Maia Thomas

Food is essential to everyone but inaccessible to many. Hunger is a matter of urgency but constantly ignored. Many people say they are ‘hungry’ as a throwaway comment daily, but have you really experienced true hunger? Behind closed doors some people face an empty fridge most days of the week with nothing but hopes and prayers till they see their next meal. In a world where the gap between rich and poor continues to grow daily, some have little or no access to food.

As an Equality Activist I have championed numerous projects in my community to be a leader in creating change. Creating the opportunity for thousands of individuals to gain access to food which they struggle daily to get, was essential. So I did it. I created Feed Our Community – a project supplying food packages to those in food poverty, struggling financially, on furlough and anyone truly in need. Over 2,600 households have received food packages in around six weeks.

some of the food donations

But reducing food poverty in my area could not be solved just by providing food packages. I wanted to provide opportunities for free education on household and financial management, meal ideas and smart ways to shop. This has been achieved by hosting free zoom meetings and coaching sessions. I have created a support group, so people no longer feel they are alone; this is extremely valuable due to the tumultuous world in which we currently live. Hundreds of individuals from my local community and beyond have attended these informative sessions. Many have since got jobs, are on track to paying off their debts and now have a network to confide in.

The project started one lunchtime when I was scrolling through Facebook. I found a young woman reaching out to her community for guidance on getting food, due to the financial hardship she was facing. This was not what I usually come across and that moment made me decide to act. I created a food package for her and delivered it to her doorstep. I was unaware at this moment that one food package would turn into supplying over 2,600 households six weeks later.

To decide the content of food packages I always give what I would like to receive, a value that I have stuck to throughout the development of Feed Our Community. Fresh fruit and vegetables should be accessible to everyone, so I made this a priority. After planning a week’s worth of meals, I packaged the bags with different nutritious ingredients. The packages include tinned meats and fish, pasta, rice, other tinned products, breakfast items and daily essentials such as toiletries.

This woman was young, at an age where you may lack knowledge of available support systems. Reaching under-represented and often unreachable groups has been a core focus of Feed Our Community. For some, reaching out for help – whether that be food or financial assistance – is viewed as shameful in their culture. Others may not be able to get to food banks due to being disabled physically or having mental health challenges. Exploring accessibility to Feed Our Community through the lens of different groups is essential. Accessibility of a service is fundamental. No one should have to suffer in silence, not having food available to them. Therefore, this project was designed with a range of groups in mind and contactless delivery was the best way to be most inclusive.

Maia speaking at an Exeter Black Lives Matter rally.

The young woman who originally reached out was extremely brave to allow public knowledge of her financial situation but not everyone would feel comfortable doing so. Feed Our Community has always been confidential. After finding my posts via different community groups, or through being a member of my Facebook group, people can reach out via direct message, expressing their need for a food package or other financial assistance: for example an emergency electricity top up. The Facebook group was created to break down the barriers and end the sense of shame about needing to reach out. The world is in a particularly difficult space and now more than ever people need to feel able to get assistance when they need it.

Reducing food poverty and food waste go hand in hand. Making the connection between food that would otherwise be wasted and those truly in need is part of my mission. Connecting with supermarkets through FareShare has enabled this project to reduce food waste in my community. The project also works alongside farms and other local businesses to get good quality food to those who are truly in need.

In a society where we spend a lot of time talking, I decided to act. Food poverty is a matter of urgency which we cannot continue to ignore. The number of people in food poverty is rising yet food waste is greater than ever before. Why do we continue to waste, when so many do not have? Society is becoming increasingly divided yet so many groups’ voices are unheard and not catered for. Feed Our Community intends to bridge these gaps.

It is time for a revolution, and this is a first step among many.

Maia will be speaking a public meeting on Thursday 18th March at 6.30pm and discussing her campaigning work and  the Peace and Justice Project of Jeremy Corbyn which she has signed up to. She will be joined at the meeting by CND General Secretary Kate Hudson and former MP Thelma Walker. Please register for the meeting using this link. It will be held on Zoom

]]> https://prruk.org/springtime-welcome-to-the-peace-and-justice-project/ Fri, 18 Dec 2020 10:59:14 +0000 http://prruk.org/?p=12447 Almost a year to the day since Labour’s general election defeat, we saw the beginning of what could be a significant political development. No longer a Labour MP, having been excluded from the PLP by Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn has launched the Peace and Justice Project. This initiative brings the possibility of much needed change to British politics.

In his presentation of the project, Jeremy said,

‘We will be looking to analyze issues; to organize with, connect, and empower groups that exist already, and to support big campaigns for change. We want to cooperate, not compete, with others. For example, we’ve had messages of support for the launch so far from the Orgreave Truth and Justice campaign in Yorkshire as well as trade unionists in Bolivia and the USA. And connecting up those campaigns, seeing the big and small pictures at the same time, is so important.

We will work with unions and social movements to build a network of campaigners, grassroots activists, thinkers, and leaders, to share experiences and generate ideas about solutions to our common problems.
We will combine research and analysis with campaigning and organizing. And we can build on the popular socialist policies developed in the Labour Party over the past five years.’

There will be a global launch for the Peace and Justice Project in January. It is a new and exciting initiative and as Jeremy says, it is ‘unknown territory’ for us all. Some things are immediately clear. This will not be a project for Labour Party members alone but one which can unite countless thousands who share Corbyn’s vision of a better, fairer society – and who are willing to get active to make it happen. Many of us outside the Labour Party had hoped when Momentum was first formed that it would bring socialists together both inside and outside the party and play such a role. Those hopes proved illusory especially as the struggle inside the Labour Party to establish Jeremy’s leadership unfolded and the shutters came down on non-party members. The Peace and Justice Project will unite socialists inside and outside the Labour Party in a developing network.

It will also be an international project bringing together campaigners for peace, and social and economic justice across the world. There is often a parochialism to political campaigning in Britain which Peace and Justice has jettisoned. Rafael Correa, the former President of Ecuador, spoke on the launch video and other supporters include Yanis Varoufakis, Ronnie Kasrils, a leading member of the ANC and the SACP, and Daniele Obono, a member of the French National Assembly. Already the European Left Party has sent solidarity greetings and this internationalism will be at the heart of the new project.

Within a day of its launch it was clear that Peace and Justice had struck a chord in our political life. Tens of thousands of people joined up. Social media support groups appeared and local groups began to form.
We are seeing what Tariq Ali has called ‘a sniff of spring’. This new project appears at a time when the Labour Party leadership is intent on the complete eradication of the left from the party. The deputy Labour leader, Angela Rayner, has called for thousands of party members to be suspended. Corbyn himself was suspended from the party in an outrageous and apparently pre-planned attack on the whole left. A disciplinary panel readmitted him only for Starmer to unilaterally suspend him from the PLP by withdrawing the whip. When party members sought to challenge this through their CLPs they were suspended themselves. Starmer is driving the party sharply to the right and more than 50,000 members have already left in disgust.

10,000 turn out in Liverpool, not for one man, but for hope, for a vision of a better way, and an end to the politics of the few and the demonisation of the many.

With the Labour Party under Starmer’s leadership preoccupied with internal battles, it has done nothing to seriously challenge the criminal policies of the government which are blighting people’s lives on so many fronts. A coherent left alternative is urgently needed to break out of the political impasse that is preventing a popular radical left narrative emerging. The challenges we need to address are many and serious: the pandemic has already killed more than 1.6 million people worldwide and left the same number with debilitating illness; the global economy is on life support suffering not only from the disastrous economic effects of the virus but also from the fallout of the 2007/8 crash from which the western capitalist economies have yet to fully recover. We face a devastating ecological crisis, and in political life, despite the defeat of Donald Trump in the US elections, the far right retains huge support. In Britain this far right politics is expressed through the Brexit process and we see the rise of a poisonous nationalism which could grow in strength in 2021 as Britain adjusts to life outside the EU.

The Peace and Justice Project can be part of building a powerful alternative to both a right-wing Tory government and a failing centrist Labour Party. But it will do it on a different basis – not repeating the new party initiatives of previous times. There have been numerous calls for Jeremy to lead a breakaway from the Labour Party and he has been clear that he is determined to remain within the party – he has been a member for more than 50 years and has no intention of resigning. But he has also been clear that he will fight for his politics: he will do that inside the party as we have seen, and he has always done that outside the party too. That is the great strength of Jeremy and the reason for the massive support that brought him to the leadership of the Labour Party. Corbyn personified a deep desire for radical social change and this was expressed in the hundreds of thousands of new members who flooded into the party in 2015 and after. It is also the great strength of this initiative: campaigns, movements, members of parties, non-affiliated activists – all can come together, united with the political passion that was generated during Jeremy’s leadership.

The Peace and Justice Project is in many respects a continuation of that movement but it is also a fracture because Labour’s new leadership is in the process of driving out those who have shared Corbyn’s vision and supported his leadership. As the right straight-jackets the left within Labour, limiting its ability even to bring motions, radical left politics can find untrammelled expression – with the wider movement – in this new initiative. Under these conditions the appearance of the Peace and Justice Project constitutes an essential response – it is not a new political party but a determination to fight on the central political questions come what may. It represents a partial break with Labour in order to support the struggles of the working class.
We cannot say in advance how this project will unfold. But what we can say is that it is necessary given the situation we face. I urge socialist campaigners to constructively engage with the hope and the possibilities that are contained within this new movement. We should not prejudge its outcome. Yes there will be hurdles to cross and political weaknesses to be overcome but this is a real opportunity for the left to drive forward the politics of change in the interests of the many.
Let’s build something important together.

When the comprehensive history of Corbynism is written, it will date its demise not to the general election defeat in December 2019 or to the subsequent Labour leadership contest but to the 48 hours or so following the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party on 29 October 2020. This historic moment has marked the final surrender of the Labour left to the establishment forces it sought to challenge. It is the turning of a page on a momentous, disorienting chapter in British political history and the unequivocal return to dominance of the Labour Party’s right wing.

Corbynism beyond Corbyn

The devastating election defeat in December extinguished the left’s dream of a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. But the future of the broader movement he led remained, for a time, uncertain. Some, wrongly believing the left’s control of the Labour Party to be secure, spoke optimistically of a ‘Corbynism without Corbyn’, a new chapter of the movement to be led by one of Corbyn’s young proteges. Following the resounding victory of Keir Starmer in the leadership election, this assessment was revised: while the Labour left had lost the election and now the party leadership, it could reassure itself that it retained intellectual dominance and that core elements of Corbynism (including higher taxes on the rich, public ownership of key industries, a Green New Deal and opposition to military intervention) would survive. Keir Starmer’s promise of party unity, specifically a factional truce discouraging the denigration of both New Labour and the Corbyn years, was of great appeal to a party membership exhausted by years of brutal infighting. Many Labour members who had voted for Corbyn in 2015 and 2016, not out of a deep ideological commitment to socialism but for more contingent reasons, opted for Starmer over Rebecca Long-Bailey, Corbyn’s anointed successor.

In the first months of Starmer’s leadership, the left of the party watched carefully to see whether Starmer would stick to his Corbynite ‘Ten Pledges’. The speed and audacity with which these pledges were undermined shocked all but the most hardened socialist observers. Instead of standing ‘shoulder to shoulder with trade unions’, the new leadership briefed against Long-Bailey for supporting the National Education Union, soon firing her on a highly tenuous antisemitism pretext. Instead of making Labour ‘the party of BAME representation’, Starmer dismissed Black Lives Matter as ‘a moment’ and condemned the anti-racists who tore down the statue of slave trader Edward Colson in Bristol. In the midst of the greatest economic crisis in memory — a crisis which has immiserated working people and enriched billionaires — Labour announced that it was ‘not calling for tax rises’, despite Pledge №1 to increase income tax on the top five per cent of earners.

Should I stay or should I go?

As the list of betrayals grew, a new fault line on the Corbynite left emerged, not over policy but strategy. Traumatised by the election result, cowed by defeat and perhaps seeking to curry favour with the new party leadership, a series of notables from both politics and journalism lined up to inform left-wing Labour members that the sensible thing to do was to stay in the party and work constructively with the new leadership. John McDonnell, once the hard man of the Labour left, assured his followers that Starmer was a true socialist and that his tepid, vacillating response to the Covid crisis was ‘exactly right’. Owen Jones, Corbyn’s original supporter in the mainstream media, hurriedly published an autopsy of the project which blamed its defeat squarely on Corbyn, praised McDonnell’s strategy of reconciliation with neoliberals and studiously ignored the lamentable role played by his own employer, the Guardian, in smearing Corbyn as a racist. On the other side of the fault line were the many Labour members, especially young and BAME members, who left the party, either with a howl of righteous Twitter indignation or in resigned silence. If all these former Labour members were to switch to one particular alternative vehicle, it would constitute a major realignment of the left. Instead, anecdotal evidence suggests that these disillusioned Corbynites are splintering, switching their allegiance to the Green Party or irrelevant socialist corpuscles, focusing their energies on workplace and community organising, or retreating from organised politics altogether.

Left members who chose for the time being to stay in Labour looked desperately for leadership. Would it come from the Socialist Campaign Group, the parliamentary grouping of left-wing Labour MPs including fresh faces like Zarah Sultana, Apsana Begum and Sam Tarry? The group’s failure to coordinate their response even to egregiously hostile attacks on labour such as the Covert Human Intelligence Sources bill (some voted against, others followed the whip to abstain) suggested not. One source of hope was the revitalisation of Momentum by a new leadership, drawn from the Forward Momentum faction, committed to empowering members and working with organisations like London Renters Union and ACORN to build working class power in communities. But Momentum too appeared to lack a clear strategy for resisting Labour’s rightward turn. Platitudinous calls to ‘stay and fight’ began sounding increasingly hollow as Starmer’s strategy to humiliate and marginalise the left became transparent.

This lack of left leadership, married with an unimaginative institutional loyalty to the Labour Party, laid the groundwork for the utter tragedy that has unfolded over the past 48 hours.

Taking the king

Solidarity is everything in politics. The left preach this, but the curious reality is that the right practise it much more effectively. Consider Boris Johnson’s unfailing loyalty to Dominic Cummings, which extends to defending the indefensible. Or recall the reaction of the Labour right to the threat of disciplinary action against Margaret Hodge after she allegedly called Jeremy Corbyn ‘a fucking anti-semite and racist’. There was no thoughtful chin-stroking from right-wing Labour MPs and their outriders, no nuanced tweets about how Hodge might have expected her actions to have consequences. There was instead a collective howl of outrage, sufficiently loud to convince John McDonnell that the disciplinary action had to be withdrawn. The same solidarity ensured that Alasdair Campbell’s expulsion from the party — a straightforward ‘auto-exclusion’ following his admission to having cast a ballot for the Lib Dems — resulted in a hand-wringing semi-apology, again from McDonnell.

