On the right Jews, the wrong Jews, antisemitism, the Labour Party and losing one's religion...

Rebel Notes.

Reaching the Tipping Point

I left the Labour Party today. I have cancelled my direct debit to a Party that since April 2020 has been waging a full scale war, not on the most dangerous right-wing government I have lived under, but on its own members. A Party founded by trade unionists and dedicated socialists is embarrassed now by its union links and is a hostile environment for socialists. Latest estimates say 200,000 members have left under Labour’s “new management”.

That should be adjusted to 200,001.

Shadow Cabinet member Rachel Reeves openly rejoices that so many have left, slandering us all as “antisemites”. The same Rachel Reeves who gushingly declared her admiration for the Tory, Nancy Astor, the first woman to sit in Britain’s parliament, while ignoring Astor’s fanatical support of Hitler and the fervent hope she expressed that he would solve “the world problem” of “Jews and communism.” Small wonder that Labour MP Stafford Cripps dubbed Astor “the Member for Berlin”.

Mind you, Astor did make the odd exception. At a private gathering she introduced her friend Chaim Weizmann, later to become the first President of Israel, as a speaker, describing him as “the only decent Jew I ever met.”

When Starmer became Labour leader he said his first priority was to eradicate antisemitism in the Party. Reeves has not even had the slap on the wrist given to Barry Sheerman MP for his “silver shekels” remark, or to Steve Reed MP for describing a wealthy Jewish businessman/Conservative donor as “the puppet-master for the entire Tory Cabinet”.

When prominent Labour figures go unpunished for real antisemitism, while many members with impeccable anti-racist track records, especially left-wing Jews who voice criticism of Israel, face disciplinary measures, including expulsion, it is clear that the leadership’s claimed fight against antisemitism is about something else. The cynicism of their phoney war on antisemitism provided the ultimate tipping point that has compelled me to leave what has become a toxic party. I am leaving in disgust, as well as anger, at having discovered how my own ideas and commentary, as a Jewish socialist, were being manipulated by disciplinary bodies in the party to help them exclude other left-wing members. More on this later, but other factors have certainly contributed to my deep alienation from the Party as well.

Compared with the invective that Labour’s leaders direct against their own dedicated members, our hapless Tory government has escaped remarkably lightly. How many times since April 2020 have we heard Starmer’s mantra, “We support the government”, as the COVID bodies did indeed pile high because of the Tories’ disastrous and discriminatory “strategy” for dealing with the pandemic?

Many Labour members, and scientists too, argued for a Zero-COVID strategy aimed at eradicating the virus rather than managing it, but Labour’s leadership failed to promote any alternative strategy. They stayed as close to the Tories as possible while criticising them mostly for being chaotic and incompetent.

Early on in the pandemic when the National Education Union (NEU) flagged up the serious dangers of children and school staff returning too early to schools that lacked adequate safety measures, Starmer’s main concern seemed to be showing the public that unions would not dictate Labour’s policy. He was more gung-ho than the Tories to get children back to school quickly despite the risks. But when he first pursued this argument in parliament about school settings, the economy and COVID, he made his demands in language that closely mirrored documents just published by Tony Blair’s Global Institute. A clue perhaps as to who he was listening to.

The Tories’ “herd immunity” drive, which prioritised “the economy” over people’s health meant that those the Government considered expensive and/or expendable were disproportionately affected. Death rates among ethnic minorities, disabled and older people were devastating. While many grassroots Labour members, including myself, volunteered in mutual aid initiatives – and still do – Labour’s leadership was shamefully complicit in government strategies that brought suffering, financial hardship and so many unnecessary deaths.

It’s not only on COVID strategy that Labour has tried to place itself close to this far-right Tory government’s thinking instead of providing opposition and a real alternative. As an anti-racist and an internationalist I find Labour’s ultra-nationalism and obsession with Union Jacks stomach-turning. Labour will never outdo the Tory Party or fascist groups on patriotism – but why are they aspiring to? We ought to be the Party of commonality that cares for all citizens equally. Displays of ultra-nationalism will simply strengthen hostility towards migrants and refugees.

