A Big Thank You From the Al Tafawk Centre, Jenin, West Bank, Palestine

We raised £860 for the children of the Jenin Refugee Centre

Last month we launched our biannual appeal for the Al Tafawk Centre in Jenin.  We raised a record amount.  Most of the schools in the area have closed because of Trump’s cutting off of funding to UNWRA. Many of the children rely on the Centre for their only meal of the day, so every penny is needed.

We asked people to channel any money they wanted to pay via The Brighton Trust which paid the £25 transmission charge. Amongst those giving were Brighton and Hove UNISON (Local Government) Branch (£100) and UNITE SE 6246 Branch (£100).

We will be making another appeal around May/June as the Centre is particularly busy over the summer when there is no school.  Once Again Many Thanks and here are a few pictures of a child holding the receipt.

If you would like to contribute in the run up to the summer please send any donation to:

The Brighton Trust,

Sort Code 09-01-28

Account Number: 91420311

Tony Greenstein

Xmas Under Occupation in Ramallah

Israel Appears to be Promoting the Xmas Celebrations in Bethlehem this Year as part of normalisation of the Occupation

Hence why it appeared on the BBC - however they still can't erase the Apartheid Wall 

What would you say if an organisation that supported Apartheid in South Africa claimed to be anti-fascist?

Nick Lowles Hope not Hate's Editor Openly Supports Israeli Apartheid – any Socialist or Anti-Racist Who Supports Them Is a Fake

Today I received a heartwarming Xmas message from Nick Lowles of the misnamed Hope not Hate.  It boasted of many achievements, most of which had nothing to do with it, including:

Hope not Hate should re renamed Hate not Hope for its role in demonising Chris Williamson

‘We Stopped Tommy Robinson from Winning His Election’ ‘We Beat Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party’ ‘We Took on Donald Trump’ etc. It is after all the season of Santa Claus.

There is however a less amusing side to HnH. For the past four years they have provided an ‘anti-fascist’ cover to the demonistation of a whole range of anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists in the Labour Party, many of them Black and Jewish, such as Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, the former MP for Derby North and Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London.

This is not surprising since for five years, before becoming an MP, Ruth Smeeth was Deputy Director of HnH. Before that she was Director of Public Affairs and Campaigns at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the main pro-Israel propaganda group in Britain. She is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and after the defection of Luciana Berger she became Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.  In short Smeeth is a racist supporter of Apartheid.

Can you imagine the late John Carlisle, MP for Luton North, an apologist for South African Apartheid, whom we used to nickname the member for Bloemfontein West being anywhere near an anti-fascist organisation? Yet Ruth Smeeth is all over HnH.

As Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, stated Israel is worse than Apartheid South Africa was. When Apartheid was in existence in South Africa Israel was its closest partner. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted, Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens, not its Palestinian citizens. 5 million Palestinians living in Greater Israel have no vote.  Within Israel 93% of the land is barred to Israeli Palestinians. The Israeli government spends money funding groups like Hemla, charitable wing of the fascist Lehava organisation, opposing Dorit Rabinmixed marriages.

An obsession with racial purity is the hallmark of a society based on the principles of race. In 2015 Israel’s Education Ministry banned from the syllabus, Dorit Rabinyan’s Borderlife, because it depicted a relationship between an Arab woman and a Jewish man. Dali Fenig, from  the Education Ministery explained:

According to Wikileaks Ruth Smeeth is a Protected Asset

 “The story is based on a romantic motif of impossible prohibited/secret love. Young people of adolescent age tend to romanticize and don’t, in many cases, have the systemic vision that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.” (my emphasis)

Miscegenation is an ugly word that means the mixing of races. It is defined as

‘mixing that is perceived to negatively impact the purity of a particular race or culture. Anti-miscegenation is a prominent theme of racial supremacist movements, including white supremacy.’

And in the era of Segregation and Jim Crow laws, States passed laws forbidding miscegenation. Yet this is the Israel that Ruth Smeeth and HnH are prominent supporters of and opposition to this is ‘anti-Semitism’ according to HnH.

Smeeth is also prominent member of the JLM which is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation. The WZO is one of the main pillars of Israeli Apartheid. It has what Ha’aretz called a ‘land theft division’.  It is complicit in the colonisation of the West Bank. And this trollope was not only Deputy Director of HnH but her politics permeate throughout this bogus ‘anti-fascist’ organisation.