The propaganda campaign to smear Jeremy Corbyn as a racist would not have found the foothold in public discourse that it did had it been met by a similar show of solidarity on the left. Many of the left’s strengths, including sincerity, kindness and a belief in the importance of nuance, became weaknesses in this debacle. Instead of responding in a firm, collective voice, ‘Jeremy Corbyn is an exemplary anti-racist and allegations to the contrary are an appalling weaponisation of Jewish suffering’, leading figures on the left (with a few brave exceptions) mostly engaged earnestly with the smears as if the debate were a good-faith anti-racist endeavour rather than a thinly veiled attempt by Corbyn’s enemies to divide and demoralise his supporters. Important efforts to debunk the false narratives around Labour and antisemitism, such as the book Bad News for Labour or the contributions of Jewish Voice for Labour, were ignored; their findings did not suit the policy of apology and appeasement adopted by McDonnell and other influential left voices. Commentators on the fringes warned that the anti-socialist, pro-Israel groups leading the charges of antisemitism would never be pacified by this strategy and would instead continue to up their demands until the threat posed by Corbyn and his supporters was completely eliminated. As in a game of chess, they would not claim victory until they had taken the king.

The left’s Stockholm syndrome

The decision by the new leadership to suspend Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party following the publication of the EHRC report was not without risk. Though unpopular with the general public, Corbyn retains the enthusiastic support of a considerable proportion of the Labour membership; many of them would not have joined in the first place had it not been for his leadership. Corbyn’s suspension could have been the trigger for a historic exodus of the left from Labour and the formation of a new socialist party that posed a genuine electoral threat to Labour. It is not entirely fanciful that the 48 hours following Corbyn’s suspension could have unfolded something like this:

• Following an emergency meeting, the Socialist Campaign Group announces that Corbyn’s suspension is an unforgivable act of war on the left; that Starmer has betrayed his promise of party unity, rendering his leadership illegitimate; and that all SCG MPs have resigned the Labour whip in solidarity with Corbyn and will sit with him in an independent parliamentary grouping.
• Momentum’s National Coordinating Group announces that Momentum members will be balloted on whether the organisation should retain its institutional link with the Labour Party or should instead align itself with the independent left grouping and arrange for a committee to redraft Momentum’s constitution.
• Unite announces that the suspension of Corbyn is unacceptable and that it will withdraw all funding to the Labour Party and ballot its members on the union’s future political alignment.

These are the actions of a socialist movement with strong leadership, a commitment to solidarity, and an understanding that the Labour Party is a mere vehicle for change, not a goal in itself.

But instead of taking this historic opportunity to flex its muscles and fight back against the right, the left has crumbled. Not a single ‘socialist’ MP has resigned in solidarity with the leading socialist of his generation. The statements issued by left MPs in response to Corbyn’s suspension have been fatally, unforgivably weak. Clive Lewis, a young MP who owes his visibility and standing to his earlier alignment with Corbyn, quoted a fence-sitting assessment by the journalist Rachel Shabi: ‘Corbyn’s statement yesterday was ill-advised, to put it mildly — and the party response to it equally so.’ Angela Rayner, endorsed by Momentum in the deputy leadership election and believed by many members to be on the left of the party, defended Corbyn’s suspension in a BBC interview. Richard Burgon, putative leader of Labour’s parliamentary left, tweeted that he agreed with members who were ‘deeply upset’, committed to ‘working for [Corbyn’s] reinstatement’ and urged the party to ‘move forward together’. In the midst of war, the left’s representatives have continued to appeal politely to the enemy even as he executes them without mercy.

The left’s perverse loyalty to an organisation that despises it, and its steadfast refusal to fight back even after the gravest provocation, was confirmed yesterday at Momentum’s online ‘Stand with Corbyn’ event. This roll call of Labour left worthies was billed as a rally; its participants seemed oblivious to the fact they were actually attending a funeral. Rather than articulating a credible strategy for leveraging the left’s not inconsiderable power, speaker after speaker uttered meaningless variations on the theme of ‘stay and fight’. John McDonnell, embracing his new role as high priest of neoliberal accommodation, explicitly ruled out forming a new party and appealed once more for ‘unity’. Left-wing Labour members, bruised and bloodied after seeing the British establishment work overtime to destroy their political hero, were told simply to ‘redouble [their]efforts’. Most craven of all was Burgon, who reassured members, ‘I want to see Keir as PM’. Compare this to the attitude of Peter Mandelson, who bragged to a reporter in 2017 that he worked ‘every single day in some small way to bring forward the end of [Corbyn’s] tenure in office’, and ask yourself which Labour faction is more serious about institutional power.

Unedifying as it is, the Labour left’s slavish loyalty to its enemies is a clarifying phenomenon — comforting, even. Since the leak in April 2020 of the internal report which laid bare the extent of sabotage by right-wing Labour staffers in the 2017 general election, supporters of Corbyn have entertained the notion that were it not for a handful of embittered wreckers, we would now be three years into a transformative Labour government. The total collapse in solidarity which has followed Corbyn’s suspension suggests otherwise. A Corbyn-led government, while nominally in power, would have had to contend with the hostile forces of global capital on a daily basis — the same forces which have in recent years fomented a right-wing coup in Bolivia and devastating anti-socialist ‘lawfare’ in Brazil and Ecuador. To survive this constant pressure and implement even a part of its social democratic manifesto, a radical Labour government would have needed to show a toughness and strategic nous that is nowhere to be seen among the Labour left’s leaders today. A left which cannot even bring itself to threaten a walkout when its former leader is ousted is not a left which can take on the one per cent and win.

The next time

This conclusion may seem unnecessarily dramatic. But it comes from a sincere belief that if we are to develop meaningful strategies on the left, we must begin from a completely unsentimental appraisal of what has happened and where we are. Naivety and wishful thinking are luxuries a socialist movement serious about power cannot afford. Jeremy Corbyn inspired a whole new generation of socialists; given the realities of climate catastrophe and dystopian levels of inequality, it is highly unlikely that middle age will have its traditional de-radicalising effect on them. These young socialists are presently locked out of power and the anti-Corbyn backlash will ensure they remain so for several years more. But their moment will come — and if they are to succeed in their mission to transform society they must learn the right lessons from the last five years.

Jackson Caines is a member of Islington North CLP

After ten years of austerity measures under Conservative/Liberal Democrat governments, public services and welfare benefits have been cut to the bone and beneath.  The British state pension is the lowest in Europe!  The NHS, after being hollowed out by outsourcing and internal privatisation and then starved of funds, is on its knees.  Social care for the old and infirm has been decimated and/or hideously expensive.  School classroom sizes are higher than ever, higher education colleges are going bust and students are racking up huge debts.  The housing shortage is so bad that young people are forced to live at home with parents or in crowded, unfit private rental accommodation.  Transport is an expensive nightmare: rail, energy and fuel prices are the among the highest in Europe.

Inequality of wealth and incomes are as high as in the 1930s.  While Britain boasts of 135 billionaires, 14 million are officially classed as poor and 4 million children are living in poverty.  Regional disparities in living standards between London and the south east and the rest of the UK are the widest in northern Europe.  Millions work in the poorly paid self-employed ‘gig’ economy, and one million people work on zero-hours contracts often for wages below the official minimum wage; while the disabled and ill are forced back into low wage work through the removal of benefits.

All this while people of Britain are divided over whether it is better to leave the European Union or not; whether Scotland and Northern Ireland should break with the Union; and whether immigration is good or bad for the economy and society.

Most important, on the economic front, Britain’s growth of national output is slowing as the population expands, making it increasingly difficult to provide the resources to meet these challenges.  Britain’s economic growth is disappearing fast.  The capitalist sector of the British economy has failed to deliver for the needs of people, although it has delivered higher profits and house prices and a booming stock market for the rich. Real disposable income per head has more or less stagnated since the end of the Great Recession, the longest period in 167 years!

That is because investment by big business is contracting, partly because of the uncertainty of what will happen after Brexit and partly because both domestic and foreign investors no longer expect much of a return from investment in Britain.  With falling investment comes low growth in what each worker in Britain can produce.  And low productivity growth means permanent low economic growth.

Real output per hour worked rose just 1.4% between 2007 and 2016. Within the G7, only Italy performed worse (-1.7%). Excluding the UK, the G7 countries have experienced a 7.5% productivity increase over this period, led by the US, Canada and Japan. In addition, the ‘productivity gap’ for the UK – the difference between output per hour in 2016 and its pre-crisis trend – is minus 15.8%; while the productivity gap for the G7 ex-UK countries is minus 8.8%.

British capitalism is a ‘rentier economy’, concentrated on finance, property and business services, more than any other major economy. Having helped trigger the global financial crash and the huge slump in 2008-9, the City of London has done nothing since to support UK businesses, particularly smaller ones.  Loans to smaller companies have fallen.  Instead, bank loans have poured into real estate.  Britain’s productive sectors (manufacturing, professional scientific & technical activities, information & communication and administrative & support services) account for 28.7% of real GDP. But bank loans to these four sectors total just 5.5% of GDP.  This is less than the total of loans outstanding to companies engaged in the buying, selling & renting of real estate (6.9% of GDP).

So what is to be done?  The UK Labour party’s election manifesto takes on the challenge.  The key underlying issue on which all depends is finding a way to increase investment in more productivity-enhancing projects and in a better trained and skilled workforce, employed in decent conditions and paid living wages.  In this regard, Labour is making serious attempts to reverse British industry’s decline.

First, it looks to launch a Green New Deal which will direct resources away from unproductive activities and instead focus on curbing the acceleration in global warming by investing in renewable energy projects and offering hundreds of thousands of apprenticeships for skilled jobs in green projects.

Second, it looks to bring back into public ownership the key energy and water companies, ending the rip-off of the public by the current private monopolies.  Rail and bus transport will also return to the public sector, thus ending the wasteful anarchy of franchised routes and inefficient and expensive local bus services.  And Labour will aim to deliver free super-fast broadband internet to every household within ten years, at half the cost that the private sector would spend, by taking over the broadband division of BT.  And it would bring the Royal Mail back into public ownership.  The largest companies would be expected to give their workers shares in the company with rights to representation on company boards.  And collective bargaining rights would be restored, reversing Thatcher’s anti-trade union laws.  These measures would provide new impetus for investment and jobs.

And third, Labour would expand public investment to compensate for the failure of businesses to invest.  Labour would set up a Strategic Investment Board to coordinate R&D, commercial services and information flows.  It would set up a state investment bank to invest £25bn year in projects and infrastructure.  It would start a new banking service for small businesses based on the Post Office.

How will all this be paid for?  Well, under the existing conditions, Labour plans to raise income taxes for the highest  5% of earners (ie more than £80,000 a year); and it aims to capture missing taxes currently unpaid by big business and the rich through tax havens and evasion – that is estimated at $25bn a year!  Labour would be prepared to increase government borrowing to fund more spending on health, education and some of the longer-term projects.  Given that interest rates are at their lowest in 60 years, the cost of borrowing would add little to annual budget costs.  Also planned investments should deliver increased productivity and growth and thus more tax revenues.  It is estimated that the cost of nationalising energy, rail, water and telecoms would be covered from the revenues of these sectors within seven years.

Contrary to the media reaction, this would not make the UK have the biggest state spending of major economies.  As the Resolution Foundation shows, it would take the size of government expenditure as a share of total annual spending to around 45% of GDP, in the middle of the range within OECD economies.

As Simon Wren-Lewis says, in his comprehensive post, “another way of putting it is that the UK will become closer to the European average, and further away from the US/Canada level.”

Can this plan work to turn Britain into a more prosperous, more equal and more united society?  Much depends on three things.  First, can just one state bank and investment board really be enough to re-direct Britain’s rentier economy into more productive areas for employment?  Labour does not propose to bring into public ownership and control the big five banks or the major insurance companies and pension funds.  Yet these will continue to provide the bulk of potential investment funding (some 15% of GDP compared to the state’s 4%, at best).  That will weaken the ability of a Labour government to deliver real improvements in investment, services and incomes.  Labour’s tax and other measures to redistribute income and wealth from the super-rich to the rest are also very limited.  Indeed, although Labour plans to raise the annual increase on spending on the NHS by 4% a year, that is still less than under the Blair government and is barely enough to meet the needs of an ageing population.  And Labour’s measures will only make a small dent in the extreme levels of inequality.

Second, there is the inevitable reaction from big business and the media.  They will go hell for leather to block and reverse Labour plans and any sign of failure will be seized upon.  And so there is a serious risk that Labour’s relatively modest plans to rebalance the wealth and power within the country may falter.  Big business and the rich have already threatened to take their investment and money elsewhere and the coming to power of a radical Labour government may well provoke what is called ‘capital flight’, inducing a run on the value of the pound and driving up interest rates.  Labour may have to take more drastic measures like capital controls. But without control of the major banks, the currency would be under threat from this financial terrorism.

And third, and most important, is the high likelihood of a new global slump in production, investment and employment.  It has been ten years since the end of the Great Recession, the biggest global slump since the 1930s.  Another recession is well overdue and there are signs that is coming, as the major economies are slowing down significantly and the trade and technology war between the US and China is intensifying, destroying world trade growth.  By this time next year, the new British government could be faced with British businesses going bust, laying off workers and imposing an investment strike.

The only way the impact of such a recession could be reduced would be for Labour to take control of what used to be called the ‘commanding heights of the economy’: the banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and the key strategic companies in Britain’s main manufacturing, energy and other productive sectors.  Only then could a national plan for investment and jobs and to combat climate change be possible because it would not rely on capitalist investment.  Labour’s current economic policies fall short of that.  Instead, Labour’s leaders and advisers rule out such drastic measures because they think they will not be necessary and instead ‘a regulated and managed capitalism’ can still deliver the needs of British people.  History tells us otherwise.

This was first published on The Next Recession

There were angry protests everywhere – from Bodmin to Orkney, from Swansea to St Albans. People in cities, towns, and villages – many of whom had never been on a demonstration before – came out against an illegitimate government. Across the country, the chant ‘Stop the Coup’ rang out.

In London, tens of thousands filled Whitehall, and thousands of young people went from there to take direct action – closing roads and bridges and marching on Buckingham Palace. They were outraged by Johnson’s attack on democracy, overwhelmingly against Brexit, solidly anti-racist and committed to free movement.

A new mass movement is being born.

Many of these protests were spontaneous. Many others were organised by campaign groups such as Another Europe is Possible. All credit to them!

