Why Labour Against the Witchhunt & Labour-in-Exile-Network Should Merge

 With the Collapse of the Corbyn Project there is a clear choice between Building a Socialist Movement or Retreating into the Politics of Sectarianism 

Ken Loach absolutely DESTROYS Keir Starmer (doubledown.news)

Starmer and Evans are conducting a scorched earth policy inside the Labour Party. They are determined to complete what Blair began, making the Labour Party safe for capitalism. That is why, on July 20^th Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed. It is on that basis that Ken Loach, Jo Bird and many others have been expelled.

Any socialist of note, indeed anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, is likely to be expelled. But whereas the Labour Party is now a ‘hostile environment’ to socialists, racists like Trevor Philips (‘Muslims are a nation within a nation’) and Luke Stanger (‘travellers are a nasty blight on society’) are quietly readmitted to the Labour Party. Anti-racists and socialists are expelled on the pretext that they ‘undermine the Labour Party’s ability to campaign against racism’ even though Labour under Starmer has done nothing about racism.

Recent expulsions include Graham Bash, Editor of Labour Briefing with 53 years of membership, and Cllr. Jo Bird, both of whom are Jewish. Pamela Fitzpatrick, a much respected Councillor in Harrow and a member of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy has also been expelled.  Pamela made a number of complaints about people like Stanger abusing and harassing her and the Labour Party’s response has been to expel the victim and readmit the abusers.

Very few politicians tell the unvarnished truth but never can there be two leaders of the two main parties, Starmer and Johnson, who suffer from truthophobia. Both of them, quite literally, have an allergic reaction to telling the truth. 

As Skwawkbox noted ‘Just days after Keir Starmer told a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) gathering that his would be a party for all Jews’, Jo Bird, a Jewish councillor in Wirral was expelled. Indeed if you are Jewish in the Labour Party you are 5 times more likely to be expelled for ‘anti-Semitism’ than if you are non-Jewish!  This is the parallel universe of the Labour Right. Anti-racist Jews aren’t Jews.

The blame for this state of affairs can be laid at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn and Lansman’s Momentum. It was they who accepted the false ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative of the right-wing, that Labour was ‘overrun by anti-Semitism’. It was they who supported the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism. It was Corbyn and Lansman who supported the expulsion of Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and myself.

Starmer and Johnson leapt to the defence of Israel's racist Ambassador

We are now seeing exactly what the Right meant by ‘anti-Semitism’ – a defence of the nakedly racist Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely and the expulsion of Jewish anti-racists from the Labour Party.

Hotovely was the person who, as Chair of the Knesset’s Womens Committee, invited the overtly fascist Lehava group to give testimony. Lehava, like the Jewish Nazis they are, oppose Jews and Arabs having personal/sexual relationships and they go hunting for Arabs in ‘Jewish areas’ in order to beat them up. This is the vile creature that Starmer and Angela Rayner defended.

Starmer was elected on the basis of 10 Pledges, which were based on the Corbyn Manifesto. Since his election he has abandoned every single pledge. Pledge number 1 was to reverse the Tory cuts to Corporation Tax.  When the Tories did increase it Starmer opposed it!

Ken Loach Interview with The Canary

Jo Bird spoke for many when she said that

‘I’m delighted the Labour Party has expelled me today. I’m free from fear about speaking and meeting with other people.... This racist Labour Party is dying as a vehicle for social justice.’

Ken Loach said of his expulsion that ‘it’s like leaving an abusive relationship’.

As thousands continue to stream out of the Labour Party and hundreds, if not thousands, fall foul of the witchhunt, a responsibility rests upon 2 of the 4 proscribed groups, Labour-in-Exile-Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt to organise, both those who are still inside the Labour Party and those who are now outside the party into a coherent socialist movement as opposed to a separate party.

Whereas Gordon Brown went from Stalin to Mr Bean, Starmer has gone from Mr Bean to Stalin

That is why the two All Members Meetings (All Members Meeting) this Friday and Saturday of LIEN and LAW are so important and I urge people to attend.  At these meetings motions will be proposed that the 2 organisations should merge. If you are not already a member of one or both groups then you should join now. You can join LIEN here and LAW here.