I don’t care if 99.9% of British Jews were to support Israel. It would still not be anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. It would just mean that British Jews were racists. Fortunately this is not the case but this is the basis on which HnH and others term anti-Zionist ‘anti-Semitic’.

Thirty years ago I wrote an article SEARCHLIGHT Undermining Anti-fascists, helping Zionists’ for Palestine Solidarity magazine. It is as relevant now as it was then.

Hate not Hope is a honey trap, a money making operation for owner, Nick Lowles.  Despite its attempt to portray itself as a campaign, it is a Limited Company no. 08188502. It has no democratic structures or accountability.

Smeeth is one of its 7 directors. According to its accounts it has assets and liabilities of nearly a thousand pounds.

However there is also Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust No. 02738367.  This has had 31 officers, 23 of whom have resigned, including Sonia Gable, wife of Searchlight Anti-fascist Magazine and Ruth Smeeth, who resigned shortly before becoming an MP in March 2015.

HnH is the bastard child of Gerry Gable’s Searchlight Magazine which used to trade information on Marxists and Anarchists to MI5 and the Special Branch in return for information on fascists. Searchlight is now almost defunct, having not updated its website for nearly 8 months.

Searchlight and HnH fell out in an unseemly squabble about money. It was a split without any principle and was mourned by the Jewish Chronicle as a ‘tragedy’. Whether the falling out of a gang of thieves merits such a description I shall leave to my readers!

Searchlight Editor Gerry Gable was caught with his pants down in 1977 when a memo to his Editor at London Weekend Television, Barry Cox, was leaked to the New Statesman. This was when the then Labour government was in the process of deporting former CIA agent Phil Agee, who had blown the cover on CIA operations in South America, and radical journalist Mark Hosenball. As far as Gable was concerned the organiser of their Defence Campaign, Phil Kelly (later Editor of Tribune) was a PLO terrorist.

HnH continued with the political methods of Searchlight, not least the belief that opposition to Zionism is ‘anti-Semitic’. This is personified in the disgusting Ruth Smeeth who falsely alleged that Marc Wadsworth, a Black anti-racist activist who introduced the family of Stephen Lawrence to Nelson Mandela, which was what put the campaign on the map.

So when I received Nick Lowles piece of puff today I decided to write him a letter, which I’m happy to share with you!

The parliamentary lynch mob in support of Ruth Smeeth

Dear Nick,

Thank you for your Xmas message about all your ‘achievements’

You are However Much Too Modest.

Haven't you forgotten another few ' achievements'? Please permit me to list them:

1.    We Helped Propagate the Poisonous Zionist Campaign that Falsely Alleged Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party

2.    We did this in conjunction with our former Deputy Director and CIA Asset Ruth Smeeth MP whose seat We Also  Helped Lose

3.    We targeted Black Anti-racists such as Jackie Walker and called them racists, in much the same way as the National Front used to accuse anti-fascists of (anti-White) racism. The allegation in this case was that they were ‘anti-Jewish’.

4.    Ruth Smeeth, a ‘protected’ asset of the US Embassy according to Wikileaks, demonised Marc Wadsworth and falsely accused him of ‘anti-Semitism’ because he had called out her links with the Tory press.

5.    We even targeted Anti-Zionist Jews like Tony Greenstein and Moshe Machover

6.    We also targeted and demonised anti-racist MP Chris Williamson

Yes I agree Nick.  You have indeed achieved a lot during the past year.  You will forgive me if I don’t contribute towards your funds given that the Israeli Embassy is more than willing to step in.

Best wishes

Tony

Youtube Removes Video of Zionists Shouting ‘Hitler Was Right’ at Jewish Protesters Against Ethnic Cleansing in Jerusalem - Their Excuse? Hate Speech!

Either Youtube Doesn’t Understand the Difference Between Racism and Anti-racism or They Are Deliberately Covering for Zionism’s Genocidal Wing

Nearly 10 years ago I published a blog, Hitler was right say Zionists. It described how Zionist hecklers had shouted 'Hitler was Right' at Israeli Jews who were protesting at the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian families from Sheikh Jarrar in Jerusalem.  Police were about to evict families who had lived there for generations in order that Jewish settlers could move in.

