"He was a member of the BNP but he never said anything racist"

Today marks something of an epiphany. I had, sort of, assumed that the Labour Party would eventually get round to sorting itself out on the matter of antisemitism. After all, being a Jew is recognised as an ethnic designation - in the words of our equalities laws, a 'protected charcteristic'. This means that language attacking Jewish people on the basis of their Jewish identity is a 'hate crime'.

The revelation that the leader of the Labour Party was a member of a "secret" forum on Facebook that seems to have specialised in antisemitism was pretty shocking. But it is only half as shocking as the reaction of Labour members and supporters to this revelation. With a few notable exceptions, Labour MPs, councillors and activists responded to the existence of this forum and Mr Corbyn's involvement with what amounts to a shrug. If these folk said anything it amounted to "nobody cares" - probably because there are only 300,000 or so Jews in Britain making racism towards them pretty marginal in political terms.

When poked or pushed the typical reaction from Labour members has been to make excuses for Mr Corbyn - like this:

...being a member of a group where obnoxious views are expressed does not mean that you share them. Unless there is clear evidence, such as a racist post or a like of a racist post by an individual it is merely circumstantial, and at worst cause for concern.

So Mr Corbyn is invited to join a group full of racists, chooses to join the group (we'll give him the benefit of the doubt on whether he checked out the group before joining) and remains a member for at least two years. During that period we're expected to believe that Mr Corbyn didn't witness a single antisemitic trope, meme or statement even though he appears to have helped (or so the people involved said) organise a meeting of some sort - here's a letter to Mr Corbyn from Joan Ryan, Labour MP for Enfield North:



It may be - I haven't seen - that Mr Corbyn denies helping organise this meeting or deflects it by passing off the organisational blame onto his office but, for me at least, this shows that he was actively engaged with the people running the group who were (judging from their posts) deeply antisemitic. It's not just a case of being a member and occasionally posting.

Overwhelmingly the membership of the Labour Party is not antisemitic but, when the leader and people around the leader are closely associated with antisemites, you have to ask whether the sort of "Jeremy's not antisemitic he was just on a forum full of antisemites" argument gets thinner and thinner. We've not quite got there yet but it's getting close to the position where the defence is effectively: "he was a member of the BNP but he never said anything racist". And people who remain in the Labour Party without, at the very least, questioning whether the Party has a problem are pretty complicit in perpetuating the too widely held view that being racist to Jews isn't as bad as other forms of racism.

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It's not just clumsy language, the left is institutionally anti-semitic

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If we ignore the "it's all an evil Tory conspiracy run by Murdoch" line, there are two narratives around the current problems the Labour Party faces with anti-semitism. One is that the Party isn't fundamentally anti-semitic but has a few members who have spoken or written things that constitute anti-semitism. The other is that the Party has a fundamental problem, to coin a phrase, it is institionally anti-semitic.

Chris Dillow makes the case for the first narrative:

It might be useful to distinguish between two forms of racism: verbal, and structural. Although the two often go together, they need not. For example, you’ll hear far more racist language in financial firms than in the arts industry – but you’ll also see far more ethnic minorities too. One business has more verbal racism, the other more structural racism. In this sense, Labour has a problem with verbal racism, but isn’t obviously structurally racist.

Now taken in the round, Chris is quite right here. Even its biggest critics (and I count myself as one of these) wouldn't see the Labour Party as structurally racist, indeed the Party can make a strong claim to having been instrumental in making Britain a far less racist country than it was when I was growing up. On the specific question of anti-semitism, however, I fear Chris might be wrong - the faction that has captured the Party right now, the Corbyn-Abbott-Livingstone axis does have a structural problem with anti-semitism. And at the root of this is the left's (if it's OK to describe Corbyn's faction in such terms) attitude to Israel.

It's not simply the left's 'edginess' (as Chris calls it) that's the issue here but that the adoption of unquestioning support for Palestinian rights had led them into sharing campaigns with mysogynist, homophobic and Jew-hating groups simply because those groups are opposed to Israel. And, as Jonathan Fredland observed in his plea for the left to treat Jews as they would any other minority, 93% of Jews see Israel as part of their Jewish identity. The support of Corbyn, Abbott, Livingstone and others for organisations that present an existential threat to Israel, that literally wish to destroy the world's only majority Jewish country, isn't seen as 'anti-Zionism' but as an attack on Jews and the idea of Jewishness.

