - Just About a Privileged Section of White People

During the Corbyn years I wrote a number of blogs such as Why Freedland Felt the Need to Lie to The Guardian's Readers and why the Guardian Refused to Allow Any Reply to Freedland in its Comment Pages. See here, here, here and here culminating in an attack on Ken Loach and a refusal of a right of reply.

Freedland produced an endless series of articles about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. He celebrated Starmer’s sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey because ‘at last, Labour is serious about antisemitism’.

The Guardian refused to cover Al Jazeera’s series The Labour Files about the dirty tricks campaign against Corbyn, which included spying, bugging and monitoring Labour activists, the racism of Labour’s staff and even their hacking of a journalist’s computer.

Even the saint-like Corbyn referred to the ‘'utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness' of Freedland. Corbyn’s comment, in a fly-on-the wall documentary ‘Corbynism: the post-mortem’ so unnerved Freedland that he devoted a whole Jewish Chronicle column to it!

Despite pretending not to notice Freedland admitted that

In truth, though, it left me quite shaken. It’s unnerving to see yourself torn into by a frontline politician — the man who would be prime minister — with such venom.

Like most bullies Freedland was happy to accuse people of ‘anti-Semitism’ but when his victim bit back he cried into his column. It is unfortunate that Corbyn didn’t do this a bit more often.

Freedland thought nothing of targeting Muslims with bogus accusations of 'antisemitism' in his desperation to prove that Jews were under attack in the Labour Party

It is instructive that when Freedland recently wrote a book about a Jewish holocaust hero, Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from Auschwitz he chose an anti-Zionist Jew! As Hilary and Steven Rose observed, Vrba ‘found some of the same Zionist leaders in positions of power (in Israel) who had helped betray the Jews of Budapest’.

I haven’t yet read Freedland’s book but I strongly suspect that he has glossed over or omitted Vrba’s opposition to Zionism. But let us recall what Vrba wrote in the Daily Herald (February 1961):

I am a Jew. In spite of that – indeed because of that I accuse certain Jewish leaders of one of the most ghastly deeds of the war. This small group of quislings knew what was happening to their brethren in Hitler's gas chambers and bought their own lives with the price of silence. Among them was Dr Kasztner. … I was able to give Hungarian Zionist leaders three weeks’ notice that Eichmann planned to send a million of their Jews to his gas chambers… Kasztner went to Eichmann and told him, ‘I know of your plans; spare some Jews of my choice and I shall keep quiet.’

Having Described the Palestinian Struggle as ‘anti-Semitic’ Freedland now asks them to rescue Israel’s ‘Jewish Democracy’!

One of the features of ethno-nationalist states is that the police state apparatus that is created to suppress the indigenous population is sooner or later turned against dissidents amongst the herrenvolk. Once you have got used to murdering the Untermenschen you soon find that you are also surrounded by Jewish traitors and fifth columnists. 

The Nazis not only murdered millions of Jews they also murdered at least three-quarters of a million Germans. Israel is no exception to this because an ethno-nationalist state breeds a fascist mentality and the goal of racial purity is the chimera which drives it along. That is what is happening in Israel today.

The Racism that Freedland Can't See - Only 'Anti-Semitism' Concerns Him

Freedland Appeals for Palestinian Support!

It was with astonishment and amusement, that I read Freedland’s latest screed Netanyahu is an existential threat to Israel. He can be resisted – but only with Palestinian support. As Netanyahu and his Coalition proceed to neuter Israel’s Supreme Court, Freedland has woken up to the 20% of Israel’s population who are Palestinian. Realising that the ‘Jewish Democracy’ that liberal Zionists have venerated is disappearing, even for Israeli Jews, Freedland now looks around for allies. Having demonised support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic, Freedland now appeals to the victims of ‘Jewish democracy’ to come to its rescue.