Every time I see or hear a Labour advert, a Starmer speech, I find so few words I identify with and so many that alienate me. I did not vote for him to become leader, though I know people on the left of the Party who did. They wanted to believe his election pledges which lie in tatters now. Starmer tells us, rightly, not to trust a word that Johnson says, but has opened himself up to the accusation of being a serial liar by ditching practically every pledge he made to convince members to elect him.

My background

I was born into a low-ish income Labour-voting family, conscious of its immigrant roots (all my grandparents, two of whom I never knew, were Jews born in Poland and Ukraine). I imbibed from my parents anti-racist values and a sense of being on the side of the underdog in an unequal society. By the time I was 16, in 1974, I had explicitly defined myself as a socialist. I witnessed the Tory government collapsing in the face of trade union action led by the miners. Harold Wilson formed a minority Labour government, and later that year won a narrow overall majority.

My parents took me and my brother to hear Wilson at an election rally locally (held in our secondary school hall). We couldn’t get in because it was full, but listened to it relayed outside over loudspeakers. Two years later, I was among hundreds in the same building hanging on Tony Benn’s every word, as he explained common-sense arguments for socialism. By then I was becoming involved in anti-racist and anti-fascist activities too.

I understood that the fight for socialism was a long-term project against powerful vested interests, but recognised the issues affecting people here and now that could not wait. I’m still waiting for socialism but I have spent the intervening years – I’m 64 now – arguing and persuading, campaigning and struggling alongside others, some of them Labour members, others not, on immediate issues bound together by principles of equality, rights and social justice.

My years as a Labour member in that time, though, starting with a few in the early 1980s, add up to less than 10. But they do include the last six and a half years. I was part of an insurgent, proudly socialist, internationalist, anti-racist, Labour Party that stood up with and for the exploited and oppressed from 2015-19. I cannot use any of those adjectives to describe our Party today. As I leave the Party, it will be a wrench to walk away from comrades I respect and admire and feel close to in my CLP, but I know I will continue to see and cooperate with them in collective struggles, just not in Labour Party meetings.

The Corbyn Leadership

In the Corbyn years I knew exactly what the Party stood for, and was proud to popularise it. I felt the palpable enthusiasm, the desire for fundamental change that this project offered, rather than a mere tinkering with a system rigged in favour of the rich and powerful. I am fortunate to live in Jeremy Corbyn’s constituency, Islington North, and I have known him personally for more than 30 years.

In 2015, I witnessed young people flooding into the Party and older people finding renewed enthusiasm. They knew especially that Corbyn and those close to him were deadly serious about redistributing economic and political power in the country and empowering ordinary people to claim their rights and a better future. Small wonder he induced so much fear in the establishment, who were determined to destroy him and toxify everything he stood for. They used the filthiest lies emanating from disreputable right wing bodies to smear and demonise him, and ultimately demoralise huge numbers who had found such hope in that movement. As Corbyn reminded us on several occasions. “It is not me they are attacking, it’s you!”

As that ugly process unfolded we saw more clearly who the establishment were: not just the Tory Party and their tame mainstream media, who will always defend wealth and class privilege, but also those elements of our own Party who were determined to sabotage his chances. Today, their hands hold the levers of power within Labour, though they are still nervous about their grip on it. Corbyn continues to live rent-free in the heads of Labour’s leaders. People like Starmer and Margaret Hodge display intense personal jealousy of Corbyn and the popularity he and his policies attract.

Labour’s “new management” recognised that they could only enforce their will on the Party by ruthlessly attacking democracy within it and abusing its disciplinary processes to drive out the bulk of ordinary members who signed up so wholeheartedly for the best motives for the Corbyn Project. And the new leaders have been prepared to bankrupt the Party to get their way.

Like Starmer I went to Leeds University, though not at the same time. I was fortunate to study politics there with Ralph Miliband. Perhaps I should have listened more closely to what he wrote about the Labour Party, though even he would not have predicted the Corbyn leadership and its wave of popularity. But I also took a completely fascinating course on fascism in my final year there, with the brilliant thinker, Peter Sedgwick. He gave me a deep insight into fascist ways of thinking and the mechanisms they use. I never imagined, then, that this would help me understand behaviours at the heart of the Labour Party.

