Pro-Palestine votes aren’t ‘sectarian’ – Labour mustn’t dismiss them
JVL Introduction
Why are those who showed their concern over Gaza in the general election pathologised, seen as a sign of a worrying sectarianism in political life?
Two sentences in Nesrine Malik’s insightful analysis answer that:
“During the months I have spent reporting on how Gaza has played out in domestic politics, I have never heard it mentioned without it being connected to other issues.”
“People who felt strongly about Gaza and refused to vote Labour on this basis did so partly because the issue stood for so much more: it suggested that the party’s rebrand had purged Labour of a moral backbone.”
There is a choice, she says: to understand this as the flowering of a political pluralism that Labour can and must embrace; or to dismiss and pathologise it.
To do the latter will simply feed into a further lowering of political engagement and political trust – and into Reform’s toxic capitalisation of both.
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Mon 8 Jul 2024. Read the original here.
Pro-Palestine votes aren’t ‘sectarian’. Dismissing them would be a dangerous mistake for Labour
Independent MPs won support by harnessing anger over Gaza. Their success reflects a wider sense the party is not listening
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Absolutely excellent. It was such a pleasure and honour to work with Muslim vote organisers in Andrew Feinstein’s campaign. we have all learned mutual values over time.
Nesrine Malik is also right imo to say that Galloway lost on other values. (This is not to discount his courage in being the first to stand for Gaza earlier this year, but his characteristic opportunism then turned people off). Altogether this was a great set of results.
Until European politicians are collectively willing to face down the most extreme elements in the Israeli government and first declare that Palestine is a state in its own right and then take steps to bring the state of Palestine into existence within its own borders and free from interference by the state of Israel, I think it is wishful thinking to expect Starmer to do anything but dismiss his loss of support from people who declined to vote Labour because of his stance on Gaza, his own embarrassing loss of votes to Andrew Feinstein, the unseating of four Labour MPs by Independents and the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn, as anything but a ‘blip’ he can ignore.
Starmer is a follower not a leader and he is acutely aware of the systematic vilification of his predecessor by MPs and organisations who self identified as Jewish, because of his overt support for the Palestinian people and his unwillingness to cosy up to groups like the Jewish Labour Movement.
Challenging Imperialist crimes in the Imperialist heartlands reaps a wide range of responses . More extreme and dangerous variants of this occur in States in the Imperialist cross hairs- lile slaughter& torture. Assange’s experience shows the vulnerability of challengers and brutality that can occur in so called bourgeois ‘democracies ‘ on the wrong side of history.
Galloway is a chancer and opportunist whose exterior hides a deeply selfish and nasty interior. I experienced him in my constituency of Bradford West where ‘pro gaza’ independents nearly overturned the 27000 majority of the very pro gaza’ Naz Shah. In her campaign to protect Asian women’s rights she has to fight misogyny coming at her from within and without the Labour Party as well as islamophobic lack of support from them nationally. One of these ‘independents’ was clearly supported by big money. Some of them obviously stood to get at the ‘uppity woman’. Malik’s article hardly scratches the surface of this complex situation.
The idea being touted that Muslims and others who care about victims in Gaza are simply expressing a sectarian vote, that’s indicative of a supposed lack Britishness is racist concept, and yet again demonstrates how neoliberal entryists expressing this vile notion, are entirely alien to Labour.
Labour has always been an internationalist solidarity party. After WW2 there were numerous anti-racist, anti-imperialist, Freedom for Africa, African Nationalist, and Arab Nationalist groups that were either directly or indirectly affiliated to Labour. Going back many decades before this many Labour and Trade Union activists were supporters of Ghandi and Indian Independence – the Labour supporting Socialist theatrical Dame Sybil Thorndike being one of these (as a socialist she did not use her title). Obviously, as well as Socialists, many Feminists were part of this anti-imperialist sensibility. Ethiopia has a statue of Sylvia Pankhurst celebrating her support.
This is yet another issue that demonstrates, that this is not the Labour Party any more.