The “under new management” Labour Party has left one more left wing Jew out in the cold
JVL Introduction
David Rosenberg’s closely argued and deeply felt resignation letter from the Starmer led Labour Party is a distressing and necessary read.
In his “Rebel Notes” blog, David explains why he cannot remain part of a Party that attacks Jews and others in the name of combatting antisemitism while behaving in deeply antisemitic ways itself.
He describes a Party that he believes has lost all moral authority through its authoritarian abandonment of democracy and that has trampled on the idealism and enthusiasm of the hundreds of thousands of younger and older people who supported Corbyn in his project to build a better and fairer Britain.
David is yet one more left wing Jewish Party activist who has given their all only to be driven out of the Party – whether by expulsion, suspension or despair. JVL has seen far too many of these letters and statements. In this piece by David we can read the hurt, anger, frustration and disappointment in every line.
The Party is the poorer for not being able to cherish principled Jewish socialists like David and so many others featured in these pages.
This article was originally published by Rebel Notes on Mon 21 Feb 2022. Read the original here.
Reaching the Tipping Point
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Well done, David. There is no point in staying in this party.
I am not sure Zero Covid policies actually work studies are showing lockdowns do more harm than good and those harmful effects go on long after the lockdown ends.
Bottom line: What is described here represents yet another in a long line of deeply worrying related examples of people being classified and designated as ‘undesirables/deplorables/undeserving working class’ [take your pick].
To be denied political representation and other rights in the widespread culture of Cancellation, de-platforming and de-legitimisation which is a direct result of the retreat of the wider left, in lockstep with the neo-right in the LP, from Class Politics in favour of dividing people into ever smaller and smaller groups into manufactured hierarchies of oppression.
My LP membership has now lapsed. I am not Jewish but have been to Bergen-Belsen,Theresienstadt and Waansee.
What is to be done?
David Rosenberg has been one of my must read people over the past 5 years or so. I’m surprised he’s leaving Labour as I know he is close to Jeremy Corbyn and I would have thought that staying in the party was better – after all Starmer and co could be gone soon. There are still plenty of left activists at local level. Maybe he and we all will be back. Or maybe there is a new party afoot but I doubt it.
Only thing I disagree with in the article is where David says: “I have no doubt that there needs to be a deeper understanding of facets of antisemitism within Labour and across the Left.” This is talking up the ‘left antisemitism’ meme which people such as Owen Jone and David Renton promote and which I really don’t think is there. Left antisemitism is an oxymoron and there is nothing much ‘deeper’ to understand.
Good on yer, David.
Starmer’s Labour Party will soon find itself on the wrong side of history. Just as apartheid apologists in the 1980s LP did. The Overton window is shifting towards support for the oppressed and condemnation of the oppressors, the Israeli government. This keeps on happening to Starmer. He doesnt do strategy, does he?
Richard Barton Pink: I got Covid in March 2020, before lockdown. I got it because I was circulating round schools, football stadiums and my university. I escape death by hairsbreadth – just getting to hospital on time. The govt at the time was pursuing a policy of ‘herd immunity’. Johnson had already flagged up in Feb 3 in his Greenwich speech that he was against ‘market segregation’ as a way of dealing with Covid. An inner group of ministers, advisers and – sadly – some scientists were working out that some of us should die in order that others should be saved. I believe that this was mass murder.
So convincing, and well expressed, David.
Sorry to get off the point, but I must jump in, Richard Barton Pink:
In Bahrain (and many other places) a Zero Covid policy worked very well indeed, with a British public health policy advocate, (John Ashton) advising the Bahrain government. The British government under complacent Boris Johnson took the outbreak of Covid frivolously, was ashamed to take swift state action, or to mobilise civic society and the public sector. Imagine how empathetic, compassionate and effective a Corbyn goverment would have been!
Zero Covid policy is not the same as a belated panic and a lockdown.
Thanks for taking the time. You are in good company now
Your well shot of the Labour Party, I’ve voted Labour for 62 yrs , but never again, until we are rid of the Mandelsons and Blairs and their toxic influence on the most ineffectual leader since Kinnock. BTW is there any way that presentation you mention can be put online, I would very much like to see it.!
An excellent letter David which explains well the corrupt nature of the Party which has the nerve to call itself the ‘Labour Party’. A Party which faces both ways by claiming to be anti-racist whilst at the same time owing allegiance to the racist, apartheid regime in Israel. We must not forget however that the Witch Hunt began under Jeremy Corbyn and despite everything which has happened since, THAT is the bit which hurts many of us the most!
This is clearly a heartfelt and well written letter explaining why Dave has felt he has no alternative but to leave the Labour Party. I believe that he is right but I am disappointed that he doesn’t point to ways that people who were part of the Corbyn Project can continue that work.
For myself I am a member of the new Socialist Labour Network, formed as part of the merger of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network.
There is nothing I can add to Dave’s coruscating attack on the deceptive and dishonest Starmer. His lies put him on a par with Johnson.
However Dave, because of his hero worship of Jeremy Corbyn, fails to provide any analysis of where the left went wrong during Corbyn’s period as leader. The witchhunt didn’t start with Starmer. Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, myself and many others were expelled under Corbyn’s watch not Starmers. Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson were suspended and forced out with Corbyn’s blessing.
Dave still doesn’t realise that the anti-Semitism campaign was a false narrative from the beginning. It was not as if anti-Semitism didn’t exist among Labour members. It did but was trivial compared to the amount of Islamaphobia. But that was not what the ‘antisemitism’ campaign was about. That was why, ironically, when the GLU came across genuine holocaust deniers they left them in place. It took a 200+ strong petition from Labour International Members before one such member was expelled.