Luke Stanger, a vile racist and friend of Hove's right-wing MP Peter Kyle (Vice Chair of LFI) is readmitted to the Labour Party

LIEN’s Steering Committee has voted in favour of merger or consolidation of both organisations, since LIEN was in many ways an outgrowth of LAW. At one time 3 members of the LAW SC were also on LIEN’s SC . However LAW’s Steering Committee, under the influence of Labour Party Marxists, has come out against a merger with only myself, out of 6 members, in favour of merging with LIEN.

Trevor Phillips - another genuine racist readmitted to the Labour Party

At the LAW AMM on July 24 a motion was passed to ‘explore the merging of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network’. Moved by Tina Werkmann (who has since changed her mind) the motion read:

 This meeting believes that:

1.   Unity is strength. While there are obvious political differences in the history of both groups, the composition of both memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that both groups have enough in common politically to justify a possible merger.  

2.   Such a merger would send out a strong signal to many of those who are feeling disheartened and politically disoriented by the current trajectory of the Labour Party. 

3.   It might encourage more people and groups to join our merged organisation. 

4.    This meeting therefore resolves to start exploring a merger process between both organisations...

 At a joint LLA, LAW and LIEN members and supporters meeting on October 14 a motion moved by Tina Werkmann stated:

Unity is strength. While there are obvious political differences in the history of the three groups, the composition of their memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that they have enough in common politically to start bringing their forces closer together by setting up joint campaigns, joint educational events and joint meetings of the respective leaderships.

Amendment number 8 moved by me stating that

A merger of LAW and LIEN in the light of the recent proscriptions and attacks on the left in the Labour Party would be extremely welcome

was passed by 43-25. Amendment 6 by Diana Isserlis calling explicitly for a new socialist movement passed by 44-31.

Amendment 4 moved by Roger Silverman calling for

the establishment of a common transitional movement uniting socialist activists both within and outside the Labour Party

was passed by 61-15.

Amendment 3 moved by Diana Isserlis calling for a new organisation to

co-operate with forces inside and outside the Labour Party, pursue campaigns linked with the wider socialist movement, build a socialist movement including those inside and outside the Labour Party

was passed by 45-26 and Amendment 2 from me calling for the new combined organisation ‘to organise shadow CLPs to include ex-members and current members of the Labour Party’ was passed by 54-11.  By way of contrast a wrecking amendment from LPM, deleting half of the motion was heavily defeated by 58-12. 

The amended motion was passed by 63-11. In other words except for the hard core supporters of LPM just about everybody else agreed with the strategy of merger.

The LPM, which is the Communist Party of Great Britain, which produces the Weekly Worker. It is a small group of around 30-40 members which has stayed approximately the same size since it was formed from The Leninist over 30 years ago.

Their strategy, if it can be called that, is to form a mass revolutionary Marxist party which will, with the support of the unions, force the Labour Party into becoming a ‘united front of a special kind’.  In the meantime LPM simply writes off the hundreds of thousands of people who joined the Labour Party after the victory of Jeremy Corbyn and the millions who voted for the 2017 manifesto as having the ‘wrong’ politics. There is a complete failure to understand what the Corbyn project represented and how to build on it.

LPM is therefore fiercely opposed to such a merger or indeed any attempt to build the left other than temporary alliances with already existing left groups like CLPD or LRC in the Labour Party. It dismisses all attempts to build anything outside the Labour Party as a Labour Party Mark II.

At the November 9 Steering Committee Stan Keable submitted the following motion:

The LAW steering committee resolves to withdraw from the recent joint meetings with the steering committees of Labour in Exile Network and Labour Left Alliance, and to end LAW’s participation in joint all members and supporters meetings.

The joint steering committee meetings, while nominally favouring continuing the struggle in the Labour Party, have in fact been dominated by proposals to orientate away from Labour, to give up on the struggle within Labour, and to attempt to create an alternative movement or party based on the failed politics of Corbynism, aiming to keep together the thousands of disillusioned comrades at all costs. Far from rearming and rallying the left, we believe such a project will only add to the widespread demoralization and disorientation of the Labour left that already exists.

However, we wish those comrades well, and will seek to co-operate with them wherever possible. Meanwhile, LAW has a tremendous job on its hands in fighting the ongoing witch-hunt.

