No words for Labour’s complicity on Gaza
JVL Introduction
July 4th saw the first anniversary of this Labour government after 14 years of Tory or Coalition led rule. Hugh Lanning of Labour and Palestine writes despairingly of the countless failures of a so called Labour government (led by a Human Rights lawyer) regarding the horrors experienced by the people of Gaza for 21 months!
His frustration is understandable, we all share it; it is clear that the government will not change its position based on facts or international law, let alone compassion. As with the backtracking on cuts in disability benefits, this will need a great deal of pressure and we have far fewer MPs on our side. But people are overwhelmingly with the pro Palestine activists; they applaud as marches go by and polls show they want the UK to stop all weapons sales that could be used to perpetuate the genocide.
So this is a reminder – if one were needed – of how much the government has failed the people of Palestine and, in doing so, have endangered our rights as well.
LL
This article was originally published by Labour Outlook on Sun 6 Jul 2025. Read the original here.
Labour one year on. Words Fail Me
“Logic, international law, appeals to humanity, insults, pleas and petitions have all been tried, but all words have failed. Labour has lost its ‘sense of sin’, it has lost its moral compass – the difference between right and wrong.”
Hugh Lanning, Labour & Palestine, looks at what Starmer’s first year in office has meant for Palestine and at UK Government complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza.
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Hugh Lanning’s article is a passionate denunciation of what the Labour Party has become – but one sentence in particular caught my attention and demands a response.
He writes: “It is shaming to Labour Party members that many more Labour MPs are not challenging this Government’s policies on Palestine.”
If that is the case, it begs the question why anyone who is remotely concerned with morality or humanity or peace or truth is still a member of the Labour Party.
Furthermore, if Hugh Lanning feels a sense of shame he should take personal responsibility for his continued part in that organisation. He should resign his membership rather than complain about the failure of MPs. It seems rather late in the day to be doing that, given the mountain of evidence that the Labour Party selected its parliamentary candidates with some care in order to ensure that they lacked a spine and independence of mind.
Forty years ago the Scottish playwright CP Taylor wrote a play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was called “Good”. The play traces how ordinary men and women can – little by little – be detached from the reality of what they are involved in. It was about the holocaust in Nazi Germany.
Members of today’s Labour Party should be reminded of the play, and encouraged to ask themselves whether their continued membership has any connection to the holocaust in Palestine.
Any belief that the “tone” or “policy and actions on Palestine” will change, is misguided. Deeply embedded in the DNA of the Labour Party is protection of the establishment and its deep links to the Foreign Policy of the United States, which is directed from Yaffa [Tel Aviv]. There was little opposition in the Labour Party when the “British Mandate” was handed over to Zionist terrorists, even though British Service Personnel were murdered by the new colonial power. Atlee presided over the handing of its colony [Palestine] to another colony – “Israeli”, whose aim was to occupy, displace and ultimately “ethnically cleanse” Palestine of its indigenous population. The Labour Party and its leadership have never shied away from protecting the vested interests of its elite and acted as manager of the UK as a vassal state for the USA. Its very existence is a barrier to working class solidarity, support for liberation struggles and the death of imperialism across the globe.
When people get fed up with a Government they focus on a discrete issue: Palestine is that issue. Any debate about ‘our values’ is torpedoed by one word – ”Gaza’.
Spot on
I strongly suspect that much of our government’s policy towards Israel comes down to one simple factor – money. Many of our politicians at the top have received significant donations from “Israeli sources”. Surely this is the most egregious corruption? Equally egregious is Israel’s willingness to engage with our politics and try to influence them. That it has been so successful is shameful and casts serious doubt upon the calibre of people who we elect.