Following pressure from the Blair-rights and the Tory media, the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party again showed they have the backbone of a jellyfish, by suspending Chris Williamson from the Labour Party, on the grounds of “bringing the party into disrepute”, after he argued that the party had been far too apologetic in its response to claims that the party is “institutionally anti-Semitic”. Now, you can agree with Williamson on this point or disagree, but the fact of an expression of opinion one way or the other, most obviously, is not any kind of indication of anti-Semitism! What next, are we to find that Blair-rights attack Corbyn for not singing the National Anthem, and he responds by holding a patriotic choir service, and anyone who criticises his apologetic response is then hauled up on charges of bringing the party into disrepute for being “institutionally anti-Monarchist”?
Some have criticised Williamson for his shaky politics, not just in relation to an uncritical, or even supportive attitude to others accused of anti-Semitism, but also in relation to his record as Leader of Derby Council. Fair enough, let's debate those issues, and hold Williamson to account for them, but typical of much of the way the LP machinery operates, instead of doing that, the real issues are replaced by other vague charges – the most obvious of which is the charge of “bringing the party into disrepute” - which is what Williamson is currently being charged with. That is more typical of the kind of charges that were used in Stalin's show trials, which demanded those so charged made full recantations before they were shot, or with McCarthy's witch-hunts in the US, in the 1950's.
Suppose someone was brought before a court, and the police in giving their evidence were to say,
“Well you're honour, we don't have much of a case in relation to the current charges, and we don't know exactly what law the accused should be charged with having broken, but we do know he's a wrong'un, because we have evidence that he is responsible for a load of stuff that we never charged him with in the past. So, forget about what he's actually charged with now, and just send him down on the basis that he did all this other stuff in the past.”
Every decent liberal, let alone socialist would insist that not only the case be dropped, but that the police themselves be charged with malicious prosecution! Yet that is essentially the case in relation to Williamson. It is the kind of procedure used by the police in the past, for example against The Shrewsbury Two, who were not charged with committing any particular criminal act, but with "Conspiracy".
And, we know that those that have pressed this case against him, just as with those that insisted that Hatton's LP membership should again be suspended, for a 2012 tweet in which he criticised the Israeli government, really have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, but for whom anti-Semitism is merely a convenient hook on which to hang their campaign against the left in the party, as they systematically seek to discredit that party, and to undermine Corbyn's leadership of it. And, the reason they have been so keen to go for Williamson is precisely because, he is right in what he says, in this context. Corbyn and the leadership have brought this situation on themselves, in which Corbyn the epitome of ant-racism, and opponent of bigotry is accused of bigotry and racism to such a degree now, that the Tory media take it as an article of faith that they do not even have to justify. We have the ridiculous spectacle in which the Labour Party which has always been the party that fought racism and anti-Semitism is branded as “institutionally racist”, and that meme is repeated ad nauseum each day on TV and in the Tory press, with an endless stream of Blair-rights only too eager to provide support for such attacks on the party, whilst the Tory party, whose virulent racism and xenophobia, is allowed to continue unchallenged. We have Corbyn the opponent of all kinds of bigotry branded a bigot, whilst we have Blair-rights, like Rachel Reeves, appearing on TV to tell us that the actual anti-Semite, inveterate racist, colonialist, and vile white supremacist, Churchill, is “one of my heroes.”!!!!
This really is the world of Orwell's 1984, and of Newspeak.
If Williamson is guilty of anti-Semitism, for his comments in relation to Giliad Atzmon, and so on, then he should have been reported by those that make those charges to the party's disciplinary committee, and not on the current charge of “bringing the party into disrepute”. If Williamson was guilty of bad politics by supporting PFI schemes, as leader of Derby Council, then socialists might decide not to select him as a Councillor or as an MP. In fact, LP members in Derby did decide to select him to fight the 2017 election, which he won. So it seems those on the ground were not so offended by his performance as Council Leader. Moreover, it would hardly be a reason to remove him from the party, or if it was, then nearly all of the PLP would have to be kicked out for supporting PFI during the Blair/Brown years!
Part of the charges made against Corbyn and others is that they have shared platforms with people who are anti-Semites, usually this is in relation to events around the question of Palestine. As someone who has opposed idiot anti-imperialism for over thirty years, I am the first to say that the attitude of certain sections of the Left, in that regard, has been unprincipled and strategically damaging. It has put “anti-imperialism” ahead of being “pro-socialist”. Moreover, it has given the opponents of the Left an obvious lever to use against it. But, it's obvious that for those opponents of the Left, it is merely an opportunistic device around which to frame their attacks.
