I have now read my way through all 851 pages of the suppressed and leaked Labour Party report on its handling of anti-semitism complaints. It is an important document, that is fundamental to understanding a major turning point in UK history, where Northern European social democracy failed to re-establish itself in the UK.
If whoever leaked the document still has access to the vast amount of original source material on which it is based, this is documentation of immense historical value. I would strongly urge them to send the original thousands of emails, texts and messages to Wikileaks to ensure that this is preserved for the public record.
More mundanely, the report is of obvious value as evidence to the Equality and Human Rights Commission as part of its investigation into anti-semitism in the Labour Party. The fact that it has not been officially adopted by the Labour Party does not make any difference to its value as evidence; nor does its status as regards copyright or data protection law.
If, for example, I were to discover evidence of blatant racism, and send that to the EHRC, the EHRC would not refuse to look at that evidence on the grounds it breached the racists’ copyright or rights under the Data Protection Act. These excuses for suppression of the report are just that. I am accordingly myself sending a copy on to the EHRC making just that point. I find it rather troubling that Keir Starmer seems more interested in suppressing this report than acting on its alarming findings – and I say that as someone who is not initially hostile to Starmer.
What are the key points we learn from the report? Well, firstly that there did exist among Labour Party members examples of genuinely shocking and indisputable anti-semitism. It is also true that in many cases the processes of dealing with these individuals did drag on for months or even years. Much of the report is concerned with precisely whose fault that was within the Labour Party.
The report does conclusively refute the accusation that delays were occasioned by Jeremy Corbyn or his office, or that his office displayed any sympathy for anti-semitism. In fact, the opposite is the case. Corbyn’s office showed a proper hatred of anti-semitism, but also an alarming willingness to throw good people under the bus on very flimsy allegations of anti-semitism. pp306-7 The report shows a serious inability to distinguish between real, nasty anti-semitism and opposition to the policies of Israel. Furthermore, this is the attitude of the authors of the report themselves who in many scores of examples take for granted that the accusations of anti-semitism are sufficient to consider the case proven, and accept a number of specified opinions as proof of anti-semitism which are anything but.
The headlines of course have been grabbed by the report’s stunning exposure of the fact that Labour HQ was staffed by right wingers so vehemently anti-Corbyn that they actively wanted the Conservatives to win elections. I think it is important to understand just how right wing they really are. Senior members of staff were messaging each other opposing any increase in corporation tax and opposing re-nationalisation of the railways as “Trot” policies.
The case of the horrible and very right wing John McTernan is instructive. McTernan had taken to writing articles in the Daily Telegraph praising the Tories and attacking Labour, but the Governance and Legal Unit of Party HQ refused to take action against him. They finally took action when he wrote an article urging the Tories to “crush the rail unions” for hampering the operations of private railway companies; but the action taken was to suspend a member who called McTernan out on his Tory support. p.140
John McTernan, meanwhile, formerly involved in New Labour and a delegate to 2016 party conference, was repeatedly reported from 25 July onwards for abusive language on Twitter and elsewhere, including describing Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn as “morons”; tweeting twice that Corbyn was a “traitor”; describing “Corbynistas” as racist; telling an SNP MP that he should “Come down to Peckham and try saying that, mate”; calling Corbyn a “Putin-hugging, terrorist-loving, Trident-hater”; and writing in the Daily Telegraph that all of Corbyn’s supporters were “online trolls”.368
No action was taken, and McTernan received the staff decision “No action – removed at referral”. On 18 August, however, Dan Hogan did report a member of McTernan’s CLP, Omar Baggili, who – in response to an article by McTernan in “The Telegraph” urging the Conservative government to “crush the rail unions once and for all” – tweeted at him “seriously John why haven’t you got yourself a Tory membership card. They’re anti unions & pro privatisation like you.”369 Baggili was suspended for “abuse”.
This is by no means an isolated example. One of my favourites is the case of Andy Bigham (pp538-45), who initially came to the attention of the Governance and Legal Unit for suggesting Corbyn was a traitor and Diane Abbot should be “locked in a box”. This was considered insufficient for action to be taken against him, and incredibly this stance was still maintained even when he subsequently posted that he had voted Conservative, urged others to vote Conservative and became the administrator of a Conservative Party Facebook Group.
Meanwhile left wingers were being thrown out of the party for having advocated a Green vote years before they joined, or for calling MPs who supported the Iraq war “warmonger”. The report makes an overwhelming case that the Governance and Legal Unit of the Labour Party failed to take action on accusations of anti-semitism because it was devoting all of its energies to a factional effort to remove Corbyn supporters from the party.
These right wing staff were hoping for Labour electoral defeats in order to get rid of Corbyn. Senior Labour staff were actually hoping Labour would lose its seat in the Manchester Gorton by-election.
27/02/2017, 16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: Just had discussion at strategy meeting We will meet Steve and Andy next Monday – we are looking at all 3 in May but select in Gorton within 4 weeks Katy will speak to you/Iain
27/02/2017, 16:53 – Patrick Heneghan: From karie
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: They didn’t include us in the discussion.
27/02/2017, 16:54 – Patrick Heneghan: Well let’s hope the lib dems can do it….113
It has long been known that there was tension between Corbyn and Labour HQ staff over allocation of resources to key marginals in the 2017 general election. What I had not known prior to this report is that HQ staff set up another organisation (p.92), based in another building, to divert party funds and secretly channel them to the campaigns of their favoured right wing MPs. On p.103 is detailed the horror expressed by Labour Party HQ staff at the Labour Party’s good performance in the 2017 election. People were “sickened” by the exit poll showing the Tories losing their majority.
The emails and messages quoted throughout the report are a tiny percentage of those available and are, of course, the selection of the authors of the report. That is why I call on them to dump the whole cache, which they say is many tens of thousands, to Wikileaks. One theme which continually crops up in the selected passages for quotation, but a theme on which the authors of the report scarcely comment, is that support for British military attacks abroad appeared to be the touchstone issue for who was “in” and who was “out” with Labour Party HQ staff.
The Manchester terror attack occurred in the middle of the 2017 General Election campaign. Corbyn bravely, and correctly, stated something that had been unsayable in mainstream UK political discourse – that British invasions abroad provoke terrorism at home. Labour Party HQ staff hoped and believed this would sink Corbyn and were actively wishing Labour to fall in the polls. pp 96-7
Jo Greening 09:12: and I shall tell you why it is a peak and the polling was done after the Manchester attack so with a bit of luck this speech will show a clear polling decline and we shall all be able to point to how disgusting they truly are
(now obviously we know it was never real – but that isnt the point in politics!)
Francis Grove-White 09:13: Yeah I’m sure that’s right
Francis Grove-White 09:16: My fears are that: a) the speech won’t go down as badly as it deserves to thanks to the large groundswell of ill-informed opposition to all western interventions. And b) they will use that poll to claim they were on course to win and then Manchester happened. And whether or not JC goes, lots of the membership will buy that argument. Like after the referendum when they distorted the polling and claimed we had overtaken the Tories before the “coup” happpened
Jo Greening 09:17: if this speech gets cut through – as I think it may – it will harden normal people against us definitely in the face of a terror attack normal people do not blame foreign intervention they blame immigration whats more – all they will hear is we dont want to respond strongly we want peace with ISIS it all plays into a bigger picture of how they see corbyn so I have a feeling this will cut through you are right on the second point it has to be up to the MPs though to demonstrate how toxic he is on the doorstep throughout but that this speech particularly was toxic and Manchester had happened when that poll was in the field on the supporters I personally think we are going to do very badly in deed and I think it will shock a lot of them how badly we do including JC so everyone has to be ready when he is in shock it has to be clean and brutal and not involve the party at all in my opinion those crazy people who now make up our membership never want us to win in anycase they are communists and green supporters even if Manchester hadnt happened and we got smashed they would have never changed their minds
Francis Grove-White 09:23: Yeah that’s true
My emphasis added to show just how right wing thinking is at Labour Party HQ.
To return to the failure to deal with cases of anti-semitism, a great deal of the problem appears to have arisen from sheer incompetence of staff. The Labour HQ staff had been inherited from the Blair years, and factional loyalty and a history of right wing political activity related to the Progress agenda were much more important in employment decisions than qualifications or competence. The Governance and Legal Unit, which handled the complaints of anti-semitism, was staffed by vehemently anti-Corbyn right wingers and was a bad actor; but it was also just useless.
The most basic systems were not in place, like a log of complaints/allegations – there was no log at all, let alone by category – and there was therefore no system for tracking the progress of individual cases. Emails went unanswered or even unread for many months, sometimes in email boxes which nobody attended. The epicentre of this incompetence was Sam Matthews, who was to be the star of the BBC’s Panorama programme “Is Labour Anti-Semitic” and the primary source of the allegations that Corbyn’s office was preventing action and protecting anti-semites.
It is impossible to read this report – and I have ploughed through all 851 pages – without coming to the conclusion that Matthews himself was responsible for a great deal of inertia. The report hints throughout that the failure to deal with anti-semitic Labour Party members was a deliberate act by party HQ staff in order to make Corbyn look bad. This evidence does not make that case conclusively, though it certainly does nothing to undermine it. The report expresses the suspicion most clearly in a passage on a period where Sam Matthews started inundating Corbyn’s office with requests for input on anti-semitism cases only later to produce the replies to him as evidence of unhelpful interference. This is a key passage of the Report (LOTO = Corbyn’s office):
However, Matthews’ emails reveal that he was the person who initiated a process of asking LOTO for their views on cases, on the basis that he was asking for their “help”, explicitly saying “it’s really helpful to have your input”. Matthews has also asserted:
“I had been privy to emails where Jeremy Corbyn’s Chief of Staff, Karie Murphy, was responding on a case by case basis on antisemitism in order to not suspend someone who they all knew damn well should be suspended.
I thought I just can’t countenance this.”1290
Matthews’ assertions about Murphy are also untrue. Murphy responded to GLU-GSO on just one case, Craig Allaker, agreeing with Emilie Oldknow’s suggestion of a membership rejection. Murphy’s other emails indicate that she did not want GLU involving LOTO in disciplinary cases and she questioned why Matthews had suddenly started involving them.
The conclusion of the Labour Party is that Matthews and possibly others in GLU-GSO instigated this process of consultation with LOTO, and proposed suspensions in some cases for conduct which GLU had previously not considered to merit any form of disciplinary action. This was later used by the same staff to accuse LOTO of involvement in antisemitism cases or of letting off antisemites, blaming LOTO and Jeremy Corbyn for GLU’s inaction on antisemitism complaints.. It may have been GLU and GSO’s intention to make this accusation when they initiated this process of consulting LOTO.
The report proves conclusively that Matthews’ allegations of unwarranted interference from Corbyn’s office to block anti-semitism action are malicious lies. It does not however conclusively show that his motive for asking for input from Corbyn’s office was to generate material to appear to substantiate his lies, not does it show conclusively that his incompetence and that of the Governance and Legal Unit in general was a deliberate ploy to make Corbyn look bad. These are not, however, unreasonable inferences.
