The evidence is that right-wing officials in the Labour Party attempted to use allegations of anti-Jewish prejudice to discredit Corbyn, whereas the Labour Party was found to have improved its procedures for dealing with this problem under Corbyn.
Yes, Labour has a history of institutionalised and systematic racism. But I don't think that, at least over the past twenty or thirty years or so, Jews have been a particular target of Labour racism as compared to, say, Muslims or GRT people.
Yes I'd agree with that, too. Again, though, isn't it more accurate to say that society has a history of institutionalised and systematic racism? Is Labour any worse than the rest of society?
Perhaps not, but that doesn’t mean they’re not beyond criticism or even worthy of our support.
Totally agree, but let's make the criticisms accurate.
I would not have made any criticisms I didn’t believe were accurate. You’re welcome to disagree.
The Labour Party is responsible for legislating racist laws, for implementing and pushing racist policies, creating a racist climate from e.g. distributing racist anti-immigration mugs. It is a political group that organises for power and to use that power for the ends it supports. And like any political group must be evaluated on the basis of its actions and its politics.
www.progressivebritain.org
Yes I can’t argue with any of your first paragraph, and most of the the eta part of your post is what I’m actually saying. I’m not sure what you mean by “Not put the LP in the space basket as the RSC, let alone society as a whole seems a strange thing to do.” though, I think autocorrect has struck.
) Corbyn – it was his policies aiming to bring back the successful policies of the PWSC that made me support him (whether he’d have succeeded is a different matter of course). If he’d been elected I think he would have done his best to enact policies across the board that were anti-racist, which again is why I think it’s wrong to single him out as being an antisemite. It’s an incredibly damaging thing to say about someone without being able to back it up properly.
The problem here is what the Greens and Labour aren't saying. I've been living on a largely black council estate for the last 15 years. It is in what we keep being told is the Green Party's number one target ward in Lambeth. In that decade and a half I have NEVER seen anyone from the Green Party come on to the estate, and have never even had a leaflet from them through the door. They are very busy in the largely white middle class streets around us but they just don't come here. The Labour Party do, but what they do is say nice things and then go away and the council keeps trying to screw us over. There is currently no political party operating seriously in the borough of Lambeth that isn't primarily chasing white middle class votes. As far as they are all concerned the rest of us can go to hell, the agenda is gentrification and getting power. Jim and Claire aren't entirely dumb, but they are both lot down the rabbit hole of all politics being about national Parliamentary elections chasing white middle class floating voters in marginal seats in middle England, and thus the needs of a majority of people in Lambeth are entirely unimportant. Stuff them ALL. We need something locally based and focused, taking council seats from all of them.Doing this already,
Beating the Greens at the ballot box — Lessons From Lambeth
Lambeth labour councillor Jim Dickson and, leader, Claire Holland tell us how Labour can beat the Greens across the country on May 4th
Cllr Dickson almost lost his seat to Greens in Lambeth. So this isn't just theory. He is one of the more intelligent Blairite Cllrs.
Ironically this article was next to the article you posted on the website this morning
forget social democracy again
Why? Why do we have to compare it against other parties? If the reply one gives to the statement "look at this racist action the the Labour Party has done", is "but the Tories are worse" then that is pretty much a clear example of whataboutery.
The Labour has been in government or the official opposition for 100 years now. It is not just been "tainted" by society's racism, it has played a key role in forming the racist policies and actions of the state over that time.
Working class first
This goes back to the end of the 1980s and the blame lies squarely with Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould. In a context in which much of the Labour Party had been actively fighting bigotry and prejudice they introduced the idea of a static Overton Window and the idea that opposing bigotry was a bad thing as it upset bigots and drew flak from the gutter press. Completely misunderstanding what the Overton Window was. Joe Overton was a right wing extremist libertarian who invented a tool designed to work out what policy areas the extreme right should push at to gain political traction. The damn thing was invented to be moved. Trying to treat it as immutable was basically surrendering to neofascism. Kinnock, Blair and the others who bought into that delusions share some of the blame, but the driving forces were Mandelson and Gould. Until they started pushing that line it was accepted across the board that fighting bigotry and prejudice was a good thing that wasn't always popular. Their most enthusiastic acolytes now OWN the Labour Party.
I'm not. At the moment I am just trying to organise to stand a candidate in Streatham and North Croydon using the Transform Lambeth network to find funding and campaigners. At the moment the plan is that whatever happens in terms of Tramsform attempting to form a new national party, candidates at this general election can stand independently of it and still get backing. If they manage to form a national party then the membership apparently gets to choose the party's name (I think to some extent because it is understood that Transform is not a good name for a political party but nobody actually has a better idea yet). My guess is that it will end up being an independent candidate standing very much as a local individual on a personal platform labelled on ballot papers as something like "independent <something implying democratic and left of centre>. Aside from sending in some amendments to the draft constitution I'm not really getting involved in the efforts to create a new national left party simply because I can't be bothered with all the inevitable aggro when there's only a matter of months in which to get candidates set up, funds raised and campaigns planned before the general election. I'm just setting out to get some of the worst crooks out of Parliament and replaced by some functioning adult human beings.