The Labour leadership called on people to join the protests. Jeremy Corbyn spoke in Glasgow and Diane Abbott and John McDonnell in London. Many grassroots activists spoke alongside them, as well as Laura Parker from Momentum and the new general secretary of the UCU lecturers’ union, Jo Grady.

What is at stake? We are entering a struggle for the future: not just of this country but across the world. It is a struggle against the politics of the far right – the politics of the 1930s.

The suspension of Parliament is the latest stage in the right-wing takeover of the Tory Party and the Government that began with the Brexit referendum in 2016. The Leave campaign was pumped full of money by billionaire Aaron Banks. It used unlawful data targeting methods. It was fed by the lies of the Tory press. It was the opposite of democracy.

Anti-migrant xenophobia was the key to the victory of the Leave camp. And in the frenzy whipped up by the far right, MP Jo Cox was tragically murdered.

If we don’t defeat it, the suspension of Parliament will mean a calamitous hard Brexit, followed by a general election. In this, Johnson will posture as the politician who carried out the will of the people. He will advance an utterly reactionary programme based on being ‘tough’ on crime and fake spending promises.

The chickens of the 2016 referendum are coming home to roost. This was never simply about crashing out of the EU. It was always about the extreme right seizing control of the Tory Party and then the Government. They have done so.

Now they want to impose their ultra-right programme. They want to turn Britain into a deregulated, cheap labour, low-tax, outpost, with minimal workplace and environmental regulations. With no EU deal, Johnson will be forced to accept a trade deal imposed by the United States – with grave implications for the NHS. This will make Britain a vassal state. A cornucopia for ruthless billionaires, exporting cheap labour, operating as an off-shore tax haven.

There would be huge tax cuts for the rich, paid for by the working class. There would be soaring prices, stagnant or reduced wages, a collapsing health service and social care sector. Zero-hours contracts would be hugely expanded, with a reduction or abolition of the national minimum wage further down the line. Cue rampant racism and attacks on immigrants. Cue new attacks on trade unions and democratic rights. Cue British servility to American militarism world wide.

This is the hard Brexit that must be fought. It’s the only one on offer. So the Labour Party must fight for Remain.

On Saturday, Extinction Rebellion activists occupying Manchester’s Deansgate spontaneously joined their actions with the anti-Brexit coup mobilisation. This is the kind of unity that is needed. We need to come together to fight and win.

There seems little chance that parliamentary action alone can stop the coup. Even with opposition parties united – a moot point – it needs Tory rebels to stand up to their leadership. In the past, all such rebellions have faded away. Johnson is threatening all Tory MPs who oppose his plans with immediate deselection. Tory MPs have few principles, but keeping their seat in Parliament is one.

Stopping the coup in Parliament would require a complex operation that could be derailed in the Lords. And even if Parliament succeeds in voting it down, the Johnson regime threatens to deepen its attack on democracy by ignoring it.

The present spontaneous mass action is showing the way. Now we need Labour and the trade union leaders to step up and play their part. They must call a national demonstration – a million-person (or more) march. Trade union leaders such as Dave Prentis from Unison, Len McCluskey from Unite, and TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady all recognise how calamitous Johnson’s plans are for workers and their families. The threats to union rights, to the NHS, and the threat of mass casualisation and large-scale unemployment are staring them in the face. They cannot step back from this fight.

Trade unionists must call for our unions to join together with Labour in preparing this national mobilisation, linking with the new movement that’s forming. The Labour and trade union movement has the strength to overturn the drive to dictatorship that the Johnson government represents.

Tory strategists will be reckoning that however this plays out, they can win a general election with a hard Brexit message, topped up with promises to build more prisons, lengthen sentences, exclude more unruly pupils, and spend more on the NHS.

The best way for Labour to prepare to win the election is to join with the mass mobilisation against the Brexit coup. The politics played out in the next few weeks will determine the future of Britain for years.

MPs can’t win the fight in Parliament without the mass action and civil disobedience we’re seeing across the country. We have to step it up on both fronts. This is a continuing struggle and we must link up with others across Europe and beyond who are facing the same attacks on democracy.

We must act, but we must also debate. We must decide strategy and tactics as we go forwards. This is the reason for this bulletin. It is an initiative of anti-Brexit internationalists on the Left. Please contact us with reports of actions in your area and ideas about the way forward. Contact us for further copies. Let’s work together to stop the coup, stop Brexit, and launch the fight for a better world.

Now is the time to act.

]]> https://prruk.org/a-labour-pact-with-the-liberal-democrats-neither-possible-nor-desirable/ Mon, 05 Aug 2019 20:22:59 +0000 http://prruk.org/?p=11006 The election of Boris Johnson as Tory leader, the outcome of the European elections and the result of Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, won by the Liberal Democrats with Labour in fourth place, have combined to further deepen alarm among Jeremy Corbyn supporters. 

In the Welsh by-election the Greens and Plaid Cymru stood down to maximise the chances of a Liberal victory against the Tories, a successful move.

It is increasingly obvious that with a parliamentary majority of just one, the Conservatives will now go for a general election. Whether this comes before, or just after, a Tory Brexit, it will certainly be the ‘Brexit election’. Labour activists fear being caught in a pincer movement between the Liberal Democrats on an anti-Brexit platform, and the Conservatives’ hard Brexit position (with help from the Brexit party in squeezing the Labour vote).

This background has led to calls for an electoral alliance with the Greens and the Liberal Democrats, and in Wales with Plaid Cymru. Paul Mason, writing in the Guardian, calls for a full-blown popular front, on the model of the French popular front which took power in 1936.

Mason puts his finger on the dangers of a Johnson government:

“For progressives, the last two weeks have shown how high the cost of losing that general election would be. The country would be ruled by a faction of elite Tories who have abandoned their moral and intellectual dividing lines with the far right. Britain would become an appendage of the United States, in foreign policy and in trade. It would be goodbye to the welfare state and the tolerant society.”

Mason is right about one other thing. To guard against defections to the Liberal Democrats, Corbyn has to become the leader of the fight against a hard Brexit, effectively any Brexit at all likely to be agreed by a Johnson cabinet. Labour must stop equivocating. How can Labour effectively fight the hard-right Tory Brexiteers if it does not champion what to millions seems the obvious and logical alternative – revoking Article 50 and staying in the European Union.

But a formal alliance with the Liberal Democrats would be a calamity. Such an alliance, a new popular front, would have to be an alliance for government and have a programme. And the problem with that is that the Liberal Democrats are not an anti-austerity, anti-privatisation party and would veto radical economic and social measures. Any substantial increase in the number of Lib Dem MPs would create a secondary anti-Corbyn anti-radical bloc in parliament.

The last Liberal Democrat election manifesto supports calls for ‘a fairer Britain’ and ‘investment in public services and infrastructure’, just like every other party. It does not support the introduction of a real living wage as the minimum, nor a big investment programme in the NHS and social care, a big campaign of social housing building, or the abolition of zero hours contras acts. Nor does it support the abolition of the draconian anti-union laws, which underpin the maintenance of neoliberalism in Britain.

New Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson was a junior minister in the Tory-Liberal coalition government and voted along the line for numerous disastrous austerity measures. As Anoosh Chakelian records:

“Swinson voted with the 2010-15 Tory-led government to back some of the most disastrous, harmful and utterly gratuitous cuts to public spending. Her voting record is stark. The bedroom tax, the Education Maintenance Allowance cut, the public sector pay cap, disability benefit cuts, general welfare cuts, cuts to local authority funding — it’s all there. In terms of her voting record, Swinson is no different on paper from the Conservative ministers of the time.”

Of course, parliamentary votes on austerity are not just an indiscretion ‘on paper’. They involve very serious matters of life and death, affluence and poverty, misery and hope. Not the sort of thing that should stand in the way of the career of a Liberal Democrat minister.

Swinson has in the past refused to rule out a coalition with the Tories, but now says she couldn’t support a coalition with a Johnson-led Conservative Party. Well, that’s what she says. After an election she might easily change her mind. In any case, the one thing she definitely rules out is an alliance with a Corbyn-led Labour Party. Swinson wants the Lib Dems to have their own share of the mud-slinging against Labour and Corbyn over fake anti-Semitism charges. In effect she is saying the price of an alliance would be a right-wing Labour takeover, which is not going to happen before a general election.

The way forward to fight off the Liberal Democrat challenge is not an alliance with them, but for Labour to take leadership of the anti-Brexit forces. Labour will certainly lose some hard-Brexit voters, but the damage is mainly done on this front and they are probably not going to be won back any time soon.

As Owen Jones points out:

“For those of who [sic]proposed a soft Brexit, it was always damage limitation. Dealing with the electoral dilemma of Brexit is one thing — and it’s a legitimate argument to fear that Labour will alienate some communities it needs to win to form a government if it adopts a full Remain position. I think this position has collapsed — the middle ground on Brexit has collapsed, Labour is losing far more Remainers than Leavers, most Leave voters now think that ‘No Deal’ is the only genuine Brexit and believe a soft Brexit is ‘Brexit In Name Only’.”

The way out of the current Labour impasse is to stand up to and repudiate the fake anti-Semitism charges; and to take the leadership of anti-Brexit political sentiment. Calls for a popular front are beside the point.

All who wish to see an end to bigotry and racism, and who seek a more just society, should give their support to the Labour party.

We are Jewish members and supporters of the Labour party concerned about the current rise of reactionary ideologies, including antisemitism, in Britain and elsewhere across Europe.

We note the worrying growth of populist rightwing parties, encouraging racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism. In Britain the far right is whipping up these prejudices, a threat that requires a resolute and energetic response. But instead we have seen a disproportionate focus on antisemitism on the left, which is abhorrent but relatively rare.

We believe that the Labour party under the progressive leadership of Jeremy Corbyn is a crucial ally in the fight against bigotry and reaction. His lifetime record of campaigning for equality and human rights, including consistent support for initiatives against antisemitism, is formidable. His involvement strengthens this struggle.

Labour governments introduced both the anti-racist and human rights legislation of the 20th century and the 2010 Equalities Act. A Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn will be a powerful force to fight against racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.

It is in this context that we welcome the Labour party’s endorsement of freedom of expression on Israel and on the rights of Palestinians. Labour is correct to recognise that while prejudice against Jewish people is deplorable, criticism of Israel’s government and policies can and must be made.

We urge all who wish to see an end to bigotry and racism, and who seek a more just society, to give their support to the Labour party.

Prof Elizabeth Dore
Prof David Epstein
Prof Gene Feder
Mike Leigh
Prof Mica Nava
Prof Michael Rosen
Prof Donald Sassoon
Prof Avi Shlaim
Gillian Slovo
Prof Annabelle Sreberny
Walter Wolfgang
Prof John Yudkin
John Abraham
Kate Adams
Rebecca Amiel
Ruth Appleton
Tasha Barlow
Graham Bash
Dr Shereen Benjamin
Jeremy Bernhaut
Frances Bernstein
Dr Jon Berry
Cllr Jo Bird
Rica Bird
Frank Black
Jay Blackwood
Pamela Blakelock
Alice Bondi
Tony Booth
Jenny Malca Brown
Peter Buckman
Andy Burkitt
Erica Burman
Samuel Burrowes
Keith Burstein
Rose Challands
Brian Chinnery
Eve Cina
Andrew Clifford
Emma Clyne
Jonathan Clyne
Mike Cohen
Ron Cohen
Amnon Cohen
Ruth Cohen
Kathy Cohn
Rita Craft
Judith Cravitz
Prof. David Curtis
Mike Cushman
Miriam David
Steven Davidson
Hilary De Santos
Alan Deadman
Greg Douglas
Elizabeth Dresner
Linda Edmondson
Ros Edwards
David Einhorn
Mark Elf
Michael Ellman
Prof Debbie Epstein
Javier Farje
Pia Feig
Jack George Field
Arye Finkle
Nick Foster
Roisin Francis
Esther Freeman
Debbie Friedman
Danny Friedman
Kenny Fryde
Carolyn Gelenter
Mike Gerber
Vicki Gilbert
René Gimpel
Prof. Jane Ginsborg
Claire Glasman
Murray Glickman
David Goldberg
Paul Goldman
Simon Goodman
John Goodman
Peter Gorbach
Tony Graham
Rosalind Grainger
Alice Gray
Ilse Gray
Elleanne Green
Heinz Grünewald
Ash Hardenne
Alison Harris
Jeanne Heal
Prof Susan Himmelweit
Andrew Hornung
Katharine Hoskyns
Mike Howard
Jonathan Hyams
Selma James
Lin James
Riva Joffe
Ann Jungman
Michael Kalmanovitz
L Sasha Kaplin
Stephen Kapos
Jenny Kassman
Richard Keidan
Monash Kessler
Jenny King
Godfrey King
Katherina Kohler
Simon Korner
Dr Agnes Kory
Debbie Krantz
Richard Kuper
Jon Kurta
Prof Frank Land
Michelle Laufer
Pam Laurance
Daniel Laverick
Mike Layward
Dr Sydney Leaman
Joanna Leigh
Jessica Leschnikoff
Cllr Leah Levane
Rachel Lever
John Lipetz
Robert Lizar
Ruth Lukom
Simon Lynn
Deborah Maccoby
Dorothy Macedo
Nikki Mailer
Jenny Manson
Jessica Manson
Helen Marks
Stephen Marks
Gillian McCall
Jeff McCracken-Hewson
Terence McGinity
Ros Meadow
Rita Mendelson
Dr Heather Mendick
Angie Mindel
Prof David Mond
Diana Neslen
David Nissen
Gary Ostrolenk
Jonathan Parish
Susan Pashkoff
Helen Pearson
Jacob Prager
Caroline Raine
Reuben Ramsay
Roland Rance
Tom Reed
Jenny Richardson
Siôn Rickard
Prof Marion Roberts
Prof Jonathan Rosenhead
Benny Ross
Carolyn Roth
Richard Saffron
Esther Saraga
Ian Saville
Monika Schwartz
Josepha Scotney
Mike Scott
Amanda Sebestyen
Glyn Secker
Jenny Secretan
Irene Sedler
Marian Sedley
Ruth Selwyn
Brian Shade
Janet Silver
Liz Silver
Ludi Simpson
Pam Singer
Mark Smithson
Stephen Solley QC
David Sperlinger
Ruth Steigman
Dr Alexandra Stein
Adrian Stern
Martin Stevenson
Benny Talbot
Deborah Talmi
Inbar Tamari
Norman Traub
Tessa van Gelderen
Daniel Vulliamy
Brian Warshaw
Sam Weinstein
Charlotte Prager Williams
George Wilmers
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Debbie Windley
Roy Wolfe
Miriam Yagud
Dr Gillian Yudkin

Source: Counterfire

Other forms of racism are downplayed – notably Islamophobia, which is a form of ‘respectable racism’ firmly in the political mainstream.