What this report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong. Corbyn’s office was not responsible for lack of action over anti-semitism. The people responsible were the very people whom Ware chummed up with to make the allegations.
All involved were bad actors, including John Ware. He made no attempt to fairly assess or present the facts, or to hear the counter-arguments of those close to Jeremy Corbyn, and appears at the very best to have accepted an extremely selective presentation of written material from Matthews without proper question. But it is of course worse than that.
John Ware, a freelance journalist, was hired by the BBC to make that documentary despite a long history of anti-Muslim, and specifically anti-Palestinian, propaganda that had previously brought the BBC into disrepute and cost the license fee payer money.
In 2006 a John Ware produced Panorama programme Faith, Hate and Charity made deeply damaging false accusations about involvement with terrorism by Palestinian relief charity Interpal and caused the BBC to have to pay substantial damages to the director of another charity, Islamic Relief. Both Interpal and Islamic Relief have continually been targeted by the Israeli government.
John Ware has frequently been labeled an Islamophobe, including repeatedly by the Muslim Council of Britain. There is a double standard at play here. I suggest to you that it is simply the case that the BBC would never commission somebody denounced as “anti-semitic” by the Board of Deputies, more than once, to film a Panorama.
John Ware is proud of his activism for zionism. In 2016 Ware had a paid propaganda tour of Israel as part of a “Commitment Award” from the World Women’s International Zionist Organisation. Ware is perfectly entitled to write articles for the Jewish Chronicle attacking the BDS movement, and he is entitled to his views. But in the BBC Panorama Is Labour anti-Semitic? programme, Ware posed not as a strong pro-Israel propagandist, but as an independent journalist conducting unbiased investigation. In so doing, he allowed Sam Matthews and numerous other Labour staff members to put forward lie after lie after lie, which Ware appeared to validate, as is conclusively proven by this 851 page report.
I am not in a position to know whether John Ware knowingly connived in the lies, or whether he was so blinded by his deeply felt zionist ideology that he allowed himself to be taken in. I do know that today John Ware is engaged in fronting an attempt to takeover the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News, which has drawn criticism from within the Jewish community because the source of its finance is secret. It was plainly wrong for the BBC to hire somebody with the obvious axe to grind of John Ware to make a Panorama documentary on this subject.
Like the rest of the mainstream media, and like Keir Starmer, the BBC has taken the excuse of this Labour report “breaching the data protection act” to avoid reporting the contradiction of the lies the BBC spewed out for years. You wont find Nick Robinson, Laura Keunssberg or Andrew Neil tweeting enthusiastically about this story. Never have journalists been so united in refusing hard news information because of the dubious legal basis – though unquestioned first rate source and access – of the leak. The Guardian for four years ran up to twenty “Corbyn anti-semitism” stories and columns a week. Their only action on this report has been to denigrate it by reporting gleefully that the Labour Party may be sued for large sums under the Data Protection Act.
To turn to the report itself, it contains so many examples of Corbyn’s office pressing the Governance and Legal Unit to shove alleged anti-semites out of the party quickly, that I am not going to detail them here, but it includes all the high profile cases including Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker etc. It is plain from reading the report that the Governance and Legal Unit were both lackadaisical and incompetent – complaints against anti-semitism were a minority of complaints they received, and complaints of sexual harrassment were receiving even less action (p.264). But sporadically the party machinery appears more concerned to give a fair hearing than Corbyn’s office, who would just shoot anyone the Guardian requested.
There are horrific examples of anti-semitism within the report, but also instances where I would query the categorisation as anti-semitism not only of Labour HQ at the time, but of this report.
At p.214 a case is given of somebody deemed an anti-semite for quoting the Rothschild involvement in Genie Energy fracking in the Golan Heights. Now I claim to be the person who first broke this story to a wider audience, (after finding it in the trade press), and it is completely true. Here is Genie Energy’s own press release.
Mineral exploitation of the occupied Syrian Global Heights by the occupying power is illegal in international law. Shale gas drilling is highly problematic environmentally. It is Genie Energy’s own company press release which led with the involvement of Jacob Rothschild (and Rupert Murdoch).
Claude Pupkin, CEO of Genie Oil and Gas, commented, “Genie’s success will ultimately depend, in part, on access to the expertise of the oil and gas industry and to the financial markets. Jacob Rothschild and Rupert Murdoch are extremely well regarded by and connected to leaders in these sectors. Their guidance and participation will prove invaluable.”
“I am grateful to Howard Jonas and IDT for the opportunity to invest in this important initiative,” Lord Rothschild said. “Rupert Murdoch’s extraordinary achievements speak for themselves and we are very pleased he has agreed to be our partner. Genie Energy is making good technological progress to tap the world’s substantial oil shale deposits which could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world.”
I perfectly accept that there is a fundamental strain of anti-semitism that accuses the Rothschilds and other “Jewish bankers” of controlling world capitalism, and that this is dangerous and harmful nonsense beloved of the Nazis. The Labour report actually gives some examples of precisely that. But you cannot move from there to the position that any criticism of any specific action of the Rothschild family is therefore anti-semitism. To criticise their involvement in illegally fracking on the occupied Golan Heights is perfectly legitimate journalism. It is not an anti-semitic trope.
Similarly it is cited repeatedly (eg p.461) as “anti-semitism” to claim Israeli involvement with ISIS. Why is that? Nobody seriously disputes that the most important diplomatic change in the Middle East of the last decade has been the de facto alliance of Israel and Saudi Arabia (together with most of the GCC), aimed squarely at Iran. Nobody seriously disputes that ISIS, Daesh and Al Nusra have all been enabled at a fundamental level by Saudi and GCC funding and supplies. Some, but very few, analysts genuinely deny western assistance to those jihadi factions when operating against Syria. Nobody disputes the hostility between Isis/Daesh/Al Nusra and not only Hezbollah but also Hamas.
ISIS/Daesh/Al Nusra are the allies of Israel’s allies and the enemies of Israel’s enemies. It is not in the least irrational, nor anti-semitic, to posit possible cooperation. Personally I doubt there has been much – the Israelis are not as foolhardy as the Americans. The odd supportive air strike at Saudi urging, or targeted aid, or intelligence feed perhaps. There may be more. But the idea that it is anti-semitic to suggest Israeli aid to ISIS is wrong, and brings inyo play the question of the use of accusations of anti-semitism to chill legitimate analysis and criticism of Israel.
On Ken Livingstone, I do not think in the least that Ken is an anti-semite. I do however think he is wrong. I have always found the discourse around Nazi/Zionist links disturbing and generally anti-semitic in motivation. Of course there may have been contact at some early stage between Nazis who wished to eradicate Jews from Europe, and Zionists who wished Jews to move to Israel. But what purpose is there in pointing that out? The Jew-hatred of the Nazis is indisputable, and any misguided Zionist who tried to deal with them was not therefore a Nazi supporter. It is a pointless discussion with highly unpleasant undertones. How Ken was entrapped into it I struggle to understand.
The report is desperate to be seen as approving Labour’s now toughness on anti-semitism, and therefore endorses the characterisation of people as anti-semites whom I know not to be. Several instances are given of quoting or linking to Gilad Atzmon as evidence of anti-semitism, seemingly with no need felt to analyse the particular Atzmon article being quoted. Atzmon is of course an Israeli Jew of controversial views particularly on Jewish identity, but it ought not to be axiomatic that to refer to Atzmon is anti-semitic.
Some of this is troubling. We are all more aware nowadays of historic involvement in the slave trade. The BBC recently did some excellent programmes on Scotland and the slave trade. Yet the report contains an analysis by the Community Security Trust p.363 that states that to discuss Jewish involvement in the slave trade (in the instance in question, it was a Jewish person discussing) is an anti-semitic trope. The dangers of this approach are obvious. I have not studied it, and I doubt that Jewish involvement in the slave trade was as bad as Scottish. But I do not doubt it existed, and it ought to be equally as open as Scottish involvement to investigation and comment. You cannot dismiss just everything that may show any group of Jewish people in a bad light as “an anti-semitic trope”.
In short, in my view the report correctly identifies the existence of genuine antisemitism from a small minority of Labour Party members. It correctly identifies that the Labour Party machinery was highly incompetent in dealing with the vast majority of complaints of anti-semitism. It identifies that almost all input from Corbyn’s office was demanding tougher and firmer action. But it makes the error, in its desire to clear the Labour Party of any taint of anti-semitism, of enthusiastically endorsing definitions of anti-semitic behaviour which are so wide as to chill legitimate free speech.
So what conclusions can we form? Well, the first is that Corbyn failed to be sufficiently ruthless in clearing out the quite extraordinarily right wing Blairites that he had inherited as Labour Party HQ staff. The Labour Party is a horribly complex institution, with elected committees, and powerful unions to appease who control the purse strings. But Blair and Brown had managed to create a machine in their own right wing image, and it is hard to read this report without concluding that Corbyn lacked the ruthlessness required in a leader to spot enemies and be rid of them.
But then, his not being a ruthless bastard is why so many people flocked to support Corbyn in the first place.
The second point is that Corbyn’s tactic of constantly attempting to appease the media on anti-semitism was never going to work. The right wing press and TV had no genuine interest in anti-racism, other than as a tool to prevent the possible election of a European style social democratic government. Neither the media nor the Blairites were ever going to reconcile to Corbyn. We will never know what would have happened if he had come out and denounced the witch-hunt as an attempt to stifle supporters of the Palestinians, and spoken openly of Israel’s move to apartheid. He had the nerve to take on the establishment narrative when he stated that British military invasions cause terrorist blowback at home, and won public support. Whether a firm line on Palestine and calling out the witch-hunt would have had a better result than giving way before ten thousand unfair attacks, we can never know.
There are more general points therefore to consider about the nature of power and of political parties. I intend to address these in a further article – including some very worrying similarities with the staff and orientation of SNP HQ.
With grateful thanks to those who donated or subscribed to make this reporting possible.
This article is entirely free to reproduce and publish, including in translation, and I very much hope people will do so actively. Truth shall set us free.
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One doesn’t have to read it all to recognise that this report is utter filth.
1) THE GENERAL ELECTION
I searched through the report for the word “manifesto”, looking for whether there was any mention of WHY the Zionist organisation with help from the BBC etc. destroyed the Labour party’s chances of winning the December 2019 election – which was of course because of what was written in the Labour manifesto. There was no mention at all.
Anybody remember what the manifesto actually said was? Here are three relevant Labour promises:
a) stop selling the Zionist regime weapons to be used “in violation of the human rights of Palestinians”
b) “secure justice and accountability for breaches of human rights, such as (in Gaza)” (in other words allow Israeli war criminals to be prosecuted in Britain)
c) “A Labour government will immediately recognise the state of Palestine”
There followed the largest ever open Zionist campaign against a major political party in a British general election. Labour’s voteshare crashed from 40% to 32% within two years, and the Tories – a party led for most of those two years by the most incompetent prime minister in living memory, and then for the last few months by a guy who tried to shut Parliament down, kept losing Commons votes, and had hardly ever appeared at PMQs – won with a landslide.
