Education about antisemitism and anti-racism in Sheffield
JVL Introduction
We were Interested to read this report on LabourList.
JVL has been offering its own educational sessions to Party branches, CLPs and trade unions, with non-prescriptive, open-ended exploratory discussion of the issues. As experienced educators we aim to help people think about difficult issues, not tell them what to think. See our education page for more details and to arrange a session.
We note that Edd Mustill from Sheffield Heeley CLP similarly writes that “we purposefully did not label the sessions as ‘training’. We consider anti-racist politics as best developed by ongoing education in order to improve our understanding and ability to challenge racism wherever we encounter it…”
Little help has come from the Labour Party centrally. Instead we seem to have an ever-increasing number of arbitrary and secretive suspensions and investigations, with no discussion of how to raise antiracism awareness in general. Discipline as a first and only resort makes for poor pedagogy.
This article was originally published by LabourList on Fri 7 Aug 2020. Read the original here.
How our local party developed an educational programme on antisemitism
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Much more constructive than trawling for tropes or reporting on people who unwittingly may have said something at a meeting which could be construed as anti semitic
I am dismayed that JVL sees fit to reprint, without any correction, an article from Labour List which recycles the slander circulated by the ‘liberal’ and right wing press that Williamson claimed the Party had been too apologetic over anti-Semitism. His speech to a Momentum meeting in Sheffield is available on line and says nothing of the sort.
As Naom Chomsky observed Williamson’s Sheffield speech argued that Labour had “given too much ground” and had been “too apologetic” in defending its record on fighting racism and “the scourge of anti semitism.”
Our web editor writes:
We reported extensively on the Chris Williamson at the time and hoped our position was well known – simply search for “Chris Williamson” on our website to find numerous articles endorsing the point you make.
We often repost articles from other sources that contain assertions or judgments we disagree with. Where they are central to the argument, we generally point them out. Where, as here, the comment is made in passing and has little bearing on the general argument, we trust our readers to post comments – like yours – which correct the record.
Nonetheless, we accept that should have drawn attention to our disagreement with this particular assertion.
Fair point. The media did twist Chris Williamson’s words and he was thrown under the bus. I support his claim that the EHRC lacks independence. A body packed with Tory cronies and no black or Muslim representation has no credibility.
It would be fair to describe the Labour Party as having bent over backwards to dignify the views of Zionists without making any effort to confront anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic bigotry.
Such I initiatives are at best pointless, at worst counter-productive in as much as they accept the idea that Labour has a problem about antisemitism. I am no longer a member of the Labour Party as I will not contribute to the settlement made by Starmer on behalf of members. So I will no longer subscribe to JVL.
I think that whether Williamson argued that labour had been “too apologetic” over anti-semitism or “had given too much ground” and “been too apologetic” is a little too nice. Some of us feel that Corbyn had made too much of a doormat of himself rather than confronting the (necessarily human-rights abusing) manifestation of settler-colonial Zionism. Criticising this modern form of zionism cannot be anti-semitic as it is endorsed and promoted by millions – possibly tens of millions – of Christian Zionists in the USA and elsewhere. In this sense, Williamson was quite right. Anti-zionism could not be “anti- semitism and there is no way that the Labour Party should have been apologising for it without other evidence of anti -semitic intent. Anti-Zionism is NOT anti-semitism not even “code for” anti-semitism.
unfortunately the LP has constantly bowed to the weaponization of A/S Corbyn let MPs like Hodge and Streeting get away with making accusations that were both false and wrong. A/S is a much bigger problem in wider society than it ever has been LP.It has been used by the right wing of LP to get at Corbyn because this civilised man was against all forms of racism and injustice.
It was a sad reflection on LP that it was allowed to develop and fester without any serious challenges made to MP s like Hodge and Streeting Burgier . Now in my view it should be seriously challenged by anybody in the LP who recognises the damage that has been done .
This article is by a labour councillor who welcomed the suspension of his former ward secretary for tweeting (or re-tweeting) a graphic showing a doctored Job Centre sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei”. This action was considered antisemitic.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-43586882
A sign saying “Arbeit Macht Frei” was first used outside Dachau which was opened in in March 1933 for the incarceration of left-wingers. Any Jews there at that time would have been arrested for their alleged political activities. This shows how much those who complained about this “antisemitic” tweet know. In any case, the graphic is a comment on the DSS and cannot be construed as antisemitic (it doesn’t offend me).
It is not possible to have a meaningful discussion about current “antisemitism in the labour party” without discussing “factional issues” in the Labour Party or the Israeli government, as this article suggests happened. They are both central to what is going on and the article is thoroughly disingenuous in ignoring this.
It sounds as though a discussion by JVL of Steve Cohen’s book would be interesting. I don’t know it, but I assume that it doesn’t say that criticism of Israel and Zionism as racist or Apartheid is antisemitic, which is the claim that is at the core of the witch hunt.