Fighting antisemitism

Academic freedom is contingent on the epistemologies and politics of the time. A case in point are the past debates in the University and College Union (UCU) for an academic boycott of Israel, which premises that Israel’s curbs on academic freedom for Palestinians should consequently negate academic freedom for Israel. A paper co-authored by the left-wing Israeli academic Oren Yiftachel and the Palestinian academic Asad Ghanem was submitted to the journal Political Geography in the spring of 2002. The paper, which identified the state of Israel as “dedicated to the expansion and control of one...

The Dreyfus Affair, which began in 1894, is a cause célèbre that refuses to go away. The framing of Captain Alfred Dreyfus on espionage charges split public opinion in France into pro and anti Dreyfusard camps. What gave the case added resonance and placed it high on the list of historic miscarriages of justice was the overwhelming stench of anti semitism surrounding the entire episode. France was recovering from the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) and the German annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. Ultra-nationalists in particular were out for revanche (revenge) against Germany to win back the...

In discussing the case of David Miller and Bristol University, I chose the example of Helmut Hasse, a celebrated mathematician sacked by the British occupation authorities in Germany in 1945 because of his right-wing nationalist views, as a comparison test case. Partly because I knew about it, but partly because no reader is likely to find Hasse's views other than vile. Hasse, to my mind, provides a test case for how Miller's could be considered wrong even while denouncing his political views. And likewise we can criticise Sussex University professor Kathleen Stock's noxious trans-sceptic...

About 500 people attended the 3 October march and rally to commemorate the October 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when tens of thousands of East London workers and supporters defeated the police to block Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists from marching. Although members of the Communist Party of Britain were not particularly visible in the crowd, the event is very much a CP-organised affair, as was clear from the speakers at the end. Several puffed up the role of the Communist Party at Cable Street, when in fact the CP's role - as opposed to that of some CP members in East London, defying...

In the last year Workers’ Liberty has published material about both Shapurji Sakatvala and Dadabhai Naoroji – two opponents of British rule in India and, in their different ways, socialists elected to the UK Parliament a century ago (Naoroji was MP for Central Finsbury 1892-5 and Saklatvala MP for Battersea North 1922-3 and 1924-9). Saklatvala was very much part of the Marxist tradition and Naoroji part of our tradition in a broader sense. Naoroji was the first person from one of the Empire’s subject peoples beyond the British Isles to be elected to Parliament; Saklatvala the third. The second...

This article is taken from Woman’s Dreadnought, paper of the Workers’ Suffrage Federation, 26 May 1917, where it was an editorial under the headline “A pogrom in London”. It describes London’s East End of that era, which also produced the Poplar council revolt four years later (described in Solidarity 601); and the big wave of anti-migrant agitation which had already produced the Aliens Act of 1905. Woman’s Dreadnought changed its name to Workers’ Dreadnought in July 1917; the group soon after changed its name to Workers’ Socialist Federation, and in 1921 merged into the then-revolutionary...

What follows is an account of the anti-Jewish pogrom in Manchester in August 1947. Britain still occupied Palestine and Jewish guerrillas were at war with the colonial power. Two British army sergeants were captured and, in reprisal for Britain’s hanging of captured Jewish fighters, hanged. A great outcry followed. The Mosleyite fascists found a new resonance for their antisemitism. Pogroms against Jewish communities took place in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester. (The picture shows Liverpool afterwards.) The text is from a book, Jerusalem Is Called Liberty, by Walter Lever. Lever had been a...

Antisemitic attacks in the USA over the two weeks to 23 May ran at over twice their average rate in 2019, according to figures collected by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Some examples: “A synagogue received an email... ‘Die fucking jew cockroaches! Israel = racism, apartheid, genocide’... a Jewish man wearing a Star of David necklace was punched by a man who allegedly asked him, ‘What is that around your neck, does that make you a fucking Zionist?’... “A Jewish man was beaten by a group of anti-Israel protestors in Times Square [New York]. In another incident, anti-Zionist protestors...

Many students at UK universities have rightly responded to the escalation of violence in Israel-Palestine by mobilising in support of the Palestinians. In some places there are campaigns to get universities to stop investing in companies that financially back Israeli military industries. We hope Palestinian solidarity campaigning continues beyond the ceasefire, and that university divestment campaigns succeed. At the same time we continue to criticise the blanket boycott policies which dominate on campuses (including academic boycotts), with their implicit backing for a “one state” outcome in...