A brave article from Labour MP Ian Austin in the New Statesman - Threats from Len McCluskey won't stop Labour MPs standing up to anti-Semitism. Austin was one of those singled out by McCluskey for daring to take a stand against the Labour leader's long-standing history of support for antisemites.
Members of our party have claimed Hitler was a Zionist or legitimised the myth that Jews financed the slave trade. We’ve seen Labour candidates denying or questioning the Holocaust. At last year’s conference, the party gave a platform at a fringe event to a speaker who said “Holocaust: yes or no”. What did he mean – did the Holocaust happen? Was it right?
Others have denied Israel’s right to exist, singled out the world’s only Jewish state for boycott and sanctions; or drawn outrageous comparisons between the actions of Israel and the crimes of the Nazis.
And throughout all of this, so many denied there was any problem at all. Too many on the hard left believe they are so virtuous - they say they have fought racism all their lives – that they can’t be responsible for any form of racism. All this must therefore be whipped up or “weaponised” by people opposed to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.....
This current crisis was triggered by the shocking discovery that Jeremy Corbyn defended a grotesque racist caricature on a mural in east London. For three days, he issued excuses. Only after the Jewish community organised that unprecedented protest did he actually manage to say sorry.
Labour members need to ask themselves what they’d be saying if a senior Tory defended a racist cartoon about anyone else. But I’m afraid our leader has spent decades defending anti-Semites....
Len McCluskey is right on one point - everyone knows I didn’t support Jeremy’s leadership campaign and haven’t been persuaded since. But McCluskey is completely wrong to claim this is why I complain about anti-Semitism and extremism. It is in fact, the exact opposite way round. It is because I’m angry about anti-Semitism and worried about extremism that I’ve argued against Jeremy from the outset.
At least one Labour MP has some principles left.
Meanwhile, from the Sunday Times (£):
Jeremy Corbyn was warned three years ago that anti-semitism would become his “Achilles heel” but chose not to address it, a former aide to the Labour leader has revealed.
Harry Fletcher, who spent a year as Corbyn’s adviser on communications and strategy, said he was “extremely disappointed” by the lack of response.
“I warned Corbyn three years ago that he needed to deal with the issue of anti-semitism otherwise it would become his Achilles heel,” he said. “I even came up with a strategy but it was never acted upon.”
And, finally, Nick Newman's cartoon:
Comments