Labour and Palestine – the sellout continues
JVL Introduction
In September 2021 the Labour Party conference passed a historic motion of solidarity with Palestine. We reported on it here: Overwhelming Labour Party support for condemnation of “Israel’s continuing illegal actions”.
The leadership never acknowledged it as party policy despite the fact that Party conference is sovereign.
As far as we are aware that segment of the conference was not broadcast publicly, and the resolution did not find its way onto the Party website. You can find it here.
Lisa Nandy said at the time: “We cannot support this motion.” She added, referring to Labour’s generalised, platitudinous support for “a just, lasting peace” that “We condemns all actions [such as this motion] that are making that goal more difficult.”
We commented then: “We can only marvel at her and Starmer’s continued contempt for the membership.”
A lot to time has passed and their contempt for the members has only grown. For many members that is reciprocated.
The final retreat – long anticipated – has just been announced: Labour has dumped its commitment, made under Ed Miliband, to recognise the state of Palestine.
As the shadow Middle East Minister Wayne David said on 14th January, recognition could only come to “fruition in a way which is acceptable to the state of Israel…”
As Israel’s war on Gaza shows, it is uniquely placed to be given a veto on when and whether Palestinians deserve a state.
You couldn’t make it up…
We repost a couple of social media posts on this latest capitulation followed by a background article by Hugh Lanning Labour has no hiding place on Palestine.
RK
This article was originally published by Tribune on Mon 15 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
Labour has no hiding place on Palestine
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Lisa Nandy, five minutes after the vote, at Conference :
‘Well, we won’t be doing that!’
It is worse than the comment by George Peel on Lisa Nandy. LP members were told that policy decisions passed by Conference, the constitutionally enshrined highest body of the LP, were only valid while Conference was in session. Every single democratic right of LP members to discuss and vote on policy and to choose election candidates at all levels have been systematically removed by the present leadership. We will have a Labour government after the General Election not because of love for Labour but because of hatred for the Tories. And that Labour government will continue the Tory policies of cutting living standards for ordinary people under the guise, in Rachel Reeves’ words, of fiscal stability.
Labours unwavering support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, is no shock or surprise to any of us. We all witnessed, the brutal campaign against the election of a Socialist British Prime Minister with an ethical foreign policy. To quote a phrase: Labour is nothing more than the iron fist of Capital in a velvet glove. It disables the working class movement and is the biggest single block to real radical change. Effectively, they have tossed the tens of thousands of dead and wounded Palestinians into “history”. They have no call nor need to support any Palestinian state. Their single call is to protect the arms trade and Zionist settler colonialism in the Middle East.