I watched Sky’s version of the Labour leadership hustings.
The set looked familiar and the host(ess) was Soppy Ridge. (See, I told you I’d leave her name auto-incorrected)
The most annoying bit of the programme was during the part where they did their bit to address the party’s antisemitism problem, which they all (rightly) condemned as ‘racism’; all three insisted that the worst offenders had to be rooted out of the party. They all spoke as if antisemitism had nothing to do with Islam. Lisa Nandy even managed to assure us that she was so anti-racist that she had no time for the “racist Tommy Robinson”(!) The chairperson confused the matter still further by bringing in an extra questioner, whose somewhat equivocal question on the same subject virtually negated the original unequivocal one.
Rather awkwardly (though it amused me) one extremely earnest and passionate member of the audience got his knickers in a terribly uncomfortable twist, trying to defend Jeremy Corbyn by insisting that he wasn’t racist at all and refusing to concede that there was any such a thing as antisemitism in the Labour Party. His enthusiasm for the party as a whole and his misguided attempt to support all three contenders effectively negated everything they’d just said. In fact, it exposed their duplicitousness.
I'll believe the Labour Party is serious about tackling anti-semitism when they admit anti-semitism has always been part of the socialist movement and is not some sort of exotic import. Henry Hyndman, leader of the Social Democratic Federation, who helped found the forerunner of the Labour Party (the Labour Representation Committee), was virulently anti-semitic. Marx although of Jewish heritage, came out with frankly anti-semitic writings. Stalin was anti-semitic. A lot of Labour activists have been of Roman Catholic Irish background and received thoroughly anti-semitic educations from priests well into the latter half of the 20th century. That has had an effect as well.
ReplyDeleteI suspect that most of Mosley’s supporters in different times would have been natural Labour voters. Dubious aristocrats aside.
DeleteMosley's New Party, which subsequently became an officially Fascist party was an offshoot of the Labour Party. So yes!
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