The result of this is that too many from the left are simply blind to how their words and actions around Israel are deeply upsetting to many Jewish people. When Livingstone said Hitler supported Zionism what Jews heard was that the man who sought to exterminate all Jews and killed over 6 million, far from being an anti-semite was a supporter of a Jewish homeland. Livingstone and those who act as apologists for his racism in effect declared that Zionism and National Socialism had the same ends. That so many in the Labour Party fail to realise that this view is horribly anti-semitic says to me that this isn't just 'verbal racism' - the left is institutionally anti-semitic for the same reasons that the the Lawrence Enquiry found that London's police were institutionally racist.

I'll conclude by saying that, while Chris Dillow is correct about the persistence of dog-whistle politics and right that it should be challenged - the attacks on Sadiq Khan in London are appalling - this is essentially 'whataboutery'. What the left needs is to recognise is that it doesn't treat Jews in the way it treats other minorities - in the game of equalities top trumps, anti-semitism is bottom of the pile.

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It snowed this morning - a comment on "normal politics in Bradford"

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It snowed this morning. Not an unusual occurrence in Bradford as the massive grit pile at Denholme attests but late April is pushing it for snowstorms. Because I chose to stay in rather than head into town, I found myself reading a piece in the Independent by the writer, Ben Judah where he - with some justification - tears into the politics of Bradford:

Were you shocked by Naz Shah’s outbursts on social media? Were you baffled that an aspiring MP would call to “relocate” (that is, destroy and deport) Israel to America? Did you baulk, wondering why on earth a self-respecting politician would ask supporters to vote in an online poll because “the Jews are rallying”?

Don’t be. Because Naz Shah, and everything she said, is normal politics in Bradford.

Ben goes on to recount his experiences of visiting Bradford including a terrifying and terrible racist assault. The picture painted in the article is a pretty bleak one filled with references to the poverty, depression and segregation of the City. I bridled a little at the suggestion that all politics in Bradford is shaped by events in Israel and Palestine and, as a result, got into a spat with Ben on Twitter.

Nevertheless, the view about Bradford's politics that Ben put across is understandable when all outsiders see of that politics is this:

I contacted all the candidates vying to replace him. Most had photos exhibiting themselves at pro-Palestine rallies. One Labour hopeful responded, rather bizarrely, to my request for an interview with a video of herself speaking at a pro-Palestine rally.

From the sectarian mania of George Galloway - he would be a comedy act had his words and actions not damaged Bradford so much - through to the recent reports of anti-semitism, the public face of Bradford politics is exactly as Ben Judah describes. As another writer recently asked of me - "does everyone have to say this sort of thing to get elected in Bradford?"

My answer to that writer was that, in 20 years as a Councillor, I've never found the need to make inflammatory, racist statements in order to get elected. And I'm sure the same goes for many of my colleagues from across the political parties in Bradford. It is indeed depressing that the picture painted by Ben Judah is painfully close to the truth but it is only part of the truth. And it's that other truth about Bradford that still gives me hope.

This is the truth about the men from Bradford Council of Mosques who helped raise the funds to repair Bradford synagogue. This is the truth of a City that's not simply a Muslim enclave in a non-Muslim Yorkshire but is a varied, interesting and at times exciting place. Muslims make up little more than a quarter of Bradford's population yet the public discourse about the City is almost completely captured by the issues that minority are focused upon.

As I said, it snowed this morning. So there weren't any horses clip-clopping along the bridleway behind our house. But there will be tomorrow. This is the other Bradford, the place that visiting writers never see, the place that isn't described in comments like this from Nigel Farage:

What has happened, and I think what has happened in Bradford, is that left-wing support and sympathy for anti-Israel/anti-Israeli views has now become allied to a very big growth in the Muslim vote in this country.

"I think what you have in Bradford is sectarian politics and I loathe it because if we think about the other part of the United Kingdom that has been plagued by sectarian politics, it is called Northern Ireland with Protestant v Catholic and look where that has got us."

When I've talked to Muslim audiences during this year's election campaign, I've stressed that this is a local election, I've told them that the Labour Party takes their votes for granted, and I've told them that we need to focus on getting the basic services right if we want a better City. What I haven't mentioned is foreign policy, the familiar litany of other places grievances that have infected politics in Bradford - Palestine, Kashmir, Syria.

That message is the same one we put out everywhere - make savings, deliver good services, help improve schools. And that everywhere includes the World Heritage Site at Saltaire, it includes the village of Thornton where the Brontes were born and Haworth where they lived. It includes a City centre with a nightlife of bars and restaurants that's starting to thrive again. And it includes Cullingworth where I live. Bradford is a great place filled with many fantastic people and I'd love for Ben Judah to visit again so we can, by way of asking for forgiveness, show him the good side of the City to balance the bad side he experienced.

