Let Diane Abbott talk about race!
JVL Introduction
News on July 17 that Keir Starmer had suspended Mother of the House Diane Abbott for a second time for remarks about different type of racism sparked outrage and some incredulity on the left, helpfully chronicled by Sam Browse for LabourOutlook. Nearly 30,000 have signed a petition calling for her reinstatement.
Even though some of Diane’s visibly Jewish Orthodox constituents might disagree with her on the question of whether Jews differ from Black people in not being instantly distinguishable as belonging to a minority group, there can be little doubt that Starmer has suspended her as part of his drive to eliminate the remnants of left wing dissent from the party.
More important though is the deeper question of how our discourse about racism has become so superficial. Where are the forums for thrashing out complex issues and learning from one another in rigorous debate? Jason Akundaye argues in this comment piece for the Guardian, we need spaces where “discussion pertaining to race in Britain could be contested in all its messiness, ferocity and rigour… gladiator-style”.
On matters of race he says “institutions have developed a preference to either run scared or dismiss real discourse rather than challenge, engage and understand.” A perfect summary of how antisemitism is dealt with.
NWI
This article was originally published by The Guardian on Fri 18 Jul 2025. Read the original here.
The Diane Abbott row shows how impoverished Britain’s conversations about race have become
We should be able to discuss the different ways in which minorities are racialised in a thoughtful – and sometimes confronting – way
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As I expect is true of many Jews who wears clothing other than that associated with the orthodox Jews, I have had to endure people talking about what Jews are and what Jews do as if they knew everything about them without them having the faintest idea that they are talking to a Jew. It is fun enlightening them, and, usually, witnessing their embarrassment. But that involves a particular type of hurtfulness which I expect Travellers must also tolerate. Dianne Abbott is black: she has direct knowledge of being personally confronted for daring simply to be black; and she shares that experience with every other black, or indeed Asian, who has been directly, and very personally abused for being who they are. As is surely true for orthodox Jews whom I have heard disgustingly abused in front of me by racists who just thought I was another white face in the crowd. Racism comes in different forms and we should be allowed to acknowledge and discuss that. For Starmer to turn on a long-serving and respected member of his party for her daring to talk about a subject of which he has absolutely no direct experience is a sad comment on his own view of of the significance of racism.
I am sure Diane Abbott was suspended as a way of getting rid of another person on the left. The government doesn’t care about how we talk about race (unless it is ‘offending’ Jews who can’t bear hearing Israel criticised), which means we don’t have the sort of discussion we need in a country which is hugely ‘multi-cultural’. We are not just black and white, and both black and white themselves cover a multitude of options. Yes, we need that discussion.
But I do not think Diane Abbott’s suspension has anything to do with the more complex debate which she appears to want to start. Nor about her blackness. Nor has she helped us to have this debate when she gave Starmer an open goal into which he instantly kicked a ball.
When she wrote that foolish letter in which she equated racism against Jews, Irish people and travellers with that experienced by red heads who are bullied because of their hair colour, she trivialised all discussion of race. I am sure she didn’t mean to do so – she mayn’t even have written the letter. I have seen it suggested by people who I trust that she was covering for a minion (which, if true, was honourable). In any event, she instantly withdrew the letter and apologised. That should have been that. But vengeful Sharmer suspended her and then tried, unsuccessfully, to stop her standing to be a Labour MP this time round.
So I cannot fathom why, in a recent radio interview, she said she regretted nothing about the events leading to her suspension. She is experienced enough to know that would have been a red rag to a Starmer bull, interpreted as meaning: ‘I apologised, but I didnt mean it’. And if she regretted NOTHING, well, where, apart from anything else, does that leave the red-head comment? Of course, Starmer acted against her again. He doesn’t have the wit or subtlety or common sense simply to ignore what she said in the interview, yet she didn’t seem to realise that.
For the record, I don’t think she should have been suspended the first time, nor the second time. But I also wish she would devote more care and thought to her letter-writing and any interviews she does, as none of this current hoo-ha helps the kind of discussion we do need about race.
The crux of Diane’s argument valid and obvious, despite maybe some clumsy phrasing in the original article. Simply put, if you observe someone at distance you cannot tell who they are as a person other than male, female, adult, child, black or white or oriental or Asian. It is a purely physical assessment leaving people of colour exposed to instant prejudice and racism. That is a truth. The PLP
are either jumping to an outside agency’s tune or have jumped at an opportunity to purge the left again. Either is wrong.