Attack on democracy

Internally, Labour’s “new management”, ­especially through its General Secretary, have implemented methods that are more commonly associated with right-wing dictatorships. The most recent is retrospective bans. This means that members are being expelled for actions in the past that were permitted at the time – “crimes” such as joining a Facebook group, or even “liking” a Facebook post, or talking to a journal published by a group that has now been declared off-limits.

For the first four months of Starmer’s tenure, under the pretext of the pandemic, Party branches could meet on Zoom but were banned from passing resolutions and making decisions. That was eventually relaxed under grassroots pressure, but we were then forbidden to discuss certain issues that were “not competent business”. This included the massive financial settlement paid by the Labour Party, using our membership fees, over the BBC Panorama programme about Labour and antisemitism (a case Labour had been advised it would win).

That Panorama programme was a travesty, based on unfounded assertions and steeped in unstated factional politics. A series of “talking heads”, most of them past or present Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) officers, condemned Corbyn-led Labour for its alleged “failures” on antisemitism. Yet the JLM itself – an overwhelmingly right-wing, pro-Zionist Labour body – was not named. Some of those talking heads, lauded by the Party’s right-wing as “whistleblowers”, also feature in Labour’s Leaked Report, which offers a very different take on who was actually responsible for delays in dealing with antisemitism cases in the Party’s Governance and Legal Unit (GLU). That report also alleges that the GLU failed to provide accurate information to Corbyn when he inquired about the quantity of cases and progress with them.

The JLM’s political priorities were revealed during the 2019 election, which it effectively boycotted, save for a few seats. They wanted Labour to lose, even though they knew this would open the door to a Tory government led by a known racist, Boris Johnson, who would continue a hostile environment for migrants and refugees. They would surely have known too, that since 2010 the Tories had been co-leaders with Poland’s Law and Justice Party, of a group in the Euro Parliament that included far-right antisemitic, Islamophobic and anti-Roma parties and governments.

Another subject we were forbidden to discuss was the hugely controversial IHRA definition/statement on antisemitism, which was heavily criticised by leading Jewish academics and Palestinian rights campaigners for chilling free speech by confusing and conflating opposition to Israeli policy or to Zionism with antisemitism.

Political anti-Zionism is as old as political Zionism, and was invented, first used and developed by Jews for positive reasons, especially through a socialist, internationalist and anti-nationalist organisation called the Bund, which I and many other left wing Jews identify with. The Bundist philosophy is diasporist. It fights for absolute equality, freedom and cultural rights for Jews and all minorities in the countries where they live: “Rights and justice for Jews everywhere without wrongs and injustice to other people anywhere”.

Outside bodies, however, bullied the Party into adopting the flawed and contested IHRA statement as policy by threatening to slander them as antisemites if they didn’t.

“There where we live, that is our country. A democratic republic! Full political and national rights for Jews”. [Left] A Bund Election poster in Yiddish Ukraine 1918

In late 2020, an older Jewish member of my CLP, with an outstanding record of international human rights work and campaigning dating back to the early 1960s, and still active in his local synagogue’s projects around homelessness and refugees, was summarily suspended after he submitted a motion to his branch that was critical of the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Two months later, after he joined a collective court case against the Party over similar unjust measures, he was hastily readmitted, but with no explanation or apology.

Many Jewish Labour members I know personally as committed socialists, humanitarians, and anti-fascists have suffered defamatory suspensions and Notices Of Investigation charging them with antisemitism. Their names have been dragged through the mud and they suffered abuse on social media for expressing valid and honest opinions consistent with their progressive outlook on matters relating to Israel/Palestine, antisemitism and the Jewish community.

One recent case that affected me deeply because I have known her since the mid-1980s, concerned Diana Neslen. Her work against racist brutality and apartheid began in the land of her birth – South Africa. She is also a very knowledgeable person steeped in and very attached to Jewish/Yiddish culture. I suspect her accusers within the Party’s disciplinary machinery are not.