Dave never recognised that the whole campaign was aimed at getting rid of Corbyn and had nothing to do with genuine antisemitism. Why? Because the Zionist organisations behind it, notably the JLM, have never been interested in fighting antisemitism.
So a little self-criticism would also be in order.
Solidarity Dave.
I think you listed most of the worst acts of this sinkhole of antisemitism that is the Labour Party, including what they did to Sue. But that disgusting use of your work to condemn others of antisemitism has to be among the worst things I’ve heard. Isn’t that also what they did to Robert Cohen?
I’m sure you can sue the Labour Party for defamation as there is clear evidence they are accusing you of antisemitism.
Leaving Labour is a healthy choice. You’re wasted on them. Go well.
Tremendously thorough and well documented piece, thank you. I left a little before David having stuck it out as long as I could. I am extremely glad to no longer feel tainted and tarnished by the Labour leadership’s dangerously anti-democratic manoeuvrings
Thank you Dave for your revelations confirming what those of us who have left the LP understood to be the case. Of course one can say Jeremy Corbyn ought to have known he was being duped by his advisors, but in his defence I say his case is indeed a special case, who, one might well ask, has had to go through such a frenzied attack sustained over such a protracted period, an attack supported by a massive mountain of money and an army of corrupt individuals.
Solidarity David Rosenberg, as well as empathy (- the latter, in my case, comes easy, as we share ethnic, ideological and generational characteristics).
However, I would like to take this opportunity to comment about the tendency in “our circles” to reverse the weaponisation of antisemitism charges against Starmer and his “under new management” L.P. :
Ample has been said, in this venue and elsewhere, about the fact that the orchestrated antisemitism campaign was but a pretext and a tool to suppress a mass movement and its figurehead, which threatened to chip away at the established class privileges in a time of socioeconomic and geopolitical instability.
Although I can understand the tactical propaganda advantage (particularly among the liberal identity politics-oriented public) of addressing that very charge at the Starmer administration, I very much doubt it would serve our strategic aim to concentrate on that message, or indeed on that agenda.
I think that the proper socialist reaction to the current wave of “new antisemitism” charges against the left ought to be:
“Thank you for preaching to us about ’50 Shades of Antisemitism’, but we don’t need your lecture, since we wrote that book. And now, let us discuss what needs to be done to guarantee the survival and decent living conditions for the 99%”.
I fully understand David and see the Labour Party as an obstacle to political advance and think we would be far better off with PR. But it was clear that these attackes weaponising antisemitism were FROM THE VERY START a way of attacking Corbyn and the Left. Many of us said so – and Corbyn should have fought back right from the start making it clear that what this was really about was defending racist Israel.
thank you David for this heartfelt piece which expresses so clearly the issues involved. Yes, see you in the struggle. Nicola
Solidarity David.
I am still a party member and wonder why? Reading Davids text about the way he and others have been smeared and denied the right to speak, I am reminded of history books at school – about the rise of tyranny, especially fascism. What is to be done collectively?
The party is poorer for your resignation the movement is however stronger, solidarity comrade.
What a loss to socialism, anti -semitism and to us all, David. Who knew that the Labour Party would ever sink so low, as you have described here.
You remain an inspiration as a socialist, a Jew and a lovely person.
Thank you for setting out your reasons so cogently.
John W: In the first place, the smear campaigns against Jeremy were not just because of his support for the Palestinians and his criticisms of Israel, and there were other elements at work as well of course. And you say – as has been oft-repeated – that Jeremy ‘should have fought back right from the start making it clear that what this was really about was defending racist Israel’. And precisely where do you think Jeremy could have voiced this – ie what platform? I mean do you really believe that the MSM would have cited him saying such, and done so without contacting the likes of the CAA and the JLM and LFI and BoD and Margaret Hodge and John Mann and Iain Austin etc, etc, to get their ‘take’ on Jeremy’s ‘claim’ (as it would obviously be referred to and presented as)?! Needless to say, any such coverage would have contained mountainloads of faux fury and condemnation and vilification.
The episode that really kicked off the A/S smear campaign was the Naz Shah/Ken Livingstone episode, and the following is just one examples of the response – ie the reaction – to Jeremy denying that there was an anti-semitism crisis in the party:
Labour in crisis over ‘anti-semitic’ scandal: MPs demand Corbyn gets his ‘head out of the sand’ after Red Ken is SUSPENDED for claiming Hitler backed moving the Jews to Israel…
Jeremy Corbyn tonight denied Labour was facing an anti-Semitism crisis despite being forced to suspend his old friend Ken Livingstone for claiming Hitler was a ‘Zionist’.
Senior Labour MPs tonight expressed horror at the attempt to play down the explosive row, which has rocked the party just a week before crucial elections.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3563223/Ken-Livingstone-claims-Hitler-supported-Zionism-supported-moving-Jews-Israel-went-mad-ended-killing-six-million-Jews.html
Well done, David. Excellent letter. The whole Sue Levi Hughes incident is shocking — and so revealing of the thinly veiled antisemitism of so many Starmerites. You’ve made the right decision: given the war against Ukraine and, domestically, the cost-of-living crisis and the erosion or our democratic freedoms, it’s tragic that two Opposition parties should be wasting their energies on internecine struggles. (The Greens are consumed by an internal battle on “trans rights”).
I left Labour in the wake of Starmer’s sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey in June 2020. I wrote to Keir Starmer before resigning, saying that it trivialised antisemitism to state that Maxine Peake’s criticism of Israeli security forces constituted “antisemitic conspiracy theories”. I also asked if his planned trip to Israel/Palestine would include visits to the West Bank. He never replied.
All the best for the future, David.