What happened? Answer, “the Lobby” happened.
2) “SHADOWY ELITE”
I read the first few pages, until I got to the bit that blames “social media” for the “growth and sharing” of ideas about a “shadowy global elite“. It’s interesting that a former DPP is now Labour leader, because that kind of idiot talk could easily come from the mouths of the Crown Prosecution Service who want to clamp down on people who post to the internet who show insufficient deference towards their “betters”.
What if there WERE a shadowy global elite? How would these great bullsh*tter “investigators” and “report writers” in the Labour party ever find out? They wouldn’t be able to, would they? Therefore nobody should take what they say seriously. The decision to commission the report was an act of kowtowing to the Zionists.
Oh no, wait – everything is basically above board, parliament is sovereign, and bourgeois democracy is as fair and free and open as all the politicians of all the parties pretend, especially at election time. So anyone who talks of a “shadowy elite” should be ignored, excluded, or even silenced or hunted down. Yeah, right.
3) LIES ABOUT GILAD ATZMON
The report calls Gilad Atzmon an anti-Semite.
I wouldn’t wipe my a*se with any document that slanders Atzmon in that way. He is not a racist or anti-Semite of any kind whatsoever. Take a look at his websiteto find out what he really says.
4) THE REQUIRED RESPONSE
Basically some of those who supported Jeremy Corbyn should now forget the Labour party and go extra-parliamentary.
Sadly few will, just as few did when the party leader Tony Blair started openly Thatcherism in 1994.
There’s pretty much a National Government in all but name, even if leading Labour figures aren’t working from ministerial offices in Whitehall. The Labour Party is not in any way an opposition, any more than the Social Democratic Party was in West Germany when it joined the “Grand Coalition” in 1966.
…and we’ve all got to respect Tory politicians, medics, policemen, “experts”, etc., because we’ve all got to pull together to stop the spread of the lurgy, right? (Except if you’re in a care home, of course. Then you’re not supposed to “pull together” – you’re supposed to shut up and die.) That’s the time we’re in right now, and the fact that so few are speaking against it is truly terrifying…
“One doesn’t have to read it all to recognise that this report is utter filth.”
This is an example of how you undercut your own sometimes excellent argument. Remove the headline and immediately, it makes more sense. Yes the report is a limited hangout, yes the report is a mere sliver of everything that was happening, but also yes, the report is also very useful.
C. Recognition of what, Palestine from sea to shining sea or the Bantustans?
For a minute there i read it as Clown Prosecution Service, which of course makes much more sense.
Any serial parodists out there interested in putting together a comic book starring Vanessa Baraitser and her pals as a troupe of Harlequinas? Pretty sure I have a couple of photos of her. She is fetching as a clown.
Let me know.
N_ a lot of truth in what you say. I think MPs like the inestimable Richard Burgeon, Ian Lavery, Long-Bailey and any other left wingers in the Party should start their own Party something like “The Peoples Party for Social Democracy” or something like that. Starmer is seriously bad news for anyone with a remote interest in supporting the poor and the vulnerable, in Keynsian spending to revive the economy, in investing in young people, in creating a fairer benefits system. He has nothing to say really, at least nothing that in any way would benefit the UK, the Economy, protect people’s jobs and build significantly more affordable housing. After all, the first thing he did when he won the Leadership election was to write a snivelling, grovelling, pathetic letter to the President of the BoD. That was his first priority. Not demanding an urgent recall of Parliament about the Lock Down, the shambles of CV-19 (not to mention the mass hysteria created by fake news reported by the MSM), not Brexit, not the dire straits the British economy is in. No. To appease the BoD was his first priority. That says everything anyone needs to know about him. At least Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had some vim and vigour about them and did introduce very good policies to help single parents get back to work, almost eradicated homelessness, invested hundreds of millions in modernising the NHS (which monies were grossly misspent by the NHS) and so on and so forth. Starmer, I don’t think he has any interest whatsoever in Labour policies, social democracy, in rebuilding the economy I’m not even sure that he understands politics at all. So far, the MSM are heaping praise on his performance at yesterday’s PMQs – the reality is he was rubbish if anyone watched it. He only got away with his poor performance because Dominic Raab is, like most Tory MPs, into ‘soundbite’ politics – in other words, facts and information don’t matter, lob out a few ‘soundbites’ and the MSM will do their duty and splash it all over the papers.
“Atzmon is of course an Israeli Jew of controversial views particularly on Jewish identity, but it ought not to be axiomatic that to refer to Atzmon is anti-semitic.”
He is not a Jew. He has specifically said that he is not a Jew.
“Jewish” is a cultural identity. The only acceptable non-racist approach to deciding whether or not a person is a Jew is to go by whether they view themselves as Jewish or not. Gilad Atzmon does not view himself as such.
Crap, you walk the walk or you’re a hypocrite (unless you accept a claim from me that I’m Jewish because I say so). Jews are people who follow the religion, not poseurs into a bit of occasional conformity. Judaism isn’t tupperware where you you pick what you please and ignore the rest. Atzmon stopped following the religion, ergo he resigned from being Jewish. The difference between him and unspeakable criminals against humanity like Netanyahoo is that they lie about it.
And all the Jewish atheists who founded Israel? What religion had they? Clue: Zionism is not a religion.
What is Atzmon lying about, exactly?
Please gas elsewhere.
You don’t want to help? Fine. Time for a change and you don’t care.
You can’t be Jewish and an atheist.
Squeeth, I understand what you and N_ are saying. There is an excellent book called “How I Learned to Stop Being a Jew”. It is a short and brilliant read by someone who is Israeli. In that book, Shlomo Sand differentiates between being ‘Jewish’ and being an Israeli citizen and N_ is right in what he says about Atzmon. Judaism is a religious faith not a national identity. In the same way that Catholicism say, Hindu, Muslim etc are religious faiths. What Judaism, Hindu, Muslim faiths have in common is that they underpin society and culture in its entirety and, in the case of Israel, it’s politics also. Sand in his book says the Israeli Government want Israel to be referred to as The Jewish State which is not accepted by many Israelis as there are many Israeli citizens who do not participate in the Jewish faith but are members of other religious faiths and organisations. It is an enlightening read and was described as being “a quiet earthquake of a book”. It is short, easy to read and a page turner.
“Underpin society”? No, society is the people not superstitious mumbo-jumbo.
I don’t really care if Gilad Atzmon is anti-semitic or not but I read his website a bit and I haven’t found anything so far that strikes me as anti-semitic (though some of it does strike me as rubbish). Perhps someone could help me by pointing out the anti-semitic bit.
Thanks for your, as always, excellent research on this concerted move by the Blairite aparatschiks, supported by the bbc and 90%of the now right wing printed media, Craig.
Far from wasting time trying to change it from within, again, after this proof of utter rot and careerist destruction, egged on by a mass murderer on the sidelines who should be in jail,
Members should leave and form a new party with a less covuluted structure, aclear commitment to sustaibable pol8cies, fair proportional elections at all political levels, a complete reform of the judicial system, the end of public broadcasting as it is undermined to the 77th. Degree, no adherence to unions that demand political guiding and disproportional say, an end to religous interference or special positioning in the party/ies. Full adherence to UNHR and the rights to selfdetermination, reform of the EU as a prerogament to our participation within, selections of Mp’s for one term only with an automatic gender exchange at every election, drawing of candidates open to all within a constituency in a random process, including 16 year olds on the electoral roll, etc.etc.
We have time to waste on fighting for the hollow body of a thoroughly abused and hopelessly compromised political party of cheats and backstabbing Atlanticists who are hanging on multiple strings and are pulled away from truly representing their constituents who deserve better.
Creating a real new party is the only way to galvanise the trust many young people have given to Labour. I’m sure that many will agree and switch their allegiances away from the compromats of old.
Any new party would be instantly swamped with chancers, carpetbaggers, place men and opportunists and a few spooks. Not that I care, they have to live somewhere.
Indeed. Given this report the pretence of democracy in the UK is exposed, it’s a joke, but who’s having the larfs eh!
Perhaps it’s time to admit that there is no left wing in the UK, and also just ditch the farce of elections. The money used for elections campaigns could be given to charities and foodbanks, might as well, it’s what the right wing and far right wing overall idea of democracy is based on. Take the taxes off the sheeple, keep them poor, on the breadline, hand a few crumbs back via charity.
The people are being made fools of by the Britnat establishment, Labour, Tories, the royals, the HOL’s farce, all of them, laughing their heads off at the sheeple. Trickle up effect, archimedes screw, the people are royally screwed.
The SNP had better get their house in order as well, if not we might as well all give up and go back to being called north Britain. You can still get a fag paper between the Britnats and the SNP, but any difference in outlook is on a shoogly peg as well.
UK is a cesspit.
Bill Thomson, not necessarily so. There is a wealth of solid left-wing talented people in the Labour Party and in its membership. The shocking thing about this report is that Stoogie Starmer is more concerned about the people named in the report who showed bullying hatred, racism and lots more and actively worked to influence the public away from a much needed Labour Government – needed m ore than ever at the moment. He by-passed the NEC. Richard Burgeon set out in a tweet exactly what action Stoogie Starmer and the NEC should take in relation to the contents and the actions of the people in it. He was spot on. Starmer? A Press Stooge and a BoD stooge therefore, is not an effective Leader of the Opposition. Even if the Left wing break away and members resign, I believe a new Left-wing party would gain some traction quite a lot in fact, with the public at this present time. Starmer is a faceless bureaucrat whose sole aim is to get into power. Look at his Cabinet, an MP who stated the Labour Party should be ‘tougher on Benefits than the Tories”, A Defence Minister who was a huge fanboy for the invasion of Iraq, A Foreign Secretary who has strong and detailed ties with Israel and whose campaign funding was a mixture of pro-jewish organisations, anti-corbyn organisations etc. Stoogie Starmer of course refused to declare his backers – now, if he had noting to hide why would he do this? Time is ripe for a new Left wing Party in Politics.
@Nevermind – My post on the same issue is “held up in the mod queue”, but yes, I agree on the main point – leave the Labour party and set up a new organisation.
But it’s time to go extra-parliamentary.
One remarkable thing is that hardly anybody on the left remembers the three specific promises in the 2019 Labour manifesto that provoked the Z10nists – assisted by Tories, LibDems, and BBC – into smashing Labour’s election chances. A was followed by B, as clear as day, but loads of people write loads of stuff and ignore it.
Now there’s a national government in all but name.
Zionists are tools of the state, not mere tools. They are a modern Brownshirt militia who smear anyone uncongenial to the boss class of the US and its fiefdoms like Britain. That’s why they lick Orban’s and the Ukrinazis’ arses.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/24/zionism-in-the-age-of-the-dictators/
On Ken Livingstone, I do not think in the least that Ken is an anti-semite. I do however think he is wrong. I have always found the discourse around Nazi/Zionist links disturbing and generally anti-semitic in motivation. Of course there may have been contact at some early stage between Nazis who wished to eradicate Jews from Europe, and Zionists who wished Jews to move to Israel. But what purpose is there in pointing that out? The Jew-hatred of the Nazis is indisputable, and any misguided Zionist who tried to deal with them was not therefore a Nazi supporter. It is a pointless discussion with highly unpleasant undertones. How Ken was entrapped into it I struggle to understand.
