Left antisemitism

The Labour Party is right to engage with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) guidelines as a living document (something to be engaged with, discussed, analysed, interpreted and expanded upon), and indeed this is what it would appear was intended by the writers of the IHRA guidance. It does not read as something intended to be a code of conduct, but rather as the basis for raising awareness and deepening understanding of modern antisemitism. Even the short 40-word definition (which is really the working definition according to the IHRA) is described within the guidance as...

We publish extracts from an article by two leading members of the Communist Party of Britain, Mary Davis and Phil Katz, which appeared in the Morning Star of 20 June. It makes a refreshing change from the absolute anti-Zionism and denial of antisemitism as a serious problem on the left that generally characterises that paper’s coverage of the subject. It is also good to see the paper carrying such sharp criticism of an earlier article published in the Star that clearly crossed the line into outright antisemitism. However, the fact that the offending article (now removed from the Star’s website...

Introduction Fighting left antisemitism in the 1980s When the facts came out Gerry Healy discovers the World Jewish Conspiracy (1981) Who were the heresy-hunters in 1983? Download whole Workers' Liberty 3/62 as pdf The story told in this pull-out, of a campaign in the labour movement against us in 1983, was originally published as a series of four articles in 2003 under the title “The Last Time We Were Heresy-Hunted”. The occasion in 2003 was another, though slighter, heresy-hunt waged against us, around the time of the break-up of the 2000-3 Socialist Alliance and the formation of the ill...

Introduction Fighting left antisemitism in the 1980s When the facts came out Gerry Healy discovers the World Jewish Conspiracy (1981) Who were the heresy-hunters in 1983? Download whole Workers' Liberty 3/62 as pdf After the WRP expelled Gerry Healy and blew apart in 1985, an inquiry set up by the remnant organisation and its international co-thinkers reported on the Healy WRP’s relations with Libya and other dictatorships. The inquiry had found “files in G Healy’s former office”, although from “internal evidence” it concluded that “much more material must exist” and “the actual amount of...

Introduction Fighting left antisemitism in the 1980s When the facts came out Gerry Healy discovers the World Jewish Conspiracy (1981) Who were the heresy-hunters in 1983? Download whole Workers' Liberty 3/62 as pdf The WRP which launched the heresy-hunt in 1983 was the last sad chapter in a long history of political degeneration. The earlier chapters were those of the most important revolutionary socialist organisation in Britain during the two decades of the great labour militancy, roughly from the mid 50s to the mid 70s. The forerunner of the WRP was the Healy group, from 1959 called the...

Introduction Fighting left antisemitism in the 1980s When the facts came out Gerry Healy discovers the World Jewish Conspiracy (1981) Who were the heresy-hunters in 1983? Download whole Workers' Liberty 3/62 as pdf Socialist Organiser 14 April 1981 Newsline has continued in its ridiculous campaign of bluff and bluster against the BBC Money Programme. But still, litigious though it is, it has not got round to suing the BBC. Many - solicited - letters from members and supporters have been printed. The campaign continues against Socialist Organiser, linked with the BBC according to the well-tried...

Labour’s 13 point action plan to deal with antisemitism has been leaked to the Huffington Post. While it is welcome that the party wants a clear plan to tackle antisemitism, its apparent conclusions should be of concern to those of us who want to deal with antisemitism as a political problem. The plan includes a speeded up process for complaints, a smaller number of trained people to investigate, greater transparency over what is and will not be considered evidence. All of this is useful, but just a clearer disciplinary process will not deal with what is a political problem. We need much more...

Consider Ken Livingstone and the Labour Party, Al Capone and the US government. They jailed Alphonse Capone, a multiple-murderer gangster, for tax evasion. That was odd, but I think it better they got him for that than that they didn’t get him at all. So with Ken Livingstone’s separation from the Labour Party on antisemitism. Livingstone has for nearly four decades been a public purveyor of political antisemitism. Here I want to consider how serious antisemitism has spread into the Labour Party by way of the ostensibly revolutionary left — the WRP and the SWP — and their ex-members migrating...

Ken Livingstone resigned from the Labour Party on 21 May. Good riddance! He ceased to be a real left-winger decades ago, he has a clear record of high-profile antisemitic comments, and he has been aggressively persistent about them. Yet the Labour Party is still blundering along without any open and thorough discussion of antisemitism. There are still people on the left who see nothing wrong in what Livingstone has said. Suspensions, expulsions, resignations will resolve little until we have that discussion. In April 2016 Livingstone chose to offer comment to BBC London on Labour’s suspension...

More debate on the Right of Return here . Now Kumar deigns to argue rather than hurling stale abuse ( Solidarity 465 ). Discussion is good. The atmosphere on the ostensible left is heavily charged with heresy-hunting, trolling (which is only another name for gang mobbing and bulling), shouting-down, and drowning-out. There is little or no real political debate or dialogue. That is what the internal life of the pseudo-Leninist sects has been for decades (the SWP, for instance, or, worse, the SP). It has now become the culture of Momentum. Here malice does service for information, hostility is...