Diane Abbott summed it up when she said what we all know: Starmer wants rid of me”. She could have added (and may have, somewhere) “and also everyone left on the left.” Have to say he’s made a decent fist of it, the cuckoo-in-the-nest, pseudo Labour PM. Will he be allowed to be PM until the end of the term? Not much talk of 2nd or 3rd term now. The number of calamitous policies he’s forced through, followed by the many enforced U-turns will have him alongside Ramsey MacDonald in the list of infamous LP leaders.
I have been a member of the Labour Party for nearly 60 years when I joined the Young Socialists at 15 years old. I remember with fondness interesting discussions and debates at local Labour Party meeting about different aspects and opinions on many topics including racism, pacifism and the thorny questions surrounding Palestine. A range of views could be freely expressed and the topics would often continue to be discussed in the pub afterwards. No one would have dreamed that just a few years later any one of us could have been suspended or even excluded from the party for passionately and respectfully expressing honestly held views amongst comrades within the broad left spectrum.
So many of my friends from those days have left the party, don’t bother to go to meetings, or when they do go think twice before opening their mouth for fear of repercussions.
I feel resentful that the party that my parents worked their whole lives to build has been stolen just at the time it could have been a meaningful force for making the world a better place.
The fear of complexity undermines investigation and the rigid categories imposed on discussions around identity negate meaning …. there’s a great quote from Walt Whitman – “I contain multitudes.”
He was Gay but you wouldn’t have known it to look at him
I have been sort of assuming that the reason Diane Abbott has now restated her point about visible-on-sight racism as distinct from many other kinds of deeply ingrained racism, is because she could now see a political alternative outside the Labour party. Although I had been dubious about a new left party (feeling that more a of a loose network or progressive alliance might be preferable), I now think the new party may act as a pole of influence for many MPs who are fed up with being policed and bullied. If so, good!
In order to support her, I am one of the nearly 30.000 who signed the petition to reinstate Diane Abbott into the Labour Party. However, I wonder why Abbott does not denounce the Party which by now is a long way from what she presumably believes in and why she does not join Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell on the Independent benches.
This is an important article. However, I see that it does not use “race” in inverted commas; something that was a common practice at one time. “Race” is a social construct and it is important to remind people when discussing this. This means treating it seriously but critically in debates.
The whole debate around race has become politically skewed. It is blindingly obvious that people suffer varying degrees of prejudice/racism according to what they are (or appear to be) and this should be discussed sensibly and rationally. There IS a hierarchy of prejudice/racism in this country and it would be much more healthy if we acknowledged that fact and worked together to redress it.
The Labour party has run out of road. It’s traditional vote has collapsed – for good reason, as has the Tories, and it is very much a captive of the bankers, private equity, institutional funds whose managers thrive on investment fees to manage your money and commission from churning your assets plus a bonus from the fund whether you make money or not. It’s a captive of industry lobbies (not that we have many real industries) and the FIRE sector, and it is so badly led that it has become a caricature of everything a political party shouldn’t be, and when Starmer is finally dumped, he’ll be replaced by someone like him, who will think it is just dandy to have a friendly billionaire pick up his bills and appoint an equally know-nothing, dingbat chucklehead like Reeves to make the poor poorer and the rich a hell of a sight richer.
One of the things I did notice before I left the party the minute Starmer was elected was an dispairing sense that racism was increasingly defined as something that affected those committed to the Zioville settler colony taking over the land shared over the centuries by Christians, Jews and Muslims, and the relegation to the second class and the fast track to suspension and expulsion of Jews, Muslims and anyone who questioned Labour’s application of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism, even as the “good Jews” soak Palestinian land in the blood of men, women and, most of sll, children and starving them to death if they fail to die first from bombs, bullets, torture, rape of the unsanitary conditions into which they are packed, making an obscene mockery of the Holocaust.
But, I guess the catch all, utterly deranged, Clause 2.I.11 of the party’s constitution tells you with impeccably precise imprecision what the party’s stance on institutionalised intolerance as a means of ridding itself of the wrong kind of member is: “No member of the Party shall engage in conduct which in the opinion of the NEC is prejudicial, or in any act which in the opinion of the NEC is grossly detrimental to the Party. … The buggars have given themselves the right get rid of any member on the basis of anything they can think of. Pure Lewis Carroll with a shake of George Orwell to add piquancy to the dish.
Whatever anyone says about any group – from fairies at the bottom of the garden to inadequate politicians lacking and kind of moral compass like the Starmer, Reeves, Cooper triumvarate – can be rejected or ejected from the party “on the basis of a protected characteristic as determined by the NEC”.
I would suggest that Diane, a woman of unbounded courage, ideas and compassion for others, takes the same option as I and several hundred thousand of our fellows have done and make Your Party, her party. (commment shortened in accordance with our 300 word limit)