Cop out, double standard, sophistry. Your liberal roots are showing Craig.
Here is Ken’s entrapment piece from the Daily Politics show. I personally don’t think he’s anti-Semitic, yes he made some foolish comments, but they were hardly anti-Semitic.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PrBQMJEObR8
Ken Livingstone was an old man being sandbagged. Standard M.O. from HQ.
Shai Masot saw to it personally and LFoI then had a big Passover circle jerk. The Al Jazeera Israel Lobby doc amounted to nothing, only ratcheted up the bullshit.
Just ask Corbyn. And Ken.
The last people in the world who can be counted on to straighten out the mess in the Middle East are Brits. They have too long been addicted to the schmaltz and its delivery mechanisms. They are worse than Americans. Maybe start admitting this and actually do something constructive and productive. You know, something simple, like telling Zionists they are racists, instead of renewing your Guardian subscription.
Start with Tony Blair and his showbiz delusions.
Why isn’t UK culture brimming with portrayals of Tony as the Zionist ass clown that he’s always been?
Man up, Ladies!
Re KEN LIVINGSTONE, Eastern European ethno nationalisms in the early 20th century encompassed a great deal of Jew-hate and were very keen on cleansing their nations of these unassimilable aliens. They frequently talked of “encouraging Jewish emigration” or even “expelling Jews” (though not usually of extermination, until this ‘final solution’ became a realistic option thanks to Nazi example and occupation). Thus, the anti-Semitic Nazis were at first keen on “encouraging” Jewish emigration in the most muscular way possible (before they fixed on the ‘final solution’). The point of drawing a similarity between Zionism and Nazis was to demonstrate that they were two sides of the same ethno-nationalist coin. Both believed that people of different races could not live together in peace and security and that all ethnic groups should therefore establish their own exclusive ethno-states. Nazis were as willing to rid Germany of Jews as Zionists were to get them to Palestine with a view to building a Zionist state. Ken Livingstone’ point was drawing attention to this similarity which, in a purely academic historical context, is true (and not in itself ‘antisemitic’; many nations claimed their right to statehood on ethnic grounds and many also engaged in expulsion, genocide and land-grabbing to achieve their goals). And whereas many states today (though not all) have moved on to civic rather than ethno-nationalism, Israel remains wedded to the earlier concept. But this is a complicated argument to make on an emotive subject in the age of sound bites and media gotcha-ism. Whatever the accuracy of the historical argument, most people would not hold it against zionists to make whatever deals necessary with the Nazis (or even with the Devil) to rescue German Jews in the 1930s, considering the exceptionally awful situation of the Jews in Nazi Germany and of course, knowing with hindsight about the ‘final solution’.
Final Solution meant expulsion until late 1941, when the defeat of Barbarossa made it impossible at the same time that the looting of the USSR had to be postponed. Soviet food would be needed by the Ostheer and not available for export to Germany; the Hongerplan had to wait. The Generalgouvernment was changed into a food export area by Aktion Reinhard, a plan to murder the 3m Jews in concentration camps and blockade the non-Jewish population until the 1942 harvest was in. The non-Jewish population (Poles and those not Jewish deported thence) were lucky that the 1942 harvest was so good, they got to eat something, despite the 500,000 tons of food exported to Germany. Antisemitism played a dominant part in the selektion of the victims but the plan was founded on utilitarianism. With no Jews in the Generalgouvernment, 3m people would still have been murdered to facilitate the food quota.
Squeeth.
Again, Ken Livingstone wasn’t the one doing the talking. It was an off the cuff remark.
I remember the film, he did talk. Everything he said was true apart from “1932”.
What a patronising school masterly piece of cock swinging. Put it away before you break something.
It is intensely worrying that you see similarities between Labour staffers and some Labour politicians, and those of the SNP. This is the very scenario that so many have been warning about for so long. There is little to nothing we can do about the civil service figures around the SNP leadership, but there must be some way to weed out those who are soft on independence. However, there is another angle: the two situations are very different, in one sense, in that almost every Labour person I have ever heard of, north and south of the border, identifies as ‘British’ which, in today’s politics means England-as-the-UK.
I have not the slightest doubt that the establishment would have been gunning for Corbyn even supposing elements of his own party were not, and the establishment would have used the right-wing dissidents against Corbyn and exploited their alienation from him and his policies to keep him out of office. In Scotland, that becomes more difficult because those associated with the SNP are, by implication, dissidents against the establishment and England-as-the-UK, so the starting points are different, too, and I think that this is where it starts to get dirty. In order to bring down a SNP government in Scotland, an effort will have to have been made to either ‘turn’ existing people within the organization or to introduce double agents and agents provocateur, probably years before they are actually needed. This occurred in NI, with the IRA and Sinn Fein, and in the NUM, with a few around Scargill. We probably still don’t know the extent of it in either case. Job done.
That the SNP will certainly have been subjected to this type of British State operation is a given. Ergo, perhaps we should be looking at both malcontents and dissidents within the higher echelons of the independence sphere, and also double agents using that alienation to create division and disharmony in the ranks. Many have expressed their dissatisfaction with Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership (outwith this pandemic, and specifically in the way she has been perceived to have caved in, as it were, to British expectations on another indyref). In other words, are we putting the cart before the horse? Has Nicola Sturgeon been steered down a cul de sac by her own advisers and others around her, as well as having been subjected to tactics of confusion and/or subtle threats by agents of the British State, and even Westminster and Whitehall themselves? In other words, are we seeing an attempt to derail the independence movement and to bring down two, not one, leader in advance of an election where others could be elected, or, perhaps, with a placeman/woman waiting in the wings, as Starmer was waiting to take over the Labour leadership? Two birds with one stone?
In one sense, then, it is quite feasible that both the Labour Party and the SNP are the victims of their own hubris, exploited by outside agents? Is that where the similarity lies? Oddly, Nicola Sturgeon seems determined now to move away from the British government by dealing with the pandemic in a different way – through independent procurement abroad, using a Scottish airport to bring in supplies of PPE, to lockdown and calling for stricter regulation for those coming through passenger airports. Some independent dynamic is working itself out through this pandemic, perhaps?
Lorna Campbell
Craig wrote a straight piece about Labour corruption to confound his critics who accuse him of being extreme.
Cricket and politics are boring games by which the British pretend not to be grabbing and abusing the inhabitants of their colonies.
When they have convinced everyone they are utterly boring, they resume thrashing their colonial slaves. After Dominic Raab’ s show of being utterly responsible and caring, this ultra right wing conservative foaming bonkers PM will resume bashing the English nation.
Stiff upper lips and teatime create the illusion of normality, and after a good leak and hot air everybody will have forgotten what the swine have done.
Militant Tendency entryism was nothing compared to the subversion of the Labour Party by the oligarchy.
«the subversion of the Labour Party by the oligarchy.»
I call that the Mandelson Tendency entrysm. Some people call it blairism, but he was just a follower of Peter Mandelson; couple of quotes:
Lance Price, “Diary”, 1999-10-19:
“Philip Gould analysed our problem very clearly. We don’t know what we are. Gordon wants us to be a radical progressive, movement, but wants us to keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks that we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe.”
Tony Benn diary, 1993-05-19, in his last NEC meeting:
“I think, candidly, what is happening is that the party is being dismantled. The trade union link is to be broken; the economic policy statement we are considering today makes no reference to the trade unions. Clause 4 is being attacked; PR is being advocated with a view to a pact with the Liberals of a kind that Peter Mandelson worked for in Newbury, where he in fact encouraged the Liberal vote.”
Excellent article again Craig! It’s sad that the LP have been shredded by Neo-Liberal infiltration and is top heavy with People who would likely be considered right wing even if they had been in the Tory party!
Your ending of the piece alluding to the SNP is obviously of more concern to me than what goes on in England but there is definitely a similar pattern, although Labour have had this happen for far longer. I look forward to your analysis of the SNP ‘problem’!
A very useful article thank you for putting it together. I wish articles like this could be read in a free press in this country.
I will send a one off to your account. Sorry I cant subscribe on my low income. I’m sure it won’t be the last time I support you.
I remember in the weeks before the leadership elections that Corbyn won, thousands of leftwing Labour members were preremptoraly expelled from the Party for the most spurious reasons. Yet now these treasonous Blairite weasels, sabotaging the Party from the top while living high on members’ money, must be granted an interminable investigation by their own ilk and allowed to sue the Party? Clearly some in the People’s Party remain far more equal than others, no matter what they have done.
Brian C – I would be interested to see what a court case would look like because they used public forums such as WhatsApp etc. Thos who appeared on the Panorama programme and state they will be suing the Party on the basis that their reputations had been damaged because Labour accused them of being ‘politically motivated’ appears to me to be completely misguided. They chose to go on that programme, tell lies on it and were hand picked for their anti-Corbynism. I don’t believe they have any sort of legal leg to stand on quite frankly, they chose to appear on a completely biased programme, tell lies and were clearly, very clearly politically motivated as this report shows. Likewise, with this report, they are saying they are going to sue under the Data Protection Act – but they are MPs, Labour HQ staff and used public modes of communication such as WhatsApp and e-mails. Now, these e-mails appear to have been sent from their office i.e. with their Labour Party e-mail addresses. These are the property of the Labour Party NOT the owners as it is a use of their office resources. If they are referring to the leak as being the reason they are suing well, many reports are leaked naming and shaming people I don’t see they had a case in law. However, what we do know is that the MSM will make a huge issue of it and, once again, the right wing of the Labour party will cause further damage to it and this country’s politics.
Gilad Atzmon’s crude analysis holds ‘Jewishness’ responsible for the ills of political Zionism, which he considers ahisotrically. He is poison for the Palestinian solidarity movement and his analysis been roundly rejected leading Palestinians. Please don’t attempt to rehabilitate him – its not okay to share his posts ever nor to cite him as an authority on anything.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/palestinian-writers-activists-disavow-racism-anti-semitism-gilad-atzmon
Former Israel born Jew and former IDF. You don’t like him because he knows precisely what he’s talking about.
That’s just like your opinion man. You are welcome to tell me what you think but not to deny me my own opinion of his utterances.
Do any of you know Gilad? He’s a nut! But he’s not an anti-anything Other than violence, he’s a big galoot and a hippy, with a big mouth and plays some mean horn, he wants everyone to live in peace and harmony and cast off cultural and religious dogma.
But he is a nut!
“All jews are Zionist” would be anti-semitic. I’ll see if I can find the part where he says that.
Johny, I don’t see that it is anti-semitic at all.
Of course there may have been contact at some early stage between Nazis who wished to eradicate Jews from Europe, and Zionists who wished Jews to move to Israel. But what purpose is there in pointing that out?
Zionism *is* racism. Pointing out that Zionists collaborated with Nazis in the ’30 is part of the history of Zionism and well worth pointing out.