While there have indeed been instances of antisemitism from some Labour members, the evidence shows overwhelmingly that it is not a widespread problem in the party, it has increasingly been addressed in a serious way, and the notion that Corbyn personally is complicit is absurd.

In the US, meanwhile, there has been an outpouring of vitriol directed at Ilhan Omar, a newly-elected congress member, for critical comments of Israel that have been tendentiously spun as antisemitic. In January, Omar became one of the first two Muslim women members of the US Congress in history, alongside Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib. Together with another new left-wing Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib have rapidly developed a high profile for challenging the conservative status quo in Washington politics. They have been faced with the inevitable backlash.

In both cases – Corbyn here, Omar in the US – antisemitism is being weaponised. It is wrongly treated as a smear tactic, cynically deployed to attack the left. This is motivated, above all, by the fear of the kind of politics represented by a new left.

In the UK there is real anxiety among the political establishment, and in the British state and ruling class, that a socialist could become prime minister. In the US the threat is less serious, but the trio of refreshing new voices in Congress – together with Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – represents a growing rejection of the old order, and a burgeoning interest in broadly socialist ideas.

These campaigns around antisemitism are therefore a misuse of a real form of racism, geared towards political ends: weakening, stigmatising and dividing the left. They involve ignoring or downplaying the more serious instances of antisemitism on the far right and, by weakening the Left, threaten to damage the political forces that can actually confront the growing far right and its racism. There is also a massive downplaying of other forms of racism, notably Islamophobia – which is a form of ‘respectable racism’ firmly in the political mainstream.

There was recently a triple whammy of insulting comments by senior Tory ministers in the space of just 48 hours that illustrated the point. Amber Rudd referred to shadow home secretary Diane Abbott as ‘coloured’. Andrea Leadsom responded to a request – from a Muslim Labour MP – for a debate on Islamophobia by saying it was a Foreign Office matter. Karen Bradley, meanwhile, caused great offence to Northern Irish Catholics by suggesting that killings by British security forces in Northern Ireland had not been crimes.

These ‘gaffes’ were swiftly followed by the news of the death of Shamima Begum’s baby in a refugee camp, exposing the callousness of Sajid Javid, home secretary, who had made Begum stateless. Yet, in this context, it is Labour – not the Tory Party – that receives the lion’s share of media denunciation and whipped-up controversy.

Opposition to Israel is not antisemitic

One thing that the sustained attacks on both sides of the Atlantic have in common is the question of Israel. Ilhan Omar faced a backlash due to comments she made about Aipac, the American umbrella group for pro-Israel lobbying  campaigns, and its influence on US politics, and for wider criticisms of the Netanyahu government and Israeli abuses of Palestinians’ human rights. Last summer’s furore over alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party pivoted around how to define antisemitism. There was a major campaign to force the party to adopt the full definition, including very controversial examples relating to Israel, proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

The IHRA code was subsequently adopted by the Labour Party’s national executive committee. It treats as antisemitic such things as saying that Israel is a ‘racist endeavour’ or challenging Jews’ right to self-determination, which in practical terms means the state of Israel. Many Jewish organisations worldwide have condemned the definition on the grounds that it extends the meaning of antisemitism to encompass fair criticism of Israel. Attitudes towards Israel have always varied within Jewish communities, which have rich traditions of anti-Zionism and of non-Zionist currents. These Jewish groups have also expressed concern that it makes the struggle to defeat antisemitism harder by focusing on the wrong targets.

This does not mean that the entire weaponising of antisemitism is driven by Israel or its lobbyists. That is to grant them an exaggerated influence. Their objectives – to delegitimise opposition to Israel’s apartheid regime and its violence, racism and colonisation of Palestinian land – dovetail with how significant parts of the US and UK political establishments view the strategic interests of their own countries.

It also fits neatly with their wider opposition to a rising Left, especially in the field of foreign policy. A great many of the attacks on Corbyn’s politics have focused on foreign policy, such as his personal background of opposition to Nato and nuclear weapons, with senior figures from the British state (former generals or security services chiefs) warning darkly of a Corbyn premiership.

Similarly, Omar’s support for justice for Palestine goes together with a refreshing opposition to US imperialism which is almost unprecedented in mainstream US politics. Her highly critical comments about Barack Obama’s extensive deployment of drones caused outrage in the Democratic Party elite.

The conflation of antisemitism with opposition to Israel does not stand up to scrutiny. Israel is a state built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948-49, creating a huge refugee population. It has been characterised, for the last 70 years, by dispossessing Palestinians of their land, often through force. Israel has developed a system of control that fragments the Palestinian people: Palestinians inside Israel are second-class citizens, those in the West Bank live under military occupation, Gaza’s two million Palestinians endure an open-air prison and the effects of a long-running blockade, and millions more are refugees unable to return to historic Palestine. Opposing all of this is a political and moral matter, not a question of antisemitism.

The ‘New Antisemitism’

Why has the defining of antisemitism become so contentious? It is no accident. There has been a concerted push by Israel, and by its political supporters elsewhere, to tarnish opposition to Israeli policies with the smear of antisemitism.

The concept of the ‘new antisemitism’ developed in response to growing resistance by Palestinians in the Second Intifada (2000-05), followed by the growth of international solidarity with Palestinians in the wake of 2005’s international BDS call. This was the appeal by Palestinian civil society for international efforts at boycott, divestment and sanctions. It has since grown into a diverse, multi-faceted and truly international movement of solidarity that has damaged Israel’s reputation and global standing, challenging governments and corporations to break their complicity in the apartheid state’s routine abuses of human rights.

The Israeli state has become more and more strategic in its response, pouring considerable funds into propaganda and lobbying to counter this threat. An integral component of these efforts has been the re-defining of antisemitism to protect itself against criticism. This is necessary because the realities of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians have only got worse.

The military assaults on Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014 have galvanised widespread public outrage across the world, as more recently has the murderous suppression of Palestinian protests near the Gaza/Israel boundary. Settlement building has continued, in defiance of international law and United Nations condemnation. Last year’s Nationality Law enshrined apartheid inside Israel by declaring that it is a state for its Jewish citizens only, formally sanctioning the discrimination and segregation that was already part of Israeli life.

The tight alliance between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Trump has helped open up serious cracks in support for Israel among American Jews, the majority of whom are anti-Trump.  This fraying of support for Israel is part of the context for the viciousness and the weaponising of antisemitism directed at Israel’s critics in both the US and the UK. The rise of the BDS movement and threat to the old order posed by a reviving Left are other crucial factors.

We should not be deflected – from both building a mass solidarity movement with Palestine and developing a stronger Left – by the spurious attempts at weaponising antisemitism.

Alex Snowdon is a Counterfire activist in Newcastle. He is active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and the National Education Union.

National Demonstration for Palestine
Sat 11 May | Assemble 12 Noon
Portland Place | London
March to Whitehall

Details…

Source: Ekklesia

The numerous accusations levelled against Corbyn vary from outlandish, to questionable, to plain wrong.

The fact that one Labour MP has been murdered, a far-right activist has been jailed for plotting to kill another Labour MP, that Corbyn himself has been the intended target of a killer, and there has been a recent physical assault on him – none of this seems to give his opponents pause for thought.

Yet the numerous accusations levelled against Corbyn vary from outlandish, to questionable, to plain wrong.

Take the ‘accusation’ that he is a Marxist. Economist Ann Pettifor, winner of the 2018 Hannah Arendt Prize for Political Thinking says, “As someone who has known Jeremy Corbyn for many, many years…I find this assertion both wrong and bizarre.” (It should be said, however, that to have been influenced by Marx’s thinking is not unusual, and does not make someone a revolutionary Communist.)

The reality is, Corbyn is a democratic socialist of the type that is common in Europe, where the policies he advocates would be unremarkable. But the UK’s political culture is now so ridiculously narrow that the BBC’s privately-educated Laura Kuenssberg can be hailed as ‘an outsider’ because she went to Edinburgh University.

Then, of course, there are the accusations that Corbyn is in some way a security risk, who would betray Britain to its enemies. These reached ridiculous heights when Conservative MP Ben Bradley accused him of selling secrets to Communist spies, and was obliged to make an unreserved and unconditional apology and pay ‘an undisclosed substantial sum of money’ to a charity of Corbyn’s choice.  It is also worth noting that Corbyn has been approved as a Privy Councillor and so can receive confidential briefings from the security services.

The charge that Corbyn is somehow ‘not patriotic’ seems to stem from a belief that love of one’s country necessitates an entirely uncritical attitude to its actions, now and in the past. That attitude, I would suggest, is the more dangerous attitude. In the age of Trump, we desperately need politicians who can view their own country with a degree of objectivity.

The idea that Corbyn is dangerous because he has chosen to meet with people of whom none of us would approve also seems illogical and unimaginative. Throughout his career he has taken an interest in conflict resolution, and as Desmond Tutu said, “If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Almost every senior politician will have met with some reprehensible characters,  to broker peace, to encourage dialogue – or in the case of Government ministers, often  to sell them weapons.

The most troubling accusation is that Jeremy Corbyn is either antisemitic himself, or condones or tolerates antisemitism. These accusations first seemed to arise after he was elected leader of the Labour Party in September 2015, so it seems fair to examine his behaviour prior to becoming leader and before he attracted so much media attention.

Over the years, Corbyn has signed numerous Early Day Motions condemning anti-semitism and supporting Jewish causes, but perhaps more importantly, he seems to have had a very good relationship with Jewish people in his own community.

On United Synagogue, a European Jewish website, Glynis Kuzuk wrote about the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at the site of North London Synagogue in Islington: “Rabbi Mendy Korer, who helped to organise the event followed with telling the audience of his involvement, from inviting the local MP Jeremy Corbyn to Shabbat dinner when the MP suggested applying for the plaque, to the procedure for residents in the locality voting for its installation.”  Pictures of the event, stemming from a suggestion by Corbyn himself, show a smiling Corbyn with the rabbi and other members of the community. This does not seem to be the behaviour of a person with antisemitic views.

But more substantial evidence of how ill-founded this accusation may be has been set out by Peter Oborne in a searing review  of Tom Bower’s recent book on Corbyn, Dangerous Hero. Oborne, a staunch Conservative, is widely considered a man of great integrity, committed to honest journalism. On Bower’s unevidenced assertion that Corbyn regards Jews as ‘the enemy of the working class’, he writes: “This is a travesty, all the more so since Bower ignores the fact that Corbyn has a long record of opposing anti-semitism.

“To take just one example, in 2002 Corbyn tabled a motion expressing sympathy with members of a synagogue in Finsbury Park after it was daubed with racist graffiti. Of course this does not in itself refute Bower’s claim that Corbyn is an anti-semite. Nevertheless, in any discussion of Corbyn’s anti-semitism, it cries out to be taken into consideration. I have checked as thoroughly as I can and can find no mention in Bower’s book of Corbyn’s sustained parliamentary activity against anti-semitism and in support of Jewish rights.”

I would urge anyone with an interest in accurate reporting to read this eye-opening review. It is a fascinating read, and as Oborne says: “There is a problem here which goes much deeper than Tom Bower himself and raises questions about the British media and political culture. Bear in mind that Bower’s book is not just intellectually dishonest, it is a farrago of falsehood and insinuation. Yet it appears to have had no difficulty finding a mainstream publisher, while receiving a generous reception in the mainstream press.”

Oborne’s review also deals with other matters which have been taken as evidence of antisemitism in the Labour Party, but which he finds have been misrepresented. So it is interesting to look at some substantive research in this area, from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

In 2017 it published Antisemitism in contemporary  Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel which was said to be “the largest and most detailed survey of attitudes towards Jews and Israel ever conducted in this country.”

It found: “When it comes to antisemitism, the very right-wing lead: 52 per cent (46-58 per cent) in this group hold at least one antisemitic attitude, in contrast to 30 per cent in the general population; and 13 per cent (10-17 per cent) of the very right-wing hold five to eight antisemitic attitudes, in contrast to 3.6 per cent in the general population.

“The very left-wing is indistinguishable from the general population and from the political centre in this regard. In general, it should be said that, with the exception of the very right-wing, there is little differentiation across the political spectrum in relation to the prevalence of antisemitic attitudes.

“However, in relation to anti-Israel attitudes, the very left-wing lead: 78 per cent (75-82 per cent) in this group endorse at least one anti-Israel attitude, in contrast to 56 per cent in the general population, and 23 per cent (19-26 per cent) hold six to nine attitudes, in contrast to nine per cent in the general population. Elevated levels of anti-Israel attitudes are also observed in other groups on the political left: the fairly left-wing and those slightly left-of-centre. The lowest level of anti-Israel attitudes is observed in the political centre and among those who are slightly right-of-centre or fairly right-wing.”

To put it simply, this study found that people on the right tend to be more anti-semitic but pro-Israel than those on the left. People on the left tend to be less anti-semitic, but more anti-Israel, than those on the right. This makes the distinction between criticism of Israel and antisemitism crucial, as by focusing on left-wing anti-Israel views, and conflating them with antisemitism, we may neglect a deeper problem of antisemitism on the right.

There is, of course, no question that disgusting antisemitism exists in the Labour party, as it does throughout society, and it must be tackled wherever it arises. But as Oborne’s review shows, misrepresentation and distortion in the reporting of it is a real problem. At a time when the threat from violent right wing extremists is greater than it has been for many years, it is important that we have a balanced view and an accurate sense of the scale and location of the threats to minority communities.

The Leader of the Opposition has been the subject of an extraordinary amount of distorted and untrue media coverage and political rhetoric. This coarsens our political discourse and polarises society. It is time to tone down the rhetoric and respect the truth, for the sake of a healthy democracy and a cohesive society.

I am not a member of any political party and have never met or had contact with Jeremy Corbyn or anyone connected to him.

Bernadette Meaden is strongly influenced by Christian Socialism, liberation theology and the Catholic Worker movement.

Source: The Independent

What can be done about the state of the press and politics in Britain before someone else actually gets killed?

This short video, originally posted on Snapchat, suggests that the spectacle of British soldiers shooting at socialist Labour leader Corbyn as if by firing squad is, if not a wholly desirable outcome, at least serves as good banter.

It is neither. This new scandal is a tragic commentary not just on our military’s internal culture, but on the state of our national politics. It comes at a moment of intense political danger when a viciously right-wing government teeters closer to collapse.

Meanwhile Corbyn, who could potentially take power from the Tories at any moment – unless another Conservative candidate steps into the breach – was himself physically attacked only weeks ago. Let us also recall: a Labour MP was murdered not too long ago and only yesterday the trial of a neo-Nazi accused of plotting to kill another Labour MP reached a crescendo.

