Why I just quit the Labour Party
Published
by
Richard Kuper
JVL Introduction
Asa Winstanley has had enough of Labour’s accusations and disciplinary processes and has resigned from the Labour Party.
We wish he hadn’t but had continued to fight the charges against him which we believe to be absurd and ill-founded, but we understand why he did not feel confident he could have a fair trial.
Here he presents his own account of events over the last year or so.
This article was originally published by Electronic Intifada on Fri 7 Feb 2020. Read the original here.
Why I just quit the Labour Party
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I am so sorry, Asa, that you have been hounded out of the Labour Party. Rest assured, the work you do will still be closely followed by Labour Party Members. We owe you a debt of thanks for all the work you’ve done so far to support Palestinian Rights and fighting for democracy and freedom of speech in our Party.
Labour’s response to the avalanche of misleading, often false and even entirely fabricated charges of AS revealed from the outset its weak grasp of the nature of racism. To say the least it showed that the party was and is institutionally confused about the nature of racism in general and of AS in particuler.
I think we were all let badly down by the lack of leadership on this issue. The enemies of Labour, especially when it espouses policies which challenge any aspect of power based on wealth, saw that they could prize open Labour’s defences and dictate how it should respond to the charges made against it. This culminated in the adoption of the deeply flawed IHRA document. In that moment Labour forfeited its integrity as a democratic socialist party. Having got their foot in the door Labour’s enemies have never looked back since. Their latest wheeze is the BofD’s outrageous pledges which ALL the leadership candidates rushed to sign without the smallest caveat.
Where does that leave us? We see where it leaves Asa Winstanley. After four years of left leadership, admittedly in difficult circumstances, this should never have happened. It happened because the left leadership and those around it failed to break with Labour’s traditional opaque and manipulative approach to policy and organisation. Let’s face it the so-called Democracy Review (which never reviewed anything) was a (bad) joke. The Party failed to make use of the immense expertise freely available to it in the form of its members. This nowhere more true than regarding Labour’s “AS crisis”.
Where do we go from here, especially since it looks as though the Party is about to lurch back to the so-called “centre”? What chance is there of changing Labour’s disastrous stance on AS? I would be very interested to hear what others think.
This is so sad, I am becoming demoralised by the constant drip drip of these antisemitism accusations. We have lost so many good left leaning activists and representatives. Perhaps there should be a Legal Help Fund set up to make a stand against some of these accusations and take a case through the courts. I fear that without someone having the financial ability to sue in defence of their reputation that this will continue until all anti-racists on the left are expelled. I fear for the future of the Labour Party and all it was set up for.
Reply to David Pavett. My heart sank when the Party accepted the unaltered IHRA Document. A sad capitulation to the pressure exerted. The Leadership Election candidates signing of a further document of even wider pledges which threaten the whole membership was a very dark manipulation of emotion. I am still a member and still support Palestinian rights still denounce the actions of Israel in their consistent ignoring of international law and appropriation and annexation of Palestinian Land. How much longer I will be a Labour Member is a matter of internal debate, I do not give in easily to pressure. I am however only an ordinary member and therefore not an explicit target for taking down, for how long I do not know.
I am absolutely appalled by the continuing witch hunt of the legitimate objectors of the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. I have decided not renew my Labour membership because I am opposed to their bully boy tactics.
Why are supporters of the Palestinian cause allowing them selves to be traduced by Zionist supporters? Is Melanie Philips still insisting that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, despite the fact that most Zionists are Christian – up to 70 million or more in the USA alone according to some estimates? It is well past time to take the fight to the Zionists. Why is any supporter of this (Palestinian-) human rights-abusing movement allowed to remain a member of any UK political party that purports to support universal human rights, enshrined in international law after the experiences of Jews and others before and during WWII? Will anyone challenge the right of (any) a Zionist to be a member of (say) Labour or the LibDems when they are clearly against the Parties’ stance on universal human rights?
There would seem to be grounds for a next stage appeal to the Info Comm office that I think lies with the high court. If Asa is mindful to do so I am sure that a crowd fund appeal could raise sufficient money. The abuse of process by the LP by sitting on documents for one year and then expecting a response in 5 days is more akin to an autoritarian regime than The LP. There must still be staff who are intent on undermining members in the relevant department. I am aware that the Panorama leakers are making ET claims but I am sure that there must be grounds for dismissal due to incompetence of current staff.
Every time I post I wonder if another page of ‘evidence’ is being complied against me.
David, Do you recall what happened when Chris Williamson was reinstated? All hell broke loose. And if he hadn’t been suspended again – or re-suspended – all hell would have broken loose again. It is/was of course all contrived and fake (all the outrage), as such, but the millions of people it’s done to ‘effect’ have no idea that it is of course, and those contriving it all know that – ie that it is inconceivable to the vast majority of people that it’s all contrived and could be manufactured. And I don’t mean ‘inconceivable’ in the sense that they consider the possibility that it’s all contrived, and THEN dismiss that possibility as inconceivable, but SO inconceivable that that possibility doesn’t even cross their minds.
Take the Ken Livingstone episode, for example. As I’m sure most people who follow THIS website, or Skwawkbox or The Canary or Electronic Intifada etc, know by now, Ken was alluding to The Haavara Agreement, an historical fact, when he said what he said in his radio interview about Hitler supporting Zionism, and we know that all the vilification and condemnation fired at him was fake and contrived, as such, and that John Mann being at party HQ (or wherever it was) with a film crew when Ken turned up there some three hours after the radio interview, was no coincidence, and was all planned in advance so that the conspirators had some video clips for TV news channels and newspaper websites, showing John Mann verbally attacking Ken and calling him a Nazi apologist etc. It was of course all orchestrated, but it would be inconceivable to the vast majority of people that it was (and John Mann has been duly rewarded for his ‘part’ in the movie since, and for playing the central roll in ‘transforming’ Ken – a high profile and close ally of Jeremy’s – into a Jew-hating anti-semite, so as to get the A/S movie rolling).
The whole ‘transformation’ of Jeremy and his hundreds of thousands of member supporters into anti-semites (and in the case of the members, into bullies and thugs as well) started shortly after Jeremy was elected leader, and then, after the shock (to them) of the very close call in 2017, the conspirators redoubled their efforts, and their ‘efforts’ were rewarded on the 12th of December last year.
When your enemies own and/or control the MSM – and the narrative, as such – they can manufacture ‘reality’ for their own ends, and the movie – Part 1, anyway – ended just as they planned. Just as they ‘Directed’.