The whole movement should reject this cynical attack on Unison’s Roger McKenzie
JVL Introduction
In what is clearly a politically motivated intervention, a dossier has been submitted to the Labour Party accusing Roger McKenzie, running for the leadership of Unison, of antisemitism.
Roger McKenzie is, of course, one of the trade union movement’s best-known black leaders. He is also a left-wing candidate, with a long history of antiracist campaigning.
Should he win the election, the left in the Party will be greatly strengthened – which no doubt lies behind this smear campaign now.
In this Morning Star analysis Ben Chacko investigates and puts the campaign against McKenzie in wider perspective.
This article was originally published by Morning Star on Sun 8 Nov 2020. Read the original here.
The whole movement should reject this cynical attack on Unison's Roger McKenzie
The flimsy attempt to portray one of Britain’s leading black trade unionists as a racist is a transparent bid by the Labour right to interfere in a union election
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No matter how many apologies the leadership makes. It doesn’t matter how much compensation it gives to those who are intent on ensuring the Party drops its progressive agenda and prevents any meaningful support for the Palestinians the blackmailers will return. They are members of our own Party and will never give up until Labour regresses to the Blair days. Worse still they are doing the bidding of a foreign state. I read an article in Byline Times recently disclosing the names of Labour MPs who are members or former members of the Henry Jackson Society. A notorious ultra conservative institution. Why isn’t the leadership going after them instead of persecuting socialists who have fought racism all their adult lives
The IHRA was all about protecting Israel from criticism, this was obvious when the IHRA plus examples was adopted by Labour conference alongside a statement which ensures this will not in any way undermine freedom of expression on Israel or the rights of Palestinians.” Here is the proof..
In a second statement, the JLC’s chief executive, Simon Johnson, said Corbyn had “attempted shamefully to undermine the entire IHRA definition”, adding that the free speech caveat “drives a coach and horses” through that definition. “It is clearly more important to the Labour leader to protect the free speech of those who hate Israel than it is to protect the Jewish community from the real threats that it faces,” Johnson said. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/04/labour-adopts-ihra-antisemitism-definition-in-full
Margaret Hodge, a Labour backbencher who has been very critical of Corbyn’s handling of the antisemitism issue, said she was disappointed that the party had issued the short clarification to accompany the adoption of the code. She tweeted:
Two steps forward and one step back. Why dilute the welcome adoption IN FULL of the #IHRA definition of #Antisemitism with an unnecessary qualification?
6:04 PM • Sep 4, 2018•Twitter Web Client
Len McCluskey urged the Labour party to adopt the IHRA definition plus examples in full. Hoping that they could draw a line under it and move on. What a fool.
Mr McCluskey, who is a close ally of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said the party had been “insensitive” in not adopting the definition.
Mr McCluskey said the problem of anti-Semitism in the party was “not manufactured” but had “certainly been wildly exaggerated”. https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2018/08/16/union-boss-mccluskey-calls-on-labour-to-adopt-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/
The IHRA is going to prove to be a weapon of mass destruction far more potent than anything else. And just to get a bit of peace and quiet the fools voted for it.
Hi Bird being hounded again and now this. Clearly a carefully planned and orchestrated campaign against the left of the party. Active resistance is where we need to be at the moment.
Vexatious claims of anti semitism are hate crimes and should be prosecuted
Has anyone thought about counter claiming against whoever submitted the dossier, there are plenty on here who could throw the book at them
Thanks, JVL for highlighting this travesty of justice. The Labour Right’s spurious attack’s on our socialist brothers and sisters MUST be thoroughly resisted in as robust a manner as is possible. Their interference in Union business should not be tolerated, neither should their attempts to sabotage the NEC elections by further allegations of antisemitism against Jo Bird.
I stand with Roger McKenzie.
I stand with Jo Bird.
Given the literally thousands of articles about A/S in the main-stream newspapers during Jeremy’s tenure as leader (and since), and the thousands of times it’s been covered by TV and radio news etc, it obviously must have had an impact to some degree or other. I mean either people believed it all or they didn’t, and if they didn’t, then they MUST have concluded pretty much from the outset that it was a smear campaign and, as such, that those conspiring in it were trying to sabotage Jeremy’s leadership AND his chances of winning a general election and forming a government, and subverting democracy as such.
By my arithmetic, there were 2.6 million people approximately that voted Labout in 2017 and DIDN’T in 2019, but there were 10.27 million who DID. So given that they could hardly have been oblivious to all the A/S accusations, then surely there are only TWO possible explanations for why they did – ie either they knew it was a smear campaign and being grossly exaggerated, or it wasn’t a problem for them. But we’ll probably never find out who thought what, and the percentages. And certainly not the latter.
Something obvious just occured to me in respect of what I said above, albeit in relation to those who voted for the Tory Party – ie voted for Boris Johnson. He wasn’t PM of course when he made the remarks about Muslim women in burkas looking like letter-boxes and bank robbers, but he was a high profile figure in the Tory Party, and had been for years. And yet this neither deterred or prevented the Tory membership electing him as leader (and PM, as such), or the the 13 million plus people who voted Tory in last years election.
But given that it was more than two years beforehand that he made the remarks, and given that there weren’t any high profile figures bringing the matter up or writing letters to the Guardian (and being reported right across the MSM for doing so) calling on people NOT to vote for the Tory Party etc in the weeks prior to the GE….. And I can only assume that the vast majority of traditional Tory voters who voted Remain in the EU referendum would have voted for Johnson and the Tories despite Brexit, and that Brexit was the reason why just about everybody else who voted Tory did so.
All that said, Boris Johnson didn’t just write what he said by mistake, and there is no doubt that it was deliberate, and he knew of course that it would be widely reported across the MSM. But then the right-wing papers – and the tabloids in particular – had been ‘generating’ bad feeling towards Muslims for years. And Johnson knew it of course.
On a practical level the left has lost discipline again, there are three left wing candidates in the Unison Election.
Its gonna end in tears again
Will we never learn?
Harry Law finishes his post by saying:
‘The IHRA is going to prove to be a weapon of mass destruction far more potent than anything else. And just to get a bit of peace and quiet the fools voted for it.’
A bit of peace and quiet! Are you alluding to all the hundreds of articles and TV and radio news items that went on for months prior to the LP finally adopting the definition and the examples? A bit of peace and quiet! You jest of course Harry. Hmm…..
Oh, right, and I wonder what would have happened and what the reaction would have been if they HADN’T adopted it!
As if Harry didn’t know damn well what the reaction would have been!
The following is the sort of black propaganda rhetoric that was being churned out just PRIOR to the definition being adopted:
Former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks said Sunday the majority of Jews are questioning whether Britain is a safe place to bring up their children.
The crossbench peer insisted the Labour leader must ‘recant and repent’ and that he risked engulfing the country ‘in the flames of hatred’.
‘Jews have been in Britain since 1656, I know of no other occasion in these 362 years when Jews… are asking ‘is this country safe to bring up our children’,’he told the BBC.’
https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/02/former-pm-gordon-brown-says-anti-semitism-is-a-stain-on-labour-7906387/
Just a bit of peace and quiet my foot!