Grassroots resistance to Labour Party diktats
JVL Introduction
Resistance to the diktats of General Secretary David Evans continues to grow.
Below are reports from three CLPs – South Thanet, Ceredigion and Hampstead and Kilburn – that have refused to be cowed, as reported by Skwawkbox.
We understand that at least thirty others have passed similar motions – or tried to, before regional officials refused to allow them to proceed.
Here are further links to Skwawkbox articles about some of them: Birmingham Hall Green, Brighton Pavilion, Hendon, Morley and Outwood, NW Durham, Sedgefield, Hackney South and Shoreditch …
This article was originally published by Skwawkbox on Sat 28 Nov 2020. Read the original here.
Grassroots resistance to Labour Party diktats
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Well done Skwawkbox for your up to date reporting of the fightback. A much needed morale boost for the grassroots of the Labour Party. The leadership must not be allowed to get away with their undemocratic practices. CLPs making a stand is just what we needed. Now we need the affiliated trade unions to pile on the pressure.
Charge against Labour Party leadership-victimisation of CLP officers in Bristol and Nottingham. Verdict – guilty! Making up the rules to justify arbitrary suspensions. What makes this even worse is the collusion of local MPs including a Campaign Group member.
I wish all CLPs were as courageous.
We put forward our Emergency Motion at Westminster North. It was ruled out. We argued for it’s being put to the members to decide. But not even that. So, we placed our motion on chat together with our proposals. There were a few voices of support and outrage but the majority were silent.
That the truth is not allowed is itself a cruel act of allowing fears to grow. But we tried.
Before I read this, I was on the road to resigning. I proudly joined a decent political party in 1970, but am so ashamed right now. Now I read that I’m not alone; others are frustrated like me and are standing up to the bullying, so thank you for putting me right, and for strengthening my resolution to continue shouting out about the outrageous treatment of the Palestinians.
One would have thought that this ‘fight back’ by CLPs in recent weeks would have been condemned by the JLM and CAA and BoD, their ‘angle’ being of course that these CLPs/members are giving their support to an anti-semite – or someone who ‘enabled’ anti-semitism – but I just checked JLMs website and there’s nothing, and the only thing I’ve come across on the CAAs website is an article published on the 23rd of November entitled:
WITH PRO-CORBYN MEMBERS LEAVING LABOUR EN MASSE, OTHER PARTIES MUST STAND GUARD AGAINST IMPORTATION OF LABOUR ANTISEMITISM
Yep, no doubt THAT one had them falling about laughing when someone or other amongst their number came up with it – ie thought of it as yet ANOTHER way to reinforce the idea in their readers minds that the LP is/was full of anti-semites. Here’s a clip from the ‘article’:
There was a great deal of concern over entryism during Mr Corbyn’s two leadership primary campaigns and, more generally, over the possibility that many of these new members were tolerant of or held far-left antisemitic views. These concerns appeared to be borne out over the course of Mr Corbyn’s tenure as Leader, and Campaign Against Antisemitism’s 2019 Antisemitism Barometer showed, based on analysis of polling conducted by YouGov, that people holding four or more antisemitic views were particularly attracted to Mr Corbyn.
https://antisemitism.org/with-pro-corbyn-members-leaving-labour-en-masse-other-parties-must-stand-guard-against-importation-of-labour-antisemitism/
Strange, isn’t it, how out of all the thousands upon thousands of claims of A/S made by various Labour Party MPs and groups such as the JLM and CAA etc during Jeremy’s tenure as leader, that only one or two LP members were prosecuted. And how come not one of these groups or individuals – who ALL piled in in the MSM to condemn the likes of Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson etc as anti-semites AND of making anti-semitic comments – reported them to the police. I wonder why not!
PS And apart from a couple of articles in The Independent, all the emails that David Evans has sent out to CLPs in recent weeks and all the motions being passed by CLPs etc has been completely blanked by the MSM. In other words, the vast majority of the general public are completely oblivious to the fact that it’s all going on – ie the diktats and the suppression of free speech etc by the leadership and the GS, and yet it is all completely unprecedented. That said, it is of course not surprising that the MSM have done so, but if they HAD decided to cover it, it would have been spun negatively against the CLPs and left-wing members and Jeremy of course.
