Confronted In The Most Robust Manner

Here:

We enter a vital week, with important votes being held across Britain — for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, councils and mayors.

It is essential that progressives unite to return a strong Labour vote on Thursday.

No artificial division or distraction must be allowed to detract from the task of confronting the wealthy elite. 

Their control of the levers of power places enough obstacles in our path without us indulging turncoats in our midst and their fabricated crises.

Shadow international development secretary Diane Abbott is correct to condemn the “smear” of anti-semitism against the Labour Party.

In contrast to the slanderous claims, the party has responded swiftly to a handful of allegations — some quite dubious — and set up an inquiry into racism.

Were this a real problem that would have settled matters: strong action coupled with a wider investigation. But little in this supposed anti-semitism scandal is real.

Unite leader Len McCluskey branded it “mood music” to challenges to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

These come from the same motley crew of bitter Blairites who have attacked Jeremy since before he even won the leadership.

First among them is John Mann, a Labour MP so scared of democracy that he demanded the leadership contest be called off after so many people registered to vote.

Ignored, he condemned Jeremy on the day of the result as “not remotely up to the job” — in an article for hate rag the Daily Mail. 

Mann then insisted that it would be “payment by results” — specifically a good showing this Thursday.

Yet Mann has done everything in his power to divide the Labour Party — which gave Jeremy a crushing majority in the first round of the leadership vote — and sabotage its chances at the ballot box. 

One can only conclude that ousting the party’s popular leader is more important to Mann than electoral success. 

McCluskey is absolutely right when he condemns the actions of Mann and co as “nothing more than a cynical attempt to manipulate anti-semitism for political aims, because this is all about constantly challenging Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.” 

Those kicking up the biggest fuss, he rightly notes, include the elements of the Conservative Party and right-wing press who supported Hitler in the 1930s “while the progressive left were out on the cobblestones of Cable Street fighting against Mosley’s Blackshirts.” 

“It’s a disgrace,” McCluskey concludes — and we couldn’t agree more. 

Racism is no trifling matter. In any and all of its forms it must be confronted in the most robust manner.

This sits at the heart of our movement — the unity of the working class across all lines which the powerful might use to divide us.

The willingness of John Mann to use a concocted racism scandal to achieve his political aim of ousting Jeremy is beyond the pale and must call into question his chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-Semitism.

It is all the more galling when the Conservatives are deploying racist rhetoric to get super-rich former tax exile Zac Goldsmith elected as mayor of London. 

The highly organised hate-mongering campaign may now have reached its nadir.

In the Mail on Sunday Goldsmith once more accused Labour candidate Sadiq Khan and Jeremy of getting pally with Islamist extremists, tastefully illustrated with a picture of the No 30 bus on which 13 people were killed by a suicide bomber in London on July 7 2005. 

“Vote for Sadiq and you’ll be blown up on the bus,” is the none-too-subtle message. 

With such hatred being used in a systematic way by the ruling class, our task is clear — say No to any racism and unite behind the Labour Party under its first truly progressive leadership for generations.