Israel's Palestinian Citizens See the Furore Over the Supreme Court as an Internal Zionist Dispute

Netanyahu and his Jewish Nazi friends in Otzmah Yehudit (‘Jewish Power’) and Religious Zionism do not care what others think of them. This contrasts with the Labour Zionists for whom Hasbarah (propaganda) was important in maintaining western political support for Israel. They went out of their way to emphasise Israel’s ‘democratic’ features and its token Arabs. Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich want the Arabs out – all of them. 

As Smotrich told Arab members of the Knesset ‘you are here by mistake – because Ben-Gurion didn't finish the job and throw you out in 1948,". So much for the ‘Arab lie’ of the Nakba. The Judeo-Nazis that Netanyahu has allied with don’t deny the Nakba.  They complain that it was not far-reaching enough!

Israel’s Supreme Court is a Colonial Court

The proposals to neuter Israel’s Supreme Court should be opposed as the alternative is the Nazi rule by decree. Even the façade of the Supreme Court is better than no legal process at all. However when Freedland claimed that

the supreme court has regularly protected the rights of minorities – including the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arab

this is what is known as a dirty fat lie. On the contrary Israel’s Supreme Court has presided over the theft of Palestinian land, both within Israel itself and the Occupied Territories.

By Supporting a 'Jewish' State This is What Freedland Supports - the Quest for Jewish Racial Purity

It has failed, even once, to rule against the more than 65 laws which discriminate against Israeli Palestinians. In the West Bank it has ignored international law. The Supreme Court has presided over the theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank using a variety of legal tricks. In July 2022 it ruled that the Mitzpeh Kramim settlement could stay because the land was stolen in ‘good faith’.

The Supreme Court created the legal architecture of Israeli Apartheid. It has consistently upheld claims by right-wing settlers in Jerusalem seeking to evict Palestinians because Jews once owned the land when Jordan captured East Jerusalem in 1948. Yet it has never once ruled that Palestinians who owned property in West Jerusalem before 1948 were entitled to its return.

The Supreme Court has ruled that demolition of the homes of relatives of ‘Arab terrorists’ is fine, because it deters terrorism but has ruled against demolishing Jewish terrorists homes. Former Supreme Court Justice Menachem Mazzuz retired early, at least in part, because he was overruled in his belief that demolitions were ‘illegal and immoral’ and a form of collective punishment.

In July 2021 the Supreme Court held, by 10-1, that the overtly racist Jewish Nation State Law was constitutional even though it explicitly discriminated against Israel’s Palestinian citizens. In the process they affirmed that that Arab citizenship was all but worthless.

The Supreme Court Only Approves House Demolitions in the case of Arab 'terrorists' - it never approves doing so with Jewish terrorists

The one Supreme Court justice who ruled against the law was its only Arab member, George Karra. Not one Jewish judge was prepared to leave their racism and Zionism at home. This is the Supreme Court that thousands of Israeli Jews are taking to the streets for. See Israeli courts legitimized the state’s worst policies. We must still protect them

Today it is the Supreme Court which is leading the drive to evict the Palestinian villagers of Khan al Ahmar on the West Bank having already ruled that the 1000 Palestinian inhabitants of Masafer Yatta should be evicted to make way for an army firing range.

Freedland knows all of this yet he lies about the role of Israel’s Supreme Court in protecting Palestinians. The Supreme Court is and always has been a Colonial Court of Zionism.

The objections of Religious Zionism and Likud to the Supreme Court have nothing to do with its record over the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. It is about an entirely different matter. Internal Jewish/Zionist disputes.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that Reform and Liberal Judaism conversions must be recognised for the purposes of who is a Jew. It has taken the view that the definition of ‘Who is a Jew’ must be broad whereas the Orthodox Religious parties in Netanyahu’s coalition, want to narrow the definition of a Jew, excluding those who qualify under the ‘grandfather’ clause in the Law of Return.

This is an internal Zionist debate irrelevant to the Palestinians. Who cares who qualifies as Zionism’s Ubermenschen. Indeed it serves our interests that the definition of who is a Jew is as narrow as possible because then Jewry in the diaspora will wake up to the narrow, racist and nationalist state that Israel is. We have no irons in the fire.