I have described her on social media as a “lomed vovnik” (one of the 36). An old Jewish religious tradition holds that in every generation there are 36 ordinary, yet extraordinary, people whose selfless, righteous work enables the world to renew itself. She has suffered several rounds of accusations and investigations from the Party’s bureaucracy, in the midst of which she was diagnosed with cancer and also lost her husband (who incidentally grew up in a Bundist family, and spoke and championed Yiddish, his mother tongue). Just as she was taking the Party to court to assert her right to express anti-Zionist beliefs in the Party without being condemned as antisemitic, they backed down, but again no apology. Instead of cherishing members like her, the Labour Party is punishing them.

In a similar totalitarian fashion to the injunctions over discussing the IHRA, Party members were later forbidden from discussing the EHRC’s Report on its investigation into antisemitism in the Labour Party, which in my view was a shoddy, repetitive piece of work that drew grand conclusions from little hard evidence. The spin put on the report by Keir Starmer was at odds with the bulk of its content. Many left-wing Jewish members, including myself, expressed strong support for the fair and measured statement that Jeremy Corbyn made about it.

The Party banned us from discussing it, treating it as a tablet of stone beyond question. Labour members were thereby prevented from mentioning in meetings the embarrassing immediate aftermath of the report on antisemitism in Labour being published: a damning report on the EHRC itself published by a Joint Parliamentary Committee that criticised its major failures around racism both internally and externally; and a very strong complaint by women working at the BBC calling the EHRC’s report on wage differentials between men and women working there, a “whitewash”. Yet Labour members were not permitted to question any aspect of the EHRC Report on Antisemitism in the Labour Party.

The response by the Party leadership to Jeremy Corbyn’s comments on the EHRC Report is well known. His statement that “the scale of the problem [antisemitism in the Labour Party] was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the Party, as well as by much of the media” was distorted into an accusation that he considered antisemitism itself to be exaggerated. His contextualising words within the same post were simply ignored. He wrote: “Anyone claiming there is no antisemitism in the Labour Party is wrong. Of course there is, as there is throughout society, and sometimes it is voiced by people who think of themselves as on the left”. He was suspended and had the Labour Whip removed.

The NEC panel looking into his suspension had to examine all his words on the matter and he was reinstated into the Party as there was clearly no case against him. At that point he was a full member again with the Labour whip. Twenty four hours later during which newspapers reported that Margaret Hodge had threatened to resign if Corbyn retained the whip, Starmer removed it from him again it without following any recognisable Party rules or processes. Promises to review the decision within three months never materialised. Corbyn has now been without the Labour whip for 15 months. CLPs were forbidden from discussing and passing resolutions about the action against Corbyn, though right-wing Labour MPs who approved of this action frequently and freely pronounced on it.

When an NEC motion was put last month to resolve this issue by restoring the whip, It was voted down by the right wing NEC majority who could not and did not offer a single argument to justify that decision. One of the reasons I stayed in the Party this long was to help the campaign to restore my MP to the Parliamentary Labour Party. Corbyn remains in limbo and I do not believe there is any intention to restore the whip to him or to restore democratic justice to his constituents who have voted so overwhelmingly for him since 1983.

Tipping point

But the real tipping point for me had already occurred. I was conscious that many Jewish Labour members I knew were being disciplined by the Party for making comments on social media very similar to those that I had made: expressing non-Zionist/anti-Zionist positions; being critical of the treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli army, settlers, courts and government; and openly criticising the views of right-wing Jewish bodies in our community that define themselves as community “leaders” and claim to express the voice of the community.

Yet I was not personally targeted. I then discovered through informal sources that something worse was happening. Non-Jewish left-wing Labour members were being accused of antisemitism if they “liked”, shared or retweeted certain social media posts that I had written. These had been carefully assembled and were appearing in the “charge sheets” accompanying Notices Of Investigation. They were also being presented to some candidates seeking to become councillors in their interviews, in ways that implied that their candidacy would be viewed negatively if they had indeed liked, shared or retweeted such posts.