Where, for example, do we see similar responses to the fact that members of Labour Friends of Israel, have regular meetings with representatives of the Israeli government, even as that government carries out murderous attacks on Palestinians, and indeed there appears to be a revolving door between BICOM, and the PLP, with former members of the Israeli state holding permanent jobs in that organisation. And, where do we see the same kind of comments about the fact that representatives of the Israeli state, in some of these meetings offered up £1 million, to British MP's to help them not just promote and apologise for the Israeli state, but to try to get some British MP's critical of Israel removed from parliament? Had this been footage of a Corbyn supporter meeting with representatives of Putin's Russia, the video would have been played endlessly on TV.
In the US, Donald Trump is under investigation, in part for collusion with Putin's vile regime in Russia. Trump, of course, has good relations with the regime of Netanyahu. And, Netanyahu's regime is itself about to go into coalition with an openly neo-Nazi, party in Israel, to try to stay in office. But, instead of criticising those Labour MP's that have lined up with this basket of undesirables, we see people like Tom Watson, instead trying to shut down anyone that dares to offer any criticism, or even any questioning of their activities. This is a truly bizarre situation. In the US, where Trump has tried to do that, he has opened himself up to potential charges of attempts to pervert the course of justice.
And, all the while, whilst socialists in the party, who support Corbyn, are coming under sustained attack from the rump of the Right, in the PLP, whose figurehead Watson has become, we see that same rump, which should have lost all influence long ago, after the party turned decisively against them, with the election of Corbyn as Leader, and following their abortive coup attempts, is once again organising to undermine Corbyn, and to institute another palace coup. Watson is openly organising against Corbyn, and setting up his own parallel Shadow Cabinet. For students of history, and of coups and revolutions, he is creating a condition of dual power inside the PLP, and all students of such situations know they are always short lived, with one power or the other asserting its dominance. Watson is currently asserting such dominance, manifest in his demands that Corbyn do as Watson and the Right of the party bid him to do, such as the demand that Williamson be suspended.
Watson showed the kind of party it will be if he is allowed to succeed, with his comment, yesterday, that, if it was in his gift, he would have withdrawn the whip from Williamson already. Hours later, he showed it effectively was in his gift! In other words, true to his own Stalinist training, he would ignore all niceties of natural justice and due process, and go straight to being judge, jury and executioner. That is the same kind of regime that existed, in the 1980's, under Kinnock, when the party was gutted. It is the situation the Blair-rights and soft lefts would like to return to, whereby the LP is only the PLP, and the membership's role is only to act as obedient drones, wheeled out at election times to ensure their betters get to continue in their seats, and draw their large salaries, before they move on to a cushy job in some large company, or a seat in the Lords.
Unlike, the right-wing witch hunters, and their useful idiots, such as the AWL, we should not, however, demand that Watson be expelled from the party, as they do in relation to Williamson, and others who stand up to the onslaught from the Right, and the Tory media. The LP is a broad church. Its 600,000 members – may be now only 500,000 given Corbyn's failure to take a principled stand over Brexit, and his weak-kneed leadership in the face of the attacks from the Right – are overwhelmingly on the Left. The battle of democracy, inside the LP, has essentially been won, but the membership has failed to realise it, and continues, through inertia to allow the party leadership, and party bureaucracy to operate in opposition to it.
It shows that, having won the battle of democracy, the membership needs to bring appearance and reality into alignment, a political revolution, within the party itself. It means that the membership, from top to bottom, must insist on further democratisation of the party. We need to bring the old political leadership to account. There should be a demand for an immediate emergency conference. That conference should:
- Set the party's policy as being clearly to oppose Brexit
- Demand mandatory reselection of MP's
- Scrap the PLP's role in determining the Party Leader and Deputy Leader
- Demand that the Shadow Cabinet/Cabinet be elected by all party members
- Institute an election for Deputy Leader given that Watson is bringing the party into disrepute by his constant manoeuvring against Corbyn
- Demand that the Party's Disciplinary Committees be directly elected by and from the party's rank and file membership.
Watson has no place being Deputy Leader, but he should be allowed to remain in the party if he so chooses. His party members should consider carefully whether they want him to remain as their parliamentary candidate, given his role in undermining Corbyn.
The rank and file members of the party need to ensure that a programme of rapid training of its members is undertaken to equip them with the skills to become councillors and MP's, so that we can quickly have a pool of good candidates to replace the current sorry bunch of careerists, Blair-rights, soft-lefts and appeasers.
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