Mike
Its worth pointing out because the whole episode around Ken Livingstone illustrates the MSM’s dishonesty and idleness. They’re not interested in the facts referred to, instead they just treat KL’s words as evidence of anti-semitism.
Great work Craig.
I’ve cancelled my Labour Party membership and asked for a refund of all the years since I joined.
The treachery of Sam Matthews shines through the total report. I would like to be more explicit but I don’t want to get banned or sued!
Do you remember this article:
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-has-done-more-to-inflame-antisemitism-than-any-political-figure-since-second-world-war-1.486310https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-has-done-more-to-inflame-antisemitism-than-any-political-figure-since-second-world-war-1.486310
I wonder if he has secret funders? I hope so because I can’t imagine anyone would employ him after this.
@ Aidworker1 April 21, 2020 at 16:48
The link in your comment doesn’t work, but this one does:
‘Jeremy Corbyn has done more to inflame antisemitism than any political figure since Second World War’:
https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/jeremy-corbyn-has-done-more-to-inflame-antisemitism-than-any-political-figure-since-second-world-war-1.486310
I have only read a few pages of the report, but from other reports of Matthew’s behaviour, I immediately jumped to the conclusion he was a saboteur. I would be extremely surprised if some real anti-Semitic comments hadn’t been deliberately introduced by agents provocateurs (a basic tool in Intelligence Agency tool-boxes).
Thanks Paul- much appreciated.
I agree with what you say.
So the broad-church of the Labour Party turns out to be no broader and capacious than a coffin, who’d have thunk it (apart from everybody). Just needs a stake driven through the well-rotted corpse to be extra certain, some hefty boulders added, before being jettisoned deep at sea, without honours. No flowers please. Nothing is to be gained or learned by examining the entrails as is happennig here. Pity the poor fish, but good riddance to bad rubbish.
Just Don’t Vote. We don’t consent to any of this, don’t legitimise a process controlled by an insignificant minority who’ve hi-jacked it and are hostile to our every interest. If it weren’t a waste of good-bog-rolls I’d suggest throwing them at them, but they’d only round them up and sell them back to us.
don’t vote and thereby vote Tory, says Tony M. How about voting for people who have a progressive agenda that does not speak of tax cuts and massive arms spending Tony? vote Green why don’t you, no better time than now.
Unless, off course, you don’t like Greens either, ah well, its shut up and take it as it comes for you then.
I voted in 1983 to say that I had done, spoilt my ballot in 1987 and stopped playing about afterwards. Since then I’ve only voted in democratic elections – a few union gigs and the exit referendum. Introduce a democratic electoral system like the one in Weimar Germany and I’d vote like shite off a shovel.
I have voted in every election since 1968 and my vote has never changed or influenced anything. In the three constituencies I’ve lived in, the seat has always remained with the incumbent or a candidate of the same party.
I sincerely, although perhaps mistakenly believe that in the event of those who decide such things tiring of Boris and his criminal gang of charlatans and deciding that a change of government was required, then the Tory ‘B’ Team currently in Opposition would be duly elected, even if not a solitary vote was recorded for them.
If there’s a single office or function of state in Britain that isn’t comprehensively corrupted then I’ve yet to imagine it.
We are truly a cess pit and the leaked Labour report simply confirms it.
I’d vote in a democratic election.
https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/that-leaked-labour-party-report-craig-murray-takes-a-view/
“Naomi Wayne
21st April 2020 at 13:49
It’s a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant analysis – perhaps more detailed and rounded than anything we have seen so far – I commended it to everyone. It is marred by one failure of understanding. As your introduction says, “On the issue of antisemitism, he is absolutely clear that there are horrific examples of antisemitism within the report “but also instances where I would query the categorisation as antisemitism not only of Labour HQ at the time, but of this report”.
Later he specifically queries automatically treating as antisemitism providing links to quotes from Gilad Atzmon: “Several instances are given of quoting or linking to Gilad Atzmon as evidence of anti-semitism, seemingly with no need felt to analyse the particular Atzmon article being quoted. Atzmon is of course an Israeli Jew of controversial views particularly on Jewish identity, but it ought not to be axiomatic that to refer to Atzmon is anti-semitic”.
David Rosenberg has commented on this: . . . (Murray) is too understanding of people who fell foul of the disciplinary system for mentions of Gilad Atzmon. While there are still activists fooled by the basic facts that Atzmon grew up and did army service in Israel and is/was Jewish (he considers himself an ex-Jew), you really don’t have to look too deeply into Atzmon’s writings since 2003/4 to the present to see them replete with Jewish conspiracy theories and Holocaust revisionism, or to see how he has been denounced as an antisemite by many leading Palstinain commentators and organisations.”
I agree with David on this. If a person accused of antisemitism for quoting Atzmon says, “I didn’t know he was antisemitic”, my view is that person should be allowed to defend themself and not be kicked out or otherwise disciplined without the opportunity to provide any evidence in support of that defence. But s/he will have a bloody great hill to climb to rebut the antisemitism allegation. The evidence of Atzmon’s antisemitism is huge, and many people have taken his views apart. It’s worth going to http://jfjfp.com/gilad-atzmon-and-jewishness/
IN spite of this, Murray’s piece still stands head and shoulders above most others – it is to be hoped that he will take on board this criticism (which he has been told about) – and substitutes another example to make his very valid point. After all, it’s not if there aren’t many others, sadly.”
Zionist Partei line; expect a lot more of this antisemitic drivel by the weekend.
Atzmon is not an anti-semite, but what they call a self-hating Jew. That’s the language they use.
It is nevermind a crisis of the legitimacy of the electoral/democratic process. I just don’t want to and won’t play their game any more. I advocated SNP in Scotland, Corbyn’s Labour in RUK with Green as an alternative there (though feel they’re captive of the nuke-power lobby and enablers of the global-warming/climate-change/whatever-they’re-calling-it today baloney and even a taste of power for them would be dangerous). Would have voted for Corbyn if he had been standing in my constituency/country. He had ample time to weed out and deselect, brutally, the Blairite and other malignant infiltrations, pare the bloated party bureaucracy to the bone, as a priority. I felt as you here do, once upon a time, lambasted those who advocated principled abstention. Thought a vote too valuable to waste. Disillusioned now hardly covers it. The system is broken, all that is on offer is more of the same, but worsening relentlessly cumulatively. A police-state has descended, it will never be rolled back in my lifetime. Fear stalks the land. Anyone’s door could be crashed in at any moment, anyone dragged off and disappeared for a lifetime, on some deranged power-mad petty bureaucrat’s whim.
this blog post is about the state of the Labour Party and the racist hate campaign that it was subjected to for three years plus, not about anything else.
To divert it into an academically subjective chat about what is and is not anti semitic is diverting the tone of the thread a tad. Object by all means, but such marmite views of a person that is trying to keep alive by peddling tropes, are like p…..g in the wind.
Why would the AfD in Germany love the Zionist model and its drive and Apartheid hatred shown towards the Palestinian semites? Are Zionist anti semitic?
Yes
Nevermind, you ask
‘Are Zionists anti semitic?’
Well yes. They are the true, visceral anti semites. Check the provenance, personnel makeup and actual actions of the Stern Gang, Irgun and their ilk in the period straddling the inception of the ongoing zionist occupation of Palestine. Google for ‘list of zionist atrocities Stern gang/Irgun’, et voila! Anti semite in tooth and claw.
Cheers!
Whilst Corbyn was probably a ‘nice guy’ and definitely not the ruthless type, he was also a truly terrible political leader who managed to undermine his own supporters morale by refusing to robustly defend himself when smeared as an anti-Semite. Effectively his lack of outgrage or skill in relation to the terrible smears made it look like there was something to them. He was, for the last couple of years, a disaster as leader and those around him were even worse.
Corbyn seems to have been a kind of ‘politcal pacivist’ which is completely the opposite of what a political leader of a major party needs to be in the UK’s political climate with a rabidly rightwing media culture, including the ghastly Guardian.
I’d also question whether Corbyn was really so popular among Labour’s members and voters. He became leader by accident or default, as a spasm, a righteous revulsion against what the party had become, the machine and the leadership’s lurch to the right or centre. Such was the membership’s hatred of the old regime, that almost anyone who stood against them was going to win and become leader. Only winning was the ‘easy’ part, leading a party where the vast majority of MPs despised Corbyn was altogether another story, requiring other talents. Not ‘ruthlessness’, which is an excuse, but the ability to defend oneself when one is smeared as an anit-Semite, surely that’s not asking too much?
Corbybn was never really frontbench material, which is why he spent his entire career miles away from the political ‘frontline.’ It wasn’t his politics, but his abilities that kept him from a leading position. He was also way too much of a sentimentalist about the ‘Labour tribe’ and loved the Labour movement too much to be an effective leader in the harsh times we live in. He never seemed to really understand that the Labour Party needs to be ‘split’ or smashed to bits and re-made as something else entirely if one is ever going to have a chance as reviving ‘social democracy’ again. Something that may be doomed, anyway.
And even if by some kind of miracle he’d become PM, then the trouble would only have just started. It would have been dire, ugly and dreadful and he was never the right person to occupy such a ‘dangerous’ position. It was always going to end in tears, but at least he could have made an attempt to fight back, instead of meekly going out with a whimper.
Corbyn was useless; it was obvious within three days. He went to a state gig, didn’t wear a tie and didn’t sing the wrong national anthem. He was criticised in the press and….apologised. I said that he was finished and that I would tell you that I told you that I told you so. I kept saying it until he ceded the gig to Bliar II. Liarbour voters deserved what they got but I didn’t. I told you so.
Squeeth
Corbyn maybe didn’t sing but mumbled along quietly because he was a crap singer, the way english people do. But what is the proof that thats what happened rather than just another lie? You were right about his talents, perhaps, but as write on says it was a one horse race so it was still best to support him.
No, the Bliar excuse of 1997 won’t wash, for reasons which must be obvious by now. If he’d sung (or mumbled) the right national anthem and told the press to bugger off, things might have been different.
The reality is we could well be three years into a Labour government now had snake officials not sabotaged the 2017 election. Among other things that would have meant a properly funded and equipped NHS.
I think we have Hasbara trolls – Mods can you stop posts from these people?
—
[ Mod: Yes, we certainly can – and we do so on a daily basis. it would be good to publish the evidence. However, ‘writeon’ has not been particularly problematic up till now so there’s no block on comments from that persona as things stand. But we’re keeping an eye on developments. ]
I really can’t see what’s wrong with the view that Corbyn wasn’t a particularly effective or good leader of the Labour Party. I suppose one could argue that he did his best under very difficult circumstances and that the establishment, the press, most of the PLP were terrified of the prospect of him becoming PM; but I don’t think he played the cards he’d been dealt, well. His reaction to the anti-Semitism smear campaign was woefully inadequate. One wonders why the right is so ‘good’ at identifying the ‘weaknesses’ of left leaders and exploiting them so well, compared to the left?