When I checked out the JLMs website a bit earlier, the first six articles listed were all entitled: ‘My experience of antisemitism’, and then the name of the person. One of them was by Ella Rose (posted on 29 October, 2020), and here’s a clip from it:
I never thought I’d ever experience antisemitism in the party I thought was anti-racist, but yet it hit me like a wave that kept coming back. From verbal abuse and people screaming in my face, to death threats and online abuse, and even people coming to antisemitism awareness training sessions with pre-prepared antisemitic questions with the intent of goading me. It had a huge impact on my mental health, and is something that I can only speak about today thanks to the wonderful support of my family and friends. Those who deny the antisemitism in the Labour Party deny the experiences myself and so many others who lived through it for years.
The antisemitism I saw in the Labour Party encompasses the whole spectrum of the long history of the hatred of Jews, everything from Holocaust denial to classic medieval antisemitism.
And here’s a clip from another by Josh Garfield (posted on 30 October):
Elected on a wave of huge optimism, Jeremy Corbyn pledged to make Labour an anti-austerity party set on eradicating inequality after our second consecutive defeat at the polls in 2015. Drunk on enthusiasm for this new movement, I joined Momentum and got full-swing behind Corbyn’s Labour, blissfully unaware of his past convictions and the calibre of activists he was enthusing to rejoin the party.
Please check them out if you can bear to read them.
https://www.jewishlabour.uk/news
PS Presumably the ‘death threats’ Ella Rose mentions happened SINCE she participated in the Panorama hatchet job, otherwise she would have surely mentioned them in her segment on the program. Needless to say she didn’t tell the MSM about them at any point, which she WOULD have done had such a thing happened of course! AND informed the police!
Whilst looking through the list of ‘news’ articles on the website of the Campaign Against Antisemitism I came across one entitled ‘Antisemitism In Political Parties’ (which although not dated, I believe they published just shortly before last year’s general election). There were 3 people listed in the Brexit Party section with a combined total of 8 (alleged) Incidents, and in the Conservative Party section 5 people with a combined total of 11 (alleged) Incidents, and in the Green Party 6 people with a combined total of 16 (alleged) Incidents, 4 people and 31 (alleged) Incidents re the LibDems and 3 people and 8 (alleged) Incidents re the SNP.
In the section regarding the Labour Party – which I have left until last for obvious reasons – they have 38 people listed, and the combined total of (alleged) Incidents is 147. So altogether I make that 59 people they have listed, with a combined total of 190 (alleged) Incidents. Needless to say, the CAA themselves don’t refer to them as ‘alleged’ incidents and, as such, supposedly regard each and every one of the ‘Incidents’ as actual anti-semitism, and given that that is the case, then presumably they reported every one of these incidents – and the individual concerned in each instance – to the police, what with racism/anti-semitism being a criminal offence. Well, if they DID, then as far as I’m aware not a single one of the 59 people were prosecuted by the police (or were found guilty of such an offence). So either the police concluded that none of the 190 Incidents of (alleged) A/S were antisemitic, OR – as I have little doubt is the case – the CAA did NOT report any of the 190 incidents to the police because they knew that they stood no chance whatsoever of being taken up by the police. But perhaps JVL could contact the CAA and ascertain from them if they DID report said incidents to the police, and if not, why not.
https://antisemitism.org/politics/
Is it possible for JVL to contact Nadia Whitome Labour MP Nottingham East for a friendly chat, would be interested to know what on earth is going on there
Thank you to the brave CLPs and more specifically chairs and secretaries who have risked suspension for democracy and free speech. All those who have been suspended should be reinstated forthwith.
My concern is that the removal of these chairs and secs is playing into the hands of Starmer in his wish to eradicate the left of the party. His fans may well be waiting in the wings to pounce at the AGMs to take over. The left needs to be aware of this danger and organise.