Across Europe and the world (in and out of uniform) fascists are emboldened by victories like those of Bolsonaro in Brazil and Trump in America – their rise precipitated by the terminal decline of neoliberal centrism and the heightened inequality it triggered.

Since the early 20^th century, the far right’s targets have not changed: migrants, the political left and anyone notably different. The footage of the British soldiers shooting at the image of the leader of the opposition both emerged from and will feed back into exactly that kind of politics.

Of course this latest episode raises once again serious questions about the military – as well as cutting through the army’s glossy waffle about diversity and inclusion. The military, as I have argued elsewhere, remains anchored to the political right, functioning at times (by design) as a far-right organisation in which power, submission, obedience, violent mythology and military ancestor worship, shape service personnel’s views and keep them in check so that they are better equipped to carry out violence in pursuit of UK foreign policy goals.

Yet let us be clear our army is a reflection of the population from which it is drawn and the class by which it is led. If we understand that we can take lessons from it. One clear takeaway is that Jeremy Corbyn has been dehumanised by his enemies in the media and the political sphere to the point of being seen as fair game. His death is no more than a joke. Some of the more extreme centrists and conservatives seem at times to ache for it and fantasise over it.

Three years of being falsely accused of being an IRA and Hamas sympathiser both in parliament and in print; being portrayed as a Dracula figure in the gutter press and made the focus of a contrived antisemitism scandal have left Corbyn – and for that matter other prominent people on the left – not just dehumanised, but a potential top target for every gammon, crank and right-wing buffoon in the land.

In 2015 a serving general anonymously threatened a military coup against Corbyn if he was ever to take power. Sadly investigations failed to discover who this “enemy within” was. If only there was a way to find out… perhaps GCHQ could lend a hand?

Regarding the video, the army has said it is investigating itself (as is always the case) and it wouldn’t be surprising if a soldier or two end up going round the corner from their garrison in Colchester to spend a bit of time in the military jail there. But the incident makes the army’s ongoing identity crisis and its growing contempt for democracy at all levels all the more urgent a question to answer.

Far more important though, however bleak it sounds, what can be done about the state of the press and politics in Britain before someone else actually gets killed?

Joe Glenton is an Afghanistan veteran, journalist and the author of ‘Soldier Box’

Source: New Statesman

A credible blueprint for the future must be issued. A Grand Plan for Britain that overcomes Brexit and places it in its historical context.

Brexit Britain is, today, wallowing in a similar sense of having betrayed both its past and its future. A “Speech of Hope” for Britain is now more necessary than ever as the country endures a humiliating impasse.

Polarisation and discord have been Brexit’s predictable consequences. However, there is something that binds together all strands of British public opinion: self-pity. Right-wing Brexiteers are perhaps the group most immersed in it. They crave “Empire 2.0” (a global, London-centred, mercantilist realm) and imagine themselves as an insurgency against brutish forces they cannot overcome.

Pro-establishment Remainers strive to thwart Brexit, trading on the sad conviction that sovereignty is a luxury for an island constantly shrinking in global influence. Lexiteers imagine that Brexit may help them avenge the left’s comprehensive defeat at the hands of home-grown Thatcherism.

This self-pity is the foundation of the various groups doing battle in the shadow of Theresa May’s calamitous Brexit. A sense of helplessness hides under the epidermis of both Leave’s delusion of greatness and Remain’s illusion that revoking Brexit will fix everything. Bitterness and self-resentment ooze out of both left-wing and right-wing Brexiteers but, equally, out of the shrinking “radical” centre’s determination to restore Little Englandism for the many and Davos-like, globe-trotting financialisation for the few.

Now is precisely the moment when a credible blueprint for the future must be issued. A Grand Plan for Britain that overcomes Brexit and places it in its historical context. A visionary roadmap depicting a nation healing itself after a decade of austerity and an interminable, technical, procedural Brexit debate that has alienated Leavers and Remainers alike.

Here is an ambitious agenda for meeting four challenges Britain has hitherto not faced:

Britain’s failed economic model
Since Margaret Thatcher’s wilful vandalism of British industry, the UK economy has relied on “the kindness of strangers”. No other European economy, except Ireland, has required such large infusions of foreign capital to make ends meet (the UK’s current account deficit widened from 3.8 per cent of GDP to 5.0 per cent in the third quarter of 2018). This is why Britain relies on cheapness: low taxes, low wages (which are not due to regain their pre-crash peak until 2025) and zero-hour contracts.

If Britain is to move beyond this unholy trinity of low skills, low productivity and slow growth, a profound rethink of its place in the global econom is required.

However Brexit is ultimately resolved, the Speech of Hope must therefore announce:

1. An industrial policy supported by a new public investment bank which, backed by the Bank of England, will soak up idle cash from the City of London and divert it to the green transition projects that are uniquely capable of creating high-quality jobs;
2. A public digital payments system, based on the tax office’s digital platform, that will not only compete with the private banks’ payments system but also enable the government to divert funds to communities and families without the fear that these monies will leave the country;
3. A wealth fund into which large corporations are required to deposit a portion of their shares (eg 10 per cent), the dividends of which will fund a Universal Basic Dividend – the first step to a post-capitalist order that allows all citizens to enjoy the fruits of automation.

Austerity, migration and Britain’s place in the world
Austerity damaged local communities and helped trigger a moral panic over migration. Free movement of people within the EU obscured the role of domestic spending cuts in curtailing public services and social housing, making an upsurge in xenophobia inevitable.

The Speech of Hope must set out a vision for an open Britain; a Britain that is a beacon of hope and light in Europe and beyond; a country that takes the lead in resurrecting the spirit of giants such as William Morris and John Maynard Keynes with practical proposals for a new Bretton Woods-style settlement and a world in which freedom and rights are reserved for people, not capital.

Democracy: Referenda, citizens’ assemblies, the electoral system and parliamentary sovereignty
There is a revealing paradox concerning referenda. Many of the advocates of a second Brexit referendum are typically opposed to such public votes, especially when they deliver the “wrong” verdict.

The Speech of Hope must describe a future in which parliament and citizens’ assemblies work harmoniously, as they did during last year’s Irish abortion referendum, incorporating direct democracy into a revitalised parliamentary system.

The Speech of Hope must also restart debate on electoral reform and the replacement of the UK’s antiquated first-past-the-post system with one that bridges the gap between the will of the parliament and the will of the people. Parliamentary process must also be revisited: throughout the Brexit process, the House of Commons has been denied adequate influence, including over the transposition of EU legislation into UK law.

The English and Irish questions
The sense of self-pity that drove Brexit, and is poisoning public discourse, is primarily English. Tony Blair’s incomplete devolution settlement made England the only nation of the UK without its own dedicated assembly or parliament.

Combined with the devastation caused by remorseless deindustrialisation and the austerity imposed on the left-behind – and held-behind – areas of rural and coastal England, a majority of the English feel only disdain for a Westminster parliament that is unrepresentative of their hopes and fears.

The Speech of Hope must promise further devolution to create a new federal state. For instance, whoever delivers it must explain that the Irish “backstop” controversy is due to the incompleteness of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The tremendous success of ending the Troubles was achieved because London and Dublin abandoned their strict claims of sovereignty.

Now is the moment to secure the peace with the formalisation of a post-Westphalian joint sovereignty arrangement between the UK and Ireland and, perhaps, one between the UK and Scotland too.

Who should deliver this sorely needed Speech of Hope for Britain? There is only one British politician who can do so credibly today: Jeremy Corbyn.

Yanis Varoufakis is the co-founder of DiEM25 (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025) and the former finance minister of Greece

Source: La Jornada in Spanish (06/11/2018) and in English.

There have been important anti-imperialist socialist figures throughout Britain’s history, but none has ever got as close to power as Jeremy Corbyn is right now.

Arriving at the Houses of Parliament in London, I worried that I would find Jeremy Corbyn downbeat and nervy. The leader of the Labour Party, the official opposition to the British government, has been the victim of fierce attacks over the past six months — the crescendo to a campaign that has been rolling since he was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015.

In a near-universally hostile British media, he is regularly portrayed as an antisemite, a misogynist, a terrorist sympathiser, a communist agent – the list is literally endless. Every day, there is a new line of attack on a politician who for just about his whole political life was a largely unknown, marginalised left-wing voice in British politics.

But, like so much when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn, the opposite is the case. He is upbeat and relaxed. I meet him at his offices where he is surrounded by young and enthusiastic staff buzzing round the office. As he greets me, he hands me a double espresso. Someone has got his order wrong. “Want it?” he asks smiling.

He is quick to crack a joke, is intensely interested in other people, and seems at peace. His aura is one of enviable calm. Considering the storm around him, it’s disorientating. You take a lot of hits, I say. People worry this must have an effect on you: are you happy?

“Absolutely,” he cries with his characteristic wry smile, raising his eyebrows. “Absolutely!” he adds again for emphasis. “I’m extremely happy. I do my work in Parliament, I spend a lot of time touring around the country doing campaigning events, meeting people. And I travel when I can, I was in Jordan this summer visiting refugee camps.”

He then adds: “I lead a very balanced life. I read quite widely. I have an allotment, which I’m very proud of, and I keep myself fit and healthy. We want people to be able to lead full lives, and I lead a very full life, and I’m very happy doing it.”

As we chat casually — he is disarmingly open — I have to keep reminding myself that I am sitting opposite the biggest threat to the British establishment maybe ever. There have been important anti-imperialist socialist figures throughout Britain’s history, but none has ever got as close to power as Jeremy Corbyn is right now. His rise has been improbable, but, after constant destabilisation campaigns (often by his own party) he is obviously going nowhere.

In the General Election of 2017, when he was roundly predicted to crash and burn, he increased Labour’s seat count and the Tories lost their majority in the Houses of Parliament. Some say it was the most important moment for progressive politics in modern British political history. The left finally proved that its ideas could be popular with the general population. Socialism is back, and many predict that if Britain’s unstable Prime Minister Theresa May falls and a general election is called, Corbyn and Labour would win a landslide.

This is what terrifies Jeremy Corbyn’s enemies – his huge popularity, especially with the young.

Corbyn the internationalist

Corbyn, unlike many in parochial British politics, is and has always been an internationalist. He links struggles for democracy and human rights across the world and has travelled extensively throughout his life. But Latin America, and especially Mexico, has a special place in his heart. I glance over to his desk where a miniature Mexican flag flies above his papers. Further back is a framed picture of his Mexican wife Laura Alvarez at her graduation.

Corbyn has been rereading A History of Mexico in preparation for the interview and he is clearly enthused by the fact Mexico has turned red with the election of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador – the first time, he points out, Mexico has elected a real left-winger since Lazaro Cardenas in the 1930s. In fact, he is so excited by what AMLO represents that he announces he will be travelling to Mexico for the inauguration of AMLO in December.  “AMLO has shown amazing personal and political courage over many decades,” he tells me. “He was one of the most reforming of mayors of Mexico City in history. Indeed, it’s quite humbling when you go to the supermarket at the time of the month when the older people get their food vouchers, and they call them AMLOs.”

Does Corbyn sees similarities between himself and AMLO? “I see similarities in the sense that we’re both of about the same age, both been in politics all of our lives, and both have an absolute commitment to human rights and to righting injustice. I support him in the difficulties I know he’s going to face in searching for all the disappeared, as well as dealing with the Ayozinapa 43, and the dreadful case that that is.”

Corbyn first went to Latin America in the late 1960s when he was 20-years-old. He was living in Jamaica working with Voluntary Service Overseas and when he finished he embarked on a solo trip around South America. He fell in love with the region and has since visited nearly every country in Latin America. “There is a huge ethnic diversity across Latin America that’s often not understood by people outside. Understanding the history of Latin America is very limited in the rest of the world. The diversity of Bolivia, for example, with Quechua being actually the dominant language not Spanish. When that diversity is recognized you tend to get more inclusive governments. For example, in Chile the great Salvador Allende recognized the needs of the Mapuche people, which had often been ignored until then. I see the strength of Latin America as bringing people together.”

This is the side of Latin America that has inspired the left across the world in the past century. But there is another, darker, side to the region that, in places like Brazil, is coming back. Corbyn is aware of this too. “I also see elites in Latin America that have often been interlinked with the armed forces and global corporations … hence the problems that Allende suffered. I think an ongoing issue is the question of control of resources, and the economic development of the continent. I was looking recently at my diaries from 1969, and I’ve got an entry from 1 May 1969, in Santiago. That was the time when Popular Unity had been formed which eventually led to the election of President Allende a year later. Remember it was the first past the post system, so Allende got elected on, I think, 36 per cent of the vote. He faced opposition from the very beginning, particularly from the mining companies, and the CIA, much of it led by Kissinger. It’s all very well recorded.”

Corbyn pauses then adds: “There are powerful forces that move around in the world that want to oppose those who want to bring about economic and social justice. The only way to combat it is insertion of democratic values and humans rights, and that is exactly what I’m determined to do.”

Unkind media

Corbyn has been called by some Britain’s answer to Salvador Allende. Except the powerful reactionary forces he mentions will be much more concerned about Britain going red than Chile. No core capitalist country has ever had an anti-imperialist socialist in power. The political and economic system is sick and immoral. It remains to be seen whether such a system will ever allow a decent and principled human being to rise to its apex. Do you worry, I ask, about the forces that brought down Allende doing the same thing to you?

“Well, I understand a lot of the media are very unkind towards me here,” he says. “Extremely unkind,” he adds with a wry grin. “I think what we showed in the general election and since then is our ability to communicate with people was critical. Things like social media, and local organizations, have created a confidence amongst a lot of people in Britain that we can bring about political change, we can be a government of social justice and we can have a foreign policy based on human rights and justice. I’m utterly determined to achieve it.”

The Labour Party in Britain is nominally left-wing yet at least since Tony Blair won leadership of the Party in 1994 – and arguably long before – it has allied with reactionary forces across the world, from George W Bush to Silvio Berlusconi to the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.  That meant it showed no solidarity at all with the “pink tide” movement of the late 1990s and 2000s which saw progressive governments come to power in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Paraguay and Brazil. In one of the most exciting times for left politics in history, the Labour Party under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown was completely absent – only offering ritual denunciations of “authoritarianism” and “populism” in the liberated countries.