Unsurprisingly at the LAW All Members Meeting this Saturday LPM will move Motion 2 which is titled:  Reject liquidation of LAW! Keep the focus on Labour! 

The merger or consolidation of LAW and LIEN is called ‘liquidation’ a favourite word in sections of the left. The motion is the height of unreality. It fails to take account that the atmosphere of McCarthyism and vitriol inside the Labour Party, the harassment and bullying of activists has produce a situation where over 150,000 members have simply left with thousands more likely to do so.

It is crystal clear that there is little or nothing that LAW can do to combat the present witchhunt. As Ken Loach said ‘democracy is dead inside the Labour Party.’ In a situation where Labour Party apparatchiks manipulate and make up the rules to get rid of their enemy, where nobody on the left can even become a councillor or MP anymore, it is impossible to fight the witchhunt. There are no hearings before panels anymore because there are no hearings. Thanks to Corbyn and Formby fast-track expulsions have become the norm.

In the present situation the question is whether we can build a new movement from amongst those who were part of the Corbyn movement. The LPM prefers to inhabit a sectarian ghetto of 30-40 to the more difficult task of organising with people who will not always share hard line Marxist politics.

What they are advocating, behind their talk of Solidarity with all victims of the Labour witch-hunt! Step up the fight! is nothing less than an abandonment of any fight whatsoever.  Given that virtually no supporters of LPM are even inside the Labour Party their resolution is pure wind, rhetoric without any purpose.

As LIEN says on its website

The main aim of the Labour In Exile Network is to keep together all those who were mobilised and enthused to support Jeremy Corbyn for leader to continue the fight for democracy and socialism. This includes those who remain in the Labour Party, those who have been unfairly suspended or expelled in the last five years and those who have resigned from the Labour Party in despair of the party’s direction of travel under Keir Starmer and Dave Evans.

There is nothing whatsoever in this which is incompatible with the aims and purpose of LAW.

At the meetings on November 26 and 27 Esther Giles and myself will be moving a motion calling for the ‘consolidation  of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network into one organisation’.

There will therefore be a clear choice facing members as to whether or not to continue the fight against Starmer, but not necessarily on Labour Party terrain since that has now become enemy territory.

The stance of LPM raises wider questions. How does the Marxist and anti-capitalist left build in a situation which is anything but revolutionary. Is the Bolshevik model the only one for Marxists today? Why is it that there has been no workers’ revolution since 1917? Is the working class of the West potentially revolutionary? What is the relevance of modern movements such as Black Lives Matter to revolutionary change? Does the pending climate catastrophe dictate a change in tactics and strategy?

However when you are obsessed with what dead Bolsheviks said or didn’t say a hundred years ago, such questions seem otiose.

Whatever your views please come and have your say and if you are not a member of both organisations then it’s not too late to join!

Below is an Open Letter to Members of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network from Carel Buxton, Roger Silverman, Esther Giles and myself to members explaining why we think that a merger of LIEN and LAW is necessary.

Tony Greenstein

Not the Forde Inquiry but a Jolly Good Substitute!

 Israel Bans Palestinian Human Rights Groups  Yet It Still Calls Itself a Democracy 

Interview with Tony Greenstein about Labour's Witch Hunt

Two years ago, when the Zionists were doing their best to close down free speech in Brighton and elsewhere, we held a series of cultural and political events at Brighton’s Rialto Theatre. The Zionists had been intimidating and harassing venues in Brighton to cancel meetings with people like Chris Williamson on the grounds that they were ‘anti-Semitic’.  The Brighthelm Centre had received a letter from local Zionist MP Peter Kyle and immediately obeyed his ‘advice’. The local Quakers Friends Meeting House also gave in as did the Holiday Inn.

The lies that Fiona Sharpe - the racist at the heart of Brighton & Hove Council's 'anti-racist' strategy tells - free speech at the Rialto had no negative community impact unless Fiona is implying Jews don't like freedom of speech!

