Labour Party: Additional organisations that should face proscription

 

Yesterday I published a guide to four groups facing proscription inside the Labour Party. I left out by accident Labour In Exile a group of individuals who were variously expelled or resigned from the Labour Party. They have been in the quite laughable process of setting up "ghost constituency parties. They have failed to haunt anyone with that exercise but represent some of the foulest individuals ever to cross your path. Proscribe and avoid I say.

There are a number of other groups being considered for having action taken against them. This second guide is incomplete and targets only the more vociferous or vocal little sects and cults infesting the Labour Party.

First up is the totally misnamed Jewish Voice for Labour group. The JVL was set up to support Jeremy Corbyn after the rise of antisemitism inside the Labour party from so may of his new and old supporters. This group deliberately set out to undermine the Jewish Community and deny the problem existed ad underplay any actual occurrences. 

This group is totally unrepresentative of the Jewish Community but ended being touted by the racits and their supporters as evidence that antisemitism did not exist in Labour. They just called it anti-Zionism and opposition to Israel yet couldn't or wouldn't explain why so many of these people also talked about Jewish control of the media, the banks ad posted memes showing the Star of David like a creature from the film Alien emblazoned o the face of the statue of Liberty in New York.

Pure antisemitic conspiracy theories were abundant under Corbyn from the supposed "left" ad the JVL covered for them. Even one their leaders Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was famously take off air by LBC for what they considered antisemitic remarks. The others are just as bad.

Further info on my old website including statement from Labour Against Antisemitism:

 howiescorner.blogspot.com/2020/08/labour-against-antisemitism-exposes.

One the much smaller Trotskyist groupings that entered the Labour Party during the Corbyn era (and still remain) are the Workers Power organisation which has re-branded itself as "Red Flag". Of ll such groups it is probably the least well known as being so small it's activities are limited to one or two constituencies. 

The turn to the Labour Party was taken quietly as Corbyn came to the fore. The main Workers Power website and it's print paper of the same name ceased publication. Readers at the time were referred to Red Flag.

Workers Power simply reconstituted themselves around the name of another publication, this time Red Flag and are seeking to build their organisation from within the Labour Party. 

Their website clearly states:

Our goal is the creation of a genuine, mass revolutionary party capable of challenging social-democracy and Stalinism for leadership across the whole range of working class struggles. Our model is the Bolshevik party that led the Russian revolution to victory in – so far – the only successful socialist revolution in history.

Red Flag is the British section of the League for the Fifth International, which exists to agitate for the creation of a new world party of socialist revolution, whose emergence is the precondition for the working class conquest of power and the establishment of the world socialist order.

Red Flag issued a statement attacking Keir Starmer in which their intentions (and sectarianism) are clear including the lefts obsession with Palestine and a dismissal of concerns over antisemitism:

THE ELECTION of Keir Starmer as Labour leader, with 56.2% of the vote, represents a clear victory for the right in the party. Neither the fact that some on the left were seduced into voting for Starmer, nor that Rebecca Long-Bailey got 27.6% of the vote, can disguise this.....

...hey resorted to the utterly deceitful strategy of the false antisemitism accusations. In this they knew they could count on the support of the Establishment and the media. Perhaps more surprisingly, they also benefitted from the refusal of Momentum, under Jon Lansman’s leadership, and even sections of the far left, notably the AWL, to condemn it for what it was.

That the antisemitism accusations were so effective is related to the more general issue of foreign policy. This goes to the very heart of Labour’s longstanding support for British capitalism’s global strategy, in which support for Israel is a fundamental element in its alliance with the USA.

To have as the leader of a potential governing party a man with Corbyn’s record of principled opposition to imperialist wars and support for the rights of the Palestinians, among other oppressed peoples, was always completely out of the question for not just the right wing of Labour but even some on the Left.

The Progress and Labour First factions that supported Starmer will not cease their attacks on the left. No doubt with the backing of the Board of Deputies* and the press, they will demand a wholesale purge of all who still advocate democratisation of the party, anti-capitalist solutions to the crisis or internationalist policies, for example, on Palestine.

Note the conspiracy theory about the British Board of Deputies common amongst so called "anti-Zionists"

This is how entryist organisations work. In breach of party rules Red Flag factionalise in order to build an party of their own which has clear membership, finances, policies and international affiliations.

One of these groups used to be known as Socialist Organiser and was active inside the Labour Party until it managed to get itself proscribed by the Labour Party conference in 1990. The organisation now re-branded as the Alliance for Workers Liberty published yet another newspaper, Solidarity and has it's members buried deep inside Labour.

Indeed they went as far as to infiltrate Momentum and did succeed at first in gaining a modicum of influence especially through the use of a front publication (now deceased) The Clarion. However the AWL are not very popular on the left and this is in part due to the fact that the AWL recognises there was an antisemitism problem inside Labour and they call for a two-state solution unlike the rest of the far/hard left who simply take the genocidal approach.

However they have a well deserved reputation for both external and internal sectarianism. Despite the ramblings of their guru Sean Matgamna who had previous been in the Socialist Labour League (WRP) but was expelled and then Militant  founded the tendency as Workers Fight in 1966 Even etering the Socialist Workers Party at one point. The AWL has never exceeded more than 150 members and like most left groups has a revolving door system whereby activists are used, worn out and leave due to either splits or expulsions or more likely sheer exasperation.

Unlike most of the Trotskyist groups the AWL does not have it's own international though there is a handful of them in Australia and they continue to talk to other groups for further re-alignments including a new one called Mutiny a split from Counterfire.

That all said the group remains in breach of party rules and constitutes a separate political party with membership, finance, programme and requires both proscription and the expulsion of it's so-called "supporters" 

Finally for now: Another small group the Labour Party Marxists are a group of members and sympathisers of the Communist Party Of Great Britain. *This is not the official Communist Party but a splinter from the original CPGB that began life as an opposition faction inside the party around a journal called The Leninist.

The leader of the group John Chamberlain (Jack Conrad) himself a former member of a previous breakaway from the CPGB, the New Communist Party and his supporters managed to hijack the formal name of the old party when it collapsed following the fall of Stalinism in the Soviet Union. 

Unlike the other entryist groups this organisation is not ideologically "Trotskyist" but nevertheless has entered the Labour Party under the label of the LPM after a long string of failed interventions in other left-wing projects in which they were notorious for not just their special brand of sectarianism but troublesome interventions.

The CPGB were instrumental and remain a driving force of the Labour Against the Witch Hunt organisation that has managed to attract the support of many Corbyn/hard left supporters as it's project has been to defend those accused of antisemitism. 

LAW and the CPGB have provided platforms for the worst elements the left has to offer allying themselves with the worst the far/hard left has to offer in the likes of Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson all of whom are now thankfully no longer Labour Party members.

The LPM's most prominent spokesman Stan Keeble has been expelled from the Labour Party but remains heavily involved with the group as do many of the others expelled via the LAW organisation. The LPM/CPGB have built a whole political industry around the denial of antisemitism insisting in typical extremist conspiratorial theories that it's all a "Zionist " plot,that the Israeli state is involved an that the "right-wing" (including even leftists like Jon Lansman) are weaponising antisemitism to "smear" the left.

The Labour Party Marxist organises "joint" meetings and events with the Communist Party of Great Britain not that their politics or personnel are indistinguishable from each other. This group are in clear breach of party rules and should be proscribed with its members expelled.

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Where necessary I will publish updates on the Labour Party's proscription programme and report new developments and background briefings as necessary.