Another day, another Labour outrage…
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
It’s hard to keep up as South Side lashes out at another good socialist, suspended for no known reason.
You begin to think it is simply for being a socialist in the Labour Party…
Here is Skwawkbox’s report.
[17 December: We have appended Alan Gibbons’s reponse, published in Tribune yesteday]
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Tue 15 Dec 2020. Read the original here.
Momentum NCG member and Liverpool Walton Sec Alan Gibbons suspended by Labour – without explanation
No reasons given in generic suspension letter
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So what are we going to do about it
The motion posted by CLP Chairs and Secretaries is good, keep going on that
Various legal challenges need support
My hope is there are talks being held behind the scenes with unions on party funding
Last resort is mass resignations and volunteer strikes but not yet
Those who choose to stay and fight risk indefinite suspension for undeclared reasons and the consequent implication that their actions or words have been in some way antisemitic. Starmer’s ‘zero tolerance of antisemitism’ is the necessary corollary to his declaration that he is a zionist without qualification. It is now impossible in Labour circles to express support for Corbyn, since doing so tacitly amounts to antisemitism. How long before support for Corbyn’s Project for Peace and Justice also becomes a toxic offence in Starmer’s Labour?
This purge of the Corbyn-supporting left has been planned for some time. It began, unbelievably, when Corbyn became leader, though he seems not to have recognized it for what it was. The charge that he was an antisemite blindsided Corbyn; being a person given to introspection he internalized the charge, and stood aside while many loyal socialists who also happened to be critics of Israel were expelled from the party on trumped-up charges and without due process. The names of those ex-members have now been rendered toxic; they have been un-personed.
The same thing will happen to many more of us before this charade of ‘zero tolerance’ is done. To combat it we must learn tactics of fighting back — of challenging the narrative foisted on us by the traditional media. We must learn, for example, to combat the charge of antisemitism with the response that those who apologize for apartheid are themselves racist, whether they realize it or not.
A new tactic of smearing the left has now appeared on Twitter: the antisemitists gang up to complain that someone who regularly posts in support of Corbyn is disseminating racist propaganda. When such complaints reach a certain number it triggers off a temporary Twitter suspension while the complaints are being investigated. The antisemitists then jubilantly claim that their victim has been removed from Twitter for antisemitism. We must learn to anticipate these attacks and prepare a unified response. Solidarity remains a potent weapon in the unending fight against those who want to see socialists and their messages disgraced and defamed.
The similarity of Starmer’s purge to what took place during the French Revolution and the purges conducted under the regimes of authoritarians like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Trump is hardly coincidental. No-one familiar with Orwell’s Animal Farm or 1984 can fail to recognize the process for what it is and what it is designed to achieve.
Seems “the leadership” do not even need reasons now. Mass resignations are tempting but that would save them the bother!
Doug, your heart seems to be in the right place, but what does your head say when one asks – how are you going to organize politically when you resign en masse? What are your volunteers going to do – and how – on or off the ‘picket line’?
Don’t mourn…..ssaid Joe Hill…
“Allan Gibbons, suspended by The Party, who did not even deign to give reasons.”
Some of us will be aware of Franz Kafka`s book “The Trial” published in thirties Europe. Kafka tells how his character “K” is suddenly arrested but “K” is not told what he has been arrested for. He is finally executed but it is never revealed what “K” has initially been accused of!
Sound familiar? He would have been astonished that his basic story line was to be enacted in a British Labour Party in 2020.
What to say? First the disgust and the anger, at the sight of us devouring our own. Second, the wish to extend my support and understanding to Alan, for being the victim of an unprovoked act of malice in the first degree. Third, what to do next? However, this is not Kafkaesque, because we can all understand its motivations. It is a calculated effort to purge the party of the Left, or a version of the Left, those who aligned themselves with the Corbyn project. Never mind the pain this causes for individuals, or the stress, or the mental health problems these measures will create.