I wonder if that will now change under Corbyn, that the Latin American left can expect solidarity from the Labour Party now. “I’m very clear that we have to build an international movement, which deals with economic injustice and inequality, and challenges the neoliberal agenda. We need governments that think alike to work together on economic justice and we’ll absolutely do that.” He is particularly interested in the progress that Bolivia has seen under the government of Evo Morales and the social movements that catapulted him to power. “I had a very interesting visit to Bolivia some years back when I led a parliamentary delegation there. We were looking at the control of water, and the mining industry, but also the enfranchisement of the diversity of Bolivia. The idea that a non-Spanish speaking woman should be the author of the constitution of Bolivia was amazing and historic in so many ways. I’ve got a lot of respect for what they’ve achieved in Bolivia.”

Before we finish up I ask him if he has a message for Mexicans as AMLO takes power, and he shoots back, in perfect Spanish: “Saludos y buena suerte para el futuro, y paz y justicia para todo el pueblo de Mexico.” He smiles and then says tapping his Mexican history book, and back in English now, “I’m really looking forward to being in Mexico.”

Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and author of ‘The Racket: A Rogue Reporter versus the Masters of the Universe’ (Verso Books, 2015)

Source: Counterpunch

The UK media have consistently depicted Corbyn as a nonentity who somehow became Labour’s “accidental” leader. Benn certainly did not share this assessment.

Tony Benn (1925-2014) was Britain’s most enduring and influential postwar socialist politician. Born into an aristocratic family, he first made his name for his long and ultimately successful effort to renounce his title as Viscount Stansgate in order to pursue a political career in the elected House of Commons (peers are barred from sitting in the modern Commons).

After wartime service as a Spitfire pilot in Africa (he never mentioned this publicly), he was elected to parliament in 1950, and remained there until 2001.

Though a contender for the Labour party leadership on a number of occasions, and a highly effective minister in the Labour governments of the 60s and 70s, he never became party leader.

A number of reasons account for this disappointment: his party was on its long drift rightwards from the 1960s, culminating in the leadership of “New Labour” by the Tory-lite Tony Blair (Benn writes that “New Labour” had nothing to do with the Labour party); the collapse of the postwar social-democratic consensus– not that Benn had the stomach for its inbuilt and oftentimes sordid compromises– led to the erosion of the party’s leftwing base that was his natural political home; and finally, there was the man’s personality.

His deep socialist impulses notwithstanding, Benn was also hugely ambitious. A brilliant speaker and debater, with a mastery of television and scorning the need for a teleprompter, he wiped the floor in debating most of his opponents (as I recall from watching him on TV on countless occasions), but the gleaming-eyed ambition was always there, and somehow lessened the effectiveness of his otherwise bravura performances.

It was only when he gave up parliamentary politics, in order as he said “to spend more time on politics”, that he reached his prime. Freed from personal ambition and the constraints of parliamentary politics, Benn became a political colossus.

What do the diaries tell us about Benn and the politics of his time?

The reader of the diaries is struck by how right Benn was about the major issues of the day. This reader made a check-list of what he got right.

The monarchy is essentially parasitic, and renders Brits subjects instead of citizens. The queen holds the show together for now, but her heir Prince Charles is an unimaginative stiff (or words to that effect).  A bad parliament is always better than a good queen or king, because an absolute monarch can always do what they want on a mere whim.

Socialism is international, hence South African apartheid had urgently to be overthrown, and freedom struggles everywhere (including those of Cuba and the Palestinian people) supported.

Dictators– Pinochet, the Saudi tyrants, et al–  should not receive support from the UK.

Bureaucratic-command communism was bound to fail, because no major industrial power can be run like the Vatican. Benn was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union.

The UK’s “special relationship” with the US is a one-sided fiction (Benn was married to an American from Cincinnati).  Benn opposed Britain’s Trident nuclear “deterrent” for just this reason–  Britain “owned” Trident, but once launched Trident relied totally on the US’s satellite-based targetting system.  In a word: Trident could only be deployed on America’s say-so.

The Northern Irish “troubles” could only be resolved through a negotiated settlement. Ditto the UK’s dispute with Argentina over the Malvinas islands.

Unless undertaken in self-defence, invasions of other countries–  such as Iraq and Afghanistan (both of which Benn opposed vigorously) – violate international law and end-up being counterproductive for the invader. Benn wanted Blair to be put on trial at The Hague for his role in the illegal invasion of Iraq.

The EU exists overwhelmingly to provide goodies for corporations and sinecures for eurocrats. Benn was opposed to its earlier version, the EC, from the beginning.

Thatcher was a very effective politician who sensed correctly that the postwar compromise had run its course, but her agenda for dealing with its demise was a protracted disaster for Brits who did not belong to the elite.

After the immediate postwar Labour government which instituted the welfare state, Labour steadily lost its way in search of an increasingly elusive electoral success, until with Blair it ceased to be a socialist party.

Blair’s mission was purely and simply to show he was better at managing capitalism than his Tory opponents.  Politics was reduced to marketing under his leadership.

All impediments to democracy have to be resisted (even some Tories acknowledged Benn’s unwavering commitment in this respect), and a syndicalist socialism attuned to extra-parliamentary forms of activity is the best way potentially to achieve this democracy. Benn rejected the official rose-tinted descriptions of the role of parliament, and instead saw it as an instrument of “control” (his words).

Benn never made much in public of his religious leanings, but he was deeply influenced by his Methodist-theologian mother. He called himself a “Christian agnostic”, and had no time for institutionalized religion–  when it came to “Jesus the prophet or Christ the king”, the latter was a non-starter for him. But those close to him said his politics owed more to Methodism than to Marx. Benn was a lifelong teetotaller, and from 1970 a vegetarian.

Benn was vilified for decades by the British media, from the BBC to the overwhelmingly rightwing press (most of it owned by foreign-domiciled tycoons). Even The Guardian, which professes to take the high-road by distancing itself from the gutter journalism of the tabloids, would put the boot in on Benn.

He developed a carapace for dealing with newspaper headlines which called him, almost daily, a “loony”, “cultist”, “Soviet agent”, “commie puppet”, “enemy appeaser” (for being on the side of striking union members), “traitor”, and so on, but the diaries make it clear that Benn was sometimes crushed by the sheer weight of the lies thrown at him by the media. He gathered himself and went on nonetheless.

Especially important for someone interested in the British politics of that time are Benn’s accounts of the debates and battles on the key issues of the day that took place behind the scenes in the Labour party.

Jeremy Corbyn, the current Labour leader and a lifelong ally of Benn’s, features in the diaries increasingly from the 1980s onwards.

The diaries have an interesting entry in 1988 mentioning Corbyn (see photo below). On a trip to Moscow Benn was asked who on the UK left would be potential leaders. Most of those mentioned by Benn are either dead or no longer in politics (except for Corbyn and Dennis Skinner, the legendary Beast of Bolsover).

The UK media have consistently depicted Corbyn as a nonentity who somehow became Labour’s “accidental” leader.  Benn certainly did not share this assessment.

Also revealing is an entry from 1996 (the year before Labour won the general election), when Benn had a conversation with Corbyn. Corbyn had been invited by a TV channel to do an interview, and Blair’s office got wind of this. The TV channel was told that if they went ahead with the interview Blair and his shadow cabinet would boycott it in future. Corbyn’s invitation was withdrawn.

Blair and his lackeys have done their best to undermine Corbyn’s leadership of the party, and it is curious to see that this animus began more than two decades ago.

Benn had to put up with endless character assassination, and Corbyn continues to do so, as he seeks to take Labour back to its socialist roots.

1998: Tony Benn speech in parliament against bombing Iraq

Source: Twitter thread by novelist Simon Maginn, which can be read @simonmaginn

15 steps in the fabrication of an “antisemitism crisis” in the Labour Party and the smearing of its socialist leader.

1. Select your cause. This could be anything, but it’ll work better if it’s simultaneously highly emotive, imprecise, and presented as something people will find it difficult to argue against. (‘Let’s fight antisemitism’, for instance.)

2. Find ‘evidence’. Social media is a supremely rich source of possible ammunition, and accounts can be combed and pored over to find what looks like incriminating material.

3. Denounce. Denounce publicly, denounce often, denoune repeatedly. Repetition is key: the messages must be repeated sufficiently that they become ‘common sense’, something people keep on hearing about so it ‘must be true’.

4. Anyone who questions your narrative must be denounced as guilty thremselves. Denying your issue means ‘not taking the issue seriously’.

5. Divide. Make sure your issue is one that will cause division. Set factions against each other, foment intra-party tensions and get party members fighting each other.

6. Find ‘ambassadors’. People in the arts or entertainment sector are invaluable. They’re publicity hungry anyway and can be flattered easily. Their sense of self-importance will drive them to work for you, and they will have a wide base of fans who will become messengers in turn

7. Recruit the media. Make sure your issue is one the media will find ‘sexy’, and will want to report. Your ‘ambassadors’ will have good links and contacts here. Media are scandal-hungry and credulous. Flood them with stories.

8. Comedy is a key battleground. Once an issue has become the subject of TV comedy, it becomes cemented as ‘true’ in people’s minds. Your issue will gain far greater reach through TV comedy than any other route.

9. So give comedians material. Give them caricatures of reality, exaggerated characteristics. Comedians, like your media ambassadors, will be eager to be recruited if they can ‘make material’ out of your issue.

10. Swamp. The party will have some kind of complaints procedure. This must immediately be incapacitated by sheer volume. Complaints need not have any substance, it’s the volume that matters.

11. Now complain the complaints process itself is ‘too slow.’ The massive backlog you’ve created becomes a new campaigning tool. The party is ‘in denial’, ‘not taking the issue seriously’, etc.

12. When complaints are dismissed for lack of evidence, complain again that this shows the party isn’t taking the issue seriously. Dispute anything that suggests false accusations exist: the accusation of false accusations can itself become a new form of ‘denialism’.

13. Demand ‘action’. Your demands must increase as concessions are made. Every concession muct be denounced as insufficient. Whatever is offered, it must be refused and condemned. No apology should be accepted, but rejected as ‘too little too late’.

14. Be implacable. No attempt shoud be made actually to resolve the issue. Resolution is not your goal: destruction of the party is. The party must be damaged so significantly that your issue becomes definitional in people’s minds.

15. Be relentless. Never stop.

Ex-soldier Joe Glenton welcomes that Jeremy Corbyn does not cash in on soldiers, sailors and airmen. Reprinted from April 2017

Joe Glenton was court-martialed and jailed in 2010 for refusing to fight in the Afghanistan war he had come to see as unjustified and immoral. His acclaimed book Soldier Box describes the reasons for his decision. 

One method is to weaponise identity politics – race, gender, sexuality – and try to cast him as a bigot of sorts. These attacks are not hard to debunk, given Corbyn’s record and the fact that they are most often carried out via comment pieces dripping with mock outrage and written by Blairites or their natural allies – Conservatives and Liberals.

The other front, through, which Corbyn (and by Corbyn I mean both the man and the membership) is attacked, is on security, defence and foreign policy issues.

We should be clear, that coming from Blairites and Tories, these attacks are not being made from a position of authority, especially given these two closely aligned groups have gifted the world the failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and dubious interventions in Libya and Syria respectively.

Yet these attacks do have bite, not least when laced with the brand of ‘our brave boys’ jingoism which has become so popular these days as a cover for deflecting criticism and colouring the news.

The problem with all of this is that in power, Corbyn would be a better friend to the Armed Forces community than anyone else in Labour, or indeed, in parliament.

He would also better serve their interests than most senior military figures – none of whom, to my recollection, criticised the wars until they had a book to sell.

I’ll take one issue here in the form of veterans’ military mental health and tell you a few of the reasons he is a better bet than anyone else in parliamentary politics when it comes to Britain’s former soldiers, sailors and airmen.

He doesn’t separate the PTSD epidemic from civilian mental health

Another veteran and myself questioned Corbyn on veterans’ mental health at a small meeting held by Unite the Union in August 2016.

Both of us have PTSD as a result of service; thousands of other do as well. Both of us feel iffy about the web of gravy train military charities which many working class ex-servicemen are forced to rely on alongside a struggling NHS.

In response, Corbyn recognised that there is a mental health epidemic in society and set out his plan to deal with it. It is particularly notable that he did not appear to separate military from civilian mental health.

His answer, it appears, is proper publicly-funded treatment for all those in need. Those who are serving in the military get this as part and parcel of being in the military – though there are a lot of improvements to be made to in-service medical care.

Veterans, as I said, rely on charities and the NHS. But it is my firm view that the charities exist, in part, because the NHS has been pared back to a privatised skeleton of what it should be.

One cannot help but think a properly funded NHS would eliminate the need for the over 300, often highly political, military charities in Britain today.

Which major figure in progressive mainstream politics is most stalwartly and meaningfully defending the NHS with a view to reinvigorating it? I can tell you that their name is not Theresa May.

Corbyn doesn’t hero-worship the armed forces

Corbyn is not in love with the military. He does not appear to buy into the trend of gushing over soldiers as heroes whenever he is in front a camera as so many parliamentarians seem to enjoy doing.

Likewise, he does not precede every comment he makes on a military issue discussed in parliament with a giddy spiel about how grateful we must all be for our ‘brave servicemen’ for blowing up pick-up trucks in Syria on our behalf.

Why is this good?

Well, apart from how distasteful and outdated this kind of creaking nationalism is, the hyper-masculine lionisation of soldiers is bad for their mental health because it puts them on a pedestal.

The ‘hero thing’ dehumanises veterans and obscures the fact that they can face serious mental health issues because of trauma and distress as a result of their service.

Dealing with PTSD, adjustment disorder or depression brought on by military service should require – as all illness ought to – a grown up approach to treatment, care and transition and at no point should it include a cynical politicisation – of ‘hero-isation’, if you like – of psychologically-damaged military veterans.

Corbyn does not cash in on soldiers by trying to sound nationalistic or patriotically appreciative. I, for one, appreciate that fact.

He has taken responsibility for Labour’s role in Iraq

Corbyn has taken responsibility for Labour’s key role in the ethical black hole that was the Iraq occupation and in doing so took responsibility for the damage done to all participants.

This, for many veterans of that war whom I have spoken to, means something. In the military you are told to take responsibility for your comrades; to be responsible for your actions; to be honest and frank. In practice this is mostly just wind, but the sentiments are powerful.

Corbyn is the first major political figure to put his hand up and say that the war should not have happened: a view which is as widely held among Iraq veterans as among civilians.

The architects and major backers of the war have mostly since sloped off into the shadows or are fighting a deluded defence of the 2003 invasion based on their suddenly discovered love of the Kurds or opposition to dictatorship or similar.

He is extremely cautious about thrusting troops into armed conflict

What is mistaken for or slurred as a ‘pacifism’ from Corbyn is actually an understandable caution about the idea of going to war. It should be a prerequisite for anyone wielding executive power because, believe me, war is a very messy business.