Zionism is a warped racist ideology based on creating an ethnically pure ‘Jewish’ State in Israel. Any Jew who opposes Zionism is considered a ‘traitor’ ‘kapos’ ‘self hater’ and other neo-Nazi terms. Some Zionists go so far as to wish that anti-Zionist Jews had perished in Auschwitz.

I have received tweets and posts myself saying that the Zio concerned would be happier if I and my family had perished in an extermination camp.  This is the sick side of Zionist self-hatred. Based on racial supremacy Zionists can’t understand that some Jews are anti-racist.  It is this behaviour that gives the lie to their claims to be concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’.

This was posted by a supporter of anti-miscegenation group Lehava that the government helps fund

My blog post described how those shouting ‘Hitler was Right’ at these protestors were conforming to Zionist ‘logic’.  Historically one of the foundations stones of Zionism was the ‘Negation of the Diaspora’. Literally Zionism hated the Jewish diaspora (Galut). It held that the Jewish nation could only live in Palestine.  Those who refused to go to what is now Israel deserved everything they got. Zionism aimed to wind up the Galut though in practice Israel has been a parasite on Jewish communities abroad.

An example of a tweet I got from a Zio - 'shame your family survived world can do without cunts like you.'

These Zionists were saying to the anti-racist Jewish Israelis that you are no different from those Jews in the diaspora.  You have universal not Zionist values.  You are therefore no different from the Jews who died in Hitler’s extermination camps. Indeed like them you deserve to die in an extermination camp if you don’t subscribe to our racist values such as the ethnic cleansing that brought Israel into existence.

In the words of Jacob Klatzkin, Editor of Die Welt,(1909-1911) paper of the Zionist Organisation

 ‘If we do not admit the rightfulness of anti-Semitism we deny the rightfulness of our own nationalism... Instead of establishing societies for defence against the anti-Semites who want to reduce our rights, we should establish societies for defence against our friends, who desire to defend our rights.’

Of course this is not the only example of Zionists and Israeli Jews identifying with Hitler and the Nazis.  Earlier this year Rabbis Radler and Cashtiel, who run the Eli pre-military school told their students, among other things, that Hitler was right.

According to Rabbi Giora Radler the Holocaust was a ‘divine punishment’ designed to ‘encourage’ Jewish people to leave the diaspora and that the true Holocaust “is secular culture in which we believe in man, that is the Holocaust.”

According to the learned Rabbi “Hitler was the rightest person there was” Hitler's only fault was that he was on the wrong side, meaning against the Jews. This is a familiar theme of the far-Right in Israel.  Hitler was right he just got the wrong people (unfortunately these idiots don’t understand that the Palestinians didn’t live in Germany!).

Zionism today has a neo-Nazi wing which believes that Jews in Europe brought the Holocaust on themselves.  It actually understands what motivated Hitler and like the anti-Semitic President of Christians United for Israel, Pastor John Hagee, sees Hitler as the agent of god sent to drive the Jews to Israel.

People forget that Zionism not only collaborated with the Nazis but important sections of the Zionist leadership actually welcomed the Nazis to power.  For example Berl Katznelson, Deputy to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jewish Agency saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.  [Francis Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.91. Tom Segev, The 7^th Million, p.18).

I therefore posted the film on Youtube. The corporate idiots who run Youtube have a limited understanding of racism and other forms of bigotry.  They call it ‘diversity’ and ‘hate’ speech.   Racism is not a word that corporate scum use very often because it implies politics, i.e. who owns what and why.  Which is where racism is located.  These corporate bums depoliticise racism and call it ‘hate speech’. Much like the liberal equal opportunist left that reduce everything to 'hate speech' and therefore ignore the role of race and class.

For example I actually do hate rich parasites and exploiters in society!  According to Youtube that is ‘hate speech’.

It should have been obvious to Youtube that when I posted a video ‘Hitler was Right’ I wasn’t saying that I believed Hitler was Right, rather I was demonstrating how beneath the surface Zionism contains the very same strands of genocidal racism which in Germany led to the Holocaust.