The Rialto Theatre was run by someone who had had experience supporting the Kent Miners over 30 years previously and was made of sterner stuff. The bombardment of tweets, social media abuse etc. from Zionists like Fiona Sharpe had no effect so that this year there was nothing.  The Zionists gave up because they had met resistance.  If only the quaking Quakers had stuck to their principles and not retreated at the first sign of grapeshot then all would have been well. Free Speech is worth preserving and fighting for but these religious souls took fright and emboldened the racists and imperialists.

So when the book launch for Bad News for Labour was cancelled at the last minute by Waterstones Bookshop, because the head office was also put under pressure (the local store staff wanted to continue with the event), we put it on literally at the last minute. Instead of 30 people attending over 100 did, including Ken Loach.

Two years ago we could only put on a 2 day event because we had only booked the venue late in the day. This year we had plenty of time to prepare and we booked it from September 26 to 29, for 3½ days. We put on a whole series of political and cultural events called Resist at the Rialto. You can see them all here. There were 11 events in all:

The events were

Why alternative media is important to the left chaired by Greg Hadfield, who was expelled for putting on the 3 day events. It’s a sad state of affairs in the Labour Party when you can be expelled for putting on 3 days of socialist politics and culture. Former Telegraph political editor Peter Oborne, Asa Winstanley from Electronic Intifada and the irrepressible Lowkey participated.

Municipal Socialism - the left in local government with Roger Silverman, Carol Buxton and Greg Hadfield chaired by Chris Williamson.

The Great NHS Heist chaired by Esther Giles, Treasurer of the Socialist Health Association with Dr Bob Gill, the producer of the Great NHS Heist.

Wikileaks and the torture of Julian Assange chaired by Dr Deepa Driver of the Labour Campaign for Free Speech and Chair of Camden Momentum with Matt Kennard , Lauri Love and Bjartmar Alexandersson

Starmer surrounded by the butcher's apron

Purge III: McCarthyism and Starmer’s Labour Party chaired by Esther Giles with Dr Neil Todd, Senior Research Fellow of the University of South Wales

Socialists, republicanism and PR chaired by Larry Hyett with Steve Freeman, Tina Werkmann and Dr Kevin Bean

Labour, the antisemitism crisis and the destroying of an MP is the title of a book by Lee Garratt, a man who has had a very varied life including being a left-wing policeman in the Metropolitan Police! He is now a teacher. It was chaired by Chris Williamson.

Can Modern Monetary Theory solve the crisis of capitalism? chaired by Esther Giles with Professor Bill Mitchell, Carlos García Hernández and Michael Roberts, a former City economist.

This is how Zionist racists like Fiona Sharpe operate - they use the Jewish community like pawns in their attempt to close down free speech

The Palestinian resistance – and the need for international solidarity chaired by Anne Mitchell, Secretary of BHPSC, with Asa Winstanley, Huda Ammori of Palestine Action, Natalie Strecker a former human rights activist in Hebron, and Issa Amro, a Hebron-based human rights defender recognised by the UN as an anti-occupation and anti-apartheid activist. This was one of my favourite sessions.

Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel reveals what her real agenda is - protecting Apartheid

The Weaponisation of Racism was chaired by Tina Werkmann with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein.

The threat to academic freedom chaired by Dr Deepa Driver of Reading University with Dr Kevin Bean, lecturer in Irish politics at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool and Mike Cushman, Chair of Free Speech on Israel and a member of BRICUP’s Organising Committee.

The final event was Robb Johnson and friends, including Brighton’s own Professor Dave Hill.

But the event which crowned the 3 days and was a pure piece of political theatre was the Not the Forde Inquiry. 

You will remember when Labour’s Leaked Report was issued detailing the racist and misogynist abuse, by senior Labour Party staff like John Stolliday of Corbyn supporters. Senior employees of the Labour Party did their best to sabotage the 2017 election campaign. They openly supported the Tories. This Report had been compiled at the behest of Jennie Formby for submission to the EHRC.

When Starmer came in the Report, all 831 pages, was leaked. Starmer’s anger was not at the revelations of the racist abuse of Dianne Abbot or the treachery and deception of Stolliday, Emily Oldknow (both of whom have gone to UNISON) or Sam Matthews. His anger was directed at who leaked the Report. Starmer was forced to set up an Inquiry under Martin Forde QC. It was packed with right-wing Labour supporters but nonetheless Starmer has refused to release the Report using ‘confidentiality’ and the ongoing work of the Information Commissioner as his excuse. Because it is unlikely that the Forde Report will ever be issued, Resist at the Rialto decided to put on this production.