Galloway said as much in what was otherwise a pro-Corbyn appraisal piece for RT. Corbyn wasn’t a leader, he was simply giving expression to that which had been long suppressed in the party and indeed the country under the Tories and New Labour. A desire that remains unfulfilled even now. Hence the SNP’s enduring popularity and centrist Starmer’s likely lack of political traction.
Ideally Tony Benn should have had his Corbyn moment, and had time not conspired against him he surely would have made a better fist of it than Corbyn did. And they (the PLP) wouldn’t have done to Tony Benn what they did to Corbyn because he’d have wiped the floor with them using the full range of democratic tools at his disposal.
Tony Benn was a charlatan.
Starmer isn’t a centrist, he’s a far-rightist.
Squeeth, what a ridiculous comment. Tony Benn was nothing of the sort. He was a totally committed politician, in fact, a brilliant politician, but like Corbyn and Arthur Scargill and other tellers of the truth, he was crucified by the establishment many times. The establishment doesn’t like the truth. Bojo is a charlatan, Wancock is a charlatan, Dominic Raab is a charlatan, I could go on.
Writeon and Squeeth
Surely this leaked report about one aspect of party disloyalty, plus a rabid and thinktank supported Tory regime , plus the machinations of the MSM, prove that Corbyn was far from weak or useless. His opponents constantly tried to get under his skin and make him lose his cool. He never did, so far as I know. He was always cucumber cool and in full possession of the facts and logical argument. Very unlike Brown and even more unlike Neil Kinnock.
There are several easons why he’s gone. 1/ because of a virulent hate campaign by the BBC this election. 2/ because some idiot insisted on having a second Brexit referendum and 3/ because the voting system was nobbled against him by the Tories. One could go on.
In life one has to learn that apparent failure can sometimes be accompanied internally by a great sense of internal pride and sense of achievement. For many years me and my first wife helped to look after her disabled mum. When she died everything seemed to go wrong, but sometimes that is just the cost of doing good things. Sacrifice is not supposed to be risk-free and we can’t tell what reward will follow our endeavours.
So far we don’t know what Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy will be, but I’m 100% certain it will not be the nasty BBC version.
Corbyn failed of his own accord.
I agree that Corbyn was subjected to a campaign of demonisation, smears and vicious lies that’s probably without parallel in modern British politics. But was this completely unexpected by Corbyn and the group around him? Isn’t this what always happens to people like him? Why didn’t Corbyn’s camp have an effective media strategy? Why didn’t they have a plan to confront the anti-Semitic smears thrown at him? Surely one should ‘loose one’s cool’ when outrageous filth is thrown at one? Righteous anger at being smeared is an effective form of defence and a good rhetorical strategy too. Why didn’t Corbyn or his team call a press conference and surround him with Jewish Labour Party members who were ready and willing to defend him and his reputation and go on the offensive for a change? Labour under Corbyn was in ideological and moral retreat for over two years and looked hopeless. I simply can’t accept that Corbyn was an effective leader.
Giyane thanks for this clarity. It seems to me the MSM are trying to blame Brexit when in fact it was a concerted campaign against him by the MSM, the BBC, ITV and the security services – all based on lies and falsehoods. Nobody would be able to survive this onslaught, nobody. However Jeremy Corbyn was dignified throughout, stuck to task and focus and committed a huge amount of time and energy to fighting the General Election in a clean, intelligent, information based money, meeting the public and never shying away from scrutiny or public interviews. Unlike our current Prime Minister. History will remember Jeremy Corbyn very well as a true visionary, as someone who had a genuine commitment to improving the lives of the poor, the vulnerable and the elderly, whose Manifesto was visionary and who had the most progressive Shadow Cabinet in Parliamentary history.
Writeon I definitely cannot agree with you on this. Corbyn was an excellent Leader of the Opposition he just wasn’t trashy, flashy and an empty vessel. He would have made an excellent Prime Minister Leading the country with intelligence, insight and equality which is why the establishment pulled every single stop out to prevent the Labour Party being elected to Government. Stooge Starmer is a faceless, incompetent, bureaucrat who, quite frankly, appears not to really understand politics – an arena he has only been in for five years compared to JC’s 38 years. JC’s Shadow Cabinet was the most progressive this country has seen in 40 years with visionary policies, a better distribution of wealth, investment in social care with the setting up of the National Care Agency, investment in young people’s education and training, Investment in building more affordable housing and the Green Industrial Revolution which was truly visionary and doable. So, I believe the opposite to you – this country has lost the best chance it had to be led by a serious minded, committed, decent politician who is in politics for the right reasons not for power and vested financial interests but for the nation and the people and the improvement of society. Stooge Starmer’s performance to date? Useless and worthless. No match for JC and, as someone said on another blog, not fit to lick Corbyn’s boots.
“What this report proves beyond any doubt is that the entire thrust of John Ware’s infamous Panorama episode, Is Labour Anti-Semitic, was simply wrong” – Craig Murray.
Interestingly, there are at least two court cases pending over Ware’s notorious ‘Is Labour Antisemitic’ Panorama programme.
1. Justin Schlossberg is taking Ofcom to court, for its failure to follow up multiple complaints and investigate the programme: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/challenge-bbc-bias
2. Ware is taking Paddy French to court. French wrote a very interesting report for Press Gang on the gross bias and inaccuracies in Ware’s programme, entitled, Is The BBC Anti-Labour? — Panorama’s Biased Anti-Semitism Reporting: A Case To Answer. “John Ware claims this publication is seriously defamatory”: https://press-gang.org/tag/paddy-french/. Ware’s lawyer is Mark Lewis, former Director of UK Lawyers for Israel, who is also – oh, astonishment! – the lawyer for Emilie Oldknow – the foul-mouthed abusive former Labour staffer found grotesquely wanting in the leaked Labour ‘antisemitism’ report: https://www.reddit.com/r/Labour/comments/g3442c/aaron_bastani_this_article_detailing_how_emilie/. Lewis is a former Director of UK Lawyers for Israel: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Mark_Lewis
After the leaking of the Labour antisemitism report, my guess is that Schlossberg will win (hooray!) and that Ware will lose (also hooray!).
Strange Days, this really is information that is truly interesting. Thumbs up to Shlossberg. I might contribute to his crowdfunder!
To address your concern about how Ken Livingstone was induced to discuss Nazi co-operation with Zionists: he was being interviewed about the allegations of anti-Semitism against Naz Shah, and one of those allegations was based on an image of Israel superimposed on the USA, with a suggestion that the one country should move – in its entirety – to the other (it wan’t a serious suggestion; my understanding is that it was a response to a plan that had been suggested in Israel, to move all Palestinians into neighbouring Arab countries, whether they wanted to go or not). Livingstone related that to a similar situation in which Jewish people were moved – the Haavara agreement between the German Federation of Zionists and the Nazi Government, which succeeded in transplanting around 60,000 German Jews to what was then British Mandate Palestine in the 1930s. He wasn’t saying Hitler was a Zionist or a supporter of Jewish people in any way. He made it clear that he knew perfectly well that Hitler hated the Jews passionately. But John Mann came along with a film crew, misquoted Livingstone’s words as “Hitler was a Zionist”, and that was that.
Thank you – very accurate!
Hitler was a Zionist! Such a silly utterance!
Hitler did not care about the place of residence of the Jews, except for – they should not live nearby. Later, he realized that if he was going to seize world domination, one way or another the Jews would still be somewhere in the neighborhood, that’s why he decided on extermination.
Hitler hated the Jewish people, primarily because he considered them rivals in the possession of key resources. The idea of Zionism is as far from Hitler’s ideas as the elbow from the ass.
As rightly noted above in the discussion, the definition of Zionism requires modern refinement, because Zionism seems to have already departed from the original idea and the methods are beyond irrelevant to achive the goal. The state of Israel seems inspired by what they can do with impunity today; and the support that they get from their allies, and especially the methods that are implemented with this support – all this indicates that the cursor of Zionism is no longer pointed to simply getting a modest piece of land for unfortunate unjustly offended wanderers.
No, it was the failure of Barbarossa that led to the change from expulsion to extermination, because the Hongerplan was impossible to implement. Note that lots of devalued groups had already been exterminated. Do zionists shed crocodile tears about them?
Well, I admit I’m not good in history. Actually, it was so much time ago that I feel I’d better focuse on contemporary affairs. For history we have experts like Mr. Murray.
What I have with we from my history lessons is a set of basic concepts – Hitler is crap, disrimination is crap and indulgence is crap too. Indulgence and advocating made it possible for Hitler.
I don’t want allow indulgence and advocating kill people, again. That’s why I strongly object this novel turn in society – indulgence of Israeli state politics towards Palestine and Syria, or indulgence of Israeli lobby in UK or US.
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze (2006) read this and you’ll see what you missed.
Ken isn’t a stupid man, he must have known how controversial those remarks would prove to be, even if there was no real malice involved, it looked like silly, needless provocation. Plus, why provide Corbyn and the left’s critics, who are basically at that point waiting to be offended with ammunition? It’s not even as though he’s got the excuse of being a historian or expert either.
Perhaps he knew he’d be “got”, sooner or later and thought it might as well be sooner.
I think Ken enjoys the controversy a little too much – rattling certain cages, venturing opinions on taboo subjects. He’s always been a bit like that and that bravery has doubtless been part of his political appeal over the years.
Previously it would have gone with little comment . However, anything that could be used to attack Corbyn was grabbed at and thus it became a huge story.
Blaming the victim eh? What would have happened if the Liarbour movement had come out fighting, instead of copping out?
@ Goose April 21, 2020 at 21:11
One doesn’t need to be a historian or expert to quote historical fact. Did the Inquisition need experts or even facts to condemn Witches (Incidentally, I believe absolutely in the reality of Witchcraft, having been the target of same for years)?
It should be pretty obvious the whole ‘anti-Semitic’ business was to prevent JC becoming Prime Minister by the fact that it suddenly became an issue when JC became Leader. If the Labour Party was so riddled with anti-Semites, it strains credibility that they all kept their heads down, for decades, with never a whisper from the Board of Deputies or MSM, suddenly to break cover when JC arrived. BS.
Perhaps Ken and Corbyn underestimated the more nasty turn the media had recently taken since the days of their youth. Hence Corbyn’s continued appeasement.
Goose what is wrong with answering a question with examples from history. There is nothing controversial about them the point is how it is distorted quite seriously by the MSM and Broadcasters. Ken Livingstone let’s remember, was the best Mayor of London the City has ever had. But, of course, being Left Wing the MSM will distort whatever he says. There is, actually, nothing controversial about the remarks but the MSM has a knack of creating hype and hysteria by creating fake news and making a mountain out of a tiny ant hole.
> Mike Sivier on Zionism
>
> “one of those allegations was based on an image of Israel superimposed on the USA,
> with a suggestion that the one country should move – in its entirety – to the other”
Personally, I’ve always supported the “two state solution”; Florida and Nevada.
That’s actually a very good, multi-layered joke – and a fair suggestion – that would have, no doubt, had me expelled from the labouriously humourless party, had I even have made the gross error of joining it in the first place.
