Book review by Tony Greenstein
It is an iron rule which allows few exceptions, that those who leave the SWP drift to the right. Dave Renton is no exception.
Renton joined the SWP in 1991, leaving in 2003 only to rejoin in 2008. In 2013 he left the SWP because of the rape scandal.[i]
The details of this scandal are well known. A woman who alleged that she had been raped appeared before the SWP’s Disputes Committee, which consisted of friends of the alleged rapist, National Secretary Martin Smith. Smith was cleared of all the allegations. Instead, it was the victim who was pilloried and questioned about her sexual history and drinking habits. A second woman who supported her was harassed and suspended. The victim herself wasn’t even allowed to attend the conference called to discuss the matter.
Dave Renton has written movingly of his experiences in the SWP and about what happened in 2012/13.[ii] Together with others, he formed RS21.
Renton’s book makes it clear, though, that he has abandoned any form of Marxist or class politics in favour of a subjective identity politics which divorces the politics of race from class.
Renton, as his Wiki[iii] biography makes clear, was a prolific author of books on anti-fascism, racism and Marxism. He wasn’t a run of the mill member of the SWP whose political consciousness is low and confined to sloganeering activism. Possibly his weak point was an understanding of imperialism but the question I ask myself is how can he have been so comprehensively fooled by the false and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign into believing that anti-Semitism was a genuine problem in the Labour Party?
How can Renton have got into bed with Stephen Pollard, the foul neo-liberal editor of the Jewish Chronicle who was a founder member of the Henry Jackson Society? This society’s membership includes Douglas Murray and others who support White Replacement Theory. It is genuinely and overtly racist, representing the far Right of the British Establishment – people like Islamaphobe Baroness Cox.
Does Renton really believe that someone like Pollard is genuinely interested in fighting anti-Semitism as opposed to tarring anti-racists with that brush? Renton’s Damascene conversion to the Right (because that is what it is) is a mystery. In the absence of a cogent explanation I can only explain it as being a return to his class origins.
By his own admission, Renton’s political sympathies during the anti-Semitism witchhunt were with Jon Lansman, a figure who, more than any other, bears responsibility for the defeat of the Corbyn project.
Not once does Renton entertain the idea that Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis might have been manufactured, confected and weaponised in order to remove Corbyn, despite the evidence. Instead he writes that
'Part of the reason why so few people come out well from Labour’s antisemitism crisis is that we were dealing with the revival a form of racism in relation to which many people had forgotten how to act.'
The whole of the British and US military and political establishment was united in wanting to see an end to Corbyn. For example, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was recorded as saying:
“It could be that Mr Corbyn manages to run the gauntlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best. It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.” [iv]
Israeli involvement in Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations was copiously documented in the Al Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’.[v]
The weaponisation of ‘anti-Semitism’ had first been tried out against the Sandinistas and then against Hugo Chavez.[vi] The advantages of such a tactic are obvious. It gave the racist right-wing of the Labour Party and the political establishment the moral high ground. They weren’t attacking Corbyn for his opposition to NATO or austerity. Good gracious no. They were opposing anti-Semitism!
You had the absurdity of Thatcherite journalist Andrew Neil asking Corbyn whether he would apologise for Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ at the last general election. This was the same Andrew Neil who, as editor of the Sunday Times, employed holocaust denier David Irving to translate the Goebbel’s Diaries as well as employing an overt anti-Semite, ‘Taki’, a supporter of the Greek Golden Dawn neo-nazi party, as a columnist on the Spectator.
One of the ironies of Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was that even the worst racists could become opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’ simply by declaring their support for Zionism and Israel. Not once did Renton explain how papers like the Daily Mail could oppose ‘anti-Semitism’ while simultaneously employing the neo-Nazi political commentator Katie Hopkins as a columnist.[vii]
If Renton had any claim to being a socialist, let alone a Marxist, then surely he would have considered the fact that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Britain’s second major party, in the United States’ closest European ally must have set off alarm bells both in Langley Virginia (CIA HQ) and Tel Aviv. Was Renton unaware of the US’s political record in Latin America and Asia? Had he not read Phil Agee’s Inside the Company? [viii]
According to Renton, Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ spontaneously broke out just as Corbyn was elected leader. It seems as if Renton believes that anti-Semitism is inherent in anti-capitalism.
Throughout the ‘anti-Semitism’ affair, over two-thirds of Labour members, including Jewish members, rejected the false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations. Their everyday experience in Labour was of a complete absence of anti-Semitism.[ix] Jews had always made up a disproportionate number of its activists. Renton disregards the views of these members with all the contempt an Old Etonian can muster.
The book itself is error-strewn. Renton says that the ‘first sustained attempt’ to accuse Corbyn’s Labour of anti-Semitism occurred in April 2016. He omits the affair of Oxford University Labour Club, when the Chair, Alex Chalmers – a former intern for Israeli lobby group BICOM – accused fellow members of anti-Semitism on the basis that they had supported Israel Apartheid week.
The first sign that ‘anti-Semitism’ was being weaponised was in August 2015, even before Corbyn was elected, when the Mail accused Corbyn of associating with a holocaust denier Paul Eisen.[x] It progressed from there to attacks on, first, Gerald Kaufman MP and then Vicki Kirby. Renton’s book is marred by sloppy research.[xi]
Universalism (racism from a distance) is the Left's "superior" moral position... and the only way they achieved it was to pretend to disavow their own. The Left has been pulling that trick on the Right since at least '68. Pulling it on their own is merely a recent convenience for some.
ReplyDeleteThe Labour we're talking about here is not Left by any stretch of the imagination. They're the faction that, in concert with the British right wing, set out to destroy Corbynism ('Far Left'). They're centre right.
DeleteNeither is this "left wing". It's the neoliberal defense of globalism.
DeleteThe Labour we're talking about here is not Left by any stretch of the imagination. They're the faction that, in concert with the British right wing, set out to destroy Corbynism ('Far Left'). They're centre right.
ReplyDelete