It was compared by Dorothy Walker, the late mother of Jackie Walker who had kindly agreed to come back to life to help us ward off the latest bout of McCarthyism, something which forced her to flee to London from the United States with Jackie in the 1950s.

Sir Norman Licky QC aka Paddy O'Keefe

The Cross-examiners in chief were Ken Loach and Graham Bash of Labour Briefing/LRC.

The Prosecutor for the Labour Party was Sir Norman Licky QC otherwise known as Paddy Keefe, an expelled member of the Brighton Labour Party and a professional actor. Witnesses were:

Becky Massey, Esther Giles and Roger Silverman

Esther Giles, suspended secretary of Bristol North-West CLP,

Becky Massey, expelled member of Hove CLP,

Roger Silverman, expelled member of West Ham CLP, son of the late Julian Silverman, a Jewish MP responsible more than anyone else for the ending of capital punishment in Great Britain

Leah Levane, Chris Williamson and Greg Hadfield

Leah Levane, co-chair of Jewish Voices for Labour and a former Hastings Councillor, who was expelled at the Labour Party Conference itself for attending a rally against the witchhunt!

Chris Williamson, the only socialist Labour MP, who was disgracefully suspended by Jennie Formby under Jeremy Corbyn.

Greg Hadfield, newly expelled member of Brighton Pavilion Labour Party had been suspended 3 times. When he was elected Secretary of the Brighton and Hove District Labour Party by a massive majority at the largest ever meeting of over 600 people, he was removed by the simple device of suspending him 2 days later.

I hope you are able to watch all these events but especially the Not the Forde Report.

Tony Greenstein & Stan Heller of The Struggle

Interview of Tony Greenstein by Stan Heller

On October 5^th I was interviewed by Stan Heller of the United States’s Struggle Video Media about the Labour Party witchhunt and you can watch it here

6 Palestine Human Rights Groups Declared ‘Terrorist’ Groups by Israel

Children as young as 12 (as long as they are not Jewish of course) are subject to arrest in the early hours of the morning.  They are blindfolded, beaten, often sexually abused, not allowed to see their parents or a lawyer and forced to sign confessions in a language, Hebrew, that they don’t even understand.

Their plight has been taken up by Defend Children International – Palestine.

A few weeks ago their offices were raided in Ramallah, their records, computers and other information was seized. Today they and five other organisations have been declared terrorist organisations and banned.

These are the actions of an authoritarian state, not a democracy as Israel likes to claim to be. The new Israeli government was supposed to be an alternative to the bad old Benjamin Netanyahu. It contains the so-called left Zionists of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz and even includes, on the outside the conservative Arab Party Ram.

Yesterday the Defence Minister and former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a veteran war criminal, formally banned the organisations without a squeak out of the above named parties, thus proving what I have always said.  That there is no fundamental difference between the different shades of Zionism.

The groups are Al-Haq, a human rights group founded in 1979, Addameer, Defence for Children International – Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

The pretext is that they are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in other words guilt by association. The PFLP is a legitimate left-wing Palestinian group and even if there were a grain of truth in the allegations it would be no justification for the banning.

Israel’s B’Tselem organisation, which itself declared in January that Israel was an Apartheid and Jewish Supremacist state, issued the following statement:

“Israel’s ‘change’ government’s designation, earlier today, of Palestinian human rights organizations as ‘terror organizations’ is not merely declarative. It is an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organizations,” B’Tselem said in a statement, accusing Israel’s new government of trying to perpetuate a “violent apartheid regime.”

Even South Africa at the height of Apartheid did not ban human rights organisations. The decision of the Naftali Bennett government gives the lie to the idea that the Israeli state is at all interested in peace. Repression is the only game they understand. It is even more of a reason to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who work closely with many of these groups, issued the following joint statement:

“This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. While staff members of our organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations. The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.

How the international community responds will be a true test of its resolve to protect human rights defenders. We are proud to work with our Palestinian partners and have been doing so for decades. They represent the best of global civil society. We stand with them in challenging this outrageous decision.”