This is a trait effectively unheard of in Blairite circles where, with the possible exception of Dan Jarvis, there exists in buckets that kind of war horny blood lust for armed conflict reserved for those who will never, have never, been a part of it.

Corbyn’s attitude is precisely what it should be when considering armed conflict: gravely serious and rational.

His views on defence, on which I also briefly questioned him at that recent meeting, appear to reflect a lifelong view that the exercise of violent military force should be a last resort. It is a view shared by many ex-servicemen and women.

Much can be said to recommend a Corbyn defence policy and indeed much will be said when his shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis – the first man in the role to have worn uniform since Nicholas Soames in the 2000s by my calculations – completes his defence review.

But what we can say right now is that keeping unnecessary foreign wars like the one I served in in Afghanistan to a sensible minimum is a good way to safeguard soldiers’ bodies and minds.

The right-wing of Labour are the quintessential long-range patriots, willing to spill other people’s sons’ blood for US foreign policy goals while they clap at the back. Until such time as they get a handle on this issue, they can’t be allowed to have responsible positions of power…such as control of the military.

Think of them as the clumsy cousin who has to drink from a beaker instead of a glass.

Jeremy Corbyn apologises on behalf of the Labour party for the Iraq War

In 2016, Jeremy Corbyn took the unprecedented decision to apologise for his party, under the leadership of Tony Blair, taking Britain into the illegal and unjustifed war in Iraq. In this video, he explains why this apology is owed to the people of Iraq, the families of those soldiers who died or returned home injured or incapacitated, and British citizens who feel their democracy was traduced and undermined.

Source: Counterfire

This is a battle about the future of the Labour party. The right is trying to regain control, with the support of the whole establishment.

Some people, including the Shadow Chancellor, have speculated that a Corbyn-led government would face concerted opposition from all wings of the establishment should it ever make it to office. As if to confirm these worries, the security services initially refused to meet Corbyn.

Soon after he became Labour leader a general was quoted anonymously in the Observer threatening a mutiny if Corbyn became prime minister. The Financial Times has reported that city opinion ranks Corbyn as a much greater threat than Brexit, and Corbyn-supporting economic experts have long worried about the possibility of non-co-operation from the financial sector in the event of a Labour victory.

But it is now clear that the soft coup has started before Corbyn could make it to number 10. After the announcement that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has taken the first step in the process of investigating the Labour Party over claims of antisemitism, it is no longer plausible to see the events of the last few weeks as a series of accidents.

Consider the sequence of events. First, following antisemitic attacks on Luciana Berger by right-wingers there was a media storm about unconnected no confidence resolutions in her constituency. Shortly afterwards a group of Labour MPs left to set up The Independent Group. They famously had no policies but focused their public pronouncements on attacking Corbyn’s leadership, particularly over Europe and antisemitism, but dwelling as well on what they regarded as Corbyn’s ‘problematic’ attitude to foreign policy and security. The attacks included suggestions that he was not fit to be leader.

They immediately received the support of Tony Blair but more seriously, they were backed by Tom Watson, whose video, released the same day, threatened further defections if Labour did not change course. In the media firestorm that followed, Watson too suggested that Corbyn’s antisemitism disqualified him for Labour’s leadership. That weekend the Mail on Sunday carried an attack on Seumas Milne, one of Corbyn’s key advisors, written by the former head of the security services, Richard Dearlove. The following week begun with an onslaught on Corbyn ally Chris Williamson who had been filmed making a speech saying that Labour had been too defensive about the attacks over antisemitism.

Emboldened by the retreat over the second referendum and the suspension of Chris Williamson MP, the right have stepped up their attacks. Last weekend the Observer targeted another Corbyn advisor, Andrew Murray. On Monday, Aberavon MP Stephen Kinnock, a long term Corbyn opponent, suggested disciplinary action against Welsh NEC member Darren Williams for merely circulating an email arguing that Chris Williamson’s remarks had been wrongly interpreted.

The hysteria around antisemitism is such that commentators and an MP have felt able to claim that anti-capitalism is antisemitism. Now Tom Watson is openly setting up a centrist organisation within the party.

All the claims against Corbyn have been enthusiastically taken up by the whole of  the media, not just the usual right-wing suspects, but perhaps most vociferously by the BBC and the Guardian, two outlets with big influence in liberal and left politics.

Their bias has been breathtaking. You can disagree with him, you can quibble with his use of words, but it is a simple fact that nothing Chris Williamson said in the ‘offending’ video clip is anti-semitic. And yet the spurious claims against him were reported as proven by most of the media from the start. The absurd coverage of Darren William’s complaint about the treatment of Chris Williamson have forced statements like ‘there is no place for anti-Semitism in Welsh Labour or in Wales’ from the Welsh Labour leadership.

This is one of the remarkable things about this whole sequence of events. There have apparently been few, if any, new cases of antisemitic incidents in Labour over the period. Any level of antisemitism is unacceptable and needs to be dealt with decisively, but the facts show that while antisemitism in wider society is growing, in Labour it has gone down since Corbyn was elected, and that it is significantly higher in the Tory Party than in Labour.

Meanwhile, as James O’Brien brilliantly explained on his radio show, the furore can’t really be about racism in politics, because the proven and public racism of some Tory Party leaders and commentators is so much more serious and blatant than anything Labour members are even accused of.

The crisis then is fundamentally artificial. It has been generated by relentless attacks from current and former members of the Labour right with the backing of Blair and his ‘team’, aided and abetted by the media and encouraged by Tories. The involvement of the EHRC marks a significant escalation of operations intended to give the extra authority of a ‘neutral’ apparently liberal wing of the state to the case against Corbyn.

This is not to claim some special conspiracy. Different parts of the state and the wider ruling class co-operate in various undertakings to defend their interests as a matter of course. This is why the state exists. Establishment hostility to Corbyn as the most left-wing leader of Labour has ever had is both understandable and on record.

Plans for a breakaway from Labour have been being discussed semi-publicly for some time. Discontent amongst some members over Corbyn’s opposition to a second referendum and claims of antisemitism presumably provided the pretext that overcame hesitation. Maybe the organisers felt they couldn’t wait any longer given the proximity of Brexit. Whatever the reasons for the timing, when it happened it was almost inevitable that it would be siezed on by the media, the rest of the Labour right and other elements of the establishment as the moment to create a crisis for Corbyn.

This is how soft coups happen, through the manoeuvring and collusion of different establishment forces inside and outside the state. This one can of course be resisted. Thousands of activists and Labour supporters know what is going on. Millions of people will struggle to believe the bizarre claim that Corbyn is an antisemite. But the problem is that so far the Labour leadership has responded by making concessions and much of the left seems in a state of denial, accepting all the claims of anti-semitism for example to be in good faith. Few have been clear enough about what is going on and how high the stakes are. The left urgently needs to get organised and address this situation.

First we have to be much more robust in our defence of those being attacked. There is no way that Chris Williamson’s comments warranted suspension. Giving in to hysterical and unsupported demands contravenes natural justice and implies guilt where there is none, so encouraging the offensive against the left. We must also be much more combative against the plotters.

How is it that Tony Blair for example can still be a member of the Labour Party when he has publicly supported colleagues who have left Labour and joined with Tories in setting up a new party? Why is Tom Watson being allowed to voice support for defectors and organise a party within the party without challenge?

And we need to go onto the offensive ideologically. This means making the incontrovertible case that Jeremy Corbyn’s record on fighting racism in general and antisemitism in particular is second to none and that all forms of racism including anti-semitism are mainly problems of the right.

But it also means being open and honest about the fact that we are involved in a battle about the future of the Labour party. The right is trying to regain control. With the support of the whole establishment they are trying to destroy any possibility of a Corbyn-led Labour government.

The majority of the membership and millions of voters want to see such a government come to office. This support from both inside and outside the Labour Party now needs to be mobilised in rallies and mass meetings up and down the country just like it was against the ‘Chicken Coup’ of 2016 and during the general election the following year. Only an open fight against the right can do this and the fight has to start now.

Source: Electronic Intifada

More than 400 French intellectuals, artists and activists sign an open letter to Macron: “If you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us, well, you can come and get us.”

More than 400 intellectuals, artists and activists have signed an open letter to Macron that was published on 28 February in the national newspaper Libération.

“Mr. President, we are French citizens who respect the laws of the republic, but if you adopt a law against anti-Zionism, or if you officially adopt an erroneous definition of anti-Semitism that permits outlawing it, please know that we will break this law with our words, our writing, our art and our acts of solidarity,” the letter states.

“And if you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us for that, well, you can come and get us.”

Among the signatories are academics and educators Ariella Azoulay, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun and Michèle Sibony; filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Simone Bitton and Eyal Sivan; writers Nancy Huston and Abdellatif Laabi; and veteran journalist Alain Gresh.

“Anti-Zionism is an opinion, a current of thought born among European Jews at the moment when Jewish nationalism was taking off. It opposes the Zionist ideology that advocated (and still advocates) the installation of the world’s Jews in Palestine, today Israel,” the letter adds.

It notes that the essential argument of anti-Zionism is “that Palestine was never an empty territory that a ‘people without land’ are free to colonize based on a divine promise, but a country populated with real inhabitants for whom Zionism would soon become a synonym for exodus, despoilation and the negation of all their rights.”

During his speech to CRIF, a major Jewish communal organization and pro-Israel group, Macron claimed “anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism” and pledged that France would formally adopt the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Supported by the Israel lobby, the definition deliberately conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism on the one hand, with hatred of Jews, on the other.

Macron did not promise a change in the penal code to outlaw anti-Zionist speech, but said that instructions would be issued to police, judges and teachers “to permit them to better combat those who hide behind the rejection of Israel and even the negation of its existence.”

The French president’s move, praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is part of a transatlantic campaign to weaponize often false accusations of anti-Semitism to smear and silence critics of Israel.

But while Macron is so far not proposing to change the law, some 30 lawmakers are pushing just such an initiative and said in February that they have been working up proposals for several months.

“What we want to outlaw is denying the existence of Israel,” Sylvain Maillard, a lawmaker from Macron’s La République en Marche party, said. “Of course one can continue to criticize Israeli governments.”

In his speech to CRIF, Macron seemingly sought to allay demands to outlaw anti-Zionism directly by touting French authorities’ legal crackdown against BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

Macron pointed to convictions against boycott activists, and said there would be more.

The campaign group BDS France took aim at the president’s renewed attacks on the boycott movement.

“In reality, the vast majority of complaints against BDS activists do not result in convictions,” BDS France stated. “They either are not prosecuted, or are resolved by acquittals.”

The group noted that even the staunchly pro-Israel European Union has conceded that boycott activism to pressure Israel and complicit institutions and companies to end abuses of Palestinians is protected free speech.

“Let’s recall that boycott is a frequent form of protest against injustice practiced by such historic figures as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela,” the group asserted.

Paraphrasing Macron’s own words, BDS France vowed that none of the president’s repressive measures would succeed in “erasing from our society the anti-apartheid struggle or the criticism of Israeli policies.”

“We will hold on and, in the end, we will win,” BDS France stated.

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine. He blogs regularly at Electronic Intifada.

Corbyn and his supporters are being witch-hunted, chased from pillar to post by a feral UK mainstream media that has entered full firing squad mode.

Source: Counterfire

We either allow the corrupt, polluting and exploiting ruling elite to destroy the planet. Or we get organised and prove that another way is possible.

David Attenborough gave a very powerful speech to the COP24 conference recently, highlighting climate breakdown and the mass extinctions that we face on a global scale if the ‘decision makers’ do not act immediately to reverse global emissions. For once, the BBC ran this topic as a headline story and ran it for an entire day. Yet, with their backdrop of the Polish coal mining industry, the media coverage was complicit to say the least with the fossil fuel industry by the very way in which they framed the story.

I don’t doubt Attenborough’s commitment to this issue for one minute but when the BBC tried to torpedo his arguments by challenging him on his solutions for the Polish coal miners, their families and the effect that losing the Polish coal industry would have on their livelihoods, his answer was along the lines of “things change” and “workers will have to adapt”. Yet if he was politically aware, he would have known the arguments and could have reeled off all the positive alternatives to coal. He could have talked about green jobs, disruptive technologies, disinvestment, and the huge opportunities the green economy will offer coal miners, in terms of high skilled, well paid and secure jobs.

This is the problem with trying to leave politics out of analysing climate change. Climate breakdown is the most pressing political issue of our time, it is simply ludicrous to not recognise that and not to campaign directly on those terms.

I’ve also heard recently of some Extinction Rebellion activists saying that the campaign should be “non-political”. This may be a minority view within the campaign, I’m not sure. It certainly is fair to say that they have hit the ground running and their direct action including blocking bridges has brought significant media attention. They have sent a strong message to the polluters and the political class that they mean business. There is doubtless more to come from XR. However, as with any campaign, we need to identify the root cause of the problem in order to tackle it.

The problem is capitalism

It is no coincidence that the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to lead us into the situation we now face. Oil barons of a hundred years ago were firmly rooted inside governments and were allowed to dictate the way in which our energy sector has developed. Extraction of fossil fuels was favoured over the development of renewable technologies for as long as those in power could get away with it – why? Because renewable energy doesn’t make as much profit. Just think what a hundred years of technological advances in renewables would have bought us had they not steered us down their dirty route for profits.

While it is encouraging that the ‘climate agenda’ has finally hit the mainstream, the Paris Accord and the recent COP24 meeting don’t go anywhere near far enough to scratch the surface of the monumental task we have in front of us, let alone address it. Evidence shows that we will reach the tipping point of catastrophic, runaway climate breakdown in a matter of years – this is very serious. This video from Leo Murray of the 10:10 Climate campaign shows exactly what we are facing if we hit that tipping point.

One rather glaring issue in relation to sea level rises is also often overlooked. Fukushima remains in a very fragile state and still holds the potential to cause a global extinction event. The authorities simply don’t know how to deal with the crippled reactor. There are 454 nuclear power stations around the world, usually located in coastal locations. If sea levels rise by just a few meters this could cause many reactors to go into uncontrollable meltdown. Any climate change event which prevented staff from being able to get to work to operate these power stations for more than a week could have exactly the same effect. Nuclear power stations (54 are currently being constructed despite the huge threat they would pose to life if any of these scenarios ever play out). Their construction is in no small part due to the fact that they also produce plutonium for the nuclear arms industry.

All this is because we are now fully entrenched into a global culture of exploitation of the world’s resources. The last forty years of neoliberalism has utterly compounded this. Capitalism relies on the exploitation of the workers, ownership of land and control of the means of production. Simply put, this means exploitation of people and exploitation of our land in the name of profit.