I mean, why live surrounded by people who hate you, when you could be surrounded by allies in a business friendly nation? (Except, of course, that it might be harder to extort all that financial aid).
Apart from the the pile-on on interest parties, I always thought the hullabaloo over the “Hitler was a Zonist” trope, was to distract from the greater historical question of whether had the German Zionist federation and diaspora done more to support the German left wing that was actually fighting the Nazis, they may have not risen at all in the first place. I thought the history pretty much read that they didn’t because their interests best served by going along with the Nazis, a far more shameful decision but one which resonated with the right versus left alignment today.
I thought the overarching strategy was one of just making any serious discussion of the history, beyond an acceptance and repetition of the IHRA script, so impossible and unattractive that it would never happen.
To this day when now we end up with Keir “I am a Zionist” Starmer’s pretty much first public statement being a “don’t kick me please” to the pro-Israel lobby who, ultimately, have been successful in creating their “grassy knoll” level chilling effect upon British politics.
Oppose us and we will destroy you, just as Shai Masot promised.
As to what has happened to The Guardian and its part in all this, words can’t explain. I would have said it’s only good for lining the bottom of my bird cage now, only when I tried that, it made a terrible mess of my laptop’s keyboard and screen.
From being a 6 day’s paper purchaser, I will not even sign up now so that they can track and digitalise my belonging to them.
Zionists blah blah blah they’re not worth a tinker’s curse. A 12-year old girl in India has died of dehydration whilst trying to walk home alone 150km in hot conditions. In an ocean of tragedy this stands out and that this could happen beggars belief.
Hodges ‘sting’ has a different twist to it now, Corbyn was spot on as usual.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47924025
Rob, what is that woman on? All I can assume that this witch-hunt against Corbyn continues not just within the right of the Labour Party but also by Friends of Israel, other jewish organisations and the MSM is because he still poses a serious threat to the establishment and, as a backbench MP, will provide a robust challenge when it is required which is more than Starmer will do.
I was one of the people expelled from the Labour Party for alleged anti-semitism. DanvHogan sent me a list of every comment they had found going back five years that could remotely be considered anti-semitic. I answered every example they gave — with references where necessary — proving that there was not only no prejudice against people because they were Jews, but that much of what I had written was either verifiable and/or could be shown to be historically accurate. Their main accusation was after they had trawled back over five years to find a book review I’d written on Amazon.
I wrote a nine-page rebuttal quoting every social media example they presented and showing how none of the comments demonstrated any racism at all.
I notice you take Ken Livingstone to task. I was disappointed in you for doing that Craig, as you also acknowledge what he said was historically accurate but then go on to repeat and criticise him using the exact same strawman media campaign distortion of what he actually said.
If someone refers to verifiably accurate historical fact, how can that possibly be an example of racist prejudice??? Have we become so cavalier and dismissive of factual accuracy?
If you are interested I can provide you with the accusations against me and my rebuttal if you like. Then you can decide for your self if I have ever written anything showing prejudice or hatred against all Jews because they are Jewish. I vigorously deny the charge. I have been a lifelong opponent of all racial prejudice, which I abhor.
Revealingly there was a front page hit piece on me in the Jewish Chronicle that appeared before I was even notified that I was expelled. That means those deciding my case had been in touch with them before the decision had been made.
The Jewish Chronicle falsely libelled me as a ‘holocaust denier’ using excerpts from my book review taken out of context and criticising me for saying things that are historically factual. Just like they did with Ken Livingstone. I have children and relatives who will also be tainted by this smear tactic.
And it is not just me. They feel they can attack, smear and expel life-long anti-racist campaigners like Jeremy Corbyn, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, etc. When they can destroy with impunity the reputations of Jews like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, then we should ALL realise that this HAS NEVER BEEN ABOUT COMBATTING RACISM!!!! It has never been about rooting out racial prejudice. It was NEVER genuinely about anti-semitism. It was and is about attacking anyone who supports the human-rights of the beleaguered Palestinian people, and keeping out of power ANYONE who criticises Israel.
That the allegations against you were false is irrelevant, that they were made was expedient for the partei apparat which exploited the fact of the allegations rather than the fact that they were false. Their evidence was beside the point, it was a pretext. That said, they did you a favour, membership of the Liarbour Partei is inconsistent with decency, principle or honesty.
@ Chris Crookes April 21, 2020 at 21:19
“Anti Semitism Is A Trick We Always Use”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hi4oLUVKjIY
What’s new? And of course the MSM go along with it.
If you are the same Chris Crookes your case is described in section 2.3 of the report (pp155ff) as an example of the inaction of Matthews in the face of strong evidence of anti-semitism. The summary describes Chris Crookes as a “holocaust denier”, which, in view of what you have written above, you might consider a lie and libelous.
Joanna Cherry retweeting Alastair Campbell, what has happened to the SNP?? Same as labour i fear….
List of parliamentary supporters of Labour Friends of Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Friends_of_Israel
The idea that Corbyn is some iconoclast good-guy surrounded by nasty foes is laughable, though. Done well for himself, being the long-put-upon spirit of socialism past, hasn’t he?
@ Gav April 21, 2020 at 21:50
‘The idea that Corbyn is some iconoclast good-guy surrounded by nasty foes is laughable, though…’
Why is it laughable?
‘.. Done well for himself, being the long-put-upon spirit of socialism past, hasn’t he?’
In what way? By being elected Leader of the Labour Party? That wasn’t done by big money shoveled into his coffers by Corporations and millionaires, but by a mass of ordinary people who believed in his politics.
You need to explain yourself, not just make apparently baseless allegations or insinuations to be taken seriously.
Hi Paul. Are you under the impression that his rhetoric wasn’t an act to mitigate the reality, to attract that very mass of ordinary people? I’m surprised that there are intelligent people who could say that he was anything more than a lure for the hopeful. And please, less of the ‘baseless’ – the only base to claim the opposite of my view, would be to take a politician’s words as gospel.
I would really love it if I was wrong, though. 🙂
Gav
If cynical people in the LP were using Corbyn ” as a lure for the hopeful “, that reflects on them , not on Corbyn. People tend to remember when they were personally strangled financially by government action, rather than studying politics.
I have been robbed by Thatcher , Brown and political Islam. And those experiences have made me by default a mug for the Corbyn ” lure “.
When Britaun is engaged in an illegal war, which is most of my adult life, I am deeply troubled psychologically. It does my head in that politicians would continue to choose rape pillage and murder like Blair, Briwn and Cameron a fter we experienced two world wars. So I have lost out financially during all those wars, through stress.
Theresa May , sitting on her Tory cowpat luring dungflies while Trump dismantled Daesh, watched only tranquil respite from interminable Zionist wars. So yes I was looking forward to a few more years of peace under Corbyn who was a very powerful opponent of all illegal war.
I voted for Brexit only to stick a spanner in the works of EU UK collusion against Syria and I would vote for anybody who opposed interventionist wars. Lisa Nandy supports interventionist wars so i presume we have one coming, maybe in Yemen, and vital reasons will be found to flatten Yemenis after Covid 19, supported by that dung fly .
Soon my ’50s generation, children of those who lived through the War, will die out, and little girls with big eyes can thump the Despatch Box in favour of flattening Yemen.or wherever. But I prefer my political leaders sit on cowpats and be harmless lures.
So evidence of how many are ready to abandon Labour, in order to be able to stay in with what pays.
Apologies if this has already been posted.
London’s Jewish Chronicle Folds Under COVID-19 Pressure
April 8, 2020,
— The London-based Jewish Chronicle — the world’s oldest Jewish newspaper — announced Wednesday it is folding in the face of the COVID-19 crisis and beginning liquidation proceedings.
In an article published on its website, the 179-year-old weekly said its board had, “with great sadness,” decided to begin voluntary liquidation proceedings.’
https://www.law360.com/articles/1261573/london-s-jewish-chronicle-folds-under-covid-19-pressure
They had to pay out on a libel claim recently – more lies about Labour anti-semitism – so that might have tipped them over the edge.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-chronicle-pay-damages-over-anti-semitism-libel
@ Mary April 21, 2020 at 22:16
I’m sure I read somewhere recently that a front man was taking it over, and there was some controversy because the money behind him was unknown.
I would be extremely surprised if it folded. Some jiggery-pokery afoot, I suspect.
Yes Paul, John Ware! You read it in Craig’s article above!
@ Shatnersrug April 22, 2020 at 03:58
Thanks!
You are right. This reports an attempted acquisition of the assets from the liquidators by the Kessler Foundation (the existing owners) but it is not confirmed.
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/uk-jewish-chronicle-owner-seeks-one-newspaper-by-buying-stricken-assets-624644
Yesterday’s online JP reports Starmer and Thomas-Symonds rolling over onto their tummies for a tickle.
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis receives ‘personal call’ from Sir Keir Starmer on Yom Hashoah
New Labour leader reaffirmed effort to repair breakdown in relations between the party and the community
Yesterday, 16:14
Nick Thomas-Symonds Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary calls Hezbollah ‘antisemitic terrorist organisation’
He adds the party should have adopted IHRA definition ‘much sooner’
Yesterday, 13:30
Mary
We all accept the royal families definition of itself as superior , maybe because we aspire to wealth.
If the Israelis want to accorded special treatment they should try to earn that respect by behaving decently like everyone else, but no they want respect as well as brutalising their Muslim citizens. I for one 200% reject the IHRA definition of antisemitism , 100 % because israel is not exceptional and another 100 % because it makes no effort whatsoever to pretend to be better than anyone else. In fact it is immeasurably worse.
Mary, thanks for this information. Since it was the BoD and the Jewish Chronicle who fabricated the anti-semitism fiasco in order to bring Corbyn down and were the sole instigators and entirely responsible of the breakdown in relations, we have Stoogie Starmer still trying to appease them for what? Nick Thomas-Symonds comments are scandalous, quite frankly scandalous. I would give him this comment: “The Israeli Government is an “anti-arab terrorist organisation” that has been led and managed by a terrorist who, with some past and present cabinet members, waged acts of terrorism on innocent civilians around the world by the use of bombs and other weapons. It is a racist, apartheid Government who is intent on eradicating the Palestinian nation and whose politicians have used the word genocide on numerous occasions to resolve the problem”. Hezbollah is a legitimate political party. All this is becoming very frightening as our Government appears to be controlled by a foreign, apartheid Government who dictates and controls USA and UK Foreign Policy. A small country who are unashamedly using the Holocaust still, to gain political power around the world, untrammeled and unquestioned. I have always said it will be Israel who will start WWIII.
No figure in western political history has ever had to ride the tiger quite like Corbyn did as a proud socialist and anti-imperialist trying to seize control of the historic citadel of capital and imperialism.
He and McDonnell had no road map for successfully negotiating a viciously hostile party machine, MPs, media and state. They tried pacifying the beast by throwing it some sacrifices. Had they shown no quarter they would almost certainly have been chewed up long before they reached the threshold of Downing Street in 2017. Securing power then would have accrued benefits for ordinary people in this country that would have far outweighed the sacrifice of some old allies to the rabid beast. Despite everything, they did almost get there and may well have done had it not been for a coordinated campaign of sabotage by rightist officials. (A sabotage without precedent which has been fully sanctioned by the silence of the BBC and liberal commentariat.)