But of course the idiots who run Youtube have few politics and even fewer ideas.  Despite proclaiming that ‘We review educational, documentary, artistic and scientific content on a case-by-case basis’ it is clear that this is a lie.  Anyone with half a brain cell who reviewed this video would understand what it was saying.

These idiots, in a standard message, posted that

‘Content glorifying or inciting violence against another person or group of people is not allowed on YouTube. We also don't allow any content that encourages hatred of another person or group of people based on their membership in a protected group.’

Far from encouraging hatred I was trying to combat it by exposing what the Zionists really believe.  No doubt some idiot Zionist took offence at this video and complained. So I am asking you to retweet it and post it on social media and upload it to Youtube to defy the censors of Youtube.

I have posted this video up again and challenged Youtube to suspend me as they’ve threatened to do under their racist 3 Strikes policy. I have also posted it on my google drive in case they take it down again because once an idiot always an idiot.

In my Appeal to Youtube I said:

How dare you do this?  I have been an anti-racist all my life. 

This video 'Hitler was Right' was a video of what right-wing Zionists said about other Jews who oppose ethnic cleansing.  This is about what is happening in Israel today. Shame on you for supporting Israel's far Right. U are idiots

Tony Greenstein

Christmas in Bethlehem Behind the Apartheid Wall

Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign reminds people that in the birthplace of Christ, Xmas has to be celebrated under military occupation – this is what Israel calls ‘freedom of worship’ 

See A Palestinian Christian explains what it feels to celebrate Christmas in Bethlehem today.

The main reason that Labour lost the Election is because, for the past 4 years, the Labour Right Waged War on Corbyn

We Should NOT Support Rebecca Long Bailey – she is a female Neil Kinnock – Critical Support Should Be Given to Clive Lewis and Richard Burgon

Graham Bash (left), Chair Rebecca Massey and John Rees (right)

Update
After having been contacted by members of Norwich South CLP, which is where Clive Lewis is based, I have withdrawn my previous critical support for him.  I should have known (but didn't) that he is a supporter of Trident but also has a record of attacking the left locally.  My apologies.  That means that there is no one that I can recommend which is probably a good reflection on the present situation.

The question is who is worse?  Someone like RLB moving rightwards and taking the left with her or Jess Phillips, who everyone with more than 1 brain cell knows, is a fake feminist friend of the Mogg.

Tony Greenstein

Last Monday Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance, which over the past 6 months has replaced the now defunct Brighton and Hove branch of Lansman’s Private Company (Momentum Ltd.) held a packed meeting at The Rialto on Where Do We Go Now?

The speakers were John Rees, from Counterfire (formerly of the SWP) and Graham Bash of the LRC and Editor of Labour Briefing, as well as Political Officer of Jewish Voice for Labour.

Pathetic racist Fiona Sharpe, founder of Sussex Friends of Israel, engaging in a last bit of vitriol against Waterstones and the Rialto, for the 'crime' of  supporting free speech. 

The Rialto was where we held a number of events last autumn, during Labour Party conference, after the Zionists had done their best to close down free speech in Brighton. We held the book launch for Bad News for Labour, which the Zionists had successfully forced Waterstones to cancel, as well as Jackie Walker’s film The Witchhunt (which had been due to premiere at the Liverpool Labour Party last year but which was prevented by a bomb threat which the Police didn’t investigate).

Part of the audience at the Rialto

Graham pinpointed the essential contradiction behind the rise of Corbyn which was the decline in working class struggle and strikes at the very same time that Labour elected its most left-wing leader ever. It is this that helps explain the political demoralisation in the northern ‘Red Wall’ constituencies that led to many working class people voting Tory.

As Graham made clear, there is no obvious successor to Jeremy Corbyn. Rebecca Long Bailey, who is apparently the Socialist Campaign Group candidate, appears to be running on a joint slate with the even more right-wing Angela Rayner.

When Angela Rayner was chosen to address the Board of Deputies she chose to first distance herself from her previous description of Norman Finkelstein’s book, Holocaust Industry, as ‘seminal.  She then launched into an attack on me! According to the Jewish Chronicle Rayner said that she was ‘glad activists such as Tony Greenstein had been expelled and said "those who distort history by likening Hitler to Zionism are no longer welcome".

