Deprioritised No More?

Zoom? Whatever happened to Skype? But anyway, it's all Zoom now, apparently. And there is consternation in certain circles about a Zoom event last night at which Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein were present alongside Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Diane Abbott.

At that event, it was pointed out that some Labour Party members had died as a result of allegations of anti-Semitism, while anti-BAME racism had been deprioritised in favour of anti-Semitism. Well, some people did die as a result of this, yes. Underlying health conditions, and all that. But they did. And BAME disciplinary complaints have been deprioritised while complaints of anti-Semitism have been prioritised. That is just a fact. 

This whole business has done Labour enormous damage in the previously loyal BAME community, whereas it must be said that most Jews have been Conservatives since the 1980s, with two thirds of them voting Conservative even under Ed Miliband. The IHRA Definition, to which the Conservative Party has never subscribed, simply denies BAME, migrant and refugee experience in a manner that calls to mind the Windrush scandal and the Grenfell Tower fire.

And now Labour is led by a former Director of Public Prosecutions, although his election has brought to the fore a long-developing sense on the BAME Left that "brown faces in high places" would not do, and that it was necessary to challenge the structures of economic inequality; something similar is occurring within feminism. Although good luck to either them with that in the Labour Party, which has never challenged those structures, and which never will.

Through her father, Jackie Walker is Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws. Tony Greenstein is the son of an Orthodox rabbi. Their views were shared by the late Denis Goldberg, and they are still shared by Andrew Feinstein, a former ANC MP who is now based in London as a strong critic of the failure and corruption of post-Mandela South Africa. 

Jews are not a race. Anyone may convert to Judaism, and all Jews in the world today are either converts or at least partially the descendants of converts. But Labour is racist, all right. Don't I know it from way back. And a recently leaked internal report into the Labour Party has revealed that while he was its London Regional Director, Neil Fleming employed the Angry Black Woman trope against Diane Abbott. BAME Labour MPs should refuse the whip while Fleming remained a party member in good standing. Especially but not exclusively in London, BAME people should withhold their votes from the Labour Party.

Fleming is now the Head of Media Relations UK at HSBC, and there should be street demonstrations outside its headquarters in Birmingham if he remained in its employ after the lockdown. Such demonstrations, as well as a campaign of boycott and divestment, should be held in unison with those who objected to the recent decision of HSBC to cancel standing orders to the charity Interpal, which provides humanitarian and development aid to Palestinians.