Internal shenanigans and the perfidy of Labour’s Right Wing – a discussion
JVL Introduction
The recent Al Jazeera documentary series The Labour Files has, despite the shocking revelations, been been virtually ignored by the mainstream media. In this discussion Alexei Sayle and Richard Sanders explore this lack of interest and much more.
This is an enjoyable listen, while still addressing the very serious issues raised by the Labour Files, the situation for Palestinians, free speech, the difficulties for any Labour Leader at that time, the (non-legally binding) IHRA (working) definition and the use of antisemitism by those opposed to left-wing ideas.
JVL gets an honourable mention in relation to the Forde Report.
This article was originally published by Alexei Sayle Podcast on Thu 20 Oct 2022. Read the original here.
The Perfect Weapon - with Richard Sanders
“Many of you watched Al Jazeera’s three part series The Labour Files in horror as the inner schemings and corruption of The Labour Party were revealed. Many of you were equally horrified to see that it was getting very little to no coverage in the mainstream media! … in (this) podcast we have executive producer of those films and director/writer of the second part – on antisemitism – joining Alexei for a deep dive on how corruption on this scale gets to exist, survive and grow, and what to expect in the future.”
You can listen via links here or here. or search “Alexei Sayle Podcast 30 on any podcast platform
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As a politically naive teenager, with both parents Labour Party councillors & being a supporter of the Campaign for Democratic Socialism, which was a major flag-waver for Party leader Hugh Gaitskell back in the late 1950’s, I believe I can speak with some experience of the Labour Party right-wing’s political perfidy.
Being brainwashed from an early age that opposition from a left-wing perspective to Gaitskell’s pro-NATO, pro-British A-bomb and adherence to only the vaguest, milk-sop alternative ideas to Tory PM Harold MacMillan’s goverment was an act of disloyalty to the leader, and that people espousing such views were to be avoided like the plague.
Come the freezing cold winter of 1962/63 virtually closing down the building trade, adding to an ongoing recession which heralded unemployment topping 1 million not seen since the end of the 2nd World War, the North West of England’s regional trades councils called for a demonstration & lobby of Parliament in March 1963 attended by tens of thousands, which climaxed in a siege of the St Stephens entrance to the Commons, caused by an apparent reluctance by many MPs to meet with angry constituents.
In the months long struggle to take several coachloads of especially young unemployed from our region to London for the march, the Party’s local right-wing leaders offered no support whatsoever, indeed did all they could to frustrate our efforts, in hindsight due to their hostility to any campaigns not directly under their bureaucratic control.
This was a real eye-opener for me as to who were the real fighters for worker’s rights & social justice at home and abroad and it wasn’t those in the Labour Party’s right-wing!
If it became clear to me all those years ago, how come many on the Party’s present day Left apparently still haven’t learnt the lesson as to how scheming and treacherous the right-wing, opportunist careerists of the PLP and many full time officials really are & instead start to make plans to take the gloves off in order to rid the labour movement of these political Judases before they can do even more damage to the interests of the working class at home and abroad?
Hi, the link to the Alexei Sayle blog led to a dead end on Spotify!
Just when I was licking my lips!
Apologies for that – there is another link on the piece, https://player.fm/series/the-alexei-sayle-podcast/ep-30-the-perfect-weapon-with-richard-sanders or if you have a podcast platform you use, just search for “The Alexei Sayle Podcast 30” (There are, therefore, another 29 treats for you). Meanwhile I will make this change and try to check the spotify link. Thank you for letting us know – it did work when posted
I would like to thank Nigel Haines for his contribution, I too followed the same beliefs, that although we wouldn’t get everything out of the right wing leadership in the Party, that they would genuinely try to ameliorate the problems of the many. Sadly as the years passed it got worse and even at a Ban the bomb demonstration in Cardiff we witnessed Neil Kinnock begging the crowd to listen to Dennis Healey, saying “he was on our side”, when he along with all the others clearly wasn’t. The ultimate change comes from Neo-Liberalism, which is the antidote to socialism, since the 1970s we have been under permanent attack, and this will continue as corporate capitalist power will never let socialism raise its head above the parapet. The post war Labour government proved what capitalists have always denied, that poverty is politically motivated, and is not an inherent fact of life. This is the reality of what was in fact moderate reforms to capitalism, but Hayek and Friedman understood as a threat to capitalism itself. A Tory asked a question in the house of commons in 1956, around the time when Harold Macmillan claimed that workers had never had it so good, only it wasn’t the Tories that instigated it and only achieved half the improvement of the previous Labour Government. Labour improved living standards by 71% against Tories 34% https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1956-02-23/debates/8806eeb3-a61f-4178-8115-8648bbd89f38/AverageIndustrialWage(PurchasingPower)#contribution-9db8682f-d690-46d1-9a79-6895e2e3aef0
When we look at how Neo-Liberalism has permeated every aspect of British and societies around the world, we can only conclude that there is an open conspiracy to prevent ordinary people from gaining any sense of control over their lives, and only there to specifically serves the interests of the 1%, indeed back in 2011 Bernie Sanders pointed out the degree of wealth accumulated and yet they still wanted more and more tax cuts, which proves unequivocally that the 1% are at war with its own people. Of course meaning an economic war. This I feel accurately sums up the Neo-Liberal agenda since the 1970s, and corporate capture of people, politicians, and every known institution in society has been the glue holding it all together.
Well said Mervyn Hyde. Evidence of the Labour Party’s right-wing conspiracy to undermine any genuine socialist opposition to their monopoly of power within the party couldn’t have been made clearer than when Jeremy Corbyn rode the crest of a wave of opposition to defeat them in the leadership election and attracting hundreds of thousands of new members in the process.
Ever since then the majority of the time-serving careerists in the PLP & the party bureacracy spared no effort to undermine Corbyn and come the 2019 general election kept their mouths firmly shut in the wake of the lies cooked up by the Tory gutter press & politicians, egged on by the vilest range of Zionist accolytes encompassing supporters of the Board of Deputies, employees of the Israeli embassy, not to mention Netanyahu’s Likud Party. Nice bed fellows indeed, suffice to say in passing Likud now joined in an alliance after the recent Israeli election with Israeli neo-fascists that one could imagine that Mussolini himself would have approved.
And don’t think these right-wing Labour Party elements haven’t been aptly rewarded for their long history of sell-outs & betrayals, witness the hefty financial rewards accrued by the likes of Blair, the Kinnocks and many, many more, including the former Labour MP in my constituency party, a one time chief whip who got his reward with a life peerage and scuttled off to join Michael Owen’s SDP as soon as he could.
The Labour Party a broad church? Don’t make me laugh. The sooner their “broad church” is politically burnt to the ground the better, anything less is an evasion of one’s socialist responsibilities.
Wow. What an excellent encapsulation, in the small and the bigger picture, of the issues, historical context and the place we have arrived at now;
A friend asked me: “How does one translate vision and integrity into action? “ – in a way – that is to say, – in some circumstances, – (of total blanket stubborn stolid resistance) – YOU CAN’T!
I now see Corbyn’s movement as the brave new Titanic come of age- doomed to shipwreck when it meets the immoveable Frozen Monolith of the Establishment. Only global warming could melt that and then we are stuffed anyway! If Richard’s optimistic summing up comes to be true, then we can celebrate. But we are in for a very long wait before PR might permit the viablility of a Left renaissance in this country.