As Ha’aretz wrote in an editorial, the Supreme Court is ‘the Occupation's Rubber Stamp’. Chief Justice Esther Hayut stated that

‘there is no need to make a ruling…on the question of the applicability of Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty to the Palestinian population in the area.’

The Supreme Court is perfectly happy with a situation where Israeli civil law applies to Jewish settlers and military law applies to Palestinians. See When the Exceptional is Regular: The Supreme Court on Israel’s Landgrabs by Hagai El-Ad of B’Tselem.

Jonathan Freedland knows all of this. One thing he isn’t is stupid.  Malevolent yes, dishonest yes, but stupid no. He also knows that a Jewish Democratic state is an oxymoron. The state is either Jewish, in which case Jews are entitled to preferential treatment or it is Democratic. As it stands Israel is Jewish for Arabs and Democratic for Jews.

What Freedland wants is for Israel’s Arab citizens, who possess a citizenship which relegates them to the status of tolerated guests, to rescue the democracy in ‘Jewish democracy’ even though they themselves will not benefit from it.

Although I knew it wouldn’t be printed, I sent the Guardian a letter.  However Freedland does not do criticism. Today the letters column of the Guardian has also been Freedlandised.

The Supreme Court as Israel’s Iron Dome & Flak Jacket

But if the Supreme Court doesn’t protect Palestinians what it does do is to protect Israel’s army of occupation. In the Jerusalem Post former MK Rachel Azaria described the High Court, as

‘the flak jacket of IDF soldiers, it is protection for our sons and daughters that serve in the army, from attempts to petition against IDF soldiers at the International Criminal Court in The Hague,"

Likewise Alan Dershowitz, explained how:

“It will make it much more difficult for people like me who try to defend Israel in the international court of public opinion to defend them effectively, It would be a tragedy to see the Supreme Court weakened.”

Aharon Barak, the former Chief Justice, made the same the argument.

The High Court has acted as a kind of legal “Iron Dome,”. Without a credible independent court, deemed as ensuring Israel’s democratic functioning, including in its treatment of the Palestinians, “our chief of staff and government ministers will immediately be arrested when they travel overseas…  The leaders of the country will be put on trial in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.”

President Isaac Herzog told the Knesset’s that

“Israel’s diplomatic and legal institutions, including our Supreme Court, will continue to be a diplomatic and legal defensive shield for us on the international front.”

In January 2019 Supreme Court President Esther Hayut argued that

one of the important side effects of judicial review is its contribution to Israel’s international legitimization.” Its intervention helps “bolster Israel’s claim of ‘complementarity’ when it deals with criminal proceedings in foreign courts, whether international or those of other countries.”

In other words, contrary to Freedland’s lies, the Supreme Court protects Israel’s war criminals not the Palestinians. Neutering the Supreme Court strips away the illusions in Israeli democracy.

Tony Greenstein

A Short Email to Freedland

Dear Jonathan,

Having spent the Corbyn years equating support for the Palestinians with anti-Semitism you are now calling on them to rescue Israel from the consequences of Zionism and settler colonialism.

And as we both know the 'antisemitism' you wrote interminably about was nothing of the kind. Otherwise you might have spent a little time on Boris Johnson and Rees Mogg's undoubted antisemitism.

It is difficult to know whether it's just malevolence or just stupidity that drives you.  Perhaps it's both.

It is no coincidence that the only Jewish hero of the holocaust that you could find was an anti-Zionist.  I've yet to read your book so I will reserve judgement on whether or not you had anything to say on this aspect of Vrba.

Oh and speaking of the holocaust I have brought out a book Zionism During the Holocaust about the true record of the Kasztners and Ben Gurions.

Either way I somehow doubt that many Palestinians will be queuing up to support a Supreme Court which, contrary to the little lie in your article, has consistently negated Arab rights in and without Israel.

tony greenstein

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

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

Update

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

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

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

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

TG 

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

This is what 'Zionist Without Qualification' Starmer Supports

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Resist at the Rialto & Labour Left for Socialism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

DISCUSSION OF MOTIONS

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

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

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

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

The Board of Deputies 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tony Greenstein