People are asking me how, as a Jewish person, I see the witch-hunt about “anti-Semitism” in the Labour Party. I am not Jewish by religion, but I am by the chief rabbi’s definition and Hitler’s definition; I am not a Labour party member and doubt I ever will be; and I am not convinced that sounding off on facebook is very helpful. But here goes.
I tried to write a bit about this last week, and stopped because it was going on and on. It’s complicated. Because obviously there is anti-Semitism in the Labour Party like there is everywhere else. When Jeremy Corbyn wrote to the Board of Deputies (a really good letter that’s on the BBC web site) he referred to “forms of anti-Semitism specific to the left”. I agreed with that, and didn’t agree with Labour friends who thought that saying so was a bad idea.
It’s also complicated because these forms of anti-Semitism, quite often involving a confusion in lefties’ minds between the state of Israel and Jews as a group of people (an identification the state of Israel has been proselytising all along), also fade into the sort of one-dimensional politics that I have come to hate and despise as it is practiced by proto-Stalinists, ex-Stalinists and plain old Stalinists with respect to Ukraine, Syria and wherever – that Bashar al-Assad, or whoever, must be on our side because the US state department calls them bad names. Think of Chris Williamson. So all that’s complicated.
But there’s also some stuff that is relatively simple. Quite clearly, in the context of the worldwide shift to the right by rightwing politicians, the Israeli government has stepped up its efforts to identify as anti-Semitism all opposition to its treatment of the Palestinians. (No space for Jews like me who know a cruel form of apartheid when we see one.)
Quite clearly, there are rightwingers in the Labour Party who have done much to stoke the witch-hunt against Corbyn because, on some level or other, they would rather a Tory government than a Corbyn one. A good example is Margaret Hodge – who herself famously embraced the racist discourse of the BNP when standing against them in an election (I think it was in Barking?). These people have stoked this insanity to an insane degree. And then there are people jumping on the bandwagon because the British elite is, despite what the Financial Times says about being able to live with McDonnell’s policies, very uncomfortable on all sorts of levels with the thought of a Corbyn government. Think of the chief rabbi and the head of the Church of England (who don’t agree on the minor matter of Jesus’s claim to infallibility but do agree on advising people not to vote Labour).
The Labour Party leadership collectively hasn’t handled all this well, most obviously by putting dunderheads in charge of the disciplinary process, who have used it to carry on expelling left wingers (basically the only thing they know how to do). Acceptance of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which many people who go on about it don’t understand, has made matters worse. John McDonnell should have known better. I also think Corbyn, on the basis of his lifelong record of antiracist activity – he’s one of a small number of MPs who could hold an intelligent conversation on the subject – should have been much more robust. I would have liked to see him sue for defamation Hodge and others who accused him personally of being a “racist and anti-Semite”, a vile slander for which there is no shred of evidence.
Anyway. A bit late now. Things have spiralled onwards in the deranged hall of mirrors that British politics has become. This issue is not now at the same place as it was three years ago. It’s evolved, just as the Brexit thing has, because there is class war. It’s about making sure that the precious pinnacles of British capitalism don’t fall into the hands of a bunch of left wing social democrats. It’s about trying to kill off the Labour Party, discipline it ideologically, rather than have it evolve into some new kind of social democracy for the twenty-first century. It’s about trying to get at Corbyn personally, although I think he’s tough enough to deal with that. And it’s about next Thursday, when Dominic Cummings and his mates are hoping to get elected as prime minister Boris Johnson, a disgusting racist who through his whole political career has stoked prejudice, against people of colour, single mothers, the working class, the continent of Europe, whoever.
So in the hall of mirrors, the witch-hunt could end up helping this horrible piece of shit. Obviously. I’ll be voting Labour to try to stop that. And I won’t be discussing all this on the comments to this post, sorry, but do send me a personal message, call me up, denounce me on your own facebook feed, or whatever, if you wish.
⏭ Simon Pirani is a London based political activist and writer.
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