Why did they not target me directly? I believe it is partly because they knew that these posts expressed a legitimate political point of view of a Jewish member who had an established profile as an author, a contributor to newspapers and journals and as a blogger. But they clearly believed they could get away with accusing non-Jewish members of antisemitism for adopting similar views, fulfilling their factional goal of removing left wingers from the Party.

The most bizarre instance I saw on a charge sheet of a member with a decades-long record of antiracist and anti-fascist work, concerned a Facebook post with a photo of myself and Jeremy Corbyn holding a copy of the new edition of my book Rebel Footprints at its launch event. In the post I described Corbyn as “a rebel I have always been so proud to work and campaign with”. I added “Solidarity with you against the haters, the ignoramuses and the tukhes-lekers (arse-lickers) of the wealthy”. It seems that this non-Jewish member was being condemned for antisemitism for sharing a post that included a Yiddish phrase!

But perhaps they dug a bit deeper and discovered that, in addition to writing a book on the fight against antisemitism in Britain in the 1930s, and helping to organise five-yearly commemorations of the Battle of Cable Street, in which several national and local labour politicians and branches have participated, I do a considerable amount of educating about antisemitism within my professional work and in my voluntary work in the anti-racist movement. This includes being one of the group leaders of annual educational visits to Auschwitz and Krakow for trade unionists, students and anti-racist activists. That work educates people about the rich and very meaningful Yiddish cultural life of Jews in pre-war Poland, as well as about their death.

The most generous description of the behaviour of those within Labour’s disciplinary department, who use my words to incriminate others, would be to call it “cowardly”. I find it sickening, dishonest and disgusting. It was when I had firm evidence that this was happening that I resolved to end my ties with the Party. This is a clear case of cynically weaponising accusations of antisemitism for another purpose – to purge left wing members. It cheapens and devalues the term antisemitism. In doing so, it endangers Jews, while doing nothing to combat real antisemitism.

If anyone still doubts how low the Party has sunk on these matters, the events just a few weeks ago in Hornsey and Wood Green CLP’s online general meeting on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day are salutary. The local Party invited two of its Jewish members to give presentations, one was the branch’s leading JLM figure, the other a left-wing Jewish member, Sue Levi Hughes, whose parents fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, while other close relatives were murdered in Auschwitz and Belsen. She was preparing a presentation about Jewish women’s resistance during the Holocaust to accompany reflections on her family’s experience.

Hours before the meeting, the local Labour MP, Catherine West, tried to persuade Sue Levi Hughes to withdraw because the JLM speaker was refusing to share the platform with her. He cited a tweet she had made several days earlier about the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, which referred to Israel as an Apartheid state (a formulation used by Israel’s leading human rights body, B’Tselem among several others.)

At the meeting, an attempt by Labour right-wingers to block the presentation was voted down by a substantial majority. As Sue Levi Hughes began her presentation, more than a quarter of the members present left the online event. The JLM complainant did not attend the meeting at all. When Catherine West addressed the meeting before it closed, she did not acknowledge Sue Levi Hughes’ presentation at all, or thank her or express sympathy, but instead condemned the “shoddy” treatment of the JLM activist!

Many of those who walked out of the meeting were non-Jews who seem to have decided that they didn’t want to hear from the “wrong sort of Jew” – one who had criticisms of Israel. However they may have justified it to themselves, this was an antisemitic act. But this whole framing of which Jews are allowed to express their views has been promoted by the Labour leadership who take their cue from a narrow set of Jewish establishment bodies, rather than engaging with the diverse views among Jewish Labour Party members let alone the wider Jewish community. And it’s more than distasteful for non-Jews to dictate what views Jewish people may or may not express.

Within an hour of the meeting, those proud of their boycott action were leaking it to a reporter on the Jewish News, praising their MP, who had “really kicked arse tonight” and praising themselves for “giving the left a bloody nose” by walking out. Had they forgotten what the meeting was about, and what Holocaust Memorial Day represents?