I hope that my message - that you don't need to be a racist sectarian bigot to get elected in Bradford - is the right one. And rest assured that, if the only way to get elected in Bradford is by being anti-semitic, then I'd rather not be elected.

As I said, it snowed on Bradford today.

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A funny old week....anti-semitism, suspension and the problem with social media

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Was always going to be quiet on the blogging front - there being a local election and all that jazz. But it has turned out to be a most peculiar week. It started with this:

A Labour MP has argued Israel should be “relocated” to America and praised the “transportation costs” of deporting Israeli Jews out of the Middle East. Naz Shah, who defeated George Galloway in Bradford West, shared a highly inflammatory graphic arguing in favour of the chilling “transportation” policy two years ago, adding the words “problem solved”.

Three days later it resulted in this:

“Jeremy Corbyn and Naz Shah have mutually agreed that she is administratively suspended from the Labour Party by the General Secretary. Pending investigation, she is unable to take part in any party activity and the whip is removed.”

As I said, a strange old week. Not only is it a lesson (again) about social media but it reminds us that hatred is easy to get sucked into - from putting 'hates Tories' on your Twitter profile to posting anti-Semitic tropes. A sense of injustice about Palestine is entirely understandable as is criticising the Israeli government but the next step, depersonalising Jews is a problem. I suspect Naz Shah knows this and knows what she posted was wrong - not because some people might be offended by those posts but because anti-Semitism itself is wrong.

There may yet be more to come on this story, I don't know who trawled through Naz Shah's social media, but whatever the personal cost I hope that the result is that my fellow politicians challenge anti-Semitism more strongly wherever it rears its ugly head.

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Things said about David Ward MP I agree with...

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Well here’s what’s wrong. If one of Lord Ahmed or Mr Ward’s respective party allies had said something similar about Muslims, you can bet your life that they’d – quite rightly – be drummed out of Westminster before you can say racist.

Invite a well-known anti-Semite to speak at a meeting you’re hosting, or launch into an attack on “the Jews”, and your party will not lift a finger to oust you.

Seems that way, I'm afraid.

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Quote of the week...David Ward MP

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Comes from  David Ward MP:

"...as someone who has run race awareness classes, I find the idea that I have been sent on some sort of correctionary course to be patronising and quite offensive.” 

David still doesn't get what he did wrong - quite amazing for someone who lays claim to anti-racist purity!


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David Ward MP keeps on digging...

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Now it's the great Jewish conspiracy - the "machine":

"There is a huge operation out there, a machine almost, which is designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism. And that comes into play very, very quickly and focuses intensely on anyone who's seen to criticise the state of Israel. And so I end up looking at what happened to me, whether I should use this word, whether I should use that word – and that is winning, for them. Because what I want to talk about is the fundamental question of how can they do this, and how can they be allowed to do this."

Saying that atrocities in Gaza were down to "the Jews" was anti-semitic. Saying that the only reason he got into trouble was because of some vast machine compounds David Ward's 'mistake'. The truth is he got into trouble for saying that "the Jews" hadn't learned from The Holocaust.

I'm pretty sure David doesn't mean to be anti-semitic but the effect is the same - maybe he needs some awareness training?

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In which David Ward MP gets a little anti-semitic.

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I've no time at all for David Ward MP - I recall when he accused the then Director of Regeneration in Bradford of racism in a letter he bunged through doors in Barkerend. And when he accused me of lying in a speech to Council - when I wasn't present to respond.

However, today - when we remember the evil of Hitler's genocide - David Ward launches what seems to be a crass, anti-semitic attack:

"Having visited Auschwitz twice - once with my family and once with local schools - I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza."

The Jews, David? All the Jews?

And it seems, when asked to explain, David digs his hole deeper:

“It appears that the suffering by the Jews has not transformed their views on how others should be treated”.

Oh dear. The Jews, David? All the Jews?

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...of course anti-semitism isn't a problem in the UK

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Or maybe it is:

A spokesman for the Brighton Dome said the reason for the cancellation was to concentrate all security resources on one evening, in order that at least one show would go ahead smoothly with a "higher level of security". He said that the decision had been made following discussions about security with Sussex Police, and with awareness about the disruptions and protests at the Edinburgh shows.

It is appalling that people feel able to target a show simply because it is Jewish. And that the police are so supine and unready to defend free speech.

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