John Rees mentioned that when he visits the Stop the War Coalition offices, in the same building as Corbyn’s constituency office, he is there hard at work on behalf of his constituents. We are unlikely to see someone who has devoted himself to the poor and oppressed again at the top of the Labour Party.

An excellent discussion ensued after Graham and John had spoken. B&H LLA hope to organise another meeting next month on the scandal surrounding Julian Assange’s incarceration.

Why Rebecca Long-Bailey Should NOT Be Supported

There are many on the Left who are saying that RLB is  the least worst candidate.  I disagree. RLB stabbed Chris Williamson in the back when according to the Jewish Chronicle she told the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement’s Vice Chair Stephane Savary that Williamson ‘should not be a member of the Labour Party and that she did not know how he had not already been expelled.’

Possibly one reason Chris should not have been expelled was that he was fitted up by racists who lied and distorted what he actually said. But when you are comforting Zionists truth flies out the window.

Angela Rayner - the lightweight partner of RLB is standing for Deputy Leader as part of a nightmare ticket

Let us remind ourselves what it was that Chris Williamson actually said because it is a microcosm of the lies and distortions and the contempt for truth by those for whom ambition is all.

The Yorkshire Post, the BBC and many others reported that Chris said that the Labour Party was "too apologetic" over anti-Semitism. What he actually said was:

The party that has done more to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party.

“I have got to say I think our party's response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion… we have backed off too much, we have given too much ground, we have been too apologetic.”

Tom Watson 'lost sleep' over the sacking of racist Labour MP Phil Woolas - Rebecca Long Bailey was happy to sign Watson's petition calling for the suspension of Chris Williamson

If RLB is prepared to support the expulsion of a Socialist MP and sign a petition by the racist Tom Watson on the basis of deliberate misreporting by the Tory press then no one should be under any illusions as to what direction she will take the party.

The news is that Black MP Clive Lewis, who supported Marc Wadsworth, is standing for the leadership. It is true that Clive is no anti-imperialist but neither is RLB. Clive has shown more independence than RLB and did at least stick his neck out on occasion. Given that he is Black that in itself is a reason for supporting, everything else considered.

I urge socialists in the Labour Party to critically support Clive Lewis.

RLB explained to the racist rag that is the Jewish Chronicle, a paper that in the election campaign unceasingly for anyone but Corbyn and which openly called him an anti-Semite, that but for her membership of the Shadow Cabinet she would have signed Tom Watson’s petition calling for resuspension of Chris Williamson (ruled unlawful by the High Court).

Phil Woolas's racist leaflet caricaturing all Muslims as violent Jihadists - Rebecca Long Bailey was happy to sign Woolas supporter Tom Watson's petition

This alone should prevent the Left from supporting Long-Bailey.

The fact that John McDonnell, who has made his peace with Blair and Campbell, wants RLB to succeed Corbyn, should be another reason for not supporting RLB. Let us remind ourselves that when the High Court removed racist Labour MP Phil Woolas from the House of Commons for running an election campaign which, in the words of his own agent, was designed to ‘make the white  folk angry’ Watson wrote on Labour Uncut that he had ‘lost sleep thinking about poor Phil.’ If RLB was prepared to sign a  petition by this racist she is no socialist.

RLB also told members of the JLM, which didn’t even support Labour in the General Election, that ‘she is aware Jeremy Corbyn has lost the trust of the (Jewish) community’. This was of course the same allegation made about Labour’s only Jewish leader, Ed Miliband. In fact the Labour Party has long since lost the confidence of British Jews, most of whom have voted Tory since the 1960’s.

People should face facts.  The Jewish ‘community’ today, in particular the synagogue going adherents of the United Synagogue which the Board of Deputies represents (about 30% of British Jews) are a reactionary community whose identity is shaped by the Israeli state’s oppression of the Palestinians.

Just imagine that at the time of Apartheid there had been a large community of exiled South Africans. According to RLB’s racist logic we should have supported Apartheid for fear of upsetting the identity of white racists.  This is exactly the same situation today. Jews who support Israeli Apartheid are either ignorant or racist or both.

RLB has been engaged in a love-in with the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who more than any other body, were responsible for the fake anti-Semitism campaign.  A body that supported the mowing down of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza and which has supported every war against the Palestinians and every aspect of Israel’s Apartheid policies.