I know Sue Levi Hughes well and have been on group visits with her in recent years to Auschwitz and Treblinka. I have seen her presentation, which is stunning and very educational. Fortunately, with the encouragement of the local Party’s BAME officer, the presentation was subsequently sent to every CLP member there. But have we really got to the point where a Jewish Labour Party member’s right to speak about her own family’s experience in the Holocaust and talk about Jewish women’s resistance to the Nazis is conditional on them adopting a particular pro-Zionist position on issues in Israel/Palestine?

For what it is worth, my own view on antisemitism is that it is becoming stronger in British society alongside other forms of racism, under a Tory government which has been given the easiest ride over this by the mainstream media and by the Labour opposition. It is also growing menacingly in several other countries again alongside other bigotries. I have personally encountered and witnessed more antisemitism here in the last 10 years than in the previous 50, and heard reliable reports from friends corroborating my perceptions.

That includes a small number of cases within the Labour Party. I have no doubt that there needs to be a deeper understanding of facets of antisemitism within Labour and across the Left. That is an educational task. But I also believe that where it comes up in contexts where education can play a part in challenging it and changing people’s minds and behaviour, that has to be our first response. I would apply this to other bigotries as well. Shami Chakrabarti understood this in her report which was attacked and rubbished by some of the very same people who have been waging a factional war under the guise of tackling what they claim to be antisemitism in the Party.

There might be one more reason why the Party did not target me directly. That is because I have been involved in a complaint of antisemitism to the Labour Party made on behalf of a wider group of left-wing Jewish members in December 2020 after we received a collective death threat from a non-Jewish right-wing member of the Party. The case is live, so I won’t add more except to emphasise that it has now been 14 months since it was submitted. A suspension took place quickly but the case, for reasons that we don’t understand (though we can speculate), has not been heard nor brought to a conclusion.

One of my reasons for staying in the Party was to pursue this case. It is outrageous that it has not been concluded yet, but I know that the other victims will continue to pursue it.

What’s next?

Last week I attended the my CLP’s AGM. I wanted to see out the year in my role as Political Education Officer which members have elected me to do for the last few years, and which I have carried out willingly and enthusiastically. I wanted to be democratically accountable for my work in the Party. On the weekend before the AGM, I held one end of our CLP banner at the People’s Assembly rally in Parliament Square over the cost of living crisis. I was proud to do so, even though I knew it would be for the last time.

I don’t judge individual members for the decisions they take on whether to stay in the Party or to leave. Socialists need to engage in the struggle where they feel they can be most effective in bringing progressive change, and also feel valued and respected. I have always felt valued and respected in my CLP, but clearly I am not valued or respected by the Party machinery. No doubt they will be glad to see me go, but I refuse to go along any further with their utter contempt for democracy, the centralisation of unaccountable power at the expense of grassroots members, their lack of basic humanity, and their attempts to destroy the possibility of Labour being able to elect a left-wing leader again and be a force for a radical transformation of our capitalist society.

I am not seeking to join another Party but intend to replace the considerable amount of time each month that I had put into the Party with work on the political issues that seem most pressing to me, through my trade unions (I am in two), and through specific campaigns – especially those concerned with refugees, anti-racism, oppressive police powers and human rights internationally. There are urgent issues to confront within each of these spheres. I look forward to contributing my energy, skills and experience, and not just doing the right thing but being able to speak truthfully, free from the threats of censure by the machinery of a Party that was created to obtain freedom, equality, dignity and decent lives for everyone, but has moved so far away from these goals.

See you in the struggle!

Biographical Notes

In the 1980s I worked for the GLC-funded Jewish Cultural and Anti-Racist Project then later for the Runnymede Trust, where I co-authored a book, Daily Racism: The press and black people in Britain. I worked as a Teacher in an inner London primary school for 23 years where I was also the union representative and the Equalities Manager. I have written two other books: Battle for the East End: Jewish responses to fascism in the 1930s; and Rebel Footprints: a guide to uncovering London’s radical history. I am an adult educator specialising in radical history in London (including many aspects of Jewish history) and of the history of the Warsaw Ghetto. I lead regular walks through London’s radical history. https://www.eastendwalks.com