Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Momentum candidates in this election
Would be interesting and useful is someone could list which Labour candidates standing in this election are Momentum supporters and which are not as some voters who are not in the the know might find the information useful before they cast their vote.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dan Smeeton on
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She might not have to wait long. With the wedge Lammy is earning from his second job, he'll surely be retiring early. See here.
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Alan, I was referring to a national figure and only used our local embarrassments to cleave more closely to the terms and conditions of this site.
If Keir is to make a show of his work on ridding the party of antisemites, I'd have thought some aggregate figures would be available. No privacy issues. The stories of the two examples you give are interesting, but do little to refute the ample evidence of antisemitism in Labour.
As for the conflating of antisemitism with criticism of Zionist policies, much of this appeared to happen in rabid and confused outpourings of support for Momentum, Corbyn, and their stance on Palestine. Some will have been genuinely antisemitic and some caught up in the cultish fervour.
Those who set out to purge the party of this problem were clearly politically motivated and unwilling to separate the two. I suspect that they were more motivated to scrub the party clean of Corbynism than racism.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Hello Will. Let me be frank.
I'm uninterested in Keir Starmer's shows. And my interest in the topic you raise of "ridding the party of antisemites" is not a framing I find helpful. My concern is for Starmer at least to try acting as a democratic socialist. Which to my mind includes a need for the process to follow rules of Natural Justice. Sadly lacking as far as I'm aware. And that includes the maxim: "justice delayed is justice denied" - as lawyers agree.
That applies as much to members complained of, as complainants. Again not something I've noticed in cases I'm familiar with. I'm also very much aware that these issues are a matter of deep emotional and personal importance, and of pain, to many if not most people involved.
It worries me that you stress aggregate figures. Whether Jews or non-Jews, Zionists or non- Zionists, Muslims or members of other faiths, or none; for me, this is a matter of caring for and about people. People who have lives, families, friendships loyalties, and histories. It's not some aggregate scoresheet which I worry and care about most. People are not dirt to be - in your own phrase - "scrubbed clean".
The Jewish values I learned from my parents and wider family and their friendship networks were about justice, fairness, solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood. To oppose racism and inequality. Valuing truth-telling; and living in the truth. Building trust among different peoples. And much much more.
I do not detect such values among many of the people celebrating the fall of Jeremy Corbyn. And the loss of good people kicked out, as far as I can see, because they have different views from Zionist Starmer. Nor the values in some of the people including Zionists as well as people claiming to be left-wing, who are ready to misrepresent and even lie about me and other Democratic socialists.
Perhaps you'd like to say a little about yourself. Are you a Labour Party member? Or someone who wishes the Party well? Or perhaps are something entirely else?
I want to be frank about your comment that:
"the conflating of antisemitism with criticism of Zionist policies, much of this appeared to happen in rabid and confused outpourings of support for Momentum, Corbyn, and their stance on Palestine. Some will have been genuinely antisemitic and some caught up in the cultish fervour."
Well I'm neither rabid nor confused. No outpouring of "support for Momentum, Corbyn, and their stance on Palestine," Though yes, what is happening in Israel/Palestine I find appalling. I am not anti-Semitic; nor self-hating, Nor "caught up in ... cultish fervour". If you read widely - which I assume you do - you'll know that I am not in any way odd or unusual. Simply another of the many Jews who prefer to think for themselves, Nor are my thoughts and feelings especially original.
I've spent considerable time over several years trying, with an open mind, to repair my ignorance on these issues. Maybe we may need to agree to differ. But I'd appreciate your not labelling me and insulting others' views as cultish or rabid because they disagree with yours.
Finding ways for Humans to survive on a planet in grave crisis is too urgent and vital to waste time on ad hominem abuse.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Walsh on
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thank you alan stanton. your wise and informed words give me heart in these dark times please say more.
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Alan, you have taken an observation about a cohort of Labour members and turned it into a personal attack. While this is straight from Haringey Labour's playbook (the former Deputy Leader is a world class proponent of this tactic), I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt and assume that you simply misinterpreted what was written. The only other possibility was that you identified with the types of bigots whose criticism of Zionist policies spilled over into antisemitism... a possibility I immediately discounted.
Aggregation is a fundamental approach when trying to evaluate scale. We don't detail the life stories of the unemployed when comparing national statistics, as much as their stories have value. A handful of anecdotes one way or the other do little to show the extent of the antisemitism issue within Labour, or of the attempts to address it.
As for the semantics of scrubbing the party clean, I'm entirely comfortable with that metaphor as an explanation of the party's motivations, and find your contextualisation of it unhelpful. Meanwhile, at least three current Haringey Councillors continue to represent the borough despite having been sanctioned for perpetuating racism.
Beyond the virtues of identifying and eradicating bigotry, these are squabbles within a dysfunctional political party. They have been going on for decades and no doubt contribute to the lack of success the party has had on a national level. As I said previously, there are clearly political as well as moral motivations in the current 'purge'. That's the game. That's the arena entered when people sign up for membership of a political party.
Undoubtedly, some people have been unjustly caught up in the most recent skirmish (S'Kiermish™). But the legacy of Corbyn's inaction lives on as Jews in North London are being harassed on a daily basis for the policies of the Israeli government.
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Thanks James
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Will. I guess we see the world very differently
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