This political lightweight, who has all the charisma of a dictaphone, produced a slick video claiming that that had been “born to the sound of the roar of the Stretford end”  Since she was born on 22^nd September 1979, when Man United were playing away to Wolverhampton, this is quite a remarkable feat!

Where the Blame Lies for Labour’s Defeat

As this blog has repeatedly said, Jeremy Corbyn made, over the past 4 years, grievous mistakes, not least in abandoning old comrades like Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson. But ultimately Corbyn is not responsible for the disaster last Thursday. Neither is Seamus Milne, his disastrous adviser or John McDonnell, despite his rapprochement with Alistair Campbell and his perpetual backsliding and overtures to the Right of the Labour Party.

The blame for what happened lies with the Parliamentary Labour Party who waged an unending war against Corbyn. People like Margaret Hodge, Wes Streeting, Louise Ellman, John Mann, Ian Austin and the two fake ‘victims’ of anti-Semitism – Ruth Smeeth and Juliana Berger.

If only Corbyn and Len McLuskey had supported Open Selection at the 2018 Labour Party Conference. Fortunately every cloud has a silver lining and the last five are no longer in parliament having either not stood, left the Labour Party for the Lib Dems or deserted to the Tories. 

It is noteworth that Austin, Mann and Ivan Lewis, who was suspended for sexual harassment, all backed the Tories. The victory of the Tories was , despite public protestations of horror, welcomed by the Peter Kyles and Jess Phillips of the PLP.  Indeed in an unguarded moment Phillips, a ‘feminist’ friend of anti-abortion Rees-Mogg, was caught expressing her delight at Labour’s defeat.

WHERE TO WE GO FROM HERE?

As John Rees made clear there is no Labour MP of the calibre of Corbyn.  None with his record. Whoever replaces him, for all their faults, will be politically worse. That is the reality we must face.

Those tempted to support RLB should remember when the Left backed Neil Kinnock against Roy Hattersley after the 1983 election.  Kinnock came from the Left and despite his betrayal of Tony Benn in the Deputy Leadership Election in 1981 was supported by the Left against the right-wing Hattersley. 

In fact Kinnock used his antecedents in the Left in order to betray the Left.  Whereas Kinnock paved the way for Blair and supported him throughout his premiership Hattersley became a trenchant critic.

My suggestion is that we don’t repeat the same mistake twice with RLB. If she is prepared to sacrifice the Palestinians to her own political ambitions, cuddling up to the reactionary and racist Zionists then she isn’t worth the candle.

It is essential that the Labour Left regroups and draws the necessary conclusions from the General Election. It is untrue that it was Brexit that defeated Labour. Brexit is symptomatic of a demoralisation and despair amongst a working class that has seen industry in the North of England laid to waste and devastated by monetarism and austerity. Brexit is the product of political defeat.

The antagonism to Corbyn was not hostility to his programme  It is unfortunate that Corbyn appeared weak and indecisive because he refused to stand up to the Right.  In appeasing the Right and apologising to Zionists he weakened himself in the eyes of the working class electorate. Instead of a Manifesto which promised lots of goodies there should have been a narrative about how Labour would reverse the 30+ year transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Reforming capitalism is simply not enough.  Socialism is about replacing capitalism not reforming it.

In the short term the Labour Left Alliance needs to regroup and the LRC, a group which has achieved little or nothing in its sad history and which has McDonnell as its President, is going to have to decide whether to follow the sectarian stance of its current Executive or try and build a strong left inside the Labour Party.

The Labour Left needs to understand that there is a need for left unity that straddles those in and those out of the Labour Party, especially given so many of us have been expelled.  The existing left groups outside the Labour Party are constitutionally sectarian and all too often divorced from reality. The question is whether the Labour Left is up to it given that large sections of the previously Corbyn left has been taken in  by identity politics, which is what their concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ is. 

There is a battle ahead and RLB will be on the wrong side of it. The battle also needs to extend to the trade union movement, without which the Labour Party would never have adopted the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism.

We should also be campaigning for the readmission of Chris Williamson and an acknowledgement of the injustice done to him.  An injustice which led to the loss of Derby North to the Tories.

Tony Greenstein