It is politics and the politicians in the back pockets of the super-wealthy who have allowed this all to happen.

If we are apathetic and take no part in the political agendas which influence every aspect of our surroundings, then we ignore for instance, that the metals and minerals found in our smartphones have largely been torn from the ground in Africa. Where corporations with scant regard for environmental protections or employee safety, exploit the workers and force them into terrible working conditions. We ignore that they fund and arm militias and armies to murder and brutally quash legitimate protest.

To ignore politics is to ignore the plastics which are allowed to be sold in our shops and which then end up in our rivers and seas. It is to ignore the child worker whose slave labour for the polluting factory makes our socks and our clothes. The better we begin to understand how all the pieces of this vast political jigsaw fit together, the better equipped we are to begin to create our own jigsaw in order to build the type of world that we all want to see. Namely; a world that won’t be destroyed by the inherent and hardwired greed of capitalism.

Governments around the world, especially our own, are locked into a toxic three-way embrace with the corporations and the arms industry. We see with our governments making laws that benefit the super rich and multinational corporations such as with off-shore tax havens, to such a degree that in Britain tax avoiding companies actually ‘advise’ the government and HMRC on tax law. The revolving door for politicians like Osborne who first grease the wheels for the tax avoiders while in government and then take up seats on the boards of these same banks and companies. It’s the same story for the polluters and fracking companies. They even do both jobs at once while writing the laws that regulate… themselves!  100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions and they’re given carte blanche.

So what can we do about it?

One thing that is clear is that the climate chaos will not be solved by individual lifestyle choices. The problem is systemic and so the only solution can be a radical transformation of society. Not only do I think that time has come for us to be openly making this case but I think we need to seriously ramp up our rhetoric on this point.

With global inequality increasing exponentially, neoliberalism is being further exposed each day for what it really is. There are growing calls on both sides of the Atlantic for a ‘Green New Deal’ which encompasses the symbiotic nature of the fight against climate destruction and inequality. The two have to go hand in hand; the alternative is for the ruling class to co-opt the idea of green reforms to further entrench neoliberalism. As Macron recently discovered with his attempt to introduce a regressive fuel tax, such reforms are not only unfair and don’t solve impending climate chaos, but they will never have popular support.

Jeremy Corbyn’s policy proposals which include investing in green technology, defence diversification that would move jobs from the arms trade to green industries and a commitment to massively reducing carbon emissions by turning to renewable energy resources, show that radical transformation of the economy which reverses neoliberalism and mitigates the destruction of our planet is possible – and on the cards.

While such reforms aren’t the ultimate solution to halting climate disaster, they would be a big step in the transition towards a ‘Resource Based economy’ style model. A Resource Based economy means that the finite resources of the planet are treated as the ‘common heritage of all’ and these resources are used sustainably. The fundamental premise of this type of model is that firstly, we only have one planet. And secondly, we have almost eight billion people on this planet who all have an equal right to food, water, housing, health and education.

Technology and automation would not be used as a mechanism to drive down wages as they currently are, but instead to free up people’s time to study, spend more time with family or contribute to society in other ways.

None of this is going to be easy, but the choice is stark: we either allow the corrupt, polluting and exploiting ruling elite to destroy the planet around us, while they prepare to fly off to their mountain bunkers as total ecosystem breakdown engulfs the rest of us. Or we get organised and prove that another way is possible where people and planet do come first.

Source: Jonathan Cook Blog

The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite.

Yet again, Corbyn has found himself ensnared in what a small group of Jewish leadership organisations, which claim improbably to represent Britain’s “Jewish community”, and a small group of corporate journalists, who improbably claim to represent British public opinion, like to call Labour’s “anti-semitism problem”.

I won’t get into the patently ridiculous notion that “Zonist” is a code word for “Jew”, at least not now. There are lots of existing articles explaining why that is nonsense.

I wish to deal with a different aspect of the long-running row over Labour’s so-called “anti-semitism crisis”. It exemplifies, I believe, a much more profound and wider crisis in our societies: over the issue of trust.

We now have two large camps, pitted against each other, who have starkly different conceptions of what their societies are and where they need to head. In a very real sense, these two camps no longer speak the same language. There has been a rupture, and they can find no common ground.

I am not here speaking about the elites who dominate our societies. They have their own agenda. They trade only in the language of money and power. I am speaking of us: the 99 per cent who live in their shadow.

First, let us outline the growing ideological and linguistic chasm opening up between these two camps: a mapping of the divisions that, given space constraints, will necessarily deal in generalisations.

The trusting camp

The first camp invests its trust, with minor reservations, in those who run our societies. The left and the right segments of this camp are divided primarily over the degree to which they believe that those at the bottom of society’s pile need a helping hand to get them further up the social ladder.

Otherwise, the first camp is united in its assumptions.

They admit that among our elected politicians there is the odd bad apple. And, of course, they understand that there are necessary debates about political and social values. But they agree that politicians rise chiefly through ability and talent, that they are accountable to their political constituencies, and that they are people who want what is best for society as a whole.

While this camp concedes that the media is owned by a handful of corporations driven by a concern for profit, it is nonetheless confident that the free market – the need to sell papers and audiences – guarantees that important news and a full spectrum of legitimate opinion are available to readers.

Both politicians and the media serve – if not always entirely successfully – as a constraint on corruption and the abuse of power by other powerful actors, such as the business community.

This camp believes too that western democracies are better, more civilised political systems than those in other parts of the world. Western societies do not want wars, they want peace and security for everyone. For that reason, they have been thrust – rather uncomfortably – into the role of global policeman. Western states have found themselves with little choice of late but to wage “good wars” to curb the genocidal instincts and hunger for power of dictators and madmen.

Russian conspiracies

Once upon a time – when this camp’s worldview was rarely, if ever, challenged – its favoured response to anything difficult to reconcile with its core beliefs, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crash, was: “Cock-up, not conspiracy!”. Now that there are ever more issues threatening to undermine its most cherished verities, the camp’s response is – paradoxically – “Putin did it!” or “Fake news!”.

The current obsession with Russian conspiracies is in large part the result of the extraordinarily rapid rise of a second camp, no doubt fuelled by the unprecedented access western publics have gained through social media to information, good and bad alike. At no time in human history have so many people been able to step outside of a state-, clerical- or corporate-sanctioned framework of information dissemination and speak too each other directly and on a global stage.

This new camp too is not easy to characterise in the old language of left-right politics. Its chief characteristic is that it distrusts not only those who dominate our societies, but the social structures they operate within.

This camp regards such structures as neither immutable, divinely ordained ways for ordering and organising society, nor as the rational outcome of the political and moral evolution of western societies. Rather, it views these structures as the product of engineering by a tiny elite to hold on to its power.

These structures are no longer primarily national, but global. They are not immutable but as fabricated, as man-made and replaceable, as the structures that once made incontestable the rule of a landed aristocracy over feudal serfs. The current aristocracy, this camp argues, are globalised corporations that are so unaccountable that even the biggest nation-states can no longer contain or constrain them.

Illusions of pluralism

For this camp, politicians are not the cream of society. They have risen to the surface of a corrupted and corrupting system, and the overwhelming majority did so by enthusiastically adopting its rotten values. These politicians do not chiefly serve voters but the corporations who really dominate our societies.

For the second camp, this fact was well illustrated in 2008 when the political class did not – and could not – punish the banks responsible for the near-collapse of western economies after decades of reckless speculation on which a financial elite had grown fat. Those banks, in the words of the politicians themselves, were “too big to fail” and so were bailed out with money from the very same publics who had been scammed by the banks in the first place. Rather than use the bank failures as an opportunity to drive through reform of the broken banking system, or nationalise parts of it, the politicians let the banking casino system continue, even intensify.

Likewise, the media – supposed watchdogs on power – are seen by this camp as the chief propagandists for the ruling elite. The media do not monitor the abuse of power, they actively create a social consensus for the continuation of the abuse – and if that fails, they seek to deflect attention from, or veil, the abuse.

This is inevitable, the second camp argues, given that the media are embedded within the very same corporate structures that dominate our societies. They are, in fact, the corporations’ public relations arm. They allow only limited dissent at the margins of the media, and only as a way to create the impression of an illusory pluralism.

Manufactured enemies

These domestic structures are subservient to a still-bigger agenda: the accumulation of wealth by a global elite through the asset-stripping of the planet’s resources and the rationalisation of permanent war. That, this camp concludes, requires the manufacturing of “enemies” – such as Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Korea – to justify the expansion of a military-industrial machine.

These “enemies” are a real foe in the sense that, in their different ways, they refuse to submit to the neoliberalising reach of the western-based corporations. But more significantly, they are needed as an enemy, even should they want to make peace. These manufactured enemies, says the second camp, justify the redirection of public money into the private coffers of the military and homeland security industries. And equally importantly, a ready set of bogeymen can be exploited to distract western publics from troubles at home.

The second camp is accused by the first of being anti-western, anti-American and anti-Israel (or more mischievously anti-semitic) for its opposition to western “humanitarian interventions” abroad. The second camp, it says, act as apologists for war criminals like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Syria’s Bashar Assad, portraying these leaders as misunderstood good guys and blaming the west for the world’s ills.

The second camp argues that it is none of these things: it is anti-imperialist. It does not excuse the crimes of Putin or Assad, it treats them as secondary and largely reactive to the vastly greater power a western elite with global reach can project. It believes the western media’s obsession with crafting narratives about evil enemies – bad men and madmen – is designed to deflect attention from the structures of far greater violence the west deploys around the world, through a web of US military bases and Nato.

Putin has power, but it is immeasurably less than the combined might of the profit-seeking, war-waging western military industries. Faced with this power equation, according to the second camp, Putin acts defensively or reactively on the global stage, using what limited strength Russia has to uphold its essential strategic interests. One cannot reasonably judge Russia’s crimes without first admitting the west’s greater crimes, our crimes.

While the whole US political class obsess over “Russian interference” in US elections, this camp notes, the American public is encouraged to ignore the much greater US interference not only in Russian elections, but in many other spheres Russia considers to be vital strategic interests. That includes the locating of US military bases and missile sites on Russia’s borders.

Different languages

Two camps, two entirely different languages and narratives.

These camps may be divided, but it would seriously misguided to imagine they are equal.

One has the full power and weight of those corporate structures behind it. The politicians speak its language, as do the media. Its ideas and its voice dominate everywhere that is considered official, objective, balanced, neutral, respectable, legitimate.

The other camp has one small space to make its presence felt – social media. That is a space rapidly shrinking, as the politicians, media and the corporations that own social media (as they do everything else) start to realise they have let the genie out of the bottle. This camp is derided as conspiratorial, dangerous, fake news.

This is the current battlefield. It is a battle the first camp looks like it is winning but actually has already lost.

That is not necessarily because the second camp is winning the argument. It is because physical realities are catching up with the first camp, smashing its illusions, even as it clings to them like a life-raft.

The two most significant disrupters of the first camp’s narrative are climate breakdown and economic meltdown. The planet has finite resources, which means endless growth and wealth accumulation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Much as in a Ponzi scheme, there comes a point when the hollow centre is exposed and the system comes crashing down. We have had intimations enough that we are nearing that point.

It hardly needs repeating, except to climate deniers, that we have had even more indications that the Earth’s climate is already turning against humankind.

Out of the darkness

Our political language is rupturing because we are now completely divided. There is no middle ground, no social compact, no consensus. The second camp understands that the current system is broken and that we need radical change, while the first camp holds desperately to the hope that the system will continue to be workable with modifications and minor reforms.

It is on to this battlefield that Corbyn has stumbled, little prepared for the heavy historic burden he shoulders.

We are arriving at a moment called a paradigm shift. That is when the cracks in a system become so obvious they can no longer be credibly denied. Those vested in the old system scream and shout, they buy themselves a little time with increasingly repressive measures, but the house is moments away from falling. The critical questions are who gets hurt when the structure tumbles, and who decides how it will be rebuilt.

The new paradigm is coming anyway. If we don’t choose it ourselves, the planet will for us. It could be an improvement, it could be a deterioration, it could be extinction, depending on how prepared we are for it and how violently those invested in the old system resist the loss of their power. If enough of us understand the need for discarding the broken system, the greater the hope that we can build something better from the ruins.

We are now at the point where the corporate elite can see the cracks are widening but they remain in denial. They are entering the tantrum phase, screaming and shouting at their enemies, and readying to implement ever-more repressive measures to maintain their power.

They have rightly identified social media as the key concern. This is where we – the 99 per cent – have begun waking each other up. This is where we are sharing and learning, emerging out of the darkness clumsily and shaken. We are making mistakes, but learning. We are heading up blind alleys, but learning. We are making poor choices, but learning. We are making unhelpful alliances, but learning.

No one, least of all the corporate elite, knows precisely where this process might lead, what capacities we have for political, social and spiritual growth.

And what the elite don’t own or control, they fear.

Putting the genie back

The elite have two weapons they can use to try to force the second camp back into the bottle. They can vilify it, driving it back into the margins of public life, where it was until the advent of social media; or they can lock down the new channels of mass communication their insatiable drive to monetise everything briefly opened up.

Both strategies have risks, which is why they are being pursued tentatively for the time being. But the second option is by far the riskier of the two. Shutting down social media too obviously could generate blowback, awakening more of the first camp to the illusions the second camp have been trying to alert them to.

Corbyn’s significance – and danger – is that he brings much of the language and concerns of the second camp into the mainstream. He offers a fast-track for the second camp to reach the first camp, and accelerate the awakening process. That, in turn, would improve the chances of the paradigm shift being organic and transitional rather than disruptive and violent.

That is why he has become a lightning rod for the wider machinations of the ruling elite. They want him destroyed, like blowing up a bridge to stop an advancing army.

It is a sign both of their desperation and their weakness that they have had to resort to the nuclear option, smearing him as an anti-semite. Other, lesser smears were tried first: that he was not presidential enough to lead Britain; that he was anti-establishment; that he was unpatriotic; that he might be a traitor. None worked. If anything, they made him more popular.

And so a much more incendiary charge was primed, however at odds it was with Corbyn’s decades spent as an anti-racism activist.

The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite. They chose it because it is the most destructive weapon – short of sex-crime smears and assassination – they have in their armoury.

The truth is the ruling elite are exploiting British Jews and fuelling their fears as part of a much larger power game in which all of us – the 99 per cent – are expendable. They will keep stoking this campaign to stigmatise Corbyn, even if a political backlash actually does lead to an increase in real, rather than phoney, anti-semitism.

The corporate elites have no plan to go quietly. Unless we can build our ranks quickly and make our case confidently, their antics will ensure the paradigm shift is violent rather than healing. An earthquake, not a storm.

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001.