Now party members in their wisdom have provided us an “opposition” leader who is bankrolled by big business and Israel lobbyists and who has the imprimatur of the Telegraph and Gideon Osborne.
Joel
Except that the sacrifices didn’t work and never even looked like they might, unless you were delusional about the nature of the beast.
Thank You for reading, studying and writing this summary.
I would never read the whole report.
Your summary catches the suspicion that I formely held.
Although left wing I was always cool on Corbyn. I remember Foot (and Militant, I’m from Liverpool)
I considered his reign as a failure. I agree with you that he just lacked ruthlessness. He had no excuse of naivety. He has been around longer than most.
Whatever Johnson and co are, the fact remains that their ‘coup’ was very well organised and a Thatcher style purge was very effective
After the second confirmative Labour leadership vote, Corbyn was sitting on an unassailable majority, with a high wall of ascendancy and support. Why did her not clear the decks then.
Not just administration but the PLP and local government as well?
As you mention, why did he not confront the issue of anti-semitism straight on.
Instead he appeased LFI and went at any Labour member the MSM shouted out. Alienating his own hardcore support
The bottom line is that the poor and vulnerable will now pay for Corbyns pipe dreams and the metropolitan lefts idealism
His past was always going to be exploited (Ireland, Isreal Palestine, anti militarism, internationalism). He was a terrible option and us in the left have been led up the hill and down again.
What a waste of genuine peoples time and energy.
Jeremy Corbyn was the worst of all thing for working class folk: False Hope
you’re leftwing but your only reflections on this report are denigrations of Corbyn and his principles and ‘ pipe dreams .’
Principles will always be despised by people who admire ruthlessness.
Meanwhile in the real world, principles will always be defeated by ruthlessness, without an overwhelming balance of power on the side of the principles. Fighting clean when your opponents are fighting dirty just gets you a better class of defeat.
My sympathy and empathy is for the homeless, the poor and the vulnerable that a more considered and mature Labour leadership team would prioritise over ideology
Corbyn was hopless at Leadership hopless at communication and obviously dire human resources
Who pays for London Metro lefties egotrip and flights of fancy. IE 4 day week
You guessed it..the poor, the vulnerable and the minorities they claim to champion
For the record iv sat in on many meetings with these middle class idealists and it is very rarely any them with their secure salaries and pensions that pay the price
Seen it in unions, CSOs, charitys, the Labour Party, local and metro government and Westminister
Darrell, no Corbyn was not hopeless at communication. He had weight of the Pro Jewish lobbies, the MSM, the security services and more besides waging war on him. He was the victim of the most vicious, malicious, sustained, vitriolic personal campaign in UK political history but he maintained his dignity, he had the most progressive Shadow Cabinet this country has ever known, his policies would have transformed this country into a Social Democracy with a better distribution of wealth, a strong economy founded on investment, employment, housing and affordable transport. He went out there and communicated it very well as evidenced by the hundreds and thousands of people that attended his election rallies. He went out there to the people, din’t hide in fridges to avoid difficult questions and answered all questions honestly and openly. However, the MSM, the BBC, the ITV comprise the propaganda organisation for the Tory Party. He made a brilliant conference speech – yet it wasn’t even reported on the BBC website and only one snippet on the news which was about re-nationalisting the utilities and the railways. It was very difficult to find anything about it in the MSM who chose to, instead of covering it, issue another raft of vicious, malicious, unsubstantiated and untrue allegations about him in order not to have to report it. He was a great Leader, he listened, he challenged where it was necessary, time will remember him as the best Prime Minister this country never had in the past 20 years.
Hows the ‘Left Wing’ going right now ..
How was it going a year ago?
Well its democratic champion Jeremy Corbyn was demolishing his ‘principles’ throwing his lifelong allies under a bus whilst pussyfooting the ‘enemy within’
The result?
A fucking catastrophic and doomed future for Britains poor and vulnerable
I truly believe that Metropolitan lefties in London or Liverpool have no idea of the zietgest in the midlands or the north.
They live in a bubble similar to conspiracy theorists or scriptural ‘Christians’
Darrell, what are you on? What we have now is a Leader of the Labour Party who is worse than useless, a Zionist who has no interest at all in what the country needs but rather, whose priority is to appease the BoD. Nothing else seems to be on his radar.
When has the Labour Party ever supported the working class, never have they aligned with working class struggles when they were striking for enhanced working conditions and wages, many examples can be shown from the dock workers in the fifties to the miners and nurses of later years.they are a reformist party trying to run capitalism in a less brutal manner.This cannot be attained capital=profit this is the iron fast rule that must obeyed.
Seyditz, I give you the Labour Government who built the NHS, who gave free education for all, who invested in council housing, who delivered cheap and affordable transport and much more besides.
In practice the use of the term “anti-Semitic” is deployed by vested interests in the same partisan way as all the other “isms” are to silence debate and seek advantage. Its a tactic, but the irony is, in his own partisan way Corbyn was sincere.
And so due to Corbyn’s long record of “anti-racism” he was unable to rebut accusations of “anti-Semitism”, because he had to take the accusations seriously! He couldn’t just dismiss them as contrived, after a life time of calling others “racist” in the same contrived way.
I.e. Hung by his own petard.
Please provide an example of his contrived accusations of racism.
To be honest I’ve forgotten his particular words and actions, but am using the word how it was generally used in a partisan way by the “Left”, against critics of immigration, when mass-immigration (it cuts both ways) is a “racist” attack on the native population.
Panorama’s John Ware and the Jewish Chronicle’s Stephen Pollard seem to be joined at the brain. Ware is connected to a mysterious consortium that is trying to take over the Jewish Chronicle, as Craig says. The consortium would like to re-install Pollard, who resigned as editor last week in order to support its bid for the newspaper’s liquidated assets.
Pollard, who also writes for the Daily Express, Daily Mail, the Sun and the Telegraph, once described Ware as “the most brilliant journalist that I am aware of in this country”. He also revealed: “I tell our trainees at the JC, that if there is one person they should model themselves on, it is John Ware.”
Just like the BBC had to do after Ware’s Panorama programme, the JC had to apologise and pay substantial libel damages when it attacked a charity called Interpal more than a decade later.
That was just one of a number of cases where the newspaper had to pay up for making very serious false allegations. The press regulator IPSO made eight findings against it during Pollard’s time as editor, according to Wikipedia.
Pollard is even less restrained than Ware in his attacks on Corbyn, whom Pollard called “a man I believe to be a racist”. He also tweeted a warning about “what happens (…) when an antisemite leads a party”. Even the BBC would not be that openly biased.
Under his editorship, the Jewish Chronicle ran a front page editorial in 2018 warning about what they called “the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government” and “Corbynite contempt for Jews and Israel”.
The JC blames the corona virus for its recent financial problems, but another factor in its failure must surely be its loss of credibility as an unbiased independent publication. That means a loss of readers too. And all the payments of damages and legal costs over the years didn’t help either. But Stephen Pollard was apparently not worried about running the paper into the ground after it had been printed for 179 years. It had served its purpose in recent years as a weapon against Corbyn and other people whom Zionists consider dangerous.
I’m of the mind that Corbyn couldve still managed to win the December GE, even with the media constanly pushing the over hyped anti-Semitic trope.
I think Corbyn’s undoing was his indecisiveness on Brexit. If he had come out clearly that he wished to leave the EU, instead of giving off mixed messages, then I think many who voted for the Tories whilst holding their noses, would’ve naturally voted for Corbyn.
You had life long Labour supporters vote Tory simply because they wanted out of the EU. In an idea that was instilled in then by mainly false media reports that the EU controlled the UK in many fields. Corbyn had these voters in the bag, but failed to capatilse on it by sitting on the EU fence for years.
Pity that, Corbyn, would’ve changed things South of the border for the better.
Yes, going neutral on Brexit (same as not rebutting the accusations of anti-Semitism) was due to a wish to keep the party united and so he was a party manager (important as that is) but not a leader, which would have required him to act like Trump!
I think that you are, generally, correct. I disagree about the logic behind popular support for Brexit- which I think was despite media influence. But you are right about the fudging and reneging on the 2017 pledge being the reason for the defeats in the North.
I don’t think that the charge of anti-semitism had any impact at all on the electorate. What did have an impact was the milquetoast response to the libels: they ought to have been confronted, head on. Chris Williamson and Ken Livingstone should have been encouraged to continue in the lead that they had given.
Nobody-with the exception of those ideologues and anti-semites who regard capitalism and Judaism as synonymous- thought that Corbyn was an anti-semite. But many were concerned with his refusal to fight back. A concern that was increased by the knowledge, which this report confirms, that the Labour bureaucracy was not interested in investigating charges of antisemitism, but deeply invested in subverting the membership’s chosen spokesman. That is the sort of thing that motivates many voters to abstain at election time. And my guess is that many Labour voters in the North didn’t switch to Tory but simply stayed home.
I disagree. I think the campaign of smearing Corbyn and Labour with charges of anti semitism had a massive effect. Mesdames Hodges, Reeves, Ellman et al ran a very successful campaign. It was unceasing and the UK print and audio visual media gave it full coverage.
It had a massive effect but not because Labour lost votes from people who believed it to be anti-semitic. Nobody did. The loss of votes came from people who thought, quite rightly, that voting for a Labour party so divided that it could not be expected to act made little sense.
This report just confirms what everyone, including the general public could see, that 2 out of 3 Labour MPs hated Corbyn and the party programme more than they did May or Johnson.
So far as antisemitism is concerned I don’t think that the voters who abstained or voted Tory did so because they felt that to do otherwise would be to show hostility towards Jews.
Mary, interesting the Mesdames you name because Starmer has appointed two of them to his Shadow Cabinet – i.e. Reeves and Ellman.
Ellman resigned from the Labour Party in October 2019 rather than face a CLP trigger ballot which she probably would have lost. It was Ellman’s claims of anti-semitism against Audrey White that lead to lies being printed in the Jewish Chronicle. Audrey White subsequently won a libel case and damages.
@ Republicofscotland April 22, 2020 at 14:21
‘… mainly false media reports that the EU controlled the UK in many fields…’
But they did, often in ways unknown to many, such as it was the EU who told Britain to privatise the Post Office.
Also, the EU was to blame for the foot and mouth and Mad Cow Disease’ ‘outbreaks’, by leaning on Britain to drastically curb it’s livestock farming (‘Slaughtered On Suspicion’ (2014)’: https://21stcenturywire.com/2020/04/19/sunday-screening-slaughtered-on-suspicion-2014/
I voted out because I thought of the EU as a non-accountable massive piece of the NWO ‘One World Government’ plans, but I’d rather stay in the EU than see Britain become Trump’s (or any other Yank’s) poodle. We’re virtually that already, but I wouldn’t want it formalised.