The Labour Party’s Culture War Over Racism Has Pitted Marginalised Communities Against One Another
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Ash Sarkar focuses on a particularly destructive aspect of what the leaked Labour Parry Report has revealed: the party’s culture war over racism.
Treating antisemitism as a thing quite apart from racism at large, has left a blind spot when it comes to antiblackness and Islamophobia in the Labour party.
This, argues Sarkar, “has repercussions far beyond its own internal bureaucracy. Its implications have the potential to drive deeper divisions between marginalised communities for years to come.”
This article was originally published by Novara Media on Tue 14 Apr 2020. Read the original here.
The Labour Party’s Culture War Over Racism Has Pitted Marginalised Communities Against One Another
The leaked report into ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019’ may not make the Booker longlist, but it still supplanted Hilary Mantel’s latest as everyone’s new favourite 800 page magnum opus on the horrors of political bloodletting.
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A couple of comments on this excellent article:
It is not only under the IHRA definition that “holding an [ethnic or ethno-religious group] collectively responsible” would be considered racist. I can see what Ash is doing here, pointing out the hypocrisy in adopting (and presumably endlessly discussing) the entirely unnecessary IHRA text and then actually ignoring one of its tenets when it applies to black people or Muslims. I just wanted to point out that this “collective responsibility” thing is plain prejudice and doesn’t need to IHRA to define it.
The other thing is something Aaron Bastani pointed out on Tyskysour last night, which is that not only did Patrick Heneghan tell Michael Crick about Diane Abbott crying in the toilet, he told him that she was in a cafe called Leon’s (which I’ve never heard of: I was puzzled as to what “Diane in Leon on vic street” meant). The intention being presumably to enable Crick to go and upset her further.
This reads as another factual account of vileness amongst paid staff, who have been acting against the Labour Party members who provide their living.
Please Keir, skip pointlessly fussing about how the facts came out. Please deal with the actual problem.