Look at Margaret Hodge, who recently called Shraga Stern “a second-class Jew”. Look at Nick Cohen, who has demanded that Stern be banished from public life on account of his Yiddish accent. Look at Jess Phillips, who has accused British Pakistanis of importing wives for their disabled sons, and who became famous by claiming to have been rude and abusive towards Britain’s most prominent black politician, Diane Abbott.
Look at John Mann, who writes racist material against Gypsy, Romany and Traveller people, and who then distributes it to his constituents. Look at Ruth Smeeth, who organised a lynch mob of dozens of Labour MPs and Peers to march through London and demand, successfully, the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth from the Labour Party, not for having lied about Smeeth, but for having been so uppity a Coloured as to have dared to tell the truth about her.
Look at all of the Black And Minority Ethnic Labour MPs, not one of whom has defended either Wadsworth, or Jackie Walker, or Tony Greenstein, or Chris Williamson. Look at Claire Kober, who sought to emulate apartheid South Africa by bulldozing Tottenham and building an all-white luxury gated community over its rubble.
Look at David Miliband, who created the “Chagos Marine Protected Area” in order to prevent the Chagossians from returning to their homeland. Look at Tony Blair, who with George Bush has killed more brown people than any other white man alive.
Look at Hilary Armstrong, who at the same time as she was Chief Whip on the Iraq War was banning me from becoming a Labour District Council candidate in her constituency because I was mixed-race. Look at Laura Pidcock, whose election literature in 2017 featured Armstrong’s name, face, and words of endorsement.
And look at Simon Henig, the George Wallace of our time, whose attack on Durham County Council’s Teaching Assistants is racist at least in effect, the Teaching Assistants having been brought to their sorry pass by the treacherous political advice of Pidcock’s Political Advisor, Ben Sellout.
Yes, Boris Johnson calls black people “piccaninnies”, and Muslim women “letterboxes”. And yes, his Home Secretary is a close ally both of Narendra Modi and of Benjamin Netanyahu. Modi’s Education Minister has slashed scholarships for Dalits (so-called “Untouchables”), while Netanyahu’s has described marriage between Jews and non-Jews as “a second Holocaust”.
But the Labour Party has adopted the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, a silencing of BAME, refugee and migrant voices redolent of Windrush and of Grenfell Tower. Under the terms of that Definition, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Bernie Sanders would all be ineligible for Labour Party membership, meaning that they would be expelled if they were already in the party.
That adoption, which has happened under the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and which did not prevent the subsequent foundation of Change UK by Luciana Berger and others, has banned both the Black Left, as such, and the Jewish Left, as such, from the Labour Party.
It is now compulsory, both to support a white settler colonial state as a first principle, which the Black Left can never do, and to hold that that state is fundamental and central to Jewish identity, which the Jewish Left can never do.
Effectively, therefore, both the Black Left and the Jewish Left are now proscribed. It is no surprise, then, that they are being purged. Along with the closely connected treatment of Chris Williamson, that is the real purge in Corbyn’s Labour Party.
Labour submits to the “Equality” and Human Rights Commission, which has no concern for the economic equality without which there can be no other, which sacks its black and disabled staff first, which exonerated the Government in relation to Windrush, and members of which profited from Windrush and from blacklisting.
A Labour Government evicted the Palestinians. A Labour Government evicted the people of the Chagos Islands, at the same time as it was repressing demonstrations in Hong Kong far more brutally than is happening at the moment. As has been mentioned, a Labour Government sought to banish the Chagossians permanently by creating the “Chagos Marine Protected Area”.
Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration. After nearly 30 years of suggestion, speculation, and even a sort of preparation, I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham. The crowdfunding page is here, and buy the book here. Please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.
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